I designed this logo for the South Florida Nom Squad, a dining and culinary-adventure club led by Samantha Calabro. Cute cartoon animals aren't really my specialty but I'm reasonably pleased with how well this manatee turned out.

Here's a 3D-printed version of the classic impossible dovetail puzzle, inspired by a machined metal version by Chris at Youtube channel Clickspring.

After modeling the geometry in Onshape, I printed my version in Estonian blue, black, and white. I wanted to sign my name on the pin so I rebuilt that part in Solidworks, which still offers a less annoying way of importing 2D vector art for this sort of feature. If you'd like to make your own impossible dovetail or play with the CAD models, follow these links:

• Impossible dovetail, Onshape document
• Impossible dovetail pin, Solidworks file
• Impossible dovetail, STLs for 3D printing

I recently documented my designs for a kind of filament extender structure that I added to my 3D printer to keep the filament a bit more under control on its way from spool to extruder. Maybe it will be of use to someone else that has a Prusa i3 clone like mine.

Last year's reading list is complete. I'm pleased to report that I met my target number of 36 books for the year (although only just!). My usual practice in case of success last year would be to set a higher goal for this year, but it's occurred to me that chasing ever higher numbers has the effect of encouraging me to read shorter books, which isn't exactly in line with the spirit of this enterprise. So I'll keep it at 36 and still try to read more, by reading longer books.

In recent Christmases I've enjoyed making some gifts, decorations, and gift-wrapping components myself, often employing some of my desktop fabrication machines: the laser cutter, 3D printer, etc. To satisfy 2018's “Esto Blue and Lion Gold” theme I used that 3D printer to make some custom stamps featuring a lion face, suitable for use with blue or gold stamp pads.

The final design ended up very different!

After sketching a lion with a magnificent mane to serve as some kind of guide, I designed the final artwork in Adobe Illustrator, then imported that 2D vector drawing into CAD to extrude it into a 3D block. I've been trying to do my more hobby-oriented CAD work in Onshape so that it's easily accessible and modifiable by readers without a lot of resources. Generally I've been very pleased by how complete this product is, but vector import in Onshape is still a pain, so I did this one in SolidWorks instead.