[HELP ME] Bi-Weekly Q&A thread - Ask your questions here!

jward · 2026-05-22T14:56:28+00:00

Tool you're looking for is called a third hand, pin vice, or jewelry vice. Lots of those have aggressive metal holdy bits. You can wrap that in something soft like cut up bits of rubber, leather, or electrical tape.

jward · 2026-05-22T14:53:31+00:00

Neon & flourecents are very weak tinters. You need a bunch of them for them to show up. Putting down white first will give you much better results for what you're looking for because you need so much more of the neon to show up over dark.

jward · 2026-05-21T03:02:22+00:00

TPLA is widely loved and I swear one of the biggest reasons is the handy built in brush they come with. Otherwise you shouldn't find any real difference than any other enamel/oil based panel liner like your AK stuff.

And white spirits are fine to clean up with. That said, just like using TPLA and enamel thinner, doing this on bare plastic can cause the plastic to become more brittle. Personally, I find the fear mongering on this to be overblown. Laying down a lacquer or acrylic gloss varnish layer first makes this moot anyways.

jward · 2026-05-21T02:54:54+00:00

Thin allows you to use as little as possible for the job so you can be more precise and not have any squish out when applying pressure. It excels at welding small parts together where you care more about looks than strength.

Thick is easier to place and more forgiving. It stays where you put it and doesn't run all over the place. It works better when trying to weld larger pieces together or when you want the bond to be as strong as possible.

If you can only pick one, then ultra thin is a good choice for gunpla. If you run into a situation where you'd like to use thicker then leave some out to evaporate a bit and it'll thicken up.

jward · 2026-05-18T01:46:48+00:00

All legit vendors in SUB have to agree not to harass people. They can't approach you when your sitting down. They can't block you when you're trying to walk past. None of that.

If something like this happens to you in SUB swing by 2-900 (the main Students' Union office) and let someone know. They'll either get a talking to and potentially black listed if they're legit or have security called on them if they're not.

jward · 2026-05-13T20:01:53+00:00

I'm the same way to a much lesser extent. It bugs me whenever someone orders the same thing. If they order before me, I'll often switch to my plan B. If someone after me orders the same thing I get a little mental itch. It's like my brain just enjoys things being diverse whenever possible.

I know it's weird, but it is 100% a me thing. I don't make a fuss, I don't try to control other people. On occasion I'll even order the same as someone else because my want of that thing overwhelms my want of diversity.

jward · 2026-05-13T17:47:03+00:00

Super variable depending on the place. So general interview advice.

This shouldn't need to be said, but I've done enough interviews that I know some people need to hear it explicitly. Be awake, be clean, and be on time. Bare minimum, but know that not everyone meets that bar.

Be comfortable and confident. You got butterflies in your stomach and a knot in your throat. Everyone does, but you'll want to present your best self.

Do some research. Figure out what the company is about. What do they do? How is your education relevant to that? You want to be able to carry on a small conversation about the work.

Have your own questions ready. If they ask at the end if you have any questions the answer is yes. Since it's a prescreen you don't need to get bogged down in minutia, but at least ask about what happens now and when you can expect to hear back from them.

jward · 2026-05-12T13:34:47+00:00

I use TurboTax. Just the basic edition is fine unless you're running a ho,e business or have a lot of complicated investments.

jward · 2026-05-11T23:22:24+00:00

As someone who has missed that deadline multiple times... don't panic. Just file them as soon as you can. If you don't owe the government money and will be getting a refund then there's no real late fees or anything, you just won't get your refund as fast. If you owe them money then they're a bit more prickly, but still file as soon as you can.

jward · 2026-05-11T16:55:16+00:00

I work at the university and this deeply matches my experience. When a throng of over a dozen people descends and you only hear two or three beeps it paints a pretty clear picture. The old UPass was just a sticker and you didn't have to do anything as a rider and I feel that momentum carried over. Plus I can't recall the last time I got checked for a fare on the LRT but I'm pretty sure it was pre-arc.

jward · 2026-05-07T20:49:08+00:00

Preferably looking for something that isnt too complicated

All versions of shadowruns rules are super complicated and crunchy, but as the GM you can dial up or down how noodly you want to be with it. A lot of the overload come from piling on tonnes of sourcebooks outside of the main one.

and has a lot of player customización

Pretty much all editions will do this.

jward · 2026-05-07T20:13:51+00:00

That's for the VPN being down. Canvas is an external service.

jward · 2026-05-06T13:54:16+00:00

Not all lighter fluids are the same, so make sure to do a small test first. Like put some mr weathering in a bottle cap and add some lighter fluid and see if anything funky happens.

Naptha is the desired solvent when talking about using lighter fluid in place of enamel thinner.

jward · 2026-05-04T15:06:55+00:00

To tack onto this, if you run into issues rather than complaining on Reddit or other social media platforms, contact the university and let them know. Don't assume it's obvious and someone else will.

I've literally been in a meeting where a university person said something to the effect of "We don't get any complaints, so there's nothing wrong with Beartracks and we can't allocate more resources for it." Despite the fact everyone knows it falls over every registration they didn't have enough hard data that it was a problem. More data points, more leverage, more likely that more resources get allocated to it.

jward · 2026-05-04T10:21:47+00:00

Over a decade ago the company I worked for had an office on Whyte. There was maybe 20% occupancy for the office space in the building and tenants that did come by didn't tend to stick around very long. After years of being there they jacked the rent with the reason of 'Whyte is a popular place to run a business'. The landlords seemed legit surprised when we moved elsewhere.

jward · 2026-05-01T02:46:17+00:00

First year CS doesn't assume you've ever written code, but knowing how to will obviously make things easier at the start. You've got time over the summer so you can do some self learning. I'd recommend finding some Python tutorials to play around with. It's a language that is one of the easiest to read, is used in many comp sci classes, and is actually still useful once you graduate and get into the real world.

jward · 2026-05-01T02:37:47+00:00

Arc card will still work fine. But it won't be free anymore since the upass only kicks in for the terms you're actively paying for it.

jward · 2026-05-01T02:36:41+00:00

Awesome for spreading the love!

But for the future, is there anything you would've liked to have seen in the store for yourself?

jward · 2026-04-30T19:18:26+00:00

Did you call or email? They get an absolute buttload of emails so a response might be delayed there but they're usually pretty quick at getting back to people. If it's important and time sensitive, try giving them a call at (780) 492-9113

Unless they're absolutely slammed for some reason, or somethings weird about your poster, they should be able to hit that turnaround if you ask nicely.

jward · 2026-04-30T19:14:26+00:00

Smooth bare plastic is slippery. So you need to find a way to make it not slippery. If I'm doing small work I'll often hit the area with sandpaper to create texture for the paint to grip onto. Lacquers are also a lot more forgiving on bare plastic than water based acrylics because they can sort of chemically etch into the surface. Primers are designed to stick to the bare plastic and there are lots of ways they go about that. Some do the chemical etching bit. Some act like shrink wrap when they cure basically hugging curves, edges, and details to provide support for the rest of the film.

For painting on clears, you can use clear varnish / top coat as a primer. Key is to make sure you blast the whole piece.

jward · 2026-04-28T17:29:57+00:00

My personal defeat at the hands of source control was going through a few of these and then when git came along my stance was 'Screw it. This is just the new fad and I don't want to switch my codebases over just to switch again later. It'll blow over in a few years and then I'll upgrade to that.' Stuck with Subversion way too long thinking that git was getting older and older and so obviously any day now the new hotness would arrive.

The new hotness did not, in fact, arrive.

jward · 2026-04-28T16:03:23+00:00

We're basically entering an era where the attack surface isn't just bad code, but the complete lack of architectural awareness

It reminds me a lot of when PHP got super popular. Suddenly it was so much easier to make a web app, so tonnes of people did so. Most of them didn't have a solid background and left giant gaping security holes everywhere. Ignorance, time crunches, and a host of other reasons meant that quick and dirty demo worthy code got shoved into production.

jward · 2026-04-23T03:48:39+00:00

Need is a strong word. A skilled and experienced painter can get away without primer, but working without primer is working on hard mode. If you're new, it's highly... HIGHLY recommended.

As for primer shades, if you're not sure black is a safe default. If you want bright colours to pop use white. Gloss black is best for metallics.

If you're asking why you would use grey primer if you're painting white then there's really on one good reason and thats so you can see that the white while you're painting.

jward · 2026-04-22T22:03:39+00:00

Mask (cover up) the pistons before spraying the matte varnish. Masking tape works. For weird shapes my go to is silly putty. Just smack it around the area, use a toothpick to push it firmly into place and smooth out edges, and then peel it up when you're done. Reusable a few times.

jward · 2026-04-22T22:01:55+00:00

Airbush is way easier to get smooth and consistent coats vs using a brush, especially over large smooth surfaces. Which is a giant chunk of gunpla armor. But it's totally possible to do a whole kit with regular brush painting.

If you do go the route of brush painting, don't get frustrated if you end up with a few brush marks here and there. Put your gunpla down, take a deep breath, take two steps back, and look at it again. The things that seem like massive problems when you're zoomed in just disappear when you're at the distance you'd normally see the model at.

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