Ben's Blog

aesthetics, plots, plotters ben April 10, 2026

Dragon of Recursion / Light Show / Post-it Portraits

7 days, 47438 pen strokes :\. Lara’s work and a recurring dragon on this blog :). I sped up the machine to make it 7 days instead of 10, so it’s slightly more inaccurate, but more importantly I failed to anticipate that ink would run out faster. I used to have about 1.5 days between pen swaps, here it’s barely above 1 day. No harm done I got there in time, but I should have thought about it when I adjusted speed.

I lined it up with a big public event and tons of people got to see it.

No sure if there’s anything more to say about lasers & post-it portraits, it was the now usual formula. I’ve enhanced the pipeline some to do auto-face-cropping as it is a step we usually waste lots of time on. Esther & I rehearsed over the week end. She runs the operation during the event.

Some recurring questions I get asked at these events:

“What are the machines for normally?” Nothing, their sole purpose is to drag pens and shine cat lasers.

“Is this your job?” Nope, just a side quest.

“So how does this work?” I try to see what part they’re interested in before I launch into a 3 hour tirade :).

“Did you build this?” yes.

It’s very gratifying to see people stare at your work for a while. You can see the gears turning in their heads. I’ll sit by the big machine sometimes to watch people’s reaction to it. When I swap its pen people will come up and tell me how much they like it. I’m just glad for having the opportunity to do something cool in the world.

Leave a Comment

Cancel reply

This blog is solar powered

Interactive

Handwriting Capture
Mandalagaba
IPv6 link-local to MAC converter
IPv6 MAC to link-local converter
Markov Text Generation
Markov Word Generation
Markov Music Generation
Duplogrifier
Flood Fill Algorithms
Homestead Metrics
RGB Playground
Web Games

Categories

  • aesthetics111
    • plots54
    • specular holography6
  • Books3
  • I.T.202
    • 3D modeling / printing21
    • AI6
    • all out geekery36
    • electronics27
    • homestead automation6
    • maniacal paranoia25
    • plotters49
    • unix / linux29
    • video games4
    • web development29
    • web games3
  • Lego / Duplo67
  • life in the U.S.42
  • miscellaneous202
  • nature encounters114
  • old vinyls3
  • organs2
  • self sustainability560
    • agriculture105
    • apiculture38
    • apple20
    • building131
    • canning3
    • crochet6
    • foraging6
    • hunting10
    • maple syrup47
    • poultry39
    • preserving2
    • solar power28
    • water23
    • wood84
  • trip to a new life6
Theme by Bloompixel. Proudly Powered by WordPress