Will Fuchs

I recently responded to a job posting in the Computer Science newsletter for a website and logo design for Cal Poly PULSE (Peers Understanding Listening Supporting Educating). I got the job! PULSE provides health resources to students on campus, and my job was to help them design a self-care campaign. You can find the finished product here.

Recently, I’ve been getting into astrophotography, and this next weekend I’m going to Death Valley to take pictures! Taking pictures of the stars poses several interesting challenges, the largest of which is “star trails”. The earth is rotating, so the stars rise and set. This makes the nice pin lights that we see turn into streaks in long exposure photos. There are workarounds, like bumping up the ISO and taking a shorter exposure, but they all ultimately result in a lower quality photo. So, I’m building a barn door star tracker mount for my camera. The tracker is aligned with the north star, and it opens up at the same speed as the earth’s rotation. This cancels out the stars rotation and makes them appear stationary, preserving the pin lights that we see without sacrificing quality. I have about a week, and I’m setting a $30 budget for this project…

I’ve been playing acoustic guitar for years, but after playing my buddy’s Les Paul, I decided I wanted an electric too. My roomate and I decided build our dream guitars. This design is based off of Bruce Springsteen’s Telecaster. Unfortunately, I lost a lot of the build photos when my phone broke, so this will be a bit sparse…