Not all upgrades are a good idea

Sure, it seems harmless and innocuous at first.  A little upgrade here, a little upgrade there.  A super strong metalic arm, a sweet head’s up display, maybe an embedded MP3 player.  People, don’t you understand – no good can come of mashing up evil cyborgs and dispensers of delicious candy?!  The next thing you know we have replicas of talk show hosts and disruptive CEO’s.  I urge, no – I implore you, please stop the madness.  And, whatever you do, do not create an evil cyborg action figure that can walk on it’s own.

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P.S. A special thanks to TeamTeamUSA, 7777773, Tony Buser, jbakutis, skimbal, I-Bioloid, Luis, and InnovationByLayers for bringing us just a little closer to Judgment Day and the robopocalypse.

P.P. S.  Okay.  You got me.  I’m not really that worried about the coming robopocalypse.  I really just wanted a post highlighting awesome Doctor Who-themed things on Thingiverse so I could post THIS:

Thanks for the head’s up Sasha!!!

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I have no idea what is going on in this picture, but it just tickles me.  Normally being caught inside a dalek would be cause for distress.  However, this child appears to be enjoying it. ¹

I just know there’s an amazing backstory here.  Did he find the hollowed out husk of a dalek and decide it would make a great new home, just like a hermit crab?!  Did he defeat a dalek and wears it’s carapace as a warning to other descendents of Skaro?  Perhaps he was bitten by a radioactive dalek and is slowly transforming into a half-boy/half-dalek? ²  Is this a new and improved dalek courtesy of the insidious Davros whose vision cannot be impaired by a simple hat?

1. And, I must say, I’m envious.  If I had a suit of dalek-space-metal, I’d show Iron Man a thing or two! [↩]
2. Can you imagine trying to give a child, housed in a dalek suit, a time out? [↩]

Victory! Victory for the Daleks!

Yesterday I posted a tutorial on how to make TSP (traveling salesman problem) single line drawing art.  If you’re looking to create your own TSP single line drawing artwork from an image, there are few things you can do to ensure a better result:

• Before the “Make a Stippled Image” step, try adjusting the contrast.  Increasing the contrast will make the lighter areas have less stippled points in the following step.  Decreasing the contrast will make the lighter areas have more stippled points.  This is really just a matter of taste, so have fun experimenting with the results.
• Before the “Make a Stippled Image” step, try decreasing the file size.  Decreasing the file size will also decrease the number of stippled points.  If you have too many stippled points, the resulting SVG image file look like a jumbled mess of squiggles.  The image above was created by reducing the original image size by 50%.
• Make your batch file “drag and drop.”  By editing the Batch file in the “Create a Batch file to automate the Stippled Image to a TSP Line Drawing conversion” step, you can actually make the Batch file conversion as easy as dragging and dropping your PBM file onto the Batch file.  In order to make your Batch file “drag and drop” replace the location of the PBM file with “%1″.  This will tell the batch file to convert whatever PBM file was dropped onto it.  So, your Batch file should look like this:
• c:\python\python C:\Users\MakerBlock\Desktop\TSP\scripts\tspart.py %1
• Adjust the SVG in the free open source SVG image editing software Inkscape. ¹  You can trim any unnecessary space around your image easily by:
• File->Document Properties
• Click “Resize page to content“
• Adjust the borders to suit and click “Resize page to drawing or selection“

Good luck!

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1. I prefer the PortableApps.com version [↩]

Dalek Energy Weapon (1:1 Scale) by elmoray

…Is a life-size Dalek Energy Weapon to display prominently on my desk at work.

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Recyclinate! Dalek tagged with recycling instructions by TBuser

MakerBot Operator Tony Buser was reading a blog post at Make about using a MakerBot to print items for home repair when a comment caught his eye — a suggestion that given a MakerBot’s ability to print anything an Operator wants out of plastic, designers should offer a handy tool for adding recycling triangles right onto models for printing.

Well, Tony took this suggestion seriously and has released to Thingiverse a recycling-stamped villain from the Doctor Who universe — along with tools and instructions for similarly stamping other objects. I have a feeling Tony’s experiment will suggest loads of possibilities to other MakerBot Operators. Already, I’m thinking about stamping designer, printer, or user initials or chops onto the bottom of my designs.

Bonus points for using a Dalek to help save the world a little bit. Re-cyclinate! Re-cyclinate!

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To Victory!

1. Choose a topic. This Halloween I chose the “Dalek To Victory!” propaganda poster from “Victory of the Daleks“
2. Grayscale and Posterize. I prefer using GIMP – it’s fairly user friendly, has lots of features, well documented on the interwebs, and is free and open source.  Making it grayscale and posterizing the picture will reduce the number of colors for which you need to account.  After all, our pallet is limited – from a bright yellow to a dark orange/red-ish.
3. Print. Print out the picture on a size appropriate for your target pumpkin.  For the pumpkin above I chose a standard 8.5″ x 11″ sheet.  It was a big pumpkin.
4. Wash, Open, Hollow. Wash the outside of the pumpkin to get any excess dirt off.  Hollowing out the pumpkin can go very quickly if you’re doing it right.  I have one of those sinks that has two large sections – one for the sink and one for the garbage disposal.  I could actually fit the pumpkin into one side.  Stab around the stem and lift off the top.  I like making jagged cuts, circles are fine too.  I used a heavy ice cream scooper to hollow out the inside.  It had enough heft that I could really whack away at the inside of the pumpkin and the seeds and guts would just fall away.  I keep a plastic bag on the other side of the sink for collecting the pumpkin guts.
5. Tape. The pumpkin may still be wet, so use duct tape to affix your posterized printout to the pumpkin.
6. Score. I first tried using a pushpin to poke holes along the lines I wanted to cut.  However, this was taking a really long time and leaves you staring at a bunch of dots afterward.  In the end I started using a utility knife and paring knife to score along the lines in the picture.  I would recommend scoring the pumpkin at the really large lines and outlines first.  If your picture disintegrates after that, well, you’ve got a starting point.  My picture remained intact until I peeled it off the pumpkin.
7. Remove picture. Peel off the remains of the picture.  If you didn’t score the skin of the pumpkin deep enough, this is the time to check.
8. Trace. I found it very helpful to trace the major lines with a black washable crayon.  This let me quickly see what I was working on and compare it to the nearby picture, rather than have to peer closely at the pumpkin to make out the score lines.
9. Peel. Peeling away the pumpkin’s skin was the most time consuming part.  For this I traced the lines again with the utility knife and then used either the utility knife (for finer control) or the paring knife (for big areas) to peel up the pumpkin’s skin.  I started with the large areas since that gave me the most sense of accomplishment as I proceeded.  Peeling the skin, rather than carving all the way through, allowed me to have picture details that would otherwise be impossible – such as the lightning bolts or text.
10. Carve. I actually did very little carving on the above Jack-O-Lantern.   The lightning bolts from the gun and antenna/blinkers were the only areas on the pumpkin’s surface that are cut all the way through to the inside.
11. Ventilate. Since there were so few holes in the pumpkin surface I had to make large air holes in the pumpkin “lid” around the stem.
12. Illuminate. Insert candles, then light.
13. Display! To victory!