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PICRat

CPICPIC Assembly

So twenty years ago this year I graduated, and just after that (and before I started chasing a PhD), I did some work on a project to create a platform for building a micromouse robot. Not a speed run winner or anything, but just a bog standard, easy to use, off-the-shelf black box platform.

This was 1997, remember, these things technically did exist but they were research project level expensive and finicky and whole companies were making good money building them; Arduino is still six years out at this point and it would be years before you saw the level of available support hardware it enjoys today. Lego Mindstorms is years away and Lego’s RCX doesn’t come out till the following year. The BASICStamp is the most popular solution to beginner hobbyists and it costs the guts of $100 at the time if I recall correctly.… Read the rest

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Off the shelf…

Desk ShelfWoodworking

So fathers day was coming up and dad’s just finished the first year of a law course so lots of desk time and books involved. And then I noticed this on accidental woodworker:

Well, a desktop shelf that’d fit in the corner and leave room to hide pens and such underneath should be about right, and I had a nice piece of sapele…

…yeah, no. Turns out sapele is a total pain to plane with a normal handplane because of interlocking grain. By the time I’d resawn it from 6/4 down to just under 3/4inch thick and then flattened the resulting planks I’m down to just a shade over a half-inch thick and that just doesn’t look right for a shelf. So I abandoned the sapele to future box-making duties, and ordered a toothed plane iron to deal with the remaining sapele in my store.… Read the rest

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Branding

FinishingNew Toys!Tools
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Woodworking

So, lots of people who make stuff in wood (going back a few hundred or more years) made a mark on the stuff they build (assuming it’s good enough). Usually in an out-of-the-way place, even one where you’d have to disassemble the piece to find it; like signing one of two faces before you glue them together.

Sometimes it was a simple stamp made with a metal stamp and a few taps of a hammer:

Sometimes it was a paper sticker, and sometimes it was branded:

 

This wasn’t done out of the same sense that triggers graffiti by the way – some guilds from the 17th century onwards made it mandatory to mark every piece a workman made. Not every guild, but enough that it was considered commercial rather than odd or vain.… Read the rest

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