WASD / Arrow Key control is now available in the Caretaker web interface.

Interestingly, this feature wasn’t implemented by me — or even by Cursor — but by ChatGPT Codex, to which I simply submitted this GitHub issue. In response, it generated a working pull request.

Video 1: Codex coding process, 2× speed.
Video 2: Demonstration of keyboard control. Also shows latency when connecting via Wi-Fi through two thin concrete walls.

A blog post with full technical details will be published tomorrow.

I like space.

GoPro has a dedicated timelapse mode that captures the motion of stars across the sky.
The result — a 1.5-hour recording in a 5-second video — looks quite impressive.

I used to shoot astrophotos when I had the chance to get far away from light pollution.

One of my best examples is from Egypt — the White Desert.
That was the first time I managed to capture the Milky Way in such detail.
At first, I even thought it was just clouds or glow from nearby towns.

Actually, you can take a photo like that with almost any smartphone.
For the simplest case, a night mode is enough.
If you want better quality, switch to Pro mode and adjust a few settings:

Shutter speed (S) — start with 5 seconds and then adjust as needed

ISO — set it to the maximum your phone allows

Enable a timer to avoid shaking the camera at the start

Never shoot handheld — even leaning the phone on a rock works better

The Egypt photos were taken using an ordinary Android smartphone, leaned up against a rock in the desert.

So what was I welding a week ago?

A rake. A rake for lawn leveling.

There's a patch of land where I want to lay a lawn. It's all uneven and bumpy, and leveling it by hand is nearly impossible.
I’ve seen this tool all over social media for a while, but buying a ready-made one for a single job at a high price seemed unacceptable to me.

Especially when I can build one myself—and even make it better.
In the demo video, the soil has already been tilled and all the stones removed; after that, the process works efficiently and quickly.

Just need a longer handle—right now I used whatever I had lying around.

And a bit about how I filmed the welding process.

I decided to design a universal box that could fit a full-sized GoPro, and also allow inserting a phone.

In the video – the process of designing, gluing, and test fitting.

As usual, not everything went according to plan:

In the middle of the print, the nozzle got clogged, so the box ended up shorter than needed, and there was no time to reprint – had to go with what I had.

The tripod mount didn’t print, so I had to print it separately and glue it on (which actually worked better – the original design was too small anyway).

I had to print an additional mount inside because the stock GoPro mount on double-sided tape wouldn’t fit into the shortened box.

At the very end, I also dropped the tripod with the box... and the plastic broke — on the tripod adapter I bought!

And regular glass doesn’t work for close-up welding shots – the sparks (read: molten metal) quickly embed into it. I’ll need to look for something tougher – like quartz or borosilicate glass.

I also serve as a member of the thesis defense committee at a local university — as an external expert.

They’re all related to IT.

Today, we had a session, and one student's thesis topic was:
"Development of an Optimal Equipment Selection System for Fulfilling Orders in a 3D Printing Studio."

The student explored it independently and... didn't quite figure everything out.

To select a printer, they proposed optimizing resource usage, considering only available printers. The main idea was to upload a ready-made G-code from a slicer and choose the plastic type for printing. The G-code was then used to extract the model dimensions and print time.

However, this approach is not viable in practice, because G-code is unique for each printer — different print areas, speeds, accelerations, and firmware make it impossible to reuse the same file across different machines.

That said, the topic is genuinely interesting and unique.
If anything else noteworthy comes up — I’ll share it.

If you've ever wondered how the self-leveling function of a laser level works – the answer is gravity.

And the power for the lasers (I’ve got two in my case) is supplied through ultra-thin wires – using thicker or stiffer ones could affect the accuracy.

I found this out by accident – I needed to align a foam panel on the wall precisely, but my old device wouldn’t turn on anymore.

I had to figure it out – turns out the contacts had corroded in the battery compartment – the connection was lost, so I had to fix it in a brutal way by flooding it with solder.

Teaser for a new big project.

This time, no electronics — but even more complex technical stages.

The platform with artificial grass I showed earlier was prepared specifically for this one.

Not all the materials have been purchased yet — only part of them are in the photo. I’m currently in the assembly stage. There’s still so much left to do that I’m not even sure I’ll finish before the end of summer. Besides, I don’t get to work on it every weekend.

What it is and what it's for — I won’t say just yet. Feel free to take a guess based on the materials you see.