Daniel’s World 2.0: Recalibrated

It’s been two weeks, I know. But I’ve been a little occupied, just dealing with the slow reset that comes with moving house. I’m downstairs now, near the front door. New room, new layout, new daily routine. The biggest win though? Insanely fast internet. Like, 350Mbps down and 250Mbps up. Probably enough bandwidth to self-host this blog from a Raspberry Pi duct-taped to the wall. Not that I’ve done that. Yet. Maybe once I can afford a domain name and find the motivation to go full sysadmin on it. Until then, I’ve been relying heavily on my ThinkPad for projects, which means Fusion 360 is… not really on the table. It runs about as well as a dial-up modem at a LAN party. FreeCAD? Also a no. It feels more like filing taxes than modelling things. So I’ve shifted to OpenSCAD — basically the nerdier, code-based cousin of traditional CAD software. You type what you want, and it renders it. Possibly useful. Possibly an overengineered coaster. Either way, it compiles. Now that I’ve got solid ...

  She said something maybe two minutes ago. Just an offhand comment while talking about a packed schedule: “Why does everything happen all at once?” And it’s weird how a simple line can flip a switch in your brain. Because I’ve got the opposite problem. My workload, my responsibilities — I’ve scaled them back. Intentionally. Slowly. The mountain of things that used to sit on my desk, both literal and metaphorical, has gradually flattened out into almost nothing. Now I’ve got time. Maybe too much of it. Time to think, time to overthink, time to reflect and spiral and wonder if reducing the noise also reduced something else I didn’t mean to lose. I used to feel like I was drowning in projects and obligations. Radios, printers, code, study, writing — everything stacked like Jenga blocks that I just kept adding to without ever pulling any out. It was chaotic. But it kept me moving. Now? It’s like I’ve emptied the schedule, cleared the board — and found that the quiet doesn’t always fe...

 The Ender is very, very broken. Like, not “oh no, it needs a new nozzle” broken — more like “the entire hotend assembly is physically bent and I am officially done pretending I’ll fix it” broken. It's not the first time I’ve let go of a printer that gave me more problems than prints, but this one's different. There's something weirdly personal about this one. Like the Da Vinci 1.0 I talk about sometimes — yeah, that printer was a nightmare, but it mattered. Not because of the machine itself, but because of what I built through it. The connections. The memories. The way working on it became a sort of background noise to some very specific conversations, especially with her. (And no, I promise not every positive memory in my life is somehow tied to her. But yeah, a good chunk of the memorable ones are.) The Ender’s kind of the same. Not as pivotal, but still something. We talked a lot while I worked on it — mostly late nights, mostly off-topic. And honestly, I think that...

Sunday again, and somehow it feels like it got here faster than usual. Tomorrow’s my birthday, which is a weird feeling. Not in a bad way, just in that quietly reflective way where you realise a whole year’s gone by and you’re not quite the same person anymore. The Prusa’s printing happily away, and I’ve just put the Ender back together. No reason other than the classic tinkerer’s hope that maybe this time it’ll behave. Simple, repetitive projects like that are comforting, that remind me of the constants in life. Or rather, the things that feel like constants. Because let’s be honest, most “constants” aren’t really constant. Not in the scientific sense, and definitely not in life. But they’re not quite variables either. They’re somewhere in between. Maybe that’s why they matter so much; they give you just enough structure to keep going, but enough flexibility to adapt when you need to. Tomorrow marks another full orbit around the sun. Feels weirdly fast, but I guess time’s funny like...

  It’s a day-late update, but time is a construct anyway. After three full days back at school, I can confidently say… it’s not actually as bad as I expected. Chaotic? Yes. But honestly, it’s the perfect amount of chaos for me — just enough to stay engaged, not quite enough to burn out. That sweet spot where one moment you’re fixing a vacuum cleaner, the next you're explaining basic algebra to half your maths class. (Yes, I fixed the school vacuum instead of doing PE. Yes, I hate PE. Yes, I do consider fixing a vacuum a legitimate use of school time. Balance, right?) Maths class has basically become a mini side hustle — I’m now unofficially teaching half the class the core maths they should’ve picked up last year so they don’t fail the upcoming test. At the same time, I’m studying for French, which is its own whole thing now. We’ve got a new French teacher, and she’s already realised most of us learned nothing useful under the last one. Not her fault — just one of those gaps you ...