Now that I’m back from San Diego, I finally get to post about my boat.

This boat features a drive system known as the Voith Schneider propeller (VSP), which is those blades you see sticking out of the bottom of the ship. Wikipedia has a more detailed explanation of how the system works , but in short the system works by rotating the blades in a circle while changing their angle, in effect “scooping” water in a particular direction when the blades are not tangential to the circle they rotate in. The direction of thrust can be changed by moving a control rod that controls the center of tangency (?) of the blades (the blue dot in this diagram.)

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Was going to color this, but decided against this.

Totally unrelated things after the break.

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You might have expected this one to be Cirno, but the heuristic I use for choosing the next character wouldn’t let it happen. Presenting a Yakumo “family” triple-portrait:

Characters are:
Yakumo Yukari (friend of Reimu and Suika). Theme.
Yakumo Ran (Yukari’s shikigami (familiar) ). Theme.
Chen (Ran’s shikigami). Theme.

Yukari is the youkai of boundaries, so I thought it’d be interesting to have her open up a boundary in the paper. Ran and Chen were drawn first, with a rough outline of where I wanted to put Yukari (Aside: I really like how Ran turned out in this one, although I’ve never drawn her before.). I then drew Yukari on another sheet of paper and cut her out. I cut out the boundary’s shape on the paper with Ran and Chen, going around Chen’s head. Then I cut some more holes off to the side and tied ribbon (this was the hardest part >.> ).

Interesting note: The first time I scanned I forgot to put anything behind the boundary’s hole, so it just showed up white in the scan due to the scanner’s cover. Problem solved with construction paper.

Cirno-themed drink coaster, cut out of acrylic and patterned after a silkscreen shirt I made. It still needs some rubber backing so it doesn’t slide around on the table. It’s also a bit too big…

So, recently, the MIT Anime Club had an event, “Snooty Anime Discussion Hour”. I quote here the event description:

“It’s like the Internet without the flaming and trolling! Join fellow fans in discussing current and exciting issues in anime, fandom, and the industry in a forum-like setting. Or just sit in and learn more about our favorite medium! Tea and snacks provided.”

Of course, as it’s a snooty anime discussion hour, there must be hats. So I made this one with my friend TV&:

I didn’t actually wear this one (I had a large pirate hat), but it was for my friend wah, who runs this blog here.

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