BoxOfFeet

I have been playing with FreeCAD since before 1.0, but I couldn't say when I started. I hated it. I come from Siemens NX, and the workflow made no sense at all. It couldn't do what I considered simple tasks I use all the time for work. I want to make one base sketch that I can make multiple features or bodies from, it was super frustrating not to be able to do that. Arrays didn't make sense. I needed to 3D print a replacement part for something of my daughter's, and didn't have my work computer with me. It took me 2 hours to make this part that would have taken about 10 minutes in NX. Or even SolidWorks (which I am also not a fan of, but used it professionally for several years). I could have driven to my office, picked up my laptop, come home, and designed it faster than FreeCAD 1.0.

I tried 1.1 yesterday after watching some videos on it recently, and most of the major problems I had with it seem to have been addressed. Sketching was better, making features from those sketches was better, things just seemed to make more sense. I made another rather simple part in about half an hour, and I think that time will come down as I get more familiar with it. I wish I had my SpacePilot Pro hooked up for it, it's been a while since I've had to rotate things with my mouse. But I have previously had the 3DConnexion driver working with FreeCAD, so I'll be doing that in the future. Fun fact, you can also do anaglyph 3D with FreeCAD if you want do design with those old-school red/blue glasses.

Anyway, here's what I made. It's a base for a Lundby doll house chair for my mom. Originally, it would have had an Eames style base, with a central metal post and legs coming out like a desk chair. I made a tulip-style base, and inserted a metal pin down the center for stability. It was super easy to design and modify in 1.1, with one main sketch revolved. Then, I created a second sketch for the angled top, extruded that, and did a boolean subtract. Super easy, and actually pretty fun to make. Completely different from my previous FreeCAD experiences. I will be coming back to it again, for sure.

Here's what the original would have looked. She doesn't have the footstool, so I figured I could take some design liberties. The Eames's work is fantastic, so is Eero Saarinen's. Why not mash them up?

I recently breathed some new life into this crappy old Nextbook Flexx 10 I have had for years by trying out some lightweight distros. I have Lubuntu on it currently, and I am really enjoying LXQt so far. I was surprised at how good looking you can get it.

That leads me to a minor inconvenience. I like using my old imac USB mouse with it. It's small, has a short cord, and works on just about any surface. The click is also very satisfying. The problem is, it only has one button. On Mint and Windows, that's been an easy fix with built-in accessibility settings. Just long click to right click. But I cannot find that anywhere in Lubuntu. Am I just missing it somewhere? Is there an easy way to implement it?

This is my third DSL. I love these things. It's the most I've spent on a busted one so far, at $30. The last one I bought was 12, and the one before that was 5. All this one needed though was a new shell and a digitizer. Both screens are in excellent condition. The shell was very yellowed and busted.

Anyway, I had just learned recently that eXtremerate made DSL shells, and I decided I needed to try one out. I am a huge fan of the Switch Lite shell I have from them, it feels nearly OEM.

The DSL shell, not so much. The plastic is pretty soft. That's kind of nice, since I have had issues with previous aftermarket DS shells cracking. The bottom screen bezel is molded in, which I also like. It's hard to get the adhesive ones off without ruining the digitizer. The upper shell does not have the dual square DS logo molded into the top, which is also appreciated. The fit is also very good. No unexpected warping, everything fit together fine.

But the plastic is so soft.. I'm afraid it is going to scratch very easily. Plus, it's painted. I thought it would be gray plastic with some UV printed logos, but it is white plastic painted gray with UV logos. Sort of disappointing. If I ever re-shell it again, I'll get one of their transparent ones. But yeah, probably the best aftermarket DS shell I've seen so far, overall.

Did you know there's a decent DOS emulator for the DS? You aren't going to be playing Doom, but you can play Oregon Trail! Or Jetpack! And lots of other earlier stuff. Bind the buttons to keys, use the stylus for mouse input.

I found an old, sealed media center remote at a thrift shop. But not all of the keys work out of the box. When I run evtest, it definitely recognizes all of the key presses, and identifies the keys correctly. But how do I assign them to things? Any help would be appreciated.

I am running Mint, by the way.

I'm planning on finally retiring my Logitech T-BB18 trackball. I'm getting a white M585, and putting a T-BB18 ball in it to make it look more like the T-BB13 I had in my teens. I've already tested this, it works. What would really set it off (other than seeing if I can dye the scroll wheel red) would be to get a nice little vinyl sticker of the old Logitech logo. But I can't seem to find anything.

I thought about just getting another T-BB13, since it was actually USB. But, I remember what a pain it was to take out the ball and clean it. I'd rather get a new M575 that is both Bluetooth and dongled USB.

T-BB13

T-BB18

M575S

Old Logitech logo

I'm hoping somebody can help me out here, refresh my memory. Earlier this year, I was having an issue where whenever I opened a couple apps, they would prompt me for my password to launch. At the time, one was Firefox. It was something to do with the keyring. And I used nano to edit some configuration file for each of the two apps to change a line that fixed the issue. But I have no memory of what I changed, and my browser history is no help. Did I change something to trusted? Did I change some authentication requirement to basic? I honestly have no recollection. But if anybody has any idea what I'm trying to say, I would love some assistance.

The group is a bit smaller these days, just one buddy. We're doing some XP gaming. I got Battlefield 1942 running here, with the Battlegroup 42 mod. My Dimension E510 can really handle up to BG42 version 1.35b, but apparently they aren't hosting that on ModDB anymore. I had to find it on some shady ancient Russian file hosting site. But I got there in the end.

This is the first time out for my Precision 690, I've been working on it for about a month. I rescued it from a rage room, it was going to get beat to scrap. I asked, and they gave it to me! I swapped the single Xeon 5160 for Xeon 5355's. 2gb of ram for 32gb. The crappy display adapter for a GTX 980TI. It is an XP era powerhouse. I have not gotten XP x64 running on it yet, but it's running Mint 22.1 like a champ. I put an XP theme on it until I can dual boot the real thing. I am super stoked this thing is running. Mint might be the better option for it, actually! Good 32bit compatibility with Wine and Lutris, and full use of the 32gb of ram and 8 cores.

I saw the movie in high school, when it came out on VHS, and I loved it. I bought the book, and couldn't put it down. It was perhaps my favorite piece of sci-fi for a while. I thought John Travolta was delightfully hammy, and that the movie was extremely quotable and fun.

A coworker of mine were just talking about musicals this morning, and my strong dislike of Hamilton. For some reason, it popped into my head that I would love a musical of Battlefield Earth, and John Travolta should sing in it. This sentiment was not shared by my coworker. So, yeah, that's it.

The TI-86 is my absolute favorite calculator. I find it a pleasure to program for, I love the custom menu buttons, and I love the screen compared to that of the 83/84. I love the design, the uniform buttons and dark color scheme look very professional. This is my second one, after the screen died in my original baby that got me through high school and college. Which leads me to another thing I love about it, they are dirt cheap on eBay. Most are under $20.

Back in my college days, I saw somebody online had modded theirs with the frontlight from a GBA SP. The AGS-001, not the AGS-101. That was brilliant. I did a ton of calculator programming and math in low-light conditions at the time. Lounges in the dorms, during lectures. A calculator with a lit screen would have been awesome. I know all three major brands have options like that now, but it was pretty novel at the time. I think the only one out with a backlight was the Casio 9860 Slim, which was quite pricey. Unfortunately, even a broken GBA was outside of my broke college budget, and those tri-wing screwdrivers were not common yet. So, the dream faded.

Until, for some reason, a couple weeks ago. I do not know why it popped back into my head, and I could not find the source of the mod again for the life of me. But I knew I had to do it. And these days, you can get aftermarket GBA parts super easy and cheap. I still had my old 86, and I took it apart for proof of concept work. I tried every single test point for something that just turned on and off with the calculator, and could not find a single thing. Well, at least not anything without a signal from it. So, I resigned to just using a switch. Which I remember is what the original mod also did. I hid it in the battery compartment. It works fantastic. I wish I did this 20 years ago. There are a few specks of dust on it, and the frontlight makes them hugely visible. I'm going to get them off, but I'm out of Rodico at the moment. Anyway, just thought I'd share.

I really don't know why. I don't take that many notes. When I'm in meetings, I've been telling people I color code my notes. But honestly, I have just been switching pens at random.. I'm never going to use all this ink before they dry up, and it's going to be a pain to clean them all. Normally, I'll only have one or two inked at a time.

It took probably 10 hours of troubleshooting going off his troubleshooting guide. There was a tiny short i couldn't even see through my jewelers loupe, but measurements said it was there. So, I scraped between a couple pins with my smallest tweezers, and boom. Done.

Then, after I finished, I discovered there is a newer and better version of this mod, the iFlash2PS2. The IDE Resurrector only supports up to 128GB cards. The iFlash can handle up to 1TB. And it looks like slightly less soldering. So, learn from me. Do the iFlash.

I'm assuming you all know about FMCB, and how to rip your discs to ISO files. If you don't, this is a great way to save your console that won't read discs anymore, like this one I picked up in an "as-is" bin super cheap at a used game store. I'd look up Tito from Macho Nacho's PS2 mod videos.

Here's a pic of my terrible wiring. Yes, that's from a CAT5 cable. The wire is ordered for this mod wasn't small enough and I was too impatient to wait for more. It's very ugly, but it works. You're going to want 30ga to do this right. CAT5 is 24ga, and it barely, barely fits. Honestly, if i get ambitious I might rewire it later. The SD slot wiring is way easier than the board soldering. You can't see it of course, but I know it's there. And I'll have to see it again when I eventually install a Retrogem.

I can't stand the SpaceMouse Pro. They ruined it! Why would they swap the nice tactile buttons for stupid gummy membrane buttons? And why coat the whole thing in nasty soft touch coating that is going to turn to goo? We peaked with the previous generation of space balls.

Since I've been working from home though, it has gotten quite annoying to unplug my SpaceExplorer and take it back and forth to the office. It would be so nice to have one of those fancy new wireless ones. But that's not happening, since they ruined it.

So, I added USB-C to mine, instead. Now, I'll just have a cable at the office, and a cable at home and just take the unit itself back and forth. I can even leave a USB-C to USB-C cord in my case, in case I need to use it with my laptop away from my docks! If anyone is interested, I can share the STL for the little breakout board mounting piece I made.