Archive for the ‘General News’ Category

OCZ Vertex 3

Posted: 03/31/2013 in General News
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IMAG0128

So I meant to post this a couple weeks ago but never got around to it. Recently my main PC’s hard drive decided to kick the bucket for good. Fortunately I had everything backed up for some time on my network drive so I didn’t lose anything critical, but a new drive was going to be required.

I’d been researching Solid State Drives for awhile now and just recently they started getting under $1.00 a Gig. OCZ has been a top runner for quite awhile in terms of reviews on Tiger Direct and New Egg so I made the decision to pick one up. Seems my timing was good with Tiger Direct as this $220 drive had a $40 instant savings attached and the day after I bought it, a rebate of $30 was offered as well! So I got this this $220 SSD for $150 bucks! I was quite happy with that!

Now the drive itself was very simple to install. I had to run through a few hoops to get my OS installed correctly on it, but once that was back in play the performance increase was far better than I was expecting. My computer is actually pretty old as far as computer age goes, however at the time it was top notch. I got it back in 2008 but it was one of the first to have the new i7 Intel Quad Core technology. It also had 12 Gigs of RAM and a 512MB Radeon graphics card. I have since upgraded of course, 1GB Radeon HD6870 GPU, Creative Titanium X Sound Card and now this SSD. Though even with all these upgrades, keeping up with modern games is difficult for this first gen i7.  With that said, though the general use performance increases are impressive, I’m probably not able to utilize the full power of this drive because it uses SATA 3 technology which I don’t think was around when my PC was built.

But anyway, I’d recommend this drive to any who are in the market for a new one. As soon as I free up some money I’m going to upgrade my laptop as well because that one is even older (2006) and has a hard time keeping up with anything these days and I still need it to perform at a top level. But here is a link to the drive, hope you find this useful!

Tiger Direct, OCZ Vertex 3

Case #2 for Gman

Posted: 03/22/2013 in General News
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Case #2 for [Gman] is almost done. Unlike the last case, this one was done up from scratch. Though I love vacuum forming and making these from nothing more than a block of wood, the whole process is a great deal more time consuming. With that said, this is probably one of the best vacuum formed casings I’ve made to date and I’m quite proud with not only the form but the quality of the cuts and general layout.

Most will notice right away that this resembles the [Wii U] controller. That was the point, however now a Game Cube portable is going to be stuffed into it! And I say stuffed because apparently the commissioner is going to be putting the whole original disc drive into it as opposed to the now standard [WiiKey Fusion] mod chips that allow people to play ROMs of their games via SD card. But it should be interesting to see the progress on in the near future!

Got a few more jobs to finish up and then in the next couple of weeks the meet-up so things are about to get crazy busy! Loving every second of it though and can’t wait!

Epic Modder’s Meet-Up Officially Announced!

Posted: 03/21/2013 in General News
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Meetuppic

That’s right! On April 11th, an unprecedented meeting of some of the best modders in the country will be happening, right here, in Downing’s Basement! The culmination of over 7 months worth of planning is all actually happening and if you told me a year ago I’d have this kind of company in my house/workshop, I wouldn’t have believed it!

Let’s put this into perspective a bit. There are 6 people coming to this event from April 11th to the 15th. I live in the capital city of New Hampshire. The guest list brings people from the states of PA, CT, SC, GA and CA! Yes, I’ve pretty much got the entire Eastern seaboard headed north and one from as far west as you can go, Hollywood California. Can you see what I’m starting to get excited?!

The only thing that makes the fact these guys are traveling so far for this is “who” is traveling so far for this. Those who follow console modding at all know that there are a few out there who rise above in most cases and those few are the ones making the trip. Here’s a quick list.

From NY, we have Beta and Aux, two students at the Rochester Institute of Technology. Aux is also a Moderator on the Mod Retro forums and Beta is in line for potential work opportunities at Oculus, the new virtual reality headset that has taken the nation by storm. I look forward to their knowledge and meeting them in person.

From PA, The Game Cube Master himself, Ashen. He went to a meet-up in TN a year ago and we got a good chance to see what he’s made of. His work on Game Cube innovation has been amazing.

From GA, the very man that got me into this hobby to begin with, none other than the maker of the Darth64 and dozens of other amazing mod, Hailrazer! Yeah, I know right! Look him up if you don’t know!

From CA, making the longest trip and is also a Moderator on the Mod Retro Forums, Tchay! Tchay is the maker of the Envision which was another amazing portable Game Cube and has since become a hot seller of his.

And last but not least, from SC, the legendary old pal, Shock Slayer! If you don’t know who his is, it won’t take long to figure it out. Former Admin of the Mod Retro forums and now running his own site, SS is probably one of the most notorious modders in the hobby.

So anyway, we’ll have more update for you soon enough but you can see that I’m quite excited and for good reason. We’ll be doing a live stream of the even on Friday the 12th, so we’ll get you more info on where and when that will be happening! All in all, I’m very excited for this! Stay tuned for more!

Case Commissions on the rise

Posted: 03/19/2013 in Current Project, General News
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Word seems to have gotten out about the work I’ve been doing for other modders and in the last week alone I’ve taken on over 5 new case jobs for 3 different modders doing console commissions for other people as well. Now this doesn’t sound like a lot but compared to previous numbers of 1 or 2 jobs a month, 5 in a week is quite the increase.

The job above is a simple case cut from a Poly Case SL-68 for MBB forum member [Gman] who runs a small operation known a [Gman Modz]. He’s been doing some pretty impressive work as of late and I’m glad to be helping him out with some of his projects. This one was a run of 3 cases, all cut the same and are for Portable Nintendo 64’s. Given the size of these cases, it will be quite impressive to see these completed.

That said, I am also in the process of doing a full vacuumed-formed custom Portable Game Cube casing which will have a surprising similarity to another console on the market today. Stay tuned for that one!

Vacuum Former Update

Posted: 03/10/2013 in Current Project, General News
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Been quite awhile since I posted a new video and though it’s nothing special, it’s still an update in video form.

For those who don’t know, for the past year now I’ve been working on a new vacuum forming machine with friend and owner of Complex Mold & Machine, Jon Seik. He’s got a very well set-up shop and his experiences in machine and mold design have been ever so helpful in this process. I’m not sure how much longer this is going to take to complete, but it’s a fun time every time we get to work on it.

Anyway, here’s the video and as always if you have any questions or just feel like making some noise, feel free to leave comment below!

 

 

New Case Commission for ShockSlayer

Posted: 03/01/2013 in General News
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So last month my buddy [SS] set me up with another case cutting job for another commission of his. This time a portable Wii Laptop, which would be made up of 2 [Poly Case] casings, the ZN45 for the base and the ZN40 for the screen. I finished these up early this week and he just received them today and was very pleased! Though I don’t take credit for the design as his friend [Beta] did all the CAD work, the cut job was still a lot of work, but was quite fun.

Now this would have been done a lot sooner had I not decided to tare apart my whole CNC control system and be down for two weeks because of one damn wire being in the wrong spot, but it is what it is and all is good for now!

So I look forward to see these projects of his put these casings to good use. They should be pretty cool any way so I will wait patiently and report on them when I see them!

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