Category Archives: Geekery

Family portrait!

Posted by Verne on December 18, 2012 None comments

Here’s a family portrait of all the puppets that I’ve made over the last several years. Thought I’d get a photo in before a couple leave at Christmas.

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3-D modelling on Android

Posted by Verne on December 5, 2012 None comments

Tinkercad and 3dtin works on Android through the Firefox browser. Tinkercad will load models, but working on them isn’t really practical. 3dtin fares somewhat better. Editing simple models is possible. Screen shots follow:

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Project of the Day: New Blog for my Kid

Posted by Verne on May 21, 2012 None comments

Set up a new blog for one of my kids today. It can be found here: http://theeclecticartist.com

He plans to post video games he has programmed, artwork, lego creations, bug photos, stop-motion videos, and books he has created. He’s a pretty creative kid. Check it out some time.


Project of the day: J’s Stop Motion Animations

Posted by Verne on February 24, 2012 None comments

I fixed J up with some stop motion software on my unused Droid phone today. He took to it immediately. I’m hoping to get him fixed up with sound effects, voices, and music at some point. Here is one of his longer silent films. The speech bubble at the beginning says “Me again.” The green brain slugs have been featured in several of his short films. Keep in mind that he just turned 9 yesterday. :)


Project of the day: CNC Mill Electronics

Posted by Verne on February 22, 2012 None comments

I’ve finally been able to make a little time to work on my CNC mill/router project.

I have a dedicated controller PC built from three old PCs. Older desktops are best as they don’t have all the power saving features that interfere with real-time processing and control. It runs Ubuntu Linux 10.04 LTS from LinuxCNC.org. The OS comes as a live CD that you can try out to make sure it will work with your hardware before you commit to installing it. It installs a basic system that has everything you need to run a CNC machine with EMC2 (control software). It’s also free, which is pretty great!

The controller hardware and motors are from Xylotex. I have a 3-axs controller and 425 oz. motors. I tested the software and hardware out today. Below are the results:

The next step is to build the actual mill table. This will probably wait until warmer weather arrives.


Project of the day: Secure shell backup monitoring with Droid phone

Posted by Verne on April 28, 2011 6 comments

Warning: Nerd Content!

Through a series of hardware failures, I ended up picking up an Iomega iConnect NAS device and a new broadband router. I can now connect to my wireless network with my Droid phone.

The iConnect’s backup interface doesn’t seem to like working with a terabyte or so of info, but luckily it runs linux. A simple setting/hack turns on secure shell access, so I can set up backups using the cron and rsync. A complete backup takes around 18 hours or so. I like to monitor things, and the Droid market had a free app called ConnectBot that acts as an ssh client, so I can keep an eye on things from my phone.

Here’s a screenshot of my Droid running top on the iConnect. This type of thing makes nerds happy. I also figured out how to do screenshots on my Droid. This also makes nerds happy.

SSH to Iomega iConnect media server via Droid phone

SSH to Iomega iConnect NAS via Droid phone