Large Print

Last weekend I printed the largest object so far on my 3d printer:
Finished Print

Someone I know at work also has a 3d printer and offered to help some of his friends out with cosplay items for a convention they’re going to this weekend. Unfortunately his printer jammed and he wasn’t going to get it fixed until this week, so I’ve been helping out by printing a couple things.

The item above is a completed print of a 6 in diameter Pendant of Life from the old Nickelodeon game show Legends of the Hidden Temple. It used up about 110 grams of filament and took over 4.5 hours to print:
Print Time

Here’s a picture with better lighting:
Improved Lighting

And here’s the finished (painted product) from the twitter of the person who asked for it:

Bonus picture of the completed Legends of the Hidden Temple contestant costumes with the print:
Costumes

Camping

The last two weekends I went camping. It turns out when I’m hanging out with other people I don’t take nearly as many pictures (when I even remember my camera). I ended up with no pictures from camping in the Crags (north-west side of Pike’s Peak), though I did have the excuse that my car died on the way there so I missed the group hike to where the view was.

The next weekend I went camping with a couple friends on national forest land near Tarryall. As you can see, it’s quite distant from Pike’s Peak:
Pike's Peak

Here’s the view of the campsite from the top of the rock ridge behind it (I never did take a picture looking at it, just looking down from it):
Campsite

My tent is the green one under a tree to the far left of the picture, and the red Subaru Outback is the new-ish car that replaced the car that died on the way to the Crags. That actually worked out rather well for this campout because the last bit of road isn’t really maintained and I very much used both the all-wheel-drive (in the mud pit after it rained) and ground clearance (uneven rocky road) of my Subaru.

The spot where I really wish I’d had my camera with me was when we went mountain biking up one of the other roads to some old cabins (ranging from a log cabin built into the side of the hill to a structure that used milled lumber and concrete). That was my first time mountain biking: now I’m occasionally browsing craigslist looking for a good deal on a mountain bike.

The family that was hosting the campout (they brought their camper and toys and did most of the cooking) had a hummingbird feeder set up. I was rather impressed by the amount of traffic it got, though none of my attempts at getting a picture of a hummingbird actually came out. The hummingbirds weren’t overly willing to share, so all weekend we got to listen to their little trills of aggression as they chased each other away from the feeder.

Since I hadn’t been in a couple weeks (due to camping/no car) I did the incline way to early this morning. Here’s the sun rising through they haze of smoke from distant wildfires:
Sunrise

It was cold and tiring, but despite not really eating breakfast beforehand (a fruit cup and a granola bar on the way there) I beat my previous best time up. Here’s a ground squirrel that agreed with me that it was chilly (it was shivering):
Squirrel

Mt Manitou

I finally hiked to the top of Mt Manitou this weekend:
Summit Log Jars

Those are the jars that hold the visitor log for the summit. Based on the frequency of entries (the older, almost full notepad went all the way back to 2007) I was probably the only person to make that hike this weekend.

Of course, if it were a more frequently visited mountain there might actually be a trail. As it is you take Barr trail to the fork with the sign for the experimental forest, then take the road that goes by there until it meets another road. Take a right uphill, then as the road starts leveling out look for an easy slope on your left and just go uphill from there. Eventually you get to the top (which is covered in trees so there’s not a good panoramic view), but just downhill to the east there’s a big rock that you can get up on for a view of the springs:
colorado springs

The biggest surprise in terms of animals seen was a deer:
deer
She was between the tent set up by the creek and the group of campers up the trail at the experimental forest station (they had a fire going on one of the old concrete foundations). She watched (and listened to) me from a distance as I went by on the road.

There were lots of flowers in bloom, and I took enough pictures a couple actually turned out nicely:
5 petal purple flowers

Bell-shaped purple flowers