Category: Art

  • DIY LEGO Display Stand for Holding Heavy Objects On My Desk

    DIY LEGO Display Stand for holding two heavy objects on a desk, 3/4 view

    This past weekend, I dug through my LEGO to build a display stand that could hold two heavy objects on my desk between my monitor and keyboard. It has a wide, lower space and a narrow, higher space for the two objects. To add some visual details, I used window panels along the front with transparent red cylinders in each window center, illuminated by ambient light entered through the top of the front.

    I’m including more photos below of all sides to inspire others. Since it was a trial-and-error build, I didn’t create instructions for the build.

  • Brave Maryland Regiment Remembered Near 3rd Ave and 9th St in Brooklyn

    Street Art Mural depicting Maryland soldiers in the Revolutionary War fight the British, Battle of Brooklyn, 27 August 1776.

    I found this battlefield art mural near the corner of 9th Street and 3rd Avenue in Brooklyn. The Google Maps’s street view shows it in better days in 2013.

    Michael A Rawley Jr. American Legion Post 1636 on 9th Street in Brooklyn, New York.

    The mural is on the side of the Michael A Rawley Jr. American Legion Post 1636’s building, which also features a blue historic marker on the front of the building stating: “MARYLAND HEROES: Here lie buried 256 Maryland soldiers who feel in the Battle of Brooklyn, August 27, 1776.”

    This August 25, 2012 story in The New York Times gives some details about the battle and the uncertainty surrounding the location of the soldiers’ mass gave.

    James Schmitt notes in this blog post that an archaeological survey of the (formerly) vacant lot next to the American Legion Post in 2017 didn’t turn up any human remains.

    While time has obscured where these soldiers rest, they are remembered for bravely covering the American retreat.

  • College Cat Studying in the Stacks, and Video Card Downgrade

    Anthropomorphic cat wearing a hoodie, sitting in a library, studying two open books. Image created in Stable Diffusion.

    I decided to sell my NVIDIA RTX A6000 video card and downgrade to an RTX 4060 Ti with 16GB GDDR6.

    I’ll miss loading large LLMs on the A6000’s 48GB of memory, but between the 16GB of memory on the 4060 and my computer’s 128GB DDR4 RAM, I can get my work done–it’ll just take some magnitudes longer in some cases.

    The college cat studying image above was one of the last that I generated with Stable Diffusion on the A6000.

    Swapping out the video cards was completely painless on Debian 12 with NVIDIA drivers 525.147.05. I pulled out the A6000 and its power adapter, and installed the 4060 and connected its single power cable.

  • Cat with a Knife Emblazoned with “Kitsune” Seen in Brooklyn

    Cat standing over a knife with the words "Kitsune" on the blade. A sticker on a lightpole in Park Slope, Brooklyn.

    This illustrated cat standing over a kitchen knife with the word “Kitsune” written on it made me pause while walking in Park Slope, Brooklyn the other day. Kitsune generally relates to the Japanese myth of trickster foxes, but I have been unable to discover what it might mean in this specific context–a band, a brand, an artist? Regardless, I admired the work. And, it reminded me of one of the patches that I wear in my backpack seen below.

    An embroidered patch of a black cat carrying a knife in its mouth. Other embroided patches are seen in the background.
  • Cyberpunk Help Desk Cat Made with Stable Diffusion

    A chubby anthropomorphic cat wearing a hoodie jacket is working at a cyberpunk help desk.

    When I saw this image of a cyberpunk computer technician anthropomorphic cat that I generated with Stable Diffusion, the first thing that came to mind was the Bastard Operator from Hell. Having worked at a help desk, I think it would be an interesting experience to be his co-worker. It certainly wouldn’t be boring!