Digital Sculptures

Recently Poloxamer, one of the admins on our Minecraft server, hosted a sculpture contest.  We gave contestants a month to work -- keep in mind that they had to gather their own materials to do it and they did everything in standard mode.  No flying, no mods to make things easier, just vanilla Minecraft and their own ingenuity.  So, the million tons of stone gathered for the Egypt sculptures?  The builder, Rethenut, pick-pick-pickaxed all of that.

Speaking of Egypt, here's Re's sphinx surrounded by some pyramids!  I haven't tried entering the pyramids yet, but I'm tempted to drop in there and summon a few ghasts or other treats for anyone who dares enter without Re's permission.  :)  For a fun math problem, take a look at those pyramids and estimate how much stone was required and how much time to gather it.  (And score extra points for good project management: Re got her husband to come in and help mine some of the stone!)

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Next is Jackshadow's "Treeo."  Jack leveled about a continent's worth of birch trees to construct these giant sculptures of...birch trees!  According to Polo, Jack also set a new world record for most lethal plummets while building a single structure.  This is why you leave your good armor at home when building something large, of course.

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Our resident 8-bit artist, HollyInGrd6, built another great piece of throwback art with the theme from Reading Rainbow!  (Suggestion: go tour this one while listening to the Big 80's on Sirius/XM channel 8.)  Holly took advantage of the wide variety of shaded glass available now in MC, which required gathering a few tons of sand and all the materials needed to create dyes.  It's even better viewed on the server, as you can get up close and see the glass.

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Stufak's Throne totally cracked me up when I realized what he was building.  The giant man blends in so well to the surrounding mountain that I probably stared at it for twenty seconds or so before actually seeing him.  I'm tempted to have a future contest where contestants have to build something that the recumbent titan is staring at. 

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And finally, we have Anneka's "How It Got There."  We need to implement a Best Use of Minecraft Gravity Rules award for this one.  I watched her building the Stonehenge replica and helped chase away some skeletons riding skeleton horses.  I had no idea at the time that there was going to be more than the henge in the final product.  And for a little added creativity -- if you expand the picture and look very closely you can just see the heads of the skeleton horses who are apparently piloting the ship.  :) 

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Machine Learning-ish

Hey Siri, find the CareNow clinic. 

I'm sorry.  I can't find anything called career now click.

Hey Siri, find the CARE NOW CLINIC.

I found an urgent care clinic in Jacksonville, about 1030 miles east of you.  Do you want me to get directions or call?

Machines.  Making your life simple.

Maker Space? What's That?

I'm so glad you asked.  I just happen to have an example.

A friend and I designed a tabletop game and reached a distinct milestone -- the game mechanics had been tested and re-tested (and re-tested and re-tested), the rules were solid, and all the card content was created.  Before sending the digital files to a printer for a production quality prototype we had one remaining step: work with a Real Artist to finalize the color scheme, graphics, and layout for the physical elements of the game.  We really wanted a physical copy of our concept board to examine with the artist.

Challenge: how do you print a 30" x 24" board at home?  We could print on standard 8.5" by 11" paper and piece it together, but the pieced-together look is distracting when you're trying to look at design quality, or sharing the board with people at a game design event. 

Welcome to the North Richland Hills Maker Spot.  This Maker space is hosted at the public library and made possible by a grant from the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services, as well as other organizations.  The best short description is "community workshop."  Most Maker spaces I've seen focus on two concepts: make available equipment that might be too expensive or otherwise prohibitive to have individually, and to facilitate the propagation of knowledge.

Case in point, our Maker Spot has an HP large format printer.  It prints on 36" rolls of paper, exactly what we needed for the game board.  It's connected to a Mac that has the full Adobe suite, and current price is $1 per linear foot of printing.  That's it -- copies of the game board for $3.  Considering that our next best offer was $40 with a half-day turnaround at a local print shop, this is more than a bargain.  Of course, I'm also unlikely to have a 36" printer at home -- the best deal I see on one on Amazon is $8,500.

Similar situation with other technologies.  The Maker Spot has 3D printers, a long arm quilting machine, an audio/visual production lab, electronics and woodworking equipment, and all manner of learning kits.  And there are classes.  Sharing of knowledge is a staple activity of all Maker spaces, and ours has a fantastic array of free classes -- you can learn sewing, 3D modeling, Arduino, Adobe, Raspberry Pi...not to mention Internet safety, small business start up, electronic privacy, and more.  My daughter and I have taught a few classes there on building devices in both Minecraft redstone and physical electronics. 

Different Maker spaces offer different equipment and classes, depending on the local need, interest, and availability.  I've seen some with full-scale auto garages, others with more electronics than a Radio Shack warehouse, and some offering pottery and crocheting classes.  Ours is definitely an invaluable community resource, especially if you're printing board game prototypes. 

Modularization, the Musical

Editorial note: I didn't actually write a musical about modularization.  I just liked the title, and have a theory that Melissa Schmitz only reads my blog if there's alliteration involved.  Sorry for misleading you.

I combined a few projects today to make a gift for someone, as well as some potential prizes for people when we launch our Film Tycoons Kickstarter campaign.  I've been 3D printing personalized dice for a long time and shared earlier the custom pawns I made for the game -- yesterday I built a box specifically for these types of toys. 

But not just any box!  It's a modularized box!  Or rather, the OpenSCAD code to generate the box is modularized.  The point: efficiency of flexibility.  The OpenSCAD script results in one command for each of the box parts: the bottom, the lid, the part-specific insert, and the name plate. You can produce many configurations of the box with hardly any time required, no cloning, re-modeling, etc.

Eric Hallberg, if you're reading this, feel free to borrow the technique for the automobile industry.  Seriously, no charge.  Happy to share.  :)

The lid changes size simply by changing a variable.  The dice fit in the box with the default lid size, so rendering the lid is as easy as typing boxlid().   The Film Tycoons pawns are taller, though, so boxlid(14); makes a taller lid to accommodate.  Likewise, the nameplate is a separate piece which fits somewhat snugly (and even more so with a little epoxy) to the lid; I could have printed the name directly in the lid, but the separate plate allows for a lot more flexibility.

The round or square inserts -- similar approach.  Specify the size of the holes in the insert and the code centers them appropriately. Most important here is that by printing the insert separately the box bottom can be printed ahead of time.  (I didn't take the extra step of combining the round-hole and square hole inserts in a single code block, but I'll likely do that before blogging about the actual code.)

Odd "box" trivia: the Simon & Garfunkel song The Boxer is NOT about a dog after all!

Oh, and the length and width of the box?  Also variable-driven.  If I needed ten dice for that Super Secret Professional Double Yahtzee League, it's just a matter of tweaking two numbers and you suddenly have a ten-die box. 

The only part of the project that can't be tweaked and re-printed in seconds* is the Chinese writing.  That's a bigger challenge than putting text on the nameplate; the characters have to be brought into another program as a graphic, converted to a format OpenSCAD can understand and extrude as a 3D object, then incorporated into the model.  Another topic for a later blog.

And Missy, I still feel slightly guilty about the alliteration/musical thing, but I'll try to make it up to you.  Maybe with some 3D printing haiku or something.  You're welcome in advance.

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* That's not exactly true.  Nothing 3D prints in "seconds."  At least, not in so few seconds that it wouldn't be more appropriate to measure in minutes or hours.  The more accurate way to say this would be, "...tweaked and started re-printing in seconds."

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My Decor, My Education, And Dinosaurs

Once you reach 35 or so, or after your daughter approaches teenage status (which ages Dad 10 years for every one of her birthdays, I'm convinced) it's pretty natural to start playing the "what would I have done differently?" game.  One of my favorite variations is "what would I have major in if I could go back now?"  Or the spin-off edition, "Dear daughter: you're not majoring in history.*" 

I've played this game for the better part of a decade, wondering which of my interests would have been better served with formal education and resulted in my launching a company that would change the world.  I used to think this was just idle musing, but it turns out, I've found the answer.

If I could go back to school, I'd major in a combination of Low Dimensional Geometric Topology. 

Why?  Simple.  I want to figure out why this damned area rug in my office won't lie flat.

The rug is the perfect size for covering up the center of the room.  I pull it flat numerous times every day but it always manages to bunch back up -- and it always bunches in the direction of the bookshelves, between which is the egress.  This makes no sense to me.  Sure, I pace a lot while I'm on the phone.  I walk constantly between my desk, the 3D printer, and the worktable.  However, one would have to assume that for every southward trip (toward the door) I'm making a northward trip (toward the desk.)  I assure you that I never leap from my desk to the tile outside the office door.

There must be a mathematical principle responsible for the constant wave pattern that appears in my rug throughout the day.**  I've considered attaching the rug to the floor, but then it would no longer be a rug, it would be a carpet.  That might solve the physical problem but wouldn't provide understanding.  And as Jurassic Park taught us, achieving a result without philosophical comprehension leads to bad things.

Rest assured, when I have the leisure time available to earn a doctorate in mathematics, I'll focus on solving this problem for my own good and that of all other office dwellers. 

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*Just to be clear, I didn't major in history.  I love history and have Randolph Campbell's Gone To Texas on my frequent re-read list, but even at 20 I realized that a history degree doesn't pave the way to many occupations.  I majored in pre-law, the obvious choice for a guy who's going to spend 20 years working in business intelligence and databases.

**I've considered and rejected the philosophical theory that my rug bunches toward the door because I'm eager to leave my workplace and thus, put a bit more energy in trips of that direction.  I love being at my desk and feel quite comfortable there, so I think the energy expended in each direction is balanced.

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More Fun With Electricity!

I finally got around to a bit more guided testing of my conductive ABS plastic this week, thanks to some direction from /u/eb86 and /u/SaffellBot from Reddit.  They suggested to simply measure the resistance of the conductive filament rather than the voltage drop.  Eb86 also gave me more direction on measuring the voltage drop with the filaments in series and the multimeter in parallel -- haven't gotten to this yet, but I will soon.

If you haven't read my previous blogs on this subject I'll repeat the disclaimer that I'm a horrible dabbler with electronics.  I've no issues with admitting my amateur status at anything (it's a pretty good approach for learning stuff, you know) and I love it if my dabbling inspires other people, but remember -- everyone's responsible for not burning down his or her own house.

This one's a pretty safe experiment.  Same 3D printed conductive block that I described in this blog.  This time I simply plugged the multimeter directly into the block to measure the resistance.  The reading was a pretty steady 143k ohms.  That's a heck of a lot more than the 330 ohm resistors that I normally use with my LEDs; I'm surprised the LED lights up at all with the conductive filament in the circuit.

Simple result: while this arrangement does conduct electricity, the resistance is pretty high.  (Sounds like I could be describing a marriage at times, huh?)

Appropriate music suggestion: Muse, "The Resistance."

Yesterday's experiment also resulted in a mystery*.  When my 3D printed block is in the circuit without a resistor the LED doesn't light at all.  Logic suggests that the resistor and block together would increase the resistance, but no one ever said that logic is key to science, right?

The logical next step (to me) is to print some different configurations of the conductive filament and figure out which offers the least resistance.  I've already got this latest one at 90% infill, is the resistance higher or lower with more dense infill?  Is the diameter of "wire" a contributing factor?  Like a circuit board, perhaps a very thin layer of conductive plastic is better than the wire I have now -- say, .1mm or .2mm as opposed to ten times larger.

More to come...but after I've finished more of my actual work for Film Tycoons.

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*By "mystery" I mean, "I don't know the answer to this, though it's very likely that someone with more knowledge of this subject probably sees my mystery as a basic fundamental concept.  You can laugh, but you know who you're coming to when you're trying to figure out a SQL database, don't you?

Crappy Endings and The Best Movie Ever Made

In the past two weeks I've seen three movies.  Small perk of being "between opportunities" or "impacted."*  My severance package doesn't include movie tickets, but it does enable me to take long lunch breaks every once in a while.  Since this is the 75th anniversary of Casablanca it's showing on the big screen, and there's no way I'm missing an opportunity for that.

I think even Christopher Walken is creeped out by Mr. McAvoy here.

Of the two new releases I saw: the first was a fairly mediocre movie but the final 30 seconds made me overwhelmingly glad I'd seen it and eager to see a follow-up.  The second was a brilliant, magical story, beautifully done, and the final 30 seconds almost completely ruined my enjoyment of the previous two hours.  The first movie was M. Night Shyamalan's latest effort, "Split."  I won't name the second movie because I don't want to dissuade anyone from seeing it; you may find the ending enjoyable. 

Incidentally, I didn't say the ending was BAD.  I said it ruined my experience.  Considering that I'd been enraptured by the movie until that last bit, that's a bad thing.

There are dozens of things that make Casablanca the Best Movie Ever Made.  Give me a call if you want to spend three or four hours discussing them all.  Here's the relevant one for today's blog: the ending was almost impossible to write, yet came out brilliant.

Here's the gist: Rick and Ilsa meet in Paris shortly before the German occupation begins.  Ilsa believes her husband, Victor, was killed by the Nazis.  She and Rick have a whirlwind romance.  When the Germans roll into town they need to flee -- but Ilsa finds out at the same time that Victor is still alive, so she leaves Rick hanging at the train station. 

Rick sets up shop in Casablanca and tries to forget about Ilsa.  A year later, she and Victor show up, still on the run from the Germans.  Ilsa was unaware Rick had moved to Casablanca.  Other important details: Rick still loves Ilsa.  Ilsa loves both men.  Victor can only be safe if he can get to America, and Rick is the only person who can get Victor out of Casablanca. 

Turns out Rick can choose how the story ends.  He and Ilsa can flee together, leaving Victor to a death sentence, or he can send Ilsa and Victor away together. 

The studio dilemma was pretty straightforward.  In 1942 there was no way a censor board would allow Rick and Ilsa to stay together without Victor dying.  (In fact, they had convulsions over Rick and Ilsa having their Paris affair; it was only allowed because she thought Victor dead.)  Leaving Victor to the mercy of the Nazis certainly wasn't an acceptable thing for our hero to do in '42, either.  The writers had to figure out an ending that would leave audiences happy despite Bogie being left with a (second) broken heart.  And they managed to do it perfectly.

How do you measure "perfect?"  Start with this: no remakes in 75 years.  Even fantastic movies like From Here To Eternity have suffered from the remake plague.  Not Casablanca.  Studios consider it "untouchable," as Madonna found out when she tried to remake it with (wait for it) Ashton Kutcher as Rick. 

Yeah.  Ashton Kutcher.  Sorry, kid.  You'll never have Paris.

Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life.

*You have to see the humor in your tough situations, and a favorite of mine is the tendency for people to use euphemisms instead of saying "laid off."  We're the "impacted."  It sounds like the name of a TV series.  The Afflicted.  The Infected.  The Impacted.**

**I realized I could name an awful lot of movies with "Impact" in the title.  Deep Impact.  Double Impact (with Jean-Claude van Damme!).  Sudden Impact.  Deadly Impact.  Final Impact.  That last one had Lorenzo Lamas.  Do you remember Lorenzo being in Grease?  I sure don't.

Oh, Amazon Prime, How You Spoil Me

Last December I thought it'd be fun to 3D print replacement tiles for my Settlers of Catan game.  The Catan board is made by placing hexagonal tiles next to each other; each tile represents one lot of resource-rich land (either wood, wheat, wool, brick, or ore) and the set is surrounded by sea tiles, which may have harbors for trading.  The junctures where three tiles come together provide spaces for villages and cities to be built, and the borders between tiles are roadways. 

I chose this tile set from Thingiverse for one feature -- small holes along the underside of each tile allow magnets to be placed inside.  The magnets are just strong enough to keep the tiles together during incidental bumping throughout the game.  (Otherwise the game could be retitled Settlers of San Andreas.) 

The preferred magnets are pretty specific: 3mm diameter spheres.  Go ahead.  Search for "spherical magnet" on Amazon.  You'll find that the world's biggest retail clearinghouse comes up pretty dry.  But no fear, the Thingiverse designer provided a link to a company in China which sells these.  The company is called TinyDeal, and back on December 16th I ordered myself a few boxes.

"It seems to run on some sort of electricity!"

Fast forward -- no, wait.  Crawl forward to February 1st and my magnets arrived. 

Sure, the magnets came from China.  The customer's expectations should be set appropriately; it takes a long time to ship goods from China.  Problem is, some behemoth has been steadily resetting the general expectations of the American consumer in regard to shipping time.  With Amazon Prime we regularly receive goods in two days, one day, or even the same day that we ordered them.  During the Super Bowl they even advertised the possibility of receiving your Doritos via drone in minutes, right?  If my craving for simulated nacho cheeze flavoring can be quenched in an hour, surely my need for tiny magnetic parts can be accommodated in less than six weeks.

The business lesson is pretty obvious -- scarcity is the only compelling factor to order from TinyDeal.  And even that could be alleviated easily by someone who orders in quantity, stores in the U.S., and is able to fulfill my magnetic need for just a few dollars more, but within days.  That's worth paying for, right?  I'm going to refer to this theoretical concept as importing.   Maybe I'll see it during my lifetime, though I'm pessimistic.  I'm still waiting on my flying car.

Running Time: In Search Of...

This week I got back on the horse.  Or at least, back on the treadmill.  About ten days ago I overdid it a bit; I was running on a Saturday and feelin' fine, getting my In Search Of on.  In fact, I was enjoying the run so much that I watched nearly four episodes: "Atlantis" first, then "Psychic Detectives" and "A Call From Space," followed by half of "Learning ESP."  Total time was 71 minutes, or just over seven miles.

Can you think of a better hero for a 13 year old girl?  Besides her dad, of course!

The next day I got through the second half of "Learning ESP," just about one mile.  Almost immediately my knee started to hurt.  I thought I'd "run it out."  That mile was enough to convince me that I was "running it worse," so I called it a day and researched iliotibial band syndrome instead.  Short story: overuse.  Rest until it doesn't ache, then do more cross-training.

Fortunately for both of you who eagerly awaited my next 70's TV review I was able to run again this week.  I caught "Nazi Plunder" on Tuesday and "Amelia Earhart" Thursday.  Since things are holding up pretty well my next run will include both "Dracula" and "The Easter Island Massacre."

One thing struck me about both "Nazi Plunder" and "Amelia Earhart."  As of today both these episodes stand the test of time.  Numerous tantalizing hints exist pointing to yet-unfound treasure ditched by Nazi officials fleeing the fall of the Reich.  And of course, despite tremendous research and searching, Amelia Earhart's disappearance has yet to be definitively explained.  Considering that these episodes are 40 years old and covering subjects from 30 to 35 year prior to that, it's pretty impressive that they can still be intriguing today. 

My Stakeholder's Hidden Agenda

One of the most common phenomenon* in business intelligence is the mismatched ends: you've gathered requirements, think you've gone through them ad nauseum, but weeks later the dashboard is delivered and the stakeholder says, "This doesn't meet my need."

Like any decent phenomenon** the Mismatched Ends mystify us.  That in itself is puzzling; given that the phenomenon occurs often/regularly/daily, one would think there's plenty of opportunity to study, solve, and avoid it.  And like any decent phenomenon the best place to seek an explanation is often the mind of a child.

The child in this case is my daughter, MD.  When MD was eight she and I started an annual ritual we call the "Dad and Daughter Adventure Trip."  We identify at least one Really Cool Thing to do, vow to stop at every Potentially Cool Thing on the way, and hit the road.  Sometimes the Adventure Trip includes a life lesson or at least a good learning experience.***

When MD was 13 we took our golf clubs with us on the Adventure Trip.  This one was a road trip through west Texas, and Texas in general is blessed with a bazillion golf courses.  MD navigates on road trips and quickly took on the job of finding golf courses to play.  She settled on a few criteria right away: no private clubs, and preferably no 9-hole courses.  She's also very price-conscious, a characteristic I hope she maintains through high school.

Over the week we played at three different courses and each turned out to be a great choice.  There were some consistencies in her selection -- even when near a large metro area she'd pick courses on the outskirts.  The courses never seemed to be very busy, and most of them were very duffer-friendly.  (Long, wide fairways with little water or trees.)  I finally asked how she was making the final selection in each area and found she had one very simple criterion: she was checking the course rules to find out if she could drive the golf cart.

That's it.  After the basic assumptions that we'd agreed upon she added one high priority condition.  She wanted to drive the cart.  I never would have guessed that this was important enough to influence her overall evaluation of courses, but it turned out to be absolutely critical. 

And this agenda item was "hidden" by her for some reason -- one strong possibility is that this was important enough to her that she assumed I already knew about it myself.  It's also possible that she was embarrassed a little by it and decided to own the search herself rather than vocalize the need.  I actually think it's the former -- after all, we both clearly understand that the most important criteria in selecting a hotel is the availability of a pool, so shouldn't Dad just know about the golf cart?

*Notice the clever use of the word "phenomenon."  It almost sounds positive, like, "Whoa!  Look at the fascinating thing we've discovered!"  This approach, rather than negative implication words like "challenge" or "problem" helps keep everyone feeling like we're making progress even though we've encountered setbacks and delays.  It's the same reason the safety briefing card on an airplane shows everyone smiling as they don life jackets and plummet toward the ocean.

**A few of my favorite phenomena in the U.S. include the Marfa Lights, the Devil's Kettle, and the Great Stalcpipe Organ.  You should leave your desk, go visit one of these places, and return to work with a sense that you're now prepared to completely dominant mundane tasks like requirements gathering.

***One of my favorite life lessons was, "Listen to Dad when he says you shouldn't eat three cheese Danishes right before a 12 mile hike at an elevation one mile higher than where you live."

Added Value Explained

I tidied up my office yesterday, a process which largely involves a) discarding bits and pieces of early 3D printing experiments, b) discarding bits and pieces of board game prototypes, and c) filing or discarding papers that have clearly passed the threshold of "every day use" and must now be relegated to either recycling, filing cabinet, or three-ring binder.  During that third stage I found what might be the most important business document ever: a worksheet my older daughter, MD,  completed at school in first grade.

The scan's a bit hard to read, so here's question #3: Alena wants to buy a sticker for 45 cents.  She hands the cashier 1 quarter, 1 dime, and 2 nickels.  Did Alena give the cashier enough money for the sticker?

The answer, of course, is yes.  The sticker costs 45 cents (holy inflation!) and Alena hands the cashier 45 cents.  MD dutifully shows her work (25 + 10 + 10 = 45) and says, "Yes." 

But that's not all.  In the margin she adds, "but not with tax though."  And there you have the two simple keys to defining and identifying added value.  Information beyond the simple correct answer was provided, and that information was of vital, practical importance to the end user. 

The smiley face and "I love it!" is from her teacher.  That's the added value litmus test: the end user recognizes that the information provided went above and beyond the minimum correct answer AND provided insight that could help avert a negative situation or facilitate a greater success. 

I showed this to my team members seven years ago and it's occupied various spots in my office ever since.  Though there's a pretty good size file of paper memories for her in my closet, I think this one's going back up on the office wall for another few years.

I Have No Job, But I Have A 3D Printer

(I thought that was a bit catchier title than, "Conductive Filament Part 2."  At least it gets fewer conflicting hits on Google, right?)

I meant to post this earlier in the week but as the title subtly hints, I was laid off on Monday.  That took a bit of wind out of my blogging sails this week.  Ironic, given that I've abruptly had time on my hands.  On the plus side, I'm interspersing my job search time with 3D tinkering and helping get the new 3D printers set up at my daughter's school, so...let's do some more filament testing.

In Part 1 of this subject I started testing the actual conductivity of STAR Alchement's Conductive ABS Filament.  In technical terms, the results were middlin'.  While my printed coupler did conduct electricity, it dropped the 8V output from my battery to just over 4V.  I decided to change a few things on the next attempt.

I was out of bananas, so I used a penny for scale.

The coupler in this experiment is regular ABS (Hatchbox Gold, not to be confused with the awesome double album, ABBA Gold) while the inside is Alchement's Conductive.  The sockets are the same size cones described in the first blog; the wires pressure fit snugly into the ends of the block.  Each cone tapers down to a 2mm diameter cylinder, and the entire arrangement is 40mm long.

One other key change -- I separated the processes and used different infill densities.  The gold box is 25% infill, same thing I use for most prints.  The conductive part, however, is at 90% infill. 

Similar test to before.  Measure the battery output alone, then add the coupler to the circuit and measure again.  No need for a "before" shot this time, it's pretty much the same as the first time.  (It's the same battery, same battery clip, and I promise I haven't been running my Walkman off it in the intervening week.) 

You can see the results below. Although the voltage still isn't at the full 8V the battery was putting out before, it's much higher at 6.26 than the 4V from the first piece that I printed.  It was also quite steady.  Once the wires were seated firmly the reading hardly budged.  The obvious conclusion is that the 90% infill made the major difference. 

Next steps will be trying a few more variations of the "wire."  The connecting wire here is 2mm diameter over 20mm (each of the sockets is 10mm deep) and perhaps that volume causes more diffusion.  (Mike Patterson, if you're reading this, stop laughing.  My line is business intelligence, not electrical engineering.)  After a visit to PAX South this weekend I'm going to print more models with 1mm or .5mm wires and see if I get any noticeably different results. 

First Test of the Conductive 3D Filament

One of my favorite things about 3D printing as a hobby is that new capabilities are developing almost daily.  It seems like a new type of filament is on the market every day, or someone has assembled a new extruder to do anything from create edible cake decorations to pouring concrete housing.  A while ago I ordered [STAR] Alchement's Conductive ABS filament and this week I started testing it out.  The significance of this as a printing capability is pretty obvious.  If you've also got an interest in electronics, it's possible to simply print some circuitry as opposed to leaving cavities for electronic parts in your prints.  My dual extruder printer should be particularly well suited for this -- print regular ABS from one extruder for the main print, and conductive from the other to make "wires" through the print.

Of course, this all depends on whether or not the conductive filament is truly conductive.

The Amazon reviews aren't promising.  To date there's one question asked: is the filament truly conductive?  One person has answered, and he rather vehemently says no, it's not conductive at all.  Likewise, the sole review gave the filament three stars and claims that it's not conductive "by any means." 

Well, I've got a roll and I like Alchement's other filaments, so let's give it a try.  Here's my disclaimer: I've only run one test so far.  I'm going to modify some of the prints to see if I can improve the results.  I wouldn't claim that this first bit of data is conclusive.

For a simple conductivity test I printed a little connector, pictured to the right.  It's just a rectangle of filament, 40mm long, 2mm sides.  The final 10mm at each end is a hollowed out cone, 1mm wide at the very end, narrowing down to .4mm.  Hence, a jumper wire or the leg of an LED or resistor pressure fits into the socket and there are 20mm of "solid" filament between the two sockets.  (Quotes around "solid" because I printed this at 50% infill.  One of the next things I'll toy with is printing the "wire" at 100% infill.)

Quick printing specs: because I'm dealing with a pretty small part and want the sockets to work well I changed my primary layer height to .1mm.  The bed is set at 105C and the extruder at 230C.  It printed quite nicely at these settings and given how small the part is, it took about 10 minutes.)

Time for some measurements.  The picture on the left is the multimeter hooked up directly to the 9V battery.  Not surprising, I'm getting just under 8V.  (It's a veteran battery.)  On the right, I've gone from the battery to my filament connector, then a jumper wire to the multimeter probe.  Noticeable drop in voltage, down to 4V, but it IS conductive.

Some immediate thoughts: it's possible that my socket design isn't the best.  The wires are all plugged in pretty tight; they won't fall out of the sockets without a good tug.  It's worth looking at, though.  Also, the aforementioned infill of the wire.  In the current configuration (no pun intended) my "wire" is 4 square mm with 50% infill.  When printing this as a wire inside another model I plan on making the wire a 1mm cylinder at 90% or 100% infill. 

Of course, the multimeter is good for testing but not really a fun application.  Here's a little more visual evidence of the difference, using an LED to demonstrate.  Again, straight hookup on the left, conductive filament socket in the mix on the right.

Early conclusion: hell yeah, it's conducting electricity!  No disappointment here, it's time for more experimentation.  :)

Low Carb Jump Start!

So, it's Friday and you're going to start low-carbing Monday.  Excellent!  If you're not accustomed to a low carb diet it's pretty hard to stick with it more than a few days, in my opinion.  More than the first few days, that is.  It definitely gets easier the longer you do it; after I'd spent six months on low carb (low enough to be in ketosis constantly) I found that I could spend a few days eating carbs again and easily get back into low carb mode.  Those first couple of weeks were a struggle, though, so here are suggestions that I think are key to getting started.

First, one of the easiest excuses for dropping out of low carb is, "I don't have what I need to make low carb food right now."  Plan ahead to avoid that.  Go to RuleMe.com and AllDayIDreamAboutFood.com and /r/ketorecipes and all the other great places to find low carb recipes.  Find some that look good, and go out to get the ingredients NOW.  Get eight blocks of cream cheese.  Get meat.  Lots of meat.  And eggs, and seasonings.  Stock up on keto-friendly cooking stuff now so you aren't caught unprepared later."

Next, figure out your favorite salad stuff and again, stock up.  I eat a salad with baby spinach leaves, ranch, feta cheese, and some kind of protein (turkey bacon bits, shrimp, or chicken) at least once per day and ideally twice.  It helps you feel full so you don't get hungry between meals.

Snacks!  Snacks can be the bane of low keto.  I found I really like the Atkins bars and some of the Atkins candy.  They're really convenient if I'm in a hurry, and I can sneak them into the movie theater.  Likewise, I like the store bought cheese crackers (Moon Cheese and Cello Whisps) and recently started making my own in the dehydrator.  Have that stuff nearby so that when you have to snack, you can do it low carb.

Quantity in cooking.  If you're going through the trouble of making a new recipe, make enough that you'll be able to eat for the next few days.  I love the cheesy chicken and pepper soup recipe I found, and I make it in batches that will give me four meals.  Combine that with having some other stuff already prepared, and I can go four or five days without cooking, but without relying on Atkins bars and cheese to get by.

Finally, find a tracking app and use it religiously.  I started out using MyFitnessPal, but now I'm using Fitbit's app for both my exercise and calorie intake tracking.  Which is good, since it easily shows me my calorie deficit.  Most important, though, is that tracking your calories and carbs keeps you really aware of what you're eating.  If your goal is to stay in ketosis you need to make sure your carb count is very low.  If you're working on weight loss, you want to be tracking the calories as well.  This was a big one for me -- after six to eight weeks of tracking nutrition to stay in ketosis, I found it much easier during my carb-ful breaks to stay in a good calorie deficit despite eating carbs.

Most important note -- keep getting back on the horse.  Remember, it's a long haul, not a sprint.  If you can sprint for a while, great, but overall, health is something you're maintaining over decades, not days.  If you deviate from your desired course one day, just get back on track and try again.

Dialing In My Frustrating Frustum

Yesterday I decided it would be fun to create a 3D model of a pyramidal frustum.  I have no idea how this popped into my head, but I've decided to blame it on my friend Mike P., from way back in junior high and high school.  Mike had a great knowledge of the esoteric and was quite a good artist.  It's quite possible that while we were playing Car Wars one day he made an offhand comment like, "If I designed a house it would be a pyramidal frustum."  That'd be just like Mike.

So yesterday I decided to model my own pyramidal frustum, and because no project can be left simple, I decided to embed Fibonacci spirals in the faces.  (Plus, anything with a Fibonacci spiral is automatically +5 in Mysterious, right?)  You can see the OpenSCAD code for the modeling if you like, but here I'm going to talk about dialing in the FlashForge Dreamer settings to make a nice print.

The four prints in the photo are ordered left to right from first printed to final print.  The first print's pretty bad.  The copper layers are really uneven and the edges are stringy. The blue spirals look terrible -- the second extruder leaked blue filament everywhere, yet somehow managed to not fill well in the print itself.  Go figure.  I'm using Simplify3D to slice and in that first print, the Hatchbox bronze PLA was set at 180 while the Metalink blue was set to 200.

(My Dreamer has upgraded nozzles which tend to make Hatchbox PLA print at lower temps than the original nozzles.  However, I just got this Metalink filament recently and used it to print all the sea tiles for a Settlers of Catan set quite nicely at 200C.)

For the second attempt I decided to turn on retraction and coast at end.  I was trying to avoid using a priming pillar because pillars really add to the length of a print.  I find that the priming pillar needs to be 10 or 12 mm square, minimum, to NOT break away from the print bed.  When your pyramid is 30mm square at the base, that priming pillar adds significantly to the overall print time.  So, retraction on to 2mm, coast at end of Simplify3D's default .2mm.  Result: a still very crappy looking frustum.

Third attempt: increased the retraction to 5mm and the coast at end to 2mm.  (Yeah, that's a big jump in the coast value.)  I also lowered the temp on my Metalink filament to 190, since it was still leaking little drops of blue all over the place.  The threading seems to have gotten even worse in this one.

Fourth try: all right, I'm turning on the ooze shield.  I use this feature a lot when I print dice, since it helps prevent cross-contamination of the filaments.  I'd been trying to avoid this since it adds to the print time; not quite as badly as the prime pillar, but noticeably.  In this case, the print time went from 36 minutes to almost exactly an hour.  Yikes. 

On the other hand, the ooze shield made that fourth frustum come out far nicer than any of the previous attempts.  I did leave my retraction and coast set the same as the third attempt, but the ooze shield clearly made the biggest difference.  I'll have to experiment further with tweaking the retraction, extra restart distance, and other related settings.  For now though, when someone has a critical need for a pyramidal frustum, I'll have to stick with the ooze shield.

Running Time: In Search Of...

Hello, 1970's!  For Christmas someone sent me a box set of EVERY EPISODE of In Search Of, a documentary-ish series that ran from 1976 to 1982 and was hosted by Mr. Spock, er, Leonard Nimoy. I've run through six episodes so far.  The episode lengths are perfect for running; at 22 minutes each I can do an easy weekday morning run of 2.2 miles or the two-episode runs of 45 minutes for a nice 4.5 miles.  (When watching episodes 1 and 2 on weekdays I just ran an extra three minutes each time to get to a nice, even 2.5 miles.)

It's a fun series to watch, if you can avoid getting into the "40 years later we know better" mindset.  So far I've viewed topics such as plant empathy, the Nazca Lines, the Bermuda Triangle, Bigfoot, and killer bees.  First thing that struck me was the disclaimer at the beginning of each show -- the producer points out that this show is only meant to introduce a few possibilities, not back any particular theory or claim to know fact.  I thought it funny that that seemed important to do, given that today people make whatever moronic claims they want on TV without the slightest concern of veracity.  Go figure.

Second thing I noticed is that a lot of the clothing reminds me of my childhood.

Although you have enjoy the series while keeping in mind that forty years have passed (much like watching Ray Harryhausen special effects and still loving Perseus taking on the Kraken) one more serious lesson did occur to me while watching the episode on Bigfoot.  One segment includes an anatomist who has viewed the Robert Patterson Bigfoot film in "minute detail, frame by frame."  He swears that the film must be authentic and goes into great scientific detail about why Patterson couldn't have faked the film.  You've got to believe him, right?  After all, this is the specialty he's studied for decades.  Of course, in 1998 a fellow named Bob Heironimus admitted to being the man in the Bigfoot costume and other evidence surfaced to show that the film was entirely faked.  Sorry, Science.

Keto Bread and Silicone Pans

Although this keto-friendly bread recipe has already been covered extensively on Reddit I'm adding yet another blog about it, partly so I can link here when I want to share it with people.  Directing them to something on a popular Reddit thread is like telling them to review an audio recording of a conversation that took place five years ago in the middle of a football stadium.  Good luck picking out the relevant information.

I agree with KetoConnect -- it's the best keto bread recipe I've found to date, and I've tried a bunch of them.  With this recipe I can make slices of bread that are 1) a decent size while still being 2) low carb and 3) not so spongy as to just fall apart.  In fact, I found this stuff is especially good when toasted lightly before making it into a sandwich or slider buns.  Another nice thing about this recipe is that the dough ends up soft enough to actually pour well.  I was able to fill up the pans without feeling like I was sculpting the dough into something that resembled a brick made from the surface of Mars.

Getting a decent sized slice of bread without adding four to eight grams of carbs to a meal is really challenging.  I found that these silicone pans from Amazon worked great -- the recipe filled each pan almost to the top and the loafs rose noticeably.  I sliced each loaf into 12 pieces, so the total calories/carbs turned out to be 75 calories, .9g of carb in each piece.  You could round that up to 1g of carb for easy adding or depending on what your thoughts on carbs in eggs are.  (When calculating this I assumed .6g of carb per egg.  I've seen the carb estimate as low as .4g per egg from the National Agricultural Library to 1g according to numerous online resources.)

Modular Printing to Avoid Support

I decided to model some custom pawns for Film Tycoons this weekend.  The "old fashioned" film camera might be the most iconic (non-copyrighted) symbol of American film, so it's the most obvious pawn choice.  It also has a very pleasing silhouette; you glance at it and know immediately what it is.  That outline structure causes some 3D printing issues, though -- there are a lot of unsupported overhangs at angles which can't be printed.

Quick lesson for those who aren't familiar with 3D printing: an unsupported section is any bit of plastic which does not have plastic directly beneath it.  Consumer grade 3D printers work by laying down layer after layer of plastic.  (The layers in these pawns are .2mm tall.)   The layers can gradually shift as the print builds; up to a 45 degree incline is quite safe and you can get even steeper if you print slowly.  Hence, the tripod legs will print with no problem.

Check out the front of the lens housing, though.  That's 90 degrees to the print bed and hanging in thin air, about a centimeter above the table.  Try to print that and you're going to end up with a big glob of plastic

One way to handle this is by printing support.  The slicer (the software which translates a 3D model file to code for the 3D printer) can add in columns of plastic with a more diffuse density and a weak connection to the layer being supported.  The support columns break off easily from the part.  However, supports increase the overall print time, they can leave rough spots on the surface of your model, and they can increase risk -- if the support doesn't have a wide base it can break away from the print bed and cause your print to fail just as easily as the finished part itself.

Instead of printing one solid part with support I decided to cut my model into three pieces, each of which could be printed with no support, then glue them together.  From the base to the connecting point on the tripod was one logical piece, the camera body and lens are another, then the reels. 

I hate gluing flat pieces together, though.  No one wants to hold two pieces together for ten minutes while the glue dries, right?  Especially if there are two gluing operations per pawn and I'm printing six pawns.  That's...a lot of time that I could be playing Ruzzle. 

The answer: pegs and holes.  (Ikea figured this out a long time ago, too.)  The camera housing has a hole on both top and bottom.  the tripod and reels each have a peg.  Besides making the gluing easier, this helps ensure that the pieces are aligned the correct way. 

I actually turned this 90 degrees to the left for printing, so that the lens pointed straight up.

I also use this little technique when slicing larger prints into pieces that will fit on the printer.  My Maltese Falcon is an example of that; I wanted it to be the same size as the movie prop, which meant slicing it into three parts.  Peg holes helped keep his parts flush at reassembly.  (Clarification: I didn't create this awesome Falcon model; I printed someone else's model from Thingiverse.)

A couple of other interesting production notes.  First, the to make the peg/hole arrangement really work well, the holes should be cylinders with different diameters at the ends.  In this example my pegs have a diameter of 4.5mm.  The holes have a diameter of 5mm at the opening and 4.6mm at the back, providing a snug pressure fit.  The pieces actually stay together pretty well without any glue.

Second, note the orientation of the housing -- I printed it with the back side flat against the print bed, lens pointing up in the air.  Why?  The peg holes have a 90 degree overhangs.  The one on the bottom could potentially sag during the print.  Probably not a big worry in this case because the widest of those "roofs" is only 4.6mm, but it's still a good practice.

Sometime soon I'll post the OpenSCAD file for this model either here in my site or on Thingiverse.

Running Time: You Only Live Twice

Since I have nearly all of the James Bond movies on DVD now (I used to have them on VHS.  I haven't been using the VHS player for a while) I realized I could run about ten marathons while watching my way through the entire collection.  And that's even skipping the truly crappy films.  This last week I hit You Only Live Twice, mainly because it's one of those that I haven't seen for years.  Keep in mind that Bond movies are LONG.  This one clocks in at three minutes less than two hours, so I ended up watching it in four runs: 3 miles, 2 miles, 4 miles, 3 miles. 

It's also one of the worst-written Bond movies.  It's overly fantastic, even for a Bond film.  Yeah, normally James gets a metric crap ton of the old willing suspension of disbelief, but this one defies all boundaries.  Worse, though (and what relegates this to the ranks of lesser Bond films) is that the believable parts of the script just don't make sense.

Ignore the fact that SPECTRE has perfected a VTOL spaceship that can capture other spaceships and bring them back to Earth, without either the Americans or Soviets able to track it.  We'll just let that go via "it's a bond film."  More annoying is that to "infiltrate" this small Japanese fishing island, Bond must a) be made up to pass as a Japanese fisherman, b) marry a local villager to establish bona fides and c) train to be a ninja.  All in three days, no less.

You know who the least Japanese-looking man on the planet is?  Sean Connery-san.

Of course, none of this subterfuge is really necessary because SPECTRE apparently knows where Bond is all along.  He's attacked twice at Tiger Tanaka's secret home and ninja training ground, so why he needs to marry a local woman to gain access to the volcanic island base is beyond me.  Not to mention that Tiger manages to infiltrate a hundred commando ninjas onto the island without marrying them off to the locals.  Apparently SPECTRE will be alerted by a Single White Male setting foot on the island, but 100 strangers in a village of 50 people doesn't raise an alarm.

Here's the one thing I really like about You Only Live Twice: it was written by Roald Dahl.  That's right, the same Roald Dahl who wrote Matilda and The BFG.  I looked up Roald after watching and found his story far more entertaining than the movie.  He was also a World War II fighting ace in the Royal Air Force, but this came after he'd already crashed one plane in the African desert and severely injured himself.  Guess there's always a chance to rekindle your career.

Low Carb Hot Dog Fettucine Alfredo

That's right.  Hot dog.  I already had this excellent alfredo sauce made from a recipe in Quick and Easy Ketogenic Cooking, by Maria Emmerich.  Someone really cool bought me this book a few days ago and I didn't want to wait for Christmas to start using it.  I made some of the alfredo sauce a few days ago to eat with some chicken and shrimp and loved it.  That same day I ordered some Miracle Noodles, which I also learned about in said book.  They arrived yesterday, and I was really eager to try them this morning.

Four miles of running this morning (which included most of Episode Six of The Man in the High Castle) made me quite ready for some alfredo for lunch.  Alas, I discovered that the four ounces of leftover chicken I had in the fridge was actually zero ounces.  Apparently I ate it yesterday...

I did, however, have hot dogs.  Another of Ms. Emmerich's recipes, Pigs In A Bacon Blanket, called for hot dogs, so...why not try them in alfredo sauce?  The noodles took two minutes to boil, the sauce and dog took about a minute to heat.  Since the noodles are zero calorie, zero carb, the whole meal came to about 310 calories and around 1 gram of carb.  (Oscar Meyer Premium Beef Franks are 130 calories each.)  I'm re-reading Dune right now and I'm happy to report it goes just fine with hot dog alfredo.