Uncategorized – Page 2 – chrisfenton.com

April 16, 2017 admin

HANS gets an upgrade

It’s rare that any of my projects get a mid-life upgrade (or do much more than gather dust on a shelf once completed), but HANS is that rare project with long-term entertainment value. It sat on my desk happily calculating the state of our inner solar system for over a year, before I began to get a bit bored with it. Our inner solar system just isn’t that exciting to watch (and I got tired of having to reset it every 3 months or so when the Sun started to drift away). What could I do to spice things up

April 16, 2017 admin

A Dream Fulfilled

Inspired by my previous blog-post, I finally got around to making my own dedicated Cripple Mr. Onion player. This had been on my to-do list for the like the last 7-8 years or so, and I’m pretty happy with how it finally turned out. Check out the full write-up for the gory details, or see a video of it in action:

April 16, 2017 admin

A little website spring-cleaning

My expertise in computing falls mostly in the Sand-to-C part of the stack, with relatively little interaction with the nebulous underpinnings of the modern Internets. Even maintaining a wordpress blog to document my projects is more of a hassle than I would like, but alas, here we are. After a few wordpress upgrades (and a lot of projects), things had gotten both very slow and fairly crowded around here. I finally sat down yesterday and sorted out the back-end issues that were making the site so slow (I put the blame squarely on a nefarious plug-in), and organized my projects

September 11, 2016 admin

On possible future projects

I normally only post to this site when I finish a project (or have something fun to show off). My ability to come up with ideas for projects has always far outstripped by ability to execute on them, though, so a lot of ideas never get realized (or get built halfway and wind up collecting dust in my basement). Here’s a rambly list of projects I’ve considered in the past, and might one day consider again in the future: Building a ‘kitchen sink’ laptop – I’ve always loved the idea of hackers crafting their own heirloom laptops (a la Bunnie

November 27, 2015 admin

Say hello to HANS

I wanted some new desk art for my office, and this is the result. It’s a digital orrery that simulates our inner solar system with unnecessarily high precision on a hilariously underpowered microcontroller.

May 29, 2015 admin

Meet the PixelWeaver!

Checkout my latest contraption – the PixelWeaver. It’s a 6×5 display driven by a jacquard-style punch card reader. Come see it in action at the 2015 NYCResistor Interactive Show!

January 3, 2015 admin

Behold the Numbotron!

I finally added a proper write-up of my adventures with building a more advanced electromechanical computer. Check out the full write-up.

May 18, 2014 admin

Testing my newest contraption…

A long time ago (after I built my FIBIAC), my friends at Makerbot used their botfarm to make a boatload of 3-digit counters for me. I hadn’t really decided what to do with them at the time, but I thought it would be fun to see how far I could push the delightfully-inefficient instruction-set architecture I had come up with. After languishing for 2 years or so, I finally decided to do something with them. The punch-card chain of the FIBIAC has been replaced by a somewhat more robust stepper-driven instruction drum, and there are now 8 (!) 3-digit

July 4, 2013 admin

The Pocket Gutenberg

I think I started this project around 2 years ago, but got bogged down in trying design my own printable, movable-type font (it turns out font design is a whole crazy world I want nothing to do with). I recently discovered the “Write” library for openscad (along with Makerbot’s cool ‘customizer’ tool for thingiverse). The result is a neato, pocket-friendly printing press. Customize a plate of type, print it out with a 3D-printer, and then 2D-print until your heart’s content. You can finally make the tiny zine you’ve always wanted to!

June 9, 2013 admin

The Turbo Entabulator is alive!

I finally got my 3D-printed, fully-mechanical computer running! Go check out the Turbo Entabulator – and then go build your own!