richfiles

All I wanna do is just open my window, and let some fresh cool air inside... Can't do that, cause the current set of neighbors have seen to it to apparently have a relay race, where they instead of batons, they apparently pass off a lit cherry to keep a pervasive cloud of smoke lingering outside my windows at all times of the day and night... 3 am... Smoke out my windows. 1 pm... Smoke. 8:46 pm... Smoke AND coughing! I have got to get back into a house of MY OWN again! This is insanity! I'm gonna need to start using the AC soon, just to stay cool, if this local smog cloud doesn't dissipate! I hate smoking, and that's all I've got to say about that.

@klond That is by far, simply THE MOST Kerbal thing I have seen all year! Bravo! For the Blue LED, you could replace it with something a bit more Kerbal, like a green LED. You might need to add a small resistor in series with it, since a blue LED almost certainly will have a higher forward voltage than most green LEDs. As a result, blue LEDs will often have a smaller resistor than what you'd use for a green LED. Adding a resistor in series will increase the total resistance, further limiting the current through the LED. The larger the resistor, the dimmer the LED. A subtle green glow might be more preferred than a blazing blue annoyance.

Ah yes... @catonthekbd is absolutely right. It's easy to forget basics like that when it's been over a year since I last ordered a PCB... My first PCB. Definitely do a "DRC" (Design Rule Check) to make sure the design falls within the manufacturer's basic requirements. In this case, for cutout portions, consider what is easiest to machine. If they are milling out a cutout, consider the radius of their tool, and make sure there are no hard interior corners sharper than that radius (exterior corners are fine). Another thing to consider, is if you have multiple holes, try to make as many of them the same size as possible. This will reduce the number of tool changes, making it simpler to manufacture, and potentially cheaper for you. Some manufacturers might charge a fee for exceeding a certain number of tool changes. Another thing to consider, is that many board houses will send you three identical boards when you order their usual low cost prototyping option. If you have a design that requires multiple boards of similar dimension, consider seeing if you can create design overlap. Maybe a V-groove section that can be snapped off to provide a piece you need elsewhere, to allow the part to be used one way for one part, and a completely different way when used as another. I don't know if this will apply to your project, as I've not had a chance to look it over in detail myself, but it's something to consider. I'm going to be using this "feature" of many board houses in my controller for my navball. My navball project is using a real FDAI salvaged from an Israeli P-4 flight simulator. I need three identical circuits to control each of the three axes, but I need a single reference circuit and reference amplifier to provide a signal to all three circuits. By building the board to include the reference, a reference tap point, and a single axis control circuit, and a reference power driver, I can order the ONE board, but get three identical copies of it. I'll populate all three axis drivers, but on one board, I'll populate the reference generator and the reference power driver. Boards two and three will just have those parts left out, but will be connected to the reference signal from board one. Tricks like that can drastically reduce the board cost by just taking advantage of the way manufacturers supply these boards, usually in triplicate. Another way to benefit from triplicate boards, is durability. You can stack two or even three thinner boards to make a stronger assembly, if it's needed.

Ah! I see. Maybe design in KiCAD, print out 1:1, and check, check, check those measurements in balsa. Once you feel confident about the prototype, have it made. Those FR4 protoboards would also work. Despite using FR4 protoboard, the first thing that comes to mind when I hear "protoboard" are the phenolic style "paper protoboards", which are quite thin and brittle, and don't even tend to sit entirely flat. Honestly, if you prototype anything on your higher quality FR4 boards, they'd probably just be usable as is then, though having a design that can be manufactured, and made available to download would be great for the community in general.

an FR4 PC board is just a fiberglass PC board. For something as small as what you're working with, there will be negligible weight difference, and with one, you can have it drilled/machined out by a place set up to do so at nearly no additional cost to just having it made. The only significant difference, is Carbon fiber of the same thickness will be more able to bend without breaking, something that shouldn't be much of an issue, unless you intend to have material cracking torque on your motors.

I don't buy them. A chicken's generous posterior donates them to me. (My dad has a farm) My complaint for the day... 0.9-1.4 Mbps down... The upload eventually registered a tick on the speed test... My router seems to have given up on being functionally wireless, and as such, my workshop is most decidedly without a reliable means to be connected. That means a 144p Youtube video will buffer occasionally...

Why not just order a custom PC board with all your motor and gear mounts as part of the board design. Just make sure to order from a board house that is capable of the cuts. Then the only thing you need to deal with are the small bits that serve as your bearing blocks. it looks to me like the plate design you came up with more or less covers that. Just make the PCB your plate. (Unless you meant a prototype PCB, as in if it's done, why redo it)

People in multiple apartments were running their AC yesterday and the day before. I chose not to and didn't sleep AT ALL 2 nights ago, because it was just too hot... We have snow forecast for tomorrow.

I've had an account on Aliexpress for a few years now. Ordered a few things... A Raspberry Pi clone, a soldering iron... Today I tried to order parts for a homemade "helping hands" tool and parts to repair the thumbtack on my Nintendo Switch. In all, I ordered $36 worth of small stuff. I forgot to turn off my VPN... Oops! Apparently, they didn't like that my IP address did not correspond to the location of my billing address (I assume), and they locked out my ability to buy... The problem, is they feel it's perfectly fine to demand a photo of my STATE ISSUED ID, My credit/debit card, an a copy of my BANK STATEMENTS... NO!!! That is so far into privacy breach territory! Holy Kraken Spawn! What I DID do, was to completely blur out every piece of financial, identifying, or unique data on said documents, leaving ONLY my name and address (which they already have, to ship my products), and for my card, I left the name and last four digits to be matched to the record of my payment... I blurred out the first 12 digits. All in all, the ONLY information I gave them was my name, last 4 of my card, and my address. This is data they ALREADY HAVE, and they can't see ANY OTHER INFORMATION. With what I gave them, they should be able to easily correlate my name and address across all their demanded documentation... If they accept that, then I'll proceed with the order... If they tell me I've obfuscated too much and want me to send anything uncensored... I'm simply gonna tell them they've lost a customer, as I will NEVER give that level of privacy breaching information to a some FOREIGN CORPORATION! I wouldn't give that level of data to a LOCAL company! Yikes! I'll tell 'em exactly where they can shove their document requests!

Take whatever time you need... Sometimes you just gotta step away from things. You'll always be welcome back here if you get the itch to post again. As for me... I am facing the crushing realization that my coding skills have not made one iota of progression since I got those LED displays for my KSP instrument panel first lit, WAY back in 2016... It's been three years, and I haven't even touched code. My keyboard is still unprogrammed... Coding is proving to be an anchor for me. I so loath the very idea of being forced to face the inevitable wall, that I honestly think it's impacting my drive to move forward even with he parts I do enjoy, such as hardware design and construction. For me, Coding is the "homework" of tinkering, and with all my big projects, when all the fun hardware stuff gets done... I'll be faced with a wall of code I need to learn and create, and I fear I won't find any enjoyment there... And that is very demotivating...

Though they've been used as food additives for nearly half a century... True, there's not a lot of long term study on their effect when inhaled after high temp vaporization, but those chemicals are non addictive, unlike nicotine. Nothing wrong with studies, but comparatively... I know cigarettes are demonstrably worse. My buddy did indeed have an instance of getting way too much nicotine once when he was weening himself off it... It looked to be an absolutely miserable experience for him. He made sure not to make that mistake again. I do like your advice on vegetables, but different people will find differing levels of success in quitting. For him, a decade and a half of "quitting" was solved in a period of several months, thanks to him using that vaporizer as a weening crutch. Will power indeed does vary wildly from one person to another, as does any personality trait. I just wanna see people have the best chance of quitting smoking, and for there to be less risk of starting. I actually would like to imagine that we might finally be seeing a younger generation that actually knows better, for a change. I'm crossing my fingers!

I know people who quit cold-turkey, after a lifetime of smoking... My old boss from the motor manufacturing job (the first one I worked for) used to chain smoke while working, back when it was just him and the one other employee. One day, he just decided... "I'm done", and that was it. The man had a will of iron though, so it doesn't surprise me he succeeded. I also know for a fact that vaping can be the magic key to quitting, at least for those with little to no willpower. I've witnessed it with my very eyes... It genuinely troubles me that there are people who can not differentiate NON-NARCOTIC nicotine free vaping from vaping with nicotine juice. I know people make fun of it, rip on it, look down on it... But for real... My best friend quit 8 years ago. I never in all my life EVER believed he would quit. A little back ground here... He started smoking in high school. I remember when he was saving up for The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask. He'd put a $20 in his tackle box to "save" it... Nope. Cigarettes. He'd lock his tackle box... Nope... Cigarettes. He'd hand me the key. NOPE... Pried the corner open to buy cigs... He had to literally hand me money in order to save it. It was so bad, that over the course of months, he wasn't able to save the $120 necessary ($70 for the game, $40 for the memory expansion pack the N64 needed, and about $10 in sales taxes). He only managed the $70, thanks to finally realizing he had ABSOLUTELY NO POWER over his own free will to control his spending on cigarettes (Thanks a lot, all the garbage enablers that would take his money, pocket some of it, and hand him a pack... That right there is despicable... Not only unlawful). Me and another friend each pitched in $20 to buy the memory pack behind his back and secretly install it into the N64. We tried to cheer him up by trying to "convince" him that maybe he could play part of the game before it ran out of memory... Even though he'd not saved up enough for the Memory Pack. It was a fun, wholesome, and generous prank, all done to bring up the spirits of a self defeated dude... Self defeated by his addiction to cancer sticks. This is the guy I'm talking about... a person that, when still in high school, had already fallen that deep into the vicious cycle of addiction and dependency, and lack of willpower to even attempt to quit. He tried patches, gum, prescriptions, you name it... And ALWAYS FAILED... What SAVED him from cigarettes was vaping. He started with a heavy nicotine fluid and did a mix of vaping and regular cigarettes. Once he had himself "reprogrammed" to associate the nicotine fix with the vaping, he was able to genuinely stop regularly smoking cigs. The act of holding the vaporizer, the act of bringing it to his mouth to take a draw... All of it tied into that mechanical muscle memory tied to his habit. It satisfied the addiction. He vaped for a long time, but every couple months, he'd get juice with a little less nicotine. He tried all sorts of flavors, and made the vaping into some kind of reward in that sense. Basically, he gave himself a different "fix" to look forward too. The nicotine was still there, but slowly, slowly weened down, until one day, he realized he'd been spending money on flavored e-juice for a few months that was nicotine free. He decided that vaping juice was boring, inconvenient, and too much trouble for a "taste", and just quit. Just like that, he was done. Vaping saved his lungs. Vaping saved his sense of taste and smell. Vaping made him more tolerable to be around. I'm also certain that his multiple packs per day would have killed him, so I'd say vaping saved his life. This is why it INFURIATES ME to no end when people attack vaping in general cause "kids are vaping, it's such an awful thing"... You know what... Kids were SMOKING TOO, and that was an awful thing, but it was illegal, and harmful to start with! Instead of enacting COMMON SENSE legislation to set an age limit on selling e-fluid containing nicotine to minors, some people seem intent on trying to ban and vilify it everywhere by treating it as the same as a cigarette. This is problematic... In the primary concern case of minors... Yes, it's not good that minors are experimenting with it, but I'd RATHER them experiment with NICOTINE FREE juice in their youth, than find themselves falling into cigarettes like my and prior generations did. If they DO get their hands on nicotine laden juice, I'd RATHER they have weaning options rather than force them into that same circle of enablers, buying them nicotine e-juice for them, like my friend dealt with with his early days of cigs. Yes... I'd rather have a minor experiment with nicotine free vaping than to force them to rely on enablers that are MORE likely to share nicotine containing juice with them, creating a REAL addiction, as opposed to mere experimentation. Second, the problem of blanket vaping bans HARMS recovering cigarette smokers who are trying to ween themselves off cigs. By making vaping more convenient, it becomes a more favorable means to wean oneself away. Blanket bans for them are tantamount to if a place banned you from using your nicotine gum, or patches, or prescriptions... Different people respond differently to different treatments, and vaping was the solution for my friend... The guy got so desperate once, he even tried one of those hypnotists (nuffin'). I'm not convinced my buddy would have succeeded in today's vaping UNfriendly environment. Back then, the convenience of being able to vape in a restaurant, when cigs would have sent him outside, was an absolute blessing. It MADE the complexity of maintaining his vaporizer WORTH doing. Had he been forced to go outside to vape, I don't think he would have stuck to the extra effort to maintain the maintenance and cleaning and charging of the device. I could genuinely sit across the table from him, and not be bothered by his vaping. At ALL! This coming from someone who gets headache developing within 10-30 seconds of smelling regular cigarette smoke. I see vaping, as well as vape shaming or vape banning for what it is... With Nicotine, it is a FAR SUPERIOR alternative to smoking, with the REALISTIC CAPACITY to be used as a tool to ween a person off nicotine completely. Without Nicotine, vaping is a far superior medium for experimentation, and is WORLDS easier to drop than ANYTHING containing nicotine, cig or vape. Blanket banning or vilifying all vaping, including nicotine free, is harmful, as it can direct those intent on experimenting to seek enablers, who may share nicotine juice. I hate with a passion, the push to treat vaping the same as cigarettes, and blanket ban it in the same way. People do not understand the good that can come from it, and they do not understand that for some people, that ban might as well be as sinister as banning them from taking a prescription. That might be the only option for quitting cigarettes that is, or will ever work for them. I'm sorry if it bothers you that an angsty teen is experimenting with nicotine free vaping, or that some hipster wants to vape in a coffee shop. Belive it or not... Those things DO NOT BOTHER ME! Teens do stupid stuff sometimes... Their brains are still developing, and it's just NATURAL for them to want to experiment with things to see what works. I can not stress enough, that I'd rather see some teen experiment with nicotine free vaping for a few years, rather than get addicted to actual cigs, or even nicotine e-juice, because some "ban" forced them to seek out illicit sources. I am a firm applauder to to the bans on smoking in public buildings and businesses, cause second hand smoke REALLY, GENUINELY causes me discomfort, and it IS unhealthy... But vaping, even at my own table, NEVER bothered me... I'm stopping here, or I'll ramble on forever, and keep repeating myself. TL;DR, I've never smoked or vaped in my life. I'd rather people choose the option that is less of a health hazard, that might actually save their lives from the other option even, and I hate when people try to compare the two as if they were the same, cause THEY ARE NOT! It's April. Isn't the AC running full-time yet? Here in MN, we had a massive snowstorm, followed by a perfect week, followed by a cold and chilly rainy week, followed by a day that reached "I can't sleep cause it's too hot", to I gotta close this window, I'm starting to shiver, and the rain is getting in... Weather here is absurd.

have an iPod Mini from 2005 that I STILL use to this day. I swapped the hard drive out for a compact flash card, so it's now a 16 GB flash iPod, and I replaced the battery twice over the years with third party replacement batteries. That latest battery still works for a few hours, but it's definitely reduced from the old literal full day of play time it used to have when fresh. Definitely time to upgrade the battery again. Heck... Maybe I'll even get a 32 or 64 GB card and upgrade the whole thing! Far cry from it's original 6 GB!

Sounds like you probably need a new battery. If only Apple didn't glue their darn computers together. Battery replacement is SUPPOSED to be easy... I helped install lights on a tractor for one of my brothers. Most of the time, when there are electrical problems on those old machines, the solution is to just wire in a toggle. My brother is rebuilding the machine, and so on Saturday, I helped him get the thing rewired to work with the original stock rotary light switch on the dash. Off, Position 1 - Dim forward lights and flashers (Low Beam road lights), Position 2 - Bright forward lights and flashers (High Beam road lights), Position 3 - Double bright forward lights and rear facing work lights with no flashers (Work light position). The problem... I left my multimeter at home. Literally brought EVERYTHING BUT it... Ugh... made things WAY harder. Then, in all our wisdom, we installed lights on one side while inside the shop during the day. As the sun went down, we realized the other side didn't have shop lights illuminating it, so we moved the tractor out of the shed... into the last 15 minutes of sunlight, then did the rest of the work with NO shop lights at all, with just flashlights... Yeah... I had a serious case of the dumb that day... Finally, my finger picked a fight with a screwdriver, and VERY much lost... I was slinging blood like Spidey slings webs! It's a bit sore today...

No matter how far from the building or where people are restricted to smoking outside of the apartments where I live, cigarette smoke will ALWAYS find the most direct path toward my open window.

But.. but... Why such a convoluted name!? Why a new thread... I don't like change!!! I still think this coulda been handled by just clarifying the scope of the old thread to match the scope here, and it have been reopened... I guess this will do, but RIP all that history... Rip the fun, concise title... It feels like an argument over semantics, this vs there. I'm still calling this thread by the old name... **Grumble grumble** Crispy bacon taunts me... It causes pain if I bite it with my cracked tooth, and my state is dragging it's knuckles in getting my heath insurance papers filed... Also the dentist has a waiting list that could be measured by trees, if printed out.

Two days ago, I rushed to get food home cause it was hot enough I was concerned over spoilage. Yesterday it was chilly and drizzled a few times. Today... it's SNOWING. The indecisive goofs forecasting the weather actually tried to claim it could be 1-2 feet of snowfall tomorrow... then revised it to 8-12 inches... Now they say today we will get 1-3 inches, and tomorrow it'll be a mix of snow and rain, and the rain will likely wash out what little snow accumulates. Someone needs to DRINK their tea... Not try to read the tea leaves for the forecast... Ugh... As for my other complaint... Just finished responding to someone on a Pokemon Go post on reddit... Someone there actually tried to make the argument that only IRL acquaintances can be your "actual" friends, and online people "aren't really real" friends... I mean... To have the gall to say that, online no less... There are people I've known online for the better part of a decade, who know more about me than my closest IRL friend. Some of these people, I chat with nearly every single day. We are more open and share more with each other than we would naturally allow ourselves with people in person, but then we become so accustomed to one another's friendship, that it simply becomes natural. Same with my best friend IRL. He knew a guy for a solid decade and a half. They used to just play CoD together, but as time went on, they chatted, got to know each other... A few years ago my buddy traveled to Colorado to visit. They met in person. My buddy crashed at the dude's house. They already knew each other, each other's families. It was like old friends reuniting after years apart... Except they HAD met before... Many times... Online. They were perfectly comfortable in spending time together IRL. They became REAL friends online. They just made it IRL as an excuse for a vacation and to finally make the friendship IRL. I really hate when people try to tell people that online friends can't be "real" friends... I know the difference between the artificial likes and subs, vs those people I am genuinely friends with online. Don't be trying to toss those real online friends with the faceless followers.

If you look at Missouri and the England portion of the UK, they are very close to the same height, with Missouri being a small bit wider... We got 50 of 'em! there's 5-6 states west of Missouri, and they're all bigger than Missouri. Estimating a 45 minute trip north of Branson, to SpaceX, then even relying on interstate highways (which allow higher top legal speeds), it'd be a 1640 mile (2640 km) trip, and be 24 hours in actual drive time. 'Murrica is "yuge!"

I use software called Soundflower Ninjad by @steve_v I need to not neglect this thread for an entire week...

I don't care for bean juice coffee... Or leaf soup tea... I almost never drink sugary beverages anymore. Still, muh caffeine... I'm stuck buying these sugar free caffeinated flavored packs that you mix in a bottle of water. I mean, they're not bad, and there's a few good flavors, but it's about the only thing left that I drink regularly anymore. All the coffee discussion just reminds me that my beverage choices are bland, and that I really dislike hauling the water refills in or going outing winter to refill the water jugs from the filtered water dispenser at the shop down the street. At least it's warming up, and the water is only 25 cents per gallon for the inconvenience of hauling it yourself.

"Bots" is simply a term used to de-humanize people with opinions that differ from the mainstream opinion. It's offensive. Some of those people are not bright. They belive whatever they read from source X, and parrot it on Facebook without a further thought. That doesn't make them a bot... It makes them dumb. Unfortunately, any speech that goes against the mainstream narrative is lumped together with them. It means anyone with a different opinion, even an informed one, can be easily dismissed by lumping them together with the less bright group. Try not to fall for that "bot" stuff. It's highly politicized, offensive, and likely won't lead to any discussion that belongs on the forum.

I forget what it is you were drawing, but maybe try to shift focus onto another subject. If you're trying to draw something like organic scenes, maybe try technical drawing instead. You know, just to mix it up. Try something different, or something technical, that you can better control, and work out from there.

Of course I built my computer! I'm still suffering that hack job (literal Hackintosh) 5 years later. I've NEVER seen the fans on my GTX 980ti spin, and it made me paranoid, so I just put case fans on it.

Can't tell if just logo backwards or if whole memory stick backwards... And for some people, I realize that both might be equally bad.

I've got backups going back to 0.25. My complaint, is that as amazing as the game is, post 1.0, the reliance of auto struts as a bandaid to fix the wheel issues (specifically, wheels being invisibly auto strutted to the CoM) has destroyed the usability of my docking port based rocker bogey style mega rovers (like Gilly Vanilli). Where in 0.90, it was a flexible, dynamic system that could handle major flexing and stress loads, even at speeds of near 60 M/S, now it's just a rigid board that destroys wheels. I honestly don't know if this ever changed or not. In 0.90, I had done a 1/3 circumnavigation of Minmus in Gilly Vanilli (took three surface science missions, with the destination being my ground base on one of the flats). I really enjoyed the challenge, and had started a Kerbin circumnavigation. 0.90 had some crashing issues, which really sucked. I was excited when 1.0 dropped, and decided to try and continue there (1.0.5 being the last version of KSP I actively played), but was dismayed at my greatest creation being rendered useless, because wheels were now rigid in relation to the CoM. After about 120-140ish Km in 0.90, and restarting the trip or continuing it in 1.0.5 being a non-starter... It kinda just took the wind out of my sails. Roadblocks in my KSP instrument panel also dismayed me. Then work got stupidly insane, including work injuries. I've honestly not played KSP in like 3 years... YEARS! Heck... I'd started producing a video covering my 1/3 circumnavigation Minmus road trip... and just never finished it either. The bleak future for my Gilly Vanilli rover just really killed my drive... I really want to get back into it, but I worry that the one great innovation that I was so excited to put to use... Will still be dead in 1.6 and on. I used to follow the developer posts, but I haven't even looked at them recently. Not hardly at all since the Take Two takeover. I'm looking forward to the day I can replace my main computer. I'm hoping it'll serve as the excuse I need to start fresh and get back into KSP again. As always, I'll edit my "core crew" into whatever save file I create. I'm a sentimental sob like that! Someday... Three years... I am also well aware of how wrong this base is... So very wrong... I also regret not recording the launch. It was a glorious mess of a disaster where nothing broke, but everything that could possibly go wrong, went wrong, and yet, I still went to space that day. That was a monster, not just in the number of asparagus stages (13 stacks of the largest tanks, stacked three tall, with the quad engines on most of those stacks), but also because I forgot to have an upright facing command module on it (or sufficient RCS or SAS), and I had to control it by right clicking the engines and manually managing thrust levels. Mechjeb could only stain it's mechanical pants trying to figure that thing out... I had to kill it before it killed the crew. It launched as a single unit. That base was assembled, in it's entirety, in the VAB! I recall the remaining fuel when orbit was achieved so small... I wanna say I had .13 seconds of burn time left. It was a stupidly small number. I had to launch numerous refueling launches just to restock it with enough fuel for getting to and landing on Minmus. It had landing legs (32 of 'em) and drop tanks for landing on small bodies. I think once the drop tanks were released, there was maybe 30 seconds of thrust before you'd better be landed. Yeah... The two Gilly Vanilli rovers were my last major missions in KSP. This vehicle was the secondary. The primary vehicle (obviously) went to Gilly. Aside from those two vehicles in 0.90 and a career restart that got up to some satellites and stations around Kerbin, Eve, and Duna in 1.0.4, really didn't do much after that. I tried to rebuild a new Gilly Vanilli in 1.2, but the auto struts for wheels was still a thing. After that was crazy hours at work. I've literally not actively played KSP since then. It's hard to even wrap my brain around the time that has passed... I have never had a vehicle or satellite ever go further than Kerbin, Eve, or Duna... I always wanted to save the rest of the game for after I built my instrument panel... I feel like I might play it in a decade or two, at this rate...