Openthing revamp

Have given Openthing a bit of a revamp this week, from the comfort of my home and the discomfort of a stomach bug. Any comments welcomed, whether they be on the site, niftymitter or open design in genera

>> Sorry, have fixed that link now. That was a bit embarrassing.

Future Craft Exhibition

Openthing and Niftymitter will be appearing in an exhibition at DJCAD as of Thursday, entitled Futurecraft. The exhibition marks the end of the Past Present and Future Craft research project, and kicks of their Scotland wide Craft Festival. Find it on Level 5 of the Matthew building.

Dive! Cribbage Board

IMG_6119
Originally uploaded by Zero-waste Design

In the last week in Dundee I managed to get round to doing something that has been plaguing me for about two years: a cribbage board from my friend Suzy. I had already drilled the holes and it took me a while to think up something to laser engrave. I eventually decided on a kind of 'field of shapes' thing given that the board was already punctuated by hundreds of circular holes.

It would have been much easier to engrave first, then drill but hey, sometimes things don't happen in the right order! I have put up the .svg for the layout on Thingiverse so that others can do it in the right order. And an instructable here.

There is significance in the name of this cribbage board, but it might take you a while to realise..

The image set is here.

Openthing is a thing!

I haven't said what Open Thing is - its essentially Open Craft, but that isn't available as a domain. OK, what I mean is, it is the website I have set for my residency here in Dundee: it is a wordpress blog and wiki and project site for open source shenanigans. And it is now live and pretty much brought up to date.

www.openthing.org

First days at DJCAD

Lasercut Landscape
Originally uploaded by Zero-waste Design

I have begun my Arts Council funded residency as part of the Past Present and Future Craft Practice project at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design. - Have already been messing round with a laser cutter, one experiment pictured here: laser cutting from a heightfield bitmap to create a 3D engraving in the pages of a book. This heightfield image was found on Google image search, and was actually designed by the Creative Director of Simcity 4 in Photoshop as a source for a terrain in that game!

Have otherwise been getting my bearings, rummaging in a skip and thinking more on the Air vane motor:



which I'd still like to make and develop some things around.

Other things to do - properly document various means of fabrication encoding which I could use, look at various platforms/programs for collaborative development etc.

I am also going to work on Niftymitter a bit further and use the technical knowhow here to learn some Arduino/general hardware hacking skills.

'sall for now.