Finalizing and Updating Old West Project

Apparently it's been 11 days since I've been here on the blog with an update, but it doesn't seem that long. As Sensei Jensen points out quite appropriately, documenting the process of developing and constructing this project is probably as important as the actual design and modeling work, and I've been neglecting that.

So I wholeheartedly agree that project management has been perhaps my biggest weakness to date (across numerous projects), not out of lack of understanding, but often out of obsession with the design and modeling processes themselves. Hopefully this will be the first step towards demonstrating an ability to plan and execute and document a project from beginning to end, rather than just going about it in a shotgun method.

In the meanwhile, I think I've been driving people nuts with little nuggets of Old West trivia, things I dredge up in the course of researching and planning the various assets that comprise this project. For instance, did you know that modern air conditioning was invented and patented around 1852? Show of hands, how many people even thought they even knew what electricity was back then, let alone how to put it to use to cool an office building?

The major thing I've discovered so far in the course of my research, which I recently had a long conversation about with friend and fellow WoW addict Stefan, is just how little understanding we have about just how many little nooks and crannies and little insignificant objects make up the world we live in, until we have to actually build a world that looks plausible and lived-in. Things you wouldn't even thing of, such as, what did a Post Office mailbox look like in 1880, and did they even have them? They did, but I substituted a suitably antique-looking box from turn of the century London when I couldn't find sufficient reference to reproduce an authentic American Old West mailbox.

This post was supposed the come after the detailing of the milestones and progress, and then I figured I'd just lay a little groundwork leading into the milestones. It looks like I've run a little long, so I'll have to call this a "flavor" post and move on to the milestones in the next one... which is coming in a minute here.