Author Archive
New Word Alert: Endling
This one’s sad. An endling is the last known living individual of a now-extinct species.
Arrived at this word by way of reading about the Thylacine. Very much worth a watch is this short film about a performance adaptation of a picture book titled The Dream of the Thylacine.
Posted on Friday, February 3rd, 2023.
New Word Alert!
Deaccession, to sell or otherwise let go from a collection.
Sort of the opposite of acquire. Weird that we don’t say dequire instead.
Posted on Wednesday, February 1st, 2023.
New Bookmarks
In addition to dusting off this blog, here are two other new links:
- jimdevona.art: the main place to find my art-related links. Previously hosted here, masking this blog for a while, but now set up as a separate account.
- mastodonbooks.net/@anoved: Nothing to see here yet, but just created as a hedge against Twitter’s unraveling, and for commentary more focused on art and books. (Mastodon is sort of like an open-source version of Twitter. I did find it confusing to sign up, as there are multiple servers; they’re all interoperable, but each has a different account creation policy, and some are open only by invite.)
Posted on Monday, January 30th, 2023.
Blog Spring
It seems the spring season of renewal for reviving blogs is now. My dad’s: dddevona.blogspot.com
Posted on Sunday, January 29th, 2023.
Time for a New Front Wheel
Twelve years and some 16,000+ miles later, my new bike is still going strong – but it is finally time for a new front wheel. Lots of riding means lots of stopping, and all that brake wear was beginning to erode holes in the rim.
Ordered a new wheel through a local bike shop today. I am absolutely satisfied with the original Bike Wheel Warehouse Pure Tour rims – they’ve taken a lot of abuse and carried all kinds of loads.
Posted on Saturday, January 21st, 2023.
New Word Alert!
I like meeting new words. Today’s: coulee: a ravine, gully, or other erosion-related landscape feature that may or may not still contain water. Learned from Stephen Graham Jones’ Backbone of the World.
Posted on Friday, January 20th, 2023.
October 2020 Author Sketches
I recently read a 1954 anthology titled “50 Great Short Stories” edited by Milton Crane. The book was mistitled; “50 Texts Exalting Ennui and Miserable Marriages” would have been more accurate. That said, a few of the stories were memorable! Here are sketches of the authors of half of them.
Clockwise, from top left: Katherine Mansfield, V. S. Pritchett, Ring Lardner, Irwin Shaw, and J. D. Salinger.
I’m drawing authors for Patreon this month. Sign up to claim one (perhaps accompanied by a story synopsis). I’ll probably do a few more from this book, then I look forward to reading something fresh!
Posted on Thursday, October 8th, 2020.
Creating Heightmaps of Large Regions
An open question from Josh Ajima about making 3D printable models of Virginia prompted me to consider the general problem of finding a suitable elevation dataset for a large region like a state.
@DesignMakeTeach Here’s a start. (https://t.co/qS9F9kWMeQ clipped to state boundary & saved at quarter res. in QGIS) pic.twitter.com/hmwwX7dj6U
— Jim (@anoved) September 28, 2015
In this post I will explain how I made the image I posted in reply, using free tools and data.
Posted on Tuesday, September 29th, 2015.
Adjustable Phone Clamp and Assembly Animation
I made some parts to combine a length of ½” PVC and a tripod into a mount to hold my phone in any position over my desk or workbench. (This could be useful for recording more timelapse drawing clips…) The ball joint clamp design is inspired by a commercial dashboard mount but redesigned to be easily printable without support. Find the files and more details on Thingiverse, including an easily customized version of the phone clip for compatibility with other devices.
I designed the parts with OnShape. To date I have been focused on learning how to draw within Part Studios. After designing and printing these, I decided to see if I could connect them in an Assembly. To my surprise, it worked, despite having known nothing about mate connectors while drawing the parts. Pretty neat to be able to explore mechanical interactions in software.
Posted on Monday, September 28th, 2015.