Our biggest Thanksgiving weekend sale ever is on at Evil Mad Scientist!
Today through Monday: Deep discounts on select AxiDraw models and clearance prices on a broad range of our other products.
Sale runs through Monday, November 27.
Halloween Projects and Specials
It’s time for our annual reminder that we love Halloween! Our Halloween Project Archives is a great resource for inspiration and ideas.
Halloween is one of our favorite holidays, and … we’ve organized dozens of our Halloween projects into categories: costumes, pumpkins, decor and food.
A new pen clip for AxiDraw
Tiny product update: A new version of the pen holder for AxiDraw, with slots for quick adjustment between the vertical and 45 degree angle positions.
Tracing the Line: the art of drawing machines and pen plotters
Tracing the Line is a book of plotter art available for preorder now, coming out this November. Many of our featured artists are included in the book, and AxiDraw makes several appearances in the video teaser. Looks like it will be fantastic!
Linkdump: August 2023
- Space Elevator (Also, from the same site: Password game)
- The Amazing Story of How Philly Cheesesteaks Became Huge in Lahore, Pakistan
- Early computer art in the 50’s & 60’s
- Maryland License Plates Advertising Filipino Casino
- My Benihana, Myself
- How much does animation cost? A price guide
- Cats apparently recognize their names
- A rubber block that can count
- SmarterEveryDay takes a tour of a Progressive die stamping facility (YouTube)
- From back in 2018: DOOMBA: Automatically generate DOOM level maps for your house from Roomba tracking data
- The mystery of the Bloomfield bridge
Hidden line removal for AxiDraw
We’re pleased to note the release of AxiDraw software version 3.9 this week, with a couple of neat new features. One of them is that the “preview mode” button — which lets you simulate plotting to see how the results will come out — is now accessible no matter which function is selected. The other, the big one, is that AxiDraw now supports hidden-line removal as a standard feature.
There’s a full changelog up on GitHub, which also notes a few new features for users of the AxiDraw CLI (command-line interface) and AxiDraw Python library, including the ability to resume a plot a little before where it was paused.
But, let’s talk more about hidden-line removal.
Continue reading Hidden line removal for AxiDraw
Linkdump: April 2023
- The CRUMB Circuit Simulator, a breadboard simulator
- Deep Fried Coffee Beans
- Conserve the Sound: “Your Museum for endangered sounds.”
- Furby source code
- What is the price of a Big Mac across the country?
- Floppy disk costumes for SD cards
- De visdeurbel (Fish Doorbell; Dutch language.) When a fish in the canals needs the lock opened, you can send the lock keeper a photo to let them know.
- Near infrared, in situ imaging of chips: An inexpensive method to see inside certain types of integrated circuits.
- An Aperiodic Monotile, and a talk about it, from the National Museum of Mathematics.
- The Tabloid Programming languate, and an implementation in Racket.
- The Electronics Flea Market returns to Silicon Valley this weekend.
Linkdump: November 2022
- Video shows florescence, showing how electrical signals move down the leaves of sensitive plant Mimosa pudica
- Reenacting wear patterns on recreations of medieval book illustrations
- E-ZPass reduced the rate of premature births to mothers who live near toll booths by 9.1%
- How to understand cough medicines, including why some cough syrups don’t really have active ingredients
- Python 3.14 Will be Faster than C++
- OpenRCT2 an open-source re-implementation of RollerCoaster Tycoon 2
- The Peking Duck Exemption
- How shaders render bottles in the game Half-Life: Alyx (YouTube)
- How one unwilling illustrator found herself turned into an AI model
- About the “baseline” scene in Blade Runner 2049
- Fast line hiding with a WebGL shader for pen plots
- A linear stepper motor PCB racetrack
Open Circuits: Now available
Earlier this year, I wrote about my then-forthcoming book, Open Circuits: The Inner Beauty of Electronic Components, co-written with our regular collaborator Eric Schlaepfer.
Open Circuits is a coffee table book full of close-up and cross-section photographs of everyday electronic components. And, it’s now shipping! As of today, it’s available in hardcover from your local bookstore, as well as to purchase online and in electronic versions.
We also just launched a new website for the book, with links of where you can purchase it as well as lengthy galleries of images from the book and of outake photos.
We put up a list of sellers on the website, including direct from No Starch and our own store, where signed copies are available.
Flickery Halloween Fun
Shane from Dark Illusion Studios shared this video using our candle flicker LEDs to make skull sconces. Our flickering LEDs are great for lots of different Halloween projects.
If you still need some inspiration, check out our Halloween Project Archives:
Halloween is one of our favorite holidays, and … we’ve organized dozens of our Halloween projects into categories: costumes, pumpkins, decor and food.
