MSRaynsford

My Kickstarter campaign just entered the final 48 hours, it's currently just under £12,000 raised or 1200% funded which actually makes it more successful than the first time around (especially if you count all the increased sales of the existing 4 designs). There is still time to hop on the bandwagon though and get yourself some of the new puzzles hot off the press. Or please share the link one more time if you know someone that would like them. It's going to be a busy month next month but at least I should have some time in between puzzle runs to blog all the things I've been making this month. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/msraynsford/wooden-fractal-tray-puzzles-2/

While I'm stuck in production hell, filling most of the week with a quantity of cake based parts, I just managed to cut a stack of tokens for a wargaming friend. I bundled them up in a bag ready for the post, vac sealing the bag makes them easier to pack.

My kickstarter campaign continues to tick over in the background, amazingly I just reached 1000% funded. I shall have to make another 6-700 puzzles next month in a similar scale to the previous campaign. All of this work and secret escape room projects and large cake projects are keeping me all rather busy at the moment. There are lots of things I mean to write about but am just not finding the time, hopefully I can squeeze some of those things in too.

Ninja Warrior Button tied to wifi controller Over the last few weeks I've been playing around at Ape Index Leicester , it's like a ninja warrior training gym with a climbing wall. I'm mostly playing but I've certainly been getting fitter because of it, I was talking to the owner who discussed a big red button project like they have at the end of the ninja warrior course. Wiring one up is tricky because the place is so big so it sounded like a perfect match for some of my ESP8266 work . It's a simple browser based stopwatch app written with javascript, this is served up from the ESP8266 as an access point. A websocket is opened to transfer data too and from the browser without refreshing the page. When you press start on the screen the light on the button becomes illuminated, when you push the big red button the timer stops counting, so you can start the system from one end of the course and see what time they get at the other end. This is very much a fu...

I did say that this Oversized Chess Piece  was the start of something bigger and here it is. There are a few tweaks and changes such as the arrow points on the base to show the forward direction and these are about 20% bigger again. What good is an incomplete chess set I hear you ask? This one has been made specifically for one of the puzzles at Escape Asylum . We recently went to visit and completed Riiitual , escaping with time to spare. We've done a few different escape rooms and I think I liked this one the best, it was definitely challenging, the puzzles fit the theme of the room well.  The only thing that let it down slightly was a plastic chess set with some manhandled broken pieces. Being a local nerd with a laser cutter I thought it only fitting to offer some decent wooden replacements that can take the punishment. Once I got started there were quite a few things that could be upgraded so I've now made a few new props for them which I will never be allowed to...

The first time I ran a kickstarter I just kind of launched it and told a few people once I'd done it, the whole thing funded in 24 hours which was great news. This time around I was a bit more prepared, I contacted people in advance, sent out some samples for review and generally made people aware that it was going to happen. This time I was 100% funded in 1 hour 58 minutes. I realise I was only asking for a paltry £1000 each time and it doesn't really bear any relevance to the amount required to complete the task but it's still nice to see that people were keen to be involved this time. We hit nearly £4K in 24 hours which is a promising start, now I need to push it a bit to keep up some of that momentum. In general though it looks like it's going to be another successful campaign and I'm going to have another busy month.

I just launched my new kickstarter campaign for the second set of fractal puzzles, now is a good time to jump on board and grab yourself an early bird bargain. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/msraynsford/wooden-fractal-tray-puzzles-2