A lot of hackers like science fiction. If you aren’t one of them, you might not know that the Hugo is a prestigious science fiction award handed out at the World Science Fiction Convention every year. The statue looks like a rocket ship, but every year the base the rocket ship rests on is different. Kinetic sculptor [gfish] realized the convention would be in Spokane (his hometown and near his current residence) and decided to enter the competition to create the bases. He won, so the 2015 Hugos all have [gfish’s] bases on them and it’s pretty neat that he’s shared the process he used to make them.
The design in Blender wasn’t the hard part. [gfish] had to experiment to find the right process to bring his vision to reality. After a few false starts with water jet cutting, he had 3D printed bottoms and had to fabricate a special magnetic jig to hold things in place for welding.
Overall, the result was worth it (see photo, right). We couldn’t help but wonder if you get a Hugo for designing the Hugo. Suppose not. Sculpting seems to be a popular hacking activity and we are no strangers to science fiction. However, having a part in the iconic Hugo awards makes us green with envy.
Of course, a lot of people (see the video below) were not happy with this year’s nominees. But that still doesn’t mean they weren’t handing out a cool statue.
Summary says:
“After a few false starts with water jet cutting, he had 3D printed bottoms and had to fabricate a special magnetic jig to hold things in place for welding.”
But read the author:
“The solution to the ugly perforations was suggested by my waterjet guy. Turns out waterjets can etch materials by only cutting partially through them. We ran a test of this and the results were beautiful!”
So, wait… he wound up having these waterjet in the end, just out of steel instead of aluminum and didn’t use a series of tabbed built in folding parts (akin to kerf bending) but instead built a jig to weld it all instead of using his original tabbed and bending idea because he couldn’t bend the parts accurately enough. He didn’t actually abandon waterjet cutting like the summary implies at all.
Yes I didn’t say he gave up on water jet just that he started with it unsuccessfully but finally got it. I never said he quit with the jet cutting.
The way it was written implied he gave up and 3d printed them and somehow welded something together? It just wasn’t very clear what he actually did to complete these is all.
I agree with Waterjet. That was a little confusing.
There’s an easier way:
1. Write something crappy.
2. Be a far-left bigot.
LMAO…seems you might be a bit pissed…
No wonder, with their scorched-earth vote manipulation tactics.
sorry to hear
Ugh, it is a cool bit of manufacturing but everything that has touched this travesty is tainted. Why even go there Hackaday?
How long until an “anyone who disagrees with my politics is evil” argument divides the hardware hacker community?
Well, we already kind of have that with open source…
Hopefully they’ll just delete comments from people who can’t keep a civil tongue and leave the rest of us to enjoy the tech stuff.
I wonder if this wasn’t decided by the management in a meeting, ‘let’s stir things up, that gets visitors’. Ignoring that you get unwanted posts and visitors, because it’s not about having a good site but about having a many-users site, which is worth money, and money is everything.
Let’s hope not.
Hugo, named after Hugo Gernsback, early promoter of radio kits, science fiction digests, and publications such as Radio Electronics.
the video was a great inclusion because it explains the Hugo Award drama that happened. it seems to me that people were able to maintain a semblance of sanity by choosing the “no award” option in voting. i suppose now they will need to kick out the people that joined this year only to bulldoze the electorate.
>people were able to maintain a semblance of sanity by choosing the “no award” option in voting
No, they were able to reinforce their cliqueish, politically motivated spite by voting “no award”
Childish behaviour from mewling, entitled, hyper-wailing sjws who cannot accept anything but their own extremely narrow view point and politics.
Everything is black and white with these people, they’re literally nuts, and/or professional victims.
“Oh woe is me, I had to vote ‘no award’ because some of the candidates don’t share my narrow view of the world!”
Then there were the lies and insults such as calling Larry Correia (who has been in an interracial marriage for 22 years) a “racist” and “misogynist” and claiming the Sad Puppies nominees were all bigoted white men, John Scalzi calling them “shitlords” and an employee of Tor Books calling the SP nominated works “bad to reprehensible”.
Basically, the anti-puppies and puppy-kickers were just a bunch of whiny, foul-mouthed asses, upset that anyone with a political POV one jot to the right of them would dare get a nomination, let alone an award.
These people, claiming to be so “pro woman”, were so insufferably arrogant that they ensured the two editors with the most nominations in the history of the Hugo Awards would not win. Both of them were women. It’s a ‘Perfect Alinsky’. Accuse your opponent of doing or being what YOU actually are, and keep doing it as long and as loud as possible to attempt to drown out all the facts presented to prove you are wrong.
So Sad Puppies 3 was a success in some ways. The campaign got more people to nominate and vote than ever before, and it proved how big of twisted control freaks the people running the Hugo Awards are.
How the No Awards happened was from people who only listened to the anti-puppy lies. I’ve read many accounts of encounters with some of them at WorldCon who when shown the list of SP nominations and who the people behind it really were, responded that they had no idea and if they had, they would have voted differently.
The anti-puppies leveraged the low information voter, making useful idiots of enough people who couldn’t be bothered to find out for themselves what was going on, so they could once again secure the Hugos for their ilk – except for Guardians of the Galaxy.
So now Sad Puppies 4 is in motion and headed up by an all female crew. Just let those jerks try and claim Sad Puppies is a bunch of white male racist misogynists…
TL;DR version of the Puppies/Anti-Puppies fiasco:
– Writers believe that there are leftist cliques and in-groups creating an unofficial voting bloc to keep only progressive, group-approved writers or works in the Hugos the last several years.
– Decide to form two ‘Puppy’ nicknamed groups to openly combat this perceived bloc with one of their own.
– Limited to no success for a while.
– They finally get traction and sweep the nominations.
– The suspected writers/in-crowd are outraged. A lot of name calling and claims that the Puppies are just crazy conspiracy theorists
– They decide to show the Puppies how not-real their voting bloc is by overwhelmingly vote-blocking the awards so that the Puppy nominee categories get no award instead.
– Leftists and everyone else congratulate each other on keeping scifi open and inviting by keeping the “wrong” people from winning awards.
Wow Gravis, you really kicked up a lot of dust with that one, I think you hit a nerve or something. there is a really easy way to to get a Hugo, WRITE WHAT PEOPLE WANT TO READ! Yup, it’s really that simple, and if you get a Hugo for it, congratulations, if you don’t, please please please do not go down the puppy path of “I deserve” sniff sniff “a Hugo” sniff sniff “because I really really REALLY want one” sniff sniff.
Come on guys, that’s just pathetic. And gaming the system for better odds doesn’t guarantee one, as I hope you’ve learned, so stop trying. In fact if Vox Day would pay attention to what people want to read instead of saying “you should read what I write because I want a Hugo” he might actually amount to something.
But seriously, Vox Day seems to have a grudge against John Scalzi for some reason and Scalzi takes it in stride. but now the battle ground seems to be the Hugo Awards and Vox Day won’t stop until he gets one, I would like to see a new category just for him, call it the “I whined enough to get a Hugo” Hugo award.
and last but not least, I am personally glad to weigh in on the topic, however, I am even more impressed by the skill gfish demonstrated in making the bases for them, GFISH! Good job.
Now for the hard part, I would request that the moderators of hack a day, remove this thread of comments from the blog because it really DOES take away from the fine job gfish did.
Scalzi takes it in so much of a stride, he got Amazon to ban a parody of a parody.
Scalzi read and recorded the audio himself for the book “Scalzi is not a very popular author and I myself am quite popular” by Theo Pratt. No lie, That’s the name of the book. Why did he do it? to raise money for Con or Bust. Goal reached within 48 hours, achievement unlocked. but don’t take my word for it.
http://whatever.scalzi.com/2015/08/29/john-scalzi-is-not-a-very-popular-author-and-i-myself-am-quite-popular-the-audiobook-read-by-me-john-scalzi/
There is a slight difference between the two books mentioned here, one involves the quality of a persons writing ability, which anyone seeing it probably won’t get the wrong idea about what the books about. The other is a “parody” of a person being a rapist that, if the person reading about it doesn’t do a background check, could be easily interpreted incorrectly.
When Scalzi wrote the first parody, he warned people that it might be triggery to some people that have been raped and that reading it should be careful. Then VD comes by and takes the thing out of context and writes something about it and tries to profit by it. That’s a dirt bag thing to do, and that’s what vox day is.
So feel free to load up your response with a bunch of links YOU think defend him. I invite EVERYONE here to do the research themselves to decide for themselves. personally, I think Scalzi is funny as hell and quite enjoyable.
Am I the only one who upon seeing the title “How to Make a Hugo (Base)” in the RSS feed immediately thought of the clockwork automaton from the movie “Hugo”?
All Your Hugo Base Are Belong to Us
A few years ago, friends of mine were the ones bringing to Hugo award bases to the convention, and they got to use that line. Because it was obviously the correct thing to say.
I find it hard to sympathize with the side that before registering en masse to spoil the vote had shown zero interest in following or participating in the Hugos, but hey I’m sure that’s just because “the liberal elite control everything.” or so the story has gone since the late seventies.
Cool base though, I don’t really have enough interest/experience in metal work to appreciate it fully, but I do find it interesting, hopefully it’s not Deemed so evertly leftist that the puppies need take action in 2016.