Lukas and I took our bikes to Mount Umunhum and tried out some mountain biking: down one of the trails, and then back by way of the road. I’ve recently been enjoying SoulCycle spin classes, but this ride definitely gave them a run for their money, making the downhill moments all the more rewarding.

It’s nice to enjoy a little of the Californian lifestyle, and the scenery is truly beautiful.

The old radar tower–closed now due to peeling lead paint–offsets the scenery with a striking, almost brutalist cube.

Each year, I produce calendars for family and loved ones, featuring photos taken throughout the year.

Typically, I use the built-in support for creating wall calendars in Photos for macOS. In Vienna however, Junko and I wanted something a little smaller, so I turned to the desk calendar from Shutterfly. Following an email informing me that they were discontinuing the product, I realised it was time to capture and share the various calendars I’ve produced over the years.

Shutterfly’s preview generator–as used in their web-based editor–is fully parametrised and can be encouraged to produce much larger renders which I’ve turned into previews and PDFs:

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  2015

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  2016

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  2017

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  2018

Print projects can also be exported from Photos as PDFs:

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  2010

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  2011

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  2012

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  2013

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  2014

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  2015

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  2016

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  2017

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  2018

Since learning Fusion 360, it’s become my go-to tool for any kind of CAD. The ability to so quickly dimension sketches and add constraints makes it great for 2D as well as 3D.

Using Fusion, creating a simple 2D template to allow me to correctly centre a sticker on my MacBook Pro is simply a matter of a couple of shapes, dimensions, and constraints. It’s even possible to dimension the angle to get it just right:

Unfortunately, Fusion is still only really set up for printing in 3D, so printing the sketch itself is a little more nuanced. I’ve had success exporting to DXF and then use Adobe Illustrator to do the printing.

This can be done as follows:

1. right-click on the sketch in the Fusion object browser and export using ‘Save as DXF’
2. open the file from Illustrator, using the ‘File’ > ‘Open…’ menu
3. accept the default options (most importantly ensuring an ‘Artwork Scale’ of ‘Original Scale’)

I’ve found, thanks to Michael, that it’s crucial to perform step 2 and not attempt to open the file from Finder; there’s a bug in Illustrator which causes the DXF import to fail if you attempt to open it by any other mechanism.

Having done all this, I was able to enjoy putting things together: