Daniel’s World 2.0: Recalibrated

 FedEx didn’t deliver on Wednesday like they said they would (shock, horror), but they finally rocked up at about 4pm on Thursday. Not ideal, but not the end of the world either. Six hours of solid building later — and by solid, I mean completely losing track of time and not realising how late it had gotten — the radio was alive and working beautifully. Yesterday I took it down to the customer at the radio club. We ran it through some diagnostics, and it passed everything cleanly. No weird faults, no solder joints playing hide and seek, no sudden panic halfway through testing. Just smooth, textbook success. It’s always a little satisfying when something you built with your own hands just works without needing any last-minute bodges. And somehow... that’s the end of the holidays already. School starts again tomorrow. Weirdly, I’m not dreading it. In fact, it almost feels like it couldn’t have come soon enough. Maybe it’s because after a couple weeks of moving at my own pace ...

The radio parts for my customer are now stuck in Australian customs. I’m not even surprised. Classic FedEx — or as I’ve been calling them lately, Fed-Up-with-Excessive-routing . It’s almost like they’re running a sightseeing tour for parcels. Turkey to Germany to Singapore to Australia to across Australia… and now it just sits. Probably enjoying the view while I sit here refreshing the tracking page like a madman. Ah, logistics. Anyway — five days left until school starts again, and weirdly, I’m kind of missing science class. It wasn’t particularly exciting on paper, but it ended up being one of the most chaotic and memorable parts of the term. We got away with so much — like the time someone splashed a tiny amount of 0.1M hydrochloric acid onto someone else’s hand and called it a “fight.” I mean, sure, maybe it technically crossed the line, but what’s a little acid banter between friends? And then there was the relentless talking, the game playing, the wildly inappropriate jokes ou...

 So I called this post GCode Supernova in the Sky , which is an objectively terrible pun on Champagne Supernova by Oasis — a song that’s been stuck in my head for absolutely no reason other than the fact that it’s just… really good. Maybe that’s the vibe I’m aiming for this week too. Slightly chaotic, surprisingly beautiful, and held together by something that doesn’t need to be explained. The chaos part? That would be my room and garage, both of which currently look like a robot exploded mid-repair. But it's all worth it because I finally got my hands on a Prusa i3 MK3S+, and it's everything I hoped it would be. Clean prints, no complaints, and a kind of reliability that makes my old Ender look like it was held together with hot glue and ambition. (It kind of was.) The Prusa has already run a few long jobs like an absolute dream — I think this might be the start of something great. Fixing up the Prusa wasn't too hard, but needed 'the works' (linear rods were sup...

Halfway through the first week of school holidays already — somehow both too fast and not fast enough. But hey, there has been progress. The printer’s finally back online and running better than ever. After a blown fuse in the PSU and a stepper driver that quite literally burnt out (RIP to that poor little chip), a bit of patience and calibration (and $10 of hard-earned cash) brought it all back to life. First prints look great, and I’ve jumped straight into something fun: printing some parts from my own take on a 3D-printable Morse code paddle key for ham radio use. It's a mashup of different design ideas I’ve had floating around I liked — now finally coming together in plastic. I’m printing the case parts in ABS and the rest in PLA, which is either genius or a disaster waiting to happen. I haven’t tested this design in ABS before, only exclusively PLA, so we’ll see if it holds up. (Side note for any fellow makers out there — eSun ABS+ is an excellent filament. Printing it ope...

Well, here we are. End of term. It didn’t creep up quietly, it just arrived — like the school bell that rings before you're quite ready to leave. The last few weeks have been solid. Not wildly exciting, not completely calm either, just filled with enough to keep me busy. Printer’s still broken, but at this point I think that’s become part of the character arc. Physics went fine in the end, the Excel jokes kept flowing, and I somehow managed to fix five computers in a week, which feels like both an achievement and a symptom of a deeper issue. But now that things have settled down, I’ve had time to think. About the term, sure, but also about all the posts I’ve made along the way. Back when I first started writing here, I didn’t expect it to last more than a few weeks. It was just something to fill time, a side thing to keep the thoughts in my head from bouncing around too loudly. Somewhere along the way, though, this became routine. And not in a boring, brushing-your-teeth kind of ...

Life update time. The printer’s still broken, completely out of action, but not everything is. I got my physics test back and, honestly, I have no idea why I stressed so much. Classic me: spiral into panic, overthink every possible mistake, and still end up with something respectable. No complaints. No regrets. Just the usual lesson in trusting myself a bit more. Now, obviously, it’s time to talk calculators. Because this blog never promised to be predictable. I had a thought earlier about how I think one of the best compliments you could give to a person is comparing them to your favourite calculator. And me being a massive nerd is very in the know when it comes to calculators, and I know some are far better than others. So I thought of a few models of calculator that come to mind that I think most people would become: HP 48GX – Quietly powerful. No startup fanfare, no overblown branding, just raw capability. It doesn’t ask to be noticed, but once you’ve used it, you don’t forget i...