I don’t know how the gene has survived in the Swedish climate, but Sara claims to be unable to function without a trip to warmer, brighter countries in the winter. You’d think that this trait would have been mercilessly bread out of anyone foolish enough to settle this far up north, but perhaps it’s combined with some other, more useful genetic features which make up the Sara, and have survived that way. Either way, she booked a charter to Sharm el Sheikh in Egypt, and brought me along for a January excursion.

My previous forays into charter tourism have been a mixed bag — n.b. The Tunisian Experiment — but this trip was a whole other thing: My ambition was to eat houmous, swim a bit and perhaps read a book or two. Sara had been there before, so even though she mostly wanted to counteract the effects of Swedish mole-like existence, there were some ambitions as to activities: Snorkeling, eating fish, walking in the mountains.

We’re on the flight: The stewardess goes to check, returning with “yes, unfortunately penut-butter sandwiches are out of the question because of the allergies.” So we spend the five hour flight very hungry, doing the most of our chewing gum and water. Back in the flight crew cabin, Sara spots stewardesses eating the Snickers bars they’d withdrawn from sale because of the allergic person, which does nothing to improve our mood. Once we’re through customs we’re enjoying the mushy white peanut-banana infused bread, palm treas silhuetted against the setting sun, and soon are on our way to the hotel. It’s warm-isch, bright and we’re not in cold dark Sweden anymore, which fulfilles the first objective of the trip.

We’re travelling with unspecified quarters, so when the guide mentions that our hotel “isn’t exactly a five-star resort” we understand it as a promise of a broken faucet and bats in the closets. No such thing though; hotel Regal is well kept and in the old part of town (“old” being a relative term, since there’s almost no building older than 30 years) which suits us well — according to Sara it’s calmer and more cosy than the newer areas, and the “old market” is relatively close by.

There’s only us and a family with kids getting out at hotel Regal, which doubles the hotel occupancy. Out of the eighty or so rooms only a handful are in use, and so when we open our ground floor back door there’s a still pool and a closed bar outside. No sound interrupts the evening call to prayers.

Luggage is dumped onto beds, bathroom lights are turned on and off three-four times, and then we head out to eat. We don’t even get out of the courtyard before someone stops us, and within minutes we’re in the office of Manta Ray divers and Ramez is showing us his diving videos and describing the available tours. I hadn’t been under water since I took my PADI license three years previously and hoped to get a chance to see all the corals and marine life that people rave about — the most exotic thing I’ve seen diving in Sweden are two pissed off crabs, fighting — and we were suggested that a day-trip would also allow Sara to try an assisted dive.

With half-hearted and hunger-driven commitments of discussing the matter and getting back to him, we’re heading out to find food. Sara vaguely remembers a restaurant from last time she was here, and we’re soon heading downtown. Soon we’re in the Fares fish restaurant. It’s bustling, very bright, overstaffed, but the selection is big and the food plentiful; With a few exception this would set a routine for our stay, as Fares was one of the easiest places to navigate as a vegan – there’s plenty of houmous and baba ganoush and garlicky veggies. Not considered “main course material,” they’re dirt cheap, so I felt bad for getting the salad buffet each time and overtipped and bought unnecessary side dishes. Sara had all manner of evil foods and enjoyed deep fried, steamed and whatnotted marine life which I’m sure had a loving parent or thousand now orphaned offspring. Two missions accomplished and it’s only the first day. We’re off to a good start.

We go for a coffee, play some board games, and I try to get as much milage out of “la shukran” as possible in my interactions with the old market sellers. A couple of days later I also learn the hand gesture for “no thank you” which simplifies the process of turning down the taxis which badger you at every opportunity. Perhaps my Polish heritage instructs how I like my shop keepers — bitter and resentful — but I don’t see the value of shop owners assailing you and short of dragging you into their store. I understand that it must work or they wouldn’t do it, but I’m not sure what the mechanism is by which it works; certainly doesn’t with me.

More depressing is that some of the shop keepers — who without exception are male — take the opportunity when fitting a scarf to paw Sara. Far from everyone did this, but it was common enough to be depressing. As a tourist you’re a transient biped with cultural baggage, requirements and a wallet, and so are not afforded as much consideration as a real person, but it’s still sad when you greet people suspicious if they also are gonna rub their dick in your back accidentally for five minutes while grinning like an idiot.

And again, what the hell are you going to do about it? Huff and puff and storm off? You’re not making structural change, and not changing the mind of whoever wronged you. Trying to shame them, calling police or security? Sure, but how long will that take, what will you get out of it, and are you sure it would work? In the end, you flag the place and move on, perhaps write a blog post about it. This does make you appreciate more those men who sell you things who are actually nice and don’t grope you. I wonder if that’s a Yelp-review sticker they’d put in their window: “5 Stars! didn’t touch my butt once! ☆☆☆☆☆!”

Cars in Sharm El-Sheik suffer from tourrettes, but you pretty soon get used to the constant honking. “Driving” is better defined as “accelerating” while breaking is probably considered optional, as are headlights, even after dark. You soon learn to run across roads and never to assume that a driver regards you as more than a messy speed bump. The thirty centimeter curb which you thought was sloppy workmanship the first few times you saw it, turns out to be your well designed friend. Sucks if you’re in a wheelchair, but the cars can’t get at you easily.

We settle into a pleasant routine. Food at Fares or from the friendly falafel shop across the street (Later, Ramez the diver was incredulous. “You’ve eaten there and didn’t get horribly sick?!”) and swimming at by the lighthouse beach. We meet people who greet us first in Russian, then English, Turkish, Polish. Not enough Swedish tourists to merit learning that language. There’s plenty of racism all around, and Russians are the most numerous and most despised, viewed as angry drunk morons. In Fares — a non-alcoholic chain, as are many in Sharm — we saw a head waiter being berated for telling the party of ten that they weren’t allowed to drink their vodka at the table. The women looked put-upon but expensively dressed, the kids oblivious and fat, the men thick-necked and hostile — had you painted a more stereotypical image of a Russian family you’d have to add a babushka.

We bought a day trip with Manta Divers and with Ramez as instructor, and Sara did her first, and then second, assisted dive. I dove alongside them, and the corals and the fish and the clear water was ridiculously beautiful. I’ve become so over-sensitised by all grand imagery in movies and pictures that when I come acros something similar in real life it feels fake. The first few times I saw the coral reefs while snorkeling I was laughing through the tube — it felt like a very immersive Disney cartoon. Diving among the corals added the bonus sensation of potentially maiming the local ecosphere by an uncontrolled descent, but I managed to stay clear of murder by adjusting the BCD once a second… The other bonus feeling was swimming out over the land shelf, and having nothing but a drop into darkness below me — it’s like a suspended fall into forever and ever.

For the remaining days, we’re swimming by the beach and drinking Turkish coffee — hot water poured over ground beans — eating at Fares, drining beer at the branded beer pub, or shopping fabrics and tobacco. Sara got a “very good price just for you” from the guy she bought from last visit, but in the end I spot the same leaf at the airport for half the price. The airport has the largest smoking lounge I’ve seen, and also a “Real British Pub” with probably the most atrocious service imaginable — checked-in people at airports are the most captivated clients short of prisoners — and as a moral support for my poor stomach which had had one Fares-dinner too many (my quota of houmous for 2013 is used up) I hazared a beer and some god-awful chips. Apart from a gurgling sound, and a constant feer of shitting myself while asleep on the plane, it was a content and browner Mateusz who landed in Gothenburg.

YOU have complex feelings and ambivalence about a lot of things, even if it seems like those things are good for you or for the best. Don’t assume our kids don’t have those feelings, or that moving into our home is happily-ever-after for them. Don’t tell them how lucky they are or how they should feel.

→ Casaubon’s Book, Sharon Astyk: What Foster Parents Wish Other People Knew

In addition to allowing this man to not only affirm his commitment to abstaining from all the sexual partners he would instead very much be enjoying, the Internet also allowed him to pledge his fealty by defending his pony-bride’s honor, reaching out to the DeviantArt user “Kevinsano” and demanding he stop drawing her in degrading sexual situations.

→ A.V. Club, Sean O’Neal: The Internet finally reaches its apex as man marrying My Little Pony character writes angry email to erotic pony artist

Enforcing social conformity though outright mockery is kinda a time honored tradition on the internet but I definitely agree that in many cases it’s not really intended to engage the target constructively in an attempt to help them but rather ostracize them to the point where they remove themselves from the community. Of course for some targets any attention even negative attention just feeds their narcissism so they just escalate and make the environment even more toxic.

→ Metafilter, vuron: My Little Pony Wife

So, the ‘future’ – as we have previously imagined it – does not exist as a ‘thing’ but can be a ‘tool’ for dealing with the unknown. In other words a ‘flying car’ is not a product with a sell-by date, but a conversation that we need to hold – and continue to need to have – about our transport systems. In other words, it is entirely appropriate that we may not yet have flying cars or ray guns because we’ve had conversations about transport and how to deal with emerging technologies for over a century, which have contributed to their considered evolution.

→ WarrenEllis.com, Rachel Armstrong: Where did the future go?

I remember a trip our family took to Kraków when I was a young teenager: I sat for a portrait that turned out really poor, not looking the least like I but still being kept by my mom in a rolled up bunch somewhere, along with all other precious 2D-artwork any parent amasses. I also remember that I wanted one of those okarinas which were warbling so magically all over the place, and I got to pick whom to buy from.

I picked a seller pretty much on random — I valued warbling over personality — but still remember that the one I’d picked looked a bit on the natty side once I got close. My parents, lord bless their polite ambition to be non-judgemental, bought the bird-shaped ocarina from the young man with the bad teeth, red eyes and yesterdays cracking clown makeup, but even before I had the chance to pour some water into it and make noise — which probably would have been awesome, since I’d gotten the same okarina that the man had used — my mom took it away from me, making vague comments about perhaps buying one from someone else, which she did, discretely tossing the first one into a bin. I thought my parents were silly and stuck up, but as both instruments looked alike I didn’t care much.

But the event stuck with me, and I was reminded of it again this evening when we were sitting at one of the less reputable pubs in Majorna with Tura, and one of the barflies took a shine to her and wanted to join our table. Being generally tired, and weary of having to cushion the ramblings of a boisterous drunk in the company of a seven-year old, we declined the offer and she shambled away.

Unless the other party has been extremely annoying or otherwise deserving of your scorn, you tend to feel bourgeois and uptight at such moments, or at least I tend do, but Tura became upset because the situation was confusing, and we’d just been impolite to a stranger who wanted to sit down with us and was talkative.

Of course, Tura would entertain the company of Satan if she thought he’d give her attention (kids being lazy megalomaniacs) but even so our rejection of the very noisy but enthusiastic woman must have sent mixed signals about how to deal with people. Some people whom we interact with, and who interact with us, can’t help but to be assholes, confusing or inconsiderate, and we teach kids tolerance, understanding, acceptance and the importance of giving the benefit of a doubt. Others are just annoying — and we don’t think about that we’ll have to explain our dismissive as well as our tolerant behaviour, least we cause confusion.

It’s that time of year, in the life of slightly bored 30-somethings with a bit too much free time on their hands, that we drink wine and say: “Gosh darn it, but wouldn’t it be awfully nice to get together and do something? Like, I don’t know, music?” And lo! They made a mark in their calendar, and once the date came closer and the convictions grew flaky, a battlecry summoned the frail dilettantes — ”Wine! At least there will be wine, surely!”

The jokes about drinking too much wore thin by the end of day two, but despite some wear and tear on livers and brains we somehow kept the process up for the whole weekend — much thanks to Petter and Sara, who had some sort of “idea” of what this might end up being — and by the end of it all we had two songs, a bandcamp site, portraits, and importantly a name: VECKA7.

The songs are made for driving, but could also serve other purposes, possibly. Sara, Erika and Jeanette on song and various instruments, Petter & Sara on guitars and bass, and I’m the reason there are drums and some plinky noises in the background. Go listen and download: VECKA7.bandcamp.com

A while back there we went to a concert at Henriksberg, and and one of the acts was a young band playing psychadelic rock. I remember commenting that if that’s the next big thing in music, I won’t like it, no Sir. Dubstep is done, overly sensitive singer-songwriters even more so, and indie-rock shoegazing types were penned and shot behind the shed. But somewhere in a tie-dyed recess of my heart, there was something funky going on, and once Sara told me that she’d been asked to do light for the Swedish band Goat and played it for me, I was humming along — it feels natural to listen to this now. Listening to Goat, i become sheep.

It was a great gig, and even though you can’t tell from my crappy video below, it sounded and looked good. I’ve ordered some stuff to allow for better sound recording (because I love you all so much that I will give of me my only begotten dollar) and promise to use manual focus next time around.

Only bad thing about the event was the prowling security — unless Storan is haunted by fights breaking out there was no reason to be so zealous in the walking and posing and the pouncing on anyone who stumbled. On the few occasions that I’ve been at the door of a party, as soon as you start posturing and taking yourself or your uniform too seriously, people are provoked and it increases tension. So the mood was at times unpleasant.

You can find more info on GOAT on on their blogspot account — goatsweden.blogspot.se — and the opening band SONSON have both a tumblr and soundcloud. Djungeltrumman put up some images from the event, and if you actually want to see something of the concert you might want to head over there.

Christmas was spent in Stockholm, mostly at my moms or her partners place, until they took of for Florida. New this year is that Sara and Tura tagged along, and my brother once again proved his worth in child-entertainer gold. Since Kungsängen is a space-out zone and I revert into a teenage sloth when in its proximity, I didn’t even get to record much video. This is the excuse for not showing the exchange of gifts or stuffing of faces with foods, in the video above. I do beg your pardon.

I bought Sara lightbulbs for Christmas, she bought us a trip to Sharm el Sheikh — Seems a fair trade. So now we’re hoping that we won’t get sick (well, sicker) so that I can get a refresher diving course and Sara can snorkel to her hearts delight. Last time I had a chance to SCUBA was in Hawaii and I got a perfectly timed cold which precluded anything more vigorous than walking, and it would suck whaleballs if that happened again. So I’m eating vitamins and drinking my required glass of red wine a day — even being ambitious and overdoing it a bit, just to be sure.

It looks as though New Years Eve is spent at least partially at our place, which is a great motivator for tidying the place up; one more example of how my priorities have gone all pear- and bourgeois-shaped lately. No, but seriously, it’s gonna be fun. Really, I’m looking forward to having people over leaving popcorn in the dip, spritzer in my keyboard and the bookshelf de-alphabetized. Happy New Years!

Mu Hwit said she had discarded her neck rings not only because they would hinder her chances of studying abroad but also because she was “unhappy” at being a low-paid tourist attraction.

→ The Irrawaddi, Lawi Peng: Padaung Women are Discarding their Neck Rings

It plopped into the toilet and sat there till I scooped it out into an empty hummus container. I poked at it with the end of a plastic spoon. Turned it over. It was so small, this thing that loomed so large. I was too tired to be upset. I was just happy the pain had stopped.

→ The Rumpus, Martha Bayne: Knocked over: On biology, magical thinking and choice. [via metafilter]

A while back Daniel Josefsson of The Immaterial asked me to do a writeup of a project or an idea, and he suggested that I’d expound on the video project How to write like Walter Benjamin i did back in 2009-2010. I finally got around to writing the short essay, and it’s now up his blog.

Link to The Immaterial: Let me explain how to write like Walter Benjamin

When life gives you lemons, you pump lemonade options and dump them on someone else.

At least that’s my takeaway from some of the “investment tips” I’m reading right now. I’m having a conflicted time reading about personal finances, pension plans, insurance and stock investments: Despite myself it seems like an interesting challenge, sort of like an IRL ARG with clear goals but flexible routes. At the same time I’m reading books like “Collapse — Life at the end of civilisation” by David Jonstad (In Swedish: Kollaps — Livet vid civilisationens slut) and think of buying pasteurised foods and gold instead.

The book does a good job of setting up a comparison between our civilisation and older ones, as well as the (most probable) conditions under which it collapsed. David is certainly not the first one to do this comparison, and there are millenarians and doomsayers in every age, but since he’s not pulling mayan calendars out of his ass but is actually looking at what is upholding our culture (“cheap energy”) and how this is threatened (“peak everything, climate change, political incentive to keep status quo”) it’s a fascinating read. It’s as if it takes some of the arguments from Jared Diamonds “Guns, germs and steel” and speculates where they will lead us.

With one eye I’m looking to do mid-term investments with what little savings I have, and with the other I’m looking to learn how to live of the grid and boobytrap my supply of potable water and cans of beans. And with a more tranquil third eye — perhaps the denial eye — I’m finding the below consumerist video hilarious: Sara had put in a late night auction offer online and is freaking out because she really doesn’t want to win the credenza.

A couple of days ago I’m standing in the kitchen rinsing the monthly batch of beans under cold water, and Sara is making tea next by me, absentmindedly singing “the thrill is gone.” I believe it’s called “the good life” as everything is mellow and comfortable at the moment.

But in order to mix it up it was a blast to go for another alleycat Saturday: Svartkatt 2012. We donned some makeup — Saras and Zenobias more elaborate than most — and biked around for a couple of hours, looking for clues to riddles, counting stuff in dark places and generally running around suspiciously with headlamps. As a sidenote, this was the first time ever that I’ve used a headlamp, and it’s so bloody useful that I’ll be using one at the slightest pretence — my God, I could actually see stuff without chipping my teeth on a soggy flashlight. What times we live in when this is possible!

Just as last year, I solemnly swear that until the next time I will actually exercise and have more than illusory muscles. Because of an organisational snafu we rode the second part of the race first, and once that was over my thighs were melting fillets of glue and painfully painy pain, so I called it a night and had a beer. Sara and Zenobia only rode the second part, swearing over the too big borrowed bikes. As of now they’re looking for race or road single speed bikes, so if you have one lying around get in touch.

Also, perhaps there is a gadget which could help Zenobia not to be half an hour late to the start of the race? Like a watch, but perhaps with an electric shock function?

In other news, I got a grant to do some outreach work with 3D printers. This is excellent since much other work has dried up, and I get to spend some time and effort to see what all this fabbing can lead to. I’ve taken the plan of cutting back on the number of projects too far and do hardly anything; certainly not my intention. So back up into the saddles, etc, which will be easier with the grant money. And this here brand new laptop I’m using.

So, just the other day when I and Sara got back from our two week vacation in Poland, I thought I’d put up a short post with a video of the trip. No less than one and a half month later, here it is! We flew to Warsaw, stayed with my dads family there, then off to Kraków, Sanok, Polańczyk and then home by way of Warsaw again.

There are many “firsts” with Sara, and travelling with a girlfriend through my childhood vacation memories was another, very pleasant, one. As a kid I relied on being led, fed and amused by parents and other adults, and now an adult myself (34 being the age at which you’re no longer considered a teenager in Sweden) and sort of responsible for navigating for the two of us, it’s both empowering and odd having to make sense of buss tables and booking hotels. I’m not used to it, is what I mean to say, but it all went well with nary a fuckup.

Polish food was a hit, and Kraków had some good local cousine in vegan variety as well. As a rule, I am weary of the places which marked themselves as “vegan fusion” as too often you’ll get soulless food modelled on what the chef imagined would look the most holistic with little regard for taste. Culinarily I don’t approve of being lumped together with people who wear their chakra on their sleave, so once we found Café Młynek, with their potato pancakes and breakfast platter, I overate catastrophically once and overspend the other times we ate there.

Even though not vegan, the remaining milk bars in Poland are as campy and wonderful as I remember them, and both pierogi and żurek were things I promised Sara we’d learn how to make once we got home.

A feature which I don’t recall from childhood were all the arachnids; The whole country was covered by spiders, big spiders, and from Warsaw to Polańczyk we kept taking pictures with our fingers perilously close for measurement. Perhaps they were to thank for the utter lack of mosquitos, but if I’d have had a phobia the whole trip would’ve been a nightmare. I don’t kid, there were spiders hiding behind the spiders even.

In Sanok, my city of birth, we stayed with my aunt Barbara. She got one of her friends to guide us by car through the countryside to show some of the more interesting Eastern Orthodox churches left, and the oldest one we saw was also the most spectacular, or at least it’s location; it was a good ten minute climb to get up there, and just imagining how people hundred years ago would have had to make the trek up there in the dark of winter for christmas mass, or on any rainy Sunday, painted a very vivid image.

Beksiński also had the good taste of being born in Sanok, and we visited the new wing of the museum dedicated to the works donated after his murder. For the first time I also spent some time with the orthodox icons and iconostasis at display, learning the difference between Hodigitrian and Eleusan icons of Mary and the child Christ.

Along with the museum, a lot of the infrastructure has been improved in the city. The main square has been dolled up, and each evening we’d see wedding photographers shooting one bridal couple after another by the colourful fountains and lit façades.

We visited Polańczyk for one night and it was far less lively than it used to be. Perhaps it was a question of timing, or perhaps the small village at the foot of the Carpathians has seen a shift towards family vacationing, but bars started closing around eleven. We stayed in one of the multi-storied sanitaria which were the original tourist trade, and what ten years ago was slightly warmed over communist brutalism, now had been restored into something between kitch and living museum. They are sanataria in the classic sense, offering a multitude of treatments, diets, analyses and soothing walks in the forest. One of them even offered cryotherapy chamber therapy, which means you spend a couple of minutes in a room at -150°C. It’s supposed to have rejuvenating qualities, but unfortunately they only do it once a day and we were too late to join the group.

The sanatoria are immensely popular, and while we were trying to get a room walking in off the street, one of the places had no vacancies for the next six months. So I’m proposing to get a bunch of people together next summer, book a two week stint at one of these sanatoria, and freeze our balls off in the beautiful Carpathians.

My first vacation as an adult went swimmingly. Now that I know that I can do it, I want to go again.

With only three weeks left of the math course, I gave up on it. And five minutes later I thought I’d give it a shot anyway. Shortly after which I threw up my hands in disgust at my indecision and decided to put away the calculator. A minute later I picked it up again with a “fuck it all to fuck, let’s do this thing and take it to the next level” etc. And what do you know, in ten days time I managed to scrape through. This was done with the smallest of margins, and with the pitter-patter of a TI-82 haunting my dreams, but I passed Math C. So with a “yay me” I applied to the introductory course to natural sciences, and ended up way back in the reserve line — apparently because I’d forgotten to send in the grades from high-school. So two steps forward and a stumble backwards. Regardless, I’m glad I got it done, as I now can apply for computer courses and other such things which my mom is hopeful will “perhaps one day land you a job — a real one, I mean”.

Seeing as I need to make more money than I am, and that what little ambition I have is spread very thinly over too many half-assed ideas and projects, I’ve made a resolution not to have more than four things running at the same time. It’s time to reassess if what I’m doing is out of habit or if it’s actually moving a “career” in a “direction.” As so many other “previously ambitious” people, I’m way under-stimulated and seem to lack the drive to do anything specific. It’s people in my position who I imagine are snatched up by cults and set to typeset Glorious Masters Bowel Cleansing Guide to sell at the airport.

I used to say that I was interested in communication, in how meaning is created and in turn creates more communication. Driving that interest is the hope that it’s not all arbitrary – that there’s actually something developing, evolving, in this collective exchange – but my lack of communication, and actually lack of interest in doing art work lately, might stem from me not having anything important to say at the moment and not trusting that the process will generate something. For all the talk of the wonderful things happening online, I haven’t found new homes there to replace those that I’ve lost; old KDX servers and homepages which didn’t tie into a Facebook infrastructure of likes and accessibility. Also, I don’t hang out with as many artists as I used to, so there’s that as well – I’m a wide object with little mass, so the friction of everyday life slows me down tremendously and I come to rest at the shallowest of indentations.

This is a roundabout way of saying that I’m bored and need to get a project of the ground, into the air, and either crash it spectacularly into a mountainside or land it successfully, applauded by relieved passengers.

In J.G. Ballards Millennium People a neighbourhood rebells as a response to the trappings of middle class life and their inability to afford more than the image of it. Their grievances are not political to begin with but relate to maintenance and parking space, and only later turn to structures of indoctrination and politics. I’m not sure that the story applies to actual mass psychology of how revolutions start, but it’s a classical Marxist notion and interesting to see it artfully applied in fiction.

At some point, a critical mass of disillusioned middle class might set themselves to start a revolution, and it might even start over something trivial.

Unrelated to politics, but related to the trappings of comfort and our societies coating of polished civility, came to my mind when I was stranded on a train recently. I was on my way to Stockholm for work when there was a loud bang and we came to a halt. Both pantographs on the train set had snagged on something and had torn, leaving us without power in the middle of nowhere. The PA doesn’t work without power, leaving the crew to rush between trying to fix whatever had broken and walking from cart to cart shouting out what little they knew. They soon gave that up though, perhaps figuring that leaving 400 passengers steaming in a train with no articulated windows or ventilation or flushable toilets would pass for “a plan.”

The cafeteria kept selling food and drink until the power went out, after which they started writing IOUs instead. They gave this up after five minutes, seeing that the queue was growing in length and annoyance, allowing people to take food and drink (“–No alcohol!”) for free. Later, in the papers, SJ’s spokesperson put it in terms of that they “distributed food and drink to the passengers” which is an odd way of saying “allowed a disorganized free-for-all once the till didn’t work.” Apparently stuff got heated once people started looting the booze. There’s a tradeoff between offering disgruntled people alcohol to placate them, and the risk of suffering their poorer impulse control afterwards.

Once the diesel locomotive had arrived and hooked up, we were off again. disembarking an hour later at Hallsberg. Parents with kids, older folks with clumsy luggage, all dragging their charges and parcels in every which way, looking for bathrooms, someone to give them information on trains or missed connections. In the hustle for soda and pork sandwiches, the din drowned out any announcement coming over the PA for how to get to Stockholm, and mostly by chance I managed to get on a train heading in the right direction. When I finally arrive it’s night, and I’m more than six hours late on a three hour journey.

What has been lost now that we are constantly being treated as customers instead of individuals with agency, is that we’re reduced to objects with demands and criteria of contentment. We’re Sims in a very boring game of TrainVille which have to be clicked on every once in a while until the workday is over. We have demands and rights, but outside of the guidebook for consumer interaction there is no way to talk or meet in a shared interest or humanity. Which leads to four anxious crew members stressing out because they have four-hundred annoyed consumers who are not getting their moneys worth of travel experience, and no way to garner sympathy once they’ve “distributed food and drink for free.” Also, some of them were impolite asshats.

Things to remember:
* Keep people informed, even if you have nothing new to say.
* Don’t be an entitled customer asshole.
* Always bring extra water and energy dense food when you’re travelling with SJ.
* Acknowledge that people have the option of ignoring what you want them to do — offer arguments as to why they shouldn’t instead of getting indignant.

I’ve never thought much about the practical applications of fluid dynamics as much as now that the water in the bathroom is turned off and we’re flushing with a ten litre bucket. Where previously a steady flow along the rim of the bowl gently swirled the fear of ID away, three hand-poured buckets of water do little but break yesterdays dinner into its constituent parts. Let’s celebrate the ability of modern science and engineering to deal with shit!

Summer is supposedly already here, but you wouldn’t know it without looking at the calendar. It’s wet, windy and I’ve been able to show of my calves in shorts for only two days — to the disappointment of the public at large. Work has petered out and is almost non-existent at the moment, which I understand is known as “vacation time” for those with jobs, and once I’ve managed to get the math studies out of the way I’ll have time to catch up on all those projects scattered about the place.

I’ve badly neglected my and Olle’s garden. Partly due to it being so cold there was little sense in planting anything earlier, partly due to low ambitions. You’d be forgiven if you believed, as did I, that Olle wouldn’t be able to dedicate as much time to the garden what with a new kid to cuddle and coo at, but you’d be mistaken. He’s very serious about his schedule and so has weeded and tended the garden despite the weather and having more to do than I. This makes me feel bad, and I’m thinking to make up for it by building a totally badass perimeter enclosure for our lot. In my head, it will be beautiful. Also in my head, the sun is fucking shining.

Over at feber.se I stumbled over the project Google. The work, created by Ben West and Felix Heyes, is based on taking 21000 common English words and parse them through Google image search, and then printing it all and binding it.

Quote from the creativeapplications.net website:

“Conceptually it’s whatever you make of it,” writes Ben. The sad reality of shrinking attention spans, collective media fatigue or how an expert reference book is no match for the convenience of Google, for example. “It’s really an unfiltered, uncritical record of the state of human culture in 2012,” concludes Ben. So, how are we faring? “I would estimate about half of the book is revolting medical photos, porn, racism or bad cartoons.”

The second video above is from a work I did at Valand back in 2006: The uncontested order of things: A slideshow curated by google. It’s in the same vein, although it used the letters of the alphabet to search for images. I downloaded the top 40 or so pictures of every letter, picked one at random and arranged them alphabetically in the video. The idea being pretty similar to Ben and Felix — how is our language and concept of images shaped by that which we take for granted or don’t reflect over.

In the introduction to the work I wrote:

The motivation for this process, of which the resulting slideshow is but one possible combination (let alone one possible way to present the combinations) is:
1) To see how many apparently random images we can fit into a narrative, and
2) Given the omnipresence of google, how easily received/understood/accepted the images are when
3) A qualitative analysis of the images (and search results in general) shows an (apparently) unproportional US/EU presence, which in turn should
4) Kick us in the nuts for too easily accepting the perceived “freedom of the internet”, and not reflecting enough on what our online behavior tells of ourselves, but also what actual and very manifest power we are supporting by our actions.

Which actually still holds I think. Google is as omnipresent as it’s ever been, and apart from occasionally switching to Duck Duck Go as my main search engine, I don’t actively thing about how I navigate the Internet as much as I used to, or how that shapes our collective understanding of what the world looks like.

I’ve finally signed up for math-class, and am struggling with the “Matematik C” curriculum. I need it to get into any course related to computers or natural sciences, but I’m not putting near enough effort into it. It’s been fifteen years since I last took math, and back then my antipathy to math was so strong I was actively trying to forget what little I learned.

Actually, the course is officially over but I’ve asked for a month extension to allow me to catch up, so we’ll see how that’ll go. I need to do the test the 18th at the latest to be sure that my uni application for fall goes through, but this requires a couple of hours of daily practice. And I’m out of practice.

I might be doing the same mistake I did when studying philosophy, assuming that as long as you put your mind to it you ought to be able to figure things out from first principles. So you start with an intuitive understanding of 1+1 and build on that. But at this level math is mostly about learning by rote, and because I’ve been out to the loop for so long, half the time I don’t even know what problem I’m tasked with answering. “Describe a function” is not an invitation to write an essay, but something with an actual answer, and as always when you’re learning something new, the glossary seems arbitrary and made up by a stupid-poopy-head.

The TI-82 graphing calculator Zenobia lent me has a 150 page manual, and having been spoiled by GUIs for so long it feels as if I’m learning Dwarf Fortress. But it’s fun in a PRESS SHIFT+Ln+min/max way and I’m scouring the second hand market for a calculator of my own. SMBC sums up my findings quite well so far.

On the upside, I designed and printed my own graphing paper, and had it bound. Each page has different colours, and the paper is watermarked and really nice to write on using the extra soft pencil leds I found in the third store I asked. My priorities are not what they ought to be, but at least my notebook is perty.

As a small vacation, I and Sara took a weekend in Malmö. I haven’t spent much time there, so we had three days walking about, taking pictures of her old haunts and apartments, gorging ourselves on vegan cake and whatnots. Nice city, and it would have been even better if we’d gotten ourselves bikes. Speaking of which, the Malmö initiative Cykelköket has a branch in Göteborg. They seem nice!

Regardless of how bland and uninspiring you find something — be it music, art, food, whatever — there will be some people for whom it was a defining moment of their lives. For example, Jakob Hellman had some hits twenty years ago and is still fondly remembered for his one and only album. He performed yesterday at the city theatre, and Sara got us on the guest list. The cover charge for this low key evening was 250 kronor, which is 200 more than I would have considered paying, but judging from the 200 odd people in attendance others aren’t as cheap as I.

Hearing a song live which you’ve been singing in the shower for a couple of years can be great fun, and there’s something to be said about seeing the original artist perform it. But I’m not sure if Hellman managed to rekindle the memories of youthful naïveté in his audience, or if he just piddled on the embers.

So, anyway. Last couple of months have been eventful.

I’ve moved in with Sara and Tura in our own apartment. For the first time in forever I have my own name on the door and actually live where I am registered. Beside everything else, it’s a good feeling to be able to greet neighbours without wondering who will start asking questions about when you moved in and if you’re subletting legally. Besides the everyday hassle of arranging to pay bills in someone elses name, and getting the mailman to deliver your post, it’s grating to constantly be nervous that something might break which you won’t be able to fix yourself and can’t call a super about.

We’ve already called the super over twice, and actually getting a busted bathroom tap repaired within a day is a surreal experience. Renting an apartment feels good. Of course, there are some minor issues. For example, since only Sara is on the contract, the super put up only her name on the door. Apparently it’s policy, and besides he couldn’t be arsed to get over here with a Dymo to print a new label. So I bought a Dymo and now have a fancy label on the door, set in a “hollow, italic, fat, border” style, which says “S. Henriksson & M. Pozar.” Yes, I’ll be posting a picture as soon as I’m done admiring it. There’s another option for the styling on the Dymo, a wide papyrus scroll, and I’ll have to see which one is more classy.

Petter showed up with the kids last week and we had the first “guests over for dinner” event, and just the other day Carl-Johan dropped by for lunch, so we’ve checked “someone just casually stopping by” on the todo-list as well. We’re going to throw a housewarming party or somesuch as soon as we have the “somewhere to sit” issue resolved, but so long as we keep to a manageable number of visitors at any given time, we’re open for business.

Unless I’ve explicitly told you to fuck off, we have a standing blood feud, or I owe you lots of money, consider this an invitation to drop by at any time for tea, coffee, beans or wine (bring wine). Look me up in the book, I’m listed at my own adress, dontcha know.

There’s a good chance that you haven’t seen the webcomic Hark! A vagrant! even though you ought to.

Kate Beaton, the artist, also runs a Tumblr with stuff related to the comic over at beatonna.tumblr.com and in a post she asked people to email her links to comics. It’s a very long list, and if you ever feel like you have too much free time on your hands, or if you just don’t care to be a productive member of society, take a gander: Be excellent to each other.

I don’t follow all that many comics these days: Octopus Pie, Abominable Charles Christopher, lackadaisycats Oglaf, Perry Bible Followship, Penny Arcade, Battlepug, Powernap, and I wish that Warbot in accounting would start up again.

It’s kinda amusing when you read the list over at Kates post, and then take a look at the fare that readers of Warren Ellis generally repost.

Two gigs I’ve been to recently. Koloni presented Charles Haywood at Kajskjul Fyra Sex, and Kylesa performed along with two other bands at Truckstop Alaska. Haywood was rather fun to watch as he was making a twisted angry face at the microphone — his music is repetitive and manic, just as his stage presence — and occasionally it’s great fun to listen to good and tight drums.

A week later, four of us took the ferry over to see Kylesa at Truckstop. I thought their melodic trash metal was humdrum and uninspired, and the headbanging so perfunctory they might as well have hired extras to do it. Mine was a minority opinion though, and Petter even bought their record.

This can be interesting: The Pirate Bay is sharing 3D models for printing, so far only using the category Physibles on the original site. Right now there are mostly dupes of stuff from Thingiverse, and seeing as the interface is the usual forum link-dump there’s no preview or version control, but it’s still an interesting development for two reasons: For one, once 3D sharing sites will start to be harassed on IP-issues, there will be be a chilling effect on the distribution and usage of models, so we’ll need a safe haven for that. TPB has proved rather resilient.

(Further on, it’s easy to foresee 3D-printers which won’t print non-signed models, taxation on printing materials used privately, consumer protection laws which are stretched to encompass personal fabrication, etc, so there will have to be forums to discuss circumvention and open source practices)

Think about it this way: If piracy of IP today mostly is a concern for a few companies in the western world – regardless if it’s clothes, movies or medicine — what will happen when the manufacturing industries start to feel threatened by the infringement on their manufacturing prerogative? Previously, someone ordered 1000 Gucci bags from your factory and you spat them out, regardless if the person you ordered them from was a pirate or Gucci; either way, you had a business model – making stuff. If now the pirates are not only threatening the IP of some of your clients, but also the necessity of including you in their piracy, you’re suddenly standing with a factory without orders.

I think that fabbing can be a boon to humanity in many ways, but as always with disruptive technologies there will be a huge backlash, and the sooner we can build infrastructures for dealing with reactionary policies the better. Which ties in with the second reason this is interesting, which has to do with the development of a public discourse on the subject.

So far the ideas surrounding fabbing are best described in science fiction and by those in the field – Bruce Sterlings Shaping Things comes to mind — but they’re slowly gaining mainstream attention; Petter told me he saw 3D printing mentioned in a lifestyle & decoration magazine which usually is concerned with spring colours and feelgood food. Just as in art though, the debate will sooner or later come down to what we are printing, rather than that we are printing, and if TPB can be a platform to foster experimentation with fabbing, we’ll have another generation which is used to remix and copy and paste and mash things up, only now with physical objects rather than media. But for that to happen there needs to be practice and debate, and tpb putting it’s weight behind the issue can only accelerate that.

—It’s miserable, utterly and totally miserable.
—Miserable, really?
—Yeah, really. It’s not clean enough, people leave stuff everywhere, and then someone does something like this.

She waves at the noise from the two furthermost washing machines. Someone had had the temerity to use the machines she had booked, and hadn’t left a note explaining that the two other machines were free to use; the guy had shown up early and switched sets. —Really, how thoughtless and stupid can you be?

One has to sympathise with anyone who gets up early on Saturday to disorder sown by an interloper, who doesn’t even have so much courtesy as to be present for a good telling to. But “misery” is something I’d reserve for suffering dysentery on a bus with overflowing bathrooms, or losing an arm in an industrial accident because you’re worn out by pulling double shifts to afford chemo. Poor scheduling just doesn’t fill out the burlap sack of “misery.”

The woman doing the complaining was my age, perhaps slightly younger, and I was surprised that she chose me to commiserate with. Granted, I was the only person available, and possibly she suspected that I was the culprit and tried to shame me, but still; What did she expect once I’d mumbled sympathetically to the first two stanzas?

When I moved to my own place a while back I had to engage with a lot of stuff that I hadn’t given a thought of before. On Facebook, I asked for advice on which dish rack to get. The post received more comments than any other I’d made, so clearly I had touched a nerve. I took it as an informed debate on the merits of different materials and designs, but I got another perspective on the matter when I spoke to Anna some time later. She was upset exactly because the question had garnered so many replies.

And I can understand the unease and even anger: Is this really something which is worthwhile to think about, let alone discuss? Isn’t this a typical example of the banalities we complicate to give ourselves meaning? There’s an impulse there to say “fuck it, we’re googling ‘dish rack’ and ordering the first hit,” but to give up conscious thought in favour of apparent randomness, seems misguided at best and possibly disingenuous.

Of course, I think that being upset at the smaller preoccupations of everyday life only has a limited use. It’s good because it forces you to set clear goals for yourself, and make manifest your values and those expected of your surroundings. On the other hand, if you sweat the small stuff too much you’ll soon start to think of yourself not as someone who has control and ambitions, but as someone who has to obey certain rules and keep standards, and then you lose track of the bigger picture. In fact, you might end up wondering why your idiot neighbour doesn’t understand the importance of lint in the dryer.

The holidays passed with little fanfare, I spent them in Stockholm with the closest family at hand and the rest at Skype distance. Mom isn’t her full self at the moment, and the dinners were slightly less elaborate than the five course meals we usually make. I rediscovered how much work goes into making the potatoe-dumplings, which I wolf down by the dozens. Christmas Day I and Tomasz joined in the public celebration of the birth of beer, and sat with Admas in a bar and discussed ambitions, and fashion, and then I think I had Calvados?

On a recommendation from Miss Walker I visited Tevere, a bakery which also carries vegan pizza. Rather on the expensive side, but the pizzas were awesome both times I ate there.

New Years day was spent at the gym with Sara, where I nearly passed out. I can only assume that my body shut down out of fear that I would become too fit and muscular. In the evening a bunch of us gathered at Petters new place. We saw the fireworks over Hissingen skyline, although I saw most of it through the viewfinder, being concerned with capturing it. Next year I’d like to be somewhere where the explosions can actually be felt. It’s well know that arrhythmia heightens ones appreciation of sparkling things.

Andreas visited for a short while, and then he left for New York — or as it’s henceforth known: Nävvan. I’m still working on the mixtape he’s getting for birthday. I’ll have to make up for it by making it really good, and perhaps actually sending him a magnetic tape. I have half a sack of those just waiting for coming to use…

And speaking of having a bunch of old stuff laying around, I’m trying to getting rid of as much of it as possible, as we’re moving in together. This is momentous and exciting, and a first for me. We’re already discussing wall colours and such, and my suggestions of stripes the colours of a 1920 ice-cream stand have met with tacit approval. Perhaps it’s not so much approval as acceptance and stoic suffering; “Enduring love” as it were. Or perhaps it’s just an understanding that I talk a lot and will likely have changed my mind before we move in.

I’m moving out of my place as soon as possible and have hopefully already found a taker, and we’re moving into our new place beginning of March. This is going to be an exciting spring! I’m gonna Sawyer y’all into plastering and painting walls, so you might as well start digging out your coveralls. I’ll consider offering light snacks and coffee to sweeten the deal even further. But before we get to that, there’s the whole “moving” thing. You’ll be happy to know that you’re welcome for that as well, as there’s no end of the enjoyment my friendship offers.

Then, you start interpreting the high heart rate, and odd feelings, as you being *really* aroused. And lo, people end up with things like zombie fetishes, from masturbating late at night while watching horror movies. Or, your particular kink. Seriously, I wish this was something that was covered in sex-ed. Kids! Don’t masturbate to something unless you are willing to develop a fetish for it!

→ Ask.metafilter, Elysum: Comment on How does one get rid of ones scat fetisch?

The initial scale of thirteen classes (zero to twelve) did not reference wind speed numbers but related qualitative wind conditions to effects on the sails of a man-of-war, then the main ship of the Royal Navy, from “just sufficient to give steerage” to “that which no canvas sails could withstand.”[2] At zero, all his sails would be up; at six, half of his sails would have been taken down; and at twelve, all sails would be stowed away.[3]

→ Wikipedia: Beufort scale

Toward the end of the 1950s, N. W. Ayer reported to De Beers that twenty years of advertisements and publicity had had a pronounced effect on the American psyche. “Since 1939 an entirely new generation of young people has grown to marriageable age,” it said. “To this new generation a diamond ring is considered a necessity to engagements by virtually everyone.” The message had been so successfully impressed on the minds of this generation that those who could not afford to buy a diamond at the time of their marriage would “defer the purchase” rather than forgo it.

→ The Atlantic, Edward Jay Epstein: Have You Ever Tried to Sell a Diamond?

Your piracy is only ultimately ‘costing’ the overall economy anything if you then reduce your working hours and take a pay cut that exactly offsets the money you would otherwise have spent on music. If instead you do the same amount of work and take the money and do something else with it – anything else – then the overall world economy has lost precisely nothing. That money winds up going to someone, somewhere. It stays in the system. It isn’t magically destroyed.

→ Slashdot comment, AdamWill (604569): Swiss Gov’t: Downloading Movies and Music Will Stay Legal

Olle Essvik has been working on a computer game based on Beckets Waiting for Godot. A month ago he gave a presentation of the finished first part of it at Gallery 54, and I took the opportunity to record a short video. If you like to play the game you can do so at jimpalt.org/waitingfor and should you want to learn more about the making of and thoughts behind it, you can read an interview in Swedish at konsten.net and another in English over at Game Scenes.

Following that, Andreas Vesterlund is presenting the Skup Palet event week Your Mentality is Alert. It was a week-long process oriented collaboration which ended with not so much an “opening” as a “closing of the process so far.” In practice, it’s difficult to organize something which looks like an opening without interpreting it as one, but in the video Andreas tries his best to explain what has been going on and some of the ambitions going into it.

Both videos are in Swedish.

Every once in a while I think I ought to be more serious in documenting these kinds of events in Gothenburg, but can’t seem to make good on my ruminations. If you enjoy these videos, or if you have suggestions on improvements, let me know and I’ll add your voice to the todo-choir.

Honestly, one of the things driving my ambition to make a more focused video blog is that I get to play with my old MIDI keyboard, and I’d have to finally learn After Effects properly to do titles and whatnot. In addition to, you know, providing a cultural service with above average editing and good taste.

For the first time since I got back from Finland, I strapped on my tights, beanie and running shoes, and ventured into an absurdly warm november evening to frighten people by doing wheezing and shuffling noises. It went well. And to rekindle another positive habit I entertained in Turku, I’m posting another video from my residency; I finally have an edited version of the presentation I gave at the end of the project.

It’s just short of forty minutes, and it includes a short backstory of me and projects which seemed relevant to fabbing, a brief timeline and explanation of 3D printing in general and the RepRap specifically, and then an overview of how the project changed during in the process of realisation.

Over at Changesurfer Radio, J. Hughes interviews Erik Olin Wright about the definition of “class” and how that concept has changed the past hundred years. It’s very basic stuff, but seeing as much of the debate and polemics of the day assume so much — especially on the topic of post-industrial or post-class society — that it’s good to be reminded of what a useful tool class analysis can be, and that it’s still highly relevant. I recommend that you follow the link below.

→ Changesurfer Radio, J.Hughes: Class Analysis: Interview with Erik Olin Wright

I rejected the offer to work with Abramovic and MOCA — to participate in perpetuating unethical, exploitative and discriminatory labor practices — with my community in mind. It has moved me to work towards the establishment of ethical standards, labor rights and equal pay for artists, especially dancers, who tend to be some of the lowest paid artists.

→ Artinfo, Sara Wookey: Letter From a Dancer Who Refused to Participate in Abramovic’s MOCA Performance

Paid posting is a well-managed activity involving thousands of individuals and tens of thousands of different online IDs. The posters are usually given a task to register on a website and then to start generating content in the form of posts, articles, links to websites and videos, even carrying out Q&A sessions.

→ Technology review, KFC: Undercover Researchers Expose Chinese Internet Water Army

After I asked her scary things like what’s her reason for wanting to become a celebrity while enduring such difficulties at a young age, and hasn’t she heard of idols whose youth and talent were exploited after they signed so-called ‘unfair contracts,’ she answered me. ‘Reporter Onni, be honest. If a person like me, without money or connections, and whose grades are so-so, somehow goes to university, what is there after that? Even though it’s a little difficult now, you know that if I just get an agency, that is a real opportunity to me.

→ The Grand Narrative, Kang In-kyu: What did Depraved Oppas Do to Girls’ Generation?

My cousin is visiting with me for a couple of days, and since I ran out of ideas for sightseeing after one day, yesterday found us sitting in a bar and me forcing him to lie to the camera; this is the resulting video. You will note that it says “01″ which is indicative of my ambition of making him lie some more. The next time I’ll set the audio levels lower.

Here’s something that I didn’t think about. I had skipping on extruder as well as Y & X, but hadn’t thought that the pulley grub screw needed a flat surface to press against. Here I was thinking that the heat was melting the inner bore and allowing slippage (which might still be happening) but filing the motor shafts flat hadn’t occurred to me. Lucky me there’s an instructional video on the process, which seems straightforward enough.

→ Filing flat a motor shaft: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBnKPEnt9a4

Regardless, I’m still getting metal pulleys, and having looked at how coarse the T5 belt is and how it’s jumping on my printed pulleys, I’m probably moving to T2.5 belts. Now if I could only find a local source of the stuff which didn’t cost a fortune, I’d be set. On IRC I spoke with some guy in Poland who was buying and shipping the stuff, but couldn’t get a quote from him. And the pulleys had to be hand drilled, which seems a bother if there are pre-drilled ones available. Suggestions are welcome; the ones I’ve found so far seem too expensive for what it is, I mean, how much can diecasting pulleys cost?

Someone is starting to assemble a guide for beginners into the art and magic of building a RepRap, and it’s off to a good start. If you want an overview of the build process, check out reprapbook.appspot.com. I wish that page had been live when I started out, but you know what? Back then we didn’t have fancy e-books but read the wiki and begged in chats, and we would count ourselves lucky!

Svart Katt is an Alleycat in Gothenburg, and yesterday was the third time it was organized in as many years. As soon as I’d heard about the first one, I wanted to take part. Who wouldn’t like to wear corpse paint and bike furiously across the city, scouting out dark places in search of clues and whatnots? Apparently most people are uninterested in this, Tobbe calling it “hipster orienteering,” so I ended up not going. This year though, I thought that I’d give it a chance, alone or otherwise. And it was awesome.

There were plenty of solo riders there, but I got to chatting with John, a friendly Irish fellow, and we teamed up — he needed someone reading Swedish, I needed motivation to go through with it — and it worked out well. With a delayed start at twenty past nine we set out to find answers to all the questions on our map. It was stuff like “how many cherubs are there on the lamp-posts in Vasaparken” and “when did the youngest unwed daughter of this family die,” questions which quite often had us running about cemeteries with flashlights.

All were in costume, and it was grand to see groups swish by on bikes, navigating drunk kids near Trädgården or slippery leafs and taxicabs. The theme of the night was “bad mood” — dålig stämning — which later would serve to explain why some stuff was marked out wrong on the map, annoying the shit out of us. The theme was successful, as it were. At half twelve we came in for a checkpoint and received a new map with new missions, and had one hour until deadline.

In hindsight, we should have paid more attention to the instructions. We thought we were still looking for answers to questions, but twenty minutes in we realise that we’re probably looking for a physical object — most likely the chains I had overheard mentioned at the stop. So goddamn fuckbucket, now with a drizzle and headwind we head toward Majorna in hope of scoring one of the chains furthest from city center. We found bike traces but no chains, and the clues were obtuse and hilariously annoying. Theme succeeded once again.

So with no chains found, we head back to the finish just in time to not be disqualified, and John gets some beers which I’m looking forward to repaying at some point. It’s too cold outside the bike club, and stifling inside, so we alternate until it’s time for the prize announcements. The winner had only two chains, so it’s a comfort knowing it wasn’t just us being stupid. John came in seventh, but not I, which was a surprise because we had filled in the same answers to everything. I assumed that I’d forgotten to fill something out and ask to check it out, and was told that the final score is adjusted by some dice you got to throw at the half-way stop; I rolled “white” which deduced some points, while John rolled “black” which gave him some. Once again, annoying as hell in it’s arbitrariness, and a success for the theme.

All in all, it was great fun, made even more so when I had someone to bike with. Until next time I’ll have to fix my brakes. And perhaps some gears, a headlamp, something waterproof to wear, not to mention my wheezing, coughing and general unfittiness. I got to see new places and pedal furiously, eat vegan space sausage in a dark cemetery, and met some friendly people. Good time and I’m looking forward to the video of it all. Below is the video from the first year.

iTunes keeps track of how many times you listen to songs, and upon my return from Finland I’ve apparently listened to Fucking Werewolf Asso’s album Kid, just letting you know we’re doing it again 69 times. I was sure the number would be higher, but there you go. Ever since I saw them at Henriksberg two years ago, I’ve been hoping to catch them again, and yesterday they played at Pustervik for the release of their computer game, made by Cactusoid I think. The game looks like any self-respecting retro LOL-pixel adventure ought to, judging from the video loop the band had in the background.

It was enjoyable to hear old and new ditties, and singer Dennis is shouty and entertaining. There was a strange vibe to their show though; While Dennis is a spastic nihilist who’s jumping around (probably very bruised today) Martin is an angry drummer who keeps tipping over cymbals and swatting at things, particularly the new bass player EmoHair who mostly tries to hit people with his instrument and whose strongest card is “menacing pose.”

Had I been a bit more drunk or a half my age I wouldn’t have minded the posturing and the throwing of stuff, but since I got the show straight from work I was too sober not to frown disapprovingly on throwing cymbals at audience and staff. In all, it was a throwback to the days of mosh pits and bodysurfing; The music is excellent and would the energy be focused more on kicking ass instead of each other the show would be even better.

I’ve been back from Finland for a week, but my ambitions and sense of urgency hasn’t caught up yet. I have enough material for a couple of more Turku videos, not to mention the hours and hours of assembly footage I should put together for the general betterment of the RepRap noob community. Somehow the beer and the Sara and the visiting mom and — not to put too fine a point on it — the stupendous amount of lazy I can bring forth has been given priority above most other things.

The printer is on my kitchen table, in pieces, but with an aura of assembliness about it. I left the printing bed in Finland, seeing as it was temporary to begin with and the plexi was all messed up like, so I need to get one of those; Need to decide on either a solid metal or PCB heating element, and find a source of cut and drilled glass.

Sara has already invited people over to my place for a print party next week in an attempt at social blackmail. So with the start of a few evening courses this week, I go back to work for money as well as continue the printing work for glory.

Tomorrow I start teaching two photo courses, and after the last one finishes I’m hoping to catch Fucking Werewolf Asso play at Pustervik. You should really come because they’re bloody awesome and their albums — which you can practically steal here — kept me going late night in the studio. I first saw them play a set just after Civil Civic two years ago, and as it happens Civil Civic played yesterday at Jazzhuset and I ended up going since Petter had a man-cold and Sara needed company.

I’ve seen them the three times they’ve played Gothenburg, and even though the music is made for driving cars through deserts and/or biking very fast, it’s quite a treat to have the base and drum hit you at a live show as well. As it happens, they just finished recording their crowdfunded album, and you can listen to it in the nifty embed below, or just go to their homepage and give them your ill-gotten gains: civilcivic.com. Sixty odd people where at the concert yesterday, and the mood was good and I was very happy that I’d brought my Etymotic in-ear headphones cause the noise was noisy as all fuck.

Also, as a public service announcement: I shoot video quite often and imagine that people are annoyed when I’m in their way. I do my best not to be too much of a bother, and try not overdo it. For example, I don’t stand front and center of the small stage wearing a stupid hat, trying to record half the concert on my iPhone. Don’t be that guy, cause that guy is a jerk.

As my residency is coming to a close, I’m getting to the things I’d initially thought I’d get done the first week. Like for example putting up a presentation of Gallery Titanik where the residency is housed. With the co-operation of Kimmo Modig, the director of the gallery, I finally got around to it.

It’s been a long road, but my Reprap Mendel Prusa 3D printer is finished and I’m printing stuff. There have been so many problems and fuckups along the way, that when I finally started printing stuff a week ago I didn’t think much of it, but with hindsight it was a Grand Moment™. I’ve joined the ranks of 3D printers. You may now commence the “oohing” and “aahing” I understand are my dues.

So far, with the exception of a frog and a replacement LM8UU Y axis holder, I’ve mostly been printing calibration cubes. These are shapes intended to troubleshoot your printer and give you an opportunity to get your Skeinforge/Sfact setting correct. As you can hear in the video there’s some rattling going on on the Z-axis, and I have some trouble with Y-alignment on some prints, but with lowered acceleration on Z and Y, and perhaps tightening of the belt on the latter, I think I’ll be able to print halfway decent parts.

Sara came over for a few days, and as any good boyfriend I set about making her feel comfortable helping out with the build. It was much appreciated as it often seems I have three hands too few to get something assembled. Making the print bed was slow going, and as I’m using plexiglass for print surface we broke off a couple of pieces before getting a more-or-less square one. The plexi is actually good for printing on cold, at least once the PLA starts sticking to it, but if your hotend gets too close the PLA fuses with the surface, and you’ll inadvertently run the head through the board which will create pockmarks in the surface, and possibly plug your nozzle with plexi — which is the reason I’m printing with the 0.5mm nozzle instead of the 0.35 I started with.

We were leveling the print table for a good two hours, and found that the design with springs between the lower and print bed wasn’t optimal, since the springs were unevenly springy. I had bought a whole kit with the suckers but none seem to fit well enough and give enough force to work. It’s a good design on paper, but we found that it was just easier to use two sets of nuts per fastener bolt. Protip: Get spanners which fit instead of fiddling with adjustable ones or pliers; it’ll save you so much time and temperament it’s worth the expense.

At this moment thanks might be in order. A great amount of those go out to Traumflug for design and massive help with the electronics, and Kliment, Triffid_Hunter, Action68 and everybody else who’s been quick to lend support in #RepRap on IRC or on the reprap.org forums. When you’re as ignorant of a subject as I was about the RepRap, you rely on the help and input of friends and strangers, and without the support of everyone from awesome girlfriend Sara to KKV electro to that guy who barely spoke English but cut me some metal rods, this project might have fallen over and not gotten up after any of innumerable stumbles.

Of course, thanks to the people here in Turku for providing an incentive to start this, as well as the means and time to finish it. Ultimately, bigup to Adrian Bowyer for getting the RepRap project started, as well as all those who keep improving upon it. I have a public presentation of the project on Thursday 6th October at 1800 in Gallery Titanik in Turku, and if you’re nearby I’d love to see you there.

Last Friday, while Pilvari Pirtolas had his opening here at gallery Titanik, I was sitting in an adjacent room and fiddled with my machine. I had managed to get the extruder to heat up and the thermistor to register in Pronterface — a previous day of troubleshooting revealed that I’d connected the hotend to the wrong two pins of the Gen7 board — and now it was heating up with no problem and only a slightly worrying amount of smoke. Once it was mounted on the Accesible Wade’s extruder I was good to go for extrusion test.

I got some visitors from the opening next door, and it was fun to see some people react with curiosity and others with disinterest to the machine. To the uninitiated it looks mostly like a heap of metal and plastic, so the awesome disruptive power isn’t always readily apparent, so I got to practice my pedagogical skills on young and old, tipsy and wasted alike. Once I realized that all motors had the wrong polarity in relation to the Teacup firmware, I pressed “reverse” instead of “extrude” and lo! there was extrusion and much exaltation all around!

For the past three weeks I’ve been in Turku, in the studio of Gallery Titanik, whacking away at the RepRap Mendel Prusa 3D printer. I’ve been kept so busy toiling with this that I’ve lost sight of the grander scheme of things, like why I’ve been building the printer in the first place. I’ve been putting off communicating what I’m doing not because I don’t think it’s worthwhile, but rather because the more immediate problems of finding screws or getting the electronics to work seemed so much more pressing; and besides, it ought to be obvious what I’m doing, no?

Then again, every once in a while it’s good to remind oneself that one of the few telling differences between an artist and a crazy person is that an artist at least nominally does her stuff for an audience, while the crazy keeps to herself or only occasionally performs for medical personnel.

If the Work of art in the age of reproduction spoke about the disappearance of aura, of authenticity and a direct interaction between any one artist and her audience, the means of reproduction through RepRaps and similar DIY machines reintroduce at least the authenticity of the machine — or its configuration, parts and calibration — into the object.

There are things about fabbing which sets it apart from traditional reproduction, as for example there is no original on which any copy is modeled but only a digital model created to exist in a different medium from that of any physical copy. Any artworks which are printed from a CAD file are originally only ever mathematical descriptions in a 3D-file format on computer storage. So although the printed object isn’t unrelated to the artwork, it certainly has a random element to it, a stutter in its materiality.

Historically art was about creating objects which based on esthetics and social function were considered “artistic,” then around the time of Fountain it became explicitly about an artistic aura, and then fluxus removed even the “work” part of “art work” which after post-modernism left us with the free-for-all shit buffet we’re at today. Perhaps fabbing could at least offer a lifesaver?

With fabbing, we have the possibility of having art which is highly conceptual, but which manifests itself physically not by the mediation of the initial artist, but rather through printers — machines and their operators — which exist in a DIY sphere and so are all different, temperamental, uneven; In another word, they are unique. But just as we don’t give artistic merit to the assembly-line worker who manufactures the printer with which we print our photographs, we are unlikely to attribute artistic merit to whomever assembled the printer which prints our CAD-models.

Rather, an actualized 3D-print might be the artwork of an artist, but it’ll have the aura of the machine, or rather the aura of the DIY home fabrication process of building and tuning the machines; If movements can impart aura, it’s an aura of industry dependent on craft, an inversion of industrialization, transforming engineers into cottage industry artisans churning out other peoples art objects.

nathan7: and I want a good print
nathan7: a really good print
nathan7: without overhangs ruining things
nathan7: it’s about the end result here

From a discussion on IRC #RepRap

The idea of personal fabrication is positioned to affect the manifestation and appreciation of art as soon as some critical mass and manufacturing capacity is reached: The result will be analogue objects bearing the likeness of art; not simulacrum or simulation, but a second order relation to the artwork, twinned with the aura of machine. Perhaps fabbing can be a disruptive enough technology to change the artists role into something new, something interesting, something other than making artworks.

I got the frame of the Prusa more or less assembled, even though I still need to make sure that it’s straight and so forth. The motors are mounted and connected to the correct rods or belts, and they are stepping at 1/16 nicely, although the LM8UU bearings don’t seem as smooth as I’d like them to be; I will probably re-assemble the Y-carriage whenever I add the hotbed, seeing as that might be cause for some misalignment and grinding.

Robin from the forums popped by the studio and we compared builds and I got some advice which is always welcome; where to source materials, in what order to assemble specific parts, why patience usually pays off better than a flamethrower, etc.

The long M3×60 screws for the adjustable extruder have proved elusive, so I’ve gone for an M3 rod I’ll put wingnuts on. Once you get warmed up and understand how things are supposed to fit together and what functions they perform, you relax enough to improvise. It’s a good feeling. The Makergear hotend shipped with a mounting plate which doesn’t fit my Accessible Wade’s Extruder so I schlepped the studio bike around looking for 4mm plywood to drill a replacement. Once that’s done and the hotend built, I’m pretty close to testing to print.

Perhaps I’ll be able to melt som plastic into a horrible blob in time for tomorrows opening of the new show here at Titanik and impress Sara who’s coming over for a few days. That would be most excellent.

Before you can print from your STL file you need to convert it to gcode. Think of it as Postscript for 3D-printers and 2D routers. The tool of choice for people working with RepRap has been Skeinforge, which has acquired tons of functionality at the expense of usability: It’s ugly as sin and has more features than are properly documented (or documented at all) so I’m happy to see that there are alternative versions cropping up, like SFACT.

Also, putting the printer together I ran into some issues with the otherwise excellent documentation put together by Gary Hodgeson, namely the parts using the LM8UU linear bearings instead of printed bushings. Because I don’t have any spare parts I’m terrified of messing up those I bought from Greg Frost (shipped all the way from Australia) so am anxiously browsing the RepRap wiki and forums in search of instructions. I’ve already managed to put the Y-motor bracket in every position possible, and finally had to email Greg to get a picture of how to do it properly. I’m documenting every step, but so far it’s more of a blooper reel…

I finally found an excellent description of how to fit all the parts together: How to build up a LM8UU Linear Bearing Prusa. It does exactly what it says on the tin, and with the exception that I’m going for a three bearing bottom plate, I ought to be able to finish the build in no time. Now, if I could only settle on which lubricant to use for the rods, I’d be set. “Light machine oil” or “PTFE spray” is the question.

————————————

Update from the comments. In the video below I’ve inserted the pins from the wrong side. The black plastic bits should go on the underside of the Polo, so that it’ll sit flush with the mounts. As it stands, the Polos work for me soldered this way as well, but it’s more finicky and there’s a risk that you’ll have too much solder left and won’t be able to push the pins far enough into the mounts.

So I re-read the Gen7 1.2 instructions, and found there a note that one should solder the male headers onto the Pololus. I had thought that the pins were a tight enough fit not to necessitate soldering, but gave it a go regardless. And what do you know, it bloody worked. Getting this to work has been a major hurdle, and it’s been an ongoing bother the past two months. So yay me, and yay to Traumflug who has been a great help, and yay let’s move on to other problems now. Like for example finding spare parts to the hot end I just broke.

Perhaps I ought to learn at least some phrases in Finnish. I feel as close to an imperialist as I’ve ever have, asking people “svenska, talar du svenska?” all the time. Case in point: I forgot to bring a carry-around bag so went hunting for one in second hand stores. In one cramped store I find a cloth bag but try to ask the older lady if she possibly has something similar but with longer handles, appropriate for fashionable slinging up on ones shoulder. I go through English and Swedish and pantomime and am bringing out my notebook for some Pictionary, when both she and her co-worker just wave me out of the store, with a “thank you” (unless “kippis” has a second meaning, such as “shove off”) and gesturing that I can take the bag and leave. At least I hope that’s what they meant, but for all I know they thought I was telling them to “put all your money in this bag, make it large money,” and they were thanking me for not hurting them. I don’t know.

I had ambitions when I first got here that I’d use the time to whip my pasty butt into some sort of shape resembling an actual butt, and started out strong with jogging every second day and even going so far as to checking out the dorm gym. A week later I’m feeling a slight cold coming on and I’m drinking beer and eating crisps for dinner. I’m sure there is a middle-ground somewhere, but I’d be fucked if I can find it. I do hope that I’ll keep up the running though, if for no other reason than to balance out the hours sitting in the studio poking at the RepRap.

Speaking of which, I’m having some progress in the building department, and have half of it put together already. It’s probably the most straightforward part of this whole endeavor, and mostly entails following instructions and spinning a lot of bolts onto rods and such, but at least there’s a physical thing I can point to and say: Behold! Yesterday twas but a heap of rods, today it stands on it’s extruded feet. Verily, progress! etc. etc.

Two more observations regarding the traffic in Turku: First off, the bikers here drive poorly, often on sidewalks or against the flow of other bikes, while at the same time not signaling. This is in large part because the bike lanes are merged with sidewalks more often than motor traffic, and it’s just too crowded with pedestrians to allow smooth going.

Secondly, drivers are much less likely to stop for you at a zebra crossing, even if you’re already halfway in the road. Anecdotal data, and so on, but it’s happened enough times for me to notice. Also, people are very hesitant to walk on red on a crossing, even when it’s safe; It’s possible they know something I don’t. My lack of inhibition in this area makes me feel very low level badass, as pedestrian badassery goes.

Maybe related: back home people get the hell out of the way when there’s an emergency vehicle flashing lights, while on three occasions I’ve seen an ambulance or cop car stuck behind traffic which didn’t budge. Granted, once it was an older driver obviously lost and looking for the right exit, but you’d imagine that the honking, blinking, waving and shouting police behind her was a clear enough signal. So perhaps it’s an indication of an individualistic yet wary mindset? Should one do generalizations of a whole city — nay people —  on the basis of walking back and forth along four streets for a week? Of course one should, what kind of question is that?

Having set up the studio space here in gallery Titanik I’m once again struggling with the electronics of the RepRap. I got the board back from Traumflug — in addition to fixing it he’d also made it shiny! — and he had successfully used it to move motors and such, so the board is OK. But when I plug in my Pololus and motors and PSU, nothing much happens. Frustration runs high with this one. I have two videos of the troubleshooting below:

In the first video I have a 300W PSU hooked in to the board, and in the second video I try to use a DVD as a load resistor, after recommendation from Traumflug. Spoiler alert: In neither of the videos does the board move the motors, nor give me a reading on the meter. The next step will be to to add a proper load resistor onto the PSU instead of the DVD player— this is slightly more involved than just jamming a bunch of ¼W resistors in there, so I’ll have to do some research on it. The following links might give a clue:

How to Convert a Computer ATX Power Supply to a Lab Power Supply
Desktop power supply from a PC

An alternative to this would be to get a totally new power supply. I know that people have been using Xbox 360 bricks for power, and I’m sure there’s a crapload of alternatives which would work. I’m just hesitant to give up on the only part of the RepRap which I’ve actually scrounged myselft — The PSU was going to be thrown out with a bunch of computer trash at Chalmers, and I thought I’d give it a second chance at usefulness. Not that this project lacks DIY spirit and such, but you catch my drift; Ideally you’d be building the whole printer out of garbage and driftwood.

Besides walking around Turku and trying out vegan cupcakes (yay cupcakes!) I’ve started work on building the RepRap at the gallery. I have all the metal bits cut to proper length, and the threads fit the screws and the printed parts I got from Greg Frost in Australia. Last night I was polishing the threaded rods, after which I realised that I could actually start assembly of the rig. I was too tired to do it yesterday, and I still haven’t decided on how to do with the bottom plate (I’ll forego the heated plate at the moment, it’s easy to drop in once I have it) but after the weekend I’ll have somehthing which actually looks like a RepRap. It will feel good to have a frame on which I could pin my ambitions literally instead of all figuratively, in my head.

Of course, the hot-end from Makergear still needs assembly — and it’s a total PITA to put together, let me tell you — and the electronics are still home to a stubborn ghost, but it’s getting there. Once I’ll relax a bit more perhaps I could actually scout opportunities to do something with the printer which doesn’t revolve around the printer itself…

With my arrival date set, I was invited to go along as audience on a Performance Bus™ with a bunch of spectators and performance artists. It seemed an excellent opportunity to see the surroundings of the city as well as meet people, so of course I signed up. Ever since my ask over at Metafilter I’ve been trying to come up with coping strategies for performances, and immersion therapy might be just the thing to push me over the edge into something resembling professional behaviour.

Most of the time, I’m not comfortable enough with the form to have an opinion one way or another, but insofar as I have a taste, it skews toward those performances which don’t take themselves too seriously. A group performing in the bus did so in Finnish, allowing me to fill in the blanks of their text, or rather just focus on the rhythm and rhymes — as a result their performance was one of the more interesting ones. This goes to the heart of what David Sedaris learned from his career as a performance artist:

It was the artist’s duty to find the appropriate objects, and the audience’s job to decipher meaning. If the piece failed to work, it was their fault, not yours.

Kimmo Modig, the director of Gallery Titanik was along for the ride to do a performance, and we spent the trip chatting about art and related topics, as well as chickpea pancakes. We seem to agree on many things, so he’s obviously a clever and sharp fellow. For his performance, people could help themselves to a bucket with all the money he’d received to do the performance; in the end he tossed the remainder into the river. Value-destroying performances have been done before of course, but I imagine that actually tossing fifty Euro into the drink feels different from thinking about it.

All in all, driving people around from one event to another is a good way to ensure a captivated audience, and it was a day well spend, especially with an excellent picnic at the end of it. You can read a short article in Finnish about it on uudenkaupunginsanomat.fi and in English on Facebook, and I’ll post some reviews as well once I find them. Leena Kela, who is the regional performance artist of Finland Proper (and who organised this Performance Bus, see video) does some other projects of her own which might be interesting to check out. For example, I’m going to read up on the outcome of Alter ego — being someone else for a month, and then having to refer to oneself in third person. “Yes, she was much ruder and ate a lot of cheese.”

I still require parts for the RepRap, so I walked south on the recommendation that K-Rauta might stock the metal rods I need. The surroundings quickly changed into an industrial park, and shortly thereafter I find out that K-Rauta does not have what I need, unless I what I need are two burly men behind a counter. They did point me to an adjacent store which looked promising albeit closed, so I’m going back there Monday.

I’m staying in a student dorm named Domus, and have found a jogging route. The shared kitchen is a dump but there’s Al Jazeera English on the TV and a balcony I’d appreciated were I still smoking. The room is nice enough, fridge kettle shelves, and the smell of soap will be renewed once a week when someone cleans the room. Oh, and there’s a sewing machine in a cupboard, which will come in handy since my last pair of Cheap Monday jeans once again have experienced crotch failure.

The esthetics of the city is odd — it’s a mixture of fifties functionalism and drab Soviet buildings — and wherever there might have been an uncertainty about what to build, they just poured more asphalt; The roads are wide and everywhere. If there’s a city planner, that guy sure likes cars. Given a chance, I’ll ask.

It’s been a busy couple of weeks here at HQ, consisting mostly of me troubleshooting my Gen7 1.2 board in the forums and on IRC. You can read of my ordeals under the title “Getting movement with Teacup + Gen7 1.2” and my aborted attempts at troubleshooting the (probably dead) Pololus is here: How to check if A4988 is fried?

Finally, Traumflug offered to take a look at the board if I could send it to Germany. I dropped it in a mailbox quicker than you can say “Spitze!” and worried my head about getting a multimeter which wouldn’t give me random readings instead. A couple of days later I got an email back which opened with:

Your board arrived today. It took me something like a minute to find the bridge … :-) See the attached picture.

Which at once had me feeling happy that it’s solved, and rather dull for not having spottet the short. I actually got a small microscope and went over the board to find shorts, but I ignored the areas easily visible by the naked eye… Since I have very little dignity left to salvage I’m taking this in stride and the board is on it’s way to Turku, where I’ll assembly the 3D printer. Shouldn’t take more than a day or so, right? What could go wrong?

Speaking of being on it’s way to Turku: I’m writing this at Landvetter airport — amongst screaming children and the smell of fear which is probably I — and my plane leaves in a while. I’m drinking expensive beer and hoping that my luggage is under the weight limit. Seeing as this is my first residency, I’m looking forwards to having a change of scenery and a deadline for the project. Although these open-ended processess are all good and fun, actually setting print to paper — or plastic to Turku, as it were — will feel nice.

As for the multimeter, at first I got the Fluke 115 — all the reviews list Fluke as the doubleplusbest — but switched to an Agilent U1242B after watching the one hour “multimeter buying guide” with David Jones over at the EEV blog (it gets better once you get used to his voice. Your ears take five six hours to adapt, in my experience). The deciding factor was that the Agilent had μA while the Fluke only did mA — I’m not good enough at these things to know when I’ll be using what, but will take others word for it. Also, the Agilent can use temperature probes which might be handy if I’m calibrating the Makergear hotend or the heated bed.

Ok, enough with this light banter. Off I go.

In anticipation of fucking shit up I had ordered two ATMegas and having succeeded once it took me one try to get the bootloader to take this time around. The board looked fine, but after a lot of trial and error, error, and error, I resigned to the fact that my Pololus probably were fried and ordered new ones. And that, kids, is how you literally burn 600 SEK by being a lazy bum and not double-checking your solders. Lesson learned and so on.

Having received the new Pololus, and with an extruder underway from the States and the plastic parts coming over from Australia, I only need to get the motors to spin to have a semblance of a printer up and running. I have most metal parts except for some springs and wingnuts, and to celebrate the birthplace of the machine I got some SKF 608 bearings. Oh, and I still need two T5 timing belts.

In the IRC channel I was suggested to use Pronterface.py instead of ReplicatorG as a computer side controller of the board, but after the first few times I couldn’t get the thing to launch and reverted to ReplicatorG. Not that it matters at the moment, because even with the ATMega replaced and properly bootloaded and running Gen7 Teacup, I can’t get any readings or functions out of it. I made a video of my attempts and you can watch it below; it’s dry but you get to watch me prod an inanimate object with clumsy fingers.

Mom and Tomasz decided to visit now as well. I’ve shown them the archipelago and then my allotment garden and then the KKV workshop and them mom left and now Tomasz is stuck with me while I whine about the RepRap and hush him while recording troubleshooting videos. You can actually hear him in the video above, so it’s well worth watching for that alone! Also, I totally destroyed him at pingpong earlier today, and have video of that as well.

Good god damn goat balls.

I finally got the bootloader onto the ATMega — thanks to a lot of trial and error and handwringing and help from ethereal beings on the Internets and KKV, and with the motors and Pololus installed I hook the PSU into the board and the LEDs are shining and — wait a minute, isn’t the processor a teensy bit too hot? Oh, let’s touch it — well whaddayaknow, it’s blistering my finger, how peculiar!

As it turns out, I’ve soldered the Molex connector the wrong way around, so am feeding 5V to where I need 12V and vice versa. Which means some components are now fucked, possibly including the ATMega. I guess I ought to be grateful that none of the capacitors blew up in my face, but right now I’m just going to bed.

Below are some helpful links left for future reference

I found a good description for what the bootloading process is about here: http://smileymicros.com/blog/2011/03/04/busy-as-a-beavratmega644-on-a-breadboard/

Resources on what AVR’s are: http://www.evilmadscientist.com/article.php/avrstuff

A tutorial on what AVR programming is about, somewhat technical: http://www.ladyada.net/learn/avr/

Using the AVR ISP MkII as a programmer to bootload ATMegas. Relevant if I get me the programmer, but can give inside into the process: http://www.arduino.cc/playground/Code/OSXISPMKII

Crosspack is a complete AVR developing package, not sure how to implement the homebrewn boards there, but the bootloaders should be more or less generic, right? http://www.obdev.at/products/crosspack/index-de.html

Wormfood has a baud to Mhz calculator here, which I’m sure is good for something down the line: www.wormfood.net

A thread started in 2006 about the process of getting the Arduino to act as an ISP, which I never succeeded in doing: Turn Arduino into an ISP programmer

The schematics for my model of Arduino, the old NG, are here: arduino_NG_schematic.png and there’s a description of most of the parts and ports here: www.arduino.cc

I’m not sure of what this page does but it seems handy: http://www.sengpielaudio.com/calculator-ohm.htm

As a preface to this post, let me reiterate that I’m doing this writeup so that people in a similar position as I might benefit from my mistakes and experiences. I’m learning all of this as I go, and imagine that anyone somewhat dedicated but with no prior experience might run into the same conceptual problems as I. The past week has proven that reasoning ab initio is all good and well if you actually know the “initio” part. My ignorance of physics and maths leave me with little but a smidgen of formal logic to draw any conclusions from electric schematics, and that’s really not helpful when it comes to burning a blasted bootloader onto a gosh darned ATMega644 20PU.

As the saying goes: When the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. And right now I feel as if I have one of those oversized blow-up hammers, banging away at the problems like a drooling cretin.

Let’s start with what I’ve actually accomplished. I’ve scavenged a small computer fan and a 300W power supply, which made me feel all dumpster diving and glowing. Not sure if the PSU is enough to drive the heated bed alongside everything else, but it’s a start. I ordered and received four Pololus A4988 to control the five hybrid stepper motors (1.8°, 1200mA, 4V, 3.17kg holding torque) from Wetterott I also ordered

UPS didn’t bother to ring me when they where outside my door, so I had to bike for an hour to get the package; Apparently “courier” is Latin for “duuuur I’m driving around with your stuff.”

The Pololus are not the kosher ones, but according to spec they are almost the same as the recommended A4983, and can be used as “drop in replacements,” which remains to be seen. The holding torque of the motors might be too low to use for the extruder, but fine for everything else; worst case, I’ll get a stronger NEMA 17 sized motor for the extruder.

I also got the TTL-232R USB-to-serial-cable, which I thought would be enough to get the bootloader onto the ATMega 644 20PU. It turns out it’s good for controlling the final motherboard, but not burning the actual bootloader. I’ll get to that.

A couple of days ago Magnus over at KKV Elektronen brought his MakerBot over for a demonstration. It was swell to finally see a 3D printer in action, and I got a tiny teensy part for my RepRap printed. In the upcoming days I’m hoping to get the rest done, and I’ve found a local source for most, if not all of the metal parts. Hornbach turns out to have a large enough selection of washers and bolts and whatnuts to probably cover everything I need except the springs. I got threaded rods and unthreaded rods, at a fraction of the price I’d pay at Järnia, so I’ve scrapped the plans on getting it all as a kit from UK as the postage was prohibitive.

Perhaps it’s because I’m an anxious person, but it feels reassuring when I actually make the decision that what I have listed on the printout is the same thing which I hold in my hand, and put it into the shopping basket. It’s such a banal thing, but it took me a good five minutes before feeling sure that the “M8 fender washer” I was holding was similar enough to the one described.

Once I had the Pololus I figured I would upload the bootloader and try to see if I could get the motors to spin. Piece of cake, no? Well, not really, as my desperate post over at the RepRap forums indicate.

The problem, as Traumflug points out in the above post, is that I have wired the whole thing wrong. I’m using the USB-to-serial cable, where I ought to use a programmer hooked into the six smaller pins on CONN6. I don’t have the programmer in the image he links, but find information to on how to use an Arduino microcontroller as a programmer instead; Arduino ISP – In-System Programmer.

I find one page on Instructables which seems to solve my problem: Using your Arduino ISP: Burning a bootloader. I set up the ATMega on a breadboard and hook it into my Macbook. At first, I get “USB pulling too much power” warnings, but that’s cause I hadn’t doublechecked my breadboard and was actually shorting the USB-port. Did you know that shorting your USB port can kill your wifi? Oopsie.

The only difference from the Instructable page is that I use the hardware files for the Gen7 electronics instead of the Sanguino. The option to use my board with my processor shows up under Tools>board so all is fine there.

I run “burn bootloader” with “Arduino as ISP” but get a timeout. So I try the other bootloader options and get the same thing. Doublechecking the processor I have the correct one set, so it’s not that. The Arduino works and runs other applications with no complaints. Searching the Arduino website I find Using Arduino as AVR ISP, which tells me that I need to upload a special sketch (Arduino application) called ArduinoISP to the microcontroller before using it as a programmer. That takes with no problem (I’m using the Arduino NG, and if you’re following along then don’t forget to hit the reset button before sending a new sketch to the Arduino)

I run Tools>burn bootloader>Arduino as ISP and get the error

avrdude: Yikes! Invalid device signature. Double check connections and try again, or use -F to override this check.

And running Tools>burn bootloader>AVR ISP gives:

avrdude: stk500_recv(): programmer is not responding
avrdude: stk500_disable(): protocol error, expect=0x14, resp=0xe0

Using the Arduino IDE for the bootloader isn’t supported in the official wiki, but Kliment over in the #RepRap channel mentions that starting the Arduino IDE as root allows him to use it to burn the bootloader. I get the same result regardless. Following the instructions for Linux terminal (bash) gives me balls, probably because the syntax differs from OSX — I’m going to check this out tomorrow.

According to the datasheet of ATMega 644, the voltage is ok, and the current shouldn’t be higher than 200mA over the pins 10-11 and 30-31, which they aren’t. I’m clearly missing something. I log into the #AVR channel on IRC and get a short description of what a bootloader is and that one can burn those in serial and parallell mode. What I’m trying to do is apparently “parallell mode” which is all fine and well but doesn’t get me closer to an answer.

I take a look at the top of the in-line documentation of the Arduino IDE sketch, and see this:

// this sketch turns the Arduino into a AVRISP
// using the following pins:
// 10: slave reset
// 11: MOSI
// 12: MISO
// 13: SCK

I realise that those are the same names that are listed on the Gen7 1.2 schematic as COMM6. Hosianna, perhaps my prayers are answered and problem solved. I drop the ATMega into its slot on my Gen7 board, and hook up the COMM6 to the Arduino. With much the same result as on the breadboard. Cockbucket!

The day before Traumflug has mentioned that using the Arduino IDE doesn’t work cause it’s communicating too fast for the ATMega to keep up. It’s set to 1Mhz as default, but should go up to 8Mhz after a fuse has been burned on the chip. I have no clear grasp of what the Mhz denotes or how that relates to the speed of communications, but it seems critical. From computers in general, I’m guessing 1 Mhz means 1 million computations per second, but what it does to what is just beyond me. I know that I need to slow down somewhere, but not certain if I can do this in software or need to add crystals to the breadboard as per the description here and at the bottom of this page?

Default baud-rate for the Arduino IDE is 115200, which supposedly is okeydokey for a 16 Mhz chip, so perhaps I should just divide that into 16 and that might work? Can you see before your inner eye the magic chicken I’m waving above my workbench? I’m basically down to numerology here.

Regardless of how much I enjoy sailing the seas of doing new shit, whatever leaky vessel I’m in is currently waterlogged and I’m beginning to eye alternative options. As in getting a pre-programmed ATMega. It seems a shame to give in, having sacrificed brain cells and pulled hairs on the altar of geekdom, but perhaps I ought to choose my battles more wisely and forfeit this one to the processor. It does sting to be bested by an inert piece of plastic and metal on my kitchen table, but what the hell, if I can’t get it solved this week I’ll just buy a replacement. And program this chip with a brick. So it goes. Back into the fray, Smashy smashy.

I’ve successfully drilled and soldered both the Gen7 v1.2 motherboard and optostops.

Redundancy is king so I made nine optostops, two of which seem broken — they light up regardless if you apply current. People in the forums helped me troubleshoot, but having confirmed that the sensors work (i.e. infinite resistance when the optos are blocked) I can’t find anything wrong with them.

What is more worrisome is that I haven’t yet tested the motherboard for shorts and whatnot; If I can mess up a 15-solder board, surely a 400-solder one is going to explode. This might be exiting; If my apartment burns down in the process, I’m crying force majeure and buying it finished, like most people seem to.

What is remaining is everything else. I need to get all the metal parts — nuts bolts and washers — and don’t really know where to order them here in Sweden. I’m tempted to order from McMaster-Carr only because they have such a well designed site it makes me all weepy.

Hopefully, I’ll get my hands on the printed parts along with an extruder — Wade’s geared extruder — later this week when we’re going to play around with a MakerBot at KKV Elektronen, printing the boards with components at some point; It’ll be great to finally get a look at a 3D printer in action, and get a hang of the software to run it.

Speaking of which, I have to load the bootloader onto the ATMega 644-20 PU, and hope to use an old Arduino I have laying around somewhere. Sounds simple, but this would also require me to get a power supply for the rig. (12V pushing 15Amps should do it. The machine only requires 5Amps, but the heated bed requires an additional 8Amps, so there you go.) The power supply needs to be hooked up to the board, as does the Arduino, so I need to figure out what cables to use and make those, after which I get to hook computer to Arduino and let it do it’s programming magic.

The optostops need to have flags made for them, preferably out of soda cans, so that the stops can be engaged for calibration and safety. I need a couple of 5mm wide belts to drive the extruder and bed, and I can either buy them directly or split them myself from more standard widths. Having chosen to go with Wades extruder, I need to manufacture or buy a hot-end, the part of the printer where the plastic poops out, as well as the hot-bed onto which the pooping will happen. So tonight is “ordering shit online” night. That, and crying into a bottle.

So far, this has been a crash course in electronics, and the fact that I haven’t yet been electrocuted or blown a fuse is encouraging. I can almost feel my neural pathways adapt to all these Ohms, Amps and whatnots, and it’s nice to learn something new again.

Perhaps it’s the colder weather or perhaps the glass fibers I’ve inhaled are tickling my hypothalamus, but today I woke up early with the minimum of suicidal thoughts and have gotten a lot of stuff done. And it’s not even noon!

Most importantly, I’ve gotten around to ordering all the electronic component and connectors needed to finish the Gen7 1.2 motherboard and optostops. When envisioning the project, I was determined to bond with ELFA, to find a weary comrade at the store who would regale me with tales of how she set fires on things in her first project as well, and I would offhandedly follow the advice and recommendations for what to buy. Then I realised that ELFA is up to three times as expensive as some of the net stores, so screw that.

Last night I was up with a bottle of wine and a Dremel, trying to drill really fucking teensy holes in the PCBs. I was wearing a mask most of the time, but some of the glass fiber is bound to end up in my brain. Considering I’m doing this in the kitchen, let’s call it additional roughage. The drilling went well, and I managed to substitute the smallest drill bit with the conical diamond bit. I thought I would need a press drill for precision, seeing as the smallest holes are half a millimeter or so, but as long as you limit yourself to two glasses of wine you’re good. At three glasses you become a bit cavalier re:precision.

The parts I ordered were mostly from Reichelt with some remaining stuff from RS Components. Reichelt has a nice webstore with pretty pictures and all, but their customer service is either shy or enjoys receiving multiple emails with similar questions. Most businessess, I imagine, upon receiving an email asking “can I pay with Mastercard or do I pay on delivery?” would answer both parts of the sentence, not limiting themselves to “You cannot pay with Mastercard.” Playing coy might be a good way of wooing the shy guy with a beret, but I’m trying to pay for your services so no need to beat around the bush here.

Before I got to the stage of drilling holes and ordering parts, let me tell you the story of how I learned of which parts to order. I believe it’s telling of how quickly one gets mired in tracking down information when you know as little as I do on a topic.

In order to make the PCB I had to find a list of the required parts to mount on the PCB. I couldn’t find anyone who could tell me what parts are required. I couldn’t find a written list of parts, but there were instructions somewhere on the wiki telling me to open up a file of a certain type, changing a setting in an application, and then export a BOM — Bill Of Materials. No hint of what the file name is nor what application is required, but OK.

So I go onto the #reprap IRC channel and ask my stupid questions and get very little response. Someone recommends that I check out gEDA PCB, an open source application for creating PCBs and schematics, because EAGLE might not be able to open the file I need to open, whichever file that is. GEDA is actually mentioned on the wiki, but there’s no information as to what it is or where to get it, so I thought it was a filetype at first.

I check out gEDAs homepage, which tells me that I need to compile the application from source. Ok, so poke about a bit then realise that gEDA requires FINK to install, which in turn requires installing FINK and dependencies via the Terminal, which I’m shamefaced to admit I suck at using. FINK requires the Xcode developer tools, so I leave that to download for half an hour and then have the Devtools install running in the background while I try to get a feel for the RepRap IRC community.

Among the running chatter of people troubleshooting their machines, there was some discussion about the first case of 3D fabbing copyright infringement, when someone recreated a prop from a Paramount movie and they got on his case. It’s surely a sign of things to come, but as long as there are open source 3D apps and DIY printers, I don’t see how you could stem the tide of personal infringement. It’s a short read and worth checking out:

→ Torrentfreak, enigmax: Paramount Cease and Desist Targets 3D Printer ‘Pirate’

Anyway, with the Xcode developer tools installed, I notice that FINK isn’t available as a binary for 10.6, so I download a tarball and follow the instructions for compiling FINK using the Bash Terminal. Compiling FINK has actually been the most straightforward thing I’ve done so far, as the installation was really friendly and considerate; Like a well lubed proctologist with good blood circulation.

It took me a moment to realise that I need to enable unstable packages in FINK, after which gEDA installed fine while I fell back on default selections when asked about plugins and whatnot. I’m not sure if I screwed something up in the process, cause gEDA took two hours to compile even though I had engaged all eight cores.

With gEDA installed, I find the PCB app in ~/sw/bin/pcb and open up the Gen7Board.pcb file from the app. And lo and behold, there’s a “BOM” alternative under “Export…” which gives me a list of components and their place on the board. All in a text-file which you have to manually open cause it has no filetype extension. Looking over the list of parts, I’m still confused since some of the parts are labelled “unknown” which is somewhat ominous. In the chat, Traumflag himself shows up (The guy who created and maintains Gen7 1.2) and I ask my silly questions again.

Turns out, there’s a complete parts list on the wiki, and he promptly sends me a link.

Now. When you’re as green as I am on a subject, it can be difficult for an outside observer to distinguish me from a lazy bum, but I swear I’ve gone up and down that fucking wiki and not found any links to a parts list for the Gen7 1.2 board. Apparently, Google can’t find any pages linking to it either (as of July 1st at least) so perhaps there aren’t any. I don’t know how it’s possible not to link internally somewhere on a wiki, but at least it made me feel less stupid, albeit still frustrated.

In grassroots open source project such as the RepRap community, writing documentation is boring and little value seems attributed to it and consequently little work is done on it; On the other hand, it’s really simple to get in touch with whomever designed the part you need help with, and people are often kind and willing to lend a hand.

So, with a followup email from Traumflag, I had a complete list of parts. And since the wiki contained direct store links to the components, I took the sensible approach and ordered the goddamn parts already. Though Reichelt slapped on some banking fee, the parts were most certainly cheaper than ELFA; And even if I could have tried to source cheaper components, that would have taken me a couple more days, which I rather spend solving the next problem down the road. Which I predict there will be aplenty.