Categories
DIY

Blue Yeti Shock Mount Ikea Hack

I’ve been shopping around for a microphone arm and shock mount for my Blue Yeti mic. The cheap ones don’t support the weight of the Yeti, and the expensive ones are expensive.

So instead, I hacked an IKEA TERTIAL Work Lamp ($15 AUD), and with a few extra pieces, created my own.

Rather than assembling the lamp, I took to it with scissors, chopping of the bulb fixture and unthreading the power cable. Then I threaded the USB cable for the microphone, ready to plug in.

Next, I got to the 3D printing. This mount from Thingiverse did the trick very nicely. To “float” the microphone in the shock mount, I just clipped in black hair ties!

Unfortunately, the standard springs on the TERTIAL weren’t quite up to the weight. After a little trial and error, I found that replacing just one of the top springs with a C-143 size extension spring (14.3 x 76.2 x 1.372mm) provided the perfect balance.

As a bonus, my mic stand is now the exact same shade of grey as the HEKTAR work lamp on my desk.

Categories
Design

Phygital

By day, my Product Design work is purely digital. I work in the limitless realm of Software.

By night, I’ve been experimenting with Physical Product Design, modelling and 3D printing all sorts of useful widgets.

The cross-over between Digital and Physical worlds is lots of fun.

So when Lior, my 8 year old son, presented me with a drawing of a character he imagined, I had the idea to try to bring it to life as a physical object!

Lior’s Pokémon inspired character, based on a sunken treasure chest.

I’ve tried modelling on a pancake screen, and for really technical designs with precise tolerances, that works great. But when it comes to quickly bringing to life a unique, messy, interesting character, I jump into VR.

Using the Valve Index and Microsoft Maquette, I 3D modeled Lior’s flat drawings. Modeling in VR is a game changer. It allows me to design spatially, physically moving around my room and around the character, drawing and shaping in three dimensions.

Then I export the model, and open it in Blender, to clean up and properly scale.

The result gets exported as an .stl file, and sliced by UPStudio, before being sent to my Upbox to be made real!

For the finishing touch, I wanted to paint it. To help me know which colours to use, Lior recreated his original drawing on his iPad.

I’m not the world’s greatest painter, but I gave it a good go. Here’s how it turned out!

Categories
Photo

Grainy-Day Portraits

These B&W portraits were shot in 2014, using the 1969 Minolta Hi-Matic 5. They’re super grainy, and a bit scratched up / dusty. This is because I developed them myself, in my wardrobe!

Categories
Photo

Rainforest Road

Switching camera now. The Minolta Maxxum 5. This film camera was released in 2001! Can you believe new film cameras were still being produced in the 2000s?

These are some photos I shot at our Rainforest Rd property, back in 2013. Notice the bokeh here, the stock lens was really something.

Categories
Photo

Greek Islands

Some snaps from our 2013 Greece trip. 1968 Konica C35.

Really love the muted tones this film captured. It did a great job of capturing the sunset (bottom left) and dusk (bottom right) colours. And doesn’t Talia look so cool, sitting there in that ISO grain, framed with a spectacularly soft focus blur.