Author: Maker Block

Before I had robots…

My favorite open source project was WordPress.  Now, don’t get me wrong, I love me my WordPress, but I tend to usually spend my precious tinkering time with robots.

But sometimes, such as this very morning, I enjoy just a little bit of tinkering.  I’ve made a few very subtle changes to the blog.  You shouldn’t notice unless you do something very odd here.  If you do, you might notice a little extra wibbley wobbley in your timey wimey.

Congratulations Renosis!

Renosis and I had a friendly dispute.  We decided to settle it by challenge – a Maker challenge.

I have a feeling Maker disputes are different from other kinds of disputes.  Even though we were competing against each other, we still consulted each other, bounced ideas off one another, and, I like to think shared in each other’s successes.  But, at the end of the day, he got more Likes for his epic Gangsta Chess Set than I got for my Fez Pezsta.

Would you like to know what the dispute was?  Of course you would!

Renosis was sending me two of his extra bearings and a few extra hardware bits for the X-Axis Follower and wouldn’t accept any payment in exchange.  We were both being stubborn about that point – he didn’t want to accept the $11 and I was insisting on paying.

If I won he would accept the $11.  If he won, I would not pay him $11.  :)

How Makers Settle Disputes

So, here’s the deal.  Renosis and I are settling a friendly disagreement by participating in a design challenge.  The rules are simple:

  1. We have 24 hours to upload and publish a Gangsta derivative STL on Thingiverse, starting 5/26/2011 at 11PM EST.
  2. On 5/31/2011 at 11PM EST, the person with the most number of likes wins.

Here’s all you have to do, go to Thingiverse to see my brand new Fez Pez Gangsta, aka the Pezsta, and click Like!

 

Thingiverse formatting plugin

Schmarty’s Thingiverse embed plugin is pretty sweet. I believe it has been updated so that calling the relevant shortcode looks much more like a Thingiverse link to a particular thing.

Since I’m in a procrastinating mood, I began to wonder if it would be possible to make this plugin even easier to use. There are probably a lot more efficient ways to do this, but it is easy to turn a list of Thingiverse thing links into a set of Thingiverse Embed shortcodes.

http://www. -> ""
.com/  -> " "
:  -> =
\r\n  -> ]\r\n[

I suppose all of this over-engineering is really only suited to me and probably would never save more time than it would take to actually just type out the links like any normal person.

Doctor Who 6th Season teasers

I know some people who follow this blog are also fans of Doctor Who.  For those of you who are, I just found this list of 41 teasers about the current 6th season of Doctor Who from DoctorWhoTV.co.uk:

  1. The Doctor will be on trial – twice!
  2. Who controls the light sculptors?
  3. You won’t believe what’s buried under Wembley Stadium.
  4. Scared of the Eye in Space? You should be.
  5. Take up thy sins and walk – slowly.
  6. There won’t be a pub quiz on Tuesday because there won’t be a pub.
  7. Beau Geste is cool.
  8. Bow Street runners are cool.
  9. Bromley-by-Bow is cool.
  10. 4 August 1982 – Happy Birthday, Ma’am.
  11. Some lies are too much for the psychic paper.
  12. “I won’t take calls from THAT Prime Minister.”
  13. “Marc, where are you?”
  14. The only water in the forest is the river.
  15. What awaits the TARDIS at the zero point?
  16. “72 years on and Rory’s still terrified of Granny Grainger?”
  17. “I was lost in France.”
  18. “How could a fellow Gallifreyan stoop so low?”
  19. Horror of Bangkok.
  20. “Give it up, sweet Korn.”
  21. Argonite? Here?
  22. An ordinary block of flats.
  23. “If I saw them walking down the high street what would I think?” I don’t think you’d think anything at all, Amy.”
  24. Find the lady – before she finds you!
  25. “Margaret! Come back!”
  26. The Doctor defeats the Sahara Desert.
  27. Susannah’s still alive.
  28. Mill Green on fire.
  29. The Doctor will get married – Twice!
  30. What are the dangers of Port Olveron?
  31. 502, but never 503.
  32. Beware of the kites.
  33. “A pillar of salt, yes – but not because she looked back. Looking back is good!”
  34. They’ll have to get a new name for Thanksgiving.
  35. Pay attention – It’s not really her.
  36. Treading through the sand – on the one night they come back.
  37. The Shuddering Brethren, they’ll stick in your mind.
  38. “I’m my own Doctor.”
  39. Octavian wasn’t lying.
  40. Mysterious semblance at the the strand of nightmares.
  41. The bones of the TARDIS.

So far I think I’ve only caught number 14.  Have you caught any others?

Back from Maker Faire SF Bay Area 2011!

I’m exhausted! 1  What a great time!

I got to spend time with my family, see some amazing stuff, meet some great people, and see some old friends.  I also ate some junk food!  Perfect weekend all around.

I got to meet several people for the first time – including beak90, DocProfSky, DNA.  A few people mentioned they liked my OpenSCAD tutorials, which just made my day.

  1. So exhausted I didn’t get to publish this post until just now… [↩]
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