Jay McGavren
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jaymcgavren.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy
Jay McGavren
@jaymcgavren.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy
13 followers 0 following 72 posts
Author of Head First Ruby and Head First Go. Web developer. Wannabe game developer.

Portrait by https://dribbble.com/drawsgood

[bridged from https://mastodon.social/@jaymcgavren on the fediverse by https://fed.brid.gy/ ]
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jaymcgavren.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy
D20 nets: A lot of copy/pasting of tabs and slots. Inkscape was a HUGE help getting everything aligned right.

And it looks like it's all working! Can surely be made even easier to assemble, but even now they hold together nicely with zero glue!
Two icosahedrons folded from pink cardstock. The cuts and perforations look perfect (because they were done on a vinyl cutter). The folds, well, they could be smoother; they're a bit uneven in places.
October 17, 2025 at 7:09 AM
jaymcgavren.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy
On the second prototype of my tab-and-slot design for assembling cardstock icosahedrons. This is showing real promise! The join is incredibly smooth. No glue needed!

Unfortunately it's also a pain to assemble. I couldn't get the hooks on the tab to catch. I know a fix, just need to implement...
An icosahedron net. Tabs portrude from two edges. One tab has a slot in it to hold the smaller tab opposite it. The same icosahedron net, cut into cardstock on a vinyl cutter. The tab and slot from the previous screenshot are shown joined together. The join is very smooth and all the angles are correct.
October 15, 2025 at 7:24 AM
jaymcgavren.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy
My new laptop case. Sticker vinyl cut at home with my second-hand Silhouette Portrait 3.

I didn't feel like waiting for my transfer tape order to come in, so I used a medium-grip cutting mat to do the transfer instead. Worked fine!
A MacBook with a dark gray case on it. Covering most of the case is a single white vinyl sticker, a series of finely-cut spiraling hexagons nested one inside the other.
October 4, 2025 at 8:43 AM
jaymcgavren.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy
I made this hasty #lasercutter tutorial for the spiral shapes I've been doing. If you want your finished laser cut to consist of thin lines, the trick is not to draw thick strokes; you actually need paths on *both* sides of your lines!
I've been using the laser cutters at my local makerspace to cut lots of spiral shapes. If you want to do the same, you might open Inkscape, make a shape, and scale it and rotate it: [Screenshot of solid pentagons, each one slightly rotated and smaller than the last. The pentagons are completely filled in.] Here's the catch. All laser cutter software can do when cutting is trace the paths of your shapes. So you could feed the above into it, and it would cut it, but we'd end up with the smallest pentagon and a bunch of tiny triangle shards, rather than a connected shape. In my pieces, the wood "lines" are actually part of the solid shape; I created a shape frame using a "difference" operation and then scaled and rotated that. Like so: [- Two solid squares, one nested inside the other, labelled "overlapping shapes". - A hollow square with a thick, filled-in edge, labelled "difference". - A spiral pattern made out of these hollow squares, nested and rotated. The places the squares are touching are still separated by strokes. Labeled "transform: rotate and scale repeatedly". - The same spiral, but all the squares are now fused into a single shape. No strokes are visible at the places the squares touch. Labeled "union".] It has to be done this way (as far as I can tell); even if you used a stroke style multiple millimeters thick, the laser would still just cut a 0.1mm line at the center of the stroke. So be sure strokes are drawn on BOTH sides of the wooden struts you want!
September 25, 2025 at 7:41 AM
jaymcgavren.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy
Shouldn't have gotten my hopes up. #chatgpt just royally trolled me. 🤣

Me: "I want to cut stencils of bats and pumpkins out of plywood on a laser cutter. They should be nested to save material. How can I do this?"

It offers to make an SVG file FOR me. 🎉 It […]

[Original post on mastodon.social]
An file opened in Inkscape, named "halloween_stencils.svg". There are a series of "pumpkins" that are really just concentric circles, and a series of unrecognizable "bats" that look like low-poly crowns.
September 10, 2025 at 6:38 AM
jaymcgavren.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy
I, ah, did have to remove a few of the inner layers as the fine spindles literally caught fire in the laser cutter on my first attempt. 😅 Also switched to a thinner plywood, which was much easier to work with.
September 2, 2025 at 6:28 AM
jaymcgavren.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy
Inkscape and LightBurn are a pretty powerful combination for making laser cutter designs. Here we have a simple shape (subtracted with "difference" so it's a frame, I doubt a heavy stroke would have worked on the cutter) and then scaled and rotated repeatedly. "Union" the result, and voila!
A screenshot from Inkscape. A spiral of hexagonal shapes recedes into the center. The same Inkscape design, laser cut out of 3mm plywood, forming a delicate lattice.
September 2, 2025 at 6:08 AM
jaymcgavren.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy
July 14, 2025 at 7:14 PM
jaymcgavren.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy
When you paste the link to your browser, Slack . app will probably open. You'll need to switch back to your browser to find the "Open this link in your browser" link.

You COULD just use the URL that Slack . app copies to the clipboard, but that will open a […]

[Original post on mastodon.social]
A Slack URL redirect screen. The text says "Click "Open Slack" to launch the desktop app. Not working? You can also..." followed by a link "use Slack in your browser".
July 1, 2025 at 7:45 PM
jaymcgavren.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy
#macos #slack: open a specific channel from a terminal/script

$ open 'slack://channel?id=CHANNELID&team=TEAMID'

To get CHANNELID and TEAMID:

- Right-click channel in Slack app
- "Copy"->"Copy Link"
- Paste link to browser
- Click "Open this link in your […]

[Original post on mastodon.social]
The Slack.app right-click context menu for a channel. "Copy" is selected, followed by "Copy link".
July 1, 2025 at 7:43 PM
jaymcgavren.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy
"Friendly reminder that you should probably plug in your card-based games every 5-10 years, if you want them to keep working. This includes 3DS, Vita, Switch 1&2, e.g."

Via "DoesItPlay1" on X (which I won't link to because the site is owned by a Nazi).
I've seen multiple posts through the internet about people worried that their cartridges could die anytime in the future due, and given I have a significant collection, I decided to stop guessing like everyone else seems to be doing and start researching into the matter. First we should talk about the elephant in the room: what technology is being used by Nintendo for their cartridges? Some people say it's mask ROM, others say it's NAND, and others say it's an hybrid of both, containing both read-only and read-write memory on the same chip. Well, since the 3DS, they have been using a technology from Macronix known as XtraROM. Although it bears "ROM" in it, suggesting it could be based on a MaskROM technology used until since the NES all the way to the DS, it is not. This isn't really explicitelly explained anywhere on Macronix's website, making it kinda ambiguous. However, by looking at Macronix's 2015-Q2 report, in page 22, we can see they list XtraROM as a "Multi bit/cell Technology Charge Trapping Technology". This means that, essentially, XtraROM is a fancy marketing term for a factory-programmed MLC NAND FLASH. This brings the real question you might be worried about if you are reading this: are all our carts going to die? If the Switch and 3DS cartridges were read-only FLASH memories, without the capability to periodically rewrite their contents, it would be the case. It's basic physics - electrons leak from their respective charge traps over time and the contents become fuzzy for the controller to make sense of them. However, today a new Nintendo leak has happened that shines some more key insight in the XtraROM technology, and how they are not as read-only as previously thought. This leak contains an archive called "datasheet.7z". Inside this archive (which for legal reasons | will not be linking), there are datasheets for the memory ICs used in Nintendo's This leak contains an archive called "datasheet.7z". Inside this archive (which for legal reasons I will not be linking), there are datasheets for the memory ICs used in Nintendo's Switch cartridges, including Lapis' MR20RG2410D and MR2ORG4410E, and Macronix's MX23J8GLO, MX23J16GLO, MX23J32GLO, MX23K64GLO, MX23K128GL0 and MX23K256GLO. They are all pretty sparse and lackluster, but there's one in particular (Lapis MR20RG2410D, "datasheet. 72/5-7÷- N/ GC/Lapis/ES/4GB_ROM.pdf") that has an interesting bit of info: all Nintendo Switch cartridges support two special commands, known as "RD_SELF_REFRESH" and "RD_REFRESH_STATUS", meant to fix any possible degradation in the contents of the NAND memory during reflow (aka soldering). This means that a cartridge is, even though read-only from the console-facing port, still capable of reprogramming itself to fix its own errors using error correction algorithms, whenever it is sent this command. However, this brings another question: is the Switch actively issuing these commands to refresh the NAND contents, or are they, as the datasheet implies, only to be used after soldering in the manufacturing plant? We don't have access to the Nintendo Switch source code to be 100% sure, so all we can do is speculate. However, rather than just making up facts, let's dig some more into the 3DS. Remember that: 1. Nintendo already used XtraROM for the 3DS 2. Horizon OS is an evolution of the 3DS's kernel 3. The full kernel got leaked a while ago. First, skimming through the vast amount of leaked documents, l've found on "Documents.7z/Documents/t ‡1 リティチーム運営／セキュリティ仕様書/ CTR/CTR_Card_Memrory_SPEC20121212IEIt#x.pdf" that 3DS cartridges also contain a command (OxC3, known as S*RD_REFRESH), that like the Switch, is meant to fix any possible data corruption in the memory. Now that it's certain they can be also refreshed, l've had a look at the kernel sources, specifically into the drivers used to access the cartridges ("ctr.7z/ctr/sources/libraries/drivers/card/CTR/ARM946ES/"). These source files contain the last piece of the puzzle: the console indeed implements such functionality in the "CardInterfaceBase::SendRefresh" function in card _CardBaselnterface.cpp. This function is called every 10k sectors read (from card _CardAsyncController.cpp), or every 3 milliseconds (from card_CardConfig.cpp), whichever happens first. We can thus conclude that, for a card to be healthy, it's good to be periodically plugged in into a console so their NAND contents can be refreshed and thus avoid any data losses. Of course, this is only possible to a certain extent - ECC algorithms aren't magical and can only correct errors up to a limit. So if your cartridge is beyong that limit, though luck. TL;DR: plug in your cartridges every now and then into your consoles and let them idle for a while, and everything will be fine.
June 25, 2025 at 6:20 PM
jaymcgavren.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy
Moana is playing on the TV at the children's hospital, but the connection is stuttering...
A scene from Moana where she runs along a beautiful sunset beach through a series of geysers. But because it's a digital stream and the connection is bad, a trail of pixellated blocks is flowing behind Moana.
May 16, 2025 at 2:31 AM
jaymcgavren.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy
My red deck arrived! Except for the whispering voices I am completely satisfied. #balatro #indiegame
A deck of 52 playing cards with 4 jokers rests on a tabletop. The cards have red backs with pixelated artwork. The card box is also here, blazoned with the name "Balatro".
March 26, 2025 at 11:32 PM
jaymcgavren.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy
Do you WANT a zombie apocalypse? Because according to The Last of Us, this is how you get a zombie apocalypse. #games
Packaging for a mushroom-based "superfood coffee alternative". Proudly touts its ingredients like chaga, lion's mane, and... cordyceps.
March 17, 2025 at 8:04 PM
jaymcgavren.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy
Inflation finally comes for One-A-Day Vitamins
The back of a One-A-Day Brain Support vitamin package. The directions say "Take two capsules daily with food."
March 4, 2025 at 11:21 PM
jaymcgavren.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy
Lucy offering to hold a football while Charlie Brown kicks it. Charlie Brown is labelled "Rails dev", and Lucy is labelled "Default scopes".
January 21, 2025 at 9:50 PM
jaymcgavren.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy
Capybara encounter at Ghost Ranch Exotics near Tucson.

(The capybaras gave me a message to pass on: please write automated tests for all your code!)
A middle-aged man is wearing a t-shirt with a capybara on it and the caption "Coconut Beaver". He's kneeling down to pet a mid-sized adult capybara, which stands as tall as the man's knee. The capybara seems to be looking lazily back at the man with eyes half-closed.
November 18, 2024 at 8:27 PM
jaymcgavren.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy
The design of automobiles has been around for nearly 100 years. Current designs reflect the incorporation of thousands of lessons from the real world, many learned the hard way. (Like, in accidents with casualties.)

"Because that's how we've always done it" […]

[Original post on mastodon.social]
Screenshot of a social media post from "hanniecat922" with a photo of a Tesla vehicle. The vehicle's front bumper is covered in snow, including in front of its headlights. The post text says: "They're already having issues! The head lights are sunken in for some reason. This means there is a shelf to hold snow in front of the lights and block them. Now, every car has to have the snow cleared off the headlights before you drive, but this is way worse. That shelf collects snow as you drive. People have to pull over and clear the snow off mid-drive because they lose their headlights."
November 15, 2024 at 5:56 PM