A Lesson in Engineering and Motivation

Steve had a post a few days ago about trying to recapture the drive and passion to succeed. It made me think about my tattoo machine. The first iteration was just for the invention competition. V2.0 was a better design, but it still wasn’t good. It’s more difficult than you’d think to have a “good” design. It’s easy to spot good and bad design, but it’s a far more daunting task to actually design something that’s good. Good designs typically have hundreds of years and hundreds of thousands of man-hours worth of thought and labor put into them.

Every piece of sheet metal and plastic of your car has a specific reason for why it is the way it is. Machines that have been developed for as long as cars, and bulldozers, and tattoo machines are the way they are for good reason, and drastically changing them creates major design, reliability, and cosmetic issues.

Steve’s post must have planted a seed in my creative subconscious. (which isn’t very big since I’m a piss poor artist, musician, and most other creative exploits).

This morning I was in the shower, humming some Weezer when I was suddenly struck by the thought that everyone dies alone, and I began to panic. Adrenaline flooded my system and my hands and legs began to shake. I started to breath deeply to try and calm myself down. My mind was still wanting to flight, but there’s really no where to go when you’re naked and dripping wet in the middle of winter.

I began singing Thoughts of a Dying Atheist to myself while getting toweled off and went to get dressed.

Then it came to me. It doesn’t have to have a cover on it. It’s a tattoo machine, not a fucking BMW. Kind of the Indian Larry school of design. This will make it a more compact package and it will look cool. Machined springs also came to me, and I had a flash in my brain of what V3.0 should look like.

Now all that’s left to do is everything.