Who are you, what are you doing in my house?

Hello! My name is Alex, but most people online know me as “Sillybutts”, or just “Silly” for short.

All my life, I’ve loved figuring out how things work. Toys, cars, spacecraft, social platforms, programs, computers, video games, etc. I’m a creative type!

During middle school and high school, I was a Boy Scout (First Class), and a honors student. I also participated in a robotics club.

I grew up and currently live in Maine, the best state. Come live here, it’s nice.

I really enjoy building stuff with Lego. One of, if not the, best toys of all time! I definitely credit a lot of my current engineering success to my early days messing around with Lego Technic.

Generally speaking, I just really like to make stuff. Let’s talk about that.

Foam Blasting

Since 2010, I have loved playing with Nerf blasters. Of course, shooting people with foam is very fun. However, the main draw of the Nerf hobby, for me, has always been the interesting mechanics of the blasters themselves.

As soon as I got my hands on blasters like the Maverick and Raider (the clear one!), I ripped them apart to figure out how they worked. And as soon as I figured out the mechanics, I tried to improve them to the best of my ability.

I loved taking apart blasters, mashing together parts, and showing off my creations online (even if they were, admittedly, very bad). I also loved learning about the historical side of the hobby, spending most of my time looking at old forum posts and collecting vintage blasters.

When I was getting started in the hobby, I was watching and interacting with people like Bobololo, Mag212, NerfOmania, Drac, Meaker VI, FlyingChicken, Louiec3, StudioYale, CaptainSlug, etc.

I joined NerfHaven in 2016 after reading it since ~2011. I then joined the r/Nerf SubReddit in 2017. Later in 2019, I joined the History of Nerf Modding Discord and the official r/Nerf Discord. I pretty quickly became a co-owner of the History of Nerf Modding project, and I made many good friends on the HONM and rNerf Discords.

When Covid-19 hit, I suddenly had a lot more free time on my hands! I began learning Fusion 360, and in July 2020 I began designing some homemade Nerf blasters of my own.

In January of 2022, I finally felt my design skills were good enough to warrant selling my work to others. Since then, I have made dozens of blaster designs, and I have sold many hundreds of hardware kits and fully built blasters through licensed distributors.

Video Games

For many years, I have filled my spare time with video games. Some of my earliest memories are of playing Katamari on our family’s Playstation 2 with my dad. I still really, really enjoy playing games, modding them, making content like fan art, and helping others with tutorials about my favorite games.

I have played many games over the years, some favorites (in no particular order) being:

• Burnout: Paradise

• Forza Horizon 1

• World of Goo

• Minecraft

• Team Fortress 2

• Rimworld

• Crossout

• Loadout

• Pokemon Black & White

• Squad

• Rhythm Heaven

• Advance Wars

• Plants Vs Zombies

• Fallout: New Vegas

• Katamari Damacy

• etc

On this website, I plan to write extensively about my thoughts on various video games, mods, fan art that I have made for my favorite games, and tell tales of good times with friends online. It will feel great to finally get some of these stories out of my head and onto paper (so to speak)!

YouTube

I started making YouTube videos in 2015, and currently have a very active YouTube channel. In November of 2022 I finally hit 1000 subscribers! I usually just make videos about whatever I enjoy. This usually includes Nerf blaster development, high quality meme edits, video game highlights, tutorial videos on various topics, and more.

Forum Moderation

Since ~2014, I have moderated forums of various types. It started out with Minecraft forums on Enjin, then grew into moderating Subreddits in my early teens. Now I moderate Discord servers and a few Subreddits. I like to help out the communities that I enjoy, one way or another.

D&D

Dungeons and Dragons is one of my favorite things to do with friends. I began my first campaign in 2020, and we have been playing in the same campaign since! D&D is an extremely fun game, and it has been great getting to know people better while messing around with magic and exploration! Every once in a while, I also try my hand at DMing short games. Its fun!