Ask Lemmy

When I was on paternity leave with my first, I used the boring nap times to make a children's book. I have a first draft done with a second now underway which is effectively a full redo... But I got the first draft printed and it's cute. It makes me happy when my kid now grabs it off the shelf and I remind him I made it for him.

My partner asked why I didn't just sleep when he slept...I'm just really bad at taking naps. Tried getting the first draft published and there weren't any bites so I let it sit for over a year before revisiting for the new draft. Maybe someday. Maybe never. The act of making it is fun, regardless.

I took a wire weaving class yesterday and made this:

I also managed to finish these in time for my mom's birthday:

i made a windows app that dims my screen. but specifically for use on hdtvs, cuz I've neved had space for an office setup and have used every dimmer out there and they all lrave me unsatisfied one way or another.

i know theres 1000 dimmers out there, but i really put a lot of work into making mine useful, small, and intuitive. there's event automation, hotkeys, and a convenient ui.

no one seems to really care about it online, but after literally 10+ years of suffering I'm incredibly proud of it

I was at work, but I got a patent on an antenna that is used to jam cell signals so that explosives experts could stay safe disarming IEDs in Afghanistan and Iraq. It was more compact than previous antennas that stuck up really high, making the guy with the radio a target for snipers. Or they would fold them up to get through doorways making them less efficient. I have no idea what happened to them but I came up with the concept, designed them, simulated them, built them, tested them and even shipped five of them myself. One of the best programs I had working for the man. I sincerely hope I might have contributed to saving a life.

I made this halloween costume out of scrap from a hospital demo I've been doing and I'm pretty happy about it.

It gpt too hot too early in the season to complete it, but this greenhouse will be completed soon!

It was ridiculously expensive, I could have built an RTX 5090 gaming system for the money... in 2025. But what is the fun in that? (Almost) anyone ready to shill out that money can do that. I enjoy projects where I can design and build something to my own specifications, something that ends up being more or less unique, yet functional.

So I built a 7.5 L small form factor PC based on a Strix Halo with the best iGPU on the market (with RTX 4060 levels of performance), completely fanless, operating at 100W TDP sustained for CPU and GPU combined. This was rather nerve wrecking given the investment and how it could have easily ended up as paper weight or with my custom cooling solution just being not up for the job, as the first prototype is also the final thing. But it worked and that's why I am pretty proud at it, even if it means something only to me.

https://smallformfactor.net/forum/threads/monochrome-2-my-custom-fanless-7-5-l-strix-halo-system-completed.20177/

I made a charging station/toolbox/catch tray thing out of cardboard to set on my nightstand and put all my pocket stuff in. Going to test that out for awhile and redo it in wood once I've confirmed I'm happy with it.

I made a printable pattern that allows you to origami fold two d6 dice from a sheet of letter paper. It means I can give my acute psych patients board games if they ask and even if they're sick enough to insert them into their orifices there's very minimal harm possible.

spoiler

I have other games that also utilize pieces made very similar to the pieces used by this chess set and have even made checkers to accompany that set.

Once made a game on my calculator. Not uploaded from my computer, literally typed it in and developed it on the calculator. Had to do some optimization and everything to get it to run reasonably since this wasn't a very advanced system. It was a pretty simple game about flying a spaceship through an asteroid field, with collectables that blew up all the asteroids onscreen, and your score was how far you flew. It was just nice to actually finish a project for once, and on such limited hardware, and have it actually be fun to play!

https://remocon.tv/
It is a platform that lets people control robots from anywhere in the world in real time, with a live camera feed and everything. There is an API so people can upload their own robots and have others control them.

It's no longer online in order to minimize data exposure, but during some major wildfires a decade ago, a small city was evacuated with my city being the nearest safe place to be (~4 hours away), so I built a site within a couple of hours to let people with spare rooms offer space to evacuees. For nearly a week I became the place to find vetted information about resources for everything an evacuee needed to know. It took the province and Red Cross 4-5 days to get their systems up and running so I was an important stop gap. I've since devised a system for evacuee information that I can deploy in less than an hour (it's always running, but I confirm data for each deployment to make sure links and phone numbers are still valid).

I make music and I'm occasionally pretty happy with some of my guitar playing.

Years ago I was asked to make a website to educate the public and promote a campaign to bring back a formerly-declared-extinct species.

There were scientists, zoologists, researchers and volunteers in the field who did the REAL work. I had the easy part.

But when the website was launched, I received 'thank you' emails from all over the world. Reading all of those letters was one of the most rewarding feelings.

And the best part . . . Though it's still a threatened species (I'm told recovery potential is strong), today there are more than 500 of these animals living in the wild.

Last year I built this cupboard and hutch, along with a matching buffet.

My name is on a plaque (along with dozens of others) attached to the Nancy Grace Roman telescope that just launched. I don’t think I’ll ever top that. I also had a hand in building the primary mirrors for JWST, seeing images come back from it has been incredibly rewarding! Working in aerospace definitely has its awesome moments, despite being “just a job” most of the time.

My kids. They are incredible people and I am so lucky to have them.

I contributed to this animation collaboration project over the course of several months. I worked on maybe 3 or 4 separate pieces, and the final product turned out incredible.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vsMHNTQMDU

A few cool things I made of my own volition didn't even make it in, like a power-fist attachment I modeled and rigged up, and a custom bootup screen animation for the computers.

Although, one main piece I worked on required redoing it like 3 times to get it right. The model we used for reference had a lot of very complex and challenging shapes. :)

It was super rewarding, at a time when I had a brief window where I quit the awful job I was in and could dedicate myself to being a 3D artist. I learned a LOT, collaborating with so many (~40-50?) artists from all over the world.

I received a lot of praise for being able to take feedback and critique well, because I didn't lose spirit when being told "Your second attempt at this part still isn't up to quality yet."

I also received a commendation for going above and beyond, because I designed the rifle grip myself! (The reference model just attaches the rifle to the arm, but we wanted him to hold it.) It was a challenge designing something that looked like it belonged in the design and fit the hand the other artists designed for it.