Seppe Lenders

So, my new year's resolution (is it too late for those?): stop procrastinating. Get over my insecurities and just do it. #buildinpublic

There's always a ton of work that you look forward to working on. It's easy to ignore the work that you don't like, even if you know how important it is. My 2 priorities are: finish the Maqet beta, and make sure people know the beta exists. Guess which one I'm not doing?

As a solo founder, you wear all the hats. The good thing is that you won't get bored anytime soon. But it also means that you have to actually do all of it. I don't think of myself as a procrastinator, but boy, am I procrastinating right now.

After 15 years of writing ascii guitar tabs in Word, I only just realized that a multiline editor like VSCode, which I've also been using for ages to write code, is exactly what you need for that. Facepalm moment.

Same! My favorite is Foureyes Furniture. Their production and voice overs are almost meditative. But the manual techniques like in this video are very satisfying in their own way.

Chamfers and fillets • Maqet Chamfers and fillets in three clicks.

Pretty much every piece of furniture has chamfers, fillets or some other edge treatment. But not all software makes it easy to draw those, which makes iterating your design difficult. Here's how we are doing it in Maqet: maqet.app/blog/chamfer...

Recent pet peeve of mine: avoiding non-clickable space in navigation. If you have multiple buttons next to each other, there should be exactly 0 pixels of non-clickable space between them. The Bluesky sidebar mostly passes, but post options don't. Gmail fails horribly.

I'm not a designer in the same way I'm not a cook. My designs and meals are decent, but never exceptional. That doesn't stop me from doing either, cause who else is going to do it?

I remember playing Fighting for a Lost Cause on the guitar a lot around campfires. Might try it again in a bit. That song is golden.

I would never have guessed, but last.fm tells me this is my #2 all time most played album. Last time I played it was 3 years ago though. Glad to rediscover it!

Leaving Eden

The gloomy weather is giving me a fit of nostalgic autumn blues. I just looked back to what I was listening to 15 years ago. (I still love last.fm for things like this.) Turns out it was Leaving Eden by Antimatter. Fits the mood perfectly open.spotify.com/album/3HTVRc...

Of all the failed chamfers and fillets, I had to look at over the past few days, I like these ones best. That chiseled bit on the right could be a thing, right?

I have a similar setup. I installed a small fan in the wall of the clean room that draws clean air from outside (and as a result keeps a steady airflow going through the door from the clean to the dusty room), and that works well enought for me.

Measure Twice, Cut Once

Yay, it's an xkcd about woodworking! xkcd.com/3149

I thought I was almost done yesterday. Turns out I needed a whole extra day to finish some details that looked like a quick fix but weren't. 3D is hard.

This is awesome. I've been following you on Goodreads for a long time, it's nice to have a different way to browse your reviews. One thing I noticed: you seem to read/review way less non-fiction. How come?

Today, I spent a whole day figuring out what should happen when two chamfers meet at an angle that is not 90⁰. And that's with straight edges on all sides. My respect for the complexity of other CAD programs has grown once more.

Joints are hard • Maqet Calculating the geometry of joints is hard. This is how we are doing it in Maqet.

In furniture design, joints matter. They play a crucial role in making a design pop. But in CAD, they’re so much work that you'd be forgiven if you skip drawing them. In Maqet, there is no excuse, as drawing any joint is just a few clicks. At least, that's the goal. Check it out: buff.ly/5LNkkDY

Joints are hard • Maqet Calculating the geometry of joints is hard. This is how we are doing it in Maqet.

I found 45 possible ways to join two boards at a right angle. You would probably only ever build 3 or so of those. But I had to teach Maqet how to distinguish them. It wasn't easy, but I think I solved it: buff.ly/5LNkkDY

Ooh I see. I had to Google it, I'm from Belgium and I had never even heard of them.

Those look really good. Love the logo as well. But... What are they?

That is way too pretty for smashing into things!

I got the idea while reading The WEIRDest people in the world, where the author makes the case that we've only recently started thinking in terms of "spending", "saving" and "costing" time, instead of something you can't control and it resonated.

I'm experimenting with banning clocks from my line of sight. I found I was constantly checking the time, reflecting I'm spending my time well. But not every minute has to be productive. I now try only looking at the time when there is good reason to. I think it helps me stay in a healthier rhythm.

First world problem: how hard it is to draw joints in CAD. It takes so much time! Often it's not that important to actually draw them out, but the perfectionist in me wants the satisfaction of seeing my design, including all the small details.

I kinda like how hard it is to render realistic lighting. Predicting the interactions between light and shadow come so naturally to us, but a computer has to brute-force its way through it for 3 minutes. I also kinda hate it, I want my render to be fast and look good!

Never heard of it! I found an emulated version on archive.org, even though I'm not old enough to have worked in DOS, playing around with it makes me nostalgic.

What is Maqet • Maqet What is Maqet, and how is it different from other woodworking design software?

Most woodworking software is either:
- Quick and intuitive, but clunky at scale
- Or powerful, but overkill for one-off builds
We’re building the best of both worlds. Full story: buff.ly/X5vBX21

When learning a new topic/skill, you often have to choose between a linear approach (school or online course) which is not goal-oriented, or a chaotic approach (reading blogs, watching YouTube,...) which is inefficient in its own way. It feels like there must be a better way.

I wouldn't have expected so many planes coming together to look good, but wow, that is really something. Also, nice lighting you got there!