As is Tradition

Thanksgiving handwriting capture.

It’s pretty cool that Esther learned writing just as this project came online so I could capture her progress from the beginning. For comparison purposes, this doesn’t show lowercase letters, special characters, or cursive that she recently acquired.

PlottyBot Port

I stumbled upon electronically actuated Etch-a-Sketches, and I pretty much had to see if I could port the PlottyBot stack to the toy. It was pretty straightforward. I got the parts from someone else on Thingiverse for a smaller Etch-a-Sketch and the fit isn’t great, but it’s enough of a proof of concept to know I want to make a nice big one, and really the work is all mechanical at this point. How about a web enabled Etch-a-Sketch that can write in your handwriting?

Cycles & Traditions

Did you know that turkeys literally start showing up around Thanksgiving? Didn’t see them all Summer, and now they’re here everyday, looking tasty. Something makes them bolder and get quite close. The fact that culture and tradition were shaped by environmental cycles was completely lost on me as a city dweller. Maybe it didn’t help that I lived in places where that culture had been imported not in accordance with the environment, I’ve never seen wild turkeys in Utah.