Coastal Vectors

Apple Pi

I recently (2 years ago) purchased a Raspberry Pi (The original model). I bought it off a friend who never ended up using it for anything useful. My intent was to run a small web server with it, and enjoy some savings over the old computer I use for a server that was eating up more than 100 watts of energy.

I also didn’t care for the case it came with. I also happened to have a first generation Airport Extreme that I also got second hand. It served it’s purpose, but had since died. I thought these two might be a match-made in heaven.

I gutted the poor airport extreme and inspected it.

It didn’t know what hit him.

I was going to throw out the PCB entirely, until I noticed that the Raspberry Pi had two holes that matched up perfectly with two holes on the Airport’s main board. I decided to keep the circuit board for mounting purposes, and reuse it’s input jacks since they line up so nicely with the enclosure.

I desoldered all the parts I could near the connectors, and then marked off the part of the PCB I could remove. The intent was to remove all the circuitry that would be difficult to desolder. The result was a completely bare, partial PCB to work with.

I then soldered power, USB and ethernet cables to the circuit board that would then connect to the Pi (so it’s not hardwired in, and can be swapped).

Now I have a low power web server in a cute, unassuming box.

I also wanted to have the filesystem accessible over AFP so I could access it on my desktop. this was easily achieved by installing netatalk using the command:

sudo apt-get install netatalk

Now that I have the server’s disk mounted on my Mac’s desktop, naturally I need a representative icon.

Using a reference picture, I was able to throw this icon together in Illustrator in about a half-hour’s time.

Minimal Heroes

My friend is about to have his first son (after multiple daughters), and as such, is beginning to prep the nursery with decor appropriate for a little boy. He requested that I make some minimal designs that he will print on canvas with familiar super hero logos or identities.

The two he wanted most were Iron Man and Captain America. I did a quick design for each based on the most iconic symbol for each.

I’m not a huge fan of “minimalist” design. When I say minimal, I’m speaking mainly of “flat” design. I can see the appeal of flat design; It’s easy to make, easy to print, easy to display. It feels lazy to me though. My friend however wanted them flatter.

I obliged his request. He was ecstatic. The flatness doesn’t speak to me. It feels sterile, and boring. But he’s happy, so I’m happy.

Jumping Flash

Growing up, I was not allowed to have any game consoles, until the PlayStation came out. My brother convinced our dad that it was technically advanced enough to merit buying.

One of the first games we played was a demo for Jumping Flash! that came on the sample games CD with the PlayStation. Soon thereafter we purchased it, and I played it ad-naseum for years to come. It’s a very whimsical platform type game that is very light-hearted. The protagonist, Robbit (A robotic rabbit) is sent to save “jet pods” that are located on various pieces of planets that have been stolen by the evil Baron Aloha. One particular level, world 3-2, was the favorite. It had flying whales, catchy music, and fun rainbow roller coasters that you could ride.

This digital painting, like my other ones, was done in Adobe Photoshop with a Bamboo Graphic Pen in my spare time. I still play this game from time to time using an emulator. It’s great fun, and something I’ve wanted to illustrate for quite a while.