Category: Programming
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Improve your Christmas gift opening with Randomizer
My wife and I wanted to find a way to do an orderly one-at-a-time Christmas gift opening this year rather than the usual everyone-at-once free-for-all, but while also still keeping all the kids mentally present, rather than having them zone out until it was their turn. We decided to randomly choose the next person to…
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Alexa, start a new post called, “I’m blogging this with my voice.”
I’ve written and published an Alexa skill that lets you check your blog notifications, moderate comments, and start new draft posts on your WordPress.com or Jetpack-enabled blog, all by speaking to any Alexa-enabled device. The skill is called “Blog Helper“; you’ll find it in the Skills section of your Alexa app or by saying, “Alexa,…
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Reenact is dead. Long live Reenact.
Last November, I wrote an iPhone app called Reenact that helps you reenact photos. It worked great on iOS 9, but when iOS 10 came out in July, Reenact would crash as soon as you tried to select a photo. It turns out that in iOS 10, if you don’t describe exactly why your app…
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“Alexa, just play along with the joke.”
One of the biggest complaints in the Alexa skill development community is that the language required to invoke a third-party skill is so stilted. Instead of being able to say, “Alexa, what’s the temperature outside?”, you have to say something like, “Alexa, ask WeatherBot 3000 what the temperature is outside.” It adds a gatekeeper layer;…
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I wrote my first Alexa skill… almost.
I wrote my first skill for Amazon’s Alexa-enabled devices. (A “skill” is a way to add functionality to Alexa; other platforms would call it an add-on, plugin, or extension.) It was supposed to be a way for your kids to find things to do when they’re bored. Here’s how my blog post about it was…
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Programming My House: Multi-Circuit 3-Way Switches
I’ve been outfitting my home with “smart home” devices: light switches that I can turn on my with phone (or voice, via Amazon’s Alexa), hinges that report when doors open and close, and motion sensors that report activity around the house. I use Samsung’s SmartThings hub, which provides access to a handful of official “SmartApps”…
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I Built a Tilt-Out Trash Can Cabinet
Just looking for the plans to make this? You can get the PDF plans for this double tilt-out garbage can cabinet on Etsy or download the SketchUp file for free. I’m going on a work trip later this month, and Christina asked me if I would be able to build something to hide the kitchen…
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Today’s Functional Print: Twist-In Shelf Supports
In today’s “shake it up baby” news, I’ve printed some hard-to-find twist-in shelf supports. The shelves in our new living room have vertical metal tracks that don’t just accept a push-in support clip; the support must be turned 90º in order to interlock with the track. These supports aren’t sold at any of the national…
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Create LEGO-compatible Angle Plates with LEGO.scad
In response to a comment here, I wrote the first OpenSCAD module for generating complex brick shapes using my LEGO.scad project. LEGO.scad is great for creating bricks and wings of all shapes and sizes, but it isn’t suitable for making complicated shapes like angle plates. LEGO sells 90º angle plates (pictured); the new module can…
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Export iMessages and SMS conversations as HTML
A couple of years ago, I explained how to get instant message conversations exported out of iChat as HTML files. Now it’s 2016, and Messages has replaced iChat, and iMessages have replaced all interpersonal communication. So how do you get HTML transcripts of your iMessages and text messages? Here’s how: with my new OSX Messages…
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Today’s Functional Print: Baby Gate Support
In today’s “No, don’t go up there” news, I’ve printed a custom baby gate support. Based on a design by Thingiverse user Printed_Solid, this support allows a pressure gate to be used against a post without attaching a wall cup, which would leave a permanent screw hole. I updated the original design to have longer…
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Animating the Solar System with OpenSCAD
OpenSCAD is my language of choice for designing objects that will be 3D-printed, but I just recently learned that it also supports 3D animation. To familiarize myself with this feature, I decided to animate the movement of the planets in our solar system. Here’s a GIF excerpt of the animation generated by OpenSCAD; it covers…
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Today’s Functional Print: Board Game Piece Bases
In today’s “do you think this is some sort of game?” news, I’ve designed and printed some boardgame piece bases. These were printed specifically for my son’s “Thomas and Friends Tracks and Trestles” game, which was missing two of its bases, but the design is customizable to fit almost any size gamepiece. The OpenSCAD script…
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Today’s Functional Print: Stove Knob
In today’s “customizable knob” news, I’ve designed and printed a customizable knob. When we moved into our current house, the knob to control the stovetop fan was missing: After six months of procrastinating and one hour of OpenSCAD, it now looks like this: Now I don’t have to turn on the fan with a pliers!…
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Today’s Functional Print: Coat Rack Pegs
In today’s “I finally unpacked my 3D printer” news, I printed some pegs for a coat rack to replace the original pegs that we lost during a cross-country move. The base of each peg is flared to ensure a tight fit into the hole, but it also has a hole in the bottom to allow…
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Introducing Reenact: an app for reenacting photos
Here’s an idea that I’ve been thinking about for a long time: a camera app for your phone that helps you reenact old photos, like those seen in Ze Frank’s “Young Me Now Me” project. For example, this picture that my wife took with her brother, sister, and childhood friend: Reenacting photographs from your youth,…
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Print your own LEGO-compatible bricks
Given that I have a 3D printer and a five-year-old son, it was inevitable that I would eventually print some LEGO-compatible bricks.1 I knew that bricks were a popular “look what I can print” demo, but after I tried out a few of the popular printable LEGO-compatible models [1] [2], I found that none of…
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Today’s Functional Print: Letter Cookie Cutters
In today’s “delicious but still functional” news, I printed a set of letter cookie cutters as part of a Christmas present for my sister’s family. The theme for our family’s gift exchange this year was “locally made gifts,” and it doesn’t get any more local than my own desktop. I printed the cutters in T-Glase,…
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Today’s Functional Print, Failure Edition: Vacuum Cleaner Wheel
In today’s “I wheely love printing” news, I tried and failed to print a replacement wheel for a Kenmore Whispertone 12.0 vacuum cleaner. The original wheel’s clip had broken, causing the wheel to come unattached from the vacuum canister: Replacement wheels can be bought for $9 plus shipping, but why pay almost ten dollars when…
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Today’s Functional Print, CHRISTMAS EDITION: Christmas Tree Feet
In today’s appropriately festive 3D printer news, I’ve printed replacement feet for some ornamental Christmas trees: These feet took a while to design — the organic shapes and border ridges were new concepts to me in OpenSCAD, but I was able to settle on a design that could be printed without supports. Spot the original,…