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
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
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
attoparsec.clacks.link.ap.brid.gy
South America cut out nicely, even if a mantle upwelling knocked Tiera del Fuego a few thousand kilometers away. And that was with two tabs left connecting it to the main sheet!
An irregular piece of green/brown art glass screwed down to the bed of a small waterjet machine. Five tiles forming the outline of South America south of the Tropic of Capricorn have been cut out, with the one for Tiera del Fuego loose and sitting backwards on a cover at the side of the cutting bed.
December 14, 2025 at 12:13 AM
attoparsec.clacks.link.ap.brid.gy
Missing (1982)

Jack Lemmon tries to uncover what happened to his son who was disappeared in the Chilean coup, slowly realizing the extent of the US involvement and how naive his trust in his own government was. Intense and searingly painful at times. Lemmon […]

[Original post on clacks.link]
The view from the second floor of a large retail space with an open atrium in the center. The main floor and the sides of the wraparound balcony are filled with racks of video disks, with rooms on the second floor labeled DRAMA, COMEDY and ANIMATION.
December 13, 2025 at 10:39 PM
attoparsec.clacks.link.ap.brid.gy
The final addition to the collection, a 1953 frequency meter which uses the same resonant reed technology as the boxy tachometer. But instead of being moved by mechanical vibrations, the reeds here are excited directly by a magnetic field being created by the 120 […]

[Original post on clacks.link]
A very 1950s circular electrical gage, but instead of a needle sweeping around, there are two windows in which there are 5 little white squares. On the left these are labeled 48-50-52, all stationary. On the right, 58-60-62, and the middle one is motion blurred as it vibrates up and down by about 100% of its resting size. MODEL 30-F FREQUENCY METER CYCLES PER SECOND 100-130 VOLTS
December 11, 2025 at 7:53 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
Finally got the Vibra-Tak pocket tachometer working, turns out it just needs MUCH stronger vibrations to excite its wire. Like, nasty old two-stroke engine strong.
December 7, 2025 at 11:22 PM
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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
attoparsec.clacks.link.ap.brid.gy
Okay, this is definitely getting out of hand, with the addition of a classic mechanical tach and modern stroboscope. But this is it, I swear...

...almost. The is another resonant reed device on the way, but it uses the technique to measure the frequency of mains […]

[Original post on clacks.link]
An array of six devices, the same as before but with the addition of one with a large analog dial in a green storage case, very 1950s looking, and an orange plastic device kind of like an IR thermometer, with a LCD and several buttons on the handle.
December 5, 2025 at 5:36 AM
attoparsec.clacks.link.ap.brid.gy
Well, that was easy. Probably didn't even need the relays. Now I just have to wait for the control panel to arrive. (The final version will probably cycle much more slowly, this was just for testing.)
December 4, 2025 at 4:35 AM
attoparsec.clacks.link.ap.brid.gy
Tonight I'm learning how to do color work in double knit, where you're simultaneously knitting both sides, so you end up with a double thick piece where both sides are nice knit surfaces, just with the colors reversed. No dangling floats to snag toes like in […]

[Original post on clacks.link]
A circular knitting needle with a tiny 4x4 white swatch on it. Except there are 8 stitches visible on the needle, with a black stitch next to every white one. And on the left and lower sides, you can see the black yarn from the other side of the double knit swatch.
December 3, 2025 at 5:16 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
attoparsec.clacks.link.ap.brid.gy
Maybe mounted on a control panel something like this...
A grey steel control panel box with a sloped top face. There are three green buttons above three red ones, and another four blanks.
November 30, 2025 at 1:59 AM
attoparsec.clacks.link.ap.brid.gy
I was thinking it could make for a fun little interactive piece to have something cycling through all combinations of its lights following different Gray Codes. And I'd been meaning to do something with a stack light/tower light (used on big factory floors to […]

[Original post on clacks.link]
An industrial stack light being held at arm's length to get the full thing in frame. It is a cylinder about 40 cm long and 5 cm across, made up of five different lights: white, blue, green, yellow, red from bottom to top. This is mounted on a 25 cm mast, with a mounting flange at the other end.
November 30, 2025 at 1:01 AM
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
@FourT4 There are some working recreations in the original Chappe towers in France. (This one was the last before the end of its branch line at the top of Mont St-Michel.) But none of them are within sight of each other, sadly.
November 29, 2025 at 8:53 AM
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
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
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
I was curious about the parameter space for the bitwise fractal function, so I bashed out a quick animation script. I'm varying the x offset parameter, which was -350 in the original, but I've found thing stay more interesting in this 400x400 window if I keep […]

[Original post on clacks.link]
November 22, 2025 at 12:56 AM
attoparsec.clacks.link.ap.brid.gy
I think I just accidentally reinvented the SF Muni logo.
Four of the clevis yoke halves laid out next to each other alternating between rounded-hole-side up and rounded-hole-side down. It bears a slight resemblance to the logo of Muni, the San Francisco Municipal Railway.
November 17, 2025 at 12:55 AM
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
attoparsec.clacks.link.ap.brid.gy
More pixel art inspiration from The Art of Computer Programming (volume 4A). These are Gray Codes, different ways of changing a binary value such that every value is visited just once, while also ensuring that only one bit is changed at a time.
A page from a hardcover book in landscape orientation. There are 7 bands stretching left to right, each a grid 8 tall and 256 wide, and each with a different bit pattern of black and white squares filling the grid.
November 16, 2025 at 11:28 PM