Author: Peter Jones

Cut and glued the astroturf to the shelves. I’ll probably tack down a bit where the glue didn’t go all the way to the edge. Probably use superglue. I’m also pet much decided now that I’m going to cut wedges to act as shelf brackets. Unfortunately that means a lot more cutting. That and I’ll have to build a jig for them.
After way to much decisioning, I have a LiPo, battery management circuit, headers, Pi Zero, and TFT enroute. Next steps will be:
Get connection between the Pi and RePhone.
Get sound through the RePhone, or route the RePhone’s sound through the Pi and build an audio circuit for the Pi (because it turns out the Pi Zero doesn’t have audio broken out.
Physically map where everything will be.
Fab the case. Probably start with a paper cut out, and then depending on how I feel about it, start fabbing out of wood. Whether I feel good about it will drive how many mockups I do before I go with the good stuff.
Ideally make a plaster cast of the case. Repeatability is a good thing.
Wire everything up. I’m using Adafruits PiGrrl Zero as a base, minus all the stuff that makes a game system, using a bigger screen, stuff like that.
Add SIM card to the RePhone, and do a month of testing on a new phone number, if that works, change my phone number and do my old one.
Laptop.

Just saw an audible on the PRUs the Beaglebone. Question answered. Going Beaglebone, gonna order the display and stuff tonight. Or when home and sober. Might be the morning because it’s Friday bitches.

So I’m at 37 hours I’d work this week, and it’s only Thursday morning (before work obviously), so I’m not making a lot of progress. As a plus note, Comcast dropping network save my Myrmidon in Eve. Yay! But yeah, no progress.
Looking at the displays available for the Raspberry Pi’s funky interface versus the Beaglebone Black, it’s looking to be a wash as the Beaglebone has sine that plugin as a shield (which means a slightly higher price), while the Pi is just using the HDMI usually (which the Beaglebone can as well). I saw instructions for building aPiGrrl (or however the downing goes) on Adafruit, and I’ll be using that as a base for a lot of the setup. Still need to decide on the board though. I have the Beaglebone lying around, but the Pi Zero could help reduce the firm factor. I’m thinking Pi Zero because of the size. Also, I think the Beaglebone’s Ethernet port would be wasted on a phone, but could be great in the next project.

The Wif tested me kat night while I was blocks away from the house. Unfortunately this caused me to twitch which caused my phone to fall out of my hand which caused the screen to break even more. Now I’m looking at what appears to be a PCB’s ground plane, and that’s probably not good.
Luckily, I’ve been sitting on a stilton to this for a while now. I have a RePhone kit, opened bit not assembled, at home. So today, order a SIM card for it. Assemble, and get base functionality going. Then look at interfacing across between the Beaglebone Black and it. I’ll need to look a touchscreen, battery circuit (charging, monitoring, stepping up), and a camera. I have a USB webcam I can use, that I believe pays nice with Linux. Wi-Fi would be good. Bluetooth? Maybe I should just made sure to leave room in the case, or be prepared to make more cases as needed. Probably leave room. I could call it an Americano hahaha.
So tonight order the SIM card, assemble, prep.

This is an attempt to document which beer bottle labels exit the bottle with least effort. Some of the following I already know to separate terribly, some were coming off while drinking. But, a science has to start somewhere. All measurements were done badly, but this will start a discussion, not end an argument.

1/2 cup baking soda
Full sink of luke warm water
10:05am – 7pm ish

Emerald Triangle IPA – label sloughed off, little glue left
Rogue 4 Hop IPA – label was straight falling off, lots of glue
Lagunitas Stoopid Wit – label lifted off with ease, lots of glue left
10 Barrel Apocalypse IPA – label had to be scraped, but it came off
Elysian Dayglow IPA – booger glue, out turns out that baking soda doesn’t do jack against booger glue
Crux Cast Out IPA – label didn’t even move

So… results. Metallic labels or anything like it just don’t want to get give. Textured stock (Rogue and Lagunitas), the labels fall off, leaving bits of the label behind. Mild scraping with a Teflon scraper does the magic though. Cheap labels come off bit can be messier.

I’ve never seen a problem I didn’t want to fix. Now a lot of my solutions aren’t any better than the disease, but most of my solutions never get implemented anyway. The thing is, I’ll continue coming up with these solutions well post the time of usefulness. At least once a year I end up sing something and resizing it’s an even better way of removing a critical mass of snow on a roof.
So yesterday my work computer was starting to choke up a bit, so I pop open the task manager, and hello there Mr. Node.exe. It turns out that Creative Cloud uses Node for some backend.
I could totally work with that to quickly prototype some jdf/jmf integration in the workplace and get a proof-of-conc…
Oh, nevermind.

Soon the cat tree will be done. The Wif got the astroturf for the shelves, I have a few posts to clean the cuts up on, and then it’s just making it a little better. I think I’ll do the full assembly before I decide of I need more side guards. I think it’ll be strong enough as is, and I’d like the scrap for other projects.
Ooh… scraps and projects. Because I cut the round holes, that means I now have three roughly circular pieces of plywood. Chan then up a bit, and add rubber, and those sound like wheels.
Right. Assembly.

Totes was trading through wood like a mofo. I’ve decided I have a couple more cuts I’m going to go after all, and then it’s time to drill. Assembly will be waiting for the Wif to do some carpeting. We’re thinking astroturf (because she saw done I the cheap). Could more cuts for cross bars, couple cuts to even out (hand saw), rap the interior angle of the uprights, drill holes.

Worse idea? Definitively bad? Questionable bad?
How hard would it be to make a pseudo video driver that took all those beautiful shaders, textures and everything, and just pitched them?
How little of a system could ruin how intense of a game?

I was bsing about why I under but on tools with one of my coworkers. My main answer is that I take issue with other people’s work a lot of the time. I’m shorter than standard, have small hands,  not height-weight proportionate by American standard, and have a non-standard preferred aesthetic. So I boot strap.
This discussion led me to mentioning that I never had a toll that was just right. But I did. In the early 2000s I had a Sony laptop that was the bomb. Aluminum chassis before it was standard, 1440×900 display. Cammed hinges. This thing was sweet. I took it everywhere and ticked it like a hurricane.
Then the video card burned from heat. This led me to wanting to build my own laptop.
My coworker asked if I ever write this stuff down or of I just keep out bouncing around in my head.
That is why I blog.