📙 #043 - Plotter discount, newsletters, papercamp and a job

In which I uncover some secret estate agent information, link some newsletters, have a job update and I'm giving a talk soon.

Sep 05, 2024

# Makelangelos wall plotter, discount

I saw this pop up on the r/PlotterArt Reddit and figured I'd share. Marginally Clever Robots has a 12% discount on their Makelangelo 5 and the “HUGE version” (I think), which is, in fact, HUGE.

Using the code PLOTTERART0924 at checkout gets you that 12%

This isn't sponsored, and I don't get any affiliate kickback for that code (as it's not mine). But I like it when these codes pop up because they often equate to free shipping. This code runs until the end of September.

These machines are perfect for installations at shows and galleries where you want to show off pen plotting but maintain a manageable amount of floor/table space (also great for drawing on windows). Plus, people tend to know not to mess with stuff hanging on the wall in a gallery while absolutely fine bumping into shit left anywhere else.

# Other Newsletters

Last week, I took a much-needed break from everything, including writing this newsletter in advance and having time to make an audio/video version (probably for the best, really). It reminded me that doing a quick round-up of other newsletters that you may enjoy could be good, so here we are.

Thanks for reading Drawing Machines & Notes from Art Studio Robots! This post is public so feel free to share it.

I'm giving a short 30-minute talk at Papercamp 3 (London); details here: https://www.designswarm.com/papercamp-3/

Saturday, September 21st 2024, doors open 10:30am, which gives me an hour to get from Euston train station to St Brides Foundation with a pen plotter and no box 😅 - tickets are £35 although there's a free "zoom" ticket option, even though not everything will be recorded, some talks, mostly likely including mine won't zoom-well.

There are about 20 tickets left, and you should come along to see all the far more interesting people there than me.

My talk blurb...

Robot handwriting & AI assisted journaling by Dan Catt

Daniel really loves the idea of journaling, but he's too busy to do it, and besides, his handwriting is steadily getting worse. So he's doing what any sensible person would do and handed over all responsibility for journal writing to an AI (Kitty), who he's probably unwisely also given his encoded handwriting and access to a drawing machine to. A short talk & demo on how this hasn't turned out to be a terrible idea, algorithmic handwriting, and the joy of fountain pens & index cards.

# I have a new job

I'll have more to say about this in a couple of weeks, however...

Part of this newsletter and the #weeknotes over on YouTube is about what it's like being a full-time self-employed artist. Not everything I do makes it into these things; for example, occasionally, I've created commissioned pen plots or prints that went directly into people's homes. I've also done bits of generative art ghost coding and consulting which are, for obvious reasons, NDA-ed up to fuck.

When this happens, I vlog/weeknotes around the edges, and the amount of time I have to split between "secret" work and my own public work varies, but not so much that I never have some of my work to discuss.

This is why, for the last 12 years, I've avoided having a full-time job. There's only so far a #weeknotes video of me saying, "I'm heading into the office now," and "I'm heading back from the office now," can take you.

And also why, despite the sale of the old studio being a complete shit-show, I've avoided committing to anything beyond quick two-week freelancing gigs. I'm definitely in the time-is-the-most-valiable-resource stage in my life.

This gig is different, though...

tl;dr: Artist in Residence, focusing on pen plotting & generative art + some fun other stuff, hardware & software, documenting the whole process in videos, targeting a three year span to give us a good beginning, middle, end story structure.

And I can still fit in making pen plotting tutorials and arts-based research (AI + code + handwriting + journalling), just.

To be honest, my main concern is to keep track of the video footage I shoot. As ridiculous as this sounds, I think the simplest solution may be to get a couple more camera bodies & lenses and have "work" cameras and "weeknotes/personal-projects" cameras.

# The Art Of Asking

I've mentioned Amanda's book, The Art Of Asking before, briefly in #020 - Three Rules for Newsletters

[I wrote a whole lot here and then deleted it because I couldn't get it to say what I wanted to say quite right 😅]

But, one of the points of writing newsletters like this, and making videos like #weeknotes & tutorials, and constantly putting things out into the world is so things like getting-an-awesome-job can happen. So, does social media work? Yes, but it's hard work, but the effort (and sometimes it's a lot of effort) is worth it (imho).

Of course, in my grand scheme of things, with its 1, 5 and 10-year plans, I was planning for an opportunity like this to come along in a couple of years' time, around the 3-year mark. The fact that a perfectly shaped opportunity came along early shows that while things don't always go to plan (see newsletters #001-#042), it's definitely worth having and sticking to them.

# Threads

Speaking of social media, having pretty much given up all short form social media... but especially twitter, (even though that was automated with Kitty,) I see that Threads now has an API: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/threads/posts

And given that (except in the EU) you can link Threads to publish to the greater fediverse, I figured it wouldn't take too much to rewire Kitty to post to Threads instead of Twitter.

I still need to do it, but I’ve read through the docs and gotten myself the necessary API tokens. Meta/Facebook make getting that token tediously annoying because somehow they have to overcomplicate everything (bots and automation, I assume). But this means I'll be active on social media again soon, in a very low-effort sense.

# THE END

Despite my claim in the last newsletter that this one "will have more pen plotting stuff in" - it clearly hasn't. The main reason for that was a couple of weeks ago, I got almost struck down with cluster headaches, I made a video about it here…

And then the following week took a break to keep any potential cluster attacks at bay.

Cluster Headache, officially worse than getting shot. Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7898696/

Things should be more on-track now, aside from the whole job thing. So goodness knows what the next newsletter will look like, but it'll be arriving on the 19th Sept regardless.

On the ongoing saga of the selling the old studio front, apparently the buyers (4) at the bottom of the chain...

🏡 me
🏠 Ian Buyer
🏠 Builders
🏠 👈 Them 👿

...dropped out of the whole thing about three months ago. The Builder's (3) estate agent and solicitor knew this, of course, but decided not to tell Ian or me while scrambling around for a new buyer, which they found a few weeks ago. Which explains in part why progress has been very slow, as they trickled out “updates”.

Not technically illegal.

I only found out by purely unrelated chance.

To say I was mildly unimpressed would be an understatement 😬🔥

Love you all
Dan
❤️