Had to visit Meow Wolf Las Vegas inside Area 15!

OmegaMart - be3n owl

Area 15 is like a mall of the bizarre and interesting (and also bars).  Inside, the Las Vegas Meow Wolf installation is called Omega Mart.  It begins with a store and takes a bit of a turn.

OmegaMart - Shelves 1OmegaMart - Shelves 3OmegaMart - Shelves 2

Beyond and behind the Omega Mart is the Factory with alien motivation and unbelievable equipment.  Everything is interactive, there are stories and backstories and branching pathways.  puzzles, games, and mysteries to unravel.  I went on a mission to hack the Omega Mart!

Continue reading “Had to visit Meow Wolf Las Vegas inside Area 15!”

Discovering the Meow Wolf exhibit: Santa Fe

Meow Wolf - Giant Robot Statue

Meow Wolf: The House of Eternal Return is a 20,000 square foot building (once a bowling alley) now filled with over 70 room uniquely decorated with incredible interactive art.  Yesterday we spent hours exploring.  Just when we thought we’d seen it all we would open a cabinet or move a bookshelf and suddenly entirely new avenues opened for us to explore.

Meow Wolf - Exhibits 1
Continue reading “Discovering the Meow Wolf exhibit: Santa Fe”

My original shadowbox idea finally realized in all its glory!

Apple Mouse Shadowbox

This was actually the idea that started it all!  It took me a while to finally complete it.  I know that i am missing the serial mouse from the original Macintosh and 128.  Despite having one, i decided to keep my 128 with all its pieces.  Besides, i never touched one until after college.  The mice represented here had my hands all over them most of my life.  I am very happy with how it came out.

Cartesian Geometry is for suckers!

be3n unboxing monoprice delta pro

I am very thankful for an early Thanksgiving toy!  It’s a Monoprice Delta Pro!  (originally $1400, they have dropped a few times and are now on sale for $550. Delta printers are so cool.  They do not move at all like traditional 3D printers. i can watch mine all day.  you can too, the live cam is back!

Delta Printerhttps://printer.be3n.com

It was a snap to get it setup. The opposite experience of my Maker Select V2. Oh i love the auto bed leveling. There is no official Cura profile for the Delta Pro, so i had to throw one together from the Delta Mini and the specs.  I did have a few failures.  I bought some inferior filament and it would continually get clogged. After switching to the good stuff, my prints were beautiful.  Then i started to play with the speed rate options.

S.S. Cheap rainbow filamentSpeed Printing with Delta Pro
That articulated slug is a great example.  you can see the first layer is a bit sloppier on the head segment compared with the other segments. I turned the speed rate up to 130%  I’m not sure exactly what that does, because it certainly doesn’t have that profound of an effect on the print speed.  but if you raise it high enough it gets very sloppy.  i shaved about 30% of the time for a print by upping the speed rate to 200% but the first few layers had much more serious flaws than the slug. On the whole it wasn’t a bad speed print.  I’m sure i can improve it with tweaks.

YouTube player

Defcam 2.0 Preparation and more from Defcon 27!

DC27 Defcam2 - link UP

So I did not “complete” my hat until very late Friday when i finally got it to announce its link status on its new set of 14 segment displays.  It performed admirably all weekend.  Thanks to Paul for safely transporting it to and from Vegas. I must also thank Stephen for his late night help on Wednesday. (tacos are not enough)  Without his amazing soldering, i’d still be trying to figure out what i had done wrong.  Here are some pictures from that night and the con to follow. . .

DC27 Defcam - Return to operationDC27 Defcam2 - PreparationDC27 Defcam2 - new headerDC27 Defcam2 - PrototypingDC27 Defcam2 - CompleteDC27 Flight - Solar CollectorsDC27 - Nixie Badge
DC27 Villages - Rogues Village - Shuffle TheoryDC27 Talks - Detecting Mac MalwareDC27 Villages - Hacking a BoatDC27 - Badge Rick
Continue reading “Defcam 2.0 Preparation and more from Defcon 27!”