Ingredients needed:

• Foam paintbrush (Home depot, $0.80)
• Black tea (I used Meijer brand, 100 bags for $2.50)
• White flour (for multiple-page scrolls)
• At least one cookie-baking sheet

Optional extras:

• Gold washi tape, or other decorative tape ($8)
• Ribbon ($15 for 36 colors) to tie the scrolls shut
• Wax ($10), and a seal ($8), to add seals to the scroll
• Lathe, hand saw, dowel rods ($5 for 1" x 4ft / 25mm x 1.3m), paintbrush ($3 for 20), stain ($8) and varnish ($17) to make your own holding rods. If you don't have a lathe, see other suggestions.
• String ($3-7 for 500ft / 200m) or steel rope ($43 for crimping tool, $13 for cutting pliers, $22 for 1/16 inch x 300ft / 1.5mm x 100m rope) to hang the scroll
• Paintbrush ($3 for 20) and stencil ($7-$15) for decorating the back

First, I aged the individual sheets.

1. Soak 8 black tea bags in 2 pints boiling water. Let it sit at least 10 minutes.
2. Print the paper you want to stain.
3. Dip the foam paintbrush into the tea. Let large, splashy drops fall onto each piece of paper. Cover 30-50% of the paper. Leave it out until dried (several hours). This is the slowest step, but yields a pleasant, uneven look. For an even better look, place a teabag on the paper repeatedly, then let it dry, then repeat again in the empty spaces and let it dry again.

   

   

4. Take each dried sheet, and place it on a cookie tray. Again dipping the brush in tea, paint over it several times, making sure to cover the whole sheet. Use varied directions for brushstrokes. You may not be able to see any visible stain. You don't need to soak it fully, but you can.

   

5. Take the cookie sheets, and place them in the oven. I baked them for 250°F for 6 minutes. This was just enough so the sheets were dry to the touch. This not only dries the sheets faster, but activates the tea and makes it take on a much darker tone.

   

6. If desired, you can paint a second pass on the back--the tea will only stain one side at a time deeply. I recommend doing the back second, because each bake makes it a little darker.

   

7. Press sheets flat under a large, heavy book.

In theory I think you can iron the sheets flat. If I did this project again, I would try it. It's hard to line up and glue wavy sheets.

I tried painting on the back, using a paint I made myself. I wanted something subtle, like the faint patterning on decorative paper. I tried tempura paint, using coffee in place of water, and flour-based tea paints. I got something that looked how I wanted.

I liked the effect, but I had a hard time reproducing the paint the next day. If you want to experiment, my recipe used something like 1 bag of tea, one cup of water, and about 2 Tbsp flour.

Next, I glued together the sheets to make a continuous scroll. For reasons you'll see later, I needed an extra strong glue. So as my first step, I made wheatpaste glue, which is very strong.

1. Combine in a paper bowl:
   • 25g flour
   • 75g water
2. Stir thoroughly with a fork.
3. Microwave for 1 minute, then stir again. Repeat.
4. Once it's thick enough you have a harder time moving a fork through (2-3 minutes with my microwave), let it cool.

   

I glued together the sheets with wheatpaste. For some projects, it's easier and better to apply warm. But my paper was already fragile from the aging process, so I found it worked better all the way cooled.

I took a fingertip of glue, spread it evenly on the bottom of the page. Repeating, I covered the whole bottom. Then, I placed the next sheet over it, and laid them down so they matched. Since the aging process warps the paper, you may not get a perfect fit.

Then, use the pad your your thumb to press the sheets together firmly. Make sure to use rolling motions, don't drag your finger along. That can tear the paper.

My research suggested Zip Dry paper glue might also work.

As a fun fact, real scrolls were made by gluing together sheets, and they actually used wheatpaste glue! Scrolls were often glued left-to-right (volumen) instead of top-to-bottom (rotulus), but I thought the fantasy stereotype was more fun.

After the glue hardened, I cleaned off both sides and trimmed the edges to match exactly. Then I applied a gold tape on the edges. I had decorative borders printed already, so it was relatively easy to get tape pieces to match. I found the key was to go slow, and use many pieces of tape. After laying one down, I pressed it smooth with the back of a fingernail, flipped it, and did the same of the back. The washi tape I'm using is relative easy to remove again, but also shows defects pretty clearly.

I turned dowel rods to hold the scroll on my lathe. The middle segment is the width of a piece of paper. Then I added as much decoration as I could on each end, but my lathe is very small, so not much fit.

Then I stained and finished the dowel rods.

If like most people you don't have a lathe, you could glue something decorative on the ends of dowel rod pieces, cut bamboo segments, or decorate a paper towel roll.

It's also totally fine to just roll up the scroll and tie it closed with string or ribbon. No holders are really needed.

I made another batch of wheatpaste (much better this time).

I glued the scroll onto the dowel on the two ends.

The glue was very strong, but the ends only look okay. I trimmed the last couple inches of washi tape so the glue would stick.

If I did the project again, I'd try to keep the sheets flattened (wrinkly sheets after aging causes all kinds of problems). I'd also leave a little blank space on the top and bottom for attaching them to the rods.

I picked up some stranded steel rope, which I turned into a line with two loops at the end.

I looped them over the holes in the dowel. Voila! Now you can hang the scroll on the wall.

It's possible to make the wire hangers secure, but removable. For the first couple I made they're just secure--those suckers aren't coming off.

I dripped wax on the scroll and pressed down a seal I got on Amazon. It matches the theme of my D&D game very well, I was happy with how it looks.

The final scroll looks amazing.

One one hanger, it takes up the wall.

Between 6 pages and a dowel rod, that's why the glue between pages needed to be so strong!

By using two sets of hanging wires, you can show part of the scroll without taking up the whole wall. Here I'm showing the top of the scroll.

You can roll one dowel as you unroll the other, to show any part of the scroll. That's why long scrolls have two rods. It's also where the term "scrolling" up and down on a computer comes from.

I let each player pick the color of the wax for the seal and decorative ribbons. They didn't know exactly what they were giving me colors for.

I'm sure my players will love them!

By the way, if you're curious about the contents, this is a prophecy the players found in parts around the world. Underneath each of the 50 lines, are their player notes about where they found each piece. It's a souvenir for a campaign which ran for about 2 years, and is finally wrapping up.

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:

• the top at (0, 1, 0)
• the bottom at (0, -1, 0)
• 10 equally spaced points around a circle. they alternate going up and down below the center line.
  (±1/√5, sin(angle), cos(angle)) [projected onto the sphere]

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.

1. Soak rice and mung beans overnight. Marinate seitan or meat.
2. About 30 minutes of cooking. Boil beans and rice.
3. About 30 minutes wrapping and packaging.
4. Finally, an 8-12 hour boil in a big pot of water.

Ingredients needed:

• Seitan or pork belly (optional), 4-8 oz
• 5 c glutinous rice, lightly rinsed twice and soaked overnight
• 2½ c dried slit mung beans, washed and soaked overnight
• 2 shallots, thinly sliced
• 2 leeks, use white part, thinly sliced
• 2 t salt
• 3 t black pepper
• 1 t sugar
• 2 t good soy sauce
• 2 T fish sauce or 1 T mushroom powder
• ½ c vegetable or peanut oil

Additional supplies:

• Banana leaves (defrosted)
• Twine, string, etc
• Scissors
• Plastic wrap
• Aluminium foil
• Cardboard and packing tape to make a mold. I used a soda box

Ingredient Prep:

1. Cook rice with salt.
2. Steam mung beans. Food-process them.
3. Fry shallots and leeks in oil. Add seasonings.
4. Remove from heat. Add the rest of the oil and mung beans. Mix thoroughly.

Making the cakes:

1. Place the square cardboard mold on a sheet of plastic wrap.
2. Put two cut banana leaves inside to form a little square pocket.
3. In the pocket, layer ½ c rice, ¼ c mung beans mix, strips of meat or seitan, ¼ c mung beans, and ½ c rice.
4. Fold the banana leaves over, and remove the mold. Close the plastic wrap to hold everything together.
5. Wrap the plastic wrap in a layer of alumnium foil.
6. Tie the foil shut with string.

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:

1. https://enjoyasimplelife.blogspot.com/2012/01/vegetarian-sticky-rice-banh-chung-chay.html
2. https://takestwoeggs.com/banh-chung/

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:

• Being curious about stuff
• Getting distracted
• Having fun
• New experiences
• Being goofy, even if I don’t “learn” anything from goof experiences
• Naps
• Hanging with other people

And these are discouraged:

• Completionism
• “Grinding” through a nonfiction book I’m not that into
• Rigorously writing up everything
• TV and other mindless activities
• (tentatively) reading?