The making of the Poincare coasters

The TechShop laser cutter busy etching coasters.

Poincare hyperbolic disk coasters

IKEA sells cheap glass coasters, perfect to etch into gorgeous mathematical coasters. These are the ones I have etched so far.

Lakes of Wada

A while back, me and three friends at Stanford bought a square inch of Detroit together, and divided it up according to the Lakes of Wada configuration.

With access to the TechShop laser cutters, I cut out the third stage of the construction from four different acrylics, and put together one of these tokens for each of us.

Laser etched wallet

Mirrored skyscraper

Preparing for the Chinese New Year's parade

I was heading home. The parade organizers were trying to get organized. This involved an array of spotlights usually seen at sporting events.

The effect was striking.

Tenderloin rooftops

The view from our bedroom window.

Regularity

Some of the taller buildings in San Francisco convey an almost zen-like beauty when you look at them in just the right way.

Obscene and obscure Art Deco again

The mirror I blogged about yesterday again, with a clearer view of me, the photographer, in a self portrait of sorts. I love much about this picture, not in the least how the frosted texture of the etched out flowers comes out as patches of whatever colour is in the background — like the blue flowers tinted by the blue figurine I leaned the mirror against for this shot.

Obscene and obscure Art Deco

I recently realized it would be HILARIOUS to render Catullus 16 in Art Deco, looking somehow respectable. The result of these musings is this acrylic mirror, with a laser etching on the back, removing enough mirroring film to produce the text and decorations.

Susanne in Chocolate (2)

Another chocolate etching, this time of one of Susanne's favourites among my renditions of her.

Susanne in chocolate (1)

Today I got my first session on the TechShop laser cutter. Great fun! Also, a LOT of fiddly bits that need to be Just Right for everything to work.

One of the coolest things with a laser cutter is that it can actually etch some food stuffs nicely. Here, a Lindt Sea Salt (Susanne's favourite chocolate) etched with a portrait of Susanne (this one, a simplified b/w version of this one) and her favourite poem:

Var inte rädd för mörkret
ty ljuset vilar där.
Vi ser ju inga stjärnor
där intet mörker är.

I ljusa irisringen
du bär en mörk pupill,
ty mörkt är allt som ljuset
med bävan längtar till.

Var inte rädd för mörkret,
ty ljuset vilar där,
var inte rädd för mörkret,
som ljusets hjärta bär.

Bucky balls

I finally, now that I have a flashgun that'll fire off-camera too, got around to building that light tent I've been planning for a while now.

As a first test run, I shot some pictures of the bucky ball set I got from Susanne for christmas. Great fun to be had by everyone!!

In the mood

Many people look good in Fedoras. I certainly hope I look good in one. But few people I know carry them as spectacularly well as Susanne.

Here, in a close-up portrait I took to try and get used to my new flashgun.

Happy Valentine's Day

This card was inspired by a project I saw linked from Instructables.

After a few weeks of mulling and planning a Valentine's card for Susanne — in my plans and imaginations, this would've been CNC milled out of a blank circuit board — I finally got around to doing things. Together with Josh Myer I took my sketches for a card design and we patched them into an actual circuit design that would take an ATtiny at its heart, and using this drive 8 LEDs in a nice pattern. Helpfully, Josh is selling an electronics kit — the Surface Mount Soldering Badge — with the LEDs, the battery holder and the ATtiny I needed preprogrammed.

So with my design and Josh's improvements, we used toner transfer to etch it, and then soldered everything in place. The result is as gorgeous as the process was pleasing and filled with accomplishments.

Hence, my beloved Susanne, here's to having known each other for 11 years. I love you.

Not happy about all this attention

Fractal Jellyfish

Speckled jellyfish

Barely there

Ethereal. Almost invisible. Barely a thickening of mass, but coherent, and a single organism nevertheless.

Also viciously stinging and poisonous.

Teeming jellyfish

Glowing jellyfish

Californian factory

A golden calf?

Or a golden antelope. On the buddhist temple in the Mission, on 18th.

Wheels

Sunset over Stanford

Sun sets on the Rockies, part 2

Sun sets on the Rockies

As seen from our Lufthansa A340 window.

Candlelit snowballs

A standard fare from one of the main Swedish glass blowers are these glass snowball candleholders.