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Showing posts from 2010

Pumpkin time of year

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With Halloween orders mostly out the way and our closest game night to Halloween being last night I spent some time carving up the pumpkins for. I scooped the innards out and Kim helped with some of the details once the lovely little sprog Eli had gone to bed. They aren't particularly original but they are a combination of two other designs I've seen on the internet mixed together and they work quite well. Photos are courtesy of Alana as I left my camera at my parents and phones really don't cut it for project shots.

Eagle PCB Designer

This weekend I have mostly been trying to work with eagle pcb designer. Figured it might be useful to be able to create a proper pcb layout for some of the projects I have in mind. Sadly I have once again discovered the difference between freeware and paid for software. Most cross platform apps tend to be cumbersome and awkward to use. A gross sweeping generalisation I know but thats how I'm left feeling. I think I have sorted the last of my issues with a fudge, does the job. More details to follow.

Paper Lithophanes

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OK, good weekend for me, turns out if you layer up several sheets of paper and then hold them up to the light you can get several different shades of colour. Combine this with careful cutting out of specific shapes within those layers and you can build up pictures within the shades. I took this one step further and wrote a program that calculate this all for you and then prints out some images showing you where to cut but the principle is the same. It came out really well and not as time consuming as most of my projects are. I've got some more ideas for cutting the paper with a laser cutter or building up an image with a 3D printer that I should probably look into so this won't be the last you'll see of lithophanes from me. I also wrote an instructable if you want to make your own http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Make-a-Paper-Lithophane/

Tentacular (Tentacle Spectacular)

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After making the octopus to go under my laptop and wanting to make a unique valentines gift I came up with the idea of some entwined tentacles that form a loving little heart shape. An instructable followed as well as a web page with Paypal links should other decide that they want to purchase them from me. I'm thinking about taking the whole tentacle range to Maelstrom this year in the hope that I might get some purchases from other people who think tentacles are cool. Paypal links and other designs can be found here http://sites.google.com/site/msraynsford/tentacles
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I needed a new laptop stand for my laptop. The old was was rather rattly and because the fans were exposed I couldn't rest it on my legs without an additional table mat. So I came up with a basic stand design, that left a gap under the back of the laptop. While thinking of something to put in that gap the idea of a scary monster hiding under the bed hit me and the monster under my laptop range was born. The claw monster was the first design. Nasty yellow claws and glowing LED eyes peer out from under the laptop. The LED's and fans both take power from the USB socket. Enthused with the success of my first design I then went on to make other designs. The tentacle monster was shaped from polymer clay and I think is the best design to date. I have other ideas in mind but as I now have 3 laptop stands for my own laptop the wife has suggested that I sell some of these designs before I make another. These designs and all future stands can be viewed and purchased from the follow