@ancientjames@mastodon.social
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ancientjames

@ancientjames@mastodon.social

In New Zealand, making things.

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ancientjames, to random
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ancientjames, to random
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Fiddling around with Doom in 3D, and struck by how well the Doom engine maps to cylindrical scanning - column-based and only horizontal and vertical planes (almost-horizontal planes stairstep quite badly).
I'm rendering to a voxel buffer then scanning out from that, but I think I could avoid some aliasing by rendering straight to the panels on the fly.

ancientjames, to random
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Spaceship

ancientjames, to random
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An increasing number of websites seem to be popping up boxes telling me I can't proceed until I disable my ad blocker, even though I don't use an ad blocker.

ancientjames, to random
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I needed some hydrogen peroxide, so I ordered some online from a place that seems really into hydrogen peroxide as a lifestyle choice. It came accompanied by a leaflet which uses the term "nature's own magic water".
I've decided to find it charming.

ancientjames, to random
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Someone building their own voxel display got in touch asking for the BOM and I thought that might be of interest generally, so here's a list of the components I used in mine.

It's a collection of things I had or could easily get in New Zealand, rather than necessarily the best part for the job. If I made another, I would change some of it (lazy susan bearing, finer pitch LED modules, shorter motor) but this configuration has at least been shown to work.

ancientjames, to random
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You never see the film crew reflected in a car door or shop window any more. Another of life’s simple pleasures taken from us by computers.

ancientjames, to random
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Me designing a mechanism with a cool nonlinear motion path: Haha fuck yeah!!! Yes!!
Me writing the software for it: Well this fucking sucks. What the fuck.

ancientjames, to random
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I don't know if this is a known technique, but I've developed the habit of printing screw holes too small, and then heating the screw to cut the thread without splitting the print.

(Sadly I haven't developed the habit of checking my hands aren't obscuring the camera on the first take.)

A closeup video of a small self-tapping screw in a green PLA part being heated with a soldering iron until it starts to wobble, then quickly driven in with a screwdriver.

ancientjames, to random
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I can't believe how many years I wasted dividing by w.

ancientjames, to random
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The first PCB I made was an ADC that plugged into my Atari ST's cartridge slot, so I could build my own version of this scanner:

https://mastodon.social/@paulrickards/111563234880920173

ancientjames, to random
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Love this. https://youtube.com/watch?v=HKpBhE7QVAI&si=ro9diaaOb2Ogijxb

ancientjames, to random
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Idly thinking about making a replica of Box from Star Cops, and my mind has been blown by the discovery that the original prop was reused for Talkie Toaster in Red Dwarf.

ancientjames, to random
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I've seen a few people recently complaining that Google search is becoming worse, but I didn't really pay much attention because people are always saying things.
But twice in the past week I've been unable to find something on Google where it insisted on changing my search term from one which would only return a few (correct) results, to one which would return lots of (identical, irrelevant) results. It's quite jarring after 20 years to be getting better results from different sites.

ancientjames, to random
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Lightbulb pamphlet or Alien keyboard?

ancientjames, to random
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End of an era.

ancientjames, to random
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Got a message from facebook to the email address associated with the account I deleted ten years ago, something something updated terms. At the bottom, where I was hoping to see an 'unsubscribe' link, it instead looks me square in the eye and says 'This message was sent to [email] at your request'.
Shady company.

ancientjames, to random
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If my calculations are correct, when this baby hits 300rpm you're going to see some serious shit.

A prism of led matrixes (matrices?) displaying noise and rotating faster than seems safe.

ancientjames,
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Making parts for this has been a real saga, so while I wait for a faster printer to arrive I tried removing the collimators and running it as a swept volume display. Now I’m thinking maybe that’s what I should have built in the first place.

ancientjames,
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Slightly higher rpm, slightly longer shutter.

The same as before, but less flickery. There's now a Baron of Hell running through its attack animation, too.

ancientjames,
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I rewired the back of the panel to tidy up all the loose flappy cables. It now manages 600 rpm, which is not too flickery.

A perspex globe on a desk in a darkened room, with a hot pink wireframe 3D model of the Apollo lander floating inside it. The camera tracks around it showing the effect from different angles.

ancientjames,
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This feels like a good match of style and content.

The voxel display from this whole thread, displaying a primary coloured low res floating wireframe of the Voyager probe, as you imagine it would have looked on a futuristic NASA display in the 1970s.

ancientjames, to random
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Trying to find a car wash near me, and the closest is something called "Colonial Car Groomers" which is just a collection of all the worst words.

ancientjames, to random
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I was hoping to catch sunrise from the top of the hill this morning, but it was obscured by clouds. Still, I got a nice shot yesterday which is pretty close to the solstice. Then I realised that, being a creature of habit, I have a photo from the same spot and at the same time of day, but at (roughly) the previous solstice. All the way over there!

ancientjames, to random
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I pretty much stopped working on my affordable animatronic head when I reached the skin. There were too many new (to me) problems that needed to be solved simultaneously, and my iteration rate plummeted.

Having spent the past year building up a bunch of knowledge working with silicone, I've started on it again. This time I'm working from the outside in, small sections at a time.

It's amazing the difference there is between seeing something on screen, and stretching it between your fingers.

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