Lurkposting

Some ceramic trinket dishes from last month!

These are slightly curved inwards to help contain items from teabags to jewellery. :)

After finishing the texturing process, I reached a point where I was happy with the overall result of the model. The final outcome closely matched the original concept, and I was able to use the hand-painted techniques I learned throughout.

Fig.1 Final Wheel

While I am still gaining confidence in hand-painted texturing, this project helped me understand how to use color, lighting, and variation to create depth and visual interest. I enjoyed the process, as it offered more creative control than regular texturing workflows. I want to keep exploring and improving in this area for future projects.

Once the texturing was complete, the next step was to prepare the asset for export into Unreal Engine. This part was straightforward and mainly involved selecting the right export settings to ensure compatibility and quality. For exporting the textures, I used the Unreal Engine 4 (Packed) preset in Substance Painter. The settings were: PNG format, 8-bit + dithering, 4K resolution (to maintain high detail, as this is a hero asset).

Fig.2 Export Settings

Okay. So. You know how some people want to finish exterminating all large predatory mammals so they have less competition for deer and so they don't occasionally lose livestock? And you know how native deer species in North America have been hit increasingly hard with Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) in the past couple of decades due to overpopulation thanks to the eradication of large predatory mammals that normally keep them in check?

We already have evidence that reintroducing predatory mammals to their native ranges not only knocks deer populations back to a healthier level, and now we've discovered that apparently the digestive systems of cougars and bobcats are lethal to CWD prions. Prions are among the most difficult pathogens* to eliminate; you have to heat them up to about 1,800 degrees F in order to thoroughly destroy them. And prion diseases like CWD are almost universally fatal.

This means that at the same time that cowboys were reaching their end, so too were samurai.

No worries: He's a local pet, he's friendly, he didn't interfere with any athletes' results, and he was returned to his owners. Videos at the link. [X]

Nazgul, YOU are an Olympian!

EDIT: THIS IS FROM DECEMBER 2025.

Affected products: 1 pound bag of frozen shrimp

Lot EA14 25118 with a best by date of October 28, 2026

it's the largest freshwater lake on the planet by surface area, you could lose a couple of smaller countries in there and not even notice. (vs Europe)

on top of that, it's a Northern lake, so the water never really gets warmer than 50 F (10 C) even in the heat of summer, and it's famous for sudden violent storms that destroy ships and buildings alike. this thing has a MASSIVE body count because it's also a major shipping thoroughfare.

And when Bunjy says "the largest by surface are" what that means is: Lake Superior is a whopping 31,700 square miles (82,103 square km) of water. The only reason she is not an inland sea is because she is freshwater.

She has tides. She has rip currents, like an ocean does. You don't even have to go out on a boat to get got by her, all you have to do is step into her icy waters in the wrong spot. She has ice formations that aren't "icebergs" on the technicality that they didn't calve from glaciers, even though they look and act the same.

(photo by Paul Berger)

She LOOKS like an ocean when you are at her shores. This is from a location on the Minnesota side shore.

(photo by George Ilstrup)