Steven Hicks

Dyed golf disc. Gold rim, yellow block mostly behind disc name (aviar), wine & aqua green circular swirls like a vinyl record.

#3: a "factory second" disc that I bought new, used a few times, and decided I hate.

This time I spaced on placing the disc. I had a line marked on the disc so I could center the disc name in the yellow section for good contrast... But forgot to align when placing.

Those colors though 🤤

Dyed Kastaplast golf disc. Blue and purple flower effect over the center, streaks bleeding out toward the edge.

#2: another used play it again find. This brand's plastic is supposed to be stellar at absorbing dye. It had color to begin with, but I wanted to experiment with a floral look and the plastic so I dyed it anyway.

I messed up the timing, badly, and got some nasty streaks all over the edges.

Disc golf disc dyed with a red, orange, and yellow swirl pattern.

Back side of disc, rim spin dyed with a red to orange fade.

Disc 1: an older but good shape play it again find. I considered wiping the stamp, but I thought I could swirl to accentuate it. Unfortunately I didn't realize the swirl direction would be backwards for a righty... Which maybe no one but me cares about.

Looks good though! Wish I'd used more yellow.

Forgot the before again. This was off-white with a gold rim.

Don't tell but I used someone's hair clip to get parallel circular lines. I washed it before putting it back!

The more I look at this one the more I like it, but I hate throwing it and want it gone because it is taking up space.

I was on the fence about wiping this stamp. There's the dumb factory second stamp which I obviously don't want... But the original stamp is pretty cool. Right before I laid the disc I decided I was going to wipe it... But decided nahhh because the layout just didn't make sense without the stamp.

Dyed golf disc. Gold rim, yellow block mostly behind disc name (aviar), wine & aqua green circular swirls like a vinyl record.

#3: a "factory second" disc that I bought new, used a few times, and decided I hate.

This time I spaced on placing the disc. I had a line marked on the disc so I could center the disc name in the yellow section for good contrast... But forgot to align when placing.

Those colors though 🤤

Moral, way less time if I'm also applying heat. I've since settled on 2 hours heat, 1 hour without.

I also forgot a before photo. It was mostly light blue, with that white halo edge.

I still think it looks nice and I'll try to sell it... Just a misfire.

I started it too late in the evening to do my intention of 3 hours with heat, 1 hour without. I got tired and unplugged the heat at 2 hours, then let it sit overnight. Didn't have time in the morning to pull it, and ended up leaving it for 16 hours total. I wasn't expecting such a bad result.

Dyed Kastaplast golf disc. Blue and purple flower effect over the center, streaks bleeding out toward the edge.

#2: another used play it again find. This brand's plastic is supposed to be stellar at absorbing dye. It had color to begin with, but I wanted to experiment with a floral look and the plastic so I dyed it anyway.

I messed up the timing, badly, and got some nasty streaks all over the edges.

I'm very happy with the spin dyed rim on the back. Overall this is a really completed disc. I'll try to sell it, if priced right I think it'll go even though it's used.

Disc golf disc dyed with a red, orange, and yellow swirl pattern.

Back side of disc, rim spin dyed with a red to orange fade.

Disc 1: an older but good shape play it again find. I considered wiping the stamp, but I thought I could swirl to accentuate it. Unfortunately I didn't realize the swirl direction would be backwards for a righty... Which maybe no one but me cares about.

Looks good though! Wish I'd used more yellow.

This manufactured urgency prompted a similar lack of concentration I feel on the course. I had some good ideas for these discs, and pretty good plans, but in the moment I just spaced and forgot the plan.

I went on a little run of discs over the last week. I got a little fire in my belly, because I decided I'm going to try to get about ten or so into my local disc shop for consignment by black Friday. Eek!

*How many* prompts would you rather write than one shell script?

I'm on the verge of finding out my number.

LLMs continue to be FUCKING TERRIBLE at writing bash scripts, yet I continue to ask them to write bash scripts for me because I AM MORE FUCKING TERRIBLE at writing bash scripts.

something something job security?

A snippet of a conversation between Claude Code and myself. Claude: "Run this and share the debug output so we can see what's being extracted from the status table." Me: "Run it yourself"

YOU GUYS THE ROBOTS ARE GOING TO START MAKING US DO THEIR WORK FOR THEM

I also got some more practice on the back with spin dying. There are some artifacts there that I haven't figured out yet. Blank spots, and some bleeding (probably not enough evaporation time).

Also as you can see from all the colors on the edge this was my test disc for all my different dyes 🙃

You can see that dumb ink mark peeking through the green and I'm just going to have to get over it.

You can also see in the glue bed photo that I'd marked the spot with ink so I didn't forget *and I still forgot*.

2. This is a "factory second" disc that I got for a little discount. Annoyingly, Innova uses ball point pen to mark the rejects and the marks don't come off.

I figured "no problem I'll do some swirls with a dark color and cover the ink spot with dark color." Then I forgot to make that spot dark 🙃

I probably could have added more light blue after I realized this was happening, but I didn't think about that until after I'd already put the disc in.

I made 2 mistakes on this disc that will haunt me.

1. I meant it to be mostly light blue. I forgot while dropping dye into the bed that you need to wait for the acetone base to evaporate before adding a different color, or the colors will mix! So most of my light blue got mixed with the dark teal.

Dyed golf disc. 3/4 covered by swirls of dark teal, light blue, and neon green. 1/4 pure white.

Back side of disc. Spin-dyed ribbons of light blue and neon green.

Original disc. All white, with pen marked cross in center.

Glue bed before dying, with a polar grid underneath.

Aaaand another one today.

I *love* the colors on this disc... But I'm not sure I'll enjoy looking for it in the brush. I can't wait to throw it, I've been playing without a straight midrange, waiting until I got this one dyed. Hopefully the straightness keeps it out of the brush every throw.

The yellow on the original white disc photo is glue. I masked that area so I could dye it solid colors. (And then I messed those up by using the wrong medium, as you can see by a little bleed over the stamp.)

Purple and pink lotus flower dye in a Mint Salamander golf disc.

Back side of disc. Pinkish plate with a purple rim.

Dye bed before dying.

Plain white disc, before dying.

Another disc to report.

Tbh this is probably the one that convinces me to monetize this hobby, damnit. Not that I'll sell this specific disc, because it's a light weight that I can actually throw and those don't come around very often, but I'm pretty sure I can make more good ones like this.

(holy cow that motor is loud, isn't it?)

But I'm going to have some fucking sweet spin-dyed golf discs.

I'll show you the front side of this one tomorrow. It's good.

Also I got rid of all my vinyl years ago so I don't have anything to listen to anyway.

I'm guessing it sounds horrible.

But I can't really tell, because aside from the flash drive, the only outputs are rca and I don't have anything to plug that into.

So tonight I bought a used "digital converter" turntable for 20 bucks.

I guess it's for playing a record directly to a flash drive.

Update on this disc:

I stole my daughter's turntable while she was at cross country, and I spin-dyed a blue ring around the front (though it looks green), and green/yellow/blue on the back of the rim. It adds a nice frame and makes it feel more complete.