Category: Uncategorized

I would be lying if I said I wasn’t devastated by the closure of the Galactic Starcruiser in Disney World.

The Galactic Starcruiser was a fantastic piece of immersive theater, and the fact that a company as wealthy as Disney couldn’t pull it off financially is hard to swallow. A lot of it is Disney’s own fault – I cringe every time I hear someone refer to it as the “Star Wars hotel” – they never really succeeded in explaining to the public what on earth it was.

It’s a hotel in that you do indeed sleep there, but that’s about as far as that comparison goes. It’s a ride you sleep in. It’s 48 hours of willingly suspending your disbelief and immersing yourself in a story. It’s going to a Disney park without ever going through the front gate or waiting in line. It’s a cruise ship that happens to be in a Florida parking lot. And it’s probably the most innovative performance art ever attempted at that scale.

The premise of the journey was that you were aboard the galactic cruise ship Halcyon, on a nice vacation with some surprises in store. In a lot of ways it felt unfinished, like a school assignment handed in at the last minute, but only because what they attempted was so over the top impossible. Some of the early reviews criticized the finishes, which are fairly simple compared to the design of Batuu (the Star Wars area of Hollywood Studios), and they’re not wrong but I felt like they missed the point. The point of the Halcyon boiled down to the childlike wonder I felt moving through the ship. It kicked off with our discovery of an honest-to-god secret passage onboard, and was furthered by every interaction I had with the phenomenal cast.

The cast, which includes everyone from the lead actors to the housekeeping staff, truly demonstrated what’s possible when you give talented people the support and flexibility they need to put on a show. I’ve scrolled through Reddit posts about the Halcyon and it’s funny how everyone insists their Lt Croy (played by at least 4 different actors over the various voyages) was the best and they can’t imagine anyone else in the role. The 6 or so folks in the main ensemble were with us from 3pm to 11pm each day. Their energy was infectious and brought the story to life around us.

I had a Bo Katan armor costume but no real plan for a character beyond that. I put it on for out trip to the park (and I cannot stress how cool it was to come in through a dedicated back entrance) and then sort of forgot I was wearing it when we sat down to dinner. Our waiter came over to take our drink orders but seemed a little uncomfortable. When he got to me he said “I want to make it known that all my debts are paid…” and I remembered that I was dressed as a bounty hunter. He told us about lots of bounty hunter related lore and gave me plenty of “yes and” moments to build my character. I promised him I was only there for dinner, not business, and he relaxed a bit.

We spend so much of our lives trying to be cool, or acting like we don’t care about things. On the Halcyon everyone was encouraged to drop the act and just embrace the moment. The actors helped remind us that having the “right” answer isn’t always as important as just playing along and having fun.

Disney World can be a real grind sometimes, and the opportunity to just soak it all in – without the grueling itinerary, Fastpass juggling, or rushing to a dinner reservation – was a true privilege. The Starcruiser was definitely at a price point that was inaccessible to most people but I don’t think it was overpriced. And they still manage to find 1000 people a day willing to pay $500+ to see Hamilton at the Rogers Theater, so it’s not like there aren’t people out there with the money for it.

I sincerely hope that Disney figures out how to recombobulate the parts of the Halcyon into something sustainable. The work the cast members put into the project deserves follow up, even if it’ll never be quite the same.

Ever since moving out of New York City and away from NYC Resistor I have dreamed of once again having access to a laser cutter. A decade later it’s finally a reality! I got a Trotec Speedy 300, 80w. It’s a huge beast compared to the Epilog Mini 35W we bought in 2008.

I spent a long time looking at various brands of lasers. I ruled out Glowforge early because their cloud based software was a dealbreaker and I also wanted something at least 12×24. After doing a bunch of research I decided I didn’t have the time or patience for the various Chinese lasers (though there are some really nice looking options there now). I wanted something that I could call someone to fix if it broke. After talking to Epilog, Universal Laser, and Trotec I decided that the camera registration system on the Trotec set it apart enough to justify the increased cost over Epilog and Universal. It’s worth mentioning that Trotec also has a budget line called Rayjet, though I didn’t spend a lot of time looking at those.

I placed a deposit on my machine in mid January and was told to expect a delivery date of 4-6 weeks. 10 days later it was sitting in a crate on the elevator, where it remained for a couple weeks while I got the studio space ready for it.

Note: if I was doing this again I’d get the Speedy 360. Why? The Speedy 360 is slightly shallower than the 300. The 300 does not fit through a standard 36″ wide doorway, and turning it on its side to move it was a stressful pain in the ass. I ended up hiring some movers to pick it up and carry it through the doorway.

I hired an HVAC company to run an exhaust vent through the roof and connected a Penn State Industries 1.5HP motor blower to it. I then build an MDF box to put it in, both to make it easier to deal with and to muffle some of the sound. There’s also a DIY prefilter (not shown, made from a 5 gallon bucket) to catch the larger particles from engraving.

In the first picture up above you can see a fire extinguisher on the floor next to the laser. This is a CO2 fire extinguisher rather than the foam spray kind you can get at your local hardware store. It’s considerably more expensive ($200ish) and kind of a pain to get (I had to drive to Grainger to get mine) but absolutely worth it in the event of a fire in the laser. CO2 fire extinguishers work by starving the fire of oxygen and work well in situations like this. The benefit is that you don’t have to clean goo out of your laser after putting out a fire.

After the exhaust was set up my sales rep Josh came out to show me how to use the machine and software. I have a ton of experience using the old Epilog but the software for the Trotec is very different. Instead of a printer driver that integrates with Corel / Illustrator they have locally hosted network based software. The benefit is that you can set up jobs from any computer on the network, and don’t need to have Corel / Illustrator installed on the computer that’s connected to the laser. The drawback is that the software, called Ruby, is very new and definitely feels like a beta product. It works very well for the things it does, but feels a bit limited in functionality. The other downside is that all their help documentation still references the old software (JobControl), so I was kinda on my own when figuring out things like how to make delrin embossing seals.

I got the Trotec Vision camera, which I got a good price on because it was being phased out in favor of a new, cooler camera that mounts in the lid. It cuts extremely accurately, so I don’t have to add bleed to my images. This saves on ink (which I think is still the most expensive liquid on earth).

I also made a wooden puzzle from some of my generative art postcards. I first cut the puzzle out of Unisub, then printed it on my sublimation printer. I think next time I’ll reverse the order and print it first.

Other fun stuff includes some merch for my body positive fitness studio and a whole bunch of felt mouths for the puppets for a puppetry studio.

Then of course there’s the boring stuff, like signage for the office building in Manayunk where I have my studio.

I’m taking commission work on a case by case basis right now, if you’re in Philly and looking for some laser cutting please reach out! If I’ve got the time I’m happy to do it.

We decided to move the Amazon spybot Echo out of the living room and I needed to come up with a new way for the kids to play music, since they can no longer run around yelling “Alexa, play Katie Perry!” 200 times per day.

I combined a Raspberry Pi with an RFID reader to make a system where the kids can grab a card and swipe it in order to play a song or playlist.

I’ve seen both RFID and mag-stripe based music players built around Raspberry Pis so putting this together was more about assembling the bits that suited my needs rather than actually doing any hard work. Helen Hou-Sandí has a really thorough write up of her project which was the jumping off point for mine.

I ended up installing and configuring the music server by hand rather than using Pi MusicBox. Pi MusicBox is built on top of Mopidy, which I installed on a fresh copy of Raspberry Pi OS (formerly Raspbian). I added in four extensions: Mopidy-Iris (web frontend), Mopidy-MPD (needed for command line control of the player), Mopidy-Spotify, and Mopidy-Local (which used to be bundled with the core but is now separate). This was a moderate pain so if you’re not familiar with the joys of Linux and Raspberry pi I suggest sticking with Pi MusicBox, which Just Works.

While I’m not an audiophile I do think the sound output on the Raspberry Pi is pretty miserable so I added a Hifiberry DAC+ card to it, which has RCA outputs I can connect to my stereo. Configuring the card is pretty easy, you just need to make sure you set the appropriate Mopidy config so it uses the RCA out and not the onboard headphone jack.

I picked up a 125kHz RFID reader and a package of 100 RFID cards. The RFID reader is a ready to go USB device that functions like a keyboard when you plug it into a computer, so no driver setup was needed for the pi.

Side note: the RFID reader has the weirdest configuration method I have ever seen. You plug it into your PC, swipe a special “configuration card” and then it will start spitting out config options, one second at a time, into Notepad or whatever you’ve opened up to accept text input. When it gets to the setting you want you unplug it to “save” that setting.

When the Pi boots up it runs a bash script that listens for the RFID reader’s input. The cards I got were pre-programmed and read only, so I set up a document that correlates the card number to the song or playlist to play. Each line has the 10 digit card number, track URI, and a comment about what it is to make the list easier to update later. The script is a fork of the one Helen wrote for her jukebox project. I tweaked it so I could include the card number and comment in the song list, and designated a specific card to trigger a graceful shutdown in case it needs to be unplugged, moved, etc.

Helen’s original repo is here and my modified version of the file is here.

I’m using a Raspberry Pi 3B+ which has the ethernet jack on the side and I wanted everything to be on the same face so I make a short ethernet cord to bring the jack around to the back.

Eventually I’d like to make a nice enclosure for it but right now this cardboard box is doing just fine. I made a template for the outputs and hacked some holes in it with an xacto knife.

Here’s everything nestled into the box, with plenty of room to spare:

I put together a quick tool to generate the labels. Photoshop has surprisingly clean SVG output. I was able to use that with a script that swaps in the artist / song title and changes the colors for each label. I’m still working on tweaking the label images but the basic process is to put the titles into a JSON file, run that through the script which outputs to a browser, then use Chrome’s “print to PDF” to print it out. It’s not really the best way to dynamically create printable PDFs but it was easy and it works.

Future Enhancements

I’ve got it working well enough to suit our needs but there are definitely some things that could improve it for the future, including:

• Nice looking enclosure
• Attached card holder / organization
• Physical play / pause / next / previous and power buttons
• Moving the track listing into a database of some sort (maybe Airtable) for easier updating and maintenance
• Cutting out the labels on my Silhoutte Cameo rather than by hand
• Amiibo support

The last one is just a silly add-on. I realized after I’d ordered the reader and cards that Amiibo use NFC and it would be neat to be able to scan those and play songs as well. Unfortunately it’s a different frequency than the reader I ordered.

Originally I had planned for a card holder to slide the currently playing card into, and have it look like a cassette deck. Right now this doesn’t work because after a few seconds the RFID reader scans it again and starts the song over. I’m sure I could come up with a software workout for that though.

Materials

Here’s a list of materials and components, most of which I already had lying around.

• Raspberry Pi 3B+ ($25 at Microcenter)
• Hifiberry DAC+ ($29 at Hifiberry)
• 125kHz RFID reader ($34 on Amazon, though this is a generic Chinese brand)
• 125kHz RFID cards ($22 for 100 on Amazon)
• Ethernet extender (I made my own but they’re $5 on Adafruit)
• Sticker Paper ( $37 for a 100 sheets at Onlinelabels, you can find smaller quantities at Michaels or Staples)

The past three years we have attended PAX Unplugged and the general pattern goes like this:

• Play a bunch of games at PAX
• Buy a bunch of games at PAX
• Put those games away
• Go back to mostly playing Galaxy Truckers and Sagrada

This came to a head this past Chrismas when I went to put away some games we’d gotten as gifts (Mega City: Oceana and Ticket to Ride: London) and there just wasn’t any room on the shelf. As I shuffled things around I came across games we’d only played once, games we’d never opened, and games I swear I’ve never seen before. It was then I realized there needed to be a Reckoning.

What even is all this stuff?

The first step in getting organized is figuring out what you have so I set out to inventory my games. I started out with a spreadsheet but quickly decided to switch to using my account at BoardGameGeek.

The awesome thing about BoardGameGeek is that is has a really comprehensive database of pretty much every tabletop game. The less awesome thing is that the UI is completely overwhelming and I didn’t find out until after I was done entering everything that there were some shortcuts I could have taken (namely the tiny ‘add game’ button at the top of your collection list).

Once it was all in BGG I connected my account to a site called GeekGroup.app which has a very nice UI and got this easy to digest list of games:

What’s also neat is you can make a group collection with friends who have done the same. This does mean badgering your friends into logging everything in BGG, but the reward is a list that makes it easy to see who owns what (and thus whether you can leave Galaxy Trucker at home because there will be a copy where you’re going.

Planning to play games

I came across the idea of a 10 by 10 challenge wherein you set out to play 10 games 10 times in a year (or other timeframe of your choosing). You can decide how strict you want to be (I’m allowing myself to swap out games if I really start to hate them)

I don’t have a fancy board so I’m using a phone app called BGStats to track my plays. Each time I play a game I log who I played it with, what the score was (where applicable), and who won. I hand picked 6 games that I want to play this year (Chaturanga, Eclipse, The Expanse Board Game, Mage Knight, Pandemic Legacy, and Power Grid) and the other four will auto-fill in the app based on whatever I’m playing the most.

More Stats

Now that I’m tracking my games I suddenly have all this data! Data which can be used to generate… MORE STATS AND VISUALIZATIONS.

GeekGroup has a bunch of different ways to visualize your playing. There’s the streaks and records page:

But what I really love is the playback visualization which walks through the timeline of your plays. Check it out on the GeekGroup site to get the full effect.

I’m heading into 2020 with a goal to get to know my game collection better (and jettison anything we just don’t like to play). I’m excited to dig into some games that I’ve only played once or twice, and even more excited at the idea of getting away from Weekly Rules Explanation Night by playing repeats.

Warning: this post contains major spoilers for Stranger Things season 1. If you do not want to know what happens in the series do not read any further!

The end of Stranger Things season 1 left a lot of unanswered questions, which is not surprising to anyone. Various websites have put together lists of questions which are all things obviously meant to be ambiguous. Let’s address a few of them before moving on:

Is El still alive?

Yes, obviously.

Is Beth Barb really dead?

Yes, obviously. She seemed pretty clearly dead from the moment she got pulled into the pool. Her character wasn’t particularly well developed. She exists only for the purpose of getting Nancy involved in the story. She’s not coming back.

Edit: see she is such a non-character that I got her name wrong.

Is Dr Brenner really dead?

First rule of Hollywood: if you don’t see the bad guy die on screen, he is not dead.

What’s with Will and the slugs and the upside-down?

Gee I guess we’ll have to wait ’til season 2 comes out to find out!

Ok, with those out of the way, here are some of my questions. And whether I think we’ll find the answers.

1. How is/was the Demagorgon moving between the normal world and Upside-Down? He’s obviously popping out in places without using the Big Ass Gate. Does he control openings like the one that idiot Nancy crawled into? Or do they just show up whenever someone cuts themselves?
   Odds of getting an answer next season: pretty high
2. Who is Mr Clark’s girlfriend and did she dump him after he interrupted their date to tell some kids how to make a saltwater tank?
   Odds of getting an answer: maybe
3. Did insurance cover the damages to Joyce’s house, or did they have to cover it out of pocket? If so, how? If she doesn’t have the cash for a new phone, she definitely doesn’t have the cash to repair the fire/hatchet/etc damage.
   Answer odds: low
4. Did Mike’s mom realize the hairs she found in the basement were from a wig?
   Answer odds: nil
5. Why on earth did Hopper think they’d be able to get into the lab the 2nd time around?
   Answer odds: medium. I think we’ll learn a lot more about Hop next season.
6. What happened to the other 2 Bad Men in the scene where Hopper comes to get the kids from the junkyard? Did he pop all 3 of them or what?
   Answer odds: nil
7. If the series makes it up to 1988 will there be Heathers and Beetlejuice references?
   Answer odds: slim
8. Does anyone else refer to Steve as Steve Holt?
   Answer odds: tell me in the comments!