Having prepped my ESP-32, I decided to make an LED fireplace today.

The plan was to put an LED strip on a piece of cardboard, and have slowly shifting red, orange, and yellow lights going up and down, somewhat like a music visualizer. I knew the bare LEDs wouldn't look good, so the plan was to put the cardboard somewhat deep into the fireplace, and add some translucent tissue paper layers in front to diffuse the lights.

Sadly, of my three ESP-32s, two were broken. I ended up instead using an ESP-8266, since I had several laying around. Annoyingly, the boards I have are so wide it's impossible to breadboard the, so I used perfboard instead.

Having carefully set up the circuit, I flipped the on switch and... nothing happened. It was about 10pm at this point, and I was starting to run out of energy, so I gave up.

Very late that night, I found the problem was the resistor I added--the LED strip has a built-in resistor as well, and apparently the two together were too much. I eventually got the lights to turn on, but too late to finish the project for the day.

Today I wrote a game called Little Herbalist. Or at least, I started to.

I'm pretty pleased with what I have--random ingredients appearing in various colors, which you can add to a brewing potion. The potion changes colors based on what ingredients you've added.

It's definitely not a complete game, and I'd like to work on it again another day.

You can play the unfinished game online or read the source code on github.

I made my first android app today. It was terrible and I plan to never do it again.

It took me about three hours of trying to get the sample apps to run before I gave up and made something from scratch. Both involved heavy use of ChatGPT (not my usual flow).

That said, if you want an app that reminds you how to tie your tie in an easy step-by-step way, you can download the APK from my website, and I believe you should be able to run that on your phone.

I don't know how to easily share Android source code, so I won't.

Today I wrote a little game where you make food in a kitchen.

You can play here. Source code is on github.

This was so-so. I didn't have a ton of fun making it, and it's not that fun to play either. I spent way too much time with things like trying to get sprites to load, and not as much on making the game fun. I think it could be much better with another day or two of work (as usual for hack-a-day).

Today I made a TODO list. It has whiteboard sections to write tasks in, an eraser, and a timer. You should be able to use it flat or on the wall, though it's a little bulky to use flat.

The blue is mostly spray paint, with some hand acrylic painting near the tape. The various bits on top are held in place with magnets, which I epoxied.

The cost to make this was $17. $5 for the whiteboard marker, $5 for the MDF board, and $7 for the timer. The eraser I made for free. I already had paints, whiteboard tape, epoxy, and magnets.

Originally I had planned to add a bunch of electronics (LEDs for which task is active, a built-in timer, a buzzer, etc), but I decided not to. I was way too ambitious, so I didn't think I'd have time. On top of that, I was having a rough time getting my microcontroller to work, or figuring out how to mount hardware cleanly on MDF. I don't think I would have been happy with the electronic version (even with enough time to do it well), and I am with this version. I'm glad I gave up on that part early. I don't think I'll attempt another physical electronics project during hack-a-day -- it's too hard with too little to show for it at my skill level.

Today's project was a "vibe piece". I've been obsessed with the idea of easy, relaxing games based on organization.

In this game, you sort squares into like colors.

You can play online here. Source code is on github.

My family and I have been playing Curse of the Dark, an "escape-room" style board game. We recently reached the halfway point, where they recommend taking a break--it's supposed to be two 90-minute play sessions (spoiler: we are on month 6).

Included with the box is an answer sheet, which include scratch-off hints. (You might also be familiar with them from lottery tickets.) You scratch off the grey stuff with a penny, and underneath is the hint. I idly wondered if you could do that yourself.

I found several people online repeating this recipe:

• 2 parts silver acrylic paint (I used 5 parts white, 1 part black)
• 1 part dish soap

They recommended 2-4 layers to make it opaque. I gave it a try.

So visually it looked pretty good. But scratchable, not so much. It was hard to get off, and the paper tore when I scratched harder.

Randomona did some experimentation, and had better luck with all types of paint. Turns out it works way better if you add a layer of plastic, such as tape, rather than applying to paint directly to paper or cardstock. This makes sense since the stickers are basically a thin layer of something on tape. And sure enough, when I looked at the 2-3 other tutorials I read, they all said to apply tape first. Whoops!

I would discover this only later, pictures are later in the post

I decided to give "the reveal" a try with small square post-it notes (50x50 mm, about 2x2 inch).

These were okay. But

• not many fit on a page
• post-its aren't very fun to take off
• sometimes I had to use two notes, or you could see through
• my local store doesn't sell the full-sticky post-its, so you can peek if you really wanted. (I'm not sure if they still make full-sticky, and I don't think they ever did in mini size)

By the way, you can print your own using my bad generator. If you want less than 15, just leave some boxes blank and don't cover them with a post-it.

Next up, I bought some! They sell premade scratch-off stickers. They are available in 50x50 mm, but I went half that size--I'd rather have more on a page.

Mine came in a roll of 1000 stickers for $10 (that's 1 cent per sticker). You can get circles or squares--I picked squares.

Here you can see my scratch-off chores card. It was a lot more fun. I wrote a better second generator you can use to print your own. Up to 88 can fit on a page, and it will shrink the grid if you have less.

Finally, I tried the homemade acrylic paint method a try, with tape this time.

I'd say the stickers scratch off best, followed by the recipe mentioned on tape. I tried more dish soap and no dish soap, and they were both worse. I suspect less dish soap would work better.

You can write on the stickers fine, or the acrylic, but the dish soap recipes scratch off if you try to use a pen on top.

What's the longest sequence of words you can make, beginning with any word and adding one letter at a time, if each step must also be a word?

If you can add them only at the end, a computer search outputs the dubious:

co
com
comp
compo
compos
compose
composer
composers

Adding letters only at the beginning I get the equally doubtful:

es
hes
shes
ashes
lashes
plashes
splashes

If you add can add letters on either end, I found this valid 10-letter sequence:

I
in
tin
ting
sting
siting
sitting
slitting
splitting
splittings

My personal favorite, allowing rearranging letters, yields this whopping 15-letter series:

I
it
tie
rite
irate
attire
cattier
interact
intricate
recitation
ratiocinate
ratiocinated
accreditation
contraindicate
contraindicated

The above answers found using a python, and the GNU aspell dictionary. Words containing ', -, or capital letters were removed.