Two-stage Cryptex: Fabrication and build

As it turns out, it's a lot harder to fabricate things when you aren't a student that has a 24 hour machine shop at your disposal (or a free machine shop anywhere, period). Bemoaning my separation from the CSAIL shop/stockroom and the ever-helpful staff of the Pappalardo machine shop, I began my lengthy search for outside resources. 

First up were the two endcaps, which absolutely needed some portion, if not all, of them to be CNC machined. I shopped around at a number of fabrication services (as an aside, why does every place require you to submit a model and then wait around for a quote? It's incredibly awkward to ask for a quote from someone for a tiny one-off personal project, knowing their answer will be way outside your budget and use case). Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with any of the companies I'm going to mention, I'm just a broke recent-grad who designed a thing way beyond her means to produce at a reasonable price.

Burning Man Jacket

I've wanted to go to Burning Man for many years. Unfortunately, living on a student budget on the east coast made this mostly impossible. But after I moved to Berkeley for grad school, the community and opportunities were hard to escape. I applied for a Low Income ticket in April, after a longtime burner friend of mine convinced me to go, and, to my immense surprise and gratitude, was granted one. In July, this friend got in contact with the people who built Dr. Brainlove, and suddenly, I was on board as one of the core crew to build an art car (post on that forthcoming). 

Two weeks in the desert loomed up in a month and a half, when I'd never been to a festival before or even gone camping for more than a weekend. And in the desert there are no coat checks; my usual strategy of multiple layers for warmth under a leather jacket against wind would probably be suboptimal for long nights that wavered between biking and dancing and sitting out in the open. I looked online for a while and hit up thrift stores, but didn't find a jacket that really met my needs and aesthetics. So I dusted off the Singer sewing machine my father gave me and made a custom jacket. 

Finished product first. Appropriately cyberpunk (shaved half hawk? check. Weird shapes? check. Military inspired lines? check. 120 degree angles? check. Asymmetry? check. Low life? uh, do the PJs and dirty bathroom count?)