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  There have been more than a couple technical difficulties, but the bike RV is rolling, at least a little bit. #biketooter

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  Still not quite as far along as I was hoping, but the frame is painted, the fridge tray, rear trailer jacks and deck all permanently mounted (that is, with lock nuts or loctite), and the chain cleaned and cut down to a better length for the tiny front sprocket I switched to for lower gearing. I'm beginning to resign myself to having to do some of the hexayurt assembly once I get to the playa. I'm not even 100% sure it will fit in the uhaul with the roof attached. Ugh, I hate thi...

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  Newton could predict mountaintop observatories, but not adaptive optics.

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  I think I'm going to be here for a while.

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  It's only tacked together, but the hexayurt is complete. Still to do: Fully tape up the seams, except joining the roof, as it probably won't fit in the uhaul with that attached. Connect the walls to the deck, add the tape loops to the roof for the straps which provide much of the strength. Figure out how the solar panel mounts. Pack. Buy food. A thousand other things. Don't quite tip over into burnout.

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  Huh, I could have sworn the prescription lens blanks were 60mm. Sorry, everyone I misled!

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  Sometimes you can't sleep until you've gotten a very silly idea out of your head.

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  4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007) Grim, claustrophobic and devastating, this follows college roommates arranging an illegal abortion in communist Romania. Glad I watched it. Will definitely never watch it again.

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  I've had this ridiculous idea bouncing around my head for years, and tonight I finally did it. Take that, overhanging greenery! #biketooter

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  I just realized it's weird that most people seem to think that zero-gravity "Vomit Comet" flights achieve free fall by diving straight down, instead of following a parabolic arc up and over like they really do. Because that's actually a thing commonly done in everyday life, when stealing a bite of something drippy from a plate across the table. You do a little bouncing motion, and then move it up and over in an arc to your own plate, trying to keep everything in freefall so the...

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  This weekend I finally cut down the cargo trike's rear axle so I could add the differential. Luckily each side was already supported by 2 bearings, so no other serious modifications were needed. This also meant adding a pressfit sleeve to what used to be the undriven wheel, to add enough thickness for a keyway to firmly couple it to the axle. I'm a bit nervous if that will hold under real torque, but that will just need to be answered empirically. It's not quite ready for that yet, b...

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  At what point does it become millimobility?

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  Aw yeah, that's the shit.

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  It is hard to exaggerate just how common autonomous cars are here.

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  Biblically accurate surveillance state

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  It's too wet out to continue today, but I at least got the cargo trike frame stripped and ready for painting when possible. Which means I need to decide what exact color it should be, beyond my primary goal of "dear god anything other than that hideous mint green". I originally intended to lean hard into the RV look with Winnebago browns, but now I'm wondering if a cream base and the "Berlin" urban camouflage scheme would be interesting. I&...

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  Tonight I've been experimenting with bulk assembly of the remaining Life cell prototype boards. It's gone okay, but there are definitely a lot of subtleties to pick up still.

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  It's a bit hard to see because only the debug LEDs are installed, but I just got real Conway's Life behavior running on hardwired circuits on modular boards! It's a classic blinker, the simplest oscillator possible, discovered by Conway himself in 1970. It alternates between | and —, between the middle column being on and the middle row being on. The clock signal is manual, half a cycle with each click. Watch the lowest of the three LEDs on each cell to see the pattern sw...

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  Bay Area folks: I'll be in town next week Monday through Thursday with a lot of free time. Let me know if you want to meet up for coffee of something. Or if there is something I should be sure to check out while in the area!

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  I'm so old I still sometimes call this thing a DMM.

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  Today I'm driving out to eastern Washington to see some visiting family.

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  My punch card cyberdeck from last year got a nice mention in this Make blog post: https://makezine.com/article/technology/computers-mobile/destroy-big-tech-with-a-salvaged-cyberdeck/

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  The heavy duty drawers are done! The rotary table and the collet chuck finally have a permanent place to live! The 4-jaw chuck and the faceplate also moved in, for the community.

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  @rstevens Unfortunately, Jevon's paradox means the overall Umberto consumption only goes up.

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  @gigabecquerel Yeah, I've only bothered a couple times, when it's the relatively rare case of needing real processing power in a small package. That said, having a full dev environment onboard sure is nice!

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  Does anyone need a 38" x 52" x 7" granite surface plate? I know of a dead CMM in the LA area which is going to become landfill if they can't find anyone to take it off their hands.

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  Today was a nice, sunny day to break out the stained glass protest sign. #nokings

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  Having a very Seattle evening here.

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  I'm finally cleaning up the outer shop properly after finishing Goose2, and in case you were wondering how much grinding dust a large sculptural piece can generate...

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  "What's in the box?" "Precision."