Starship Modeler Discussion Forums

Hey, not one 500 Error today! I have been using https, so that may have something to do with it. If this continues, we'll need a new problem to have a vicious political argument about.

EDIT: just got an SQL error. Probably Harris' fault. Isn't the vice president in charge of that?

Thom wrote: ↑Sat Sep 28, 2024 6:26 amMods seem to have vanished as well.

Alright then, time for a no-holds-barred political argument!

I don't have a roll. Will a bagel do?

Wow! Now it's practically saying, "Please kill me!" I get a 500 Error on 90%+ of clicks and a lot of botched page loads. This is on my tablet; it might work better on my desktop.

Evidently the hosting service isn't doing what they're getting paid for.

Working much better today. Hasn't once begged to be killed.

The little white TIE fighters are clearly intended for distance shots, and I would bet they were painted that way because they were going to be photographed under much lower light.

Both the David Parker article and the one at shipmodels.info are the right way to look at it, pragmatically but philosophically. There's a wrong way, too, and you see it online in people seeking advice or offering it, who assume there's a right way of doing "scale effect" that consists sim...

I'm getting the 500 error on 50% of attempted page loads. Definitely wonky, approaching squonky (the squonk being a creature so ugly it cries all the time, and dissolves in its own tears when cornered).

My understanding of scale effect is that it simulates atmospheric perspective, by which intervening haze is a depth perception cue, like in the matte painting in the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. How it applies to space models is something for the modeler to think about. Mostly it means I have a r...

Here are pics of his models. You should recognize them from Close Encounters, even if you mainly just see the lighting effects in the movie, and little of the models themselves (aside from the mothership). https://www.flickr.com/photos/bellerophon_modeler/53827074562/in/dateposted-public/ https://ww...

Stu Pidasso wrote: ↑Thu Jun 20, 2024 11:25 am Am I late?

You're not hanging around the lobby of the Crowne Plaza, I hope.

As usual Tony, your good photography saves me doing bad photography. Thanks.

Though I did take underside photos of Scott Washington's CE3K UFOs, because they were awesome and hardly anyone takes underside photos. I must share those. They're still on my phone.

Yeah, so much for that crazy prediction. My crystal ball needs Windex.

Now that I'm here at WF, here's my crazy prediction: this year Adam Savage shows up at WF, just as a regular attendee. Last year Norm from Tested came here to shoot video, and this year Fon Davis, his friend from ILM days, is one of the guests. The planets seem to be aligned.

Oh, great! Now I have to use a sheet of copier paper and about 0.2 cents worth of toner, at my own expense, just to save myself an hour of standing in line! What's this world coming to? Soon we'll have to print out our own entry badges in the comfort of our own homes instead of waiting in line until...

Mrs. Bellerophon and I will attend again this year.

I once touched up a rental car with nail polish. Does that count?

They didn't come after me about the scratches, so I must've done a decent job.

Interesting idea. Sounds like a job for a single-action airbrush. I've used hot stuff on misbehaving decals, but always with a brush (and a level of caution like I'm handling a rattlesnake). Usually it has ended in failure. An airbrush could give better control, but I'd still treat it like a rattles...

Carlotta vom Acht and the Manshonyagger in "Mark Elf" by Cordwainer Smith.

Yeah, the two smallest sizes of Plastruct butyrate tubing aren't tubing at all, because there's wire where the hole would be. But Plastruct doesn't call them tubing, either. Maybe they found it impractical to make hollow tubing that small, so they made coated wire instead. Evergreen round styrene tu...

Indeed, thanks for doing all that work to share WF with folks who couldn't make it and to save us so-so photographers the trouble.

BTW Tony, you've got Ilene and me down as from NJ, not PA, but I give you a pass because she's a Jersey girl for life.

This was the third WF since it was cancelled in 2020, and it's been growing each year. Covid has definitely improved hobby sales, 'cause people needed something to do during all that downtime, and they rediscovered the fun they had when they were young (plus you have young people discovering it for ...

You mean before or after that hoard of a crowd wasn't in the contest room??? (Maybe I needed an extra-special lens on my camera, enabling me to shoot directly through all of those folks who were crowded around the tables, for much of Saturday)? :wink: Actually, I wasn't able to get into the contest...

Tony, you spent too much time looking through the viewfinder of your camera, and not enough aiming your Mark I eyeballs directly at the models!

But seriously, I appreciate the work you and everyone else do taking good photos at WF!

P1010092 with that NASA liveried P-51 turboprop conversion tucked in lower left corner is a point of interest. https://postimg.cc/p5N8kQw2 Don't know if the real deal was actually used by NASA but here is this, https://www.aerialvisuals.ca/AirframeDossier.php?Serial=78138 By 29 March 1968 Converted...

Here I thought by vanquishing dust, sbaxter, you meant getting the air clean in the first place. Sort of like Mr. Miyagi said, "Best way to avoid punch, not be there." I have a serious dust problem at my workbench, and aside from giving the room yet another serious cleaning, I plan to try ...

Funny, I just did as you suggested aitala, adding the s, and I do see the lock icon in the URL bar.

So what's the risk here? Just spammers getting accounts and posting malicious links, or is there something else?

Out of curiosity, I once bought a little jar of conductive paint that would supposedly let you build a circuit board without soldering. Think it had graphite in it. Anyhow, it didn't work for me.

I had not noticed the paint pages at Scalemates, nor had I heard of Encycolorpedia, so thanks for posting that, Zubie. Unfortunately, more information about color standards and hobby paints can make the task of color matching even more difficult for the modeler, as you clearly know if you're working...

I still have a number of the old Humbrol Authentic colours from the 1970's and tonight I found two unopened tinlets of Humbrol #170 Brown Bess. These two tins are from the early eighties and are now discontinued. Those tinlets of Brown Bess would fetch a nice price from Aliens model and prop builde...