What is a hobby you enjoy, but seems too quirky or obscure to bring up in most conversations?
What is a hobby you enjoy, but seems too quirky or obscure to bring up in most conversations?
Mine would be creating pen and paper ciphers for my made up secret communication needs.
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I don't usually mention embedded programming, electronics, vintage stereo hi-fi, home automation, and fountain pens, among a few others. Of course finding someone who is into any of that could lead to some fun conversation.
For a second I thought you were implying that you embedded programming into the rest of that list and I was trying hard to think of what you'd program into a fountain pen
Challenge accepted!
Next Gen actually flexible livescribe fountain pen?? I honestly spent WAY too long trying to design a system that would automatically digitize what I wrote but work with a fountain pen. I eventually gave up and moved on to designing a system for a single handed braille keyboard to let me text while walking. Which I also have on hold. (I HAVE completed some projects, I have a knit shawl of silk/yak that I spun all the yarn for and then added 4000 beads to the edge work. I actually made two of them in different colors and materials. And I've made some crud apps and artwork. There is just too much that is interesting!)
Favorite fountain pen and ink (or at least your favorite at the moment)?
I love vinta perya (I dilute it further with water) in my Noodler's clear flex pen. I have a million pens and inks but that's the combo that makes me happy and that I keep going back to 💕
Those sound like amazing projects. How did you go about digitizing the pen strokes? Onboard IMU or something else?
I don't even know what a braile keyboard looks like. But that sounds really interesting.
The shawl sounds so cool. Where does one get yak hair(?) for spinning? I've never tried spinning. Sounds like another rabbit hole to jump into :)
There really is way too much that's interesting and not enough time for it all. Or people curious enough to share it with. Ah well.
My favorite fountain pen will sound boring but the journey was fun. After a few years of trying many many pens (I have like 50-60) over the last year I've settled in on the humble Parker 45.
I like a form factor with stepless section (Sheaffer Balance, Parker 51, etc) and the slim pens from the 60s (like Montblanc 221 / 32 / etc) is my jam. For whatever reason I am able to do my best handwriting with the 45. I also like that they're such an advanced design, easy to clean, and that they're so plentiful and low cost, and come in so many different colors. They're durable and reliable (on airplanes and everywhere else). And they work well with my go to work in, Quink Black. But also are not too picky about ink and are easily tuned to write wetter or drier. So I can use my other favorite inks like Lamy Pacific blue, Iroshizuku Tsuki-yo, Kobe Sannomiya Panse, or Diamine Purple Dream (I really ought to get a bottle of that stuff... But I have too many bottles already). Unfortunately my favorite purple, Diamine Damson, is way too dry for anything but absolute gusher pens (prior favorite pen Pelikan 140 is perfect).
What kind of home automation?
I recently rolled my own environment sensing, from the ESP32 C code up to the web front end. I basically got it functional and have been using it daily.
That sounds awesome. What is the front end written in? I always struggle writing front end stuff.
I want to get there with ESP32 sensors but haven't had the motivation or energy to make it happen.
I have a few use cases in mind -- soil moisture sensors for the garden, temp monitoring for fridge/freezer, stuff like that.
But so far all my home automation / smart home / "dumb home on the internet" stuff has been off the shelf stuff... so pretty boring.
I struggle with frontend too, it was a super basic jinja templates with html and a plotly js applet that I just fed data to. Its ugly but functional.
I Started to re-write the server in Go, I have like 90% feature parity with postgres instead of mongo, but I need to figure out vue when I have a chance to make something a little nicer. I have an old obsolete ipad with a bunch of touch deadzones I'd like to load up in kiosk mode for a nicer data display.
I really liked the ESP32 ecosystem. I figured out the ESP-idf and really liked the build system and freeRTOS. The examples given are really exhaustive and super useful. I basically did format strings into static HTML headers to send the data to the server since it only has like 3-4 readings.
Interfacing with any common hobbyist sensor is mostly a matter of finding a basic C driver and adapting it for the ESP build system.