I designed and built my own dice tower for use in D&D! It is made of 1/4" 5-ply Baltic birch plywood, etched and cut out with a laser cutter at my local maker space, lined with laser-cut wool felt, and assembled with wood glue.

These were my original design ideas. My final design ended up almost exactly like I had originally planned.

A later iteration, on the computer at the maker space, ready to laser cut.

First cut! A little burnt and smoky, but not too bad. I've since learned to really dial in my settings to get clean cuts all the way through the wood (although with plywood, there can be random spots that are tougher to cut through).

First prototype cut out and assembled with masking tape! It fit together great, and only had a couple of mistakes in the design. I was super happy with this! I was really excited to get started on the next iteration.

Here I decided to get fancy. I spent a decent chunk of time adding a brick pattern, with some banners and 20-sided dice to be etched into the wood. I also bought some fancier, more expensive, 7-ply plywood. Surely it'll come out extra fancy!

I read somewhere online that adding some painter's tape could cut down on the smoke staining.

Thaaaat was DEFINITELY not the case... So much fire... It was terrifying to watch, so I just had to cancel the cut job. The wood was totally ruined...

Here is my final design. I took a training class on the more powerful laser at the maker space so that I could get cleaner cuts, and gave it another shot, using the more basic 5-ply wood, and NO tape of any kind. Back to basics.

It came out great! A little smoke, but nothing too terrible. I also went to the fabric store and picked up some grey wool felt. I was unsure of how to attach wood and felt, but randomly saw a youtube video of someone using wood glue. Awesome.

Here it is all assembled, drawbridge up!

D20 banner on the back.

Felt lined all on the inside! It makes SUCH a satisfying noise when you toss some dice down there. Without the felt, it was unpleasantly loud.

The final product! It's not perfect, and it was a long time in the making (quarantine and other distasters didn't help...), but it really makes me happy. Here's hoping I can use it with some friends soon!

A visualization of the change in property values for Austin, TX from 2019 to 2020.

Click here to see the full size image.

First I went to TravisCAD's website and downloaded their "TCAD APPRAISAL ROLL EXPORT" from the publicly available data section.
They also provide a "APPRAISAL EXPORT LAYOUT" to help you parse the data (which had one small datatype error that was luckily easy to fix).
I then wrote a Python script to parse the data.
This gave me the 2020 market values of all the properties. To get the 2019 data, I went to archive.org and found a snapshot of the website from last year, which included a link to the 2019 dataset. Score!
I then downloaded a section of Texas surrounding Austin from OpenStreetMap (using an external mirror because the number of nodes was so large).
I loaded this map data into a local instance of Nominatim, which translates addresses into latitudes and longitudes.
I wrote a local webpage that uses OpenLayers to render the map, and draw colored dots on the map. I made the map grayscale as to not interfere with the visibility of the data.
I made the key in HTML because I got fed up with doing it in image editors, and I know HTML and CSS way better.
Then I used GIMP to composite the map, key, and title.

This is a 1:24 scale model I built of the Hideout Theatre main stage in Austin, with working stage lights:

I'd never built anything like this before, so it was super fun and challenging! It is made mostly of foamcore board painted black. The lights run on an Arduino Uno powered by a 9V battery. Almost everything is held together by hot glue.

I was looking for my next project to work on, and wanted to do something that involved building, but also some simple electronics. I take classes (and occassionally do shows) at the Hideout Theatre, and got the idea to build a replica of the main stage. So I started taking lots of pictures and measuring things with my feet by walking paces whenever I was there. People just thought I was being weird. I was able to use these measurements to get the dimensions of most things, but I wasn't at the theatre every day and would miss things, so I had to figure out some of the dimensions using people whose heights I knew who happened to be in my reference pictures.

Here is the real hideout theatre for reference:

Now for the model!

I started with simply making sure I knew how to complete a circuit using the Arduino:

I already had a few electronic parts lying around from another Arduino project, and used them to create this circuit with a potentiometer, to test programming the board and dimming the LEDs:

While I waited for my ordered supplies to come in, I started prototyping stage lights to suspend above the stage:

These versions were just cardstock printer paper and a lot of electrical tape and Sharpie. They got the idea across, but they were also kind of sloppy, and I later found a much better way to make them.

The rest of the supplies are in!

All in all, I ordered the above Arduino Uno (and USB cable), a 100-pack of 5mm LEDs, a 36-pack of wire clothes hangers, and some breadboards for prototyping. The rest I had on hand.

I started by painting and constructing the stage area:

Then I added the back wall:

This was too short, and I ended up re-doing it two more times. It was really stressful having to tear it off and cut/paint/glue a new piece in its place!

Then I added the first bits of hanger for the lights to hang from:

There is a curtain that hangs behind the stage, so I bought a yard of black cotton, and started prototyping. I happened to be visiting my parents for 4th of July, and my mother has a very nice sewing machine, so she was able to help me out with hemming a few pieces of fabric. (Thanks, Mom!)

But, cotton doesn't behave the same at small scale, and it wanted to bow out like this:

It didn't have the ripples I wanted, to match how the real things looks. I considered using a different material like silk, but didn't think it would look right. So, I had to get creative:

I sprayed the cotton with water to get it damp, laid it out over this closet shelf, and put some drill bits in the spaces between the bars to force the fabric to dry into the shape I wanted. It worked like a charm!

Next, there was the banners that hang on stage. I started by manually recreating the graphics in GIMP:

This took a while. I had to generate hexagons, get the spacing right, create the pixellated heart, position it, tilt the hexagons around the axis of the heart to the right angle, make sure the cut lines match the real thing, get the scaling right... Matching the colors was really difficult as well, as they looked different in every reference picture I took depending on the lighting.

But they eventually came out really well!

Then I attached a short piece of hanger to the back so they could hang from above and keep their shape:

And here they are suspended by sewing thread:

Not bad! Starting to resemble the real thing.

I didn't like the curtain being this short. I had prepared a few different lengths, so I tore the pieces of hanger off, and replaced it with a longer curtain.

Ahh, much better. I also had to do a bit of surgery on the stage to put this longer curtain in place. I cut about an inch off the back of the stage while it was already in place, which was really nerve wracking! If I messed this up badly, I'd have to start everything over.

But luckily, it went well, and the front half was looking pretty good:

Next, it was time to start on the back half, which included the seating area. This was a LOT of measuring, cutting, and gluing:

As you can see, I only use the fanciest of materials, including a frustratingly bendy and elastic measuring tape, and a cardboard box scrap cutting board.

Finally, all 8 levels completed:

At this point I realized I was going to need to be able to power this thing portably. Luckily, I already had a 9V battery connector, and found out I can use that to power the Arduino!

Perfect.

After a lot more painting, I did the dangerous work of gluing the back half floor and wall to the front half, and then gluing the stadium seating in place. Here you can also see the walls surrounding the seating area:

Painted and glued:

Woo!

I wanted to add some more detail in places, so one thing I did was simulate the wooden beams that run along the outside of the seating area wall. I added some thin strips of cardstock printer paper, glued them in place (using a very fancy glue stick), then cut them to size and painted them.

Jump forward a fair bit in time, and here is the tech booth, with ladder (it was a pain to cut piece this small...) and little mini-door on the bottom:

I really wanted this project to have some cool little authentic details, so I ordered some tiny slide potentiometers to control the lights:

They didn't come with any documentation, so I had to figure out how to wire them myself, but luckily I was able to get them to work!

At this point it was time to start putting the stage lights in place, but I wasn't happy with how the ones I had looked. So I found a more precise, better-looking way of making them, and I really like how they turned out:

And here they are wired and hot glued to the hanger:

The wires are managed by some pieces of velcro wire organizers I cut to be smaller.

Now that they're in place, let's make sure these suckers still work!

Worked like a charm. (Phew...) I used all black wire for this portion so they would blend in and not be an eyesore.

Time to really start wiring things up:

Electrical tape was not good for this job. I had to switch most of it over to Scotch tape as it just kept coming loose.

Then I started the difficult work of soldering things to a circuit board, and adding a power switch:

Any soldering experts, I warn you, the next few images may disturb you.

Here are the slide potentiometers in place:

And the back side:

Here's a simple circuit diagram showing how the slide potentiometers are hooked up:

I had to write a bit of code to translate the input values from the potentiometers into brightness values to send to the LEDs. I put the code on github: https://github.com/brad811/Hideout-Arduino/blob/master/hideout.ino

I added a little doorknob to the mini-door below the tech booth:

I cut the back half off a push pin using a wire cutter. I didn't have any silver paint, but I did have a silver Sharpie. The Sharpie wouldn't stick to the push pin, so I mixed a little black and white paint and painted it gray, then was able to Sharpie over that. You can also see the tech booth floor in place.

Here is everything shoved into place below the tech booth:

And everything actually works!

Mounting the slide potentiometers was actually a bit of a pain. It was near impossible to cut neat slots in the foamcore that tiny. The solution I landed on was to cut big messy holes in the foamcore, then use Google Drawings to precisely map out the slots, print it out, and cut the slots out very carefully with an X-Acto knife, glue it on top of the foamcore, and paint it black.

The three potentiometers control lighting stage left, middle, and right. I made sure the light on the right points across to light stage left for authenticity. The sliders are not reversed, as that would be terrible and confusing.

Left side lit:

Middle:

Right:

Finally I created the boxes and benches that go on the stage.

At this point, everything was pretty much done! The whole things took about a month and a half.

I think my improv classmates and teacher had fun playing with it!

So there it is.

I hope this was interesting! Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments at brad811@gmail.com. Thanks for reading!

A visualization of the change in property values for Austin, TX from 2016 to 2017.

Property value data source:
Travis Central Appraisal District (https://www.traviscad.org/)

Geocoding:
OpenStreetMap (https://www.openstreetmap.org/)

Mapping:
Google Maps (https://www.google.com/maps)

The Process

The above image shows the percent change in value for over 120,000 properties in Austin, TX.
The value of addresses for 2016 and 2017 was gathered from publicly available data from the Travis Central Appraisal District.
The addresses were then translated into a latitude and longitude using a locally-running instance of OpenStreetMap's "Nominatim".
The data points were drawn using Google Maps' drawing API, in groups of 10,000. The resulting images were combined using the image editor "GIMP".

I wanted there to be an app to find out who would be up for doing something fun, but with a lower barrier to entry than the existing options. I couldn't find one, so I made one.

Google Play (Android) - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bradjewell.upfor

iTunes (iOS) - http://itunes.apple.com/app/id1231916111

A multi-console, multi-game arcade cabinet I designed and built.

I'm not sure why, but one day I got the inkling to build my own arcade cabinet. The first thing I did was make this mock-up in SketchUp:

I ordered some arcade buttons and started wiring them up to test:

I found a button configuration I liked online and cut it into a piece of cardboard to try it out:

Looks great!

Next up was a long weekend of cutting out the wood pieces. Here is a completed side panel:

There was a lull for a couple of weeks where I couldn't work on anything, so I got impatient and made a scale model of the cabinet out of cardboard:

I ordered some programmable LEDs from Adafruit, and a marquee from a local print shop.

Here's what the marquee looks like all lit up!

After another long weekend making cuts and assembling with my family's help, it really started to look like an arcade cabinet! We installed some 2" casters I bought as well, which made the thing a breeze to move around, besides being pretty heavy.

Once I put the buttons in it was actually playable!

One of the last steps was a marathon of painting. I started with an oil-based paint, but that was just a terrible experience. It took forever to dry, and was impossible to get off of anything it accidentally got on. Switching to water-based was SO much better.

I decided to spring for a coin door because I thought that would be a really neat touch.

Got everything assembled, just had to terribly wire everything up...

And here's the nearly complete product!

Since that picture I've put some black burlap mesh over the speakers. I still need to install some white t-molding along the edges, touch up the paint in a few places, install the marquee properly, power the lights behind the coin door's reject buttons, and a few other finishing cosmetic touches.

A browser-based 2d role-playing game engine and game maker written in dart.

Player: https://bradjewell.com/dart-rpg/
Editor: https://bradjewell.com/dart-rpg/editor.html
GitHub: https://github.com/brad811/dart-rpg
TIGSource Forum Thread: http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=50038
A little bit of history: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmoLBMbUF3w

Creates a 3D world out of the output from the Go dungeon generator.

GitHub: https://github.com/brad811/js-dungeon-game

Demo: https://bradjewell.com/game2/

A random dungeon generator written in Go.
You can run this yourself by cloning the repo from github and following the instructions: https://github.com/brad811/go-dungeon

Based on the method described here: http://journal.stuffwithstuff.com/2014/12/21/rooms-and-mazes/

Example Image Output

Legend

0 - wall

= - room floor

| - door

- - tunnel

Sample ASCII Output

Creating empty dungeon...
Creating rooms...
Creating tunnels...
Identifying edges...
Conneting regions...
Trimming tunnels...
Dungeon: ( 40 , 40 ) Regions:  13
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 = = = = = = = = 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 = = = = = = = = 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 = = = = = = 0 = = = = = = 0 0 0 0 0 
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 = = = = = = = = 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 = = = = = = 0 = = = = = = 0 0 0 0 0 
0 0 - - - 0 0 = = = = = = = = 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 = = = = = = 0 = = = = = = 0 0 0 0 0 
0 - - 0 - 0 0 = = = = = = = = 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 = = = = = = 0 = = = = = = 0 0 0 0 0 
0 - 0 0 - - | = = = = = = = = 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 = = = = = = 0 = = = = = = 0 0 0 0 0 
0 - - 0 0 0 0 = = = = = = = = 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 = = = = = = 0 = = = = = = 0 0 0 0 0 
0 0 - - 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 = = = = = = 0 0 0 0 | 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 
0 0 0 - - 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 = = = = = 0 0 0 0 0 | 0 0 0 0 0 - - - - 0 0 0 0 0 
0 0 0 0 - 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 = = = = = 0 0 0 0 - - - - - - - - 0 0 - 0 0 0 0 0 
0 0 0 0 - 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 = = = = = 0 0 0 - - 0 - 0 0 0 0 0 0 - - - 0 0 0 0 
0 0 0 0 - 0 = = = = = = = = 0 = = = = = 0 0 0 - 0 0 | 0 0 0 0 0 - - 0 - - - - 0 
0 - - - - 0 = = = = = = = = 0 = = = = = 0 - - - 0 0 = = = = = 0 - 0 0 0 0 0 - 0 
0 - 0 0 0 0 = = = = = = = = 0 0 | 0 0 0 0 - 0 0 0 0 = = = = = 0 - - 0 0 0 - - 0 
0 - - 0 0 0 = = = = = = = = 0 0 - - 0 0 0 - 0 0 0 0 = = = = = 0 0 - 0 - - - 0 0 
0 0 - 0 0 0 = = = = = = = = 0 0 0 - - - - - 0 0 0 0 = = = = = 0 0 - 0 - 0 0 0 0 
0 0 - 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 | 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 = = = = = 0 0 - 0 - - 0 0 0 
0 - - 0 = = = = = = = 0 0 = = = = = 0 0 = = = = = 0 = = = = = 0 - - 0 0 - - - 0 
0 - 0 0 = = = = = = = 0 0 = = = = = 0 0 = = = = = 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 - 0 0 0 0 0 - 0 
0 - 0 0 = = = = = = = 0 0 = = = = = 0 0 = = = = = 0 - - - - - - - - - 0 0 - - 0 
0 - 0 0 = = = = = = = 0 0 = = = = = 0 0 = = = = = 0 - 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 | 0 - - 0 0 
0 - - 0 = = = = = = = 0 0 = = = = = 0 0 = = = = = 0 - 0 = = = = = = = 0 - 0 0 0 
0 0 - 0 = = = = = = = 0 0 = = = = = 0 0 = = = = = 0 - 0 = = = = = = = 0 - 0 0 0 
0 0 - 0 = = = = = = = 0 0 0 0 0 0 | 0 0 = = = = = | - 0 = = = = = = = 0 - 0 0 0 
0 0 - 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 | 0 - - - - - - 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 = = = = = = = 0 - - 0 0 
0 - - 0 = = = = = = = 0 - 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 = = = = = = = 0 0 - 0 0 
0 - 0 0 = = = = = = = 0 - 0 = = = = = = = = = 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 - 0 0 
0 - - 0 = = = = = = = 0 - 0 = = = = = = = = = 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 - - - 0 0 
0 0 - 0 = = = = = = = 0 - 0 = = = = = = = = = 0 0 0 0 - - - 0 0 0 0 0 - 0 0 0 0 
0 - - 0 = = = = = = = 0 - 0 = = = = = = = = = 0 0 - - - 0 - - 0 0 0 0 - 0 0 0 0 
0 - 0 0 = = = = = = = 0 - 0 = = = = = = = = = 0 0 - 0 0 0 0 - 0 0 - - - 0 0 0 0 
0 - 0 0 = = = = = = = | - 0 = = = = = = = = = 0 0 - 0 0 0 0 - 0 0 - 0 0 0 0 0 0 
0 - - 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 - 0 | 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 - - 0 0 0 0 - - 0 - 0 0 0 0 0 0 
0 0 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 0 0 0 0 0 0 - - - 0 0 0 0 0 0 
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

A sound visualizer that uses your browser's microphone API.

GitHub: https://github.com/brad811/sound

Demo: https://bradjewell.com/sound/

A platformer physics prototype written in Dart.

Play with it here: https://bradjewell.com/platformer/

Little dots move around looking for food, reproducing, dying, and evolving over time.

Play with it here: https://bradjewell.com/dots/

GitHub: https://github.com/brad811/Hungry-Dots

The simplest javascript game I could create one bored day. Although I still made a level editor.

Game: https://bradjewell.com/bacon/bacon.html
Level Editor: https://bradjewell.com/bacon/bacon_edit.html
GitHub: https://github.com/brad811/bacon