There are a spots on this kit that lack some detail or leave very noticeable holes because something went in its place on the original MG. For example a part that really bothers me is this spot in his chest. You can clearly see when you look down it the pegs that hold it in place.

So I added a thin sheet of pla-plate to cover up the hole.

Then added a Kotobukiya nozzle option part to add some detail to the blank spot.

What it looks like in place:

I also didn’t like this exposed polycap on his shoulder joint:

So I added some minus mold that I sanded down to make it thinner to the shoulder to cover it up.

I also added some 1/16th” magnets to the shoulder armor to make painting easier.

Everything in place:

The gun is also lacking some detail, which I am not quite done with. This particular spot is on the front of the gun, originally the part had a cable coming into the back of it, but the conversion doesn’t use it.

So I covered up the hole with some plate. I will probably add some minus mold or something to give it some detail.

This part is also extremely flat and boring:

So I drilled some holes to match the look of the front of the barrel:

That is all for now.

I’ve got to working on my Core Works EX-S ver. 2 conversion kit quite a bit over the weekend while watching Heroes season 1 on DVD. My goal is to have in finished by the end of May for the Conversion Kit contest over at MechaModelComp. For my first conversion kit I don’t believe I have bitten off more than I can chew at all but I have run into a couple of fitting issues with the kit, which is normal for a conversion I am told. One particularly pain in the ass piece has been the pelvic armor, the resin piece refused to fit properly so I cut off the top of the original piece from the MG kit and attached to the actually changed part of the resin piece with some two part epoxy resin. It doesn’t look like much now but when it is primed you won’t even be able to tell they were separate pieces.

I have also added magnets into the feet, thanks to seeing Mr. Greeds WIP and giving me the idea to do the same. They are a little large but they work great on the foot. I ordered some half the size (1/8th”) for the shoulder armor and a few other pieces, but they haven’t come in yet.

Other than that construction is going smoothly and I have been removing seem lines where needed, noticeably on the back pack. I started using Tamiya extra thin cement in the little glass bottle. I like it so much better than any of the Testor’s crap I have used. The giant blue shoulder things (wtf are those anyways? propellant tanks or something?) are going to be a pain to remove the seem lines, my plan so far is to paint the insides of them as separate pieces then glue them together, remove the seem, mask and paint the outside. In case anyone is wondering I am going with the pretty standard ver. Ka color scheme (mostly blue and white) but I am going to do smallish digi-camo squares on the blue instead of the larger box pattern you normally see on the ver. Ka.

This is certainly the largest model I have built yet, it easily towers over my GM custom even when not on its base.

He is a little sneak peak at the project my roommate is working on, can you guess what it is?

Our first attempt at casting a mold is the dark blue one, the silicone mixture wasn’t correctly proportioned… oops. But the pieces turned out pretty good after making correct molds.

The Intel Mac mini is one of the smallest, sleekest, and quietest PCs on the market. It also supports surround sound and up to 1080p resolution. OS X Leopard also includes FrontRow, a sort of juke box like application that is very easy to read and navigate (if you have seen what Apple TV looks like it is basically the same thing). Front row is also controllable with a small and intuitive remote that comes with the mini. All of this makes it an ideal choice for a home theater PC (HTPC). In my upcoming articles I will go over a few things that you may not have known you could do with a Mac mini HTPC that I have done on mine to make it beyond just a conventional HTPC into a living room entertainment device.

I bought a 2.0GHz Core 2 Duo mini and the wireless Might Mouse and Apple Wireless Keyboard from the Apple store at my local mall. The Mighty Mouse is ok, but I love the design and form factor of the wireless keyboard, it doesn’t look out of place in the room. You may want to use a different mouse and keyboard, which is cool, but wireless is a must and I would recommend going with Bluetooth because it saves you USB ports and more wires or dongles cluttering the back of your home theater system.

There are lots of ways you can connect your Mac Mini to your home theater system. To use DVI, VGA, HDMI, Toslink optical sound, 3.5mm audio jack to stereo… this is really up for you to decide and what your system can handle. I have a 1080p HDTV with no DVI, but it does have a VGA and HDMI input. I also have a surround sound system, so naturally I would want to take advantage of that fact.

I orginally hooked up my Mac mini to my HDTV with a spare VGA cable I had lying around through the DVI to VGA adapter that came with the mini. The HDTV easily accepted the 1920 x 1080 resolution of the mini but I was unsure if it was 1080p or 1080i. The VGA cable also cause some slight ghosting to happen that was particularly noticable around the dock. I also hooked up the audio to my reciever using a simple 3.5mm audio jack (your standard headphone jack) to RCA stereo cable. This worked also because I had it laying around but this won’t allow you to get surround sound out of your mini, which is all too important when it comes to home theater. So I jumped on monoprice.com (their site freaking rules, I will never buy cables from a brick and mortar store again… I’m looking at you Best Buy with your $80 HDMI cables) and ordered myself a DVI to HDMI cable, which will not carry audio like regular HDMI will, and a Toslink standard to mini cable for digital surround sound for a whopping $12 with shipping.

With my new cables in hand I was ready to hook them up and test them out. I had a few problems with getting the video settings right on my TV. Under display options the highest resolution was 1920×1080 (interlaced) at 60Hz. Something was all wrong, because the Mac mini most definitely can output 1080p. A bug with Leopard might be what is causing this but what really matter is that it is fixable. If you click on “Show displays in menu bar” it will add a little monitor icon near spotlight next to your wifi and Bluetooth icons. Clicking this will open a drop down menu of all the selectable resolutions, notice there are now TWO 1920 x 1080 options, click that second one and suddenly you are enjoying full 1080p goodness. You might have to fiddle with some more settings on your HDTV because not all HDTVs are made the same.

My the other slight problem I have, which is really more of a gripe, is that the only apps that support AC3/Dolby Digital 5.1 (multi-channel) on a mini are DVD Player and VLC, no Quicktime (only possible on a Mac Pro with a discreet 6 channel sound card)! So if you plan to rip DVDs to your HDD using Handbrake you will be out of luck on surround playback at least through FrontRow.

In future articles I’ll explain how to turn your mini into a DVR and break the stereotype that gaming isn’t possible on a mac.