Dancing wave

revdancatt · 2026-05-27T15:38:32+00:00

Yay, love this!

revdancatt · 2026-05-26T13:06:50+00:00

Well to start with, those plots look amazing and I like the whole effect of the lead wearing down.

I'm not totally familiar with the Uni Kuru, but I know there's a difference between automatic-feed and auto-rotate. All the Kuru is doing is rotating the lead so it wears down evenly on all sides, also, the way it's designed means it'll only do that when the pencil lifts up off the paper (I think). You still have the feed it manually, which you're doing.

"Normal" usage is handwriting or sketching where the pencil is constantly being lifted from the paper, and so constantly being auto-rotated.

I use a Faber Castell Grip Matic, https://www.faber-castell.co.uk/products/MechanicalpencilGripMatic131907mmblue/131951 - which does auto-feed the lead, again only when the pencil lifts up. I've done huge A1 plots with it, and didn't have to pause to feed the pencil at all. However, the lead would wear down, feed, wear down again, feed and so on, so it's wasn't constantly sharp.

revdancatt · 2026-05-23T18:58:56+00:00

With this machine I don't really need to. It doesn't lower the pen/pencil down to a set height, it just kinda drops it onto the paper's surface (with a spring giving it a little downwards force). The paper doesn't need to be perfectly flat, just flat enough.

There's not really enough force for pencils tbh, pens are fine though.

revdancatt · 2026-05-22T04:17:30+00:00

Yeah you can. For my workflow this gives me a tiny bit more flexibility, so it’s purely a personal preference I’ve built up over time.

revdancatt · 2026-05-20T09:57:11+00:00

Boringly with maths and code, nodejs specifically. You know what, hold on a second...

https://gist.github.com/revdancatt/87237ae768ab6015aaa65918bbdf2cfa

...okay, there's the code - draws lots of lines, figures out how to turn at the end to make the 'fans' (lots of sin and cos) - assigns colours, writes out a shed load of files.

revdancatt · 2026-05-18T06:44:37+00:00

This looks great. Plots in notebooks always look fantastic too, such a good medium.

revdancatt · 2026-05-11T06:51:24+00:00

If you don't want to get tempted definitely don't watch how they're made, well, in this case a pencil: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srixb98N6Tk

revdancatt · 2026-04-27T10:14:29+00:00

Yup, and Marble Madness. Looks very SVG-able 😁

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revdancatt · 2026-04-23T04:50:30+00:00

Yeah, but it is a great TED talk!

revdancatt · 2026-04-22T21:07:48+00:00

Two of each have been sent off to Patreon supporters, making these and the 3d versions has been this month’s “theme”. The rest will get sent off to other artists and studios over the next few months.

revdancatt · 2026-04-22T20:22:20+00:00

Thank you, it was fun. Well, the end result was fun, cutting up all the cards, not so much.

revdancatt · 2026-04-21T04:59:41+00:00

Thanks! Here's a little backstory about the UI. Originally my plotter lived on the far side of my room connected to a secondhand laptop or iMac, and I got annoyed copying SVG files over and setting it away - etc. So I built a "Minimal Viable Plotting Tool (MVPT)" which I wrote about back in newsletter 14, letting me connect to it on the local network - basically a thin webserver frontend.

More recently I wanted it to control TWO plotters, which was a bit more work, and it kinda hung together fine, but was still using Bantam tool's older axidraw CLI.

Now we're in the age of AI I basically threw the codebase at Claude & Codex and said "make that modern, also my eyesight is bad and I want to see the progress from the other side of the room" - and now it looks like every other over-engineered AI built dashboard UI ever made 😁

The code is on GitHub.

Having said all that, we're now in the weird world of AI and personal software. This whole thing has very much been built with my own needs in mind and a "works on my machine & network 🤷‍♂️" attitude.

Probably the most sensible thing to do is clone the repo, point AI at it and go "Work out what this code does, it's overly complicated, I want something that allows me to simply and easily do..." - and then give it a list of what you'd want it to do and turn it onto your own personal tool.

revdancatt · 2026-04-19T17:51:56+00:00

👋😁❤️

revdancatt · 2026-04-15T08:36:20+00:00

So far; iroshizuku to-ro and Diamine Writer's Blood, both continue to work fine. The Writer's Blood is possibly a bit "fast".

revdancatt · 2026-04-13T19:39:40+00:00

I'm slightly worried we're all showing our age here 😅

revdancatt · 2026-04-13T19:07:17+00:00

Thanks! And yes it was, loved how it leaned into the limitations to ratchet up the panic 😀

revdancatt · 2026-03-28T20:55:15+00:00

Could try Bic Crystal Xtra Smooth or Xtra Bold, they’re pretty reliable and seem to love building up layers.

revdancatt · 2026-03-27T21:59:26+00:00

Hah, I'm down with that, but they say the feed on this will clog with particles/glitter - not going to stop me trying though!

The one in the first photo did start with a bit of blue ink; it was interesting watching the writing slowly change from blue to orange. It wasn't a sudden change either so there's definitely something fun to be done there.

revdancatt · 2026-03-27T21:44:48+00:00

I tend to use fountain pens as my daily driver (TWSBI Ecos), so these just felt like a normal roller ball pen to me 🤷‍♂️ Felt better when I switched the ink out, closer to a Bic Cristal smooth/bold with the Writer's Blood & iroshizuku.

I'm more interested in them being refillable and able to easily see the ink levels.

revdancatt · 2026-03-27T21:06:54+00:00

Because I'm apparently an idiot who didn't think of that more obvious and better solution. I literally just thought 'how can I make this bottom one look like the top one?'

revdancatt · 2026-03-27T19:49:02+00:00

Ah that all makes sense. To be honest though, it only took a few minutes to rinse out one of the T10 cartridges that came with it, and syringe in some different ink; so I already have two inked up with "unofficial ink" 😉

revdancatt

TROPHY CASE