Just tested all the motors and extruded my first blob of plastic. Nothing so fine as a real print yet but also, save a small issue with some wire insulation smoking, no problems.

Next I need to have a good dig into the process of calibration and setting things up for a print.

I’ll keep you posted!

Nearly ready now, there is a meeting of the thames valley reprap'ers this tuesday so I'm hoping to take this there and get some advice on the firmware side of things.

I’ve been wanting to get my head around quaternions for a long time notw but am often put off by the math heavy texts I tend to stumble upon. Luckily this time around I’ve been having more luck.

I’ll post more details on what I’m doing with this another day but I thought you peeps might find these links handy too!

Part 1 of 2 articles on the origins of complex numbers and quarternions. I find it helpful to see where a subject has come from and what the drive behind it is. Curious Quaternions Part 2 of above Ubiquitous octonions

From the same site as the last two links but give a vague idea of what these things can be used for practically Maths Goes To The Movies

This site goes through the basics you need to know to start implementing quaternions in your code. Very pragmatic and easy to follow. Also even though it says ‘cprogramming’ dont be put off, the code is near enough to pseudo-code. Cprogramming.com: Quaternions and 3D Rotations

These two are useful primarily as they have some source code and easy going tone. I’m going to have a read of the rest of the site as it looks useful. 3D Programming Weekly: Quaternions 3D Programming Weekly: Quaternion Math

Cool, well thats all for now, I’ll be back with more another day. Ciao Bagley

p.s. Ooh and if you are just getting into this I heartily recommend Khan Academy’s course on Linear Algebra

…Often feels like trying to get rich by finding a gold seam and then, rather than using a pickaxe, smashing your face repeatedly into the groud. I know I’ll get there but sometimes I’m not sure its worth the pain.

Just needed to vent, no way I’m dropping emacs just tiring working out which way you have to tickle it for it to roll over and play nice.

..All is right with the world (of emacs) again.

Turns out sbcl + slime (+ quicklisp?) really doesnt play well if autopair is enabled.

You will know you have the problem if whenever you cause an exception in the repl you are unable to use the minibuffer at all without seeing the following: error in process filter: Wrong type argument: characterp, nil Or something very similar. This effectively means killing emacs and restarting, as killing/switching buffers, closing emacs, loading files, scratching your bum are all inoperable.

Anyhoo how this helps you if it’s caught you out. Ciao

WOOOO! I’ve finally got the opengl demos opening in lisp. This has been a fecking nightmare as I am really not used to installing lisp modules or knowing what the hell to do with them when I have….turns out its all easy with quicklisp but until you know what to do with it its just another bloody mystery.

I’ll post a decent writeup another day but this will go a good way to let me start experimenting with generating 3D geometry in lisp.

Ciao

Peter van Uhm: Why I chose a gun

I Miss Iraq. I Miss My Gun. I Miss My War. (2007)

It is very easy for people to forget that those they disagree with may be good and rational people, people whos goals actually align with thiers but whos idea of the path is different. I have a lot of difficulty even agreeing with myself on what I think regarding these subjects.

These two links are well worth your time, I don’t want to encourage or disagree with either just yet, but we all must see that people are not one dimentional cartoons.

Ciao

Well after that bout of rationality in the last post here some supreme stupidity

http://publicintelligence.net/do-you-like-online-privacy-you-may-be-a-terrorist/

Read the flier and give yourself a score, I rated fairly radical!

One thing that I feel very deficient on is fluency in maths. Even though a lot of what I do when programming has a mathematical edge to it I always feel like I’ve turned up in France and I only know how to ask for a baguette. I’m been trying to squeeze in sessions on khan academy when I can but despite their awesome award badge system it can still feel like a slog. Today however I read this which really perked me up and has really renewed my drive and I’ll definitely be taking some of his advice.

Steve Yegge’s Post on Math for Programmers

Another thing that has really been feeding my math hunger is the book Cryptonomicon which is wonderful and I will definitely be writing a post about when I’ve finished it.

Well that’s all for now, Ta ta

This isnt a post with any point but to enjoy the sheer awesome scale of these machines.