Timasomo 2025: Week 3 Updates

I posted it!!!!!!!! https://river.me/blog/puzzle-glue-9000/

Just in time for my flight to Germany tomorrow

So the progress on my audio player has gone well this week.

1. I feel like I am starting to get a handle on building new pages on tkinter app and linking them to running system commands. With that I have been able to build a few utility functions to help with development so that I do not need to SSH into it as often. Most notably, I made one that runs a git pull and then restarts the raspberry pi (to restart the python application). Implementing these features have helped me solve a lot of the problems needed for the wifi page, so now I am slowly building that out and I think all major issues have been solved on that. I am hoping that in the next day or two I will have completed the ability to add wifi networks.

2. I have made great progress on knitting the socks which are a thank you gift for my friend with the 3D printer. I am almost at the point where I no longer need to keep track of rows except for being aware of what is the top of the foot as that requires a rib stitch.

3. I still have not touched redesigning the case. At this point I think it will be unlikely that I complete that for the showcase, which is a bit disappointing. I also need to get to this case soon as I am starting to experience more issues with the failing case.

Overall, I am quite pleased with my process. I feel like my goals were a bit ambitious for the month, but I am hoping I can start picking up the pace on some of these issues now that I am understanding the code base a lot better.

Also, as an aside, I have found TiMaSoMo to be great motivator to try and make sizeable weekly progress. I have been wanting to get these issues sorted, but TiMaSoMo has given me a lot more motivation to prioritize these features

Edit: I have finished the WiFi feature. This was one of the most important features that I needed to implement, so I am glad to have it finished. Once I authorize Raspotify, it should become a truly portable self contained device.

Wrote the usual 12k words this week. Nothing really exciting to report. I've been feeling pretty creatively congested and I hit a real block the other day, the first major one I've had on this project. Knowing what to write but not finding the words. Really struggling to write good descriptive prose. Lot of repetitive word choices and weak metaphors. I'm clinically, chronically depressed, so it is what it is. I'll clean it up in revisions.
I was blocked enough that I went back and spent a lot of time just doing boring line edits of earlier pages, and it restored my confidence that I in fact am not writing unreadable dogshit, and that low points are just part of the process.

I will absolutely not be anywhere near finished with this fucking boondoggle by the end of the month, I've said it before and I'll say it again, but I think what I'll really have made by the time November rolls around is a good habit, a consistent pattern of writing even when I'm in those low points. So ultimately I'm pretty happy.

Major progress this week. But since @kfwyre mentioned detail, I have some detail first.

Here's the jig I made to mark up shelf support layout. It's aligned on the shelf, given a little tappy tap with a hammer to transfer the marks to the board, I then use a square to (a) mark for a screw hole and (b) sanity check the dowel marks are straight. Use the same jig to mark the shelf spacer edge, drill some holes, add dowels and glue, then drive in a screw from underneath (making sure everything is square, of course)

These parts can easily be stacked up to make a whole bookshelf. I know what you're thinking, you're thinking "surely @mat, you measured to make sure you can get your drill/driver into the gap between the shelves otherwise it would be a nightmare to assemble" well the answer to that is that no, no I did not (but I did get lucky!). Here's the final assembly

However, all my careful measuring and cutting square of everything was all for naught because the flippin' wall isn't straight (not pictured, me chiselling lumps of plaster off the wall at it's most wobbly places in order to get the shelves to sit even this not-straight). I wondered if I could live with these visible gaps and decided that for the sake of £10's worth of caulk and a few hours of effort, I didn't have to. I'm very glad I did that because it looks so much better, although a coat of primer also helps.

I have the topcoat paint and a nice set of rollers to apply it (I strongly recommend both these products, neither are cheap but the finish you get is so good and the paint is tough as hell), I just need to get it done asap. I have only this week to finish up because Kid is off school as of friday afternoon, and we have visitors coming next week so I need to get all those books off the guest bed!

The fire poker I was making is functionally complete. On Sunday I was able to draw most of it down to 3/8" (roughly 9mm) square, leaving the far end roughly 5/8" square. The working end got forged down to 1/4x1/2", then split into two 1/4" square tongs roughly 3" long. The other end was flattened and bent back on itself to create a handle similar to a saber handguard.

The process was really helped by the hook ruler I made so I could stop eyeballing lengths and thicknesses. I had a steel ruler I was using before, but it has a cork back so it would get hot and char if I held it against my workpiece. Having a quick measuring tool made it feel like I worked faster because I could tangibly measure progress.

Yesterday I hand-sanded the entire poker. It's not all shiny now, but it has bright edges and spots where the hammer blows show. I will heat-color it later today - putting uncoated steel in the oven at about 450° F will give it a nice straw gold color. Then I just need to apply beeswax and the poker is complete!

The log pickup tongs I wanted to make are halfway forged out as well. The other "half" will take more effort, as I am splitting it lengthwise for about 10" (25 cm) of length to create two jaws with one handle. The handle will also need to be drawn out, and I will need to punch two holes instead of just one, but I think I can do it. I definitely won't have these done with the same polish as the poker by the end of the month, but I'd be happy to have a functional result first.

The calculator's software is done. All that remains is to finalise the case and then put it into practice. But I promised a more in depth walkthrough last week, so here it is.

PIGS is a NextJS application that wants specific keypresses from my custom keypad. Yes, I understand that pulling up a whole ass computer and a whole ass browser just for basic calculations is stupid and way too much work, but I am making this for myself, and I won't write myself angry emails about this fact.

Anyways, it's an RPN calculator. You enter your numbers sequentially, and they pile up in what's called the Stack. Every entry in the Stack is called a Register, and the most important one is X. You enter numbers and instead of pressing plus or minus you press PUSH, and the X register gets moved up one and you get an empty one for your next number.

https://ibb.co/4nRfVW2w

If you now have your numbers in your Stack, you can press any of the operations - plus, minus and so on - and they get applied to the last two numbers in the Stack, on my implementation that's X and R1. Plus executes R1 + X, minus executes R1 - X and so on. The last operation is displayed at the top in the status bar.

https://ibb.co/m5tHfb0L

If you press the Menu button however you enter the main menu, obviously, where the more in depth features live. These are why I wanted to make this calculator, and they're pretty bespoke to my own needs. They're Conversion Mode, Paper Sizes, Aspect Ratio, Percentage, Constants, Deeper Math, Clock, Little Bitch Mode and About.

https://ibb.co/vx6XtgY6

Conversion Mode is exactly that. You get a list of categories and then units, and you can convert between them. Press SWAP to switch which one you're editing, press PUSH to move them to the X register.

https://ibb.co/CKb5crJy

Paper Sizes contains all paper sizes and their dimensions that I could find, together with a visual representation of their aspect ratio. The important ones are at the front, but I also have some deep cuts in there.

https://ibb.co/YF0G3965
https://ibb.co/RG8V1Ftj

Aspect Ratio lets you pick any of the common - or less common - ratios and calculate their dimensions for that. Same idea as the Conversion Mode.

https://ibb.co/1YZZKvV8
https://ibb.co/R4dFYPvb

The Percentage calculator is different to the ones I've seen before, and ruinously simple. Actually kind of proud of this, and it's weird I've never seen it implemented like that. You type in a number, and you turn the dial to change the percentage. If you turn the dial before typing in your root number, you can start from that percentage instead.

https://ibb.co/YTqc7k9H
https://ibb.co/PZYTMBP1

The Constants Library contains constants. Sometimes you need Pi, what do you want me to say?

https://ibb.co/twFr1WFt

Same with Deeper Math. I don't use the loragithm or whatever much in my daily life, but I'd rather it be there if I ever need it.

https://ibb.co/S47vr0c6

The About screen has the logo I made for the thing and a quick credits. This stuff is all on my github and anyone could use/implement/fork it in their own thing, so I'd better get my name on there.

https://ibb.co/XkYbQZPb

And finally, Little Bitch Mode was added after my friend whom I love dearly but never uses RPN ever didn't understand how it worked. It's a regular four function calculator, and it doesn't do anything other than plus, minus, times and divide, and that's by design.

https://ibb.co/XfzP1DpD

Timasomo is over soon, and so's my project! Next time I hopefully got everything complete and I can post a video with the entire thing and a few more insights. Happy making!

My project for Tildes Make The Prerequisites For Making Something Month (TiMaThPrFoMaSoMo) continues.

I haven't heard anything from the people I accidentally mailed a bunch of carpet tiles to. The seller was insistent that I should just go to my old house and pick them up, apparently unaware that 2400 miles is a lot of miles. But I did get them to give me a partial refund, and ordered more (obsessively checking the shipping address this time). They arrived today and my partner and I spent the evening installing most of them.

I also caulked up the remaining seams along the bottom of the walls because spiders love it there more than I am comfortable with, bringing me to a total of twelve tubes of silicone I've put into this building. I'll finish the flooring up tomorrow after that's cured, and then this cursed phase of the project will finally be behind me.

Besides that, I built a 3D printer enclosure, and made another batch of French cleats to put on my partner's side of the workshop.

So. Much. Winding. Wire. I've still got a bit more to do, but most of the little toroids are wound, soldered, and tested for continuity. I also assembled the Really Weird Twisted Sister Transformer (yes, that's what it's called) and soldered that on as well. Here's what the main board looks like now, minus a couple more things I added since taking that picture.

Scout saw me winding wire playing with a shiny wobbly string and decided to help. I'm glad Mittens was taking a nap or I would have made no progress at all...

This was the first time I used the multimeter I put together from another kit. (I never did properly calibrate it, but it works fine for basic continuity testing.) Using things you made to make other things feels cool.

Right now I'm about halfway through the assembly instructions, so I'm pretty far behind if I want to finish this by the end of the month, but I think there's still a chance!

I'm going to lay out the fabric for my Halloween costume this evening and pin what I need to. I just can't do it by myself, nor do I have the table or floor space to do it at the moment so I need Mr. Tired to help me move the dining table so I can lay out the fabric on a section of floor that is as tall as I am.

I also ran out of scrap fabrics in my stash, so I ordered two jelly rolls to cut into the right size for the hexagon paper pieces, which I also ran out of the original set I ordered. I purchased a 2-inch hexagon paper cutter thingy (stamp thingy? I am really not on with words today), so that I can stamp out hexagons as needed for the paper piecing. I'm up to about 400 hexagons made, and I'm really proud of that. I still don't know what I will make with all of my hexagons, but at least I'm enjoying making them. They're a really relaxing thing I can do while in meetings, or in the evenings that doesn't take up much space, isn't messy, isn't heavy, and doesn't need any brain power to complete.

I didn't post about it yet, but I've been working on a Timasomo project. It's a comic that I started making earlier this year mostly as a way to vent. I am not a very good artist, or storyteller (well it doesn't really have a story, it's kinda just about my experiences, but still it takes a lot of skills to present things in an interesting way) so it's kind of all over the place.

Last week I set up a simple website on Neocities where I'll be putting the comic -- not sure if there's a better place to host a thing like this? I think I'll probably start posting the "pages" of the comic there at the end of the month, maybe one each day until I run out, which is gonna happen pretty fast since I have only around 10ish, well I have a bit more but I am probably going to scrap a few of them. Other than that I've just been drawing. I draw using an extremely simple and lazy style but it's still really slow. Main problem isn't that it's slow though, it's that I just don't spend enough hours on it to make too much :D.

Ok, coming in late! I started this project before I left for my honeymoon and am now getting it all finished up. I was playing around with fun, kind of absurd, surfing stances for a sculpture. I came up with a number of ideas and ended up settling on yoga man. It supposed to be a 3 piece sculpture of a man doing yoga on a surfboard. The torso with the 2 arms and 1 leg are one piece, then the leg the man is standing on is a separate piece with two joining sections - one into the body and one into the surfboard, and finally the surfboard.

Well the surfboard broke - I think I added too many support sections within the structure - and it cracked all the way around the edge. I think this might have been caused by making the upper and lower sections earlier, waiting for it to cure a bit on a former, and then combining them with wetter segments of clay. I think I might try to make a new one out of wood with some metal inside it to give it weight. We'll see.

I've glazed it now and it's been sent off for its second firing. I have yet to glaze the leg as the stand I created for it still hasn't been bisque fired, so it might not be ready for the final reveal as a complete piece. But the most fun part will! I've also started a few others, one of which doesn't have photos of the creation process but has gone off to be fired. We'll see if it comes out. I've also added a picture of a sculpture that definitely won't be ready by the end of Timasomo but I'm pretty stoked on and want to share.

(For context, I am building an Instagram-like media gallery meant to be integrated as a Notion widget, in a nutshell)

The past 4 days have been no-ops because I was on a work trip, but I'm picking stuff back up today.

Mostly looking at LemonSqueezy and their licensing features, could be a neat way to do the monetization thing (to recap, the code will be FOSS, so as long as you can spin up a Docker container and a Postgres you're golden, but we will also provide paid hosting of the service either as a single-payment purchase or a yearly subscription - very WIP, very subject to change)

Besides that I want to improve error handling a bit more, we treated the cases where your Notion database is empty or not in the expected format, but if the data source ID or Notion API token are invalid, we just render a blank page with a basic text message. instead, we should be rendering as much of the UI as possible and then show the nicer error modals I made for the rest of the app. Should be a trivial update since all of the parts are there, I just need to hook them up.

We're getting closer to being feature-complete for v1.0 which is exciting, but that means the programming work is gonna be over soon and I need to focus on distribution, licensing, figuring out who and where will support be offered, and literally everything else surrounding a pseudo-commercial program.