Having World Cup games here means lots of samples to estimate how many graphic designers know that hexagons alone cannot tile a sphere. (Roughly 1/3, I'd say.)

After some prototyping convinced me that changing the lighting circuit wasn't worthwhile, I decided to order boards for another 9 cells, rushed. I'm not sure if I'll be able to finish them before Open Sauce, but I should at least try. That would give me enough for a 4x4 grid, or just enough for one complete glider cycle over 4 generations. Plus 2 spares, which is never a bad thing to have on hand when exhibiting!

I just realized it's weird that most people seem to think that zero-gravity "Vomit Comet" flights achieve free fall by diving straight down, instead of following a parabolic arc up and over like they really do. Because that's actually a thing commonly done in everyday life, when stealing a bite of something drippy from a plate across the table. You do a little bouncing motion, and then move it up and over in an arc to your own plate, trying to keep everything in freefall so the drips follow the fork and don't fall on the table on the way. It's the exact same maneuver!

Operating 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, it was, in essence, a 76,000-square-foot artificial wound. Trays full of meat, blood, and water, each one heated to the exact right temperature to stimulate screwworm growth, moved through the facility on a monorail system timed to the lifecycle of the screwworm.

https://www.construction-physics.com/p/the-fall-and-rise-of-screwworm

Got the drive train reinstalled and all the cables tidied away, and took the cargo trike out for a ride around the block. It is SO MUCH BETTER with the differential, wow! Even better than I had hoped! It no longer constantly pulls to the right, and turning left isn't a struggle. And the new shifting cable and housing for the rear hub means I can actually shift. It's still huge and heavy and slow, but it's now entirely ridable.

This will probably go on hold now until after Open Sauce, leaving me about a month for the actual project now that the chassis is ready: bike RV.

I'm still working on the custom eyeglass project, and I just hit a new milestone: 3D printed frames, with prescription lenses I edged (cut down and shaped to fit the frames) myself on the belt sander from 60 mm blanks.

These are the "Hitomi" frames I found in a recent video ( https://youtu.be/CFFWaF4P7os ), and they're the best printable design I've found yet. They print flat, so all the sides are presentable without post-processing or needing to outsource to SLS printing. And he included the lens templates with the design, which makes fitting real lenses to them quite easy. I don't have the screws/inserts/pins needed to properly assemble them, so they fall apart of I move my head too quickly, but otherwise they're very wearable.

Now that I have the full workflow down, it's time to get properly silly about this and make the adjustable glasses idea that got me exploring this in the first place.

It's kind of fiddly still, but for the first time I have the complete Life Cells, connected to each other only via homemade magnetic pogo pin connectors, running real Life behavior!

I ordered the parts needed from a real control panel today, which will have play/pause, single step, and adjustable speed controls. I'm also thinking about trying to get more Cells made before Open Sauce, but there probably just isn't time at this point. There are a couple circuit tweaks I want to make that I shouldn't rush, and while it won't yet be the 10x15 grid I've been dreaming of, I will at least have a working system to show off.

Should it ever be needed, I think I've found the perfect name for a legendary sword.

I just finished a double feature of the Illuminatus! trilogy (first time) followed by Foucault's Pendulum (first reread since high school), and I think I'm experiencing some psychic whiplash. The first was just some silly fun, but I had forgotten so much of the second, and it turns out to be disturbingly relevant to modern reality. A story of people cynically inventing bullshit for the clout, only to get sucked in deeper and deeper as it warps their sense of reality, finally losing control entirely as other people take the joke far too seriously... you just have to replace the Templars nonsense in the book with Qanon nonsense. I wish I'd reread it 10 years earlier. It would have made certain events a lot more comprehensible (if not any less ridiculous/terrifying).

We're approaching Open Sauce again (July 18-19 in San Mateo, CA), which means that I am once again looking for someone to help run the booth.

I can provide an exhibitor pass for the full weekend, plus access to the Friday night party. That's limited to just 2 people from each booth plus all the featured guests, and it's usually one of the highlights of the weekend. I can't guarantee you'll get to chat with your favorite A-list maker, of course, but that's when it is most likely to happen.

In return, I'm hoping to find someone who can at least stop by my booth a couple times each day to watch things while I run to the bathroom and maybe grab some lunch. You're welcome to stick around for more, it's actually quite fun running the booth, if exhausting. But it absolutely wouldn't be expected.

DM me if you're interested!

This weekend I finally cut down the cargo trike's rear axle so I could add the differential. Luckily each side was already supported by 2 bearings, so no other serious modifications were needed. This also meant adding a pressfit sleeve to what used to be the undriven wheel, to add enough thickness for a keyway to firmly couple it to the axle. I'm a bit nervous if that will hold under real torque, but that will just need to be answered empirically. It's not quite ready for that yet, but at least I was able to get it back on 3 wheels for the first time in about a month!

I propose @clarkesworld pick this up as a very funny SF story https://nesbitt.io/2026/06/26/incident-report-cve-2026-lgtm.html

Today is a good day to remember that authoritarianism is not inevitable, overthrowing fascists is possible, and good things can still happen.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/tens-of-thousands-march-in-the-first-budapest-pride-since-viktor-orban-was-voted-out

@attoparsec
Nanomobility 1 single mobility
Micromobility - thousand
Millimobility - million
Mobility - billion
Kilomobility - trillion
Megamobility - quadrillion mobilities
Gigamobility - quintillion mobilities

At what point does it become millimobility?

Well, shoot.

Frustrating evening for several reasons, but at least I can finally confirm the magnets will be strong enough to hold the cells together as planned.

Hrm. I might not be able to put off getting a new soldering iron much longer.

I spent the weekend in Spokane helping my parents with some stuff, but I did find time after getting back to mill out a custom jig for holding the lower Life cell PCB lower side up. This lets me apply solder paste to its lower side after the upper side has already been populated with components. And it holds them WAY more repeatably than the old trick of taping down some old PCBs! I might have to do something similar for the front sides if I end up assembling the full run.

i’ve had a little experiment over the years of bookbinding using bare pcbs as book boards and it works well but i just need to keep practicing my stitches. I did some case binding years ago, but need to explore adhesives for that. Recently I’ve some coptic style binding thats a perfect use case and no adhesives but my stitching is sloppy. pictures below are a couple notebooks i made using ewaste destined bare pcbs from my old job as book boards