Smiffi Staying Home Surgubben @grumpysmiffy@aus.social

MELAMINE! I broke - through a medical incident - my partner's favourite melamine tray. The critical art part is fine, and I can re-mount it in wood, but I need to chop off the sides. My laser cutter is too small, so this means table saw. Tips?

Cheers to my VIC folk, whatever you're doing. Enjoy new freedom but please, please be careful.

Old dog getting grumpy because I'm 8 minutes late for yoghurt time.

Just remembered something else about the last op. Someone said "I'm here to hold your hand." Now I recall at some point, someone was. Conscious enough to still be able to follow commands to move my head, for me, I don't think I could have asked for a more reassuring experience.

Just sent an email to the surgeons thanking the whole team for care received, and going out of the way to accommodate me as a rural patient, with transport issues, etc. Credit where credit's due.

Why would anyone roll their own CMS, then use the most cut-down implementation of CKEditor so that you have to reference pre-defined chunks of HTML, rather than having a straight WYSIWYG edit? WHYYYYYY? Because that's just what someone's done to my client.

I need craft paper. LOTS of craft paper. (Predictive text suggested beer; that too) Can't wait for the new 400x400 laser. Then I'll whip the laser head off this machine, and replace with a spindle. Then I have to get my head around 3D CAD. I don't think this is going to be easy, my brain doesn't work that way. But I'm going to have to learn, as my ambition is a CNC outfitted Sieg mill.

Well, that didn't turn out as big as I thought it would, as I was confusing pixels for mm.

But easy enough to scale it up in Inkscape, rather than running all the calculations again.

I'll scrutinise the Gcode and do a test cut after my nap.

Now to convert that to Gcode, but I've got a tool for that...

<path stroke="black" fill="none" d="M 55.00 10.00
l 180.00 0.00
M 55.00 40.00
l 180.00 0.00
M 55.00 70.00
l 180.00 0.00
M 55.00 100.00
l 180.00 0.00
M 55.00 130.00
l 180.00 0.00
M 55.00 160.00
l 180.00 0.00
M 55.00 160.00
l 180.00 0.00
M 55.00 190.00
l 180.00 0.00
M 55.00 100.00
A 45.00 45.00 90 0 1 55.00 10.00
M 55 190
A 45 45 90 0 1 55 100
M 235 100
A 45 45 -90 0 1 235 190
M 235 10
A 45 45 -90 0 1 235 100"/>

GOOD. I had to hunt on the LaserGRBL page, but there is a donate button. If something is really useful to me, I like to be able to contribute in some way. And it's a bloody good bit of software.

Attempt #2 with lower res, and smaller image.

DAMN! X-axis motor coupling slipped.

Try again. Will use lower DPI, smaller image - might finish today.

I've given my XYZ table/laser cutter a brain transplant. Crossing all available digits that this fixes the issues I've been having.

Been running a good ten minutes without a lockup so far. But probably tempting fate to say that!

Took my client* to gently remind me that I won't be doing X tomorrow, because I am taking my birthday off, yes?

*Official relationship. But there's a wonderful friendship that has developed.

Anyone know someone reliable who can put a new charging/Lightning port on an iPhone 7, without charging an arm and a leg?

Ugh, even my carefully curated and filtered timeline has too much US content on it at the moment.

Here seems like a better place.

The moral of this story is that a crappy, barely usable spare phone (dragged down by the contact tracing app) can make a fucking amazing access point.

ADSL *may* be back tomorrow, until we get our NBN, possibly late November.

For anyone who needs to know it, I've had major issues tethering non-Apple kit to my iPhone during our continuing Internet outages. And also 50% issues getting the Macbook to connect, too.

Today I realised that the 'RonaPhone - my backup cheap'n'nasty Android phone can also hotspot. It's on another data plan (I have two redundant carriers) but I was getting up to 2.5Mbps updating my Ubuntu laptop whilst running Windows updates on another machine.

24 hours post-surgery. A bit red, no longer particularly sore or itchy. Gunky, but vision otherwise good.

Which reminds me that it's time for (yet more) eyedrops.