September 2018 – LittleChip

Month: September 2018

3D-Printed Patio Table Vase

Posted on September 28, 2018September 30, 2018 by LittleChip

I am thrilled with this 3D-printed creation. My patio table has a hole in the center for an umbrella, but we have an umbrella that stands off to the side and overhangs the table. A main advantage of the side umbrella is that there is no pole to obstruct your view of the people on the other side of the table.

The same goes for a vase of flowers. Wouldn’t it be great to have a lovely floral display at your table without having it block your view of your dining companions? Here’s the perfect solution: A vase that fits into the hole in the table center!

Additional benefits:

It’s really easy to create the display because the vase doesn’t fall over. Stick it in the hole, add some water, and start adding your blooms.
No chance of it tipping over — it’s recessed.
It fills that ugly hole in the center of your table!

This is a silly no-brainer. Why hasn’t somebody invented this before? Oops. Somebody did. It just never took off, I guess.

I’ve been filling it up each week with stuff from the garden. It’s the end of the season, so there’s not much out there, but we still manage to find enough color to liven up the table. I know the photos don’t have many traditional flowers. I should explain our gardening theory is to tend “weeds we like.” Hey, they grow well. If they have flowers, bonus!

I designed it using FreeCAD. It’s a sloped cylinder with a rim that prevents it from falling through. The rim is also sloped to enable better printing (doesn’t need supports).

Flowers Week #2

Flowers Week #3

Table with Flowers

Flowers Week #1

3D-printed vase

1996 Patent

Vase Sideview

Challah Tray

Posted on September 15, 2018 by LittleChip

I’ve been promising to make Dana a challah tray for along time. I finally cobbled one together. It’s not without it’s imperfections, but she seemed happy with it, so I guess all’s well.

Dana is a fantastic baker (and cook for that matter). Before our son, J, came along she would bake occasionally, but once we had new life in our home, she was determined that he would only eat home-baked bread. And so it has been. Now 15, our son has never known store-bought bread in the house. She also frequently bakes challah for the temple. This year for Rosh Hashanah, it had bits of dried apricot. And honey, of course. Delish. Challah for Rosh Hashanah is traditionally round (not elongated), so it was ok that the tray wasn’t ready in time.

I wanted the tray to be lightweight — just enough to get the loaf from the car into the temple, so it’s 1/4″ plywood. The sides are lath, like that used for building trellises. The end pieces, have the Hebrew word for challah burned into wood using a laser engraver. (More on the engraver in a future post). Two coats of polyurethane. I think I might add a cloth liner to keep the bread off the wood. Always more to do.

Challah tray

CSOTM: September 2018 — Irish Eyes

Posted on September 12, 2018 by LittleChip

Here is September’s Cross Stitch of the Month. Mom has a bit of Irish in her and has always identified with the Emerald Isle. I like the repetition in the pattern of the Celtic Knot. Quick to stitch up. I might choose different greens next time, but I like it well enough.

Celtic knot pattern is from Donna Kooler, p. 147.

Irish Eyes

Bubbles!

Posted on September 12, 2018September 12, 2018 by LittleChip

One of my motivations to learn the Processing language is that I wanted to make an animation of randomly-generated bubbles gently bouncing off each other. Don’t ask me why the idea of this image was compelling. I just remember coding as being fun (since I don’t do it for my day job), and I wanted to re-experience the almost-immediate gratification of hitting the “run” button and seeing your planned cartoon spring to life.

So here’s a clip of it in action. The bubbles have randomly-generated positions, have varying diameters, and are an array of shades of green. A new bubble cannot be created if it is too close to another bubble. When all the bubbles are created, they move to maximize the space between them. I can click on a bubble with my mouse to “pop” it, and then the adjacent bubbles fill in to maximize the separation from each other.

Source code for the Bubbles program is posted on GitHub. Feel free to download it and experiment.

Processing: A computing platform

Posted on September 9, 2018 by LittleChip

I don’t code for a living, but I can write a bit of script if absolutely necessary. A few years ago, I had a hankering to write some programs to make some simple animations. I wanted to have balloons appear and bounce off each other. But learning a new language always seemed like such a steep learning curve, that it was just wasn’t worth the trouble.

Then I discovered Processing through Dan Shiffman‘s YouTube videos. One episode, and I was hooked.

At the time, I was travelling a great deal for my day job, with many long international flights. I bought a small computer and some books, and spent some of the flight time learning this new computer program.

Why Processing is different

Processing is fantastic. It’s compact and runs on my cheapie PC. It makes learning about objects and methods totally simple. Within a few weeks I had my bubble program running. Then I expanded to more. Plus it’s all totally free (though it would be great if you could support the foundation, too.)

Processing is build around the assumption that you want to make a window, put some things in the window, and have those things move around or interact. There are two predefined functions setup() and draw (). Setup() has the code you want to execute once. Code in draw() is executed repeatedly. Every time draw() executes, the output window is updated, giving the illusion of motion. The beauty is that you don’t have to think about the infrastructure behind how the screen is updating. You can focus what you want to put in the window. “Would the balloons look better if they were green or blue?”

How to get started

Watch some of Dan Shiffman’s Coding Train YouTube videos. Each 15-20 minute video walks you through how he goes about coding up a particular challenge, say making Purple Rain or visualizing the digits of pi. There is also a Javascript version. I haven’t begun to explore it, but if you want to put stuff up on the web, it might be the better starting point for you.

Download the code from Processing.org, and dig in.

I initially borrowed the textbook on Processing from the library. I liked it so much I bought the new version. Then I realized it was missing some material from the first edition. So I went back and bought a copy of the first edition, too. It’s the only book I own in two editions. It isn’t necessary to buy the book, but because I was doing most of my learning on airplanes, the book format worked well for me.

Processing: First Edition

Processing: Second Edition

Japan: Day 1 — Imperial Palace

Posted on September 5, 2018 by LittleChip

For our first day of touring, we wanted to take it a bit easy. After all, we were still recovering from 24 hours in transit from home, near Boston, to Tokyo. Caffeine plus travel excitement was not quite enough to offset the jetlag.

Out hotel was the InterContinental at Shinagawa station. The hotel had to be near the Yamanote line for convenience. We got a good deal through Expedia, and the room was beautiful and very comfortable for the three of us.

Shinagawa is a huge train station, and travelling through it at rush hour is not for the feint of heart. Rush hour is a river of men in white shirts and dark pants. It flows as smoothly and efficiently as a school of fish. New York has similar traffic, but everyone is all pointy elbows trying to get ahead.

We took the train to Tokyo Station and walked over to the Imperial Palace. Tokyo was heavily bombed during WWII, and nothing remains of the original buildings. We joined a tour of the rebuilt buildings and the grounds. Pleasant, if not spectacular, but the view of the city is wonderful — like seeing New York from Central Park.