Tag: Kyle

3D Prints August 2024

August 31, 2024 9:08 pm

Most of my modeling energy has been in to some longer term projects I’m working on. So I didn’t get much printed this month.

First up was a modification to my organizer for The Guild of Merchant Explorers. The guy that runs the board-game group was impressed with my design and wanted one for himself, but he puts all his cards in sleeves. So I modified the card trays for sleeved cards and printed him a copy. The modified version is up on MakerWorld with the original.

The cats had an altercation at the window screen the other night and when we came out to investigate (at 2am) we found that the screen had been pushed in ~4-5 inches and the little plastic catch that holds it in place was broken. So apparently a neighborhood cat threw itself at the screen?

So I measured things and designed and printed out little catches that pressure-fit into the jamb opening and hold the screen in place. Seem to work pretty well. I couldn’t get one out when I tried.

Games August 2024

6:07 pm

Did a fair bit of game playing in August.

Played Heat a couple of times. One loss, one win. I’m enjoying this game much more than I expected to. It’s pretty straightforward to play and there’s no adversarial interactions, but the competitiveness pushes me to play more aggressively than I normally do in games.

I got tagged in to Apiary take over for someone two-thirds through a game at the board-game group. I did not win. It was not what I was expecting from the few times I’ve seen it go by on the Internet. It’s not about being a beekeeper. It is about a far-flung future where bees have evolved sentience and you need to manage a bee spaceship to out-compete the other bee species. I’d play again to at least get the full experience.

Jess and I played Quest 19 of Kinfire Chronicles: Night’s Fall and got drubbed by a dragon. We limped back to town to lick our wounds.

Later we played Quest 9 which went far more successfully. We caught and defeated an illicit arms dealer as the mystery of his customer network deepens.

Played a game of The Guild of Merchant Explorers at a board-game group. I lost.

Got two of my crowdfunding games this month. The first to arrive was Defenders of the Wild. Which in my head is “Everdell goes to war.” You play cooperatively as a confederacy of woodland creatures defending their homes from marauding machines. Played at the board game group with experiences gamers–we lost. And what’s more is none of us had a clear idea what a winning strategy looks like. We were really close to winning at one point though. Need to give it a few more goes to see if I can “figure it out.”

The other crowdfunding game that was delivered in August was Peacemakers: Horrors of War. This one, in my head, is “Everdell tries to stop a war.” You play cooperatively as a team of woodland creatures trying to stop battling tribes from destroying each other. It’s a very unusual game. Your ability to influence things is subtle. You’re looking for opportunities to nudge events just a little in one direction or another in order to create conditions for the warring factions to negotiate a peace.

I played the first scenario two handed (two players, but only me playing) and was able to eek out a victory and get the ocelots and macaws to stop fighting.

The family continued our time-traveling adventure in Escape the Crate: Escape from Sherwood Forest. We successfully completed both chapters and rescued Robin Hood and Little John from the sheriff’s jail.

Before Peacemakers: Horrors of War the publisher released another game Lands of Galzyr which takes place in the same universe. This is a purely story-telling game however. You take on the role of one of 4 woodland creatures making your way through the world. You have a personal quest you’re embarking on but can engage in any number of side quests and narrative vignettes along the way. It’s not a game you win or lose–it’s a game you experience for the joy of the journey.

We played through one session as a family, but with 4 players I think it moves a bit too slowly. I think it would be significantly more enjoyable for everyone to play with no more than 3–and preferably just 2–players.

And finally, on the last day of the month, we played Ex Libris with friends. Jess won again, as usual.

Books August 2024

August 29, 2024 6:13 pm

Truth, Lies, and O-rings by Allan McDonald with James Hansen

Allan McDonald’s telling of the events in Morton Thiokol leading up to–and in the aftermath of–the Challenger explosion.

Pretty disheartening to see the blatant disregard for safety issues on a continuing basis. The same culture which appears to have been directly culpable for the Columbia failure 17 years later. Namely, when a disaster was narrowly averted that was internalized to mean something was safe to do rather than “wow, we were lucky, we better make sure that doesn’t happen again.”

The Peace War by Vernor Vinge

After the heavy non-fiction of A Man on the Moon and Truth, Lies, and O-rings I opted for some lighter fare.

I’ve read this before. I find it particularly amusing because the antagonists of the story is the Livermore Energy Lab (a.k.a. LLNL). They’ve imposed a tyrannical peace on the world by sealing away the implements of war.

However, the protagonists disagree on these being a preferable world to live in.

What’s it all About? Philosophy & the Meaning of Life by Julian Baggini

This is a very short introduction to the fundamental concepts in philosophy on the topic of the meaning of life.

Baggini winds up in the position that meaning in life comes from whatever we give it. Which he recognizes can be rather terrifying to some people who want some ultimate purpose handed down from on high.

But he carefully walks through the argument that any meaning tied to an after life just pushes the question without resolving anything.

Marooned in Realtime by Vernor Vinge

Although I had read The Peace War previously, I was not aware there was a sequel until I stumbled on it looking for new reading ideas.

So I grabbed this to read. It certainly takes place in the same fundamental universe, but it’s a completely different kind of story.

While The Peace War is mainly an action/adventure story this is a murder mystery: The death of a woman from natural causes tens of thousands of years ago. How is that murder and why would anyone even care? Guess you’ll have to read it to find out.

3D Prints July 2024

July 30, 2024 7:06 pm

My big project lately has been an box organizer for The Guild of Merchant Explorers. It comes with no organization and you just have to stash everything in bags. This makes set up and take down a pain and unnecessarily long.

A couple organizers for the game already exist on the 3D printing websites, but I wanted something better. Something that could stand up to the box being turned sideways or upside down without making a mess. So, naturally, I designed my own to meet my stringent criteria. Also, designing it myself let me spruce it up with premium details.

A challenge of keeping pieces from scattering is that there is space between all the components and the lid when the box is closed. It’s only about 2mm, but that’s enough for cards and bits of cardboard to slide around.

So to accomplish my goal of keeping pieces from going everywhere when the box is turned I created my trays to nest on each other so there’s not enough room for pieces to slide out when they come apart a little bit. This works great, but you’ll have a tray on top with nothing above it. So for that case I printed covers which set into the trays to keep things in place.

The game has 3 decks of cards that you use regularly (and 1 which is used only at set up). As a little nicety I chamfered the bottom of the tray so when you press on the side of the card the other side pops up a little making it easier to grab.

Finally, I added the symbols used in each section of the trays to identify what components go where. Overall, I’m extremely pleased with the final results. Set up and take down are now almost instantaneous. And I already got a request from someone at the board game meetup to print one for them.

Some of my design notes from the project. I worked on it for about a month before I decided I was happy with it and printed it.

For the last 8 years I’ve organized and run an event at work called Developer Day to encourage software developers to interact with each other and learn about the various projects happening around the Lab.

To encourage attendance and participation I give out door prizes–usually whatever I find interesting off of Amazon. This year I augmented the prizes with some 3D printed things I designed.

First up is building 453. This is the main supercomputer building on site and the building where we’ve been holding the event. I modeled it based on aerial imagery from Google Maps and some educated guesses from first-hand information. Then I put it on a base and added the Lab logo and some text. It’s about the size of a credit card. The big bland block on the back is the machine building where the supercomputers are housed.


Then I played around with a couple of designs of these text blocks. They’re hollow, about 2.5 inches long, and 3/4 of an inch tall.


And then I thought it might be fun to do something with light and the translucency of the filament material. So I designed these blocks which show LLNL when light shines through them.


And my final project of the month was modeling the Trinidad Head Light Station in Trindad, CA. One of the projects my team runs is named after this lighthouse and I’m considering printing a few of these for those team members.

I printed this in parts and assembled it after so I could get the differing colors without wasting a huge amount of filament switching back and forth during the print. I’m pretty happy with it. I’m very pleased with how the assembly went.