A few years ago, I wrote a blog post on removing plastic jewelry from my Kickin' Wiccan shop on Shapeways. My thoughts on plastic back then were: Photos of plastic jewelry can look cheap. It was not worth customizing jewelry (such as rings) in plastic because I wouldn't make enough money for the time I spent adjusting…
When I discuss the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) with folks, I usually point them to the following three on-line comics: Obamacare Obamacare Follow-up Trumpcare These three comics go over the details of health insurance in the US, the problems that Obamacare was supposed to solve, how well it solved them, where there was room for improvement, and…
This past weekend I turned on my HBO subscription in order to watch Game of Thrones. It gave me the opportunity to binge-watch another HBO series, Westworld. I have mixed feelings about the series. As I'd heard, the show has a narrative complexity and messes around with the viewers' perceptions in an intriguing way. This sustained the…
I like to print test samples of the items in my Kickin' Wiccan shop on Shapeways. I realized recently that I'd printed in enough materials that I could share a visual story of how a polished-metal item is printed by Shapeways. The process begins with a model created in 3D software. Here's how my large pentacle ring…
There's a lot of good television becoming available right now (e.g., American Gods and Doctor Who). There's one more show that's a bit harder to find in the US that I'd like to bring to your attention. The Hollow Crown is a British TV series that presents Shakespeare's cycle of plays on the events that led to…
After most of the day, I've finally recovered from last night's Passover seder. I'm glad it's my practice to take the day off following the seder. I didn't get to sleep until about 3AM this morning, and the food coma lasted into this afternoon. It was a small seder, only five people. Even so, the discussion was…
A lot of people consider blogs to be obsolete. I’m not one of them. There are ideas, essays, and discussions that can’t be expressed in short-form social media such as Facebook or Twitter.
This year the first night of Passover falls on a Monday evening, so I didn’t expect to have many people come. The turn-out looks to be higher than my expectations; we might have six people.
I've just finished my first color design project for my Shapeways shop, Kickin' Wiccan. It proved to be challenging in ways I did not expect. My goal was to create a full-color three-dimensional model of the Tree of Life. For anyone not familiar with the Tree of Life, it's the best-known design from the Jewish mystical interpretation…