Matthew Dockrey
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attoparsec.clacks.link.ap.brid.gy
Matthew Dockrey
@attoparsec.clacks.link.ap.brid.gy
35 followers 8 following 340 posts
Maker of kinetic sculptures, public art installations, and random ephemera. Based in Seattle, Cascadia.

(AKA Fish)

🌉 bridged from ⁂ https://clacks.link/@attoparsec, follow @ap.brid.gy to interact
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attoparsec.clacks.link.ap.brid.gy
Matthew Dockrey @attoparsec.clacks.link.ap.brid.gy · Jul 16
How i turned a kid's toy from 1989 into a punch card driven computing platform:

https://youtu.be/XewX68F0JDg
attoparsec.clacks.link.ap.brid.gy
Time for some solstice eggnog from some weirdly fancy electronics swag. (They sponsored a video, now I get a package every December.) Happy holidays, everyone!
Fish toasting the camera with a gilded PCBWay teacup, with strings of holiday lights hanging in a window behind him.
December 21, 2025 at 3:36 AM
attoparsec.clacks.link.ap.brid.gy
Want to know how fast something is spinning? Turns out there are a surprising number of ways to do that:

https://youtu.be/FsaPIOYaPrg
December 17, 2025 at 6:27 PM
attoparsec.clacks.link.ap.brid.gy
Hot take: I don't think "castle" is a particularly good translation of "chãteau".
December 16, 2025 at 8:14 PM
attoparsec.clacks.link.ap.brid.gy
Got the drivetrain on the test stand installed, so now I can start working on making the crankshafts.
A structure made of 2" x 4" rectangular tube steel, in the middle of an unfinished shop space. There are two vertical posts about 6" apart, and two horizontal arms coming out from there at about shoulder height. Running up the middle of the posts are two runs of #40 roller chain. One from a shaft at the bottom up to the very top, and then another short run from the top shaft down to a thicker shaft just under it.
December 15, 2025 at 12:15 AM
Reposted by Matthew Dockrey
hannah.posts.rat.pictures.ap.brid.gy
Currently contemplating modifying a fair isle sweater so that all the repeated motifs are system 6 default desktop patterns
a complex colorwork knit sweater with several bands of different colorwork motifs a bunch of my favorite system 6 desktop patterns. all of them are 1 bit pixel art in a repeated 8x8 frame
December 13, 2025 at 12:19 AM
attoparsec.clacks.link.ap.brid.gy
The sheet cracked, ruining three of the tiles, but Antarctica here is otherwise the first complete unit for the stained glass hemisphere project. I'm beginning to think I shouldn't try to cut such large sheets all at once, but at least all the other land units […]

[Original post on clacks.link]
A roughly US letter sized sheet of cloudy, streaky white art glass in the bed of a Wazer waterjet machine. 26 tiles have been cut out, forming the continent of Antarctica as cut up by lines of longitude every 15/45 degrees, and the 75 S degree line of latitude. There is a crack running from left to right across the sheet about 1/3 of the way up.
December 10, 2025 at 10:43 AM
attoparsec.clacks.link.ap.brid.gy
Biking to the maker space to use the waterjet sure feels a lot more adventurous when you're doing it at 1 in the morning to take advantage of a break in the weather.
December 9, 2025 at 9:11 AM
attoparsec.clacks.link.ap.brid.gy
I feel compelled to insist that, no, that is not at all what I was referring to when searching for "mechanical Conway's life". AI doesn't just reinforce the status quo, but of the most boring possible version of the status quo. Nothing surprising or counterintuitive can be true anymore.
Screenshot of an "Al Overview" from a Google search: "Mechanical" Conway's life refers to the fascinating, rule-based world of John Horton Conway's Game of Life, a cellular automaton where simple rules lead to complex, evolving patterns like “still lifes,” “oscillators,” and “spaceships,” demonstrating emergent behavior, computation, and even self-replicating structures, which captivated mathematicians and programmers for decades. It's a "mechanical" universe because it runs automatically, driven by just four basic rules about cell survival, birth, and death based on their neighbors, showcasing how simple mechanics create complex "life".
December 7, 2025 at 2:48 AM
attoparsec.clacks.link.ap.brid.gy
Just got down to Federal Way to celebrate the 3 new stations and 12 kilometers of track on the 1 Line. Wearing all my transit opening celebration pins from the last 22(!) years, of course.
Fish smiling at the camera, wearing a fedora, flip-up sunglasses, a grey-blue shirt and black wool vest. On the vest are 8 pins reading things like "I was there at the beginning", "Step up Capital Hill" and "🚊 I ♥️ Canada Line"
December 6, 2025 at 11:10 PM
Reposted by Matthew Dockrey
trs.metasocial.com.ap.brid.gy
Without going down the rabbit hole myself yet, is there prior art out there about transforming one QR code into another via a minimum edit distance?

Thinking along the lines of: imagine there's a QR code out there you want to "enhance" and you're equipped with a sharpie and white-out pen […]
Original post on metasocial.com
metasocial.com
December 6, 2025 at 10:33 PM
Reposted by Matthew Dockrey
robinhouston.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy
I would not have guessed this was possible!

Vladan Majerech has found a one-dimensional spaceship in the Game of Life: a pattern just one cell high and 3,707,300,605 cells wide that, after 133,076,755,768 generations (during which it is not confined to the one-dimensional line, of course) […]
Original post on mathstodon.xyz
mathstodon.xyz
December 3, 2025 at 3:54 AM
attoparsec.clacks.link.ap.brid.gy
My collection of tachometers continues to expand, now including a modern digital one and two more variations on the resonance approach. An old mechanical one is supposed to arrive tomorrow, then I can start thinking about a video exploring them all.
A collection of small devices laid out on a wood workbench. One is the Frahm resonant reed tachometer, a decent sized grey box with two rows of white squares visible in the front panel. There is also a much smaller black disk that has two cutouts in the top showing an angular scale underneath, and a thin wire with a yellow tip protruding at a tangent. To the right of this is a modern, gray plastic handheld measuring device with an LCD display. And to the right of that is what looks like a metal pen, with another wire protruding from its end.
November 30, 2025 at 9:26 PM
Reposted by Matthew Dockrey
villavelius.mastodon.online.ap.brid.gy
@attoparsec I was a marine geologist at that time. I still have the globe version of the map.
November 30, 2025 at 11:22 AM
Reposted by Matthew Dockrey
villavelius.mastodon.online.ap.brid.gy
@attoparsec Nice map. As you say, a lot was inferred. I worked on the Kane Fracture Zone in the '70s (on the Woods Hole vessel Knorr and various Dutch ships) and it turned out that fracture zones were not as straight as on the National Geographic map, but […]

[Original post on mastodon.online]
The Kane Fracture Zone – Earth and Planetary Sctence Letters, 45 (1979) 429-434
November 30, 2025 at 10:17 AM
Reposted by Matthew Dockrey
viss.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy
i hope this email finds you well
November 28, 2025 at 6:27 PM
attoparsec.clacks.link.ap.brid.gy
I finally got this framed, after hunting down a copy when I was deep in the plate tectonics simulator work last summer. One of the Maria Tharp/Bruce Heezen seafloor maps as published in NatGeo in the 70s. Utterly gorgeous -- and easily some of the most […]

[Original post on clacks.link]
A framed map sitting on a dining table in soft, indirect sunlight. It shows the topology of the Atlantic seafloor, bracketed by Europe,;! the eastern seaboard of North America, all of South America, and most of Africa. The mid-ocean ridge is the central focus, running the length of the map from top to bottom. The landmasses have minimal labels and are rendered in a pale yellow, while the seafloor is all rich blues, really making its topology pop.
November 29, 2025 at 10:45 PM
attoparsec.clacks.link.ap.brid.gy
This afternoon I'm playing around with a paper computer learning tool from the 60s. My (iterative) Fibonacci program works!
Two pieces of laminated paper sitting on a countertop. One is labeled "CARDIAC" and has several slot cut into it to reveal lines on strips of paper running behind it. The other is a grid of 100 cells, some filled with handwritten numbers. A dry erase marker sits below.
November 28, 2025 at 11:51 PM
attoparsec.clacks.link.ap.brid.gy
Got two wing segments temporarily mounted on the bird, upside down so I could support them from above using the clevis yokes. This let me attach a crane scale and measure the actual, empirical forces at various orientations that the cranks will have to lift, so I […]

[Original post on clacks.link]
An unfinished shop space, with a giant, crudely cut out goose profile mounted on a test stand made from 2" x 4" rectangular tube steel. Its right wing has been attached and is mostly horizontal. The wing is made of an inner and outer segment, and each is hanging from chain hoists out of frame above them. One has an orange box of a crane scale in line.
November 26, 2025 at 9:13 AM
attoparsec.clacks.link.ap.brid.gy
I'm listening to Bjork, which always reminds me of how I bought Post on CD the same day Netscape 2.0 was released. So I was listening to it while I was playing with the new features, including these "Java applet" things. At some point I noticed that the song being played had a weird, repetitive […]
Original post on clacks.link
clacks.link
November 24, 2025 at 11:54 PM
attoparsec.clacks.link.ap.brid.gy
Progress on Goose2 has been slower than I would like, but this morning I shuffled the outer shop so the crane could be extended up into the rafters with the test stand underneath. And tonight I got the clevis yokes welded onto the wing segments, and after […]

[Original post on clacks.link]
A small welding table in an unfinished shop space. On it are two large steel goose wings, each divided into two segments. Pairs of steel blocks, each about 2" tall with a 3/4" hole though the top end, have been welded onto the wing segments in line with each other. Same unfinished shop space, here showing a very basic cruciform test stand made out of 2" x 4" rectangular tube steel. On top of this, with a lifting clamp still attached, is a steel bird body on the same scale as the wings, about 2 meters long. It is perpendicular to the arms of the test stand, so that the wings will be in line with them once attached.
November 24, 2025 at 10:25 AM
Reposted by Matthew Dockrey
ben.lubar.me.ap.brid.gy
I very much believe that if capitalism hadn't tried to turn large language models into infinite money and they were strictly in computer science land, people would find it really cool

the idea that weighted sums can independently figure out relative meanings of words via context clues is […]
Original post on mastodon.lubar.me
mastodon.lubar.me
November 23, 2025 at 4:13 AM
attoparsec.clacks.link.ap.brid.gy
Blast, I finally got around to testing the LED running lights on the cargo bike wired into the central power system, and they draw so much power the headlights barely glow at all. I was afraid of that. I'll have to leave them on their separate battery packs for […]

[Original post on clacks.link]
The inside of a plywood cargo box. A large black battery is mounted to the floor, and above it to the right is a series of 1:5 low voltage bus modules on a DIN rail with lots of wires coming in and out. Temporarily connected to this are two basic LED strip controllers, each with a long section of LED strip, glowing red, running off the bottom of the image. There is also a single black plastic cassette looking thing mounted to the DIN rail, which has a blue fuse running out of the underside of it.
November 23, 2025 at 12:41 AM
attoparsec.clacks.link.ap.brid.gy
RE: https://werd.social/@ben/115595962340686337

"Because you can’t fix what you refuse to see."
ben.werd.social.ap.brid.gy Ben Werdmuller @ben.werd.social.ap.brid.gy · 28d
I actually like this a lot. Don’t hire jerks. (I’ll save you a click: she asks the receptionist whether the candidates treated them well. I agree that it speaks volumes.) https://www.cnbc.com/2025/11/05/former-netflix-chief-talent-officer-used-this-test-to-weed-out-disastrous-hires.html
November 22, 2025 at 11:47 PM
attoparsec.clacks.link.ap.brid.gy
My cheap little gantry crane had some problems, so in the spirit of No Effort November (questionable), I made some upgrades.

https://youtu.be/SYfMLoiJ0Vw
November 18, 2025 at 7:14 PM
attoparsec.clacks.link.ap.brid.gy
Just finished rounding over the loaf of clevis yoke halves, and now they're being sliced in the horizontal bandsaw. These will be welded to the underside of the wing segments on the goose sculpture in pairs, to give a place for the spherical rod end bearings to […]

[Original post on clacks.link]
A block of steel in a horizontal bandsaw. It is 1.25" inches wide and 2" tall, with a 3/4" bore down it's length towards the top, which has been rounded over along the centerline of the bore.
November 17, 2025 at 12:42 AM