Making

Every year, I do a few projects. Some small, some larger. I like working with my hands and tools. These are some of the stuff I made.

  • Tradfri Endless Battery Hack

    I inherited some IKEA smart home devices when we bought this house. The reliance on button batteries in Tradfri controllers became a significant issue. So I sat down and made a mod for the unit. The result is a controller not significantly larger than the original while using two rechargeable AAA batteries. Lasting much longer than those button batteries, and allowing you to recharge.

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    The Techpriest Will See You Now

    Working in security, sometimes I feel like the technical controls, policies and trainings only go so far. What we need to secure the company is a miracle. Some divine intervention to save us from damnation. So when I get a few hours over a weekend, I design and craft purity seals to keep the endpoints…

  • No Multicolor, No Problem

    The multicolor 3D printing is becoming more common. Bambulabs and their AMS, and Creality with CFS, we see a proliferation of multicolor printing. I do not have a multicolor printer. Over the years, I have dabbled with printing in multiple filament. I did this using a few hacks. Simplest one is to start the print…

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    Midlife Crisis 3D Printer Saves Memories of Youthful Love

    Most men buy a motorcycle or a convertible in their mid life crisis, maybe get a young girlfriend. I opted for a 3D printer. Then proceeded to ask: “What do I do with this thing?” I did have a few projects around the house, but eventually it became clear that the 3D printer was a…

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    New Keyboard: Welcome Charybdis

    After building the dactyl, I took a long break from building keyboards. In that time I noticed, no matter how awesome dactyl was, I still needed to lift my hand up to use the mouse. So I started dreaming about a keyboard with an integrated trackball. My dreams came true when I ran into Charybdis.

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    Two Minis in One Go

    Today I painted two Gloomhaven minis, the spell weaver and eclipse. Both were depicted as night scenes in the character art, so I choose a simple wash based approach for both. The figures were primed with zenithal highlighting earlier, so the washes just gave the atmosphere for the minis. Eclipse was no frills, just some…

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    Cragheart

    Sat down and painted Cragheart from Gloomhaven. It was a simple mini, didn’t require anything besides the prime, baselayer, shade, highlight workflow.

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    Painted the Summoner

    So tonight I painted the summoner. It was a relatively quick paint job. Begining to end less than 45 minutes, including the setup time for the paints, water and, palette. In this figurine I used lots of washes, and wet blending. It was also a trial for the object source lightning (OSL) as the staff…

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    Made a Wet Palette and Painted Doomstalker

    Last night I painted Doomstalker from Gloomhaven. It seems like it will take a while to get throught Gloomhaven minis… After a few false starts with trying to use glazes to bring out the zenithal highlighting, I said fuck it and did the classic, base layer, shade, highlight triumvirate. I am reasonably satisfied with how…

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    Revisiting Old Habits: Painting the Brute from Gloomhaven

    These days my evenings are quite uneventful. So in these lockdown days I am revisiting miniature painting. It also helps that I have Gloomhaven lying about waiting to get painted. So today I sat down and painted the Brute from Gloomhaven. Unfortunately I don’t have progress pictures. I took some pictures before I begin and…

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    Making A Glow In The Dark Poster

    In 2013 for a brief moment in time you could purchase Clinton Reno’s “I Want You To Hit Me As Hard As You Can”. It went on sale for $30 and was sold out the same day. According to this Reddit post only 40 were ever made. The poster became a sort of obsession for…

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    Poor Man’s Ambient Lightning Made Easy

    I have always liked how Philips Ambilight looked but didn’t want to replace my carefully selected gaming monitor just yet. The other after market solutions were too expensive and too clunky (a camera pointed at the screen? really?). Last time I checked (back in USA) there wasn’t a good solution for this. A week ago,…

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    Building the Dactyl – Part 3 – Flashing

    After the wiring came the software side of things. At first I was not very keen on using QMK. I wanted to just download a hex file and flash it on to the board and be done with it. That is difficult due to a few things. There are so many ways the keyboard can…

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    Building the Dactyl – Part 2 – Wiring

    After the upper case and key switches were put together I started wiring. I started by following the guide on dactyl git repository but the lack of updates and details quickly drove the project in to the ground. My original intention was to minimize learning and just to blindly follow the guides. That attitude got…

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    Building the Dactyl – Part 1 – 3D printing

    So my first project for this year is to get a Dactyl. In true open source spirit, the case is on thingiverse and there are already a dozen iterations of it. What I wanted was to have wrist-rests integrated to the main body. So I got the regular dactyl top and a modified bottom case,…

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    Digging for Switches on an Old Keyboard

    I am preparing to build a dactyl keyboard and for that I would need switches. Denmark being Denmark, it was hard to get mechanical switches for a reasonable price. I had to improvise a bit to get all the parts. Amazon.de had the switches but wouldn’t deliver to Denmark, and the ones that did deliver…

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    Modifying Matebook X Pro – Linux Benchmarks

    I got my new and sexy Matebook X Pro earlier in the week. The reviews were right, it can get somewhat loud at times. One thing I can’t stand is a loud computer. The problem with having an i7 and a discrete nvidia GPU in an ultrabook body is that getting rid of all the…

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    Stuffed Fables Minis – Last Minis Painted in US

    I finished painting stuffed fables. These may be the last minis I paint in US, as I packed my paints and brushes for the move. Heck I am even selling the desk I used to paint miniatures on. Anyway, I started off carefully. Paying attention to details and generally implementing all techniques I learned. Towards…