THE #fuckinlasersyall SAGA CONTINUES.
As soon as I knew lasercutting was a thing that I could do, the idea to make my own perfect table popped into my head. I was getting a bit sick of the wooden table that I've had for the last five years. The thing is way too large and heavy for what I needed, especially in my small room. The trestles underneath it are permanently in the way and recently the monolith started to sag. Good thing it was just a freebie from an acquaintance anyway.
In recent months I've been experimenting with lasering maps. It's a great way to flex my GIS and Illustrator muscles and lasercut maps just look so incredibly cool. Last week I decided to pick the beautiful Two Point Equidistant projection (currently my favourite) to lasercut. The cutter isn't enormous so I had to print it in two parts of 50x75cm a.k.a. 20x30". To make the table a bit more rectangular I added 10cm (4") wide parts later on both sides. With help from my dad, we made a basic support layer out of cheap scaffolding boards. We also added a layer of PMMA (Perspex) to protect the lasercut and because it makes the table infinitely cooler.
Because this table is smaller, I was able to rearrange my room again. (For the eighth time in 2 years. Never settle for good enough, kids.) I had also spent some time this week to improve my Raspberry Pi based train departure information screen. It's finally able to auto-boot into Chromium after a mere six different attempts and four hours of finding the precise place to put my single line of bash code into. It works now, so I added it to my desk setup. With the new table in place and cables "managed", it's perfect now:
Up next: more maps, definitely. Stay tuned!
(elizabeth: I used Lightroom's Photomerge to stitch together 5 50mm shots to make that photo. It's really good, you should totally learn how to master that feature. :) )