Timasomo 2025: Week 1 Updates

Been waiting for this! Turns out working on a project is a lot of fun if you know you can share updates with people who at least tangentially care.

So, calculator update one! I've found a name for the project, I've designed the keypad and the UI for it.

I've decided to call the calculator PIGS. Back in the day, I had a TI-84, and one of the few games I used to waste my maths class away on was called DRUGWARS. It was a management simulator, and you had to buy and sell drugs while moving from place to place to avoid the cops. Sometimes, random events would happen, and one of the random events (and the one that stuck with me the most) was "PIGS MADE A BIG COKE BUST! PRICES ARE OUTRAGEOUS!!!!". That would just always really tickle me in a strange way and I've always associated it with the vague notion of calculators.

For design, I am thinking black, white and orange. Dunno why, just seems right. Made some sketches on paper and reused an old numpad I had lying around from my mechanical keyboard obsession days, sketched out the keypad and i think i'm happy with this layout. Also made a custom set of keycaps and I'm having them custom printed on some website I hadn't heard of before, but their online keycap designer tool is surprisingly robust.

In terms of UI, if at all possible, I want the screen to be square. Just kinda seems cool, but if I can't find a screen that fits my specifications, I'm happy to settle for a portrait 16:9 screen. For now, I'm designing for the square screen. My screen design poison of choice is Sketch, not that it matters for white text on black rectangle, and I've made some screens for things I'd like it to have. Since it's all just math, and I'm pretty comfortable at web design, this should be easy enough to implement.

Oh yeah, I'll also probably just use a Raspberry Pi (I'm thinking Zero W, but I do have a 4B lying around too if it really is too slow) for this, running a web server and browser. I know that's not efficient, or particularly suited for the task, but I know I can make that work, so this is the army we go to war with. Making this thing for myself, after all.

Next steps will be actually writing the software and getting my hands on a screen to work with! Having a lot of fun with this project so far. Happy Timasomo!

So! I've been drafting a surrealist fantasy novel, and things are going pretty well, I'd say. First of all, just writing this thing, and when I'm not writing about it thinking about it, has been really good for keeping my mind off the state of the world, and for not falling into doomerism, so I'm happy about that.

When it comes to the actual drafting, I've been going at a good clip. I've written 12k words in one week, which, going by NaNoWriMo rules, is more than enough to hit the required 50k words in a month that that challenge requires. The problem is, I'm realizing that that pace is still probably too slow. This novel is fucking sprawling, there's so much that happens in it. I had speculated last week that it might be a novella; in actual fact, my first draft of this thing could get as high as 100-150k words, or at least that's what I'm estimating, and I'm actually a fairly economical writer, so that's fairly lean for the story being told. Guh. That said, I've been having so much fun writing this thing I might be able to pick up the pace for the next couple weeks.

Okay, so the biggest problem is that I have no idea whether this story is any good. As a surrealist novel, I really want to conjure up a poetic, dreamlike quality. I've recently been inspired by a lot of the Latin American magical realism stuff, like think 100 Years of Solitude or Pedro Paramo, and I think a lot of the success of that style relies on the cumulative effect of the finished product. Like, I've written some scenes where I was like, "Oh yeah, that's a great fucking scene," and some where I'm like, "this'll definitely need a few more passes in revisions," but as a whole I have no sense about whether this thing is working or cohering at all.

I'm a bit worried that I may be doing too much. So far, in the first 3 chapters, 12k words, I have a switch from past tense to present tense, a switch from third person limited narration to first person and then back, a switch from prose to script format and back, a poem and like zero conventional scene transitions, since I'm trying to just have the whole thing melt and flow together in a disorienting and organic way. This is why I'm enjoying writing this so much, the setting and premise mean I get to do some really fun and subversive stuff, but it's also possibly bad to read. We'll see when the second draft comes around, I suppose.

This is unironically the first time since my last creative writing class in college that I've written longform prose that isn't smut. I keep almost stumbling into writing dubiously consensual lesbian sex scenes, which sounds absurd, yes, but I think of sex scenes in the type of smut I write like songs in a musical: entertaining, yes, but also a great way to escalate drama or release tension. It's kind of stupid that I'm having to re-teach myself how to write scenes between two people without sexual overtones, but whatever. I can be normal for one story.

If anyone wants to read an excerpt of what I've got so far I can post it here as well!

I have been away and then ill and then busy but I did get a few hours to start my bookshelf project.

Here's the wall of existing shelves and you can see how they cause access issues for the bed. Plan is to replace the three IKEA Billy units with a custom made shelf that is narrower, to gain a little more space, and with closer shelf spacing to allow for more book storage. I spent some time earlier in the year measuring books and a 210mm deep shelf will accommodate almost everything, and 245mm of height between shelves will fit 90%+ of books. I'm going to make an extra tall space at the bottom for picture books, in the kinderbox format, and a single 300mm high shelf for the few books which won't fit into 245. This arrangement gets us one more full length (2.4m) shelf than we currently have in the same space. It's worth noting that the other three walls in this room are also covered in Billys and will be replaced with inbuilt shelving at some point so if there are books which won't fit onto the shelves I'm making now, I'll be able to make space for them elsewhere - this unit needs to be as slimline as possible though, the others have more flexibility.

I'm stealing a shelf design from my local indie bookshop, which should mean the shelves look pretty much unsupported over their entire 2.4m span but without having to spend hundreds of pounds on lots of invisible brackets. Brackets are expensive, and I have almost no budget for this project. In that vein, the shelves will be 18mm MDF which I'll finish with the same semi-matt white enamel paint used on the bed (I might have no budget but going cheap on paint is always a bad idea)

Anyway, so far I have moved a crapload of books and taken apart the Billys to reveal this bit of wall for the first time in over a decade. There was a lot of dust!

I would have loved to reuse the old bookcase materials but they're all bent or full of holes or just the wrong shape. Original plan was to do that but I just couldn't make it work. At least they will recycle OK and were made from sustainable sources in the first place.

I started working on my TTRPG and have quickly discovered that one A4 page (even doublesided) is a very small amount of space. I've just about got the first draft of character creation down, and it's taking up almost a full page so will need quite a bit of compressing. I may have to use a smaller font size as well, but I don't want to go too low.

Been working on my piano song, I think right now with where it's at it feels more like an opening title song to a video game or something, think gently rolling fields with a light breeze over the grasses. Have it recorded on my keyboard but apparently Macbook Airs no longer have aux-in capabilities and I will need to either get a dongle or move my keyboard over to my desktop which is annoying. Project for another day.

I'll try to upload anything I have so far when I can play around with the recording setup. It's fairly short at the moment and not sure where I may want to take the song into a longer direction or keep it as-is. Either way it has inspired me to get back into the improvisational mood on the piano!

I've made less progress on my workshop than I hoped because last weekend was hijacked by Surprise Other Project, but progress is happening!

I bought a single bag of concrete to practice with, and validate that it would work fcr what I'm doing. Then I mixed half of it, and proceeded to make an ugly mess. I expected that, though, which is why I didn't pour to full depth on my first try, so I could cover up my mistakes. Assuming this remains reasonably flat tomorrow after it finishes curing, I feel good enough about this now to go buy the other eleven bags I need.

I also installed the remaining lights on the ceiling, getting entirely too far into it before realizing I was out of conduit corner pieces, which is why I have bare wires stapled to the ceiling for now. I'll pick up what I need to fix this when I go to get the rest of the concrete, but at least I have full lighting now.

Okay, nail polish updates! I never get tildes's formatting right but I'm gonna try.

So far, I've done a little bit of overachieving, mostly because I didn't think I would manage something not-wedding-related until the end of October. I managed one and a half manicures, instead!

OPI Feelin' Capricorn-y was the first one, painted on 10/1. Blurry bus photo shimmering in the sun. This is part of my first buy from the drugstore (or maybe second - I think I went back for it) probably about 3 weeks ago. This is like a dark sage green with lilac shimmer. It took me way too long to realize they went for a "mermaid" look for this, because Capricorn is a goat fish. Go figure. I felt like this was okay but I didn't totally love it. Would still probably wear it again but likely as an accent or in spring/summer.

Then on Monday, the whole other half of my collection arrived and I got down to the business of swatching them. I learned some things about formula - some were fine and one was questionable (we'll see how the purple one fares around Halloween).

On 10/6, I got the next manicure going - what they call a skittle. It goes white-light blue-periwinkle-turquoise-teal, so it's a gradient, as well. I learned more things about formula and some things about opacity. After applying and maybe a day later. While executing the skittle was really frustrating (it took 8 million years two and a half hours because I messed up a lot), I'm finding the colors and finishes to be very very satisfying. I'm already starting to devise future manicures, skittle or otherwise. The colors in this one were: pinkie - Sally Hansen Reflection Pool, ring - OPI Speed of Bright (5 coats = so much opportunity to screw it up), middle - OPI Pisces the Future, index - mooncat Ghosts of Hecate, thumb - Gemini and I. I did try a top coat on this one I hadn't used before, and I'm noticing that it's causing the polish the shrink and slip back from the edges of my nails. I'm not sure yet if it's just the top coat or if it's bringing underlying polish with it. I definitely don't love that, but since it's a quick dry top coat and they're considered to be as good as gold, generally speaking, I'll probably try to troubleshoot it.

I called the skittle above "half" a manicure because it was technically wedding-related instead of fully self-directed. I wanted to see if partner had feelings about Pisces or Gemini compared to Hecate (which is what he had said yes to so far). Hecate remains the choice, so that's what I'm wearing to the wedding. :)

I got a good forge session in on Sunday, and I made more progress than I expected.

I am midway through making a fire poker as a Christmas gift for a friend. I started with 12" of 3/4" round stock, which I forged down to a 24" square bar going from 3/8" up to 1/2". It took about 4 hours, a lot of which was waiting for the bar to heat enough for me to work it efficiently. When I made another fire poker several months back, just getting to this point took me twice as many hours, so I'm happy with what I have now. I did run out of fuel for my forge at the end, which is what made me stop where I did.

My next step will be to flatten the thick end to 1/4 x 1/2", then use a chisel to cut that in half along the last 3". This will make the traditional poker end with a hook and a spike. The rest will be forged down to just under 3/8", chamfered, and maybe twisted for style before I forge out the handle. I expect this to take me another 4 hours, maybe less depending on how efficient I am that day.

Additionally, I made a few smaller items while waiting for the big piece to heat. Another fork down, and a nice leaf pin to boot!

As per the first post, I'm going to be busy for half of this month before I can work on songwriting (which is my project). But I have been re-aquainting myself with the main melody and lyrics, as well as some potentials for the connective tissue between the main theme. Wont be able to touch a guitar for a bit, but planning to use simple chords anyway so no biggy!

This week for my sunrise/sunset discord bot notifier, I was able to come up with the math for calculating geographic coordinates from the images embedded in the webpage, as well as being able to appropriate the sunset/sunrise quality from the single pixel that would make up the geographic coordinate the person would be looking for. I think up next would be brainstorming and implementing the bot logic surrounding the actual behind-the-scenes calculations and notifications

I'm behind where I wanted to be this week - I've got the template traced onto my fabric and I've started the outline. I had hoped to be a little further along, but the last week has been pretty hectic. I do have a week-long vacation later in the month which should allow a good bit of time to make progress on this project, though, so I'm still pretty optimistic that I can finish.

For context, I want to build a combo guide for Onomat Ryzeal, a Yu-Gi-Oh! deck I enjoy.

I am far behind on my goals for this week, I kinda wanted to have the most relevant 1-card combos with the Ryzeal starters mapped out but I only got to do Ice Ryzeal so far. And I also have the Onomats to deal with after that.

To be fair, at the same time I'm preparing the 1.1.0 release of the Fire King guide and in there I did some improvements that will eventually benefit this project (as soon as I start moving my musings into a repository and copy the website scaffolding over). Mostly just setting in stone how cards should be referenced (first by full name and with a link to Yugipedia, then by a shorthand) and also grouping of combos in a single page.

For example, starting off a single Dodododo Warrior (yes, for non-YGO-players, that is the name of the card) you have at least 4 different endboards and multiple routes to follow. Some of them are better than others, and some might only be applicable in certain scenarios.

As such, the dropdown that will let you pick the endboard/route you want to read about will be sorted in increasing order of power level (so the first one is the safest and most minimalist, and the last is the most grandiose and flashy), with a separate <optgroup> for combos that are only worth doing in a specific scenario only.

The goal is for readers to be able to focus on stuff they can apply in every match, and only when they feel ready they can move to the bonus section and learn the hyper-specific lines.

That said it's not certain this paradigm will work as well here as it does for the Fire King combos, but I wanna try it and reevaluate later.

Update 1: I tested a pattern I cut out last week, and It seems to be wearable! I will be making a full top when I'm back from my trip this week.

I also cut out more scraps for my EPP project, I'm at 180 hexagons prepared now!

I bought black cotton fabric for my halloween costume. I'm going to be Hecate, so I'm going to baste the fabric together to make a makeshift Grecian dress and a black veil/hood. If I feel too lazy, I will just wear my black cloak on top of the gown I make.

I'm working on 3D printed PC stand and I'm in need of opinions.

The PC stand has the motherboard installed upside down (CPU is lower than GPU) and it looks like this.

The idea is to be building from the common denominator -/the mITX form factor. This means every motherboard has the screws pattern of at least mITX board and then I can scale up by printing different parts for each motherboard.

There is a catch though - I believe there is no need for third row of screws, the ones that are on the far end from I/O ports. These screws are on the edge where there are SATA connectors and often 24pin connector, there are no load-bearing parts there. If you have a look here you can see it on the pictures - the bkue line on first one stands for missing 3D lrinted part and the rest of the motherboard to the right is unsupported, it is better seen on the second picture where the green part of the board is unsupported from underneath. If you have a good look at this particular board, it is a bit shorter than ATX standard and it doesn't even have screw holes there!

This makes me think that there is no need for another sctructure there. Do you think the same?

And there is another question - if you have desktop PC what PCIe slots do you use (and what you have plugged in them)? I need to know so that I can model various PCI brackets to secure the cards to them. I already have low-profile dual PCI barcket for low profile GPUs and I have to make other such brackets.

Working on getting my audio player truly portable. Most of this week has been spent trying to get the settings screen to display properly. I am starting to figure out a good process for running the code that is still in development, but I could refine it more. It might be worthwhile to create a dev environment that uses a keyboard to emulate the clickwheel, so that I can run a second Pi purely for dev. I am starting to understand a bit more how the GUI is programmed on the tkinter app, but I have hit a wall so I should probably just read some documentation on tkinter frames, as trying to just copy and modify existing frames has not been working. Once I get the frontend working, I will then need to tackle the backend, which has some fun issues I need to sort of having the python program run sudo commands in Linux (Raspian Lite).

I have been practicing, and that's about it, but I've played the guitar and sang every day.

October turns out to be a really inconvenient month for me this year. Most of last week was taken up by a family thing, so I made less progress than I wanted, and there's more coming up too. I might not finish this by the end of the month, but I still plan to try!

Here's the QMX+ radio's main board, before I got started. Thankfully the kit starts off with a lot of smaller components attached already, or there's no way I'd get anywhere (my soldering skills are basic, but hopefully enough to take on this project). I'm following the assembly instructions provided, which describe the assembly process as "quite straightforward, but very detailed". (Follow along if you want!)

Here's where I'm at so far. Got some of the simpler components soldered on, and that was really all I had time for. No you cannot see the back of the board 😳

Next steps involve a lot of winding wires, as I need to assemble an output transformer (that comes with its own sub-manual!) and a whole bunch of toroidal components.

I realized I needed to get moving on my project, so I have been setting aside time every evening the past couple nights to crochet before going to bed. It has been a really nice way to wind down from the day, so maybe this will stick as a new habit.

For the project itself I frogged the start several times to get a handle on my tension because it’s been so long since I crocheted anything and I am using a much lighter weight yarn than my last several projects. But I like how it is going now and hoping to keep up with it. This weekend I am on my own and have a specific point I want to hit as a little milestone. Fingers crossed.

My wife and I are away on vacation while our daughter is on a school trip, but I managed to pick out and order a submersible pump last week, so we brought it with us to talk about / work on the rat fountain project.

Having no real supplies with me other than my pocket knife and the tubing the pump came with, I managed to mock this fountain up using a cookie tin s basin. The plastic upper part is the bottom of a plastic water bottle. I also cut a hole in the bottom for the tube to pass through. Then I used chewing gum to seal around the tube. It worked great! I guess all those years of watching Macgyver really paid off.

Here is a picture and a video:

https://imgur.com/a/US9lfiK

Basically, this validates the overall concept and that the pump is suitable.

Now I can start the CAD design for a 3D printed version. My wife wants it to have four openings / spillways and to look like a flower, so if any of you have suggestions for flowers to look at, I am open to them. Thanks for reading!

I've got about a pound of hot peppers harvested, but the rest were still on the green side and we've just had a temperature dip into the 30's. Hoping a few more days of sunlight lets me pick enough so I can start the first big batch of hot sauce base on Saturday.

For my D20 lamp project, I've mostly been ideating and sketching up ideas. I think I'm converging toward a shell that makes up 19 of the 20 sides in a single 3d printed piece, and then the 20th side having the control button, charging structure, and a frame to hold the battery, control unit, and 20 LEDs. That side would then get inserted into the main body and screwed into place with some small M4 screws or something.

The only trouble with this design is that I'd prefer the charging and control buttons be on opposite sides so that while the charging side is down in the base, the control button is on top and accessible, but we'll see how things shake out. Definitely lots of parts and pieces to think through