Kickstarter Update
So, I was reading about yet another failed crowd-sourced project. It was some sort of dragonflying contraption. I mentioned on Facebook that I had really only had one project I backed fail, out of forty. That's a pretty good success rate.And then, literally 5 minutes later, I received a message from the failed
project that it was still going on! Of course, it was estimated to be delivered in 2012, so I'm not overly excited.
Anyway, if you're curious about what sorts of things I've backed, here they all are!
| Project | Estimated Delivery | Comments |
|---|---|---|
| The National Park Poster Project - Centennial Collection | Dec 2015 | WPA-style posters for National Parks! His goal is to eventually produce posters for each and every park. This is the second collection. Each time, we pick up posters for the parks we've actually visited. |
| Our Super Adventure | Oct 2015 | Our Super Adventure is an adorable diary web comic about a cute couple with four cats. As part of a couple with four cats myself, about a third of these strips have happened here as well. The project produced a very nice hardcover book of strips. |
| Tiko - The Unibody 3D Printer | Feb 2016 | The gist here was to produce a delta-style extrusion 3D printer at low cost by incasing it in an extruded tubular body. I don't usually back projects like this. Even a low cost3D printer is up near $200. Plus, crowd-sourced 3D printers fail left and right. These folks seemed to have their act together, though. Also, they did something I really liked. Instead of accepting a butt-load of backers to all get their stuff in the same timeframe, they staggered blocks of backers. The very first backers were scheduled for delivery in November, the next group in December, and so on. That sort of forethought impressed me. Of course, they just announced that they wouldn't be able to start shipping until January. |
| STRAFE | Jun 2016 | Remember old first person shooters where the main goal was to race around and shoot stuff? These folks do and they're creating a new game designed to bring back that style of play. |
| Exploding Kittens | Jul 2015 | Card game by the Oatmeal guy. They raised like $10 million or so. Crazy! Anyway, the game is actually fun to play, with more depth than the simple rules would suggest. |
| Notes on a Case of Melancholia, Or: A Little Death | Jul 2015 | The Perry Bible Fellowship guy is making a book in the style of Gorey. The whole thing is manually etched. It's running behind, but looks so sweet I don't think anybody minds. |
| The National Park Poster Project | Dec 2014 | The first collection of WPA style posters of National Parks. |
| Comic Chameleon: The ultimate webcomics app, Android version | May 2015 | Comic viewing app for your phone/tablet that doesn't rip off the strip creators! That said, there's a lag between a new comic showing up on a site and it showing up in the app. I often find myself just going to web sites for strips that update every morning. |
| The Non-Adventures of Wonderella: A Hero For All Seasons | Jan 2015 | Book version of The Non-Adventures of Wonderella web comic. |
| Uncanny Magazine Year One | Dec 2014 | Short story collection! |
| Lemon Jail: 'Mats Tour Diary 1983-1986 | Dec 2015 | So, this guy toured with the Replacements and wants to write a book about it. The bad thing here is that he hit his goal, but there have been exactly zero updates. Estimated shipping date is next month. Maybe he's been hard at work? Maybe he ran off with about eight grand? |
| HEROES! A Diverse Superhero Anthology | Dec 2014 | Short story collection! |
| Oh Joy, Sex Toy, The Book | Nov 2014 | The OJST web site in book form! There's also a second volume, which I didn't back, for no particular reason. |
| IAmElemental Action Figures for Girls | Dec 2014 | Female action figures without gigantic boobs? Why, that's lunacy! Well produced figures. Decent articulation. We need more toys like these! |
| Smut Peddler 2014: LADYPORN CONQUERS EARTH | Aug 2014 | Woman-produced comic erotica! |
| The Intergalactic Travel Bureau Tour | Jul 2014 | A set of postcards showing various locations in the solar system as travel destinations. There was some sort of education aspect to the project, but I just wanted the sweet postcards. |
| WOMEN DESTROY SCIENCE FICTION! | Jun 2014 | Short story collection! |
| MODARRI CARS: Feel the Road | May 2014 | You can find these in Barnes & Noble stores now. They're modular model cars. You can mix and match pieces to get different looks. They're loads of fun, and I often find myself fiddling with them. |
| 757Electronica Compilation Album Volume 2 | Feb 2014 | Locally produced electronica. |
| Athena's Daughters: Women in Science Fiction and Fantasy | May 2014 | Short story collection! |
| Kano: A computer anyone can make | Jul 2014 | Child-oriented Raspberry Pi kit. It's very nice. Easy to put together with an OS designed to get kids into coding. I haven't used it for much myself, but it's always good to have a Raspberry Pi around the house just in case. |
| The Electric Loog Guitar | May 2014 | An electric version of the 3-string acoustic guitar described further down. Frankly, build quality was a bit shoddy. The neck wobbles from side to side. One of these days, I'll stick some sort of shim next to it to stabilize it. |
| Pressy - the Almighty Android Button! | Mar 2014 | This is a wee button that sits in your phone's headphone jack with software that triggers actions when you press it. All I wanted was for it to fire up the camera when the phone was sleeping. Alas, it couldn't do that. I always hated the delay when trying to take a photo with a phone. Hit the power button. Swipe to unlock. Start the camera app. Take a photo. Maybe the software can do that now, but my latest phone can immediately fire up the camera with a quick double flick of the wrist. So it's pretty useless to me. |
| Permanence: The New Album By Deathmole | Jan 2014 | The guy who writes and draws Questionable Content also records instrumental metal albums. He wanted to record one in a read studio. It's not really my kind of music, but I love the comic. If he wants to record in a real studio, then Imma gonna help him record in a real studio! |
| OMNIVORE SALT - A family recipe that makes food taste better | Dec 2013 | Seasoned salt. Tasty, but I don't use much salt when I cook, so I still have most of it sitting in the pantry. |
| Devil's Panties Devil Girl Plushie! | Mar 2014 | Plushie version of a character in a web comic. Cute, but now I'm kinda wondering why I thought I needed one. |
| NapAnywhere | Sep 2013 | A funky alternative to a neck pillow for long flights. The final product was quite nice, but I haven't really had a chance to try it out much. |
| ModiBot Mo: DIY Action Figures with 3d Printed accessories | Oct 2013 | Are you a fan of the old Stikfas and Xevoz toys? Then ModiBot will fill the bill for you! I love these things. |
| LibraryBox 2.0 | Dec 2013 | Takes a micro-sized wifi hotspot and turns it into a book repository. Take it to the library and provide eBooks for everyone! |
| Next Generation LiveCode (Open Source) | May 2013 | This is a cross-platform development tool on which I once spent entirely too much money. (It was for a project. I eventually used Adobe AIR and JavaScript instead.) Anyway, they decided to go open source and needed some funding to do so. I went with it just in case I wanted to use it at some point in the future. Interestingly, the Historical Williamsburg Living Narrative project, just a little below this, is using it to write the text adventure. |
| Cristoforo: Victorian Cthulhu fonts revived (again) | Feb 2013 | A sweet font from a Lovecraft-themed RPG. He's been chucking out continually refined versions for a couple years now. Frankly, the early versions were fine, but it's nice to keep getting incrementally improved ones, too. |
| The Historical Williamsburg Living Narrative | Aug 2012 | Want an Infocom-style text adventure set in colonial-era Williamsburg? This is one of those projects so loony I backed it simply for the chutzpah shown. I thought this project was dead, but I just received an update a couple days ago! |
| Pebble: E-Paper Watch for iPhone and Android | Sep 2012 | Yes, I have an original Pebble watch. Mine is in the bonus orange color. I thought it would be a deep orange. Instead, it's more like safety orange. I rarely wear it. It's cool, but I just don't need to be that connected. |
| C 299,792 km/s | Apr 2012 | Short science fiction film with all practical effects. The final result was quite watchable. |
| The Dollyrots :: New Full Length Album is GO! | Jan 2012 | The Dollyrots dumped their label and crowd-sourced a very good album. |
| Brick Bending 1.0 | This guy wanted to make videos showing how to make curved objects by putting Legos under tension. They're neat techniques, but I suspect this was really just an excuse to amass Legos. (Note: I realize the official plural of Lego is Lego. I just don't care.) | |
| SMBC Theater Goes TO SPACE! | The Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal folks wanted to make a pilot for a proposed TV show. This was the result. Amusing, but I found it less funny than most of their fans. | |
| HexBright, an Open Source Light | The best flashlight I have ever owned. Arduino-compatible. Yes, you can program the flashlight. I made minor changes to the stock software. | |
| The Loog Guitar | An acoustic guitar with only three strings for kids. And for me, apparently. Works fine, but I don't really use it. | |
| The Citizen Science Quarterly | Strange little science magazine, most of which was over my head. | |
| COLOR ME OBSESSED, the potentially true story of The Replacements - phase 5 (mixing) | This was my very first backed project, a documentary about the Replacements that featured no footage of the band at all. The resulting movie is very, very good. |
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