I think quite a few of you have seen the videos made by Simone Giertz.  She has gained fame by building small household robots that work to perform a task, but rather than expending huge efforts to make everything work perfectly, she basically settles for a first draft rough prototype experiment, and the results are funny, fun, and inspiring.  I think there is something we can all learn from her spirit -- and enjoying the pleasure of creating something that doesn't quite work.

Her very latest video has taken a sad turn though, as she posts about her discovery that she has a brain tumor.  She talks about her upcoming operation.

Some of her videos, including the last one:

What a wonderful surprise to wake up and find that we have passed our goal of $10,000 raised !!


We are so lucky to have such supportive people willing to take the time and make the effort and send their hard earned money to us.

In the coming months we are going to have to show them it is well deserved by putting it to good use and continuing our process of improving the site and embarking on some new projects.

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The fundraiser will continue until the end of the month, so there are still a few days left for everyone who hasn't donated yet to be part of it!

• Donate now
• Read our latest newsletter to learn more about the fundraiser

Basic Info

App Name	BazQux Reader service
Description	A service - an online $PAID RSS feed-reader or "feed-aggregator".
Thumbs-Up Rating
App URL	https://bazqux.com
App Version Reviewed	This is an online, browser-based service, and the version is always "latest".
Test System Specs	Win7-64 Win8/8.1-64 and Pro Win10-64 and Pro - variously using: old (now defunct) Firefox browser, latest Slimjet (Chrome-based) browser <-- superb with display control NoSquint Plus extension, IE11 browser, MS Edge browser. Brave browser.
Supported OSes	Any web browser.
Support Methods	Help: is via https://bazqux.com/
Trial Version Available?	30-day free trial.
Pricing Scheme	This is a commercial service with a 30-day free trial period and then $19 or $29 (pay-what-you-want) annual subscription fee.

Intro and Overview:
BazQux Reader is a very fast online Web-based feed-aggregator, capable of reading Atom and RSS feeds.

It shows comments to posts, able to retrieve full article text, have several view modes, search, can subscribe to Twitter/Facebook/Instagram/Google+ pages and has sharing and bookmarking to popular services.

It is commercial service with a 30 days free trial and then $19 or $29 pay-what-you-want annual fee.
Copied from: BazQux Reader Alternatives and Similar Websites and Apps - AlternativeTo.net - <https://alternativeto.net/software/bazqux-reader/>

Someone was asking me how I arrived at using BazQux reader, and I thought it might be helpful/useful to post this review, as it could potentially save people a lot of time (if they were not already happily using a feed-reader).

As part of our fundraiser celebration, a couple of forum members (cranioscopical and wraith808) have rounded-up a whole bunch of companies willing to donate software for us to give away and provide discounts for our members.

Software being given away includes:  AtomicScribbler, Bvckup2, Beyond Compare, CintaNotes, TechSmith's Camtasia, DisplayFusion, DoogiePim, Help+Manual, HD Sentinel, JAlbum, Macrium Reflect, Softmaker, SmartEdit, RitLabs TheBat, Website Watcher, IDM's UltraEdit, VueMinder, ZeusEdit, The Journal 7, Zentimo, VMWare, Terragen, Write!, Writer's Cafe, ProWritingAid, Jutoh, and others.

Deadline for entry to the giveaway drawing is April 9th. 

Enter here:  https://www.donation.../fundraiser/giveaway

Greetings all! It's been over a year since the last newsletter, and we've been super busy in that time -- so busy that this is going to be a super-sized newsletter, packed to the brim with news and links.

But first: I need to ask for your financial support and your non-financial encouragement.  It's been 3 years since our last fundraiser, and 13 years since the start of DonationCoder.com.  I hope we've earned your renewed support by continuing to release and update clean, quality software free of toolbars, ads, bundled software, or other unwanted junk, and by making our forum a friendly place where people can discuss technology issues and help one another.

This past year in particular we spent a *huge* amount of time completing a long-awaited major overhaul of our website along with a move to new hosting servers.  These changes will help us do what we do better and more securely, and help us update our content more regularly.  I hope you'll show us that you appreciate our hard work by making a donation during the fundraiser.  In section 4 below you'll find a new long article by me on the changes to the site, as well as a request for your input about new ideas for the site.

Our goal this April is to raise at least $4,800 to pay for the next year of hosting.  If we can raise substantially more we'll get a chance to pursue some exciting new projects -- like funding members on our forum to write regular columns about different areas of the tech landscape (software, hardware, open source, kickstarter, etc.).

The fundraiser is also our chance to say thanks to our supporters and newsletter subscribers, by organizing a massive software giveaway and month of discounts on popular 3rd party software (see section 3 below).

-Jesse (mouser)



There's a lot more in the full newsletter.

This is a post about a (free) program called OpenSCAD.

I recently bought a 3d printer.  Mostly just because they've gotten good enough and cheap enough that I woudn't feel too bad if it mostly sat on a shelf.

I've been having quite a bit more fun with it than I expected, mostly because of the amazing site thingiverse.com where people have uploaded thousands of printable things you can just download and print (it's not *quite* that easy yet, there's plenty of tinkering and troubleshooting still required with today's cheap 3d printers).

Mostly I've been printing things to bling out my board games.

But this past week a couple of people teamed up on the DonationCoder forum to help make a model of our site mascot (Cody the Bird), and a customizable base for him to sit on.  You can follow along with that thread here: https://www.donation...ic=45256.0;topicseen

A photo:

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I've tried experimenting with doing 3d design using tools like Blender, and my brain completely shuts down, which is a shame because it would be fun to be able to DESIGN models not just print models that others have made.

Which brings me to the reason I'm posting, OpenSCAD.

OpenSCAD has been a revelation for me.  It's basically a CAD (computer aided drafting) programming language and development environment, which makes it easy for a programmer to design and model 3d objects for printing, using algorithms/code.

It's a joy to use -- you can write programs to create 3d objects and instantly preview and study them and then save them for printing.  And most of the models on thingiverse that are customizable are made with OpenSCAD, which is a great way of getting started.

My mind is swimming with the idea of creating both useful and precise objects, but also useless and mathematically interesting objects...

Here is a video talking about OpenSCAD: