Category Archives: Random Nonsense

Sometimes I just feel compelled to share nonsense, random thoughts, and sometimes just stuff I want to save

First commissioned piece! [Draft 02/22/2010]

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[That’s it.  Just the title.  I have no idea what this piece may have been, how much I was paid, or how long it took!  I was just excited that my little 3D printer was making a little bit of money and started to share it with the world…  before sitting in my drafts folder for … more than 15 years]

Drafts Zero - The Lost Blog Posts
  1. The Lost Blog Posts
  2. Plastruder! [Draft 12/25/2009]
  3. UNTITLED [Draft 12/25/2009]
  4. Preparing to print [Draft 12/27/2009]
  5. More prints [Draft 01/04/2010]
  6. Prototype Pricing [Draft 01/19/2010]
  7. MakerBot tuning [Draft 01/20/2010]
  8. Plastic Screw Anchor [Draft 02/02/2010]
  9. Magic [Draft 02/03/2010]
  10. How are you printing with PLA? [Draft 02/16/2010]
  11. Rebuilding my extruder [Draft 02/16/2010]
  12. MY robot [Draft 02/18/2010]
  13. more things i learned [Draft 02/20/2010]
  14. First commissioned piece! [Draft 02/22/2010]
  15. MakerBot: Toy or Tool? [02/25/2010]
  16. Idea for Skeinforge settings… [Draft 03/27/2010]
  17. RepRap and MakerBot alternatives [Draft 04/05/2010]
  18. RepRap Parts for Sale [Draft 04/07/2010]

Rebuilding my extruder [Draft 02/16/2010]

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[I put down the title and then did nothing.  :)  I suspect the other adjacent draft about printing with PLA was related to the need to re-re-re-build my extruder.  The way extruders were built back then didn’t involve careful machining of custom nozzles and shaped channels for the plastic to flow.  Instead, the PTFE tube went into the extruder and you kinda hoped for the best.  If you had heat creep, didn’t cool down properly, etc, you had to disassemble everything and rebuild it all.  But, such was the course of the hobbyist 3D printer enthusiast in the winter of 2010!]

Drafts Zero - The Lost Blog Posts
  1. The Lost Blog Posts
  2. Plastruder! [Draft 12/25/2009]
  3. UNTITLED [Draft 12/25/2009]
  4. Preparing to print [Draft 12/27/2009]
  5. More prints [Draft 01/04/2010]
  6. Prototype Pricing [Draft 01/19/2010]
  7. MakerBot tuning [Draft 01/20/2010]
  8. Plastic Screw Anchor [Draft 02/02/2010]
  9. Magic [Draft 02/03/2010]
  10. How are you printing with PLA? [Draft 02/16/2010]
  11. Rebuilding my extruder [Draft 02/16/2010]
  12. MY robot [Draft 02/18/2010]
  13. more things i learned [Draft 02/20/2010]
  14. First commissioned piece! [Draft 02/22/2010]
  15. MakerBot: Toy or Tool? [02/25/2010]
  16. Idea for Skeinforge settings… [Draft 03/27/2010]
  17. RepRap and MakerBot alternatives [Draft 04/05/2010]
  18. RepRap Parts for Sale [Draft 04/07/2010]

How are you printing with PLA? [Draft 02/16/2010]

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[There were two drafts with this title, one empty, and one with the single sentence below unfinished.  Up until about January of 2010 I was printing in ABS which smelled bad and warped like crazy.  But, it did print.  When I started printing with PLA I found it difficult to work with, temperamental, wouldn’t melt or it would and then clog the extruder.  I think at some point I suggested that PLA was only suitable for printing tears.  Obviously, printers, PLA, and my maturity have come a long way since.]

I’d like to know, I really would.

Drafts Zero - The Lost Blog Posts
  1. The Lost Blog Posts
  2. Plastruder! [Draft 12/25/2009]
  3. UNTITLED [Draft 12/25/2009]
  4. Preparing to print [Draft 12/27/2009]
  5. More prints [Draft 01/04/2010]
  6. Prototype Pricing [Draft 01/19/2010]
  7. MakerBot tuning [Draft 01/20/2010]
  8. Plastic Screw Anchor [Draft 02/02/2010]
  9. Magic [Draft 02/03/2010]
  10. How are you printing with PLA? [Draft 02/16/2010]
  11. Rebuilding my extruder [Draft 02/16/2010]
  12. MY robot [Draft 02/18/2010]
  13. more things i learned [Draft 02/20/2010]
  14. First commissioned piece! [Draft 02/22/2010]
  15. MakerBot: Toy or Tool? [02/25/2010]
  16. Idea for Skeinforge settings… [Draft 03/27/2010]
  17. RepRap and MakerBot alternatives [Draft 04/05/2010]
  18. RepRap Parts for Sale [Draft 04/07/2010]

The Lost Blog Posts

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A sign in front of a desolate wasteland says "YOU ARE LOST"

But at least you’re here

I’ve got a lot of unpublished draft blog posts here.  Like a lot.  At the time I’m writing this post, I’ve got 1,134 published posts and 329 drafts.  This isn’t versions of drafts.  It’s posts that I’ve started and then didn’t publish for some reason or another.  On probably 300 different topics.  Some are, admittedly, little more than a collection of links and indecipherable shorthand texts from a madman.  However, others are filled with research, links, images, code, and were so close to publishing that I can only imagine that something distracted me before I could… squirrel!

The oldest of these dates back to December 2009 and relates to the cutting edge, new to market, MakerBot Cupcake CNC’s plastic extruder, the “plastruder.”  I don’t know that anyone would be interested in this kind of content any more, but I kinda like the idea of “Drafts Zero” and spending about 5-15 minutes dusting off an old draft and just publishing it.1

Let’s see how this goes.

Update:

  1. In just the first few posts, I discovered that I wanted to add some additional comments.  Look for these at the top, in italics and in brackets to provide context.
Drafts Zero - The Lost Blog Posts
  1. The Lost Blog Posts
  2. Plastruder! [Draft 12/25/2009]
  3. UNTITLED [Draft 12/25/2009]
  4. Preparing to print [Draft 12/27/2009]
  5. More prints [Draft 01/04/2010]
  6. Prototype Pricing [Draft 01/19/2010]
  7. MakerBot tuning [Draft 01/20/2010]
  8. Plastic Screw Anchor [Draft 02/02/2010]
  9. Magic [Draft 02/03/2010]
  10. How are you printing with PLA? [Draft 02/16/2010]
  11. Rebuilding my extruder [Draft 02/16/2010]
  12. MY robot [Draft 02/18/2010]
  13. more things i learned [Draft 02/20/2010]
  14. First commissioned piece! [Draft 02/22/2010]
  15. MakerBot: Toy or Tool? [02/25/2010]
  16. Idea for Skeinforge settings… [Draft 03/27/2010]
  17. RepRap and MakerBot alternatives [Draft 04/05/2010]
  18. RepRap Parts for Sale [Draft 04/07/2010]
  1. A take on the “Inbox Zero” productivity / organization strategy [↩]

Combining Multiple Video Files

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Rather than send me a single set of video files, my client’s vendor sent me… 149 separate MP4 files, ranging from a few seconds to about 11 minutes long.  I have no interest in sorting through dozens of video files, cataloging them individually, and then trying to review them in order.

While I would have thought VLC would have been a good drag-n’-drop way to stitch them all together, the version I had and the newest version available both weren’t letting me save multiple files into a single file.

A bit of googling and I stumbled across an old friend – ffmpeg!  I hadn’t used this program to transcode video since the early days of DIVX, backing up DVD’s back in the late 1990’s / early aughts.

Here’s the process I settled on for my Windows machine:

  • Created a batch file to create a list of the video files (which included spaces, commas, and all kinds of nonsense command line tools hate).  The entire contents of the batch file was:
    • dir *.mp4 /b > list.txt
  • Since I’m using Notepad++, I used the find/replace function to search / replace on “list.txt”:
    • /r/n
    • ‘/r/nfile ‘
  • Even using some find/replace magic, I still needed to adjust the first and last lines, but that wasn’t so bad.
  • Then, the videos which had been named in semi-logical pattern, were not in strictly alphanumeric order.  I re-ordered them in the text list to the order I’d wanted to view them in.
  • I dropped the FFMPEG executable, downloaded from this mirror, into the folder with the video files and list.txt, then made a new batchfile which contained the following:
    • ffmpeg -f concat -safe 0 -i list.txt -c copy combinedfilename.mp4
  • Now, I could have typed this into the command line, but since I wanted to batch certain files together, it was just easier for my purposes to have the batch file.  Plus, now I have the executable and the batch file for future use.

Anyhow, I hope this helps save someone, perhaps even myself, a few minutes of hair pulling and searching.  :)

Night Before Going to Maker Faire

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Annnnnnnnnnnd…  my robot which has been working for a solid year is now completely unresponsive.

My wife’s robot is working, Dexter Starfighter’s robot is working, Kim’Dael LightingSlayer’s pendant is working.

And my robot not only doesn’t work, I have spent so much time trying to get it functional that I still don’t have a good way to mount it on my shoulder.

I could cry.

Review of DriveThruCards.com

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TLDR:  The cards from DriveThruCards.com (DTC) arrived yesterday and I couldn’t be happier with the result.  Great customer service, product, and value.

  1. Shipping:  Great
    1. 3/19/2024:  I ordered 120 cards around 2 AM PST in California.
    2. 3/19/2024:  The DTC website was updated with the following statuses:  Pending Payment Approval, Paid For, Sent to printer, Confirmed.
    3. 3/24/2024:  I received a shipping confirmation email from DTC in Overland Park, Kansas with a USPS tracking number at about 4:32 PM PST.
    4. 03/25/2024:  The date on the “External Packing Slip” included with the box.
    5. 3/28/2024:  USPS sent me a notification the package arrived around 8:29 AM PST.
    6. This was basically exactly as long as my Reddit lurking had suggested (about 10 days) it would take.

      Order confirmation and status screen

      Order confirmation and status screen

  2. Packaging:  Great
    1. The cards arrived wrapped in a cellophane band, within packing paper, inside a small box (about 5″x5″x3.5″ cube).  This was perfectly fine for these cards.  They have options for tuck boxes and other containers, but I didn’t need or want these for this project.
  3. Card Quality:  Great
    1. Text and images were sharp, legible, and colors rich but slightly darker than what I saw on my computer screen.  By tinkering with Inkscape, I would guesstimate the final card was about 5-10% less bright than what I saw on my screen.  Without comparing the cards directly against a large bright monitor, I don’t think I would have noticed this difference.
    2. When I set the deck down on a flat surface and run my finger over the side of the stack of cards, there’s a very slight variation over a few cards.  It’s barely perceptible and probably totally fine for any kind of card usage or card game except a super precise cut for casino playing cards.
    3. When the cards are viewed edge-on in a stack, you can tell see a faint bit of the card’s edge color.  I grabbed some “Magic: the Gathering” cards and looked at a mix of black and white bordered cards and noticed that even the black border cards seem to look white-ish when viewed edge on.  The slight bit of color here doesn’t bother me at all and for most purposes would be totally irrelevant.
    4. The cards were 2.503″ or 63.57 mm wide and 3.506″ or 89.05 mm tall, or about 0.2% large.  Some variation is to be expected in any order and this miniscule variation would be completely unnoticeable except I used digital calipers to measure them.
    5. The cards, printed on DTC’s “premium stock,” advertised as 11.4 pt (0.0114″) were 0.0115″ or 0.29 mm thick.  Flicking the cards against a table, right next to an actual casino poker card, they felt identical.  (The casino card has a slightly raised texture, but the flex, bounce, and flick of the card stock felt identical).
    6. Card Cut.  This is the one aspect that didn’t come out exactly as I had planned.  Ten of the cards I printed had borders, but they were visibly different widths at each end.  These cards were Premium U.S. Poker sized (2.5″ x 3.5″), the PDF itself was 2.75″ x 3.75″ (to account for the 1/8″ bleed area at each edge).  Unfortunately, I didn’t notice this until after I had used the cards a bit, so I don’t know whether top or the bottom was slightly thinner.  Since these cards are basically dividers, this isn’t a huge deal for me.  However, I’d prefer being able to get them back with an even border all the way around.
  4. Customer Service:  I discussed the responsiveness of the DTC customer service team in the prior post.  They went out of their way to help me with my project – and it really smoothed things for me.

I simply could not be happier with these cards.  I will absolutely be trying them again.

Print On Demand Custom Cards
  1. Custom Cards with DriveThruCards.com
  2. Review of DriveThruCards.com

Gluing Polypropylene Corrugated Plastic (Coroplast)

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Late at night, when I should be doing work or, better yet, sleeping, ideas spring to mind.  I’ve created a few small projects from big sheets of coroplast or polypropylene corrugated plastic.  This is the kind of material you see in use for yard signs.  They are big, cheap, sturdy (as long as you’re not bending it with the grain), and lightweight.  They can be bent or cut easily.  However, since it is polypropylene, it is fairly resistant to most glues, adhesives, and paints.

Duct tape and hot glue work well, but have their downsides.  The duct tape can be unsightly and not very good for “laminating” several layers together.  Hot glue works well for laminating layers, but it cools so fast that it’s hard to glue big sheets together.

Anyhow, all of this is to say I found a great website by Christine DeMerchant which provides a lot of information and insight on how to glue these materials together.

How to “Unthread” Emails in Thunderbird v115

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If you’re just here for the solution (or, you’re actually me, returning some time in the future to fix the problem after perhaps a Thunderbird update), here’s all you need to know:

  1. Click on the icon in the top right that looks like a film strip which displays the “Message list display options” when the mouse hovers over it.
  2. Sort by -> Unthreaded
Just follow these steps, starting with the menu at the top right

Just follow these steps, starting with the menu at the top right

I suppose there are times when threaded email view is useful.  However, when reviewing emails at a glance, it’s incredibly frustrating because your inbox will show you have a new unread email, but you won’t know which thread it’s nested under.

I found numerous “solutions” online for how to unthread Thunderbird emails, but none of them worked for me since the answer wasn’t buried in any of the settings, the hamburger menu didn’t help, and nothing relevant showed up in the help sections or even in searching the settings section.

Of course, right clicking on the columns allowed me to hide the “thread” column, but that didn’t stop emails from actually being threaded.

I spent some time searching for the answer, watching snippets of videos, and finally stumbled across the solution here after seeing multiple people voice the very same frustrations I did, discussing.  Hopefully the above screenshot helps you (or me!) solve this problem in the future.