I started Duolingo a long time ago, and like most people I stopped. But I’ve committed to this for over six years. First Italian to get the basics when we went to Tuscany in 2018, then Danish because I worked for an Anglo-Danish company. I went to Copenhagen twice a year, I did find my basic grasp useful. But I’ve been concentrating on German for the last few years.
Our youngest started learning German at secondary school, I did an O level back in ‘87, so I thought it would be good to brush up and help her with the language. Like all languages, German has its challenges but Youngest and I can chat in German and annoy Mrs S (whose French is coming along after a few years of Duo).
I’ve yet to test my German in the wild, I’ve not been since 2019 when I went to Frankfurt for a conference. I’ll keep on going since Youngest is doing German A level and I don’t want to be left behind.
Still can’t stand that owl, though. Needy, naggy little prick.
I’ve been working with 3D design for about two years. As a pharmaceutical scientist, I’ve been keeping track of possibilities in 3D printing tablets and other dosage forms. There’s been some interesting recent work on this and in custom design of arm casts. At my last job, we bought an Ender 3 Pro in early ’23 and set about finding uses for it.
Ender 3D printer. This isn’t the exact one we bought.
We used it to design all sorts of things – new funnels, inserts for spectrophotometers, toroidal propellers and flexible substrates for rheology testing. But I kept seeing Blender being mentioned when I looked on YouTube for help with 3D design. But I thought Blender was scary. Just look at it!
Blender window as it opens.
There’s loads of stuff on there! And that’s just one window! Sculpting? UV Editing? Eh?
But it is supposed to be a good program to learn 3d design, animation and simulations. I’d also had an idea to make a 3d print of a SEM image I took some years ago of a fractured oil droplet.
SEM image of a fractured oil droplet. I spent over 20 years studying these things.
This sort of thing was beyond the scope of TinkerCAD, but it turned out it was (relatively) simple in Blender. Well, I followed a tutorial on how to add things at random over a surface. I needed this because other images we took showed that there’s bumps all over the surface of the droplets. So with a knobbly hemisphere generated in Blender, I used TinkerCAD to add the rock-like frozen fractured oil interior. Then it was a matter of slicing and printing.
Easy.
I’d made a doughnut in September following a YouTube course (see below), which as OK I suppose.
A doughnut made in Blender. Looks delicious!
After faffing around a bit, I decided to give Grant Abbitt’s Low Poly Well a try. I chose this because Grant is an excellent tutor. He’s clear, doesn’t skip over bits (no ‘draw the rest of the owl’ nonsense) and has been using Blender for 20 years. He’s also English, so he says ‘zed’, rather than ‘zee’.
So I’m going to see how the low poly well goes. This will be under ‘Blender’ in this blog.
Our CEO and his PA visited the UK site. This wasn’t unusual, though we only had one day warning.
We’d had a very upbeat meeting three weeks earlier at the main site and I thought we would be asked to start up a few new projects.
I was stunned to be told that my contract was being terminated.
The decision had been made to stop all R&D activity. About half the company were being laid off. The focus would now be on one key product (one I’d helped invent!) and some support activities.
So I was given a letter and three months’ gardening leave plus the promise of redundancy. I get to keep my laptop and phone, but they have no further need for me after 19 years.
Where now? I’ve not had a job interview in 28 years, having got all my jobs since by word of mouth and recommendation. Set up for myself? I’m too much of a generalist to consult. I’m also 55 – my dad retired at 54, but I don’t think I’m ready financially or mentally for that.
I could buy a 3D printer and sell stuff. I’ve been learning Blender and Python, though not at a level where these could be my sole sources of income.
There will be a lot of talk with my wife. We have paid for a holiday to Australia in August, we can’t not go – there’s a wedding and our 25th wedding anniversary while we’re there.
Grim up North Heath 