Nothing to see here

today.

After last night's frustration with M0rt, I spent some time in the kitchen today. I made broth (a Sunday activity for me), home made sausage meatballs, harvested some volunteer collards and arugala from the plot that is slated to be a compost plot, planted kale, swiss chard and lettuce and researched laser cutters.

I'm currently testing how M0rt, Make the Cut and eCraftshop Pro work with Lappy. Perhaps it will all work better with 64 bit v 32 bit?  Who the hell knows. All I know is that if I am to produce quality work of any sort with M0rt, things better start acting straight. Or I will get lasers. Seriously. We're LaserGnomes with no lasers at the moment.

I seriously spent some time researching laser cutters/engravers. I would love to have one in the Gnomery. It was the main reason for going to techshop, but these days it's neigh impossible to get time on the laser since everyone and their brother is running a business out of techshop AND people are booking far more than 2 hours at a time.

So far MTC seems to be okay running on Lappy, but the first cut almost always runs all the way through. The problem usually occurs on cuts 2, 3 and so on.

The real issue with eCraftshop Pro is the speed at which it runs M0rt. MTC runs a lot slower, which allows for fewer issues with delicate cuts. Neither offers speed control and there is no speed control on M0rt himself. This is a fatal flaw. Running full tilt isn't so much a problem if you are cutting 5x7 rectangles (which I was for my first project of wedding invitations). But high speed and small cuts don't mix well. Same with the laser. You don't want to run full speed, especially if you are doing delicate detail work.

The prospect of a laser cutter would open up a lot of doors. I wouldn't be limited to paper products, fabric and the like, as I would be able to cut items up to 1/4" (some models 3/8" thick). I would also be able to glass etching as well.

Last night in all of my frustration, I busted out the scissors and started cutting (I know I said I could have cut my pieces faster than M0rt by hand, but that was clearly an exaggeration on my part). I still can't use scissors. I have regained A LOT of use of my hand and arm back, but scissors are still NOT one of those things. My arm burned and hurt so badly and I really only was using scissors for about 15 minutes. It was frustrating. That compounded with M0rt issues and disco disco made me feel ready to punch somebody.

I have days where holding a pen is difficult as well (like Friday, I'm not sure what was up, but I really hope my instructor doesn't grade based on penmanship - it was atrocious). Luckily those days are fewer and farther between than they used to be.

M0rt is currently 82% through the first cut in MTC with no problems. We'll see how he does on round 2