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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 1st, 2023

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  • I used to be an avid reader but as I got older and busier I just couldn’t find the time.

    Then when I did have time there was always distractions, or other things I could be doing.

    So now I read primarily via audiobooks through Libby and my library.

    I read 130 books or so last year that way.

    Mowing the yard? Audiobook.

    Long drive? Audiobook.

    Waiting at the doctors? Audiobook.

    Dishes? Audiobook.

    And then when I’m really invested I’ll relax by playing some mindless game while I listen. Think match 3 or bejeweled.

    Just engaging enough to keep me from getting bored while listening but not so much that I can’t do both.

    Balatro, BABA is you? Bad candidates for playing and listening.

    The last couple of years I burned through the wheel of time series, all of Brandon Sanderson’s books (except skyward which I haven’t gotten to), a lot of Adrian Tchaikovsky, and others.




  • One thing to consider. When the stocks that are part of a mutual fund drop… then your retirement contributions will be buying them on sale.

    Assuming the mutual funds are spread out to minimize risk (1 of the funds companies folds, etc) overall you’ll be better off long term.

    As you age you’ll start moving your investments to more stable options (talk to a financial adviser on the specifics for your plans). This way they that won’t benefit from huge gains but also are a lot less likely to be wiped out by massive drops.

    In the meantime look at how your funds are doing over time. Not even year to year but maybe every 2 or 3 years.






  • Klipper is a different beast but once you get it going it’s leaps and bounds ahead.

    No more compiling and editing firmware. Since the Klipper firmware itself is built and deployed to the board so the logic of what features, pins, etc can be controlled by your pi.

    E.g. the board is no longer the “brains” of the printer but the brain stem. Where the brain (the pi) tells it on pin A “tell this stepper motor to turn this”, on pin J “tell the heater to cycle on” etc.

    Basically you download Klipper, look at a printer.cfg for the board you have, and then just use that as a starting point.

    Here’s the generic printer.cfg for your new board

    https://github.com/Klipper3d/klipper/blob/master/config/generic-creality-v4.2.7.cfg

    The real power comes from having the option to use macros for things like START_PRINT and END_PRINT.

    For example, when I added a Nevermore fan on an skr mini e3v3 board I just had to wire it, find the “pins for the plug” on the board and then add the necessary config change.

    Didn’t work? Comment it out and restart firmware and you’re no worse than it not being there. Adjust, restart, and go.

    So where I’d avoid a marlin update because of the hassle of building and updating I now just check for updates, ssh in and build it with a command and update the board over USB.

    And that’s just to update the Klipper firmware on the board for whatever fixes/changes are needed for Klipper. For things like new macros or existing items changed around you just update the config and “restart” and it does the rest.

    The only thing that you lose with an ender is the screen. Their screens aren’t dumb… they have their own weird firmware. Personally I just use the website and now the moonraker mobile app to control everything and I don’t bother with a screen at all.












  • I don’t write games but a lot of people that do often say something similar. Do play tests for the concept/mechanics.

    This way you don’t spend time/energy and resources on art and assets that won’t be used, etc.

    Similar to a minimal viable product in regular dev or, perhaps a better analogy, technical demos.

    You want to write a site or app that fetches API data for GPS, calendar and Weather and show them together? You don’t start with the UI. You start with:

    • Can I get the GPS coordinates
    • Can I call another API and get the weather for those coordinates?
    • Can I get the coordinates or other info for some future location?
    • Can I send that to get the weather?

    Once you know you can and that it “works” you build around it.

    So like you said. I have boxes, and this other box (or static PNG of a cat) moves around them and when I move this way it drops the box down on another box.

    Does that work? Does it feel “fun” to arrange them? No, it feels tedious or can’t get the collision right? Then let’s try a different angle or taking the part that did work and iterating on it.

    This also leaves you open to random bugs that end up being “fun” when you lean into them.

    Game Makes Toolkit has some good videos on his journey making “Mind over Magnet”. Here’s the playlist.

    https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLc38fcMFcV_uH3OK4sTa4bf-UXGk2NW2n

    There’s also PirateSoftware whose entire stream is devoted to “go and make games”