I’ve always been kind of scattered in my approach and involvement in new things. I get hyper-focused on a new project, idea or gadget, at the expense of other things I might have going on, and I kind of meander back and forth between my pursuits, inching each forward a bit at a time. My internal guidance system tells me that one day they will all converge and Nirvana will happen.
With that being said, let me tell you about my week.
After last week’s meeting, I gave myself some internal mental grief for lack of follow-through and lack of motivation. I went downstairs to the lab that night, determined to make some forward momentum on my 3d printer, which is one of those things that had been a long-standing victim of my procrastination.
I bought the thing over 3 years ago, before my first Defcon and before my first Burn. I had gotten to the point of bed leveling, and then I was overcome by events. I went to several Burn events that year, and Defcon, and everything at home was just left in the state it was in. Then everything else piled on. I focused on home improvements for a year or two, changed jobs, went to Defcon a couple more times, and moved residences.
Fast forward to last year in the new house. I unpacked it, thought to myself, “I probably don’t have everything it takes to get this operational right here in front of me. I’m going to procrastinate further while I focus on organizing all of my parts, tools, small parts, cables, and everything else, and at the same time make tiny progress on many other little things.
Anyhow, back to last Monday night. Step 1: What the fuck printer do I even have? It’s been that long, and I felt like shit about that. I couldn’t even remember what I had bought. So I figured out how to find out, installed and launched pronterface, and issued the M115 code to get the firmware info. It’s an Anet A8. Alrighty. So I double-checked the bed-leveling, dug out a microSD card and threw a test cube gcode onto it. I fed in the filament (wondering the whole time if it was too old to even use) and started the job. The print came out kind of shitty and thin, but it worked. That’s because the slic3r I used to slice it had shitty default settings, and I didn’t even bother to customize them to what the print recommened.
The important thing is that I made progress.
So I tried to print something else, and it failed. I quickly realized I needed a glass bed and a build surface. SO I ordered those and moved on to the next project.
The next project was Hackerbox #0036, the JumboTron, a 64×32 RGB matrix run by an ESP32 devboard. I had abandoned that project when I realized it needed a power source I didn’t think I had at the time, or couldn’t find, or whatever buillshit excuse. So I ordered a power supply, one of those steel cage-encased hobbyist power supplies rated for 5V/4A.
I continued to document progress, organize shit, find shit, clean shit, etc., until the bed and build surface came. YAY.
Only my first print failed. No flow. Turns out the nozzle got clogged. Cut me some slack, I’m new at this. So I ordered 30 replacement nozzles for $6.
Meanwhile the power supply showed up. I spent a few hours yesterday making that happen, and researching other cool things to do with it (build a 3d case for it, make the wiring more permanent and less fragile, make it able to update OTA via wifi, etc).
My nozzles may or may not be here tomorrow. But I feel like I’ve had a fantastic week as far as tech stuff goes.
See y’all tomorrow nighht.