Project DM

[BerticusPryme]

ok I am letting my nerd out on this project. I still play Dungeons & Dragons on the weekends with some of my friends. Between the 4 of us we have amased quite a collection of books as in damn near all of them from 1st edition allt he way to the newest releases of 4th edition. We were looking for a easy way to keep all the books handy. In steps 3 flat bed scanners and Adobe pdf. After scanning and digital downlaods from WoTC we now have a 14gb folder of nothing but pdfs. Now we need a decent way to access them and this is where the mod takes off. I was given a Dell Latitude CPi laptop. She had a bad hdd and a shot battery. The rest is golden. From the 300mhz PII proc down tot eh 2x 64mb EDO sodimms. I dropped in a 40gb hdd for books and such and got started. I was sitting there and thought to myself to bad that doesnt come out like a little tray or something. Then it hit me. So me and my trusyt multi tool went to work and this is the result thus far. Still thinking about a paint scheme and what else to do to it so any ideas and comments are welcome. Also if anyone has 2 128mb EDO sodimms message me.
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y288/kaoticshockwave/PC160002.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y288/kaoticshockwave/PC160003.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y288/kaoticshockwave/PC160004.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y288/kaoticshockwave/PC160006.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y288/kaoticshockwave/PC160005-1.jpg
Now the battery compartment holds 2 full sets of dice.

[Airbozo]

I used to be quite the D&D geek....

I still have a lot of my character generation sheets and my main characters stats and history. I gave away my books years ago but still have tons of dice...

Nice project!

[Luke122]

Yay! Bert's back!

Welcome back alter-ego. ;) I might have just the ram you are looking for.. hit me up.

[jdbnsn]

Awesome idea BP! I also used to play more D&D than I should admit to, very fun, very nerdly. Lol, I am used to lots of medical abbreviations so when I saw the title I thought; "what the heck, project Diabetes Mellitus?"

[BerticusPryme]

Yeah i am still debating on finishes for it. I kind alike this http://www.datamancer.net/projects/grimoire/grimoire.htm# but at the same time i would prefer a paint. Thougt about doing a fake leather tpye paint on it to give it to look. Either way I am still throwing around ideas for it. Any comments or suggestions would really be appreciated.

[Luke122]

I've seen some pretty cool looking fake leather finishes, one of which was simply pressing crumpled paper or plastic against the paint while it was still wet to add that "grain" look to it. :D

[jdbnsn]

What I think would look cool is if you modeled some dragon scales out of styrene or something...
http://www.rusticcopper.com/cherry%20dragon%20scale.jpg

http://rlv.zcache.com/dragon_scale_skateboard-p186704627626223383qj4n_400.jpg

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_VTsOfxni7Ig/SYX8WMYBEQI/AAAAAAAAA98/07pqbB142oc/s400/p1050179.jpg

Another thought is chain mail armor of some sort...

http://www.alleycatscratch.com/lotr/Armor/Maille/PVC/ChainMailCollarBegin7.jpg

a site showing construction.. website (http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.alleycatscratch.com/lotr/Armor/Maille/PVC/ChainMailCollarBegin7.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.alleycatscratch.com/lotr/Armor/Maille/PVCMaille.htm&usg=__vzjfR9Ai95bQsdcHOTiV2lmyDXs=&h=544&w=725&sz=94&hl=en&start=14&tbnid=5y2XajcFzVCLEM:&tbnh=105&tbnw=140&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dchain%2Bmail%2Barmor%26gbv%3D2%26hl%3 Den)

http://historyshop.piratemerch.com/images/chain_mail_armor_300058.jpg

[LiTHiUM0XiD3]

ive done something much alike... except i used lock washers...turned out rly heavy... and tended to pinch alot :P

[BerticusPryme]

YAY!!!!!!! UPDATES!!!!!!!!!!
well thats about all teh happy you get outta me. I changed a few things around and scrapped the dice tray idea to try out another idea and I really like it thus far. Decided to go ahead and make it look like a book. SO..... I took a trip to the good ole hobby lobby and browsed around. Picked up a couple of peices of foam core or poly styrene or what ever you guys want to call it. Got back home a few hours later and got started. This is the result so far along with a preview shot of the the vinyl that will be used to cover the book. Hopefully more updates to come soon after this.
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y288/kaoticshockwave/PC260001.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y288/kaoticshockwave/PC260002.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y288/kaoticshockwave/PC260003.jpg

[Luke122]

Awesome so far!

[BerticusPryme]

well got another update. Got the leather stretched and glued down as well as alot of the other pieces. Also I found another small box that I got back earlier in the year from some girl scout cookies. It's a small tin box that is shaped like a book. I thought it would be neat to do somethign with so I stashed it away. Well now it also got wrapped and converted over to hold some of our minis and extra dice. I got an idea I where I can bring back the original dice tray idea so I may pursue that option as well but here is the pics for the update.
The girl scout cookie box before....
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y288/kaoticshockwave/PC260004-1.jpg
and after
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y288/kaoticshockwave/PC270003.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y288/kaoticshockwave/PC270002.jpg
Here is the book for the laptop...
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y288/kaoticshockwave/PC270007.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y288/kaoticshockwave/PC270004.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y288/kaoticshockwave/PC270006.jpg
and finally for size comparison both of them side by side
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y288/kaoticshockwave/PC270001.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y288/kaoticshockwave/PC270008.jpg
Now all that is left is the detail work. You all know that the devil is in the details.

[msmrx57]

Looking good.:up: