June brought the last two posts in the Blender add-on series, the Apollo Guidance Computer, and the start of summer. It's been a slower month than usual, but still some interesting work on Blender.

🆕 NEW THIS MONTH

Blender Add-on Preferences, File I/O, and Notifications with Python

The render queue needed a few things to feel like a real tool: persistent user settings that survive Blender restarts, a way to read and write queue state to disk, and status notifications so you know when renders complete or fail. This post covers all three, including some quirks in Blender's preferences API that aren't obvious until you're already stuck in them.

Read it → https://harlepengren.com/blender-python-addon-preferences-file-io-notifications/

Blender Add-on Error Handling, Queue Resume, and Packaging for Distribution

The final technical post in the series. Covers what happens when a render fails mid-queue, how to make the queue resumable so you don't lose your place, and how to package the finished add-on as a .zip file ready to install in any Blender project. If you've been following along, this is the one that closes the build.

Read it → https://harlepengren.com/blender-python-addon-error-handling-packaging/

On the retro side:

The Entire Apollo Guidance Computer Had 4KB of RAM — Here's What They Did With It

The Apollo Guidance Computer had 4KB of RAM and 72KB of storage to navigate a spacecraft to the moon and back. This post gets into what made that possible: fixed-point arithmetic, a priority scheduler that could shed tasks under load, and a display system where astronauts typed abbreviated codes to interact with a computer that could barely hold anything. Engineering under real constraint, done right.

Read it → https://harlepengren.com/apollo-guidance-computer-4kb-ram/

💡 SOMETHING I LEARNED

Summer started in full this month.

The kids finished school and are home now, and the house has a completely different rhythm. I knew going in that the blog output would slow down, and it has. The last two Blender posts took noticeably longer to put together than posts did back in April.

What I didn't fully anticipate: how much my productivity is tied to a predictable environment. I figured I'd adapt, write in the mornings, grab an hour here and there. That works, sort of, but I'm slower than I expected. Turns out I need more uninterrupted time than I thought to do this kind of writing well.

None of that is a complaint. Having the kids home is good, and I'd take the slower summer over a quiet house any day.

🗓️ WHAT'S COMING NEXT

I'm starting work on a game. I had a specific type of game I wanted to play, tried a few existing ones that seemed close, and none of them were quite it — so I decided to build at least a level and see where it goes. More details once there's something real to show.

Also: a complete reference post for the Blender batch render manager is coming. It will cover the full add-on assembled in one place, for anyone who wants to see the whole thing without reading nine posts in sequence.

If you've been following the Blender series from the beginning, I'd love to know how it landed — hit reply and tell me what you built, or where it stopped clicking.

Norm harlepengren.com