For most of the last decade I’ve been running a headless Mac Mini with a large external drive to run my Plex server and a few other services. Recently I’ve started playing with Docker and it’s really made the Mac Mini start to show its age. I briefly looked at the “current” Mac Mini’s but when I saw they start at £800 and haven’t been updated since 2018 I hastily looked elsewhere. I considered building my own server but found myself getting carried away by massively over-engineering a system. ...

The ability to print out almost any solid object you can imagine at home is undeniably awesome but there are a few things that are worth considering before you buy your first printer. (Please note this post is specifically about FDM/Filament printers. MSLA/Resin printers are an entirely separate subject although many of the same considerations apply) Do you enjoy tinkering with machines? 3D printers have matured a lot in a short space of time but they are still arguably not quite at the level of refinement of most other consumer electronics. At the very least you will need to carry out the basic calibration and maintenance of your printer. It’s also likely that sometimes things won’t work as you expect and you’ll need to troubleshoot issues that arise. ...

My day job is largely about helping people and teams focus on working on always working on the most important thing next. So I find it quite frustrating when I struggle to prioritise the use of my own free time (#firstworldproblems). Currently I’m trying to work out how and when I can do the following… Improve my 3D skills I’ve been using blender for years and I generally feel confident in my ability to create objects and scenes but I know that I don’t challenge myself enough. Blender 2.8 has now been officially released so I need to relearn some things. I feel like setting myself a more complicated scene might be the way to get back up to speed. I’m also keen to get more proficient with Fusion 360 to model objects for 3D printing. ...

Recently I’ve been getting back into fighting games and playing on an Xbox One controller just wasn’t cutting it. I did a little research into Fight Sticks (or arcade sticks as I would have called them) and it turns out that they’re still pretty expensive and they rarely support wireless. A New Challenger Approaches… The N30 Arcade Stick from 8Bitdo is one of the few arcade sticks currently on the market that supports any wireless connectivity. It can connect to either a PC or a Nintendo Switch wirelessly over bluetooth or physically over a USB cable. ...

The other day I saw that my friend Looch had replied to a tweet from Zachary Ryan asking people to answer with their top ten games as quickly as possible. I quickly rattled off my own list and replied. I’ve been thinking about it since and although there are some notable games missing from my list I think it covers the games I have spent the most time playing along with the games that had the largest impacts on me. So here they are… ...

Last week I pulled the trigger on a new laptop. I had been looking for something portable, powerful and - surprise, surprise - suitable for working in blender. I had spent several weeks trying to decide exactly which machine to go for. The contenders were the Razer Blade 15, Gigabyte Aero 15X and the MSI GS65 Stealth Thin. Razer Blade 15 - The Gamer’s Choice The Razer was originally my first choice, it’s basically the MacBook Pro equivalent for gamers, which means it has good internals for the modelling, animation and rendering I want to do. Unfortunately it seems to be constantly out of stock (or not yet released according to Amazon). I even registered directly with Razer to be updated when they came back in stock and have still not heard from them. ...

I’m currently working on modelling the whole interior of the house my wife and I are buying. I’m one room in so far but I’ll cover that in detail in another post soon. I hit a snag when I was trying to model the curtains for the windows though. How on earth do you make a net curtain material? I tried using the translucent material, then I tried using it mixed with the transparent material but nothing seemed quite right. I had a brief chat with Alex Saplacan on the UK & Ireland Blender Users Slack group and he suggested using Wave Texture nodes to generate the lines in the fabric. After some fiddling about I came up with this which I think works pretty well. ...

Lately I’ve been watching a lot of videos about prop making and cosplay. I’m not sure I’m bold enough to dress up myself but I really like the idea of making amazing looking costumes and props from such cheap materials. Unfortunately living in London means our flat is tiny and there’s no space for a workshop or even a spare room. Fortunately my wife is awesome and she suggested that we take a long weekend off work so that we could scratch our creative itches. Leave was booked, craft shops, builders merchants and toy shops were visited and a number of Amazon orders were made. ...

I’ve been fortunate enough to be supplied with MacBook Pros for my last few jobs, including my current role. I passed my own (now aged) MacBook Air on to my Wife when we met and since then I’ve been pretty much using my work machines for personal stuff too. I was thinking about buying a cheap, reliable laptop for web browsing, coding and other odds and ends. Unfortunately the requirement that it should be cheap pretty much disqualified all Apple products. So I thought I’d look through eBay and see what I could find. ...