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 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.

Or is there a way to set a resolution as a default for specific displays?

I have 3 monitors in my setup. Two are on a KVM, and one is always on my Mint PC. That monitor is an old XP era Dell. But it isn't hooked up with DVI, instead I have it connected via HDMI to an audio extractor to the Dell speakers, then HDMI to DVI. It works great. Except when I hit the KVM switch, and for some reason the resolution on the Dell changes from 1280x1024 to 1920x1080, which is unsupported.

How the heck do I get 1280x1024 to be persistent?

I got this when he sold his house to move to an assisted living facility. It's just been sitting in my garage for a couple years. Busy with the kid and all that. Well, we just got a little child trailer, and I didn't want to pull it with my mountain bike so figured it would be a good time to clean this guy up. New tires and tubes. Cleaned and lubed. Waxed. I thought it was trying hard to look like an old Schwinn, so I thought some nice shiny fenders would help out with that.

I have so many memories of going on rides with him, and of him taking it camping. I always thought it was a nice looking bike. I'll have to show him a picture of it all cleaned up next time I see him, I don't think he's ridden it in at least a decade.

Next on the agenda is new brake pads, and some retro lights. Any other suggestions? Maybe a white saddle seat, or different handlebars? I'm pretty sure its only value is sentimental, so the best suggestions are cheap suggestions. Thanks!