Maybe I should get some bitcoins now

I have $56 credit in my Renderosity store, $19 credit in my Shapeways store, and $144 in my PayPal account courtesy of M40 grenade sales at the RPF. But I also just dropped $50 at Amazon for Pachmyers and a bottle of gun blue.

At some point I need to put some bucks down for a couple of larger chunks of aluminium. Slabs for the Jubal Early. And a big chunk of cylinder if I get the go-ahead to lathe up the flash hider for a Commando Cody.

I haven't entirely given up on the KP/-31; if I can just grind enough slag off the lugs to where they will function again, it might just be possible to make the welding alternative work. Especially since I discovered I have access to a wire welder (one of the el cheapo boxes, without even the external reels and gas fitting).

Scrivenings

I could probably model the Jubal Early in Carrara. I've figured out how to work in scale in Carrara, how to use reference images, and how to export in a format useable by a 3d printer. It should be possible to follow the same pipeline towards g code the CNC milling machine can use.

But Carrara is useless for figuring out mechanics. The Jubal has a few interactive parts. Other projects down the pipeline will require even more. And perhaps more importantly, Carrara is not a parametric modeler. The control I get from it is due to working with mesh directly. I'm quite good at building compound curves and subtle rounded edges with it, but a proper parametric modeler makes this much more painless.

So I'm struggling to learn a little Autodesk now. Aside from their flagship, Inventor, they have a nice-looking student-level package called Fusion 360. Which licenses for a mere $40 a year. With a free trial period of up to a year!

The software I wanted to mention today, though, is Scrivener. This is another piece of extremely affordable shareware. It was built to manage a novel, but it is good software for organizing all sorts of documents. And, I've found, decent for organizing projects as well. It isn't project management software; there's no calendar and milestones, inventory control, Gantt Charts and dependencies, etc.

But it is a very good way of organizing a large number of document scraps and stubs, allowing you to sort them, view them in a hierarchal order or in the ad-hoc associations of a cork board or as selections strung together in a single free-reading text. These scraps and fragments, outlines and research findings and full chapters can include images, links, and various sorts of internal links and commentaries and side notes within the Scrivener project itself.

I've been using it to plan shows lately. I throw individual documents for each meeting into a folder, establish other folders for show-specific issues like pull lists or inventories, and I can look over the project as a whole in the outliner at any time, and open notes in split view while working up cue lists.

For the writer, Scrivener has the ability to generate word counts, set page goals, and track revisions. When a project is complete, it can strip out the inline notes and compile the selected final drafts into a formatted document ready for use in various online publishing systems.



Pity I can't make better use of the ability to arbitrarily re-arrange scenes and chapters. I tend to write too densely, with too many threads within each scene. It would be extremely difficult to re-arrange scenes when so many of their internal parts only work in one order.

Scrivener has a slew of other tools which I am quite behind in making use of, though. In-line annotations, global referencing (helps a lot to keep your character names consistent!) and so forth. Sigh. One more piece of software I need to find more time to learn properly.

More Blow-Back

I've been scribbling ideas for a new prop. But I also learned that one of my theaters is doing "Mockingbird" this season, and are already having questions about how they are going to do the gun.

I've done this once; for "Tis Pity..." the actor had a plastic gun and a keyfob transmitter in his pocket. He'd press the button while miming firing the gun, and the sound played out the sound system. Which is how I ended up cleaning stage blood out of a radio transmitter but anyhow.

The idea I meant to throw together was basically a cut-down Nintendo Power Glove. One flex sensor in a fingerless glove (or a flesh-colored finger cot) leading back to a XBee or similar radio transmitter.

This does have the advantage of simplicity. XBee modules have onboard analog to digital converters, and can stream a steady set of samples from the sensor. On the other side, a simple carrier allows you to bring the serial data stream into software via a USB cable. This is what I did to interpret the accelerometer data when I was messing around with a spell-casting wrist band. Since the parsing is done on the host computer, you can display the real-time data from the sensor, log it, look for patterns, adjust limits on the fly.

The downside is cost and battery life. The XBee pro is $50, and to make the sensor really responsive you have to be transmitting almost constantly.



But I realized yesterday, as I sat in a brush-up rehearsal of someone else's show scribbling away on notes on my laptop, the trigger finger sensor may not work.

The problem is recoil.

There's been a steady effort to simulate recoil in game controllers and laser tag guns. I'd been looking at those options that very day, towards the prop I mentioned above. On stage, it is frequently done that the actor will jerk the gun in their hands to try to simulate the kick of a real round. It isn't that realistic, but it is better than nothing (blanks, of course, have very little kick either).

This is the way in which the sounds don't coordinate. You can't exactly see the actor's trigger finger from forty feet away, but you do notice if they jerk the gun; auditory reaction time is on the order of .2 seconds, plus they do actually have to pull -- in a 1980's study, it was a full .5 seconds before a forefinger could be brought down on a button. Using a vibration motor instead of an alerting sound brought it down to .4 seconds.

Obviously, if it is too disruptive to tear open a rented prop gun and insert a sensor (the reason why I've been designing a sensor that is worn by the actor instead), it is way too much effort to put a recoil device on. Especially since the best commercial recoil devices are just about up to delivering a satisfying "kick" to the user -- they don't jerk the gun enough so anyone would notice it from stage distance!

Which leaves us back with the poor actor having to coordinate jerking the weapon back at the same time they operate a button. And because simulating a firearm recoil requires such a strong muscular effort, it probably precludes doing anything subtle and controlled with the same hand (like operating a button, or even like pulling a trigger). Which means you might as well have a key fob in the pocket.



But I may be overthinking this. The problem is that I shoot. The kinesthetics are clear in my mind; you grip the weapon securely, and you ease down the trigger. After you've taken out the slack, that last bit of squeeze is timed to happen just as you are on a resting breath, and the bobbing sights are properly aligned.

As an actor, though, what could I make work? Jerking seems natural, and controlled. Perhaps an accelerometer is what is called for. Assuming I can discriminate the desired motion. Pressing any kind of button or trigger feels wrong to me...but at the moment I'm trying to work this out with a hot glue gun.

Maybe I should build that prop after all. Or run across the street for one of those NERF guns I've had an eye on for my next repaint...

Hope

I've been looking for a while for a better option than the XBee for theatrical use. The XBee modules are fantastically easy to use -- basically, they are the Arduino of the wireless world. But they are also expensive. Even eBay sellers can't get you below $20 a unit.

The other downside is indoors range. The higher the frequency, the worse the reflections, and the 1mw standard XBee can't reliably get from one room of my apartment to the other. And you can't count on having good line-of-sight in theater. The XBee "pro" model increases this output power substantially, and can brute-force a signal all the way from booth, across the stage, and into the dressing rooms (which I've verified by using it in actual performances). But this option is also costly, raising the price per module to nearly $50.

The trouble with finding wireless options for theater is the combination of range and necessary reliability. We can't afford dropped signal if that is triggering a key effect. And the majority of bluetooth data links down to cheap keyfob transmitters are designed to operate at, maybe, 25 feet.

Well, there is a series of modules out there. The RFM69 series from HopeRF are under ten bucks each, even for the 100mw RFM69HW model. There are even (nascent) Arduino libraries for these increasingly popular modules. They do lack the ease of use and existing infrastructure of the XBee, but this seem the better choice.

The combination of high power and low frequency makes for better indoors range. And the low unit cost means I can incorporate remote control as a viable option to the DuckLite.



I've been looking a lot at parts costs, and with Chinese RGB modules, the cheaper MOSFETs for power switching, and ATtiny chips -- or, at least, using ICSP headers instead of incorporating a USB option -- I can get the unit price down to not much over $10 a light module. This makes it plausible to use them in multiples in a stage production; to have a set of lanterns or party lights or tea lights or costume lights or whatever.

The downside was going to be that the cost of controlling them remotely was going to be prohibitive, enough it was almost not worth adding the option even as an unpopulated set of headers. But with these nodes, this might return to being a viable option. With the realities of interface, power management, CPU support, physical headers, and so on they should roughly double the price of the modules, but this still seems plausible.



It also means all the work I've done so far in laying out the new PCB is a waste. Back to the drawing board on that one!

Successful Failure

I went in to Tech Shop today in an effort to determine if grinding and welding is an efficient way to proceed on the KP/-31 rebuild.

The effort was successful. I determined it is not.

Grinding and filing was tedious, the results marginal, and it would probably tech less time to machine new parts from scratch. Casting is looking better and better as an option.

Random Failing Canons

The thing that's making my Tomb Raider/SG1 fanfic so much fun is that I've given myself implicit permission to be wrong. There's a lot of fun stuff to research, and my followers seem to enjoy all the random weird trivia, but it really takes the pressure off to straight up admit I'm not going to get all of it right.

And, yes, I just started writing from one end. Started her in Malta because introducing her on the sundeck of her yacht over sparkling turquoise water seemed like a good entrance. Malta of course makes it obvious to go blathering on about the Knights of Malta, the Tribute of the Falcon, the Battle of Lepanto and so on.

Searching around for random interesting antiquities in that corner of the Mediterranean led me to Tripoli, and inherent in that was a clash with Gaddafi's Amazonian Guard. And the Tribute of the Falcon gave me an excuse to visit San Francisco as well. And so it went; pretty much following random connections around like an archaeological James Burke, until I needed to actively push her in the direction of the Stargate.

I've finally reached the chapter where Lara sneaks into the SGC. Filling 5,000 or more words with that would make it like playing Black Mesa in reverse; lots of crawling down tunnels filled with steam pipes and fiddling with doors, and that didn't interest me. Fortunately, the absurdities of having the Stargate buried under the old NORAD command center, in (according to the show) an abandoned silo, gives me implicit permission to be just as silly.

So I'm postulating a top-top secret continuation of the old Project Pluto (a remarkably insane Cold War creation that never quite flew, thank the gods -- it was, in essentials, a nuclear-powered cruise missile the size of a locomotive. A nuclear ramjet, in fact, spewing hot radioactive gas from an open-core reactor as it hurtled along low to the ground at Mach 3, destroying buildings from the sheer shock wave alone.)

And to find out about Project Nergal I've got her talking to a permanent resident of the gallant, foolish, and probably hugely claustrophobic and depressing Sealand, a would-be micro-nation and de-facto data haven off the coast of England. And while she is in Colorado, I've got her exploring some of the remnant dreams of Gilded Age philanthropist Spencer Penrose. All of which I discovered simply by reading as much as I could about what it looked like on the trails and summit of the mountain.

I may still manage some air vents, but I'm hopeful there's enough random material there to fill out my chapter. Then I can finally get to the place that first interested me; having Lara Croft and Daniel Jackson compare, contrast, and be confronted with the realities of their Indiana Jones school of archaeology approach to the ancient world.




I've been watching old episode of Stargate: Atlantis of late. Which depresses me a bit. The show makes a strong start but then becomes increasingly depressing. Like the much older Space, 1999 it seems to go out of its way to make the heroes ineffectual; no matter what they try, things usually turn out badly. This is not helped by the fact that this is a self-satisfied, moralizing bunch of bigots. There are numerous places where the "designated hero" rule is turned up to eleven; the Atlantis crowd giving the cold shoulder to someone doing or suggesting exactly the same thing they just did or suggested. Only they are the "heroes," so it's right when they do it.

Among the strange attitudes is their seeming certainty of what makes a "human." People who don't meet their narrow guidelines are not treated well. Wraith hybrid? Replicator? Well, it is just fine and dandy to lie to one, betray one, murder one without a qualm. It isn't as if they are people, after all.

As unsettling as this is, the mistake that most stands out for me is putting Atlantis back in contact with Earth before the first season is even over. Voyager did the same thing. Given the chance to set a series in a completely new world, the writers seemingly panic and immediately make every effort to bring back all the elements of the last show. Voyager couldn't travel a parsec without running into something from the Alpha Quadrant, whether it was yet more Borg, or Amelia Earhart.

Enterprise took this one step further. The very precept of the show was "Star Trek before the Federation, before transporters and phasers, when the Vulcans weren't friends, our ships were primitive, and we hadn't even heard of Klingons." And yet, by the second or third episode everything that had been in the franchise before was back. They just had to have the Borg again, even though it violated continuity so bad they ended up ending the series with a giant reset button.

It is tempting to blame lazy writers, but most of these shows don't have writers per se. They have giant teams of script doctors. And they also have marketing departments, and layers and layers of producer oversight. And, yes, the fans want more of the damned Borg. Or at least they say they do.

The error is giving the fans what they say they want, instead of giving them something they need. The first moment someone sat down to create a Voyager script they should have been saying, "Here we are about to cross our entire galaxy. This is a different scale of exploration than we've ever dealt with before. How does galactic structure change things? Are we going to end up in rifts between the spiral arms? How close can we get to the core, and how many episodes can we get out of flirting with the galactic-scale black hole there?"

But, no. Their first question was, "So I want the Borg to attack like they did on every other episode of the last show I was writing for. So what do I have to change to make that happen?"

Star Trek, the original Star Trek, confronted expectations. It told a story that hadn't been told before, and trusted the audience would be intrigued enough to pick up the language and absorb the mythos. It is a very difficult chore to toss any of that mythos, especially when you know you have a ready-made audience. But when the very basic premise of the show is, "This is going to be a little different," you murder your show by quickly erasing and retconning every aspect of that difference away.

Atlantis should have stayed out of contact, fighting their lonely battle with the Wraith and dependent on the contacts and alliances they could make in the Pegasus Galaxy. They should have been always constrained, and forced to new improvisations and new acts of heroism, based on not having access to infinite equipment, re-supply, power, and new personnel from Earth.

They should have confronted the reality of being stranded, and grown in attachment to Atlantis, and adopted the Pegasus Galaxy as the home they would fight for. And all the choices made in the show, from being force to abandon the city to deciding whether they could afford to keep someone like Cavenaugh on, should have been shaped by those realities.

Permission

There's something I left out of my attempt to explain TechShop. And that is something about the place and the experience that is strongly emphasized in the Maker Movement; a thing that has gotten interest in Make as a way to rebuild interest in STEM skills in students in our schools.

The idea is permission. And that's something I've been conscious of as I've worked with my niece on growing her skills.



From the point of view of someone who grew up around tools and crafts (who was, among other positions of default permission, male), the significance of TechShop is it removes the barrier between the kinds of tools you can own or rent, and the kinds you need to be a company to have. Certain things were just plain out of reach to the hobbyist. You could chisel wood. You could cast plastic. But to mill it out of metal -- well, you had to find someone willing to do it, and they weren't interested in small one-off projects.

I went through this on the Fury Gun. Just getting a weld done was a horrible problem. I had an underpowered welding rig that couldn't handle the steel of the barrels. I talked to a bunch of local shops -- one even had me come over to discuss it, but he bailed on me when he discovered he just couldn't talk me around to giving him a full eight hours of work on the project (and billing me more than my total project budget).

So for someone like me, TechShop is about being able to finally get access to the machines.



But here's the trick. Not everyone has given themselves the necessary permission. The TechShop attitude is very close to the Maker attitude. The basic assumption is that anyone can learn, and that everyone who becomes a member will proceed with care, being aware at all times of the limitations of their knowledge but always pushing to expand it.

It is a polar opposite of the idea of training -- what I think of as the Dojo Method. This is the idea that there is only one way to do the thing, and you will train and practice with paper and simulations until you can reproduce exactly that sequence. Then you are given access to the real thing, where you continue to copy exactly what you were shown in training.

Maker attitude is about grokking the subject. Makers always ask "why." Even something as simple as...

The other day I was grinding a lathe tool, and one of the TechShop staff came up to tell me I was using the wrong side of the wheel. But he didn't give me a rote instruction. It wasn't "The wheel by the lathe uses the side, the wheel by the cold saw uses the front." Instead he said "Look at the tool rest."

The idea was, you build the necessary rule (use the face of the grinding wheel) out of an understanding of the underlying process (place a tool against the wheel using the tool rest to set the desired angle). Knowing the process, means you apply what is necessary even if you are -- as I was -- free-handing the grind.



So this is what happens on every tool in TechShop. You only get access after you have passed the SBU. The "Safety and Basic Use" class is two to six hours and familiarizes you with the controls and the process and gives you basic safety tips. It also includes hand's on, always in the context of an actual project.

In the case of the Epilog Laser class, we were told verbally how to arrive at the correct power and speed settings for a material, how to look for burn-through and dirty mirrors, what to do in case of fire. And we had hand's on in focusing the beam and setting zero. And then we all engraved a dog tag for ourselves, using templates and materials provided by the shop.

This gives you, as some call it, just enough to get in trouble. You really don't know when you finished the class how to get a clean cut in acrylic, much less a nice burn on leather. That comes with experience, experiment, and, yes, failure.

But what it does give you is confidence. Even though you are on your own -- expected to ask for help from staff or fellow members, expected to read up online or even study books, expected to experiment on test scraps and jot down your findings in a notebook as you grew your laser skills, but still facing a machine without an instructor over your shoulder -- you've already done it once.

You know it can be done. You know you can do it. So even when your next piece, you forget how to set zero, fumble around trying to remember how to start a burn, and end up ruining your test piece: well, you don't take those as evidence that you can't do it. You just take them as part of the process of getting skilled.



And TechShop, just by existing, without you taking a single class, sits as one big case of the whole thing. Just that TechShop is there, and members are there cutting steel and wiring circuits and pulling plastic and serging edges; it says, "We believe you can do it."

It is implicit permission for anyone, including those who never held a tool in their life, to walk in and take the controls of a serious, massive, high-tech piece of machinery capable of doing the kind of professional-looking work we tend to think you have to be a name-brand company to do.