MINIBLOG

I last updated the projects pages on May 18th, which is a good five months. I have a feeling it's because I'm not really happy with how it's all put together. Originally I didn't want to have a Blog, you know one of those things you write like a diary, where everything is mixed together in chronological order.

Oh no, not I, I figured I wanted to divide things up by Projects. Mainly so once I finished a project there's be a record of it set in stone. I could look at it and go "Ah yes, the beginning, middle and end of that project", but I haven't yet finished any projects. Like is THE RISO PRINTER a project, or just an ongoing process, in which smaller projects exist?

I'd love to catalogue my work, but figuring out where it starts and ends and what should exist as it's own thing, but whch parts are just figure ideas out.

The short of that is I think I stopped, as it felt like carrying on would just increase what I'd have to deal with later on.

There has to be a better way to show what I do, and blog posts still don't feel like it. Perhaps an "Essays" section for "proper" writing, but, my brain is squirming just even thinking about it.

Pretty sure I should make a Week Notes section, gah, it's all too much.

Photo is of some DOOM map fun on the pen plotter, drawn onto old FORTRAN computer punch cards.

Today was a busy day that involved lots of writing and hanging out at the Riso studio. But I had to swing by my studio first to plot these out ready for posting off tomorrow.

There's a whole bunch of other stuff I should be doing, but, ah, after a day of writing I'm wiped out. Not interesting, but true.

It would be stupid to call them Day Notes wouldn't it.

Today I managed to...

• Do a whole bunch of day-job worky-work, which mainly involved making a website work on mobile after deciding that it was just fine to make it work on desktop/laptop. Turns out that's not true if you're talking about it at a conference where everybody has their phone out but no laptop.

• Edit some of the video for the next Drawing Machine 101 video.

• Plot a whole bunch of A5 and A6 cards for the Patreon members.

• Watch Kris troubleshoot the 3d clay printer so now we can use 4mm and 2mm nozzles on the machine, which was fun.

• Read some more of Book 8 in the Dungeon Crawler Carl series.

I am very tired!

I've spent the past year, in very tiny amounts, rewriting the code for my shop. I promised myself, and other people, that I'd make it as a MVP, just one item, one Stripe link, and let the Stripe site handle all the 'cart', order placing and so on.

But then I wanted to have two items, and to calculate shipping to different parts of the world, and have tracked and non-tracked options, and it kept growing.

Today I popped into the studio to focus on finishing the whole thing. Which I did, to much relief, kinda.

However I then turned to AI (a local AI on my machine) to ask a "What other pages do I need for an online shop in the UK?" - and while I'm 'feature complete' for all the code parts, I still have things like a Privacy Policy page, and GDPR and ICO registration, explain what the one cookie on the site is doing (keeping track of the session for the cart), shipping info, returns policy, listing some consumer rights, contact page an business address, FAQ, etc.

I feel like I've climbed to the false top of the code-mountain, only to view the last slog to the real top.

I'm not going to be fixing bugs, or adding features, but it's slightly disheartening that I can't just make it go-live yet without all this boring other (important) stuff.

(Photo from the start of the day in the greenhouse)

Well now, having a mini blog is supposed to be quick easy, simple, low friction and just a couple of minutes at the end of the day.

AND YET

But nothing more boring than blogging about blogging, instead, let's talk about the weather. It's cold, officially, much colder than the same time last year. I'm new at gardening and have no idea what I'm doing. One thing I have been doing though is 'hardening off' the seedlings that have been growing in the greenhouse.

Actually, I've learnt a couple of things, and it goes roughly like this...

1. Most seeds like lots of warmth and sun to germinate.
2. Some seeds, prefer a cooler environment, often sown directly outdoors.
3. Some seeds having germinated enjoy staying in the warmth.
4. Others, after that nice warm start, like to move to a cooler area.
5. Some seedlings CAN survive overnight frosts.
6. Some seedlings CAN'T survive overnight frosts.

I just assumed that everything LOVED the heat of the greenhouse and they'd stay in there until it was time to put them out. Turns out some just HATE that and everything goes wrong.

Anyway, I now have a system of zones; the hot GREENHOUSE zone, the cooler SHED zone, the DANGER before 'last frost' GARDEN zone, and the soon to be SAFE after 'last frost' GARDEN ZONE.

I've also got seed trays in small, medium and large sizes.

Now, after actually reading the instructions on the packets (and the internet) I'm starting the seeds in the correct 'zone' for each type, then once they've germinated moving them up a pot size and moving them to the correct (I hope) cool/hot shed/greenhouse.

Once they get a little bigger, the tough ones go outside, the dainty ones stay inside overnight but get put outside during the day.

Like I said, a system of moving things around, making sure everything is in the right place at the right time, and moving things to bigger pots when they need it. The main problem is that 24 tiny seedlings in 24 tiny pot, become more of a problem as 24 small plants in 24 small pot, soon to be 24 medium plants in medium pots.

As I said, this month is a lot colder than the same time last year, and all the gardening forums are suggesting not put any plants that can't handle it out into the DANGER zone until June.

Which basically means, it's getting very crowded here in the greenhouse.

Started off fresh, but turned into a nice warm(ish) proper spring day! Took a stroll past the multi-story car park, which was some of the inspiration for the FALLiNGWATER project, beyond the obvious Fallingwater building.

It's ugly architecture, according to everyone on facebook anyway, but I really love some of the features where they've tried to make a heavy, ponderous, practical building look lighter and more organic. The vertical slats letting more light in, the rough textures, and even wood textures in places. It's obvious people thought about the design with attention and care, even if it looks ugly now.

Shame they're going to tear it down at some point.

Throughout the day Kitty will ask me questions about what I'm doing. This is basically to keep me on track. In the morning I get asked five questions about the upcoming day, based on what's been going on the past couple of weeks. From that Kitty creates a todo list, which I can edit if I want. Throughout the day I tick tasks off.

The questions that get generate take all this into account; what I said I was going to do, what I have or haven't ticked off and so on.

Sometimes though, I don't get asked a question, Kitty just gives me her opinion instead. Which stays on the Vestaboard for amount five minutes until the display flips it away.

It doesn't happen very often, just once every two to three days, and even then I may not be around when it does happen to notice. But it generally always amuses me.

She's not wrong about the postcards.

Once again I'm cursing the constraint of only one image per entry in the miniblog, but this is the one I love the most out of the last batch. It's also the one that makes me wish I was on social media more because I really want to share this whole series.

I've written about this in the project section, but here it is again but briefer. Code makes brush move; brush runs out of ink fast; machine pauses every 100 strokes, top up with a new and different coloured ink.

The result is beautiful, shimmer ink, sheen ink, burns reds turn to orange to green and so on. Warm tones, lovely pattern, I kinda of want to hug this plot and I'm not sure what to do with it. There's more to explore, I think this is one that may end up in the shop (not this one, but similar).

This weekend we headed off to , the garden centre to grab a couple of drip trays, and came out with a mini lime tree, gooseberry shrub, and various tulips and bulbs. I've been clearing out one of the borders, so this sudden arrival of more stuff means I really needed to get that finished.

Long story short, my back is NOT my friend these past couple of days. But I did get to sit down in the greenhouse and pot & re-pot various things, with only a few twinges, ouch.

According to YouTube it's time to start putting the plants out for a few hours during the day to get them used to outside stuff, like wind, cooler air, birds and so on. So this is the shot from this morning before I headed off to work. I've just brought them in at the end of the day.

I also got to hang out in the riso studio to try and figure out why some of the prints are coming out with the alignment more messed up than I expected. I think I'm onto something, but I need to experiment more on Thursday.

Well that didn't take long. If I look at my records I can see the Irises flowered on the 21st of February, and I "dead headed" the last of them today, eight days later. I guess they flowered for about 2% of the year.

I guess the plan is to have LOTS of bulbs that flower at different times, the crocuses are still going strong, but I suspect they only have a few days left in them. It seems somehow fake or as though they don't count, keeping them in pots in the greenhouse. The few wild ones in the garden that somehow survived the gardener who's idea of gardening seemed to be pouring weedkiller over everything and digging up all the bulbs. Those ones that pushed up through the overgrown borders somehow seem more real.

I didn't really know how bulbs worked to be honest. Flowers I understand, they grow, get pollinated, die or dry out and leave seeds behind. You grab the seeds, plant them and, well, new flowers.

Bulbs keep coming back, and I wasn't sure where the whole seed part came from. Turns out, you have one bulb, all the nutrients and so on in the bulb go into growing leaves and the flower. The flower dies, and the leave stick around for a while. The important part is they draw energy from the sun, etc. etc. enough to send all the nutrients, and more back into the bulb, enough to survive until next year and maybe even spawn a couple more bulbs, and so they spread.

As I write this now I realised I still don't really know the roll the flower plays in all this, I guess seeds are involved somehow.

Anyway, the Iris grew, and as the flowers started to wilt and die I cut them off. So now I have a stack of flowers I can attempt to turn into actual dye, and a bunch of bulbs I can stick in the cleared border now I know what they look like and where I'm going to put them, so they can just hang out until next year, and I'll know not to pull them up.

Not much of an update today, I had a bunch of new company setting up admin to do. Most of which was trying to log into the UK gov website, which I've done several times before but it always seems to be a different process each time.

Did a little bit of python code 🐍 to control the pen plotter for what will probably be about 8 seconds of footage in the next video. I've always had a soft spot for tally marks, so the code basically makes a new tally mark each time you press the space bar.

Impractical but fun, and demonstrates talking to the plotter directly.

I know I know, ooooh look it's the greenhouse again, but I am enjoying it. This morning I headed into the studio to record video for the Drawing Machines 101 series; simple stuff, this one is about the size of paper in a fashion. Really it's about thinking in mm rather than pixels, but coming at it from a slightly different angle.

Either way, recording video is always a bit intense, so it was nice to just chill in the greenhouse, enjoying the early flowers and planting some more seeds. Will they grow? Who knows, time will tell, and I'll just be hanging out with them.

After mentioning in the newsletter two weeks ago that I'd added RSS feeds to the miniblog and the project pages, I promptly didn't update them at all. So much for keeping on top of things. There's various reasons, all perfectly fine excuses and it is what it is.

The thing now is I need to go and backfill the project pages, hopefully it's not too intense for anyone. I've been putting it off for long enough.

Oh, the photo is what my journaling desk looks like today now the bulbs are starting to flower.

This shouldn't be a milestone, it's only the third video in a whole series of them. If I count up how many I've outlined, there's about 26 + some bonus ones. To stumble and stall on video #3 right at the start has been irritating.

Worse, I'm not super happy with the video. Each time I go through it for a slight edit I want to throw the whole thing away and start again. But I know that's a trap, it's only introduction stuff that allows us to get to the actual code. Get it done, out the door, move into the next one.

This one was awkward because it talks about pens, so it's also nice to show the machine drawing with those pens, the whole pen-plotter/drawing-machine thing is supposed to be visual rather than just me being a talking head. Again though, there'll be plenty of opportunity for pretty visuals when we start with the code and get to see the results. So I needed to not only shoot the video, but then a bunch of b-roll to drop in, and it was finding the time to set things up that slowed everything down.

Today though I got the last bit of b-roll shot, I dropped it onto the timeline, added the music, threw on a colour grade, exported and uploaded, phew.

Tomorrow will be for making the thumbnails and all the admin that has to happen before I can make the video go live. For now though, very glad it's done.

My kids named him Goblin Cat, he lives in the house diagonally across the road. At 6:30am a man walking from somewhere, going somewhere else, stops to feed Goblin Cat a tin of food, a kind act.

For the past year Goblin Cat has started meowing for that food, earlier & earlier, further down the road. Now he starts at 5:30am, shouting for food, loudly, outside three doors down until nearly an hour later.

The kind man doesn’t know this, because Goblin Cat stops the moment he sees him in the distance. The kind man from somewhere else is oblivious to the pre-dawn demands of Goblin Cat.

I recorded the answers to the Questions that got asked over on Patreon.

As always I wish I'd done a better job, but the only way you get better is by doing it.

I wish I had more away from the desk shots, I wish my answers were tighter and better thought out, I wish the lighting and sound was better. But you know what, it was better than the previous one, and better than the one before that.

I'm still working out typefaces, transitions, what music beds I want, how the format should be. If I could do it all over again, better, I would. The most important thing though is just to keep moving forwards. It's done, it's good enough (maybe) and it means I can finish off the Pen and Paper video, and move past that one too.

Everything is about moving forwards one could-do-better project at a time.

This is kinda super niche, but here we go. Some of the seedlings in the greenhouse are "leggy", which means for whatever reason, normally lack of sun, they grow taller than they should (searching for sunlight) and don't really have the strength to support themselves properly. Most likely because the greenhouse is warm; "yay we can grow it's Spring", but also winter "hey wait, where's the sunlight?"

With the larger plants I have proper wooden stakes they can grow up. But these seedlings are still super small, so I need something that's a) tiny and b) can keep them upright.

I did have a look around for something I could use, but nothing was quite right, so of course I ended up 3d modelling exactly what I need. Tomorrow I'll take them down to the bottom of the garden to try out and print some more on Wednesday.

fwiw: as annoying as using plastic is, and PLA isn't the worst, these will be reused many many times, and eventually recycled at an industrial recycling plant. Also, more importantly it's pretty neutral in the soil, unlike the tiny wooden "stakes" I've used which have ended up growing mold and and fungus.

It's the weekend so more gardening chat! But, not much. The Irises are doing well, the Crocus are not far behind. The English Bluebells are just starting to show and the Anemone & Fritillaria are either dead or just chilling.

The next step (still) is to clear up the borders so I have somewhere to plant them, but you know, that's super boring so I guess it'll be put off until the last minute.

I headed down to London on Thursday and came back today. I've written this "Miniblog" to only have one photo per post, and I can't backdate any entries. The idea I guess to have minimal friction to creating a small blog post. Write a title, write some text, pick a photo and go.

But the last few days I've been too tired at the end of the day to make an entry, so this one photo will have to do for the past few days. Perhaps I'll add the rest to the "Life" section of the projects?

Anyway, back home now, and happy to be getting back to my own studio next week.

Not every day can be interesting, some days are just sitting and planning. After a day trip out to Liverpool yesterday, George and I sat down today to capture some of the things we talked about in the car on the way up. This is pretty much how it goes.

1. Talk about things, bounce ideas back and forth
2. Capture whatever seemed to be important enough (i.e. we remembered) onto index cards
3. Move things off index cards into action items or documentation

That last step is going to happen on Friday.