February Projects

 

Last Month's Projects

Physical make: This is not finished, but is going okay.  I decided to make some gears so 90 degree of wheel turn is about 150 degree of potentiometer turn.  

I encountered a problem trying to 3D print the gears: the weather and workshop was so cold the filament snapped as soon as the printer head moved!

So I had to wait for some slightly warmer weather for the printer.  A silicone mould is currently setting around them so I can cast them in more durable resin.

Coding make: DOS Raytraced Helicopter Game.  This has not happened.  I've started writing a proper X-mode VGA manager class, and thought carefully about how to do the pixel-plane rendering, but that's about it.  I'm going to switch to update my F-Z game and post it on gotm.io but I'll be back on the raytracing project once that's done.

Reading: Black Holes, Wormholes and Time Machines by Jim Al-Khalili. This is a reasonably dated book (pre-Higgs Boson and Gravitational Waves discoveries), but does bring a really nice, accessible perspective to relativity and potential time travel.

In that time, I have also read Exocet Falklands by Ewen Southby-Tailyour.  That was a very revealing book about the failures of British senior commanders during the Falklands conflict and how their self-delusion nearly cost the lives of many of the special forces.

 

February Projects

Physical make: Still on the steering wheel...

Coding make: Update to F-Z and post to gotm.io, then come back to DOS raytraced helicopter game.

Reading:  The Templars: History and Myth by Michael Haag.  I know incredibly little about the crusades and the middle-ages history of Jerusalem, and I'm hoping this book can fix some of that.







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