alifeee's weeknotes

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Weeknotes 21

Welcome to week 21. I have been procrastinating, so the clock argues that we are in week 22. I argue that is semantics.

This week, I have a lot to write about. I think I should limit the scope of this. When I started, I started with the idea that I could write these from my phone. While still possible, I always want to break out a laptop purely because of the amount I desire to write. Maybe both are good, and I will write them from my phone when I am without a laptop.

Like next weekend... for I am at EMF Camp! Well... it's EMF Camp... so I will have my laptop...

Moving on from the meta. This week, the chosen categorisation from spinning the metaphorical wheel is... alphabetical! And formatted a bit like an index to keep the most important noun-letter at the start.

What did I do this week?

  1. Anvil Emoji... I updated the page for the
  2. Bike... I've been repairing inner tubes for my
  3. Birthday picnic... I had a
  4. Bus signs... I am able to obtain some
  5. CO2 sensors... I am thinking about buying more
  6. Craft night... I worked on some sleeves more at
  7. Dungeons and Degenerate Gamblers... I've been playing
  8. lipu tenpo... I've been doing print+post admin for
  9. Photo albums... I made and bought a couple of
  10. Puzzle... I did some work on the
  11. Studio... I've been thinking about getting a
  12. Thermal printer... I have been using a
  13. Train Sign... I have made updates to the
  14. Weeknotes topic graph... I made the
  15. Washing... I've done loads of
  16. Yog Camp... I've been watching
  17. Ze end

Anvil Emoji... I updated the page for the

Mainly because whenever I think about it, I forget the submission and notification deadlines, I updated my anvil emoji proposal webpage. I put some timers on there to said deadlines. Now I can ignore it again until one of those dates hits.

Bike... I've been repairing inner tubes for my

I've been getting a repeating puncture in my bike tyre. I've replaced the inner tube 3 times now, and each time got another puncture after a week or so.

I like to think that each time this has happened, I've done better at preventing the next time. In order of replacing, I

Each time, I have found little stones or shards of glass, and not really known if I'd gotten the culprit for sure. The 1-week-following puncture is probably a sign that I didn't. I was buying a new inner tube every time, so ended up with 4 tubes.

This week, I patched all 4 tubes with a repair kit, and hopefully I can now use them in my tyre again. I think with the last time I removed what was causing the puncture. There's only one way to find out...

Bike around!

Birthday picnic... I had a

For my birthday, I invited people to a park for a picnic. We:

I was very tired afterwards. I had a wonderful time :)

Bus signs... I am able to obtain some

The bus signs that I was playing with last year (blog post) may be available for me to pick up from Hull Makerspace. That would be very exciting, as I could use them in my hardware adventures. For example, I could put benches on them!

It seems as if I am becoming somewhat of an "old train and bus sign" person. It is fun. I'd like to find a good reason to make something "completable" with them, for example to exhibit them somewhere, or run an installation.

CO2 sensors... I am thinking about buying more

I'd like to sense more rooms. The CO2 sensor I have previously used is neat, so I am thinking about buying more, and attaching them to more microcontrollers.

With this, I'm also considering making a couple of devices for friends, as CO2 levels is a very interesting measure to be able to measure. I will probably just use my influxdb server for them. My server seems to be at high load sometimes recently (think 100% CPU), and I think the culprit might be InfluxDB. So if I find out more about that, it might be worth setting up Influx on another server, or investigating how I can reduce the weight of it (for example, it might just be the web client trying to view LOADS of data that slows it down).

Craft night... I worked on some sleeves more at

The sleeves are coming along nicely. They have an elasticated top, so fit on my arms. I also hemmed the bottom. I noticed yesterday that one of the hems is inside-out. Whoops!

They are effectively cylinders. Next, I'd like to gather them at a point along their height. I'm not sure how to do this other than "tack/baste around the circumference, and pull it tight". But then, how do I lock that in place? I am not sure yet, and will see what I can do next Wednesday.

Dungeons and Degenerate Gamblers... I've been playing

After seeing the Yogs (see below) talk about it a lot, I downloaded the demo for Dungeons and Degenerate Gamblers. It's a sort of roguelike blackjack game. It's pretty fun. I may buy it when it comes out. don't mention balatro don't mention balatro don't mention balatro

lipu tenpo... I've been doing print+post admin for

The zine prints for nanpa jaki arrived this week. Subsequently, I've bought 46 stamps (30 international and 16 2nd class) in preparation of packaging them up to send them off to the world. I also printed off address labels for the 31 addressees.

I planned to package them up today, but I got distracted, and I haven't. Instead, I am writing weeknotes, and then I will go to bed. I will do it tomorrow.

Photo albums... I made and bought a couple of

Firstly, I bought a photo album. I've been meaning to for months, and haven't been able to find a place to buy them from. This week, the brainwave was to try the camera shop. They had plenty! Quite expensive, but the novelty (or warm-gut) feeling of being able to buy anything I need in person is high enough to offset most costs.

Secondly, I made my own "proto-album". I stuck 27 6x4 photo prints into an OS map. They fit nicely between the folds, so it folds up just as it normally would. I think it makes quite a neat photo album.

Puzzle... I did some work on the

The unnamed-as-yet puzzle is also mentioned below. This section is about some updates to the website that I did. I did them.

Studio... I've been thinking about getting a

I've been getting into lots of hardware projects recently: the train sign; the bus signs; a receipt printer; the skipbook. It would be neat to be able to set some of them up more permanently, instead of having to set them up and tidy them away every time I work on them.

On this track, it would be neat to share or have some sort of studio space.

Thermal printer... I have been using a

I was very kindly gifted a thermal printer. I have spent a lot of today figuring out how to use it.

It uses a system of commands called "ESC POS". This is used by most thermal printers, and is mostly the same across them, with slight differences. On Linux, you can send plaintext straight to the USB, and it prints on the printer. You can also send escape sequences to make the printer do specific commands.

My PC and laptop both run Windows, so this would be difficult to do. However, the skipbook runs DSL (Damn Small Linux), so I used this to send commands. It really was as "easy" as running

printf "hello world\!\n\n\n" > /dev/usb/lp0

It was very fun to send these simple text commands and get output physically.

Scruss' blogs were very helpful for me to understand initially how the printers worked. Their gist to print images also worked swimmingly (reminder that I love gists, and I printed out some images!

The final thing I did before realising I should sleep (not before weeknoting) was connect OpenBenches. I made a small script which would print the most recent bench on the paper. Similar to the train sign, this would be neat to set up permanently, as you could have this receipt somewhere and it would print a few new benches out every day when they were added.

With this script, I needed to get the headers from a web request. This is something I'd done last week when I made the random repository fetcher, so it was neat being able to reuse that concept. Particularly so as when I showed a friend the random repo fetcher, they said "why did you make it". The reason then was "because I can". That's still the reason, but now I also have a lesson of "well it helped me make this other thing".

Train Sign... I have made updates to the

As for hardware:

As for software:

Weeknotes topic graph... I made the

Last week I talked about wanting a topics graph. This week, I made just that. You should see it on the homepage.

Each weeknote can be tagged by me with some topics. These are hoverable or tappable which highlights them. If your screen is wide enough (see: you're on a computer), you can also see lines between the topics. This means you can see how long I go on about things week-to-week to month-to-month. It's probably too much.

Washing... I've done loads of

That's it. I'm not sure it's been more than normal, but it's felt like it.

Yog Camp... I've been watching

This week, the Yogscast are streaming an event called "Yog Camp". It's just like a mini jingle-jam, really, where they play lots of games and stream lots of streams. However, these games and streams contribute points to Team Xephos or Team Honeydew.

It's fun to very occasionally tune in to Twitch streams. I couldn't do it more often though.

Ze end

Zis is ze end of zis week.

Brush your teeth with flavours that are not mint.

alifeee

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