Reid's For Fun

Posted Jan 01 by Steven in LEGO Renders 4 min read

Although my late 2013 MacBook Pro still works well, it was showing it’s age. Sadly, I found it freezing from time to time and generally not running like it used to. Given that my Window’s laptops lasted only a few years, I’ve been very happy with longevity my mac. Yet, this was going to be the last year it received an OS update. With the release of the M1, I took the opportunity to upgrade and try it out. That means it was time to render some LEGO bricks!

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# apple⁹  # blender⁶⁰  # lego¹²⁵  # m1¹ 

Posted Dec 27, 2020 by Steven in ZX81 Computer 4 min read

As 2020 wound down, I had a couple of different ideas for new ZX81 programs. Most of them were graphic programs of various sorts. Themes ranged from dumpster fire pictures, an advent calendar, a virus action game, to a solo RPG. Although they were all great ideas, I didn’t think I’d get any complete enough to publish. In the end, I decided to enter in one of my old graphic programs of the Ocean Pacific logo.

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# monthly¹¹³  # retro⁶⁵  # zx81¹⁴⁹ 

Posted Dec 24, 2020 by Steven in LEGO Renders 7 min read

Tis the season to render Santa. Well that wasn’t really my plan, but it worked out that way. I was browsing around Bricklinks, mostly trying to update some of the recent sets. Searching for a small reindeer figure, I ran across LEGO set 1628 Santa with Reindeer and Sleigh. A great set from 1989, it looked like it would be a fun set to render.

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# blender⁶⁰  # lego¹²⁵  # mecabricks⁶¹ 

Posted Nov 30, 2020 by Steven in ZX81 Computer 7 min read

As usual, I procrastinated a bit in finishing my ZX81 program for November. Between holidays, work, and NaNoWriMo, I didn’t get around to it until this last weekend. I decided to try something a little different for this month’s program. The program itself, Charts, is a simple line graph plotter—spelling and bugs galore. As interesting as that program is, the real story is how I entered it.

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# monthly¹¹³  # retro⁶⁵  # zx81¹⁴⁹ 

Posted Oct 25, 2020 by Steven in ZX81 Computer 12 min read

Back in July, I made a mistake and entered in Star Probe again. I had forgotten that I’d already shared it. But, unlike my first attempt, I had taken a different approach which made it a much different game. Jumping ahead, I decided to finish what I started. Here is Star Probe Redo, an updated version as October’s program.

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# monthly¹¹³  # retro⁶⁵  # zx81¹⁴⁹ 

Posted Sep 29, 2020 by Steven in ZX81 Computer 3 min read

September proved to be a rather busy month, at work and home. It isn’t unusual for me, and I usually find time to throw a render or program together. As this month closed, I found myself in need of a program to share and not a lot of time. While cleaning up a few things on my laptop, I found this little test program I wrote last month that fit the need.

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# monthly¹¹³  # retro⁶⁵  # zx81¹⁴⁹ 

Posted Aug 29, 2020 by Steven in ZX81 Computer 8 min read

Back in the day I learned to program on school PDP-11 with a 6 teletypes and a CRT attached. I was still in computer club at the time, thinking the 8" floppies were pretty cool. To my despair, the poor thing died that Summer and, when I took my programming class, it was on an Atari 800. But the programs I wrote the previous year stuck with me. Printer Car harkens back to those days.

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# monthly¹¹³  # retro⁶⁵  # zx81¹⁴⁹ 

Posted Aug 09, 2020 by Steven in LEGO Building 4 min read

A retro blast from the past! The four chip Sinclair ZX81 was the first computer I owned and I thought it would be fun to build a LEGO version of it. The 2K of memory (in my US version) was pretty limited. An essential accessory was the 16K RAM which allowed you to fully use the screen and enjoy some fun, if blocky, games.

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# lego¹²⁵  # moc³  # rebrickable³  # zx81¹⁴⁹ 

Posted Aug 08, 2020 by Steven in Mind the Gap 3 min read

I haven’t added a new topic in awhile, but I ran into a bit of a problem lately. As an AFOL (Adult Fan of LEGO), I recently got back into building with real LEGO bricks. In doing so, I decided to start taking pictures of some of the sets of been building. Not content with building official sets, I started to build MOCs (My Own Creations) from both myself and others. I needed a place to share.

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# lego¹²⁵  # mocs¹  # pictures¹ 

Posted Aug 08, 2020 by Steven in LEGO Building 3 min read

After finishing Tree Fall, I had an idea to turn it into a winter scene. I thought it would be easy to swap out a few parts with white ones, but my wife disagreed. She recommended some changes and, after some trial and error, I created Tree Winter!

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# blender⁶⁰  # bricklink²  # lego¹²⁵  # mecabricks⁶¹  # moc³  # rebrickable³  # render⁷⁵