Greetings and welcome to another post of HACKING LIFE where I try to SHAPE THE WORLD TO MY WILL.
It’s been a while.
I know.. I know.. I said I would post at least once a month. Or did I?
It was too long ago. I don’t remember. And also, who cares XD
If you are actually some rando I don’t know, who’s been eager for a new post to come out then WAIT NO LONGER for I AM BACK baby! And I totally promise to upload a blog post every month-12 years.
It’s quite a tight promise, I know, but I’ll do my best to keep it up.
So what’s been going on?
For one, I have learned a ton of new stuff and built a whole lot of new projects I can’t wait to share with you.
I have also failed tremendously in some other projects I had planned out, but hey, you never do fail until you give up.
And if I’m following that flawless line of reason, I didn’t actually fail at any project, because I didn’t actually give up on any of them. I simply put them aside until the day I die.
There. Repeat after me and SAY NO TO FALIURE.
I did manage to fly to the US to conduct a cool university experiment for work. On the other side of the spectrum, I have also flown to Malta for a METAL-FEST with a good friend of mine as his wedding present.
Both trips were equally amazing, though in one of them I got to play with radioactive materials from nuclear waste.
Enough about me, let’s talk about why you are here!
So you want to learn how to organize, be efficient, and get an incredibly satisfying feeling every time you open the screws, nuts and bolts drawer in your cabinet?
Well first, get a 3d printer, or a friend who is willing to spend long hours and kilograms of filament in various colors (Sucker..).
Second, watch this YouTube video, because Zack Friedman (Soooo Jewish) explains it way better than I do.
Let me briefly explain what Zack is talking about;
Zack provides a beautiful solution to the maker community’s (Or at least my) biggest flaw – sorting and efficient organization.
He has created a whole system of standardized customizable labeled bins he called “GRIDFINITY”.
It’s basically a template for loads of containers of everyday maker objects such as a Pliers holder, Magic goo container for you 3d printer, CNC bits holder, and even a comfortable tweezer rack.
Zack also provided a template to build upon, resulting in a whole lot of people seeing the video and deciding to make their own modifications as well. And there we have it – a huge community of customized containers/holders that fit snugly into the Gridfinity system.
Organizing 101
A community is nice, and order is nice, but here’s why you need it:
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Inventory maintenance –
Ever found yourself spending long hours searching for something you KNOW you have somewhere around the house? Its frustrating.
And I bet you’ve just seen it an hour ago, but right when you need it, it’s gone, so you end up wasting more time and money driving up to the store to buy another one anyway?
Yeah… I have a word for that. I call it “wasting precious time until you decide to do the financially stupid act of buying another one of the thing you were looking for”.
Or briefly – WPTUYDTDTFSAOBAOOTTYWLF. Try saying that three times.
I am telling you, stop wasting your time and money. NO MORE!
Organize and sort everything you have in a couple of dull afternoons, and you might actually finally finish a project!
Which brings me to my next point. -
Finish your projects –
If you have things organized, you know what you have and what you need to have in order to prepare better for the project’s D-DAY. If you stick to the plan and buy everything in advance, you are more likely to finish the project on time, even if it’s not as perfect as you wanted it to be. That’s very important because you probably already feel like a failure and actually finishing a project is a great confidence booster.
I can’t even count the number of unfinished projects I had lying around until I “took the time to buy the necessary items”. Of course by that I mean I ended up throwing a them away.
Yeah, don’t start projects until you make sure to have EVERYTHING you need for it, which brings me to my final point. - Smarter project planning –
If you’ve finally decided to design that glow in the dark lamp post you promised your mom, and are working on the bolts you need, a quick glance in the organized drawer will show that you have a ton of M3 bolts available, so maybe you should design bolt holes to fit those.
The Fake Outlet
Now that we know how to organize and why, I’ll show you my own addition to the GridFinity production line.
I basically needed a container for all of my unused USB wall plugs.
In my new awesome tablet, I measured all of the required dimensions and sketched out a prototype:
Onto the 3D design. I used Zack’s template and built upon that:
And……. VOILA! From concept to a tangible reality! (I did end up doing a couple of these because I fudged the measurements the first time)
Isn’t it BEAUTIFUL?!
Also I intentionally added a photo with my printer’s enclosure. It’s built out of two IKEA Lack tables and a couple of printed parts. The lighting is RGB and remote controlled. The screen above is my Octodash interface for my Octopi instance running on my Raspberry Pi. Behind is another one of my designs – A part that connects the Raspberry Pi neatly to the back of the screen casing(Also 3d printed):
Hmm I need to do something about those wires. Well.. maybe for the next post!
Thanks for reading and stay tuned for the next one.