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Hackaday

Recently Hackaday posted some tips about tips, which I assumed was to get more people to submit more items, and be better at submitting items. So I submitted an item, and they posted it: 3D Printed Camera Arm Saves $143.

I submitted an email with a few of the important points, and some of them got mentioned, and some of them didn’t, and then there were comments.

Disclaimer: I like Hackaday. There is often good content, and then there are the comments. Some comments are good, and some are not. They seem to have gotten better in recent times. (Hackaday even addressed the issue of negative comments in the past.) Still, comments on the Internet are comments on the Internet.

But hey, since I have my own web site and don’t just leave comments on other sites, I can post whatever I want here, including my responses to some comments.

For $7 of material — and a $1000 3D Printer — and 20 hours of design time — and several iterations and testing later — it’s a pretty slick system!

Thanks, Waterjet! I obviously ran out and spent $1000 on a 3D printer so I could make one thing. It’s not a tool I use all the time for many different things. I’m sure I’ve spent more than 20 hours in total learning how to do 3D modeling, but hey, I don’t watch sports, so I needed something to fill my time. Oh, and you don’t have to buy a 3D printer, you can probably join your local hackerspace and use one there. We have three at Milwaukee Makerspace. Yeah, I also spend my free time helping create a hackerspace. You’re welcome.

I don’t get it, is it a joke? come on, ten minutes with a piece of of wood a drill and a hacksaw could have made something less flimsy and looking nicer

Thanks, fonz! I’m still waiting for the blog post that describes the version you’ve made. Oh, what? You didn’t make anything? You just leave comments on things other people made? By designing a thing and making the files available, I’ve shared something that others can build upon. I think there’s value in that. But hey, I really do want to see the scrap wood version you’re working on. I’m especially interested in how you make hexagonal cuts with your hacksaw. Perhaps you can write up an Instructable on that.

I also learned that I’m cheap (I knew that) and I waste my time (duh) but hey, if you too need such a reminder about how you do things wrong, just post your project to Hackaday!

Here’s the thing, kids… I don’t really like watching sports, and I don’t sit around drinking beer. I spend my time learning new skills and trying new things. I make things, and if they don’t work, I try again, or I move on and hopefully I’ve learned something. I share the things I do in the hopes it will help or inspire others. If someone wants to spend 10,000 hours building a replica of the Millennium Falcon out of toothpicks, more power to them! I’m, not gonna knock them for it. In this case, I made something that is actually a useful thing, and to me there’s value in that.

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And yeah, being on Hackaday definitely brings traffic to your site. This was not the goal of submitting something. I actually share this stuff because I think that’s what needs to be done with knowledge and experiences—they need to be shared. This is how we all collectively learn things and (hopefully) advance humankind. Or, you know, we could just leave comments on things.

In the olden days of blogging, before there were comments, if someone blogged about something and you wanted to reply publicly, your option was to post something on your own blog.

All of us early bloggers had blogs, so, you know, that made some sense.

Eventually bloggers wanted to be able to have people comment on their posts, so blogging software added the ability to leave a comment. A grand idea! Collect all the comments in one place, attached to the blog post, and you can easily see the discussion. Heck, people could even leave a comment and link back to their own blog with an expanded post on the subject. This was before the days of link spamming and even rel=”nofollow” nonsense.

So as you see in the screenshot of the comment form, it wants your Name and your Email address. This is all good, accountability, identity, etc. There’s also a field for “Website” which made sense, right? All of us early bloggers had blogs.

I think many of us believed that some day everyone would have their own web site.

Having your own web site isn’t the equivalent of owning your own home. I think that used to be part of the “American Dream” if you ever bought into that sort of thing…

People are fine being sharecroppers, and if they want a “home” on the web, huge corporations like Twitter or Facebook are happy to rent them some space. If your landlords are cool, then it should all work out, but if things turn sour, well… Let’s just say it’s nice to have a place to call home.