I want to take a moment and discuss something really important. Then, I’ll get on to everything else.
I know I don’t have a huge platform here, still I think this is important to say this. In the United States it is election season. This year we are having a Presidential election. If you are eligible to vote, please make sure you have registered and that you vote. Vote.
If you don’t think your vote counts consider this, the 2000 election was determined by 537 votes in Florida. The 2016 election was determined by a less than 1% margin in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. In some cases, in Pennsylvania that less than 1% margin amounted to just a handful of people per precinct. It doesn’t matter how you feel about who ultimately won those elections, that is not the point. The point is that your vote, your voice matters. It does count. It does make a difference.
If you vote for no other reason, vote to preserve your right to complain about the government for the next four years. Because if you don’t vote, if you refuse to perform your sacred duty as a citizen of this country, if you don’t exercise your right to vote, you forfeit your right to complain about what you get.
So please, make sure you Vote. If you mail your ballot, if you vote early, if you go to the polling place on November 3, 2020, however you choose to do it, VOTE.
And to quote Monty Python…”Now for something completely different.”
I spent most of my week 3D printing the items I showed you last week. The root saver things for the Aerogarden. I’ve got a nice stash of them now. I have a few more extra items I’m printing for my parents and then I hope to have that project wrapped up by the end of this week. I’ve learned a few interesting things along the way.
I tried to make the job go more “efficiently” by setting up to run multiple sets of the root savers in one print. It seemed like a sound idea. Except that it wasn’t. I didn’t think about the fact that I’m basically printing in melted plastic that has to bond to itself and it will do that best when it is still hot, or at least very warm. Not thinking about that, I setup to print 3 of the root savers as one print job. And when they were done and I took them off the printer, everyone of them either had or ended up with at least one of the “legs” broken off. They were really brittle too. I suspect that the time it took for the printer to make the full round from the first one to the third one and back was long enough for the filament to cool. So I changed plans and have printed one at a time since.
It also seems to matter how old the filament is, or maybe how much exposure to air and moisture it has had because I found that as I got farther into the roll of the blue, I got somewhat cleaner prints. Then when I completely switched to my new filament everything was consistent. I still had greeblies to clean off and sand down. But overall, the print was better.
I did spend a fair amount of time studying last week as well. I mean as mesmerizing as it is to watch a 3D printer, there really is only so much of it that I can do. So I studied. I think I am on track to start the next phase of that either end of this week or first part of next week. It’s the more intense part. It’s the part where I attempt a practice test and see how things look. I’ve been putting this off and somewhat dreading it because it’s like the real test so it could take as much as 2 hours each try. However, I’m really at the point that that is what I need to do next. The first few are always horrible and a bit crushing. I think I’m going to do ok and I get less than 50%. And yet as I continue, I will get better, I’ll learn new stuff and finally be ready to take the test. So this week, I will also be doing a fair amount of studying, with a few breaks thrown in.
Which is what I did this weekend. I took a little break from trying to study and I did some things that I enjoy much more. In addition to some reading, to finish off a couple of books, I did some Blender and I played some guitar. All of which I had been missing out on. I was really disappointed when I got to the weekend and realized I hadn’t played guitar that week or done any lessons, and that I had not made more progress on my Blender donuts scene, because I had not worked on it.
Kind of makes me think of the Addams Family.
So Friday, after watching the latest Blender Today to hear about a couple of cool new announcements, I settled down at my laptop, to the sound of the 3D printer, and I got to work on the donuts. I have a weird thing happening with the icing on one in that when I go to weight paint it, the colors are the opposite of what they are supposed to be. And since that was the first piece of icing I dealt with, when I got to the second piece I was completely confused by the results. They were the opposite of what I expected because it decided to revert to using the expected color scheme.
Why the weight painting and being opposite matters is that it makes a difference in how the particles, or sprinkles get dispersed on the icing. And it’s not that the color being opposite matters. It’s more that it was confusing. The weight map uses different colors, from blue to red, to denote how strong an influence that area will have, or in this case, how many sprinkles can land there. Normally Red means that that area will have the most influence, or in the case of sprinkles, that’s where they can land. Blue means it’s not influential at all except maybe to repel anything that is trying to land on it, like sprinkles. The first donut I weight painted, blue was behaving as it was the most influential while red was behaving as it wasn’t at all influential. And then the other two donuts decided to be normal and I was back to red as influential and blue as not. Ugh.
I am really pleased with what I got done. I did change my initial plan a little as far as the sprinkles. It seemed a better idea. I have one more idea for the sprinkles that I want to add. Maybe I’ll get it in this week.
Oh. The big Blender announcements were that they have a new corporate patron. Unity game engine joined at the patron level. Microsoft joined recently, and before that Epic, and Ubisoft had joined. This is really important for Blender because it is an open source application that is community driven. They don’t sell the software. They just write it and update it. And to be able to do a good job at that they needed to be able to hire some developers full-time. This latest patron took them to their goal and over. So that is a really big deal. And yes, anyone can support them at different levels not just big companies.
The other big Blender announcement had to do with their convention. In the past in October they would hold BCon or Blender Convention in Amsterdam where they are headquartered. This year they had also planned to have their first US convention in Los Angeles. I wanted to go even though I wasn’t sure about the price. I would, ultimately, like to go to the one in Amsterdam. This year, both got canceled. And then they decided, like so many events and groups are doing, to take it online. It looks like it will be just a 1 day event and it will be free. You can purchase a comfort box to be delivered, hopefully, in time for the event so you have swag and goodies to help you feel like you are more a part of the event. So it looks like, this year, I will be going to a Blender conference. I think I’ll order the box too.
Just in case you think, that with all that, I neglected my guitar again, I assure you I did not. I watched several more lessons and then I practiced. I re-discovered, there is a price to pay for not practicing regularly. Sore finger-tips. Lesson, re-learned. I am making an effort to practice at least a little each day. I keep making this pledge to myself. It sometimes takes a few tries before I get it. So I’ll keep trying. And playing. I am considering one of the other online guitar learning platforms out there. I was going to go with Fender play, except from the App Store from Apple, it looks like maybe their format, or at least their app might be frustrating. I also looked at Justin Guitar, who I’ve looked into before. His beginner app gets a lot of good feedback so that’s good. And I know his site is fairly extensive. I’m still looking. I am only about a third of the way through with the course I’m working on and I have 3 more to do after that. Which means, as fast as I am working through things, there’s no rush to find the next step.
Check in again next time to see what I manage to get up to next.