Custom Wedding Cufflinks - My name is not Andy

A simple rounded rectangular cut shape with the name or role of the wearer engraved on 3mm Bamboo.  The bamboo is treated with Danish oil to harden and protect it as well as to stain it to a darker colour.  Small golden cufflink blanks from eBay are then glued to the back to finish the piece.  The shape and fonts can be changed to suit the groom’s interests too.

Very simple, very quick, looks nice and makes the wedding just a little bit more ‘personal’ for the photo shoots.

[Also have a 3mm Black Acrylic version, too lazy to photograph...]

Note : My name is not Andy and I’m not the Groom

Quad-Hyperboloid - Pink Monofilament <-- That's a mouthful

I ordered the ‘stool’ in 4 materials, corrogated cardboard, 3mm Bamboo, 3mm Black Acrylic and 6mm Clear Acrylic.  The 6mm Clear acrylic is what you see here.  The top of the stool is supported by 4 ‘pillars’ with an additional 4 support beams for the 3mm materials.  The idea is to use monofilament wire to create multiple hyperboloid surfaces from top to bottom to create a ‘cool’ look.  Of course it helps that the monofilament I used is fluorescent and would glow under UV light

Can you count 4 hyperboloid surfaces?

The clear acrylic with pink monofilament example shown is a classic demonstration of the fact I’m slightly hopeless counting.  I had originally planned for 2 criss-crossed hyperboloid surfaces but due to a miscount I realized I screwed up on the first reverse weave.  Deciding to run with the mistake rather than going back to fix it I ended up with 4 hyperboloid surfaces, doesn’t look THAT bad… You can see the concentric ‘rings’ of each hyperboloid surface in the next photo.

Concentric circles look cool

A better selection of how many surfaces and curvature would improve the aesthetics greatly.  Its also rather big, would suit someone with a large bottom I suppose.  Overall not a bad experiment result though.

I’m looking forward to the Bamboo and Black Acrylic versions  Really looking forward to taking a photo under UV light too!

WTF Laptop Stand - Cardboard & Acrylic

¹Welcome to Finland / Waratah Train Fleet / Wednesday Thursday Friday / Worse Than Failure etc – Its not what you think.

Why the?

Lots of WTFs!

Ever since visiting Finland last year, it really nagged me that they didn’t have any souvenir T-shirts that read ‘WTF’ (Welcome to Finland).  Add to that the announcement that the Train project at work I’ve been working on has been named ‘Waratah‘, a fleet of trains called Waratah… Waratah Train Fleet, there really can not be a more suitable name.

How the?

A quick doodle on a notebook, quickie sketch in Inkscape and an upload to Ponoko later comes the WTF Laptop Stand.  The design is simple, two parallel sheets of acrylic or cardboard with joined WTF letters and a cross beam/bar to hold it together.  Snap fit so it can be taken apart quickly and put into a bag.

Cardboard WTF Laptop Stand Frame

What the?

Of course with the ‘quick doodle’ and ‘quickie sketch’ comes a price – I screwed up by not remember to actually measure how wide my laptop actually was! Argh.  Luckily its rather trivial to cut up the cardboard version and shorten the joining piece to come up with something usable.

I also forgot to do some fancy logo engraving/cutting in that cross beam too

Cardboard WTF Laptop Stand Frame (Shortened)

Now now, all better.  Now my laptop will actually sit on the stand properly

WTF Laptop Stand - Cardboard Side View

HP ProBook 5310m sitting on a Cardboard WTF Laptop Stand

WTF Laptop Stand - Cardboard Side View Closeup

The last shot above shows how the ‘W’ actually holds the laptop up in place.  It also shows a minor design flaw where I forgot to add a fillet on the inside of the ‘W’.  A fillet is important on materials such as acrylic to avoid create an unnecessary stress point where the piece might break.  Infact I broke a few trying to snap a piece that wasn’t fully cut through … [Ponoko shipped me extra in the package which made up for it].

Where the?

Where are the design files so you can make your own?  Is anyone actually interested?  Let me know through the comments and I can post the ‘fixed’ [Cross bar length and the fillet on the 'W'] design files on Thingiverse if people ask.

Edit : Added to Thingiverse!  http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3529

What the? (Again)

Oh just remembered to preempt the ‘what are those holes?’ question, they are an optional feature for threading monofilament (fishing wire) between the pieces to form a weave.  Just thought it might look cool but haven’t gotten around to it.  Recent obsession with monofilament will show in the next post…

Yippee

I was seriously thinking ‘Yippee!’ when I got the first of my Ponoko orders today… then I saw the ‘Yippee’ on the packaging… that was weird!

This is a gallery post of the unwrapping, too tired to assemble the bits tonight.  Can you guess what things I’m making?  [The 'Welcome to Finland' one is rather obvious...]  Post your guess in the comments!

Double WTF!

Most of my Shapeways Cufflink orders have arrived!  Only waiting for a few more designs but these came out so well I thought I’ll share them first.  For those of us who are curious on the material, these are 3D printed Cufflinks made out of Stainless Steel, impregnated with Bronze then plated with Gold!  Yup, what a lovely combination of materials.  Lets take a tour of the other designs, I’m going to warn that there will be shameless plugs to the Shapeways website for you to buy them if you’re interested

Locomotive Cufflinks

Locomotive Cufflinks! Choo Choo!

A custom design of the old style locomotive, wanted these for no other reason than I thought they might look cute.  The first comment on the cufflink I got was “..the rear wheels should be larger!” – what I get for working in a company that designs and builds trains…

Lovely detail including an open cabin and a hollow chimney, these demonstrate the fine capabilities of the 3D printing process (though these sure make painting the plastic versions tricky!).

Buy Locomotive Cufflinks Here!

Propeller Hat Cufflinks

Golden Propeller Hat Cufflinks

A propeller head (also spelled propellor head , and sometimes shortened to prop head or prophead ) is jargon for someone who is exceptionally, perhaps weirdly bright or knowledgeable, especially in some technical field.

Geeky?  Check.  Cute? Check.  Win.  Enough said.  Actually, for something geeky like this – plain Stainless Steel pictured below looks better!

Stainless Steel and Gold Plated Stainless Steel Propeller Hat Cufflinks

More of a top view because that is how you would wear them...

Buy Propeller Hat Cufflinks here!

Multimeter (WTF-meter?) Cufflinks

Multimeter Cufflinks... but they only really measure one thing...

Created for my friend Adeline who said she wanted something that relates to her work like multimeters and screwdrivers, here is the WTFmeter Cufflink!  Well I told her it was a Multimeter, but I couldn’t resist adding my favorite acronym onto the read-out…I wonder if she will notice?

Buy WTF-Meter … I mean Multimeter… Cufflinks here!

Lego Compatible Cufflinks

Lego Compatible Cufflinks

I struggled for a name when I first uploaded these, I’m still struggling for a name.  These are almost like lego blocks, but not so I called them block cufflinks.  The idea came from the fact that buying all these cufflinks were starting to burn a hole in my wallet.  What if I could print the base cufflink in stainless steel (or gold plated stainless steel) and do painted plastic add-ons later?   There was no other standard than using good old Lego™ ‘knobs’.  These make the design Lego™ compatible meaning I could actually sit a minifig on there…

The offset interior square plate and the square border makes this quite stylish even without attachments.  More on attachments later!

Buy these <untitled> cufflinks here!

That’s all for now!

That’s all folks! Hopefully my next batch of cufflinks and furniture designs come soon!

Though to make up for it, I’ve been an eBay/Shapeways/Ponoko shopaholic for the past week and a flood of new goodies should be arriving for me to make new erm general “weird shiat” , which hopefully ought to be interesting!

• Hyperboloid Stool
• Monofilament Chair
• GLID Transmutation Circle
• Cufflinks!
• Wifi Router Rover
• Teeny Weeny Solar Boat
• “My 5 cents worth” [Unless someone wants to donate to me about 500 2 cent coins, any currency]

Coming soon…Stay tuned…

E-mail to blog post software is evil… Forever cached by Google…

If you have a Windows 7 installation (as it should be pre-installed) and with the Window’s Qualcomm driver’s loaded, find the driver log directory.

e.g. C:\ProgramData\QUALCOMM\QDLService2k

There should be two files, Options2kHP.txt and QDLService2kHP.txt.

Open Options2kHP.txt and you should see 3 lines similar to :-

C:\Program Files\Qualcomm\Images\HP\UMTS\AMSS.mbn
C:\Program Files\Qualcomm\Images\HP\UMTS\Apps.mbn
C:\Program Files\Qualcomm\Images\HP\0\UQCN.mbn

Copy these 3 files listed into

/lib/firmware/gobi

The other file is a log file of the firmware loading done by the Windows driver if you’re curious.

The device ID for the firmware loader on the HP 5310m, un2420 module is 0x241d.
The device ID for the modem is 0x251d.
If the firmware is not loaded, you should see the firmware loader device.
If the firmware is loaded correctly, you should only see the modem device.

Short Instructions (Request in comments if you need debugging/testing instructions).

Download, compile and install the updated qcserial driver.qcserial_5Jan10
Download, compile and install the modified gobi_loader.gb2kload_5Jan10
Reboot and pray that network manager now shows your modem

*UDEV ISNT WORKING AT THE MOMENT … WILL FIX SOON … Run in manually like below…*

madox@madox-5310m:~$ lsusb -d 03f0:251d
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 03f0:251d Hewlett-Packard

Blah blah

Gobi Loader manually run and output

madox@madox-5310m:~/projects/gb2kload$ ./gobi_loader /dev/ttyUSB0 /lib/firmware/gobi
QDL protocol server request sent
01 51 43 4f 4d 20 68 69 67 68 20 73 70 65 65 64
20 70 72 6f 74 6f 63 6f 6c 20 68 73 74 00 00 00
00 04 04 30 03 0b
QDL protocol server response received
7e 0d 05 00 00 00 00 04 e4 7e
QDL protocol server request sent (Retry as gobi2000)
01 51 43 4f 4d 20 68 69 67 68 20 73 70 65 65 64
20 70 72 6f 74 6f 63 6f 6c 20 68 73 74 00 00 00
00 05 05 30 07 48
QDL protocol server response received (Retry as gobi2000)
7e 02 51 43 4f 4d 20 68 69 67 68 20 73 70 65 65
64 20 70 72 6f 74 6f 63 6f 6c ff ff ff ff 24 00
17 5c 05 05 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
00 30 d6 8a 7e
QDL protocol server request sent
25 05 2c 50 a9 00 01 00 00 00 04 00 00 40 97
QDL protocol server response received
7e 26 00 00 01 00 00 00 04 52 65 7e
QDL protocol server request sent
27 00 00 00 00 00 00 2c 50 a9 00 db ae
QDL protocol server sent 1048576 bytes of image
QDL protocol server sent 1048576 bytes of image
QDL protocol server sent 1048576 bytes of image
QDL protocol server sent 1048576 bytes of image
QDL protocol server sent 1048576 bytes of image
QDL protocol server sent 1048576 bytes of image
QDL protocol server sent 1048576 bytes of image
QDL protocol server sent 1048576 bytes of image
QDL protocol server sent 1048576 bytes of image
QDL protocol server sent 1048576 bytes of image
QDL protocol server sent 610348 bytes of image
QDL protocol server response received
7e 28 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 14 39 7e
QDL protocol server request sent
25 06 2c 60 2f 00 01 00 00 00 04 00 00 81 0e
QDL protocol server response received
7e 26 00 00 01 00 00 00 04 52 65 7e
QDL protocol server request sent
27 00 00 00 00 00 00 2c 60 2f 00 69 f0
QDL protocol server sent 1048576 bytes of image
QDL protocol server sent 1048576 bytes of image
QDL protocol server sent 1007660 bytes of image
QDL protocol server response received
7e 28 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 14 39 7e
QDL protocol server request sent
25 0d 44 24 00 00 01 00 00 00 04 00 00 50 90
QDL protocol server response received
7e 26 00 00 01 00 00 00 04 52 65 7e
QDL protocol server request sent
27 00 00 00 00 00 00 44 24 00 00 b9 49
QDL protocol server sent 9284 bytes of image
QDL protocol server response received
7e 28 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 14 39 7e
QDL protocol server request sent
29 bb 4c
Firmware Loading Complete

You might need to kill modem-manager if you’re doing this manually…

sudo pkill modem-manager

Server:        8.8.8.8

Address:    8.8.8.8#53

Non-authoritative answer:

69.69.69.69.in-addr.arpa    name = the-coolest-ip-on-the-net.com.