It’s like nothing you remember. One of the greatest games ever made. I still have the original box and CD. Awesome music. Best line from the game from Taurus: “Damn. I’m so good, they should name a car after me.”
I love my MakerBot
I do so love my MakerBot.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPG8z1DUVqI
Hacking The MakerBot
So I’m printing out stuff for the z axis rider you can find at Thingiverse. Problem is, some of the pieces are so big that the print head on my MakerBot Cupcake will hit the bolt heads on the heated build platform. What to do, what to do…..
Aha! Make a gigantic build base out of some stock aluminum plate I have. Benefits of this include:
- A completely flat base that is much better than the aluminum foil tape they give you
- A huge heat sink that can handle temperature variations
- Countersunk screws to expand the printing area.
Do Engineers Do Engineering Anymore?
I have two personally designed, qualitative indicators that I use to judge the health of the economy: the fast food service quality indicator (FFSQI) and the recruiter inapplicability indicator (RII).
The FFSQI is basically my experience getting fast food. When the economy is good or improving, the quality indicator drops. One wonders how some of the people providing the service manage to get, much less keep, their jobs. The worse the general experience at fast food places, the better the economy is because they’re scraping the bottom of the barrel in terms of available labor.
The RII comes from calls/emails that I get from recruiters. It’s not just the number but also the nature of the jobs. If a recruiter calls me with a position for which I am in no way qualified (or only minimally qualified), the indicator goes up. The higher this indicator, the better the economy because recruiters are having a hard time finding candidates.
This indicator, however, has recently made me wonder if engineers actually do any engineering anymore. By “engineering”, I mean applying mathematics and physical laws to solve problems or generate new products or processes. Note that under this definition, software engineering is not quite engineering. My apologies to any such engineers, but I’m focusing on “traditional” engineering.
Using a MakerBot To Fix a Screen
So the little swivel clips that hold a screen to my window have broken over the years thanks to use and small kids. This makes me sad. Makes my wife annoyed.
This is what they should look like:
What to do, what to do. Aha! Take some measurements and whip up this:
Who is this guy?
So I went to the Steelers-Eagles preseason game last night with my dad. During a TV commercial timeout right before half time, they showed this guy on the big screen:
He was getting ready to do a half time report.
Almost everyone in the stadium started clapping. Except the young woman next to me. She asked me, “Do you know who that is?”
I almost chuckled at first, as if she was trying to be funny. She wasn’t. I said, “Are you serious?” She was. I looked at my dad; we both looked at her; the guy in front of her turned around and looked at her.
“It’s Terry Bradshaw,” I said.
“Oh,” she replied and paused. “Who is he?”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “Are you kidding me?” I asked. She wasn’t. “Am I on Candid Camera?” I asked around. “I’m waiting for Allen Funt to come out here.” She kept waiting for an answer.
“He led the Steelers to four Super Bowl victories in the 70s,” I explained.
I later apologized to her and told her I didn’t mean to offend her. I explained that if I happened to go to a Penguins game and people cheered for some old guy, I’d probably wonder who it was. I’m not a hockey fan.
But I know who Mario is.
How to impress friends and kill zombies
When the zombie apocalypse comes, I’m gonna have one of these at my disposal. I’ll probably set myself on fire, but I will look pretty damn awesome doing it.
It’s complicated
My latest Arduino project, a remote controlled rocket launcher. Had to run jumpers via the top route (red) as I didn’t want to do two sided. Ugly, but effective if you remember to include holes/routes for jury-rigged vias. I think it’s laid out properly. We’ll find out soon enough.
Here’s the breadboard version I used to verify my circuit.
Zombie Killing Machete Gun
Perfect weapon for a zombie apocalypse.
Friday night fun
What’s better than soldering on a Friday night? Soldering an Arduino project.
Here’s my cheap little ArduinoISP project that lets me burn bootloaders without having to wire things up on a breadboard. Just pop in a chip to be burned and away you go.
It was also my first time using the toner transfer method (both sides!) as I usually use the photo resist method. All in all, I’d say I prefer the photo resist method; it gives me a cleaner board. I’m sure with practice I could make the toner transfer method work better, but it’s nice to just lay a stencil down and let light do the work.