I've been keeping track of my daily exercise using a checklist on the wall.
I wanted a nice small printable one. I looked around, and there were several for sale for $2. I made a free one, instead.
Here's the download link: 26 row. Or if you hate blank rows, here are some with less rows: 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
And of course, I customized one with my own workout routine.
Lately I’ve been messing about in Godot, a framework for making video games (similar to Unity).
I wanted to make a 3D game. In my game, you live in a geodesic dome, and can’t go outside, because mumble mumble mumble poisonous atmosphere?.
A geodesic dome, I learned, is related to the icosahedron, or d20 from RPGs.
A simple dome is the top half of the icosahedron. As they get more complex, you divide each triangle into more and more smaller triangles.
So to make a nice geodesic dome, we could find one (I failed), make one in Blender (too hard), or use some math to generate one in Godot. And to do that math, we need to know the list of 20 icosahedron faces. Which basically just needs the list of the 12 vertices!
Now, obviously you could look up the vertices, but I thought of a more fun way. Let’s put 12 points on a sphere, make them all repel each other (think magnetically, I guess), and see where on the sphere they slide to. Maybe they will all be spaced out evenly in the right places. Well, here’s what it looks like:
So… kinda? It was certainly entertaining.
By the way, the correct coordinates for the vertices of an icosahedron inside a unit sphere are:
My friend Callen tried to help me run a DC motor to roll my curtains up and down. We didn’t make a ton of progress, but we had some fun making a little music.
I hacked up a little to-do app in an hour. The emphasis is on focus.
It’s linux only. You can find it in my short-programs repo on github.
I’m making labels for my garden sections by painting tiles.
This is a blank “subway” style marble tile. It’s 140×45 mm (2×6 inch). One is about $1. Avoid “glazed” or “glossy” tiles, which are too smooth for the paint to stick well.
First, we add a layer of tape. I used blue painter’s tape because it’s easy to see. I expect masking tape would work well too.
Attach the sign you want to your tape. I used double-stick tape. It’s better than single-stick around the edges, but that also works in a pinch.
Cut through the letters using an x-acto blade. I used a sans-serif font to make this step faster.
Remove the paper, as well as the tape. You can use the x-acto blade to peel up the tape. Make sure not to lift up the “holes” in letters like ‘B’ or ‘a’.
Paint the tile. I used pale/pastel blue acrylic spray paint. Make sure to either not spray the sides, or cover them in tape too.
Then I let it sit for 15-20 minutes.
Peel off the tape. I used gloves, and took out the holes using tweezers.
Peeling the tape while the paint is slightly wet is easier than completely dry. When it’s dry, the acrylic clings to the tape and “stretches” rather than cleanly breaking.
If you mess up along the way anywhere, acetone took the paint off great for me.
Then I let the paint completely dry. Optionally, you can seal it with a clear sealant if you want extra waterproofing.
I attach the tile to my raised beds using z-brackets sized to fit the tile thickness and a screwdriver. They look fine on the dirt too.
Looks nice! Maybe I’ll switch to a higher-contract color paint for white?
I recently made an art project as a birthday gift for a young friend of mine.
I hadn’t seen the exact technique I invented to make stencils posted anywhere, so I figured I’d share it. I don’t think this is a good method, but maybe it will inspire someone to do something better.
I started with a blank tile. On top, I put down a layer of painter’s tape (basically masking tape, but a little less stretchy).
I printed and taped a piece of paper on top (made using this online tool with the font BreeSerif):
I used an x-acto knife to cut through both the top paper and paper, then removed the paper. Then I peeled the letters out of the painter’s tape.
I painted the letters with acrylic, let them dry, and removed the tape. In retrospect, it probably would have been easier to remove the tape wet, because acrylic paint is a little stretchy and I went over the lines.
The letters happily lifted right off the glazed tile, which hadn’t been sanded or anything. I added a heavy coat of modge-podge spray sealant, which kept everything in place after drying.
Finally, I used a masonry bit to drill screw holes in the tile, so it could be attached to a door.
She seemed to like it :). But now she wants to make one too. I’ll have to see if I can invent an easier way.
I’m one of the designers for the yearly April Fools Puzzle Contest on IRC.
Please feel free to join at https://blog.ircpuzzles.org/. The idea is that you solve puzzles in a chatroom, and get the password to the next chatroom, and so on. If you’re not familiar with IRC, don’t worry–a link is provided to connect in your browser, too.
It’s a lot of fun, and I hope you enjoy!
P.S. The contest should be up for a while, so don’t worry about being late to the party!
A few friends and I first experienced this traditional Vietnamese Tết (Lunar New Year) food while visiting years ago. We loved it, and recently I looked up how to make it myself. It’s not a well known food in the US, so I thought it would still be fun to share.
I followed the recipe from “Enjoy a simple life“, but made a homemade cardboard mold as suggested by “Takes Two Eggs“.
Like a bread, this recipe takes a fair bit of time. I would start in the morning.
Ingredients needed:
Additional supplies:
Ingredient Prep:
Making the cakes:
Once you have all your cakes made, boil them at a low simmer for 8-12 hours. Your cakes are done.
They last weeks and stay pretty tasty. You can freeze them if you want them to last even longer.
Sources:
So I’ve decided on my next project! I’m going to spend a month learning new things. Unlike hack-a-day, where the focus was mostly on doing something every day, here I’m trying to cultivate a different attitude. So the following are all encouraged:
And these are discouraged:
