In one of my latest drawings, the background is blurred to focus on the subject in the center. Such large areas always come out kind of grainy for me (particularly since I’m working my way through a set of rather cheap pencils for practice, so I thought I’d give blending… Read more“Blending Colored Pencils with Rubbing Alcohol”
Migrating from Promises to Observables in Grafana Plugins
Recently, I decided to write a Grafana datasource plugin that would collect data from the NASDAQ Data Link website and graph it. It was a good way to learn a bit more JS, React and add some new data to a dashboard I am building. So as I started following… Read more“Migrating from Promises to Observables in Grafana Plugins”
Learning to Draw: Q3 Drawings
Some of the better drawings I made over the last few months. Perspective is hard!
Adding a countershaft to the lathe
When turning metal on a lathe, the speed of the workpiece is quite important. Too slow and you tend to get a rough cut, too fast and the material work hardens. In Donald de Carle’s The Watchmaker’s and Model Engineer’s Lathe: A Users Manual, de Carle presents a table of… Read more“Adding a countershaft to the lathe”
Weeknight Curried Chicken
I love curry. Seriously. Curries of all kinds. But… a lot of the curry recipes I’ve found can take hours to make and require trips to special stores like H Mart, or if they are quick, they tend to be bland and underwhelming. So finally, when I found an awesome… Read more“Weeknight Curried Chicken”
Trying Out the Watchmakers Lathe
A while back, I purchased a vintage Boley watchmakers lathe to work with, but life got in the way and I wasn’t able to do the work needed to get it running. Over the Christmas break, I pulled it out and started working on it. Lathe Cleanup The first step… Read more“Trying Out the Watchmakers Lathe”
Baggywrinkle: Or what’s that fuzzy stuff on the ship?
It happens quite often. You visit a tall ships festival at a nearby harbor and on all of the ships you see these: So you turn to one of the crew members and you ask, “What are those fuzzy caterpillar looking things up there?” And they smile and answer “Those… Read more“Baggywrinkle: Or what’s that fuzzy stuff on the ship?”