MakerThornhill

A close up of a person wearing a yellow rain coat, wet with rain. Over their shoulder a bicycle is propped up against a grey pillar. Yellow leaves cover the grass behind it.

Rainy autumn days are for cycling to the bakery and only getting 50% drenched.

A fluffy black and white tuxedo cat, cradled in someone’s arms. The cat has a grumpy expression (although he secretly loves it).

Pros: Can jump pretty high, have feather fall, claws!

Cons: people keep picking you up because you’re just a baby! Oh my goodness look at him, he’s just a baby! Oh my-

Nothing too adventurous, just paint it and add brass and wood elements

A wall-mounted fan, partially dismantled upon the floor showing some of its components.

Normalise immediately voiding the warranty.

A large cardboard box (the length and width of almost an arms length), strapped to the back of a bicycle using bungee straps. The box overhangs the bicycle and is pushed right up against the saddle.

Normalise carrying big ass boxes on a bicycle.

It's Monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) migration season in Texas. At least 90% of all southward migration passes through Texas, either along the coast, or through central Texas.

They'll overwinter in Mexico, then return.

Let's talk about the utter weirdness of generational migration.

Cycle for 30 minutes and get bread and pastries, um yes please

A silver and green bicycle rests against a bicycle rack on the pavement.

It’s a cycle to the bakery kind of morning

A Particle Tachyon single board computer next to a 3d printed prototype which houses some magnets, an 18650 battery, and a seeed xiao sense ble dev board.

The 3d printed protoype magnetically adhered to the back of one of our washing machines.

a screenshot from a webpage. Ascii art of a washing machine with some little waves in the center indicating it's running. It's labeled "Washer 02". Underneath, it says "running - for roughly 9374 minutes"

A rare practical project from me. I live in a building with ~16 units and we all share 2 washers/2 dryers. Very annoying to go all the way down to basement just to find out they're in use. So I'm putting together a low maintenance, non-invasive monitoring setup we can all use 🧵

Got some nature happening over here today

My first cupboard I made was a flimsy thing built out of thin wood and nails. It completely fell apart when I carried it down the stairs so these latest builds are a friggin triumph.

A 10 by 12 inch cabinet door, with rails and stiles of cherry wood, and a panel of maple plywood.

A side view of the cabinet door, showing the routed joint between rail and stile

I’ve made a cabinet door. The entire world of furniture with recessed panels has opened up to me. I have “I-could-probably-make-a-interior-door” levels of confidence right now.

So much time is wasted with:
1) trying to detect if something is real or was ai-generated

2) trying to explain to folks why their ai-generated solution is bad

3) having to fix problems created by the hallucination-machines

👏 AI (llms) 👏 WASTES 👏 TIME

the intensity of my anger at those who would criminalize the homeless — a population literally created by the greed and callousness of the ruling class — is very hard to contain. it was you who dismantled the safety net. if you don’t like the results, put it back

A green and silver bicycle propped up against a bench, overlooking a lake with trees along its banks. Battery, water bottle, and tool roll add a pop of orange on the bicycle.

Celebrate the 18th anniversary of getting your bicycle by cycling it around a lake.

Rowling's 24/7 commitment to being an absolute nightmare ghoul is sort of extraordinary. She has every option in the world for how to spend her life and she commits herself entirely to hatred and self-righteous mean-spiritedness; some are more effective at evil but nobody puts in the hours like her.

A loaf of bread pokes out from an open, red and grey bicycle pannier

Now I’m not a morning person… but I WILL get up to cycle to the bakery for bread.

I love cycling.
I love bread.

Health research cuts are terrible for the economy; these are productive jobs. Economy-stimulating jobs. In 2024, every $1 spent by NIH generated $2.56 in economic activity. The repercussions of decreasing academically free health research funding will be widespread.

Door bell installed!

As an introvert, no guests thank you, but also please press the marble door button, but also no solicitation, but yes do make it ring I’m very proud of it, but do go away, just press th

A four sided wooden box with recessed panel sides, made of oak, cherry, and birch. The box has no back or front, allowing it to mount onto a wall.

The box mounted low on a wall, now full of wires and electronics

Door bell electronics that need a box 🤝 me needing an excuse to practice making recessed panels.

Just need to make a cover!

Me whenever I’m in the crawlspace: Come out to the coast, we’ll get together, have a few laughs…

Several yellow flowers of Black Eyes Susan’s amongst tall scraggly grass & plants

The purple blooming head of Milkweed

A flowering yellow Partridge Pea poking out of a scraggly mass of grass and leaves

Wild Bergamot with its pink spidery petals

Wildflowers finally appearing in the field! I spread some of their seeds last year, in areas where I removed invasive Russian/Autumn olive

Image of a big with water and red moss in the foreground and conifer trees in the background.

Photo of sundews on moss.

Happy #BogDay. The most misunderstood ecosystems on our planet have been ridiculed, drained, burned, and destroyed throughout modern history. These water purifiers, carbon keepers, storytellers, and beautiful places deserve our respect, today and every day.

And here’s it in action during an inside test, wired up to a microcontroller, a ringing generator, and a ringer bell.

The constructed door bell button with the marble button illuminated. The once blue marble glows a fantastical swirled green, like a piece of captured magic stored in glass.

The great thing about using a marble as a button is that you can put an LED behind it and it’ll glow with all the magic of a wizard’s orb

An aged bronze door bell plate with a blue marble button. The plate is rectangular and mounted onto a 3D printed housing, which is painted to match the bronze patina.

The bronze door bell plate (unmounted) next to a momentary tactile switch, a brass cup thing, a hand coiled spring, and a blue marble

I have a door bell plate and no button.

But that’s ok because I also have a switch, a brass thing, a spring, and a marble I found in the garden.

This is certainly the tism talking but I find so much joy in curiosity and the process of learning that the idea of wanting to outsource thinking to a machine is unfathomable to me

That’s the fun part! Why wouldn’t you want to do that?

Marriages, divorces, birthday parties, anniversaries… all documented in local newspapers.

Or the family where 3 of 6 siblings all owned different dry cleaners in the same town… and I don’t know why.

Maybe it was trendy to start a laundry business in the 50s? Did they all attend a start-a-dry-cleaning-company seminar?

I can tell you about the niece that survived a plane crash as a passenger, then started taking flying lessons months after…

Or the granddaughter, pregnant at 15 and married 1 day after the pregnancy test.