While Le Moulin is the unofficial name of my detached shed / office, built in 2021, Mill #6 is the name of this blog. This blog will serve as the primary information source for all of the various projects that I work on.
There are multiple inspirations behind the blog’s name. “Moulin” is the French word for “mill”. The area of Lowell, Massachusetts, the town of my birth and home to one of the many “Petit Canada” communities throughout New England, is also well-known for its old brick textile mills. Both of these sources are grounded in my French-Canadian heritage.
Back in 2003, I joined an online sci-fi community called Barscape, based mostly on the Farscape series that was airing at the time. When I joined the site, they were on their fifth iteration, Mark V. Soon after I joined, I became the administrator and web-hosting provider for the site. Over time, I had numerous plans to update & redesign the site to a “Mark VI” version, but MySpace and Facebook took members away and the site slowly faded. #6 is an homage to that early work.
As far as my roster of projects go, I am a partner of Brick Mill Games, LLC with Paul Chicoine. While that work has its own blog and associated sites, I will also make personal notes and comments regarding that work on this site.
I am closely associated with New England Simulations, a wargame company based in Nashua, New Hampshire. After having met Mark Hinkle, NES’ sole proprietor, and the rest of the NES “inner circle” a decade or so ago, I have since become involved with the design and development of the Winter’s Victory and Jaws of Victory games. While the latter has been published, Winter’s Victory is slated to be published in early 2023.
Over the past five years, I have been designing and developing a railroad game called Steel & Steam, based on the Boxcars / Rail Baron games. While early designs have been successfully playtested, subsequent attempts at adding more complex elements to the game have failed. It is currently being resurrected & streamlined, albeit slowly.
In 2017, I took a 23andme DNA test to take the first step in trying to solve a Guerin family mystery: are we Irish or are we French? In mid-2020, I took advantage of an offer from Ancestry to take their DNA test and do some genealogy to solve the mystery. This experience opened the doors to further research and another hobby for me was born. Spoiler: our Guerins are French by way of Canada. While I began my foray into genealogy on Ancestry, I now keep my tree over at Wikitree.
I am also an amateur mixologist. Over time, you will find cocktail recipes listed here. At some point, I’ll share a personal database of recipes that I use.
Finally, I am an avid hiker and traveler, though not so much of the latter over the past couple of years for obvious reasons. You’ll see posts and photos of these adventures mixed in among the rest at some point.