I'm thinking about making a GIF/video converter with an HTML frontend that uses shell (ffmpeg and gifsicle) commands to do the conversions.

Screenshot of a figma prototype sketch

Desk with hanging box for mixer and hinged box for cords.

Three small additions to the desk today. Trying to tidy up based on where things have accumulated.

Open desk box with USB hubs.

Basement project table with sewing machine and marked off project section

I feel like these quick builds are an exercise in building intuition about "how wood goes together". And then using it is building intuition about "what makes a table feel good to use", that then feeds into the next build.

Process

Left wall I've my office, now filled with shoebox-sized bins.

I've gone all in on clear shoebox + masking tape storage. Great for locating cords and small electronics so far. Still more to be figured out in terms of overall sorting (I'm hoping a natural cache will emerge?).

Thread of latent space explorations curated by Prathyush

From https://x.com/prathyvsh/status/1852215239850225943

Screenshot of building a desktop from a broken fence

Enjoying Evan Monsma's Youtube channel. Featuring relaxed figuring-it-out-as-you go builds from salvaged scraps. Sometime I want to write about the connections between prototyping on the web and DIYing IRL.

Screenshot of Murphy bed tutorial.

Thinking about DIY-ing a Murphy bed and I appreciate this straightforward guide. Nice to connect with alternate aesthetics in the cause of making stuff. From https://www.littlevintagecottage.com/2021/02/diy-poor-mans-murphy-bed.html

Tweet by Omar: two reasons to program: 1. make cool unexpected things 2. feeling of mastery over the computer system

Obviously not every reason for programming, but I think about this tweet often bc it captures two of my favorites. From https://x.com/rsnous/status/1820489330839998621

Garden posting interface

New posting interface up for this site (garden.grantcuster.com). Complete with media (S3) upload, markdown preview and posting to Bluesky.

Hand range test

Experimenting with mediapipe hand-tracking for value adjustments.

Experimenting with running a modified version of Masks on movies (Fight Club).

Me recording my face using masks

Masks - Collage faces using your webcam.

Dev notes

Working om masks

I want to think more about some connected ideas. Silicon Jungle's prototypes where he is exploring breaking ideas into cards, I think called lenses, that can then be further explored.

Linus Lee's talk about using LLMs as a microscope for thoughts.

Some work experiments where we've been using LLMs to break scenes down into parts, then applying a transformation to one of those parts.

New desk experiments - stashing a beheaded desktop below the desk with string loops.

Bottom view - laptop body tied to the underside of the desk

Top view - strings coming out of drilled holes

New desk setup as of this weekend

Process

Materials, with extra for later

Thinking a lot lately about making a comfortable environment for myself. Both in real space and digital space.

In real space I think about my desk setup. I think about nostalgic 90s photos of cozy computer setups.

In digital space I think about my neovim and terminal setup. After getting things pretty well setup I've kind of let them sit - and added a few things that never quite worked right. That cruft started to build up and now I'm starting to clean it out.

Back on the train and in the glasses deck. Sitting next to a big coffee spill on the flor and a man slowly, methodically eating a sandwich.

I don't know if I'll actually publish this as a post, but I wanted to collect my thoughts by writing.

This morning I was thinking of buying a new kitchen knife and working on cooking a couple of dinners a week again. I'd like to find some sort of system for all of that that feels good.

I'm doing some more experimentation with raspberry pi's around the house. Working on a base ubuntu setup, that is pretty close to what I would do with ubuntu on any other computer.

Flashing

Install ubuntu-server through rpi-imager. Annoying rpi-imager doesn't work with sway, something about QT apps and security. I've been flashing from my work macbook so far. I'd like to get a better setup. I could do it from the command line with dd but I'm not sure how to replicate the settings presets that the imager has, which is especially nice for automatically connecting to wifi. Still, I should dig in and get this figured out.

Organizing a new quotes repo: https://github.com/grantcuster/quotes

pokemonsay hooked up to my quotes text file