Ravenstar Space Stations and Shipyards part 1

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Last November (2017), Ravenstar Studios had a pre-Christmas sale, so I bought some items that I had been thinking about for quite some time. I picked up the Space Stations that he had available as well as the large Ship Yards kit. The original order actually got lost in the mail somewhere, but he kindly sent out a second one, along with some extras.  The items I ordered were:

Fort Courage Space Station
Missile Platform (2)
Jansen Research Station (2)
DSS McKinzie Space Station
ShipYard – Complete Set

He also included these items in my shipment as extras:

Warden Sensor Station (3)
Freeman Repair Station
Zane Refueling Station
Battle Station Raiden
Typhoons Grace
Fuco Cruiser
Unlisted Federation Expanse ship, similar to Raimus Destroyer but bigger

It all showed up in a fairly typical shipping box:

Everything was packed in nicely with a protective bubble wrap layer

Continue reading ‘Ravenstar Space Stations and Shipyards part 1’ »

Pinterest Fixed

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Turns out that the problem with Pinning was due to a change with Pinterest. I still want to investigate and see when this happened, but here is what I got from Tech Suppport at my hosting site:

“What I found was Pinterest did not allow to save pins from an insecure source. SSL was installed for your domain but your website was not using the SSL. I forced your website to redirect to https which is now secured.

There were insecure links on your website, which I corrected to https. All your pages and links are now secured with SSL.”

And, it is working now.

Pinterest problems

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For reasons that I haven’t been able to figure out yet, my site has suddenly stopped allowing things to be pinned to Pinterest.  Even I can’t pin my own stuff to my own Pinterest boards.  Apparently Pinterest is getting an error 403, which shows up as : “Sorry! This site doesn’t allow you to save Pins” or something similiar

It happens when trying to Pin items from either of my sites, https://www.ob1knorrb.com or http://www.icewebring.com.

I have tried on several different devices, PCs, IPad, IPhone, and from several different browsers on the PCs.

I don’t have any difficulty pinning from other sites. I also don’t have any add-ons or widgets related to pinning on my sites.

I think it might be related to a recent WordPress update, but can’t say for sure.  I don’t have anything in my .htaccess or an security plugins that should cause this.

I’ve posted questions on the WordPress support forums and logged a call with my hosting company to see if they can provide any details.

Cloaked Romulans

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This was certainly one of the easiest sets of miniatures to do.  Shapeways announced that they were going to discontinue offering Transparent Acrylic as an option, so I decided to order a few Romulan ships in it to use as cloaked vessels while I still could.

I ordered three of the 3733 Scale Romulan War Eagles  and three of the 3788 Scale Romulan KRC Command Cruisers from Amarillo Design Bureau, Inc, the company that does the Star Fleet Battles and Federation Commander games.  At some point I’ll have to order some non-transparent versions to use when they aren’t cloaked, but I’m not in a rush for that.

They showed up, I stuck some of the Corsec mounts on them and they were done.   I was happy to see that the necks on the cruisers were reasonably straight but a little disappointed that a couple of the warp engines bent inwards more than they should have, but overall they are decent miniatures.

 

Prepping the Blog

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I’ve spent a couple hours today setting up some draft entries for the work I’ve done on my miniatures over the last year.  Today was loading photo’s into draft postings, which takes longer than you might think since I have to dig through several folders of pictures on my PC to find the right ones.  Then I will need to do some editing on them, get them oriented properly, trim off extra space that isn’t needed, then go in and add text and links explaining what they are and what I did with them.

I also went through and cleaned up a few existing postings, primarily adding “read more” breaks so less scrolling is needed to get down to some of the older entries.

So, expect to see a few more entries in the next few weeks.

Mid year Update 2018

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Well, it’s mid way through the year so here is a collection of updates on various random topics. Squirrel!

Michelle is now doing training for doing Casual HIMS coding for Alberta Health Services in Calgary in addition to the rural areas around Calgary. Hopefully that will give her more work and cut down on the gas bills and wear and tear on our poor little KIA Soul.

We are still in recovery mode financially after two years of schooling and took a bit of a hit when we had to do some unexpected bathroom repairs. We discovered that the wall behind the shower was weak and ended up having to replace the back wall along with the side walls. Continue reading ‘Mid year Update 2018’ »

Happy New Year 2018

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This year is starting out with a sputter rather than a bang.  I came down with a nasty virus right at New Year’s and it’s still hanging on.  That means there are a few things that I wanted to get done on my vacation time that just didn’t happen.  However, that just means I’ll have to fit them in around my regular schedule.

As far as 2017 goes, the biggest accomplishment was that Michelle finished her courses and practicums at SAIT and passed her certification exam with CHIMA to become a Health Information Management professional.  She also got hired as a casual rural employee with Alberta Health Services, and when she isn’t booked with them she can still book in doing her previous profession as a sign language interpreter. Continue reading ‘Happy New Year 2018’ »

Family Tree – Ancestor Locations, Mom’s family

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One of the things I’ve always wanted to do was mark on one map as many of the important locations in my Family History as I can find.

I’ve always been told that my background is Polish, Ukrainian, German, Russian and a little bit of Gypsy.  I always joked that all my ancestors probably lived within 10 miles of each other but that the borders kept moving.  Turns out it’s not as much of a joke as I thought.  The distance might have been a little more than 10 miles, but borders certainly did move around and a village that used to be in one country could suddenly find itself in another country.

So, to get things started, here is a list of some of my ancestor’s and the locations associated with them from various sources. Continue reading ‘Family Tree – Ancestor Locations, Mom’s family’ »