Building a wood PC case on a budget

          After running a much-loved-but-aging desktop with a GTX 660 and a CPU over a decade old, it was finally time for an upgrade.  I got a great deal on a desktop with a middle-aged i5 and an AMD RX 580 graphics card - still nothing top shelf, but doubling the cores and over doubling the graphics processing power is nothing to scoff at.  

          Problem is, it might have had the speed, but it didn't have any style (that, and it sounded like a 747 about to take flight in my bedroom).  Buying a better case and fans was the obvious choice, but this seemed like an opportunity to be unnecessarily thrifty and add some personality to the build.

Hybrid Tube Amp Idea

A silly but not-too-silly idea and a sloppy Photoshop job came together, and this is what you got.  

Of course there are modeling amps that can cover infinitely many types of amps, but that's not quite the same idea here.  First off, there's that reassuring manual feel, and as charming as the interface gets on simulators such as BIAS FX or Amplitube, they're never going to be as nice as turning an actual knob.  Then there's that tube mysticism, which may or may not be so magical as to be completely inimitable by anything invented after 1969.

The biggest real difference here is that unlike modelers that switch between amps, this could have a separate valve amp controlling each speaker at different volumes that could be blended together.  The closest I've gotten to this is BIAS, which allows a maximum of two amps at once (many famous guitarists such as Eric Johnson are known to use two amps at once).  I'd imagine four different valve amps blended could create some mind-blowing-ly rich tones.  But that's just speculation, without a couple thousand dollars to sink into building a test... at least not yet!

"Get Schwifty" Obey Logo

          Sometimes, the world asks you to create something insightful, something useful or interesting that in some small way makes the world a better place.  This was not one of those times, but you might enjoy this Shepard Fairey-inspired Rick and Morty logo all the same.

Gibson Overrated Photoshop

A little Photoshop job I did for fun, figured I'd share here since a lot of people got a kick out of this in a few different guitar groups.

Building a "Wintercroft" paper mask

With Halloween just around the corner, what better way to prepare than building a doomsday costume?  Wintercroft.com designs and sells excellent low-poly mask templates so you can build any of dozens of different designs with nothing more than some card and tape.

Certificate of Appreciation Blank Template

Here are some simple blank border templates I made as part of a certificate for a tutoring event, but can work if you're building a certificate of appreciation for just about anything.  Feel free to use and share indefinitely if it's useful to you!

Free Lightsaber Mouse Icons

On a Star Wars kick playing Jedi Outcast, I was briefly inspired by the lightsaber cursor on the menu.  While not half as cool as that professionally done cursor, these minimalistic lightsaber cursors I drew add a little personality while being minimally obtrusive, and uber easy to install/uninstall.  Enjoy :)

https://app.box.com/s/3zsc59uhmrvq2nv551fo2ydifjihc914

How to Edit Yourself as a Space Marine

I posted a while back my edit of myself as a Starcraft marine and decided now to create a video tutorial and a few more edits for anyone interested in making their own :)

Harry Potter House Ravenclaw Poster HD

My dorm room needed a bit more decorating so it was time to crank out some posters.  I decided to share this Ravenclaw house poster that I edited a bit to refine a nice design circulating the internet.  I doubled the resolution and then edited away some of the pixelation, discoloration, added a texturing effect and deepened the colors for an ultimately more HD and printable poster for all my fellow Ravenclaws to enjoy.

Partscaster Paintjob Mockups

Some "concept art" mockups of ideas I have for paintjobs for this Partscaster here, gotta love that GIMP.  Feel free to comment your thoughts below!

Custom Telecaster Thinline Build Design

Is there any room left in the market for another small guitar-builder?

I've been looking into building custom guitars in very small batches, but I'm not sure if there's any profit to be made, I'd like to just put this out here and see if anyone else has any experience.

Photoshop Photo Prints

After completing the edits seen here

 http://mattwins.blogspot.com/2016/04/using-gimp-to-photoshop-my-friend.html

I chose the best several to print and "frame" as gifts.  As a college student with no car, money is tight and I have little way of getting real frames or prints if I could afford them.

Enter DIY approach, recycled cardboard and a school printer.  With some careful crafting and $0.75 total, we can get results that, if not exactly professional, look pretty great hanging on the wall around the dorm and make an excellent series of conversation starters.

The Making of a Starcraft Marine

I like to think I'm becoming rather adept at "Photoshopping" with GIMP.  In any case, this is one of the most satisfying pictures I've done yet!

Some in-progress pics after the break:

Using GIMP to "Photoshop" my friend

This was a fun challenge for me; what started out as contributing some "useful" photos to a collage as a present for a friend rapidly spiraled into a challenge to see just how many iconic photographs I could fit him into.  I already presented him with the masterpiece above (he loved it) - he doesn't suspect that there are more than half a dozen more already finished!

FPS: Unofficial Chart of College Majors

Part of a new series of doodles called "Fairly Plausible Statistics", just for fun, never to be taken seriously.

More Custom Gibson Explorer Designs

"Iridescent Aqua"

Five new custom Gibson Explorer graphic designs not featured in the original series:

Custom Gibson Explorer Paintjob Series 2016

Matt Winkler Custom Explorer Paintjob Series

Apparently I'm getting rather decent with my graphic design abilities.  Which is a milder way of saying I'm incredibly thrilled with how this turned out, especially the iridescent model.

Hope you enjoy it as much as I do, and feel free to drop a comment below!

Future Strat Build Designs

My latest computer-aided designs for a future guitar build, loosely based on the style of Eddie Van Halen's Frankenstrat and intended to incorporate at least three different painting techniques I hope to try out - look for it in the future, and feel free to vote for your favorite in the comments below!

1957 Fender Bel Air / Chevy Stratocaster

Fun with Photoshop and some crazy ideas today - Is it a Fender Bel Air or a Chevy Stratocaster?

The Political Spectrum as Spaceship Doodles

Now for something fresh in the musty world of politics, here's the (American) political spectrum represented in terms of spaceship doodles. 

A lighthearted representation of a serious analysis of the fundamental reasons that people tend to support one side or another politically.

[Note that the key term is "tend".  Perhaps you are a young urban conservative, or an old backwoods liberal.  That's fine, you're free to break the bounds of what is average or most common.  Of course, however, if we spend all our time analyzing the outliers, we will never find the common trends that unite people, and naturally we need some degree of generalization or we will never get anything done at all.]

The key theory here is that liberal and conservative politics, at least in modern America, represent a continuum based most predominantly on a spectrum ranging from fear to optimism.

This is not to say that one is right and the other is wrong; optimism drives us into the future with goals, while fear keeps us safe from being destroyed or destroying ourselves in the process.  I posit that a radical imbalance of either force is unhealthy to the development of any nation in the long term.

Discussion is always encouraged, bring your A game in the comments section below!