Author: Maker Block

Spiders + Robots = two great tastes that taste great together

I just uploaded my latest designs to Thingiverse.  I’m working on a RoboSpider using a set of gears run in an elliptical cycle.  I’ve been through a few revisions already and just came up with a new idea on how to design it with a thinner profile and hopefully work more reliably.

Unfortunately, the snap-together system I had designed just wasn’t working very well.  Also, my very VERY DIY gears are a poor substitute for using a legit gear script.  They don’t mesh that well and it shows.  I think I’ll give Cbiffle’s spur gear script filter for Greg Frost’s gear script a shot.

In the meantime, is anyone interested in designing a little rubber band powered motor to drive this thing?

Still got it

I just helped my wife start her own blog.  She wanted to include a license for some of things she’ll be publishing, so I whipped up a little WordPress plugin that will insert some creative commons license language with a small shortcode.  Although I haven’t tinkered with one of my plugins for a while now (five or six months?) I uploaded the plugin, activated it, and it “just worked.”  That’s a good feeling – writing a piece of code and having it work straight off with no bugs.

I wish I could say the same for my 3D design skills. 1

  1. Wakka wakka! [↩]

Yay for March!

So, yesterday someone who works for one of my competitors told my boss that I was a “feisty one.”

This made my day for two reasons.

  1. This guy is a jerk and it really came across in his letters.  I ignored every single one of his snarky and caustic comments and never responded to a thing he did.  Instead, I just got to work.  It’s nice to know my efforts made an impression.
  2. If he thought I was feisty before, now I’m going to double my efforts.  Seriously.  I’m totally bringing it now, baby.

February Recap

  1. It sucked.
  2. I uploaded 25 things to Thingiverse, but not even close to the “thing-a-day” schedule.
  3. I think there was a day in there where I uploaded five or six things.
  4. There were two items in particular where I started working on a mashup within an hour of the original thing being uploaded.  One was the Stargate Iris Box and the other was the Thomas track bridge kit adapter.
  5. I uploaded a practical joke to Thingiverse.
  6. I worked/played with my Unicorn pen plotter, reinstalled the optoendstops in my Cupcake, and wrote some autohoming code for the same Cupcake.

March!  My old friend!  I bid you welcome!  It has been far too long!  Come!  Let us go and leave the dust of February but a faded memory!1

  1. And use excessive exclamation marks! [↩]

Another glorious day in February

Not.  This has been a miserable month.  On top of everything else today I started to feel a little off, and then sick, until…  I’ll spare you the details.

In looking for the silver lining, I would note that after I’ve been sick and I’m on the mend, I feel like a million dollars.  I feel young, strong, energetic, and healthy.  But, that day seems like a whisper of a possibility in my current state.

So, um, in other good news – my fingers obviously work since I’m typing here!  So, yeah, that’s good, right?

My roommate in grad school hated February – saying something bad always happened to him.

Anyhow.  Onwards and upwards!

I’ve gotten e-mails from people asking how I’m doing – the frequency of posting here1 has suffered along with me this month.  So, thank you for inquiring!  I am by nature a reasonably optimistic2 guy and I think that despite 2011’s crappy track record3 good great wonderful amazing and awesome things are around the corner.

Thingiverse has been a happening and hopping place of late.

It’s late and I need to sleep. 4 5

P.S.6

  1. And, to be quite frank, elsewhere as well [↩]
  2. And, not without cause, I believe [↩]
  3. 1 for 2, if you’re keeping score [↩]
  4. Perchance to dream. [↩]
  5. Aye, there’s the rub. [↩]
  6. P.S. I actually have some half dozen posts I started over this last month, but never got around to actually finalizing.  I’m hoping to publish them, even if they turn out to be woefully irrelevant. [↩]

Domain Name Squatters

Here’s an e-mail I received today:

Dear Jay MakerBlock,

Our registrar is in the process of acquiring makerblocks.com. We are sending this email to everyone who might benefit from owning this domain.
If you are interested in buying makerblocks.com you can make an offer here http://ekodeliver.com/527749pogomu

After successful acquisition of the domain we will contact the person with the highest offer.

Thank you for your time,
Ekodomains Team
234 Hudson Ave
Albany, NY 12210

When I registered MakerBlock.com I also registered MakerBlocks.com.  I like this domain name better, so I kept it.  I didn’t have an interest in keeping the other, so I let it go.  Now some internet troll wants it?  Pssh.  See, the funny thing about domain names is that they rely on the “bigger fool” theory of monetization.  They’re hoping that someone will put a higher value on the domain name they’re sitting on than the amount they paid for it, in effect banking on a bigger fool to come along and take it off their hands.

“We are sending this email to everyone who might benefit from owning this domain.”  Seriously?  There’s a list of people you think might be interested in my old domain name?  Pssh.  Okay.  If you guys really do have such a marketing list, I say shoot me an e-mail ’cause I’ve got a great idea.  I’ve got all sorts of other junk I’m not using.  Apparently you’ve found a population of people who really like the crap I throw away.  I say let’s work together and we’ll both make money off of them!

What’s up with your website any how?  The “search for domain names” doesn’t work for anything at all.  Totally available names are not listed as available.  It doesn’t even work for MakerBlocks.com.  It doesn’t work for giggleygagglewibbleywobbleytimeywimey.com.  Seriously guys, is this your very best effort at a business model?  Honestly, it looks like you’re just e-mailing newly expired domains in the hopes that someone will want to pay you more than the registration cost.  Ah!  I see your silly tricks now!  <Thank you view-source!>  You want people to start typing in a domain name because all your system does is populate the search box with a list of the domains you already own!  How droll!  You know, now that I look at your system I don’t think it would take very much at all to build a scraper to pull out your entire list of domains.

“After successful acquisition of the domain we will contact the person with the highest offer.”  Really?  You want to hold something, of dubious value, hostage when you don’t even have it yet?  I’ve got news for you – I just let the name expire.  I could go back and get it if I really wanted.  Seriously, that’s the one of the least friendly e-mails you guys could have sent.

I have a counter proposal for you, Ekodeliver aka Ekodomains aka domain name squatter and domain name troll.  You hold on to MakerBlocks.com and try to find someone willing to pay more than $10 a year for the name.  Go on now, just try!

Heck, if anything, I’ve actually damaged the domain names MakerBlock.com and MakerBlocks.com by continuously posting a stream of nonsense.

The only thing funnier than trying to sell me something I don’t want is having shelled out your own cash in the hopes of selling it back to me.  That’s like dumpster diving at my place and then showing up on my doorstep to ask me if I want to buy some used kitty litter.  “Yeah, um, NO.”

I’ll leave it with this – get the heck out of my dumpster and stop e-mailing me.