Stringjam

I briefly carved and painted some cranks a good while back, and if it taught me one thing, it's that I would never want to do it for a living (unless I had a $20,000 duplicator...and even then, painting, drilling, weighting, and making / mounting hardware is still time consuming.) $20-$25 is totally reasonable and anything under that, IMO is a bargain for hand-made cranks. There are some killer crankbait makers on this forum, and some of the most productive cranks I own were made by them. Marty Burns and John Mills immediately come to mind. Bob Padgett unfortunately doesn't make his baits for sale.....I say unfortunately because that guy knows how to make some totally sick cranks.

The chart/yellow shad is super-clean! I've love to see that pattern on a nice balsa crank.

Awesome job Cliff! (And Marty!)

Great job, Dave! I dig it.

Those look fantastic. Black is one of the most underrated crank colors - it's always cool to see somebody doing unique things with it!

This one is more of a blend of bluegill and firetiger, but it ended up being one of my favorites: A little cover bait I carved up a few years ago:

Beautiful work, Cliff.

Great looking baits, Marty. I definitely like the pattern on the last two.

Great looking cranks - and very nice shots, too!

Cool stuff, Marty. I like the shot of 'treuse on the tails.

I know as many "old" people who can't function without a TV to stare at as young people who can't function without a computer.

That 8" straight-tail is SICK! Love it!

I always look forward to seeing your posts, because you always have something cool and unique to show. I totally dig the purple crack!

GrundleLove pretty much spelled it out. Going to need specifics because there are a lot of compatibilities to consider. The Core i3 fits an 1156 socket, which the i5 and some of the i7's fit as well, which means you can upgrade the processor. I would at least upgrade to an i5. I'm also going to assume, like Grundle, that you probably just have onboard graphics, which put frankly, suck for gaming. You're going to need a real card to get any decent gaming action. I'm going to assume that you're computer is new enough that it has a PCI-E x16 slot. If you could crack open your case and look for the motherboard's make and model info it would be very easy to determine. Then it's just a matter of how much you want to spend. Depending on the card you get, you might also have to get a bigger power supply. Gaming rigs are a slippery slope my friend. I think the bare minimum card I would get to play modern games at decent framerates would be an ATI 5770 1Gig (about $120....cheaper if you snag one off eBay), and if you have more to spend, a 5850 or 69xx would be all the better, but then you're talking $200-$300 for the card. Budget + specifics will be a big help here.

Have you considered running XP in a virtual machine (Virtual Box, VMware, etc.)?

The purple shad pattern is gorgeous, Cliff. Choice stuff as usual.

Nothing dumb about his question. Your response, however, is pretty d**n lame.

Sounds almost as utterly ridiculous as this: http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thelookout/20110524/ts_yblog_thelookout/parents-keep-childs-gender-under-wraps

All electronic devices have an OFF button, and it can be used at any time. But again, this has everything to do with people and little to do with mobile phones. In this case, your wife's employer. Unfortunately it sounds like she had to be on-call at all times, or find another job. I know how employers sometimes have an unwritten policy of intrusion. Like a previous poster said...they may not force you to be available 24/7, but they know somebody else will be. My dad was a lineman for 35 years. He was on-call a lot. Before cell phones he literally wasn't allowed to leave his house during those periods. Now that sucked. He installed a big, annoying outdoor bell on the house so he could at least go outside (everybody in the neighborhood just loved it when someone called at 3:00 am.. )

I don't think the cell phones are the problem, but the inconsiderate tools attached to them. I love my EVO, and I do all kinds of stuff with it, but when I'm with / around other people, it goes on vibration - and any calls or messages I receive during those times can just wait until I'm available. That's what voice message is for.

Those look great. I like the first yellow/black bait....has a real classic vibe to it.

It is hard on the system.....I have an i7 930, ATI 5850 rig, but I have to run it in DX9 on "very high" settings to get a decent framerate. I think it's an engine issue more than anything, same with STALKER - I'm glad to hear they're building (or licensing) a new one. I really want to upgrade to a 6970 but it won't fit in my box....guess that's a good excuse to buy more stuff.

I'm looking forward to BF3, even though I'm not really a big fan of squad-based FPS. It looks very interesting to say the least. Another one I'm keeping an eye on is the release of Metro 2034. The first one (Metro 2033) is SUCH an underrated FPS - as was STALKER. Probably because these games come from Russian developers and aren't designed to entertain American teenagers (COD, Halo, etc....). I think a lot more adults must play these types of games in the European market. What they lack in big budget and cutting edge tech they more than make up for with incredible art direction, immersive atmosphere, and story. Metro takes a very linear route (storyline driven) as it's actually based on a Russian novel of the same name. I can go for linear if it's done using a compelling story with interesting characters (ahem...Half-Life).....except this is more like Half-Life with oppressed, weathered characters fighting supernatural terror and slowly dying from a lack of resources. It's a darker atmosphere than STALKER, but I get a lot of the same vibe. Totally worth the $20 or so it sells for now for any true fan of FPS. Word is they're dropping a lot more resources into the next one to bring the animation/FPS mechanics up to date (and hopefully they add the ability to lean, as this game really needs it). A few of my screenshots from 2033

Yeah....I read it again and I think I sounded kind of harsh - it was a fun game and I enjoyed playing it, and I think it stands better if you don't have the first one to compare it to. I'll give them credit for getting a game with this level of graphic quality to run so well (and the weapon and hands modeling are downright gorgeous). It has a way of tricking your eye into thinking it looks far better than it does (until you get too close.) I think the disappointment comes more from expecting them to build on the vibe they established in the first game - and instead they discarded it almost completely - to the point that the two games have almost nothing in common with each other. I think there's a hole right now in the FPS genre - - a hybrid FPS/RPG, with large open-map, mission-based gameplay. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. attempted to pull it off (and it's still one of my favorite FPSs in life), but it took them so long to develop that their engine was pretty antiquated by the time it came out, and the first-person mechanics feel very stiff and a bit disconnected. The STALKER developers have said for quite some time now that STALKER 2 would probably come out this year on a new engine (possibly CryEngine3), and I would be ultra-stoked if that were the case. The thing they nailed more than any other FPS I've played is the atmosphere.....fantastic art direction (especially with the Complete Mod). They also introduced things like full 24 hour day/night cycles (not script triggered), bullet trajectory, a weapons modification path (in Call of Pripyat) that is very cool...among other things. It's one of the few games where you get this sense of dread / loneliness / and beauty all at the same time.

Hmmm....have to say I'm pretty disappointed. I'm a big fan of the original, and I was REALLY hoping after such a long wait that 2 was going to deliver. The first thing I noticed was the extremely narrow field-of-view. No big problem, right? I'll just edit the launch options. The only problem is that you get this "fisheye" kind of vibe when you try to get it to the kind of vision you had in the first one, and when you sprint, it reverts back to the narrow FOV. Next thing I noticed was the annoyingly high amount of motion blur.....moving your weapon back and forth looks akin to being high on LSD or something. Well, since they decided to gut the options menu (why?), you can't get rid of it (no command-line options here, either....you're stuck with the blur). On with more gutting.......prone and lean are GONE - lean being replaced by a sort of "auto lean" when you scope behind an object. This is really a shame, since these were integrated so well/smoothly in the first game - I would say better than any other FPS I've played to date. They obviously spent a lot of effort developing these player mechanics for the first game, only to drop them in 2....once again - why? I assume it (like so much other gutting) is a result of trying to make the game more playable with controllers - since Crytek decided to move away from PC exclusive development and port to the console makers this time around. Then there's the jump lag. Terrible jump lag. I'm not really sure what they were thinking with this - just one more thing to ruin the already crippled player mechanics. There was a lot of hype about how much more destructible the environment would be, and as far as I can tell, the only new attribute I noticed was the ability to shoot corners off of pillars. That's it. In the original, you could blow apart entire shacks with grenades/RPGs. Plant an explosive under a Hummer and you could blow it 20 feet in the air and watch the amazing physics engine take it from there. None of that exists in this one. Heck, you could shoot down an entire forest of palm trees if you wanted in Crysis.....this is a big disappointment. While I'm talking about vehicles - don't expect to be driving/flying much of anything. Suit functions are also gutted, with "speed" and "power" now gone. Added abilities such as the air stomp and power kick are pretty much useless. The kind of advanced maneuvers you could pull off in the first one are impossible (such as switching to power to jump on top of an object, cloaking mid-jump, and landing in prone position to start picking off enemies while avoiding detection.... ) I really dug the sandbox nature of the first game....the ability to evaluate an objective and approach it from almost any direction. You could sneak into a village and take KPA out in close quarters, or you could crawl across a hill and pick them off with a sniper rifle - or even avoid the objective entirely if you wanted. 2 is far more linear, especially considering how open and adventurous they could have been given the premise. This aspect isn't helped any by the constant radio contact with people telling you to "hurry up and go here" every 5 seconds. Apart from all the gameplay issues, it's graphically inferior to the first one as well, with textures ranging from alright to downright hideous even on the highest settings. Don't expect any of the big draw-distances and views from the first game. The art direction is very good, so I'll give them that. I think the interiors of the structures is actually better than the first game, and it's a very interesting environment. The in-game animation also appears to be more smooth. Reflective surfaces look great (glass actually looks like glass). AI is pretty decent. I was really interested in the multi-player, since that's where I tend to spend countless hours, anyway.. Without going into a long review, I'll just suffice it to say it isn't a dot on a line compared to Crysis Wars. No tanks, no VTOLs, choppers, boats, etc....and it wouldn't matter because the maps are all too constricted to use them anyway. It's just a generic bleh all-around. Crysis also came with the CryEngine2 Sandbox editor - which is like a giant Christmas present to anyone who likes to mod and build custom levels. The new doesn't come with the new editor.....can't say I'm all that interested in the new engine anyway from what I've seen.