Tuesday, February 5, 2019

Diecaster D.'s New Years Resolutions

Happy New Year everybody!
Yeah I guess waiting until Lunar New Year gave me an extra month to reconsider my goals for the year, but better late than never eh?



2018 was a remarkably squashy year for me.  I started my first real job out of college, and quickly dispelled all the doubts, fears, and dreads I've had about working a full time job.  I went in to it thinking like life was going to be over, but no comrade Premier, it's only begun!
Last year I was able to accomplish an illustrious amount of projects given the new free time I've had not being in school and, even though working full time, NO HOMEWORK!!!!!  We started the year with a slew of bicycle projects, and in December concluded with the most anticipated project for a while, my own loft bed.
2019 is definitely going to be a big year.  I've set all kinds of monthly quotas so there's always something in the works.  Without further ado, my resolutions for 2019:

1. Monthly foundry sessions:
I've been slowly but surely tooling up for the upcoming foundry season (which is an arbitrary time of year when wildfire risk is lowest).  Even if I'm not ready for casting, this still includes building something foundry related.  On the agenda for this year is completion of a new, very big casting flask.  This can later be used to cast even more flasks, but its intention is for a very special project.  I plan to build my own DJ turntables, and cast the bases and platters out of aluminum.  That 16" diameter piece of wood I turned a while back for a "secret project" was for this pattern.  The other big foundry project is the repair of the soap dish mold and construction of a molding press to enable mass production of aluminum soap dishes.
big metal foundry casting flask
New casting flask

2. Monthly bicycle BBQ's:
Bicycle BBQ was a tradition my friends and I started in high school.  Simple and loads of fun: find some scrap wood, strap it on my bike, bike to the beach and cook some food.  I plan to continue documenting the cooking recipes on the blog as I have done a few times in the past.  Check out the first entry from this year: Persimmon Oatmeal.
dutch oven on beach fire pit

3. Monthly karaoke at the local 80's bar:
I know it can seem counterproductive to go out on a Wednesday night when you have to work the next day, but I've honestly never enjoyed karaoke more.  I've been meeting lots of cool people, and I even won $500 in a karaoke contest last year through this place.  It gives me a good venue to sing Cheetah Girls songs as loud and passionate as possible too.  I may even start a new video series of my karaoke adventures on my personal YouTube channel.
DJ Petesake rockin' karaoke at That 80's Bar, Montclair

4. Step up my music production game:
I released my 3rd full length rap album last year, and it really upped the standards of what I thought I could produce.  I feel like now that I've basically completed my all-round autobiographical album "Peter Perfect" my focus next will be less about rapping, and more on production.  I've already started the year on a good foot by replacing the floppy drive in my drum machine with an SD card reader for better reliability (I was having problems with disks going bad)
MPC 60 with HXC floppy emulator

Those are just some of my goals for the year.  I feel as time goes on, my ability to create keeps enhancing and the amount of ideas I get ensures there's always something to look forward to.  

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