In my last post, I talked about designing a botanical plaque to label trees in the yard. The design had some flaws. It was two pieces epoxied together and most of them broke apart after 6–12 months. I suspect water got in the gap, froze, and helped separate the pieces from the dried epoxy. This … Continue reading Botanical Plaques, Mark 2 & 3
Author: Brian Enigma
Brian Enigma is a Portlander, manipulator of atoms & bits, minor-league blogger, and all-around great guy. He typically writes about the interesting “maker” projects he's working on, but sometimes veers off into puzzles, software, games, local news, and current events.
Botanical Plaques, Mark 1
I have a bunch of cool-looking and weird trees at the house. In a notebook somewhere, and elsewhere in a text file, I have a list of their names. And if I’m honest, that’s fine for the one time every couple of years where I want to look up what’s what. If you’ve been to … Continue reading Botanical Plaques, Mark 1
British Chocolates: Part 1
One month ago — on July 4th — it was Independence Day in the US. I don’t think I did anything special for it last year because of the pandemic, but the year before I joined some friends for High Tea at my favorite local tea restaurant. I thought that was a fun subversive way … Continue reading British Chocolates: Part 1
Decorative LEGO Cat Shelves
When using picture-boxes as cat stairsteps, you can’t put anything fragile inside, so what do you do? You attach custom-cut LEGO baseplates!
Cottage Stationery
We used scratch paper and Maker ingenuity to craft custom stationery for the new cottage.
An Evening at Dr. Raven’s Manor
A new bar opened in downtown Portland. Raven’s Manor is a haunted mansion themed cocktail lounge that Christine and I were dying to check out.
Using Star Wars Biomes as a Screensaver
This past week, the Disney+ service released Star Wars Biomes and Star Wars Vehicle Flythroughs. They are both wonderfully relaxing ambient background videos, in the same vein as their Zenimation. The vehicle flythroughs take you through the Millennium Falcon and a Star Destroyer. The Biomes take you across the surface of six planets. The Biomes … Continue reading Using Star Wars Biomes as a Screensaver
On the iPhone Gonzo Divination
In the past few weeks, partly out of silliness and partly out of artistic creativity, I’ve been posting a #GonzoDivination image to The Socials each morning. Pre-hashtag, it started with taking a semi-traditional tarot spread, but using a combination of divination and inspirational cards, instead of using all cards from a single deck. Over time, … Continue reading On the iPhone Gonzo Divination
A Cat Food Calendar
In these pandemic days of time losing meaning, with days sliding into one another, and difficulty keeping schedules, Christine and I ran into a few snags in the chores. We feed the cats twice a day, a can each time, two cans a day. When you start with a flat of 24 cans, that’s a … Continue reading A Cat Food Calendar
Fixing Oregon’s “I Voted” Stickers
Here in Oregon, everyone votes by mail. This is great because you can vote in a bathrobe and slippers, taking your time to research candidates and measures — all over a cup of tea. You then drop it in the mail or take it to an official dropbox, and you’re done. The one problem with … Continue reading Fixing Oregon’s “I Voted” Stickers