Anyone can Darth Maul Beat Saber with a double-bladed DIY adapter for Oculus Touch

Posted on January 21, 2019 by

The title of this article is not exactly wrong grammatically. You really can maul your way through Beat Saber, with a homemade double-bladed saber. And you do this on your Oculus Rift, with your Touch controller.

But first, you must 3D-print adapters for the Touch, and modify a PVC pipe to connect the two adapters. You will also install unofficial Beat Saber mods, in order to record a 3rd person view of your battle. When done, you’ll be able to make great videos to brag about online, like the one below.

This DIY tutorial is based on the Touch adapters designed by friedPotat0, which is in turn inspired by the Sith Tuber Lord, ragesaq, of the double-bladed Beat Saber fame. Saq got ProtubeVR to make a special ProSaber. If you live in Europe, you can just buy one online, and skip half of this tutorial. But if you would rather 3D-print your own Darth Maul saber, read on.

Darth Maul Oculus Touch Saber

The end product: Darth Maul Oculus Touch Saber

Here is another video recorded after I became more like a Sith Lord.

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How to master short-field landings with EDF jets such as the Avanti S

Posted on December 21, 2018 by

There is a real lack of information online about making successful short-field landings with EDF jets such as the Avanti S. I don’t know whether I should attribute this to search engines being saturated with merchant pages, or blame Facebook for hiding useful content from search engines. Looking for videos on YouTube for the same yields basically nothing. Last time I failed to find useful info, I wrote Learn to Skate the Two-foot Grapevine Analytically, despite being relatively new at ice skating. This time I’ll do the same without reservations on EDF jets and short-field landings, based on my personal experiences.

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HHAMS Reflections 2018

Posted on December 19, 2018 by

The end of the year is upon us again. As usual, it is time I try to make use of pictures I couldn’t stop taking on my phone whenever I was at the aerodrome. In 2015, I compiled them into HHAMS 2015 Field Pictures. In 2016, I compiled pictures into HHAMS Pictures of the Year – 2016 and Pictures of Planes Sighted at the Aerodrome in 2016. I was busy in 2017. Thus nothing was done, despite plenty of pictures having been collected.

This year, the club decided to show slideshows at the holiday party. Bobby Alessi and I collected pictures and videos from folks. As a result, we now have 3 photo slideshows and 1 video compilation. Pictures from 2017 and 2018 feature heavily in these, but good materials from 2015 and 2016 were also used.

The video compilation is the longest, at 13:40m. It comprises 6 segments of flying activities at the Aerodrome, each accompanied by a sound track from a scene from The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.

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HHAMS: My Girl (reflections 3/4)

Posted on December 15, 2018 by

This article exists to house pictures used in the slideshow HHAMS: My Girl. It is part three of a series of slideshows and compilations from photos and videos taken by HHAMS members from 2015 to 2018. Part three showcases pilots with their beloved planes.

A few pictures here were actually used not in the My Girl slideshow, but instead in HHAMS: What a Wonderful World and HHAMS: Learning to Fly.

Photo and video sources came from Andrea Watson, Tyler A Chase, Mario Goldberg, Bobby Alessi, Paul Yovino, Fred Hsu and Elisha Huang.

Music in the slideshow features: My Girl by The Temptations, My Girl by Otis Redding, and last but foremost, Seabird by Alessi Brothers – that’s our own Bobby Alessi.

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HHAMS: What a Wonderful World (reflections 2/4)

Posted on December 14, 2018 by

This article exists to house pictures used in the slideshow HHAMS: What a Wonderful World. It is part two of a series of slideshows and compilations from photos and videos taken by HHAMS members from 2015 to 2018. Part two examines what HHAMS is about. It is about flying model planes. Sure. But there is so much more than that, as part two highlights.

Photo and video sources came from Andrea Watson, Tyler A Chase, Mario Goldberg, Bobby Alessi, Paul Yovino, Fred Hsu and Elisha Huang.

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HHAMS: Learning to Fly (reflections 1/4)

Posted on December 13, 2018 by

This article exists to house pictures used in the slideshow HHAMS: Learning to Fly. It is part one of a series of slideshows and compilations from photos and videos taken by HHAMS members from 2015 to 2018. Part one highlights a key principle that RC pilots follow. That is, learn to fly responsibly, and try not to make spare parts.

Photo and video sources came from Andrea Watson, Tyler A Chase, Mario Goldberg, Bobby Alessi, Paul Yovino, Fred Hsu and Elisha Huang.

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2018 XiSheng RC Extravaganza 西盛遙控飛行嘉年華

Posted on November 11, 2018 by

New Taipei RC Flying Extravaganza (西盛遙控飛行嘉年華會慶) organized by NTAMA (新北市航空模型協會) took place on Sunday, Nov 4th, 2018. It was joined by flying enthusiasts from all over Taiwan. I went with friends from the RC club from Kaohsiung 高雄市遙控運動協會, courtesy of 陳振國.

This article hosts pictures I took and edited of this event. Perhaps I’ll come back and finish it with additional descriptions. Perhaps I won’t. It exists for now as a place for enthusiasts to browse and download pictures I took of them, or their planes. I compiled two YouTube videos: a shorter one comprising video clips I took that day, as well as a longer slideshow highlighting some of the many exciting moments I captured in still pictures. As usual, some of the best pictures will eventually end up on Wikimedia.

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NorCal for the model aeronautically-inclined

Posted on May 25, 2018 by
Flying the UMX Radian at Belmont

Flying the UMX Radian with Ryan

This is a guide and a preview to upcoming articles I’ll be publishing, on Northern California through the eyes of a New Yorker, with an inclination to see things from a model aeronautic perspective. It is similar to my model-aeronautic take on Ogunquit and its  bipolar beach. Here I’ll examine various Napa Valley and Sonoma vineyards on their applicability to flying, while accompanied by my brother’s family. I’ll show you where to find legitimate flying fields manned by AMA chartered clubs, as well as secret flying places that fanatics frequent. We toured San Francisco, Golden Gate Park, Half Moon Bay, Point Lobos, Fort Ord Dunes State Park and the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

Useful pictures are uploaded to Wikimedia, for illustrations on various relevant Wikipedia articles, continuing my series of Wiki Vacations (from here and there). Some pictures here link to their full-resolution images on Wikimedia, as I only upload pictures up to 2048-pixels-wide to WordPress.

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Cello sheet music: Adagio from Bach Organ Toccata

Posted on April 6, 2018 by

Folks, more free Bach cello music can be found in this new article. It is part of the Clean and Free Sheet Music initiative I’ve undertaken.

I took a detour from my usual Bach cello suite transcriptions this time. A while ago someone on Reddit posted a question asking for identification of music. It was a recording of Mstislav Rostropovich playing the cello for the Emperor of Japan, at the White House in 1994. The first piece at 0:37 caught my attention. I swore that I knew this music well – I could hum along ahead of Rostropovich. But I could not recall what this was. The music stuck in my head for days. The mystery drove me crazy.

I tried all sorts of “find the music” magics online, including by singing, by humming, by audio file, by playing on a on-screen keyboard, by entering notes explicitly, and by typing in the contour (shape). Nothing worked. Clearly this was a famous cello piece, but I just could not find it.

Not until I randomly searched for “Rostropovich” and various terms, that I hit the right combination of words. In hindsight, I could have found it in a few minutes, with just “Rostropovich adagio”. It turned out that this piece was actually Bach’s organ toccata, BWV 564. Pablo Casals transcribed it for the cello, and apparently it was one of Rostropovich’s favorite pieces.

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What is a Doob 3D Selfie?

Posted on January 15, 2018 by

Last year my family visited the miniature park, Madurodam. We had ourselves scanned at the Fantasitron, and subsequently our 3D selfies printed by Shapeways. I was so impressed that I wrote an entire article about 3D scanning, stereophotogrammetry and gypsum-based 3D color printing. We have since found another venue for making 3D selfies, this time in New York City. The company, Doob, delivers an impeccable service, starting from the first moment we made an appointment online. This smooth and professional experience extends to email reminders, in-store consulting, and actual 3D scanning. It concludes with flawless 3D-printed figurines delivered to our house.

Doob 4-inch 3D Selfies as received

4-inch 3D selfies as received from Doob

However, Doob as a company is rather secretive about its scanning process and 3D-reconstruction software. It is almost impossible to find any information about its 3D printing process. Unlike Madurodam and Shapeways, Doob offers no technical details on either its American website, or the English version of its main German website.

Hopefully this article will help answer some of the most frequently-asked questions folks may raise, concerning Doob 3D selfies. If you come across this article, make sure you first read the one about Madurodam/Fantasitron 3D selfies, to understand the basic concepts.

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