The Internet Data Bill of Rights

Something I thought up:

The Internet Data Bill of Rights

1. All Data Is Created Equal.
2. All Users Have a Right To Equal Access to All Data
3. No single ISP may decide who gets access, nor control the speed, nor the limit to that data.
4. Thou Shall Provide Free Native Network Access to Usenet Newsgroup Servers.
5. Thou ISP shall provide reasonably priced access to unlimited high speed data.
6. Thy ISP is not allowed to invade the privacy of its users IP Addresses, nor throttle the data by use of any software from a user's device connected to the network.
7. Thy ISP shall not decide on a whim to use alternate Domain Name Servers in an attempt to thwart access to websites any entity finds objectionable.
8. All Users have the right to fair market ISP competition; no single ISP may pay illegal kickbacks to local governments to block out competition.
9. When such conditions are unable to be met, be it through equipment breakdown, sabotage or damage, or an act of nature, the ISP owes it to its users to explain the problem, offer credit on bills for inadvertent denial of use of the service, and attempt to correct the problem as quickly as humanly possible.
10. All ISPs must maintain the maximum speed and data capacity of their networks, and also prove their claims of both, and must continually find ways to exceed those requirements without continual unjustified rate increases without also finding ways to reduce rates.

Fixing my Kuroneko Figma

For some reason, a week or so ago I was inspired to buy a Kuroneko Figma I found on the Chinese shopping site DHGate for only $16.90 and free shipping. Figma figures are very detailed and have lots of articulation. They're also rather easy to break as the plastic joints aren't always made of sturdy plastic. Also they tend to run $30 and up, but in general they're not exactly high price expensive. A comparison brand to Figma would be Revoltech. I have 2 of these and they run about $20 or so.

At any rate, the packet for my Kuroneko Figma finally gets here and I tear open the package. Hmm... the box shows some scuffs and wear. It's used. I don't exactly remember seeing this important piece of info on the DHGate page, but whatever. Then I get to finding out why Kuroneko was so cheap.

The pieces for the neck joint keep popping apart. The left elbow joint proceeds to crumble apart into 4 pieces as it was stuck together, presumably with glue, and didn't move freely. The left leg fell off due to the hip socket crumbling apart. And the right hand refused to stay on the wrist joint due to manufacturing irregularities.

Now, there IS a burgeoning market for replacement Figma joints. You can get on eBay and find random assortments of varying sizes and prices. But being the person I am and having the skills I have from my years of building figure kits, I decided I would fix Kuroneko's problems myself.

Examining the neck joint, I see one part has a bit of a crack on one hub piece. I tried using Testor's plastic model cement on it, but this plastic doesn't respond to that well. So I tried another trick - heating a straight pin tip and entrenching the tip in the pin of the other piece, then trying to bend it at a right angle. This way the wire of the pin would act as a retainer and prevent the joint from popping apart.

I managed to get this to work and reassembled Kuroneko's head. The pin later fell off to my annoyment, but the joint remains together. Apparently, the pin of one joint piece that goes through the hub of the other is spread apart enough to hold it together. It moves freely, too.

The left elbow joint was more of a problem. The insert pins ripped off the rotating joint parts and I had to dig them out of the arm pieces to which the joint belongs to. So I had to fix each piece before putting the joint back together.

Again, Testor's plastic model cement was not working, and super glue would work but it would not be strong enough on its own. So I decided a figure kit technique would work - use wire to support it internally. Wire thin enough to work came from bread wrapper twist ties. I got out a candle, heated a wire tip and worked it into the pins. I had to use a straight pin to help with the process of burying the end in the plastic. And I had to do this for both ends of each bit of wire I was using with super glue. Both insert pins eventually got reattached to the joint part it went with.

Then there's the issue of making sure the joint is going to rotate freely which required some fine grit sanding. After all, if the joint isn't going to move freely, it will rip itself apart again. Then came the task of not only putting the rotating joint together, but keeping it together. Again, I used a bit of heated wire tip bent at just under a right angle, and managing with needle nosed pliers to entrench the tip in the plastic. If I could avoid super glue at this point (and screwing up the joint), I was doing just fine.

The left hip was the most difficult to figure out. I tried a piece of pen tip barrel plastic from a spent ball point pen, but it ended up crumbling when I tried one way to attach it to the part I also had to pull out of the upper leg piece so I could work on it. My 2nd attempt was to sand down a little piece so when it was super glued to the insert thingy (no idea what Figma parts are called), it would fit. Also sanded out the inner diameter with my rotary tool so the ball from the joint would go in this repaired piece and cut a slot in the top like the old part had.

Seeing the ball go into the repaired socket for the hip and then stay inside it was worth the work (over an hour or 2) taken to make these fixes. The right wrist will get some wire work as soon as I can find out where the little wrist joint piece flew off to when it flipped out of my fingers. The little bugger of plastic shouldn't be that hard to find... but it's a tiny piece of plastic.

Having a rotary tool to custom prototype repairs like this is both handy and fun. You just have to not give up until you get the results you want. Maybe I'll get a photo of one repair up here.