I'm trying to do things that get me out of the house and reduce the amount of time I look at torture rectangles (aka screens with internet). This Refurbish a Game Boy workshop from Craftsman Ave. felt like a perfect opportunity. Not only would I get some quality time in a (quality!) makerspace and get my hands dirty doing some tinkering (with expert guidance and few opportunities to truly mess up), but I'd also get to bring home a joy rectangle to improve the joy-to-despair ratio of rectangles in my life.

There were a lot of things to like about the workshop. The Craftsman Ave space itself combines super functional with ✨aesthetic✨. Or, to paraphrase how they put it, "we foster the illusion that beautiful things are made in beautiful places, when we know better." Workshop instructor Zach was super prepared, knowledgeable, and patient. Helping out was Chris who was so nice and humble, but did so much so smoothly behind the scenes, it felt like we were all his guests.

Did I mention prepared? Here come a bunch of photos about how prepared!

The workshop accommodates up to 6 units being refurbished, either on your own or with a partner. We drew lots to determine the picking order from the set of available Game Boy units. (I keep writing "Game Boys", disliking it as a term, and replacing it with "Game Boy units". What is language?)

Anyway, here were the pickings for the evening!

I chose this sad boy which had very little sign of aging plastic but a lot of signs that it had probably been through a flood, with grit on the surfaces and in the holes, major signs of water damage on the screen, and all that was obvious before looking inside.

Looking inside gave me some bad feelings...

Zach had us examine the media daughter boards of our units, which indicate when it was manufactured.

We used tri-wing and Phillips screwdrivers to separate all the electronic parts from all the plastic parts, then put our initials on the plastic bits in Sharpie before giving them a soap bath and scrub-down to remove grit and grime.

With the electronics disassembled, we took turns using the Fender amp to test whether our Game Boy motherboard worked, using a 6-volt power supply and alligator clips to the power terminals. Mine, unfortunately (but not unexpectedly) did not produce the signature "bling!" sound indicating a successful boot. So, it was taken away (for recycling or a viking funeral, I don't know) and I received a known-good working one.

After motherboard testing, we took turns at the soldering stations, removing the little mono speakers from the original media boards and attaching them to the new boards. Comparing the new sleek black PCB to the old crusty speaker had me pretty convinced the speaker wouldn't work.

There were even more things happening in parallel. Our new media boards were part of a full screen replacement, upgrading these units to crisp, backlit IPS displays, with brightness controls and many more features. Critically, the new screens are bigger than the originals, requiring some alterations to the case.

This is where Craftsman Ave's X-Carve machine comes into play. A custom jig holds the front of the Game Boy case in place, while a router bit removes two screw support posts, some space on the side for the new LCD's control toggle, and carves back the edges of the screen.

At some point, Zach gave us a little demo of removing corrosion from the battery terminals using vinegar. The acid eats away at the corroded bits in a bubbly reaction. These parts were too far gone to use, but Zach had plenty of spares.

I didn't take many photos of the actual process. Re-assembly went pretty quickly, with a few key pointers from Zach about tricky placements and order-of-operations. I appreciate the care taken to make sure our new front "glass" and screens were installed free of dust and fingerprints!

Finally, it was time to put in the batteries and put in a test game. While Zach had a lovely collection, I had made sure to bring my own.

There's definitely more I could say about the workshop, the people, the space. All were excellent! But for now, I'll leave you with an abrupt:

Heydon says to thank your transsisters and drop your stinkin’ binary thinkin'.

https://briefs.video/videos/why-is-everything-binary/

I appreciate Chris keeping it 💯 and I hope you do, too.

Pushing for accessibility in every corner of what you build—whether its formally your job or not—is a great way to maintain hope, protect the vulnerable, and resist fascism.

https://gomakethings.com/accessibility-is-woke-now/

Made it 3 weeks into 2025 before I saved a blog post bookmark with the tags “2025”, “web”, and “drama” 🤪

Are you keeping cozy during eternal Caturday?

Appropriate place to learn about witchcraft

Okay this GDQ joke speedrun of a TI-83 game is sending me.

What fits your definition of a pillow during eternal Caturday?

Finally deleted my Facebook (and Instagram and Messenger) accounts. It hurts to feel like I’m cutting off one of the few ways to find and be found by long-time family and friends, but I just cannot be part of these so-called social networks anymore.

Y’all can follow me on my website and places I can still syndicate like Mastodon and Bluesky. You can also converse with me via email, Signal, or IRL.

Weird to feel seen by Bruce Sterling!

Some Public Limits of Everyday Weirdness (2025)

hat-tip: https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/06/how-the-sausage-gets-made/#linkdump

A new Wonderella??!!! 💖

http://nonadventures.com/2025/01/01/unpack-to-the-future/

Raspberry Pi 500 + Adafruit Cyberdeck Hat + Pimoroni Inky wHat = eInk display for important Caturday photos

This week I finished up a fun and challenging screen printing class at the Gowanus Print Lab!

Tucked away in the giant maze of brick buildings that is Brooklyn's Industry City, Gowanus Print lab is a small space, mightily equipped for paper and fabric screen printing projects.

Our instructor (and the proprietor) Todd took me and three other students through four 3-hour sessions: a hands-on instruction session introducing the basics of screen printing on apparel, an open apparel-printing lab where we could bring our own project of up to about 30 pieces, an instruction session on two-color paper printing (featuring our own designs), and a final do-what-you-want lab with the option to do a single-screen apparel run or up to three screens for a paper project.

I consider myself a person with little in the way of art skills, so with three opportunities to design basically whatever I wanted, I struggled a lot with anxiety and trying to push various software to turn half-imagined ideas into simple designs. I also had an "A-student mentality" kick in, driving me to maximize each session, which led to way more angst about deciding what to make than necessary. 🫠

Anyway, here are some photos of my finished projects!

I feel like the class gave a good foundation on the physical processes involved in screen printing. It's a lot of steps, but they're all about using careful prep to make things easier when it's time to start pulling the squeegee and churning out prints.

In terms of moving forward, I'd say the biggest thing I need to work on is a design practice - regularly pushing my skills with design software techniques. I'm in a bit of a negative cycle of having vague ideas combined with not enough skills to quickly sketch them out. I learned some new techniques in Inkscape (soo good for layout!) and the GIMP (newsprint filter and color managment!) but need to challenge myself to improve.

That said, I also need, uh, facilities?? A home setup feels pretty far out of reach given limited space and the potential for mess. I have a couple of places to try (textile arts center and Manhattan Graphics Center (when they're done moving to Brooklyn lol) and look forward to posting future projects if and when I try it out.

A fun thing that I feel is solved is where to get stuff (particularly, apparel) to print on! Todd pointed us to Suneco Tees, which has really great prices on t-shirts, and the folks there were super nice and able to quickly grab what I needed, rather than let me waste everyone's time trying to hunt things down myself. 😅

Some stuff I'd like to try in the future includes transparent ink printing with color mixing (just to learn the technique), as well as making short apparel runs with home-made logos for all the silly things that I like!

Many many many thanks to Amy for putting this on my radar and encouraging me through the class, staying excited about ideas even as my anxiety was spiraling, and helping me put together lists of family and friends who would happily accept and maybe even wear the results. Oh, and for shipping out a bunch of shirts!!!

Thanks for reading this far! Your reward is a bunch of random process photos!

I’ve been procrastinating about posting which means tabs have been accumulating. 🙁

We got a new, overpowered-for-home-use 3D printer, the Bambu Labs X1C. With the fancy Automated Material Switcher (AMS) that must be powered by forbidden magics.

After setting it up and letting it run through its literal shake-out calibration, I printed these things and was really impressed with the results!

• The classic benchy boat. This was actually included in the memory of the machine, but I’m linking to what looks like the version on Bambu’s MakerWorld.
• These print-in-place fold-flat phone/tablet stands which I believe was suggested by the Bambu mobile app that I used to set up the printer. I started my 3D printing journey with a MakerBot Cupcake CNC kit back in ~2009 so print-in-place mechanical stuff still feels magical to me when it works. These came out nice and sturdy!
• Craving more print-in-place, this articulated axolotl is pretty cute and moved well straight off the printer, despite what I would describe as “flimsy-looking” joints between the parts.
• For a first “useful” print, I selected this one-piece Aeropress wall mount. It’s in the same lineage as my sliced-in-half Aeropress wall mount that I cut into two parts to fit on my printer of the day.

Photos would only get in the way of finishing this post, so I’m afraid you’ll have to use your imagination.

The new printer meant I was well set up to contribute to the latest We the Builder’s project - Charon’s Boat, which is rapidly being finished by builders all over the world. If you have clear plastic filament and a large-ish 3D printer, you may still have time to grab a part and contribute to this underworldly sculpture!