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CRAFTY SAM CRAFTS SOME SHIT!

Apparently if you give me a pair of pliers I'm happy for hours.

I came home and basically steampunked my ass off, pausing only to make bread and eat pizza. Well, the doc said I should sit down and keep my foot elevated.

So far I have:
Sewn three rows of two brass buttons each onto the leg closure, so that while it actually velcros shut it looks like it buttons closed under the straps
Glued a "key hole" onto each strap where it meets the upright, so that it looks like the straps "lock" shut
Modded an old set of wings to remove the TWA logo and pin-backing
Glued the wings to a small open-top pocket I made out of an old pouch for a collapsible frisbee (mine was black)
Sewn the pocket onto the side of the boot, where it will eventually hold a compass on a chain that will attach to the other side
Realised I had lost my brass compass. OH THE IRONY. Then I found it again!

As an aside -- Stanley London is an amazing company and well worth your patronage if you are looking for steampunky accessories or navigational equipment. Mum gave me an engraved compass from them and when the needle broke (my fault, bad handling) I sent it in for repair. Not only did they fix it and give it a shine, they sent me the brass compass as a gift -- possibly a bit of a joke on me, since it has a lever that locks the needle in place, thus preventing the kind of damage I did to my other compass. They're super-friendly on the phone, too.

I still need to make a fixture to attach the chain to the boot, but after that there's not much more I can do until I get the copper foil for the reinforced heel. I realised there's a lot you can't mod on a prosthetic boot, because the boot itself is soft and you can't cover the velcro on the hard-sided uprights.

Now, having come up for air and hurled all this into the internet, I'm going to go die of tired.

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Seems the appropriate time to post this, which has been languishing in my "review this and deal with it" delicious account for some time...

Title: I Make No Promises As To Historical Veracity
Rating: PG
Summary: Ianto copes by inventing the coffee machine. Gwen copes by crossdressing. Shortfic.
Notes: Written in response to rm posting a steampunky coffeemaker and demanding a Torchwood steampunk AU.

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Saturday reccage! My new policy of not letting any email/comment languish in my inbox for more than a week is firmly in place and doing wonders for my reply efficiency. :D

First, a young artist and the son of a webcomic artist seriously injured his writing/drawing hand a few weeks ago and is in a cast. He loves comics and was given a few images of comic-book characters in arm casts, and his family and friends are trying to collect more as a surprise for him. Artists and comic-book fans, rally round! You can find more information about the injury and where to send images/sketches here at Severity's post.

Second, darththalia has ebooked my fanfic! They are .pdb files available for ebook readers, and she wanted to share them with the Cafe.

These two are prequel and sequel. They were a sort of dry run for ebooking Big Bang fic, since All That I Ain't Got has jpg imagery in it. Apparently (I don't have an ebook reader) the images came out perfectly, so the experiment was a success!
Won't You Come Home To Me
All That I Ain't Got

And these are the big epics:
The Doctor and Mr Jones
The Theory of Two Centres

Third, flamingsword asked if I would ask the cafe if anyone could point her in the direction of information on starting a charity and running it. Suffolk County is looking into the possibility of making Nikola Tesla's Shoreham lab into a science museum but apparently it's a trifle disorganised at the moment. You can find information about the lab here. Can anyone recommend a tutorial or website that explains the process? Or would someone who has run a charity (particularly the publicity end) be willing to talk to her about it? Feel free to drop a comment so she can get in touch with you.

THREE A, about two weeks ago I put a shout out for luckyckljw, who was looking for photography models in the DFW area. She emailed me this week to let me know that the project she was working on, with the help from Cafe folk, earned her a photography scholarship! She wanted to say thank you to the Cafe for their help.

ETA: 51stcenturyfox is hosting a Torchwood Porn Comments Battle. Go ye and pornicate!

Robot Porn Icon used because I Can. :D

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I am SO TIRED OF SITTING ON THE FUTON WITH MY FOOT UP, I cannot even tell you.

I think it wouldn't be quite so annoying if it weren't a weekend, but I keep getting the feeling I should be doing something. I did laundry before I left so I have clothes for the week, but there are dishes in the sink that need washing and I'm sure there's food I could be cooking and my desk is a mess. I took one of the Super Heavy Painkillers to try and mellow out, but it's not working :(

I did get to do some stuff to the SteamBoot -- I added a key for the locks (an old bike-lock key) and a "release" button below the locks themselves. I've made up two transistors out of beads and copper wire that I'm going to put on the toe, but after that there's really nothing more I can do until the foil arrives.

STEAMBOOT PREVIEW! Buttons and keyholes. This was taken before the compass pocket was added to the left (well, left in that photo) of the upright.



Whoever recommended the E6000 epoxy, by the way, thank you. That stuff is amazing. It's hard to glue the alphabet-brads onto anything, since they're very thin metal, but I think the epoxy works better than anything else I could use.

I totally missed/forgot Blog Like It Isn't You Day :( I blame it being my first day back at work. Also there were about four people I wanted to email and say "I haven't heard from you in a while, are you still alive?" and then I looked in my sent mail and realised they had in fact emailed me in the past week and I had replied, but it happened during the blur that was Tuesday and Wednesday.

I'm going to go eat a pudding cup and you can't stop me.

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I come bearing an offer and a plea!

Plea first: spiderine's laptop is dead, and as she's a good friend and not in a position to purchase one or get hers repaired right now I thought I'd put a call out. Is there anyone who has a spare or second-hand laptop they're not using, that they can long-term loan or send to her? She's in the Boston area so if you're nearby and can help that's obviously especially cool, but wherever you are you'd be doing a good karmic turn and helping out a fellow fan (Spider Gives Back: she does episode reviews, writes fanfic, participates in RPs, and has provided me with a couple of awesome recipes, including the No Knead Bread recipe). No guilt, no pressure, not something she asked me to do -- just me using my Mass Communication Skillz to try and lend a friend a hand. Drop a comment and I'll make sure she gets the info, or you can PM her yourself. Thanks guys :)

Offer next! eckaterin has four Dreamwidth codes and asked me to offer them to the first four who comment to request one. She'll see your comments and provide the code, so be sure to include an email addy.

As this happened organically last time, I thought I'd make it official and start CODEFEST II: THE DREAMWIDTHING.

If you have codes you'd like to share, drop a comment saying how many. If you need a code, comment to the post with an email you can be reached at, or find someone in comments who hasn't given theirs away yet and give them your email. Don't forget to say please and thank you!

I am, of course, copperbadge on Dreamwidth, if you want to friend over there.