The Adventures of Eiki Martinson

Letters to a Young Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke

nospam@example.com (Eiki Martinson) — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 01:14:31 -0800

Portrait drawing of Rainer Maria Rilke, Leonid Pasternak, 1901

Do you remember how this life of yours longed in childhood to belong to the 'grown-ups'? I can see that it now longs to move on from them and is drawn to those who are greater yet. That is why it does not cease to be difficult, but also why it will not cease to grow.

It's been a while. Let's ease back into our reading with a short one, a miniature jewel: the poet Rainer Maria Rilke's ten letters written to Franz Xaver Kappus in the years 1903–1908 (Yes, that's very modern by our standards. We'll let it slide this time). Kappus, an unhappy officer cadet who dreamed of living the life of a poet instead, sent some of his verses to the already published and somewhat famous (although almost as young as himself) poet Rilke asking for criticism and advice. He didn't get criticism (“any critical intention is too remote from me”, says Rilke) but of advice he got plenty. And what advice it is!

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A Logo for Sadamasild

nospam@example.com (Eiki Martinson) — Tue, 09 Dec 2025 14:27:30 -0800

In late 2022 I designed this logo for Estonian musical ensemble Sadamasild.

Sadamasild logo, December 2022

The name "Sadamasild" means "Sadam's Bridge", after frontman and songwriter Marek Sadam. The arch formed by the crossbars of the A's in the logo is meant to read as a bridge, at least to an Estonian audience that understands the name.

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Saar ja Sadam Logo Design

nospam@example.com (Eiki Martinson) — Mon, 17 Nov 2025 15:33:49 -0800

Here's a logo I designed for Marek Sadam and Mikk Saar's band Saar ja Sadam, with wider and narrower variations for different applications. For non-Estonian speakers: "Saar" means "island" and "Sadam" means "harbor", so the last names of these gentlemen naturally suggest nautical ideas to an Estonian audience.

As with my logo designs for the LEP festivals in 2019 and 2021 (postponed until 2022 for COVID), I've prepared a proposal document with some details and other variations, including text-only versions without the logomark elements, suitable for reproduction at small sizes.

I can't wait to see these on t-shirts!

Using a Laser Pointer and 3D Printing to Align Electrical Conduit

nospam@example.com (Eiki Martinson) — Tue, 28 Oct 2025 17:13:49 -0700

As part of my ongoing garage renovation I installed new LED light fixtures on the ceiling. This required me to rebuild the existing network of surface-mounted conduits and brought to light some disturbing discoveries about the state of the electrical system in the garage I've lived next to, in blissful ignorance, since 2019. For more on that, watch the video above and learn how NOT to wire a garage with an extra circuit.

In addition to the downright hazardous faults I'm referring to was a class of problems that rise to the level of the merely annoying. One of those: the ceiling box that the lights depend on was rotated by a small but immediately apparent angle from the walls of the building. If, as planned, I installed the linear LED lamps using conduits connected to the box, the pattern of lights would not be perpendicular to anything else, which I obviously could not accept.

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On the Aesthetic Education of Man, Schiller

nospam@example.com (Eiki Martinson) — Tue, 09 Sep 2025 15:07:11 -0700

A Painter's Studio, Louis-Léopold Boilly, c. 1800

But how does the artist secure himself against the corruptions of his time, which everywhere encircle him? By disdaining its opinion. Let him look upwards to his own dignity and to Law, not downwards to fortune and to everyday needs.

It is common to say that philosophy is about three things: the true, the good, and the beautiful. We've sampled widely across philosophy, but most of our reading has been about the good, because we are looking for practical advice on how to live. Modern academic philosophy, by contrast, is mostly about the true, because you can endlessly turn out answers to “how do we know what we know?” and academics need jobs, after all.

Beauty, however, is the most neglected of the trio. Maybe because it's easy to dismiss as an unnecessary luxury, something we should give up for the sake of some other worthy goal. Maybe because of the slippery task of trying to define what it is and the subsequent escape into subjectivity. You've heard all that noise about the “eye of the beholder”, “that's YOUR opinion”, “one man's trash” and so forth.

But let's not give the bromides too much credit. One man that definitely didn't was the 18th century German Friedrich Schiller, who wrote On the Aesthetic Education of Man (sometimes rendered in English as Aesthetical Letters or several similar variations), a work that respects Beauty as at least equal to her sisters Truth and Goodness. Shocked by the descent of the French Revolution, which seemed to begin with high-minded ideals, into blood and madness, Schiller asks: how could this have been avoided? If political revolution doesn't work, what conditions are necessary to really produce human flourishing?

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An Emergent Emergency

nospam@example.com (Eiki Martinson) — Thu, 21 Aug 2025 22:26:35 -0700

I keep hearing “emergent situation” or similar phrases used in place of “emergency”. This is incorrect; “emergent” means something like “coming into existence” or “coming into view” and does not, by itself, imply urgency or crisis. Although before taking to my blog in anger I had only heard this usage rather than seen it in print, a quick visit to the search engines reveals the poisonous weed taking root in (where else?) the offices of state bureaucrats and educationists. In the New Jersey Administrative Code, Chapter 53B (Jursidictional Assignments for Railroad Overhead Bridges), we find the phrase explicitly defined thus:

"Emergent situation" means a sudden, urgent, or unexpected occurrence or occasion that interferes with the free and safe movement of traffic over a railroad overhead bridge, which requires immediate action.

This same production informs us also of the possibility of “emergent bridge repairs”, whatever that means. Are the repairs emerging in some way? Is the bridge?

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X-Carve Rescue Episode 1: Torsion Box, Cleanup, and Rebuild

nospam@example.com (Eiki Martinson) — Fri, 15 Aug 2025 19:39:39 -0700

New video! I rescue this X-Carve CNC router by tearing it down, cleaning it up, putting it back together, and building a "torsion box" tabletop for it to live on. Part 1 of a series!

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave

nospam@example.com (Eiki Martinson) — Wed, 13 Aug 2025 13:13:22 -0700

Frederick Douglass, Andrew & Ives, 1863

“I prayed for freedom for twenty years, but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.”

In this, the first of his three (!) autobiographies, Douglass tells the tale of his early years in captivity and of his escape to freedom in the northern states, an escape facilitated by his identification of the power of language and of the written word. Forbidden to learn how to read and write, he taught himself by any means necessary, from the surreptitious to the psychological:

“when I met with any boy who I knew could write, I would tell him I could write as well as he. The next word would be, "I don't believe you. Let me see you try it." I would then make the letters which I had been so fortunate as to learn, and ask him to beat that. In this way I got a good many lessons in writing”

Douglass was a slave at birth, illiterate until 12, a free man at 20, an author at 27, and an international figure soon after that. By the end of his life he had been a diplomat, a publisher, a real estate developer, the most famous man of his race in the world, and “the 19th century's most photographed American”. If that isn't self improvement I don't know what is!

Unlike some of our other selections, The Narrative isn't necessarily practical advice from our point of view; we all know how to read and came by it easily. Nobody in this club is likely to have to escape from slavery, or to be whipped for mere clumsiness. But this book gives us something else: inspiration, and with it maybe even a motivating dose of shame. After all, will any of our excuses stand up to the scrutiny of a boy that had to bribe other children with stolen bread for reading lessons?

That should give us all something to think about!

We will reconvene at 7PM on September 8 at Vino's, as usual. See you there!

Self Reliance, Emerson

nospam@example.com (Eiki Martinson) — Mon, 04 Aug 2025 15:20:00 -0700

The Artist Sketching at Mount Desert, Maine. Sanford Robinson Gifford, 1864–1865

A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.

Here's something fun for a change: Ralph Waldo Emerson's “Self Reliance” (note the quotation marks around the title, this one is short). Many of our selections demand much of us, and by that I'm referring to more than the page count. Consider Nietzsche: “Only great pain, the long, slow pain that takes its time... compels us to descend to our ultimate depths...” Consider Marcus: “Concentrate every minute like a Roman—like a man—on doing what's in front of you with precise and genuine seriousness”. Consider Ecclesiastes: “I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit.” But Emerson offers you something you want to believe:

Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have always done so

As you can see, Emerson has no time for false humility. He wants to see you escape conformity, cast off any expectations that are holding you back, and become exactly yourself, acting and creating as only you can. Heady stuff, and although it's suspiciously easy to hear, it has the virtue of being not very easy to do; the voices in our heads of, well, everyone but ourselves are no quieter now than they were in Emerson's day, and after all, OSSI's membership are mostly well-behaved adults. So we'll risk it.

Here's the full text: Self-Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson. If you'd like to read it in print, it's often collected with his other essays, or in collections of transcendentalist works alongside Thoreau, etc. Any of these should do just fine.

We will meet as usual at Vino's, on August 11, and “thank the joyful juice for all [we] know”. See you there!

The Old School Self Improvement Book Club

nospam@example.com (Eiki Martinson) — Sun, 03 Aug 2025 19:43:12 -0700

Library of Trinity College Dublin.

Some time ago I created something called the Old School Self Improvement Book Club on meetup.com. Here's the pitch:

Are you interested in improving yourself? In watering the seeds of virtue and pulling out vice by the roots? Are you looking for guidance but the self-help section at the bookstore looks like shelves of unproven fads and nonsense that was invented ten minutes ago?

We agree: the old ways are still the best!

The Old School Self Improvement Book Club will meet once a month to discuss a selected time-tested work of practical philosophy, psychology, or advice for living. We'll come together somewhere in the greater Fort Lauderdale area to make it as easy as possible for anyone from Miami-Dade, Broward, or Palm Beach counties to attend.

Since June 2023's meeting for the Enchiridion of Epictetus, we've met almost every month and almost always at a wine bar in Fort Lauderdale called Vino's, which has graciously hosted us on Monday nights in a side room named "Napoleon's Parlour" and decorated with images of the emperor himself, very appropriate for our Count of Monte Cristo meeting (It was our group's only excursion into fiction)! I'll start cross-posting the meetup notifications here as well; after all, it's a good way to ensure at least one blog post per month!

Measuring Rotation Rates of Objects Using Machine Vision

nospam@example.com (Eiki Martinson) — Thu, 31 Jul 2025 21:30:00 -0700

I've recently submitted a machine vision paper to arxiv (my first!), co-authored with Daniel Raviv and Juan Yepes of Florida Atlantic University, about an analytical method for measuring the angular velocity of rotating objects. If you can track one point on an object reliably you can estimate the rotation rate, given that you have an orthographic camera at your disposal. Okay, they don't exist in reality! But if the object is far enough away the approximation provided by a real camera is good enough to be useful. Please read “A Vision-Based Closed-Form Solution for Measuring the Rotation Rate of an Object by Tracking One Point” at arxiv.org.

A Note on Technological Inevitability

nospam@example.com (Eiki Martinson) — Sun, 22 Jun 2025 13:28:38 -0700

If you traveled back to 1950, and told people that in 75 years we would be struggling to shut down coal plants and still used petrol in most cars, they would not have believed you. The future was atomic-powered, after all.

If you traveled back to 1975 and told people that in 50 years Concorde would be long retired with no replacement and that commercial supersonic transport no longer existed, they would not have believed you.

If you traveled back to 2000, and told undergrad Eiki that in 25 years nanotech would seem like a fad despite all of academia shoving the prefix "nano" into their grant proposals and that the nanoscale assembler would still not exist 25 years later, I would not have believed you. I might have been relieved but I would have been skeptical.

If you traveled back to 2015 and told optimistic 37-year old Eiki that in ten years fully automated self-driving would still be mostly a tech demo unseen outside of the Bay area and a handful of other places, that very few people would ever have been driven by a car operating on its own, and that basically no one that drives for a living would yet be disemployed by self-driving vehicles, I would not have believed you.

Be careful when you declare the adoption of some technology to be inevitable or just-around-the-corner.

Shop Infrastructure: A Materials Storage Cart

nospam@example.com (Eiki Martinson) — Sat, 07 Oct 2023 06:08:08 -0700

I return to making long-form video and build a useful storage rack for my bits of plywood, plastic, and metal. As always remember to like, comment, and subscribe!

Nietzsche, Nicer

nospam@example.com (Eiki Martinson) — Sat, 09 Sep 2023 19:06:16 -0700

Happiness is the feeling that power increases—that resistance is being overcome.

—Nietzsche

This famous definition sticks in the throat a bit because of Nietzsche's dark reputation and how it makes that “power” sound, but try a small substitution with modern therapeutic language: “Happiness is the feeling that you are being empowered” and notice how differently it hits. Or how about this very slight modification: “Happiness is the feeling that you are moving in the right direction”?

Looked at this way, Nietzsche turns into an old softy, offering us a surprisingly gentle and generous definition, in which happiness is no destination, no distant mountain peak where all is well forevermore, but something accessible, even easily so. No matter what gloomy valley you find yourself in, one step up into light—and even into power, if you will—is enough.

DIY Sprinkler Controller

nospam@example.com (Eiki Martinson) — Fri, 28 Jul 2023 09:28:08 -0700

At the beginning of the year I published to YouTube this video, in which I build a smart sprinkler controller using a Raspberry Pi and Open Sprinkler software. It's gradually becoming one of my most popular videos. Although I've been neglecting this blog somewhat, I have been making video content! Be sure and subscribe on YouTube if you'd like to be kept aware of those projects.