makkin thing @gbrnt@mastodon.technology

I've been on here quite a while and never posted an #introduction - so here it is:

I'm a designer of physical products, and I like to post about various projects I'm working on - lots of them with physical user interfaces, human-computer interfaces, that kind of thing. Some #electronics and #programming.

Occasionally I post about photography or motorcycles or cycling too. And there are the usual random thoughts about stuff and boosts of things I find amusing.

Printed a couple of the new button design and it feels promising! These could either each have their own PCB or all mount to one shared PCB. They clip neatly onto a PCB edge.

I think they could do with a slightly longer lever so they don't twist so much under your finger. They also needed a slight bit of filing due to sagging while printing. I think I can just rotate the print orientation and that won't be a problem, but the curved top will be less smooth.

Here's my finished painted Ploopy #trackball - I'm not happy with the buttons but I wanted to start using it! I'll do some black / dark grey ones another time I think.

Dr. Jart (jean fart)

Oh, and I forgot to mention that you can't stand in front of it. That activates the drinking fountain part. So you have to awkwardly stand to the side for ages, repeatedly picking up your water bottle, while there are 10 people behind you waiting to do the same thing.

Today's design gripe: the water bottle filling stations at Naples airport. You put your water bottle down and it slooooowly dispenses a trickle of water that will eventually fill your water bottle up.

Or it would, if it didn't stop after about 200ml. To make it continue you have to pick the water bottle up and put it down again. While a queue builds up behind you.

Ok there are definitely puzzles my sudoku solver can't do. And I can't either. Gonna have to learn how to do some more advanced techniques to figure out how to implement them!

I've been doing a lot of sudoku recently, and I realised that my methods for doing it are quite boring, structured and algorithmic. So I wrote a program to solve them for me!

https://gitlab.com/gbrnt/sudoku-solver

I've only tried it on 3 hardish puzzles so far, so there may be ones it can't solve. But it was a fun little thing to write!

Spent too long at the beach today and I'm pretty sure I have mild heatstroke, despite drinking what I thought was plenty of water.

I lowered the container with the siphon and it's still watering the plant too fast. I think my best bet is to ask my colleague who lives round the corner to look after it!

Currently it's a little fast (will work out to ~300ml per day). I *think* I can lower the container it's siphoning out of to reduce the flow rate. Is that how siphons work?

I'm heading on holiday soon, and realised that I have one plant which won't happily survive the duration without watering - a chilli plant that needs almost daily watering.

I tried setting up a peristaltic pump I had laying around (as you do) but with the volume it could push, it would have to run for 8 hours a day, and I just don't trust it that much.

So instead I set up a siphon feed from a measuring jug into the pot using a silicone tube with a paper towel stuffed in the end.

Some university friends arranged a meal at a restaurant, and I accidentally turned up an hour early. Whoops!

There's a nice park I can sit in nearby though.

Sprained my thumb yesterday doing some extreme, high intensity exercise!

... I fell over walking up the stairs

I like the idea of building a sort of desk shelfy thing to go over my desk. It could have a built in pegboard, lighting, webcam mount (for videoing desk) and of course storage.

Does anyone know if this is an existing thing that has a name?

Saw a dude wearing flipflops on a busy escalator - I was so worried for his toes!

I met someone with the surname Quarks today. Unfortunately they're not a physicist :(

The condensation from blowing into it does get down to the sensor, so I want to think about how to avoid that. It's not going to stop it working but it's kinda gross.

Designed a new mouthpiece for the electro-sax that's more like a real sax mouthpiece! That means it now has a movable reed which senses lip pressure!

It's a little too flexible and sensitive right now - I'll either solve that with a threshold or adjust the shape a little. It's also too thick - a little uncomfortable. But it's close!