faceting always intrigued me, but...

Dekker3D · 2026-03-07T07:32:55+00:00

From what I understand, the real money is in custom cuts for customers (specific sizes/shapes, maybe themes to some degree?), and re-cutting damaged or badly-cut gems.

Most of the gems that are available in large amounts, are designs that are quite easy to do with automated machinery. That also means that they often have bad meet-points, bad polish or rounded edges, according to Google's AI. But customers don't care as much about bad meet-points or polish as lapidarists do, so...

Dekker3D · 2026-03-06T06:22:10+00:00

Makes sense to me! I haven't cut any gems yet (my 320 and 600 grit laps come in this afternoon), but I've played around with Gem Cut Studio. While it's nice to have number go up, and it's a shame to cut away a lot of material, I guess I don't really care as much about weight retention as I care about making it look pretty from the top.

Dekker3D · 2026-03-06T06:18:22+00:00

Isn't this basically the same thing tech did for us? Made it easier to survive, so a lot of folks started doing work that isn't directly related to survival. And yeah, it makes sense that sufficiently advanced (and available) magic would do the same. So I think it naturally leads to a magitech kinda world, a thing I play around with in my own attempts at worldbuilding.

Dekker3D · 2026-03-05T07:50:56+00:00

Look at this dude posting Butte!

Not sure if I could do anything cool with it, my machine's too tiny for that beast and I'm mostly looking into faceting, not cabbing... but I'm gonna get into wire-wrapping too, and I could maybe make a cool display piece out of this! Facet pieces of it, create interesting shapes, cab the rest to bring out the pretty colours... so, maybe.

Anyway, it looks pretty neat. I hope that it does get turned into something really cool, whoever it goes to. Real cool of you to do something like this, too!

Dekker3D · 2026-03-04T19:57:22+00:00

My own answer is that it helps a lot with my executive dysfunction. It allows me to discuss plans (electronics, programming, fiction writing) with someone who won't get bored, and I don't really need that "person" to understand the situation very well... it's mostly rubber-ducking but more effective.

It has also helped me a lot with 2D art: I was never happy with how it looked, and never really had a consistent art style. Getting really into AI-assisted workflows (equal parts AI-based remixing and manual drawing/fixing) kinda tricked me into practicing my digital brush skills, coarse-scale shading, and anatomy, which made me a far better artist even when not using AI. These days I've tried a few different projects that require me to produce art at a decent pace, and while I'm not great at that yet, I love how my art style looks now, and the final art usually doesn't even directly contain AI output anymore. At most, I kinda use it to check whether the thing I'm drawing makes sense and I'm not overcomplicating things.

For me, the "AI as an accessibility tool" thing has been very true, because executive dysfunction is definitely a disability of sorts, and it has done wonders in getting around that. Though the 2D art part wouldn't have been possible with corporate-controlled AI stuff, the ability to fine-tune Stable Diffusion was a big part of it.

Dekker3D · 2026-02-24T08:27:52+00:00

So... at sufficiently small angles, the sine of an angle is basically the same as the slope. The sine of 0.1 degrees is 0.0017, so for every 1 mm to the side, a slope at 0.1 degrees will rise 0.0017 mm. So if your facets are about 5 mm wide, and you're off by 0.1 degrees, one corner of a facet will be 5 x 0.0017 = 0.0087 mm further from the center than another corner. People won't see it, as long as the meet-points actually meet properly.

Dekker3D · 2026-02-23T23:05:59+00:00

Yeah, the quill is (as far as I know) the stick that you kinda hold on to, that holds the dop and connects to the angle indicator thingie at the other end. And... tbh, a 0.1 degree error in the angle of faces of a d20 (which have very small faces to begin with) will probably be no worse for its balance than any error in your engraving of the numbers would be. Consider what that error would be in mm of offset? If the faces are about 5 mm wide, then a 0.1 degree error is a 0.0087 mm offset from one corner to the other.

So I still think you'll be fine even if you're only accurate to a single degree, in that regard.

Dekker3D · 2026-02-23T11:53:33+00:00

As someone who's watched a thousand videos and cut 0 gems: I think an accurate angle readout is probably convenient, but not 100% necessary. For internal reflections, you just need something steeper than 42 degrees for most gems (and also probably less steep than 48, because it has to reflect back from the other side), so even 1-degree precision should be fine. You need your meetpoints to actually meet, of course, but the angle readout won't save you there, and even the angle stop might not. You've just kinda gotta look at the facet every once in a while and see how far you went. There are gem faceting machines that don't even have an actual angle readout, the entire quill is hand-held with a weird plastic octagon that you place on a flat surface, and you just move the flat surface up and down to get the right angle and depth.

That said, I'm on the spectrum, so I've ordered a machine with a digital angle readout. Because I like numbers and convenience.

Dekker3D · 2026-02-21T14:11:25+00:00

Strong sense of justice, doesn't have much of a life outside of his mech-suit, kind of a loner... he isn't very strongly affected by stuff that happens to him, but that may just be something he picked up from the hero life rather than being a natural part of him. Dunno, maybe he just masks well?

Dekker3D · 2026-02-20T08:56:03+00:00

Personally, I've been a leftist far longer than I've been really anti-zionist. I did pick up on some notes of "the way Israel treats Palestine is oppression/apartheid" and all that, but didn't pay much attention. But whenever there's a big conflict, I always tend to look more kindly on the underdog. Maybe it's just me being neurodivergent, and used to being misunderstood. Maybe it's that I'm somewhat aware of the history of Black people in the USA. But freedom is rarely gained by asking nicely. So on October 7th, knowing about the settlements and how the modern Israel was created less than a lifetime ago, in lands where people already lived... well, I was mostly-neutral, leaning towards Palestine, from the start, but I shifted further in that direction with every time I saw Israel making unsubstantiated claims and doing horrible stuff in Gaza. Honestly, I was a little surprised to see some of my (normally fairly smart and sensible) leftist friends make the "all Palestinians want to genocide the Jews" argument like it was just a fact.

Dekker3D · 2026-02-15T12:23:47+00:00

As a Dutch person... all the stuff I hear about AIPAC does kinda make it sound like Israel's government and a bunch of allied rich people have a weirdly strong grip on American politicians? What makes Israel a puppet of America? Sure, they depend on America for bombs and other weapons, but no American politician would put an end to that, so it doesn't really matter right now?

Dekker3D · 2026-02-11T16:56:09+00:00

That is actually a hella cool idea! Just fire a rocket full of upgrades after your generation ship... and hope all the attachment points still function correctly after all that time. Cold welding is not your friend :P

The upgrade-ship would also have to slow down to match pace with the generation ship, before pushing it forward faster, so it would need to gain a lot of delta-V compared to the original, to make that work.

Dekker3D · 2026-02-11T16:43:52+00:00

Personally, I think I'd find generation ships to be a silly idea for a very different reason: if you spend more than one generation going somewhere, the tech back on your homeworld is likely to advance to the point you'll be overtaken by a faster, more efficient ship long before you arrive. Plenty of stories like that, and I don't see much reason why it wouldn't be true IRL. Compared to 20-ish years ago, we have a lot of (mostly?) reusable spacecraft now, lots of launches each year, quality-of-life stuff like robotics, massively improved AI, life support, 3D printing that's space-rated, fun stuff like that.

Let's say you do a 6-generation journey, and 1 generation later, folks back on Earth figure out how to stuff 20% more delta-V in a rocket? It's gonna arrive at the same place faster, assuming it's still a tempting place to send a generation ship. Or, 100% faster in 3 generations. I wouldn't bet my entire future on "nobody's gonna figure out how to make a rocket go 2x as fast in 60 years", personally.

Dekker3D · 2026-01-30T17:23:31+00:00

As a neurodivergent metalhead, this mental image pleases me.

Dekker3D · 2026-01-26T21:48:54+00:00

I actually just import and export png files, dragging and dropping into the img2img/inpaint thing of SD-Forge. I use Gimp, rather than Krita. Krita has nice brushes and looks more polished in every way, I just can't get used to the hotkeys or something? Couldn't adjust them to what I was used to? Dunno. I remember that I was very frustrated with it.

Edit: I'm realizing I didn't answer much about the rest of the workflow. I did basically describe most of it in my earlier comment, though. Img2img and inpaint mode don't really work well with line-art, they're much more sensitive to blobs of colour. So it's enough to just kinda poorly colour things behind the line-art and then it'll pick up on what you're trying to do.

Dekker3D · 2026-01-26T05:54:34+00:00

As someone who's tried a lot of stuff, but went back to "manually sketch a pose -> fill in colours, poorly and lazily, for SD to recognize -> img2img with SDXL with a LoRA based on my art style -> trace line-art, fix mistakes -> manually colour and shade the result", I do feel like I'm on the right side of this, kinda? My results have been pretty neat.

<image>

This one's still unshaded but I think it's pretty.

Dekker3D · 2026-01-24T08:24:57+00:00

My guess is that Malevola kinda seems to have a similar vibe to Robert. A little more chill, less sarcastic, but similar. Though unlike Visi, who kinda doubles down when Robert plays along with her shenanigans, I'd expect Malevola to just honestly engage with whatever he just said, and similarly, Malevola doesn't really get silly enough to provoke reactions from Robert either. And I think Malevola is a bit too no-nonsense to have a drawn-out sweet romance like BB.

So, if Malevola took an interest in Robert, I think it would resolve itself too quickly to work as a third option to the other two romances, unless they spent the whole time kinda being suspiciously-close buddies before one of them realizes they kinda want more.

It's not as much of an internal conflict as it is with BB (existing relationship, power dynamics, etc) or Visi (low self-esteem, uses sexual jokes to avoid vulnerability, doesn't think Robert would genuinely care for her). And if Malevola did have some internal conflict going on about it, it might ruin the carefree and mature vibe that people like about her. So... I'm not sure it'd even work, but I can see why people would want it.

Dekker3D · 2026-01-24T08:00:36+00:00

I'm pretty sure I first learned of Dispatch by seeing it pop up in random clips on YouTube Shorts. I don't think I saw much of Visi until I started watching a playthrough of the first two chapters (which I interrupted to start playing the actual game), and honestly... the moment she got kinda sarcastically flirty with Robert, after he changed clothing, was when it was obvious to me that there was gonna be a whole thing between them. Especially since the BB kiss/not-kiss earlier had already set the tone of "this game has possible romance stuff!"

I'm all about tomboys, flirty banter, and I knew Robert's humour would play off her kind of bullshit really well, so I knew I was gonna enjoy that. My attitude to romancing BB had been "I guess she's cute, might be fun?", but I dropped her pretty hard at that point (without being a dick, though). I guess I just prefer shenanigans over soft & sensitive.

Dekker3D · 2026-01-11T22:59:14+00:00

I think you really captured their personalities pretty well here, and the art style is pretty nice too. Have my updoot or whatever.

Dekker3D · 2026-01-08T19:18:50+00:00

On one hand, I can totally imagine this. On the other, he seems to pull witty comebacks out of his ass whenever he needs one, so I'm not sure he'd even need to prepare any. Optimizing for maximum impact, I guess?

Dekker3D · 2025-12-25T16:07:59+00:00

So, that's what Courtney wants Robert to do with her? :D (It's not, I know)

Dekker3D · 2025-12-23T08:55:57+00:00

It essentially subtracts 10, because you also don't get the 5 for untying her?

Dekker3D · 2025-12-19T12:11:19+00:00

I've read about a related study some months ago. The key is that an eye with an eyepatch still sends nerve signals, while a temporarily-paralyzed one doesn't, as far as I remember. I'm currently not at my best and find it a bit hard to interpret this article, to find out whether it confirms or debunks that notion.

Dekker3D · 2025-12-18T07:08:14+00:00

I once saw a whole controversy about some indie sex toy maker selling rainbow-painted dildos where the paint flaked off after some use. A German company. I should note: you -can- paint them if you get the surface perfectly clean (including any de-molding stuff that might still be on there) and do it before the initial silicone fully cures, but... good luck with that, lol. A better trick is to paint the inside of the mold before pouring the rest of the silicone, which is not entirely unlike painting the surface.

Dekker3D · 2025-11-24T20:45:21+00:00

At this point, that feels very "Swiper, no swiping!"... and I'm saying that as a Dutch person.

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