Yikes
A long overdue post by Steve about what's been going on in his blog-absence.
It's 2024. How did that happen?
For months now I've been meaning to post something, and I've done a fantastic job of not actually succeeding in doing so. Yay me! So here's some words about what I've been doing since I last broke cover here.
I'm alive
That much is obvious, but July had me worried. A chest infection settled into the top of my left lung, rendering it virtually inoperable. I still have flashbacks to the insane mucal production as I recovered - imagine coughing up a whole egg and you're 90% of the way there.
Long Covid continues to rattle around me. The gift that keeps on giving!
Absurdly potent steroid gel has helped me get mouth ulcers under control for the first time since being a teenager. Still get them, but not as many and they don't hang around like they would before.
Mental health? Yeah, it waxes and wains.
Projects
I've not done anything with the Cyberdeck-not-Cyberdeck. I've just not felt it. It'll come back at some point though.
I've been doing stupid synth bits and bobs instead. Here's some photos of bits from the past year:
Here's how the case was looking in May. I've changed plenty since then, I just don't have photos on my phone.
My development 'rack', which was retired recently in favour of another of my Ikea case thingies. In the middle is a CircuitPython-powered digital oscillator which I need to finish (the story of my life).
A handy breakout for the CV/gate outputs of my MPC One. Works well but I wish I'd designed in a bit more space for clearance of the top knob.
A CircuitPython-powered sample player for drums that I will finish off sooner rather than later (he says, noting the photo was taken five months ago). I have actually done a fair bit more work on this module, after taking this photo, but working out a menu system for dynamically changing samples and parameters got the better of me.
In non-modular synth synthesis happenings, for my birthday I got a Donner B1 analogue bass synth, which sounds wonderfully acidic but is actually logically programmable, unlike a Roland TB-303 (or a clone thereof). It sounds lush and can also work as a basic MIDI keyboard when plugged into the MPC One, so it's cemented itself as part of my "studio".
Tools
This one's easy for me to summarise - there's one thing that really stands out. My 3D printing game has been elevated with the Bambu Lab P1S!
It's flipping awesome. Multifilament, wicked fast and quality out of the box that I could only dream of achieving after months of tinkering and experimenting with my Ender-3 Pro. I've not got that one set up right now but I'm planning on keeping it for experimenting with - I've got a honking great laser module that could go on it - and it's already been incredibly heavily customised.
AOB
You know when you're looking on Amazon at product reviews, and you see "Vine Customer Review of Free Product" in a bunch of them? I'm one of them now. I've reviewed so many USB leads and hubs that I'm giddy!
AAOB
Can't think of anything right now. BYEEE