Latest notes from andre.torrez.org
I made a little tool for calculating the dimensions of an annular sector of a conical frustum. I use these dimensions every time I'm creating a mug or cup where the top and bottom diameters of the shape are not the same and I need to emboss something around it. I did this a couple times by hand and then realized it would be so much easier if I could make a tool! So I did .
Hi, it's been a while since I released Tyke and there were a lot of requests since then to add hotkeys, start at login, and saving data between sessions. As a reminder Tyke.app is a little menu bar app that gives you access to a simple text box where you can paste text for use in the near future. I used to use a new, unaddressed email or a random text editor window so I made Tyke to serve that…
I use the built-in iOS timer daily. I pour plaster molds where timing is critical in order to get the right mix and cure time. If you mix too little or let it sit in the pot too long you’ll waste the batch. The thing is: I hate the built-in iOS timer. First of all you have to use these dumb scrollers to pick out the length of the timer. Want twenty minutes? You have to scroll to twenty—oops, not…
We’re back from a week in Italy. It was my first time back in exactly 21 years and so much had changed. Last time we navigated without phones and used paper maps, this time went much more smoothly and it felt like we did twice as much stuff. Anyway, I’m back and so excited to get back to work. I have hundreds of photos of art and architecture. I feel like so much of my ceramic work for the next…
I built a little web app for myself to track casting progress and firing. The freedom to make the exact thing you need without any accommodation for future growth or other use cases is not something I used to do very often. I’d always have a general target I’d be shooting for but the little voices of things potential users will ask for (and the time it will take to implement) was always in the…
From left to right a bean dosing cup, an espresso cup, and a larger cup for espressos or cortados.
I had some problems with the dripper base. The foot ring doesn't taper enough and it just grabbed onto the mold and wouldn't let go. I have to redesign it but the printer is currently working on some espresso cup ideas I had.
I recently got into making espresso at home and so this is the first time I'm drinking a shot out of one of the cups I made last year. I'm still getting my head around dialing in ratios so this shot had a lot going on, but I'm enjoying the process of getting better at it. Plus if the shot is terrible I can just turn it into a latte and it's delicious!
Hey, the new mold worked! It only took about two days of printing, pouring, and curing. I still have a couple days of drying before I can actually use this mold. And there’s two more parts to pour, but moving forward feels good.
When de-molding this mold it had a preference to turn as it slid out, which meant the very tip of cone was forced to push against the very thin wings and it broke them. I’m printing up a new positive mold that softens these wings at the end but since that’s going to take 10 hours I might pour this one again and try to de-mold it more gently.
Speaking of work: I’m making a ceramic V60 dripper! Here’s the 3d printed cone (there’ll be a base and handle) It’s a small, single-cup, cone filter dripper that I’m hoping to have a few of in the next couple of weeks. If you have opinions about single-cup drippers and their handles, let me know!
Dave Rutledge has an interesting journal going. He’s tracking each hobby and what he’s done recently. As someone with a lot of hobbies and projects these days I want to do something similar—though what I really want is everyone else to do something similar. I’m going to take a stab at my own and figure out how to incorporate it here. I miss hearing what other people are doing and I guess maybe…
The next thing I thought this site needed was a blogroll, but I didn’t want to just make a list of people and sites I liked. I wanted a light-weight reader I could use myself. I asked Claude to read my 14-year-old exported Google Reader OPML, check which sites were still active, and then check if there was a recent date somewhere on the page. I then picked through that list to get this randomized…
Did I mention that I originally wrote my own blogging software last year? That’s what powers my site now. It’s stupid simple and I was originally just using the Django admin to manage it but this morning I added a host of new features including image embedding. Here’s our creek a few days ago in regular weather (mallard for scale): And here it is today: The cool part is I can drag and drop (or…
I cleaned up the blog a bit and added some posting features I'd been wanting. I had all but given up on most projects these days but Claude Code + Jesse's Superpowers has given me new life. I had tried Cursor out last year and while it worked, it felt off. It wasn't as fun to have my code generated as I typed. I felt detached from making things and grew tired of correcting assumptions the LLMs…
Looks like I’m now on the Claude Code train. 94 commits in 2 days across 6 repositories. Sometimes it just feels so dumb that this all works.
Hi, just testing out an idea here. 8:15 wake up 9:00 Having breakfast, playing Wordle, Clues by Sam , crossword mini, main crossword (29 minutes) 10:00 Go out to the studio to discover the one tool I needed to glaze some cups isn’t where I left it. Search. Search. Search. Give up. 11:00-12:00 Pick up lunch and then eat it. See the news. 1:00 Go to the grocery store. My daughter is obsessed with…
I’m pretty happy with the results of my first glaze I made from scratch! I’m drinking out of one now and I can’t be more pleased with myself. I did it!
I mixed some glaze recipes for the first time by Old Forge Creations and they worked! I was so anxious about their firing I tossed in this porcelain cup glazed with a celadon from Amaco. That one also came out pretty great.
Going to twitter.com is still baked into my brain in a way that I’ll sometimes type it without thinking. Every time I did I was a little shocked to see who was still posting there but it was hard to get an idea of how many people, so I decided to just unfollow everyone who posted that day and then check back. It was only about 30 or so people. That seemed to do it as today my feed is totally…