I promised in my last post not to wait another year before posting... well it's only been 11 months, so I technically achieved that goal!

Here's the dump of happenings since then:

1. USAxe Menus - After going to a place called "Lazy Dog" and seeing their leather-stamped menus we thought: "these are sweet! we could totally do this!" Easier said than done, but now I know a little bit about where to buy leather and how to do leather stamping! There's a whole story about our CEO smuggling a bag full of heavy leather menus into Portugal...

1. Porto Store Grand Opening (Portugal + Spain + Italy Trip) - The 2nd USAxe Club location finally opened in Porto Portugal! We took a trip out there to celebrate and enjoy the new venue. We also used the opportunity to fly into Spain and Italy. It was a crazy trip, but life-long memories for sure! One of my dreams has been to rent a Fiat Cinquecento and drive through Italy, which we did! My fav pic is the one of me in front of the Dolomite mountains with the Cinquecento:
2. Stormlight Archive Books: My kids have been obsessed with the Stormlight Archive series by Brandon Sanderson. I've made a couple art pieces inspired by the books and my kids made "pearler bead" sculptures of the crazy "Shard Blades" mentioned in the stories:
3. Dragon Cake: For my son's b-day I sculpted a dragon from cake, modeling chocolate, and Rice Crispy treats. I thought it turned out cool:
4. Clogged Drain: The drain in our guest bathroom was not draining, so we did some investigating with various tools designs to pull up the blockage... we were not expecting such a payload... this is what happens when your kids are too logical and put mario (and friends) where they "belong:"
5. Chair Upholstery: For Christmas I re-upholstered some old chairs my wife got on Facebook Marketplace... learned a lot from my mother in law about sewing and now know the word "Gusset":
6. USAxe Tattoo: Someone crazy got the USAxe logo I designed tattooed!

1. Stop Motion Lego: One of my sons has been dabbling with stop motion animation, so we did some tests:

1. TED Talk: One of my boy's schools does a TED talk event and my son's talk got chosen for him to deliver at the event. He has historically had stage fright, so he grew a lot prepping for it.
2. Spike in Head: We had some shrub palm trees in our yard that are super nasty (razor leaves and sharp spikes) and we hated them, so I chopped them down with a friend and ground up the stumps. While chopping them down, one of the branches fell on my head and a spike poked my cranium. It was pretty sore, but I thought it would go away. After about 6 weeks it was still hurting so I asked my wife to investigate... after squeezing the lump like a zit, this came out!
3. Dead Comp: I've had the same Windows desktop for 10+ years, but it started randomly shutting down... I entered panic mode and quickly backed everything up and ordered a new comp. SUPER inconvenient, but new comp is nice. Luckily Adobe still lets you download versions of their software you legitimately bought (and the unlock keys still work!) so I got back up and running with FLASH CS5.5!!!! Woooooo! Here I am trying to prevent it from shutting down while I backed up files:
4. Rock Tumbling: A while back my wife requested rock tumbling gear for a birthday or Christmas, so I got a bunch... it's been sitting un-opened in boxes for... maybe 4 years? Anyway, I finally opened it and am giving it a "spin" with my kids... what a waste of time!!!
5. Work Printed Products: As you may know, I work as a software developer making web-based software used to design and print yearbooks. Well, we've recently been running tests to expand into printing other stuff. It's been fun to do test prints of t-shirts, wall tiles, mugs, and even blankets and puzzles with my artwork. If this pans out I will have Christmas gifts for every I know forever!
6. Ruffle Tilt: I didn't have time to do an entry for the Flash Forward Jam this year, but I was able to squeeze out a demo of Ruffle running an interface to the Web API for device "tilt/gyroscope" detection. Kinda cool to see Flash doing stuff it was never made to do. The free open source repository is on GitHub if you want to use it for your project: https://github.com/pestoforce/RuffleTilt And here's a video of it running!

1. Native Axes Game: @Luis and I FINALLY finished the USAxe Club "Augmented Reality" axe throwing game we've been developing on and off for over a year. I must say it turned out really cool! As-usual @Luis was a pleasure to work with and I can't wait to see the game being played by real customers in our stores! FYI: it uses Flash + Ruffle and web sockets to let people interact with animations and sounds projected onto a wooden axe throwing target.

1. Chess: I also went to a family reunion and got destroyed by my niece at chess. I've vowed to crush her this year and have been studying chess every day in preparation... she won't know what hit her!
2. DNA: We finally did our Ancestry.com DNA tests too (another thing that sat in a box for 3+ years). Turns out I'm not as Italian as I originally thought... my family history is 35% Irish, and 23% Albanian/Greek. With some more research, I found that the town in Italy where my grandfather immigrated from is famous for being a refugee site for Albanian Greeks that escaped some dictator over 500 years ago! This was kinda world-shattering to me, but I'm coming to grips with it! I guess I have to say I look like a "Greek God" now instead of a "Roman God..." Also, I really love the movie "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" so I guess that explains that...
3. NG Thank You Note: Someone gave @Luis this hand-written note at Pico Day about finding our games on Newgrounds, it warms the heart to see stuff like this: https://x.com/LuisCastanon/status/1792241912000250138 (I would post the pic, but I ran out of allowed pic attachments...)

I'll leave you with a transcription of the note and the discussion question: Which of my games made the biggest impression on you and why?

Thanks for reading!!!!

Luis, When I first joined Newgrounds, the games you and BoMToons made were some of the first that caught my attention.

First, Castle Crashing the Beard, and then the original Portal Defenders (I still haven't been able to bear the Jeff and Stamper boss fight ;-; )

I really don't think I would have taken so much interest in Newgrounds if I didn't find these games, so thank you so much :) (Both you and BoMToons :) )

Please keep being u...

PS: Here are a bunch of artworks I made (mostly in church) since my last post: