I edited my post from last week to include the article I wrote: Humane Communities - how we can live and grow together. I would appreciate any feedback or criticism you have!

I wasn't able to get much done this week other than thinking of ideas for tools I'd want to design. I'll start pixel-placing this week. The first tool will be an archetypal communications tool for communities. I don't think it will be groundbreaking in any way, because there are plenty of communications apps out there to use. But it may include some features that other platforms lack. Think of it as an example of how to use communications tools to build a community in a way I'd like[1].

I had another idea for a learning tool I'd build, unrelated to community. I may work on that if I don't slack off this week. I plan to continue generating ideas for other apps, but in all likelihood I'll finish the communications tool + writeup this month and that's it.

[1] I can't make any guarantees about how effective my ideas are

I gave up. Blep. My mood has been all over the place this week, and I've been pretty consistently depressed every day in the afternoon. I will try again next year though :)

Last week I left my knife having its handle reglued due to glue failure. This time I didn't clean it with a solvent that weakens the glue!

I'd done a lot of roughing out of the handle before the glue failure, so it was quite close to finished already. I did need to grind off the glue squeezeout but after that it was on to hand sanding for a while and then some rounding off of corners with some sandpaper and gaffer tape (pink tape for extra cool points) and it's nearly done! A quick dab of liquid plastic polish on a polishing mop to get a nice gloss and the handle is done and it's ready for it's final sharpening.

I'm doing that on my water stone because I'm comfortable using that as it's what I use on my existing knives. This is a 400/1000 grit double sided stone, once I've finished with that I'll strop it on some MDF (works as well as leather) and hit the polish one final time to get that full-mirror edge. The last polish doesn't make it sharper but it sure as hell makes it look pretty

Here are a few glamour shots of the knife and the recycled plastic handle and an action photo (yes, I did cut my finger while I was sharpening but for every job the blood price must be paid). For comparison, here it is next to the knife it was based on. I've made the blade a touch taller and the handle a shade smaller, just so it fits me a little better. That's the nice thing about making your own tools - you can make them exactly right for you.

Overall I'm pretty pleased. There are parts of the build that could have gone more smoothly - I'd have liked to spend less time grinding post-heattreat, and I think I probably over-heated it a little too. The blade is definitely hard but I'm not sure it's as hard as it could be. Obviously I learned the lesson about not prepping surfaces for JB Weld using alcohol, so that's a plus. But for knife number three ever - I'm happy enough. Next one will be better.

Alright, time to make a start on that better knife.. I started by drawing around a different knife on some 1095 steel (not stainless, just high carbon - easier to work and much easier to heat-treat - a beginner's steel) which I then cut out and immediately changed my mind about, so drew up another design at 100% scale. Then I took the blank to the forge and it's very very hard to get a photo of actual forging because I need both my hands but here's a red hot bit of steel. I'm not sure about this one yet, the shape currently feels wrong and I won't get to use the nice hammer I modded last week on it, so I may yet put this one aside and make something else.

However just for interest, here is a different hammer mod I did - this is a dog's head or Japanese style hammer (I pretty much just chopped off one side of the original), where all the weight is to the front, so it pulls itself square very easily as you strike. This is a specialist bladesmithing hammer that is particularly good at flattening surfaces and drawing out bevels. It's noticable how much cleaner stuff forges with this compared to my round/square double faced hammer. Even when you consider that I am a very inexperienced and pretty crappy blacksmith.

If I recall correctly, my TiMaSoMo idea was to redrywall my basement, and let me tell you that is coming along quite nicely.

The bathroom wall that was fully removed is now reframed and drywalled. In the storage room, the bottom half of the wall which was taken out has been reframed and drywalled, the utility room has been vaporlocked and drywalled, the shelves have been cleaned and repainted, the ceiling has been mostly drywalled though I think it probably needs another coat. At the same time, we also finished taping up a drywall patch in my daughter's room, and that's looking pretty good to go. Next weekend will probably involve priming and painting, and maybe putting in the new doorway in the washroom.

Oh, and that secondary project that I was thinking about doing - updating my personal site - I've done very little with.

I wrapped up my stand up comedy class and did my 5+ minute set to a crowd of ~70 on Thursday night.

I guess if I can perform it live in front of 70 people, I can post it here.

All in all, it was a good experience. There really is nothing like having an awesome set that gets a lot of laughs.

Since Thursday though, I have kind of dropped off in wanting to perform or write jokes at all. It has been nice to not feel the pressure of having to put together the best material you can, in a short period of time. I wasn't the best performer by far, but I'm glad to have gotten out of my comfort zone and tried something new. It is definitely an avenue of expression that I didn't think I had in me.

I think I need time to decompress and think about if this is something I want to continue pursuing. Comic life is hard. The desire to be good is overwhelming, but you have to be okay with not resonating with people/audiences. The work is grueling and time-consuming, but it makes you break out of the analytical mind that only sees the world in truth and reason, so that you can see the absurd. A lot to digest, but I recommend anyone to take a stand up comedy class once in their life!

I got jack all done this week. It was really stressful for me, there was an important deadline for work and I did a few extra hours and that totally killed all my motivation (whoops). I got a few more rows done of my knitting and a little bit more of my writing. Luckily this coming week is supposed to be pretty chill with work and I'll have 2 days off for the holiday so I'm looking forward to that. I will desperately try to at least finish my socks!! I so badly want to get them done as it'll be like the fastest I've made something lol. I hope everyone else had a more productive time than myself.

I shot about half a roll and had most of it ruined by light leaks. Hopefully my new film back will fix this issue. I haven't had a chance to make any prints in the darkroom. I have some catching up to do but I'm hopeful I can still get this done by the end of November.

I made up for lost time over the past week! I had a great day yesterday, which put me back on track to finish 50k words by the end of the month, if not sooner.

Managed to avoid most writing this week by making a pretty detailed outline of what I want to write. Fortunately that should make writing easier as I get to it this week, and I should have a good amount of time since I'll be taking some days off and though I will be cooking and decorating, some of my other usual weekend obligations are off the table. I was going to give a preview, but I don't want to spoil anything so I won't. Good luck to everyone on the home stretch!

As before work continues on the Toyota Big Block Build with what seems like good progress, but in reality a lot of time was spent getting set up for a final push. Previous update is here and includes links to the updates before it.

To pick the to-do list from last week: Valve cover number two has been blasted further, inventory taken, and a few parts I was missing/assumed-was-in-the-gasket-kit-as-they-are-in-the-picture-but-aren't-actually-part-of-the-kit have been ordered and will be here Friday. Along with some further modifications to the blasting cabinet as the small battery powered LED lights I had were running out of steam far before I was and the blasting media wasn't flowing down the hopper at the bottom of the cabinet as well as I'd like. So in goes an outdoor LED spotlight and vibrator slapped onto the back to keep everything moving.

I pulled the head out of my shed to find the spiders in there haven't magically degreased all the chunky oil, so I guess if you want anything done you'll have to do it yourself! Being that I'm in the process of building a detached garage (and now that I'm not going on vacation I really should get those permits done with the city) space is at a premium in my garage (as it's filled with other project cars) so a lot of my work is done in the driveway. Why yes, that is a floral fabric shower curtain1 that I felt would really spruce up the head disassembly. Popping the heatshields off finds that not only did the previous owner seemingly never change the oil, he also had an exhaust leak as the cast iron 4-2-1 (credit to Toyota for great design of stock components) header has a crack that nearly circles the entire #4 runner and so I'll just fab up some headers for the swap instead of using the stock manifold. Just one more reason to finish the modifications to my 3D printer and print the header modeling pieces to see how I want to run the header and clear everything. To be fair it was already a longshot for the stock header to clear the steering shaft, but it'd be nice to not have to fab something from scratch on this project since my other main project has nearly no untouched/non-custom parts going into it. I'll decide later if I'll send the header to the recycler or hold onto it until the engine is in the car to just see if it would have cleared.

Next up the intake manifold disassembly and removal. The injectors have seen better days and will be replaced, possibly with the ones off the 7AFE donor engine, but need to check sizes and resistance first. We also find more of what we already know in that maintenance was not part of this guy's routine and so the EGR port is completely clogged with soot and unburned oil from the oil leak/burning in the combustion chamber he undoubtedly had. Not that I was going to use the EGR anyway. Here (sandwiched piece in between the head and manifold) you can see one of the other 80's Toyota innovations in the TVIS2, which increases low to mid-range torque through fluid dynamics! The throttle body is dirty as hell as well and will be cleaned along with spraying out the intake manifold itself to exorcise demons may lurk in there. Although there's a real possibility that I won't even use this intake manifold as they came in longitudinal and transverse formats, the latter being what came with this head and may not clear the firewall once installed while the former will face the front of the car and will undoubtedly fit. Why wouldn't you just use the one known to fit you ask? Because every example I've seen just assumes the transverse manifold won't fit while the longitudinal setup is an extra piece to purchase along with getting rarer by the day and therefore is more expensive. I just have it because I got it for cheap. If my way works as planned I have a sweet airbox setup idea floating around in the old noggin'.

The rest of the head shows that he also had a coolant leak at some point and tried to use the fix leak crap. That stuff only works in very limited circumstances that you'll have no idea if they apply to you and even if it does work it'll be a bandaid solution that just causes more problems down the line. There is no magic bottle of stuff to fix anything, get your vehicle repaired properly. Thankfully there are no burnt valves, just unnecessary oil/carbon buildup from poor maintenance, so the head rebuild won't involve new valves, just valve stem seals. Valve clearances need to be checked as well, but that can be done with the head on the engine so I won't be doing it right now. So the valvetrain just got degreased to prep it for the blasting cabinet.

Lastly the block was brushed to clear any loose debris, degreased, hit with metal prep, anywhere I didn't want paint was taped off, twice coated in a rust preventative that would be good enough as is if I didn't want the block to be another color, and then hit with a single coat, thus far, of "Oldsmobile Gold" engine enamel. I'm not even close to being artistic or a wizard with the paint brush and it'll mostly be hidden in the engine bay, but I think it looks great! This paint/enamel is also amazing in that brush strokes and runs pretty much dissipate after a few minutes, these pictures were taken while it was still wet.

Again that's where this week's update ends, still with plenty left to do that will hopefully get done with the long weekend. Valve covers need wrinkle finish applied, the head has a date with the blasting cabinet for cleaning both on the valvetrain and combustion chambers. Rebuild the head and shortblock, get the pistons and rods together (again, should be exciting as there's fire involved), and slap the whole shebang together as much as possible considering the old engine (and therefore the oil pan I need from it) is still in the car and there are decisions to be made about the ECU trigger setup. The welding work with a friend mentioned last week has been postponed due to voluntary quarantine by said friend since his wife works with someone that has tested positive.

I've had a few hours this weekend to work on my VR chat app. I mostly focused on getting a rudimentary signalling server up and running. Built the wrong thing initally since I didn't understand that I needed the signalling server to handle several kinds of messages in order to establish the WebRTC connection between peers (offers, answers, ICE candidates). So after I scrapped my initial version I figured I'd start by writing out a few tests so that I could verify some aspects of it working (standard practice, but I started out just slapping something together). I realized the whole thing would be easier to test if I had a browser based client too so I started writing that (not completely finished though).

I also did a screen recording of using the app. All the assets are very temporary for the moment, mainly based on stuff that was free in the unity asset store. Will make another video once I've sorted out the voice communication and am able to have at least two people move around in the same world.

Jaysus, it has not gone well honestly.

My project is an android Gemini browser: Pocket Gemini , named for Pocket Gopher, which I have copied from extensively. It currently can make a request and display the result, and that's it. It can't follow links, doesn't do headers, etc. I've made a bit of progress but haven't pushed to the repo yet, and probably wont' before I leave since I don't have time to clean it up.

I am headed up into the mountains for a while, so I might miss the next thread. I certainly wouldn't call my project a failure, but I wouldn't call it a success either. I'm very happy with how much I've learned about java and android development, I'm very unhappy with how little I have been able to accomplish thus far. I'm enjoying the little burst of excitements that come with a new project I get from hitting little milestones though, and I look forward to polishing up what I have next month.

My current stretch goal is to make it follow links for the Showcase thread, both within gemini and to other protocols. I was hoping to make bookmarks and handle failures better, but it's been a rough few weeks and I've been struggling to make the amount of progress I have.