A while ago, YouTube started recommending some ASMR videos of leatherwork being done. Handbags, laptop cases, wallets etc. It was fascinating to watch a leather hide being turned in to wonderful objects through the skills, craftsmanship and obscure processes. Over time I began to recognise the individual steps involved and wondered how hard can this craft be? Luckily, YouTube also has a lot of tutorial videos too, and before I knew it, I ordered a starter kit of tools & fittings and some sample leather.
Like many people, I had seen wild crazy looking mechanical keyboards, and had been both fascinated and confused by them. How could you get by with so few keys? What does each key actually do? They looked like some kind of wild alien input device, but, at the same time, must work well otherwise the fad would have died out years ago. The high cost and fear of failure, thought, was enough to put me off of trying them out.
While attending OSHCamp earlier this year, a talk by Alan Wood explained a lot of the ideas behind these keyboards, and answered a lot of my questions - except for one; Would I be able to cope adjusting to one?
A couple of years ago I saw that somebody on the internet had made a Slow Movie Player, and that piqued my interest. The basic idea is that your favourite film is displayed on a screen at a really slow framerate. Eink displays are ideal for this as they use no power except for when updating the image. Their refresh rate is pretty poor compared to OLED displays, but if you're only updating once a minute, that's fine. A decent size eink display is pretty expensive though, so this idea went on the back burner.
Earlier this year, Pimoroni released the Badger. A small eink display with a built in RP2040 (Raspbrry Pi Pico) which was ideal as a programmable name badge - hence the name. This was really cool, although I didn't have a need for a name badge. This also went on the back burner.
During the 2021 lockdown I started a laser cutting project I'd wanted to do for a while. It turned out that the research on this went much much deeper than I first expected.
You probably recognise this image, and think you know where it comes from. But what if I told you the story goes back further than you think.
This is one of those little projects that didn't need to be done, or could have been done very simply. Despite a lot of feature creep, everything just came together at the right time, and I'm really pleased with the results.
Ok, firstly, apologies for the lateness of this post. The stuff below was actually done a couple of weeks ago, but time has just got away from me. Hence this is being written up 2 days past the closing date for RC2017/4. Sorry Anyway, this part of my challenge involves investigating a rack that came as part of the old stuff that I picked up. Looks like a 3 bay x 12 slot Eurocard rack. Lets take a closer look...
