Zikes's Greetings and Salutations

[Zikes]

A copy/paste of livius's new questionnaire.

1. How'd you find the Freethought Forum?
Through livius drusus :) She commissioned me to make her a bunch of emotes (many of which I still owe her) when she found me over on my deviantART (http://zikes.deviantart.com) page. Promise I'll get those finished soon livius! :sweaty:

2. Are you a member of any other online forums? Which?
Well...deviantART has a forum...

ooo I was somewhat active over on The Chainmaille Board (http://www.chainmailleboard.com) for a while :1thumbup:

3. How do you feel about smilies (emoticons)?
Love 'em! :D After all I am an emoticonist (or emoticonationeerist, a rather silly term I coined one day in chat over at dA). I'm afraid I've reached the point where I have to restrain myself from using an emoticon in nearly every sentence I write.

4. How do you feel about 2000+ smilies?
Is that all you got?! :D

5. Is flaming:A. Hilarious
B. Beneath you
C. Irritating as fuck6. Is vulgar language:A. Hilarious
B. Beneath you
C. Irritating as fuck
Entirely situational...



...damnit

7. Why did the chicken cross the road?
*insert witty answer here, most likely involving beer, sex, religion, or some strange combination of the three*

8. Who pays for your food?
Still mooching off the 'rents ;)

9. What's one thing you've always wanted to do but never have?
Skydive! Or bungee jump :1thumbup:

10. What is your single favorite place in the world?
Haven't travelled very much, but St Paul & Minneapolis are interesting.

11. What's the significance of your username?
Well originally I used Zaphod, but I decided I wanted something a bit more unique and original. Plus I was sick of having to throw a bunch of random numbers after it every time I signed up for something. When I decided to make the change I knew I wanted to keep the Z because Z's are cool, and being the indecisive and uncreative type I am I picked a vowel at random to put after it and the rest kindof fell into place.

12. What about your avatar?
It's also my avatar over on dA, it's a combination of my very first two emotes ever.

[beyelzu]

well, I have already welcomed you I believe.

but welcome again.

and not to be too self serving but can you makea transmet smilie that moves, either drinking beer or doing drugs or shooting another smilie with a bowl disrupter.

transmet smilies have three eyes by the way.

if you choose to go the bowl disrupting way the disruptee smilie should only have 2 eyes.

anyway.

i think that its very cool that your avatar is the first two smilies you made. I love all the glomps.

I know that you have already read my opinion of glomp fuck

:bow:

[beyelzu]

btw liv bow 2 is a far superior smilie to bow

I really think that bow2 should be the bow prime.

[Zikes]

Couldn't pass up the idea of a three-eyed smily with a bowel disruptor :LMAO:

[Zikes]

Gah, forgot to make the background transparent :shakefist:

Edit:
Whoa, it'll take me a while to get used to the fact that I can edit posts...I'll keep that in mind next time :1thumbup:

[beyelzu]

:urock::urock::urock::thankyou::thankyou::urock::urock:

[Zikes]

Hope I got it close, I'd actually never heard of transmet before but I did a quick google on it and used my imagination on that gun :)

[Skep]

That's funny, Zikes. :laugh:

Hello and welcome. :wave:

[viscousmemories]

Damn, you're a smilie god. :bow:

:welcome: again, Zikes.

[livius drusus]

My God, Zikes. Your brilliance never ceases to amaze me. Of course I've uploaded :tmbowel: and I expect bey to add it to his siggy any minute now.

Oh, and bey, you're gonna lose your shit (so to speak) over Zikes' chainmaille work too. Zikes, where are those pics of the shirt you were working on? I know it you posted them in a journal entry but I've looked around and can't find it. You totally need to post them here.

[beyelzu]

yes, yes I am.

thank you for adding that smilie, liv, not that there was ever any doubt.

[JoeP]

7. Why did the chicken cross the road?
*insert witty answer here, most likely involving beer, sex, religion, or some strange combination of the three*
Because it fancied a pint of The One True Cock
Because the priest couldn't get his Bud out of the chicken's arse
Because...

[Zikes]

Because it fancied a pint of The One True Cock
Because the priest couldn't get his Bud out of the chicken's arse
Because...

:LMAO:

[Zikes]

Ok ok, livius has been on my case to post some of my chainmaille for a little while so I suppose I should get off my ass and do it now :)

Just click each thumb to go to the deviantART page with the full sized image and a description :1thumbup:

http://www.olemac.net/%7Ehutch/deviantArt/static/COIThumb1.jpg (http://www.deviantart.com/view/14654377/)

http://www.olemac.net/%7Ehutch/deviantArt/static/COIThumb2.jpg (http://www.deviantart.com/view/14654561/)

http://www.olemac.net/%7Ehutch/deviantArt/static/PouchThumb.jpg
(http://www.deviantart.com/view/12174017/)
http://www.olemac.net/%7Ehutch/deviantArt/static/VestThumb.jpg (http://www.deviantart.com/view/12173657/)

[viscousmemories]

Damn, you put some intense hours into that vest! Cool looking stuff there, Zikes. :1thumbup:

[Beth]

Zikes, you made that unholy earfuck smiley, so I'm not so sure I should get that close to you. :stwitch: Just stay away from my ears and we'll do fine, I think. :tease:

[Zikes]

:giggle: I'll consider your ears completely off limits then :D

[livius drusus]

I hadn't seen the pouch! It's gorgeous too, of course. I'm so blown away by your maille work, Zikes. The thought of you connecting hundreds/thousands of links to each other one at a time just boggles my mind.

:bow:

[Zikes]

Damn, you put some intense hours into that vest! Cool looking stuff there, Zikes. :1thumbup:

Thanks! I spent a whole summer working on that one and I've started on another. I'll need to pick up some more aluminum wire before I can finish the new one though :)

I hadn't seen the pouch! It's gorgeous too, of course. I'm so blown away by your maille work, Zikes. The thought of you connecting hundreds/thousands of links to each other one at a time just boggles my mind.

:bow:

Thank you! I really enjoy making maille, it's quite soothing and a lot easier than most people think :D I managed to make all that with nothing more than a few common tools and some raw wire :yup:

[beyelzu]

damn zikes, that is some way cool chainmail. I used to sell knives and swords and chain mail. the chain mail shirts that we carried retailed for 150 dollars and weighed probably 35 pounds.

how much does that vest weigh.

any advice for someone who would like to make their own maille?

I think it would be kind of cool to make some.

[Zikes]

Well that vest is pretty dense, but it's made out of aluminum so it only weighs about 9-10 pounds. It feels kinda heavy when you hold it, but once it's on the weight's so distributed that you can forget you're even wearing it :)

Not sure what the best advice would be for you, a lot of it depends on what kind of resources you have at your disposal and how much effort you're wanting to put into the process.

The cheapest route is to buy the raw wire in bulk and make your own rings. I use welding wire, a 14lb spool of aluminum lasted me about 6 years of off and on mailling. Unfortunately the process of making rings can become tedious, even in comparison to weaving them, and a bit painful on the hands. If you want to go this route I can give you a run-down of the process :1thumbup:

If you'd prefer to buy pre-made rings there are two big sources: The Ring Lord (http://www.theringlord.com/) and DeCordené Wireworks (http://www.dcwireworks.com/) A lot of beginners prefer to jump right into mailling and buy some cheap pre-made rings to learn on. I know DeCordené offers some starter packages as well as a variety of mailling tools.

Once you have the rings it's a matter of putting them together, one ring at a time. There are hundreds of different "weaves" and no limit to what you can make. I've seen people sculpt houses and furniture, chess sets and boards, curtains, full size chairs, rugs, and every article of clothing you can imagine out of chainmaille. The best weave tutorials I've ever found are at Derakon's Library (http://www.cs.hmc.edu/%7Ecweisige/) and for ideas and inspiration I recommend checking out The Chainmaille Board (http://www.chainmailleboard.com/)'s Gallery forum and gallery archive.

Depending on the size of the rings and the materials you use you'll probably have to use different kinds of pliers to work with them. I work mostly with aluminum, and the rings are sized so that I could open and close them with my bare hands if I felt like it, so I just used two pairs of needlenosed pliers. Since the aluminum is such a soft metal I ground the teeth off the pliers so as not to mar the metal while I worked with it. Most maillers that work with precious metals such as silver or gold go a step further and glue strips of leather to their pliers.

If you end up going with galvanized or stainless steel then you won't need to worry about that, but you'll need heavier duty pliers. When I was first learning I used some cheap galvanized steel being sold as electric fence wire at a local farm supply store and had to use linesman pliers to weave the rings.

:phew: Kinda rambled a bit there, but oh well :D Hope it helps!