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What creative projects have you been working on?
This topic is part of a series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss creative projects they have been working on.
Projects can be personal, professional, physical, digital, or even just ideas.
If you have any creative projects that you have been working on or want to eventually work on, this is a place for discussing those.
I just finished this stitch today! Very happy with it, almost every single of the nearly 5000 stitches are immaculate which is honestly quite a feat, and the back is not too shabby either!
And yes I am bragging lol but when you spend dozens of hours on something, you're allowed to!
It's hardly bragging when you're simply stating the truth. That work looks stunning!
Thank you 😊
That is awesome! I love that stuff, especially when it's got modern fun.
Thanks! If you really mean it that you love it, I can only recommend getting into it yourself. Cross stitching is super easy to learn!
You know, I should put it on the list of "post work-life activities to try." Thanks for the suggestion!
Making a Game Boy game with my friend.
We are in our 40's (1980's guys), and both have families (collectively six boys ranging from 14 to 24). Our kids roll their eyes at us trying to be "cool" making a game, lol. We are doing this as a creative side gig for fun as a hobby. I work in IT leadership, and my buddy is a creative designer for a leadership development company in our day jobs. Our main goal is to tell our story, and we are doing most of this while streaming on Twitch (to an extremely small following).
The gist of the story is based on a character named Robi. Robi is a young man who inherited his grandfather's business called Skull Bob's Tavern. Robi's late grandfather, Robert Dekker, was a famed explorer who climbed a mountain and nearly froze in a storm in his younger life. Seeking shelter in a cave, he came upon a mysterious cyclops/alien skull (here is our YouTube short that tells that story: https://youtu.be/B3brJkK2TzU?si=aTaRJSccRjdGhMM1). The skull Robert (aka- Bob) found saved his life and became the centerpiece in the museum at his Tavern.
Our Game Boy game story begins with Robi mourning the loss of his late grandfather and inheriting the tavern. Robi's a bit aloof and unsure how to run a business. Wanting to figure out more about his late grandfather and his adventures, the story continues as a platformer adventure RPG, where Robi uncovers clues about the past and the significance of the skull his grandfather found. The skull has some interesting characteristics and powers revealed later in the game. There will be some puzzles, storytelling, and combat in areas of the game. The story arc is Robi feeling distant from his grandfather but slowly reveals that Robert was there for Robi, protecting him his whole life from something...https://doubledropdown.com/abdoanmes/2024/202401-building-a-game-boy-game/
After the great response I got on my comment on the BespokeSynth topic, I've continued making music and I'm now here to share again. :D One mostly finished song called Rush and also a very unfinished one called Spark.
I didn't end up recording the video of BespokeSynth running for these two, but next time I will do that again. The added visual is really nice and it's a good way to show how it all works.
These are really pleasant!
Though, weird thing, certain sounds, even played really softly, cause my ears to make fluttery drummy sounds... a lot of the tones in these songs are triggering that.
Anyone else ever get this? My hearing's pretty good otherwise.
It sounds like this music is hitting close to your skull's unique resonant frequency.
I have found that there is a specific low tone (present in some music with heavy bass, but most noticeable to me when certain big trucks climb up the steep hill near my house in low gear) that causes my skull to vibrate at a particularly intense and slow wavelength, which in turns causes my ears to pick up a kind of beating sound or sensation. It can be quite painful and overwhelms all other sounds.
This is related to the concept of wolf tones in musical instruments and to glass shattering at specific vibrations. In some cases, hitting an object's resonant frequency can lead to major disasters. No wonder we don't enjoy it!
Thanks for sharing! What an interesting phenomenon. I hadn't heard of it before in relation to the skull, so it's great to have a new perspective to explore my experience from. Whenever I've tried searching my experience, I get results for tinnitus, but the descriptions don't quite seem to fit and I've been at a loss.
Interestingly, the first article you linked approaches the topic from the idea of influences on musical preference. I've encountered a lot of songs over the years I'd really enjoy (much like OPs songs) if it weren't for the pesky drumming sound in my ear.
Thank you!
I'm not sure about the hearing thingy, if that's something I could fix in some way I'd love to know but I don't know why or how that's happening. :P
This one’s a weird one, but I’m kind of excited about it. I recently rediscovered text adventure games (interactive fiction) in the later years of my life and found a fun way to mesh it with my programming past. I stumbled across this open source z-machine interpreter for interactive fiction designed to run on a MCU (Adafruit Itsy Bitsy) that you can play over serial (USB over serial). Since discovering this, I’ve been working on a 3D printed “brain” mold with a drawer for the MCU. The idea is to play a lot of these old (and new) interactive fiction games on a usb-powered computer. Yes, I know it would be easier to just play them on my laptop, but the thrill of doing this, of running the whole thing on a separate machine, and having it light up on my desk, well, that’s just too much awesome to pass up! First 3D printed brain mold arrives today!
That sounds so cool!
Thanks1 I'm looking forward to it. I'd love it to get to a point where I can sell them on Etsy and make the code open source on GitHub. We'll see though. A few steps before here and there!
I meant to ask, do you play text games?
I haven't in a while but I did pretty heavily a decade or two ago! I would never have survived them pre-looking up all the answers online. Some are brutal 😅
I have indeed been eaten by a grue.
You and me both, friend. Many times. I'm like a grue snack cake.
This sounds fun! I try to play some of the annual IFComp entries each year. There are some really creative ideas and stories out there. I grew up on the Infocom games and have always had a soft spot for them. Remember the invisible ink hint books? The IFComp is here, for anybody interested: https://ifcomp.org/
Oooo! The invisiclues! Yeah, I remember those. I had so much fun with those games as a kid. I'd sit in front of my old man's Smith Corona with the monochrome screen and bang away on that massive keyboard. I think the only one I came close to beating was Wishbringer, but man did I spend hours exploring the world of Zork and Enchanter.
I've been doing some more acrylic pouring recently, experimenting with various different techniques. A few photos available here.
I'm quite pleased with them so far, and have shown a few friends how to do it recently and they've produced some pieces they're really pleased with. I want to get more familiar with some of these techniques now, and then start properly trying to mix my own paints - at the moment I'm using pre-mixed pouring paints, but that gets expensive.
I am currently trying to kit out my new-to-me old Citroen van for camping. Not as a full-on camper, but as a vehicle to take camping. We have a delightful tent already, I have no wish to sleep in a rusty old van. But I do want to be able to camp more easily and in a more relaxed way. It feels like a creative project, because I'm trying to do it on next to no budget - using as much 'scrap' wood and bits as I can - and in such a way that if (probably when) the shoddy old van breaks down, it's easily portable to another vehicle.
So far I have made interior bike racks, a mini kitchen, storage for 5-10 Systainer boxes (all our camping gear is in Makpac cases because Festool boxes are too expensive) and a place to strap the giant coolbox down while still leaving it usable in place. Not to mention several little hooks, storage drawers and nooks. Yesterday I repaired the passenger's side window which previously only went down, now it goes both up and down (although only using the driver's side control). I have put up some fabric on the bulkhead to make it pretty and for the first time in my life bought air freshener. Today I found the rear light cluster was full of water so I drained that and sealed it up and made it work again. Every day this week I've done something to try to stop the squeak every time we go over a bump but so far no success. I will defeat it.
Kid wants a bookshelf in the cab. I am so up for that (and so proud of them for coming up with the idea), just working through the design because nobody wants a tiny library falling on their head under braking.
I am having A LOT of fun doing this. First camping trip is currently early June, but we've already done several day trips with the bikes with great success.
I assume part of the problem is actually finding the squeak, but I had a similar issue once and managed to tighten up the problem with a simple zip tie (it was something in the cab rubbing, so a more durable solution wasn't needed). Hope you find as simple a solution.
As much as your post is about the van, I popped by to GUSH about your tent. I genuinely wasn't prepared for that level of delight. Did you also make it? What's the material?
Yeah, it's pinning the noise down that is hard. I can't exactly put someone in the back of the van while I drive around to try to locate it either. I can sometimes make it happen rocking the van by hand but it's pretty tricky. So far my strategy has been to tighten up everything I can see that should be tight, lubricate everything that should move, and jam silicone into any gaps I can find. Has not worked yet, but I'm hopeful.
Also, thanks! I love our tent so much. It's heavy cotton canvas, it was bought rather than made - I'm not sure my sewing machine would be up to sewing that stuff! It's so nice to sleep in, because being canvas it breathes so it's not sweaty like polyester tents can be, and when the sun comes up the interior lights up with rainbows (kinda opposite to the picture). It's a lovely place to wake up. Also it's generally very easy to find our pitch on a busy campsite because we're the only people with a rainbow tent, although we did meet another one at a festival last year. On the downside it's pretty heavy so there is quite a bit of hefting stuff around on the kind of campsites which don't let you drive up to your pitch.
Heh, this unlocked a memory of me seeing someone do exactly that. One guy driving (slowly, not that that made it perfectly safe...), another hanging out the back. Iirc, they actually managed to isolate the problem; it may have been a matter of bashing a dinged piece of metal back into place.
Canvas tents are great for winter camping where I am, since you can drag them over snow, making weight a bit less of a factor. I have a friend who's sewed their own. I dont think it took a special sewing machine, just a LOT of time and effort. Their latest is a strategic combo of nylon panels to cut down on weight and cotton canvas for all its benefits.
Yesterday I started working on a VR implementation of Wealth shown to scale. It will essentially be an exhibition in an insanely long corridor, with wealth shown with grids of 1x1 cm2 rectangles each representing 1000 dollars.
In order to show Jeff Bezos 185 billions, if I go for a height of 5 meter (equals 500 centimeter = $500000) the length will still need to be 368 kilometers. So it makes more sense to do this project in VR.