The latest page of Darkened Heart is now live: http://darkenedheart.sunkenlibrary.com/?p=101

Here we see the second half of Lee’s journal entry from two weeks ago. In the future, I’ll put split pages like this one back-to-back with the first page. I may even just double-post split pages like these, to avoid the disruption of a narrative that stops halfway through a page.

I’m working on patching up the parts I forgot, but most of my resources are sitting at home and I’m sitting at work. When I get a spare moment between my duties here, I’ll try to get the rest of it fixed. Sorry for the delay.

All of that said, at least you get to see my absolute favorite photo from Lee’s box. The fingers are actually from a cheap Halloween prop I picked up on eBay. The “embalming fluid” is filtered/boiled water with food coloring and a small amount of isopropyl alcohol. The cork and the wax are actually cork and wax. What? Not everything is a clever trick.

I want to put yet another post out there about the Ground Zero Mosque issue. The controversy has been covered in detail elsewhere by people smarter than me. China Miéville and N.K. Jemisin, to name two. There’s also this lovely supporting visual from Ghost of Mifune.

I won’t get into the minutia of the “debate” on this one. If you want to read up on it, then please follow those links, and for the love of all that’s holy please actually READ what’s there. I’m not writing this to repeat what’s been said.

I’m writing this to call out the Republican Party. Yes, if you’re a republican, I’m calling your political party out on this one. You guys are dropping the ball, bigtime.

This is a textbook case of two fundamentally republican issues: State’s Rights and Religious Freedom. This is other states telling New York how to run it’s affairs, and this is non-Muslims telling Muslims where they can PRAY TO GOD. *

You can’t write a better scenario for the mobilization of the Republican party. And what response do we get? Conservative republicans support the bigots, while moderate republicans turn a blind eye. Why? Because they’re cowards.

Yes. Cowards. You heard me. They don’t speak up about this because they’re scared of losing votes. That’s cowardice, and it makes me sad for the state of politics in the US. The Republican party should be going to war over this. It’s not a liberal issue.

I just… Agh.

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* – Fun factoid for the uninformed, do you know who gave the Koran to Mohammad? The Archangel Gabriel. Yes, the same one from the Bible. That guy. Allah is not a different god. If you’ve prayed recently, then you were praying to Allah, because Allah is another name for God. Now you know, and knowing is half the battle.

This is easily my favorite prop from Lee’s box. It took quite a bit of work to put together, and came out absolutely fantastic. The intern may protest it’s existence, but then again, he’s not the sort to look at a prop like this and say “Oooh neat!” You can expect to see at least one more photo of the jar, this one doesn’t really show off the prop’s more horrific elements, and the 8 year old in me wants to gross some folk out.

My computer sprang a leak:

My computer is submersion cooled. Which means that most of the main components are suspended in a vat of non-conductive mineral oil. The oil cools much more efficiently than air, and lets me cool everything with a single radiator and fan. It’s quieter, more stable, and a teensy bit screaming fast.

But it means my computer has a circulatory system, with oil as it’s life-blood. So you can imagine my reaction when I woke up to a slowly expanding puddle of mineral oil on my desk.

I salvaged as much of the oil as I could. Food grade mineral oil isn’t overly expensive, but it’s rather difficult to find, so I try not to waste it.

This bin, according to Home Deopt, is supposed to be for mixing concrete… or something. I bought it as a service station for my motherboard, and it works quite well. When I was finally done with my repairs, I poured the drained oil from this tray right back into the main oil supply.

At first glance, it’s tough to see how the tank leaked. Where’s the crack?

Aha! There it is. A hairline fracture at one of the molding injection points. I don’t know if it cracked under the load from the oil, from the heat of the computer, or from some other factor, but this is definitely where the oil leaked out.

This marked the start of a two week period where I had to do without a desktop computer. All because I needed to buy a new tank. These days, I keep spare tanks sitting around, just in case something happens.

I don’t have a lot of clever stuff to say about this post. It’s another letter from Mr. Horne, and it gets into some interesting narrative gaps that I built into the story. Mr. Horne is presently referring to information that Lee hasn’t given us. Namely that the Amazonian River Crab has no effect on the Pennsylvania Plague.

This kind of odd skip will make a lot more sense when we get to the second box. We’re coming up on the end of Lee’s narrative in about two months. That’s when things will get a good bit more interesting.

But at least it’s properly updated now. The root fragments in this bottle are actually just left over herbs from my kitchen. I can’t tell you the name of the herb, because it’s written in an Asian script. A friend of mine bought me a bag of them when I was in California.

They look fantastic when added to a vial like this, very authentic. The only problem is, they apparently ferment. I had two bottles blow their caps about a month after making them, because of the growing pressure from the slowly fermenting roots.

So let that be a lesson to fellow prop-makers. Always check your found parts for sugar before using them.

Problem 1: The router plate doesn’t have any holes.

Solution 1: I have a drill press. What now, aluminum plate? What? Now?

I had to drill out a total of 6 holes, three for the screws, then three more on the same spots, to recess the screw heads. I could never have done this without a drill press… even a crappy one like the one I have.

All that work with the drill press was worthwhile however. I got a router table for a fraction of the cost. The whole thing can be disassembled and folded flat. The router can be disengaged for normal use or storage.

Why go through all that trouble? Because the cutout in these picture frames is too small. I can’t route them out with a normal router because the upper surface is too uneven. So I had to drag out the big pile of equipment… just to cut some notches.

The frame cutting is part of a bigger project, and here’s some of that project’s aftermath. This is the remains of the lower frame for one of my computer monitors. Three guesses as to where this project is headed.

Scrap wood from cutting the frame down to size. Surprisingly, the frame wood is decent quality stuff. I want to say cedar, but I’m not sure. It certainly smelled ceder-y when I cut it. Given how cheap the frames were, I’d expected barely-dried pine.