Hello Thunderbird my old friend, I’ve come to talk with you again

For the past six months or so I have been blaming the latest update to Thunderbird1 for being ridiculously slow.  This charge has, apparently, been completely unfounded.  At about the same time I also noticed a ridiculous deterioration in Firefox’s performance as well as an overall incredible slow down on my laptop. 2  It got so bad that I had to restart Thunderbird at least once a day and shut down all of these “I’m taking too long” errors.

Yesterday I had a brainstorm …  what if having Thunderbird manage two dozen accounts with synching to four IMAP accounts was causing it to hog resources and freak out?

So, I archived a bunch of mail so that it wasn’t synching up, deleted a bunch of old RSS feeds I no longer read, and freed more than 10 GIGS of space off my drive.  Poor Thunderbird.  Here I was berating it, cursing the updates, when really it was my info-addiction that was causing the freakout.  I can now use Thunderbird to communicate again! 3  OMG, I’ve missed it so.  I had taken to using Gmail’s interface more often than not, which is a great web interface, but it’s not my dear Thunderbird!

  1. My old friend [↩]
  2. This being the craptop. [↩]
  3. I’ve come to talk with you again [↩]

What other Doctor Who things should be on Thingiverse?

Okay, we already have:

  • A TARDIS
  • A printable dalek, a 3D rendering of a dalek, and a dalek head
  • A sonic screwdriver for the 1st, 10th, and 11th Doctors1
  • A cyberman symbol
  • A dalek, TARDIS, and sonic screwdriver cookie cutter2

What else could we have?

  • A time lord seal
  • K-9345
  • The Pandorica
  • Sonic screwdrivers for the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th Doctors
  • The Doctor’s calling card from The Remembrance of the Daleks6
  • A time vortex manipulator

I should really include links to all of those…

  1. Well, most of the 11th.  It’s a perpetual work in progress. [↩]
  2. Delicious sci fi???  Sign me up! [↩]
  3. Canine?  OMG!  I finally got that joke! [↩]
  4. And it only took me 26 years! [↩]
  5. Wait, wait, wait… K-9 Unit?  How long has this been around??? [↩]
  6. This is one of my favorite episodes, if for nothing else than the flippant bit about the unlimited rice pudding.  The Doctor leaves a little calling card for no apparent reason, but it is kinda cool.  I had this episode saved on VHS.  My brother taped over it with a Barry Manilow special.  It’s still quite a sore topic for me. [↩]

TARDIS Police Box Signs

Police Box Sign by Steelgohst on deviantART
Police Box Sign by Steelgohst on deviantART

Just for you Tony Buser!

  1. Whatever you do, DO NOT CLICK on the “Index” on that website.  You have been warned. [↩]
  2. Yes, I did spell his ‘nym correctly [↩]

Nuance

Some would call it OCD, others attention to detail.

When I originally uploaded the STL file for my Leonardo Voltron I discovered that the figure was facing away from the “camera” in the rendering.  Since I had to run the model through Netfabb to fix up some minor details anyhow, I rotated the entire model 180 degrees in Sketchup, re-exported to the STL, and then put it through Netfabb.

That way, when you view the rendered image of the Voltron parts, they’re facing the viewer.

Printable Voltron!

Leonardo Voltron!
Leonardo Voltron!

I’ve mentioned wanting to print a Voltron several times before.  It was Tony Buser who mentioned modifying the Leonardo Robot by jrombousky.

Well, I finally got around to designing it!  All you have to do is print up the parts from Jrombousky’s Leonardo Robot and then this single plate of parts.  Swap out the bits, paint to suit (or print in the color of your choice).

Yay!

Common ground

Yesterday I had coffee with a friend I hadn’t seen in about ten years, maybe even a little more.  As it was appropriate to the conversation we were having, I asked him whether he had read any Neal Stephenson, to which he laughed and replied, “Yes, of course I have.  I didn’t even occur to me to ask you if you had read his books because I just assumed that you would have.”