Media - our house - Page 8 | virtualwolf.org

A photo of a mostly-assembled single bedframe. Main components of it are thick black metal U-beams that make up the four sides of the frame, with another one running down the middle. There are wooden panels on the outer sides that attach to the metal to hide the frame itself (the panels themselves are solid wood too and quite hefty), and four panels of wood that the mattress sits on which have holes drilled in them to allow the mattress to breathe. These panels get screwed into the U-beams of the frame itself, and the whole bed is raised on four solid round wooden legs, with an extra leg right in the middle of the centre U-beam to provide even MORE support. The whole thing would have to weigh like 90kg, it's ridiculous.

And then this evening I put together the world's most overengineered bedframe, which weighs more than I do.

(We got this one specifically because a) we're sick of having to replace cheap bedframes because the slats either warp or the whole thing starts creaking, and b) all the other ones were too low to fit our storage boxes under them.)

Posted on 10 May 2025, 18:36

A photo of a game of Warhammer Underworlds. There are two rectangular boards with hex tiles on them, the art on the boards looks like gnarled and corrupted roots like you're deep within a cursed forest. Closest to the camera are Domitan's Stormcoven, three warriors in armour who look like they're also mages because they all have staves and one of them looks like she's levitating. On the other side of the board are the Gorechosen of Dromm, a three-fighter warband consisting of very large meaty-looking warriors in large red armour, one of whom is clearly part daemon because he's hunched over and has MASSIVE arms and huge horns sprouting from his head.

@yayKM and I played some 1v1 Warhammer Underworlds for the first time in ages! @yayKM went with her now-standard Gorechosen of Dromm, while I played Domitan's Stormcoven who I haven't actually played at all before despite getting the Wyrdhollow box nigh on two years ago now. 😬 The Stormcoven are shamefully unpainted and we had to call it after the second round (and it ended in a 8-8 draw!), but the Stormcoven's gameplay was really interesting with the inspiration being able to be switched around after activations, I'm looking forward to playing them more!

The miniatures themselves are fantastic too (you can see them close-up when I assembled and undercoated them) and normally I find the Stormcast Eternals very uninteresting (they're much like Space Marines in that respect 😛) but Games Workshop done a really good job with these three, in particular Leona Stratosi who looks like she's actually flying.

our house darkroom gaming games workshop warhammer underworlds nethermaze gorechosen of dromm wyrdhollow

Posted on 21 April 2025, 22:03

A photo of my birthday presents. At the top is the box of an Arturia "MiniLab 3" MIDI keyboard, it's a small 25 key keyboard with a number of dials and sliders and buttons above the keys themselves. Under the keyboard box are four books, Kindred by Octavia E. Butler, Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie, the Inheritance Trilogy by N.K. Jemisin, and The Killing Moon also by N.K. Jemisin.

And the actual birthday goodies! I'm really looking forward to playing around with the keyboard, the company that makes it has a big synth plugin that integrates specifically with all the dials and sliders on the keyboard itself so you can control all the various parameters of the synth without needing to take your hands off the keyboard itself.

books our house darkroom presents midi keyboard

Posted on 20 April 2025, 10:18

A photo of the back of our Kia Cerato with my drum kit in pieces but fitting quite happily into the boot (with the rear seats down, of course).

Honestly, how good are hatchbacks. I pulled apart my drum kit for the jam session tomorrow and packed it into the Cerato and it fits perfectly, along with my little Blackstar guitar amp and the significantly larger drum monitor.

our house darkroom drums

Posted on 14 April 2025, 15:58

A photo of two golden brown loaves of bread covered in flour, sitting on a cooling rack.

Starting off the holidays with some delicious bread. Sadly I ran out of @mike@chinwag.org's amazing jam a couple of months ago.

lightroom our house food portrait mode bread

Posted on 13 April 2025, 12:22

A photo looking towards the floor at right-hand side of my drum kit underneath where the two crash cymbals and ride cymbal life, showing the drum speaker. It's black box with a grille on the front, with the front of it with the speaker and grille in being angled so it points up at you as you're sitting at the kit.

I have two weeks off at the end of April, and had been talking to a couple of friends who play guitar and bass about getting together and actually playing some music. One of them is on a long break and the other only works part-time, so we're going to meet up during the day on a week day during my time off and rock out!

Very looking forward to bit, but I realised that the only external speaker I had was the little Audioengine one I'd bought a while back and that really wasn't going to cut the mustard competing with a guitar and bass amp, so I bought a Roland PM-100 drum monitor which arrived today, and it fits perfectly under the kit at the right!

our house darkroom new toys drums

Posted on 28 March 2025, 12:48

A photo of an old PowerBook G3 sitting on my desk, with windows for Hotline and Internet Explorer 5 (with macintoshrepository.org loaded) open. I also have the "About This Computer" window visible in front of everything, showing that the computer has 512MB RAM in total, with the entirety of the OS taking up 43MB.

Talking to @fsvo@old.mermaid.town about my old websites got me right in the nostalgia and missing the time when computers and the internet were simpler, so I've booted up the old Pismo and am bathing in the Mac OS 9. 😁

our house mac os 9 powerbook g3 darkroom retro things

Posted on 22 March 2025, 20:48

A photo of a three-player game of Warhammer Underworlds. It's played on three rectangular boards sitting together in a T-shape, there are tiles marked out with hexes, and the artwork is all gnarled and corrupted roots like you're deep within a cursed forest. Closest to the camera are the Shadeborn, four lithe elves in very dynamic poses with very pale skin and wearing deep purple clothing, at the left are the Gorechosen of Dromm, a three-fighter warband consisting of very large meaty-looking warriors in large red armour, one of whom is clearly part daemon because he's hunched over and has MASSIVE arms and huge horns sprouting from his head. Then finally at the right are Lady Harrow's Mournflight, four swooping spirits in sickly green.

A photo of Herax Skullgrinder's fighter card with upgrades on him.

We had @wobin over today for games and a barbecue! We mixed it up a bit and went back to Warhammer Underworlds, me with the Shadeborn (that I haven't played before), @yayKM with the Gorechosen of Dromm, and @wobin with Lady Harrow's Mournflight.

Round one was an absolute shocker for me, I lost both Drusilla and Valyssa to @yayKM's Gorehulk, and she was in a commanding position and it looked like it was going to be a blowout. Things turned around in the second round though, and I managed to kill the Gorehulk and Dromm and not lose anyone else and it was 8-8-2 Gorechosen/Shadeborn/Mournflight at the beginning of the third round. The Skullgrinder Herax was upgraded to be an absolute BEAST, I'm not sure we've had quite this many upgrades on a single character in any game before. 😅

The final score ended up being 12-8-5 to the Shadeborn thanks to an objective that gave me three glory at the end of the third round. I definitely want to play the Shadeborn some more to get my head around them, and really need to get around to painting up both Domitan's Stormcoven and Ephilim's Pandaemonium because they're such cool miniatures.

our house darkroom gaming games workshop warhammer underworlds beastgrave lady harrow's mournflight nethermaze the shadeborn gorechosen of dromm

Posted on 15 March 2025, 20:34

A photo of my Roland TD-17KV electronic drum kit sitting in the corner of a room. The whole setup is sitting on a mottled dark grey mat (essentially carpet with a fairly thick foam underlay).

There we go, last bit of drum kit upgrading for the time being: I got a proper drum mat! With my old setup the kick drum pedal was hard against the cymbal stand that's poking down there at the right, and the hi-hat stand would end up getting pushed back into the left of the drum frame. With the new setup if I really put the boot in, the kick drum pedal would end up migrating its way back, and the hi-hat stand was in an awkward position. I've added velcro to both now, and they are absolutely not moving. Plus a bonus, the kick drum pedal makes far less audible sound now that it's not booming directly against the floorboards.

our house darkroom drums

Posted on 7 March 2025, 13:11

A photo of five medium-sized brown birds with sharp pointy peaks and a mottled pattern on their feathers wandering around in the grass.

We just had a group of birds of a sort I haven't seen here before wandering around the backyard finding things to eat in the grass. I saw at least one of them grabbed a slug! It looks like it was raining a fair bit overnight and everything is soaked, I wonder if that's driven the slugs out or something.

our house darkroom birds

Posted on 7 March 2025, 10:36