As part of the boot process, the Adventurer 5M, Adventurer 5M Pro, and AD5X will attempt to mount the plugged in USB drive and run flashforge_init.sh as root if it is present. We can write a flashforge_init.sh file to edit the config for us. While we could put the entire calibration routine into this file it is much easier to do it manually and just use the script to write the new value.

There is a "secret" menu you can use to check the current values and issue manual commands. On the printer's screen go to the info tab in the lower left then press and hold on the "Device Info" text for 10-20 seconds (time depends on firnware revision). The menu should open. Go to the Manual tab, tap on the text field, and plug in a USB keyboard. You can plug it into the same USB port as you would a flash drive, the printer does support this. Type "SET_EXTRUDER_ROTATION_DISTANCE EXTRUDER=extruder" (without the quotes) and tap Send. Pressing enter on the keyboard doesnt work. Take note of the number on the right, it is your current extruder rotation distance.

Close the menu with the X button in the upper right, go to the Home tab, and heat up the nozzle to 230C or so. Make sure to wait for it to finish heating, if it's too cold when you go to calibrate it will throw off your results. Go back into the secret menu like you did before and go back to the Manual tab. Follow the instructions on Ellis' Print Tuning Guide to figure out what your rotation distance should be. The page has instructions for multiple setups; you are calibrating hot on a Klipper printer.

You can find the Guide here: https://ellis3dp.com/Print-Tuning-Guide/articles/extruder_calibration.html

While your new rotation distance value should be pretty close to the original value, I have seen it be wrong enough to cause 12% underextrusion before. Once you have the new value you'll want to grab a USB flash drive. It doesn't matter if it's empty or not but I like to clear it out for simplicity. Make a file on the flash drive called flashforge_init.sh and put the following line of text in it:

sed -i -E "s/^rotation_distance:.+$/rotation_distance: 21.9/" /usr/data/config/printer.cfg

For my printer the correct rotation distance value is 21.9. If yours is different, change the number in the text. Save the file and eject the flash drive. Turn the printer off, plug the flash drive in, and turn it back on. The printer will either boot fully or get stuck showing the Flashforge logo and not finish booting. This is normal. If it seems stuck, leave it for 30 seconds or so then turn it off, unplug the flash drive, and turn it back on. You can now go back into the secret menu and send "SET_EXTRUDER_ROTATION_DISTANCE EXTRUDER=extruder" again to check if the value was successfully updated. Don't forget to remove the file from the flash drive.

beatblock is a round rhythm game. like, circles round. i like round rhythm games. beatblock can be played with mouse and keyboard or controller, requiring only an analog directional input and one button. when playing with a mouse your directional input is whichever direction your cursor is in relation to the center. the general gameplay is that you are intended to rotate your paddle to block objects that are coming at you. theres multiple note types but they all follow the same basic principle. there are also taps, which require you to press the button with the correct timing. this is the only timed object type, the rest are not timed, instead being scored based on directional accuracy. the game is always nofail and doesnt use a meter system like games like arcaea and sound voltex do.

the way beatblock feels is quite reminiscent of just shapes and beats. hit objects are part of the level design and contribute greatly to the vibe of a stage. the game also has a robust vfx system, allowing charters to make every stage feel quite unique. at present the level editor is pretty rough around the edges but this does not hamper the quality of the official or custom charts at all. several custom charts do things that have me wondering if the level editor just full on lets you write custom shaders. both the official and community made charts are extremely well made, with the OST being quite good while also having a surprising amount of variety.

from here on there will be spoilers. i recommend playing the demo at a minimum, and if you like it go get it on steam. the steam version contains all of the demo content and more, theres no reason to finish the demo before getting it on steam.

as im playing the game, working through the levels, i come to BLOW A FUSE. i start playing it and im like "oh shit, teto??" the game had thrown a decent variety at me by that point but for some reason i still didnt expect vocaloid, let alone teto. turns out the song is great. like, its definitely in my top three of the ost. as the song is almost over im not expecting anything else because like, its the end of the song, what else could they do? then they throw in a sample from unbeatable's PROPER RHYTHM. (why do all these songs have all caps names lol). needless to say the sample caught me very off guard, and i was so very here for it. PROPER RHYTHM is one of my favorites from unbeatable's soundtrack, and for it to be sampled in a teto song in the soundtrack for another game? hell yeah.

another song, C-ミ B-ミ, samples Overkill by RIOT. once again i was not expecting this. i did look into it to be sure i wasnt doing a silly and it does turn out Overkill samples another song but Overkill's sample is heavily pitch shifted and C-ミ B-ミ's sample matches that so im pretty confident.

in typical rhythm game fashion, beatblock features a few songs from other rhythm games. Code Remix from Heaven Studio, Lucky Break from Rhythm Doctor, Empty Diary from unbeatable, Spin Cycle from Spin Rhythm XD, and heptagramme from vivid/stasis. heptagramme is neat because, as the name implies, its not in 4/4 timing like nearly every rhtyhm game song ever is. the way beatblock handles new unlocks is that they just show "new song unlocked" until you click on them, and when you click it brings you straight to the preview screen. so imagine how i felt when i clicked on a freshly unlocked song, recognized the song playing within a quarter second, and saw the art of Beat in this game's art style. much like PROPER RHYTHM, Empty Diary is one of my favorites. this is peak gaming.

community made custom maps. they are sooooo good. the community takes the quality of the official charts and runs with it. im like 110% sure the charting community is mostly autistic queers. Teto, Toby Fox, Femtanyl, and Flavor Foley make up a big chunk of the community made charts. a lot of the custom charts are so well done that they make me wonder if theres full scripting and shader support in the level editor. several of them do things that i did not know could be done in this game. one chart has the letters in its name moving around on the menu. i have no idea how theyve achieved this short of there being a flag for it in the game that nothing else uses. now that im thinking about it there are a couple secret songs i dont have unlocked, its entirely possible one of those uses it. also this game is made in love2d, the same engine as balatro. i have also just learned that there is mod support but ive yet to look into that.

theres also unlockable cosmetics, including such wonders as dog ears with the description "dgo", cat ears with the description "cta", just straight up turning you into a square, and also Quaver's bow from unbeatable. Quaver is too precious, we dont deserve Quaver. go play unbeatable, its a great game that i forgot to write a post about. i hope some songs from beatblock get put into unbeatable, especially BLOW A FUSE. i cant wait to see how this game evolves and ill likely be playing it immediately after every content update.

also theres a fishing minigame.

nextcloud recently (?) released v32.0.0, or "Nextcloud Hub 25 Autumn". oh i guess its not really that recent then is it. september?? okay i should really update this more often. anyway, they potentially took inspiration from apple's liquid glass and added a little gradient to the icons in the header. well, it was little. then they decided to push it. 75% opacity? too high. 70%? nope, still not it. 65%? yeah, thats the one. and its still WCAG AA compliant! cool, merge it. but... what if we went.. even lower? i really have no idea how these numbers work because i havent gotten enough sleep but they made it more transparent. and merged it. and shipped it. its not compliant. they fell right in the liquid glass trap: form over function.

i wrote a userstyle to fix this because i prefer to be able to understand the icons im looking at. install stylus and paste this in or something. dont forget to change example.com to your nextcloud server.

/* ==UserStyle==

@name remove nextcloud header gradients

@namespace github.com/openstyles/stylus

@version 1.0.0

@description nextcloud 32.0.0 added gradients to the header and i dont like them

@author stringlapse

==/UserStyle== */

@-moz-document domain("example.com") {

/* Insert code here... */

header{

--header-menu-icon-mask: none

}

}

the IdeaFormer IR3v2 has two main ways of queueing jobs; the Mainsail queue managed through the web interface and the repetition feature in the IdeaMaker slicer. the Mainsail queue is more flexible but inherently has a purge line for every part. IdeaMaker's repetition feature doesnt place a purge line before each part but, as the name implies, only allows you to repeat one slice instead of queueing arbitrary parts at will. the repetition feature also for some reason doesnt use looping gcode and instead just puts several copies of the slice in the file causing huge file sizes.

the repetition feature relies on some gcode that gets placed between each copy of the part, aptly called the repetition gcode. unfortunately, this bit of gcode is not shipped with the default profile, which results in the printer attemtping to reverse the belt and crash the part when it goes to start work on the next copy. i have written repetition gcode and it works well for me. to fix the repetition feature simply add this to the repetition gcode in your printer profile:

;repetition gcode

G92 E0 Z0

G0 E-0.6

G28 XY

G1 Y10 Z10

G92 E0 Z0

;repetition gcode

image: agony26 front

introducing the agony26 - it has all the keys you need and none of the keys you dont. thats right, spacebars are a scam made up by big keyboard to sell you more keycaps. to input space on the agony26 simply chord any two adjacent bottom row keys excluding z. the rest of the keymap is nearly identical to the pain27 but with a couple minor changes. details are in the git repo's readme [ref 2] if you're curious. what, that's not simple? what do you mean "you shouldnt need big words to explain how to type a space"?? here, weve cooked up this helpful image to explain it.

image: agony26 chords

the case is 3d printed with PLA and TPU, for an integrated rubberized foot. the part warped while printing so the TPU only really contacts on the left and right sides, reducing its efficacy greatly. if the print stayed flat i think it would have worked out. i printed the case on the Snapmaker U1 since it has a toolchanger, meaning i can print the TPU and PLA in one go without changing filaments manually. do note that this printer is a beta unit, i didnt wash the bed, and i never dry my filament. basically any print quality issues are my own fault, dont judge the U1 by looking at this print. ill definitely be trying this technique more in the future even though it didnt work perfectly here.

image: agony26 from the bottom

i didnt want to design a pcb for a one off meme keyboard so i chose to handwire it. i like handwiring boards so this didnt bother me. i did take it as an opportunity to learn artistic deadbug soldering or however you call it. basically i used bare copper wire to make all the connections. just dont let the wires touch, easy, right? actually yes, quite easy. i used 18 gauge uninsulated copper wire for the build and its thick enough to hold its shape when bent. the listing didnt say anything about the wire's hardness but its probably "dead soft" wire given thats what most of the listings are. i learned a lot about the process for doing this kind of soldering and look forward to building some really neat things with the technique. ive had the idea for a walnut keyboard with a glass bottom window kicking around for a while and i think it would look really nice if i did this with brass wire.

i use meme keyboards as opportunities to learn new things. if it seems like a strange move to spend all this time and effort soldering an objectively bad board so artistically, it kinda is, but only if you dont factor in the learning and practice. the TPU foot thing is the same way. i didnt do it because the board deserved it, i did it to learn. also the reason the bottom is just open like this is because i dont care. its a no stakes meme board. plus it looks neat.

oh yeah, the keyboard build itself. i guess keyboard people like to know specs or whatever. here they are:

• case: 3d printed, PLA with integrated TPU foot
• switches: durock shrimp 65g silent tactile
• keycaps: novelkeys cherry ember
• controller: clone rp2040-zero
• wire: 18 AWG bare copper

ref 1: https://github.com/uuupah/pain27_kb

ref 2: https://codeberg.org/clover/agony26

ref 3: https://uuupah.neocities.org/

the general strategy is to 3d print a stamp, cover it in sharpie, then lightly apply isopropanol to the skin and press the stamp on. the isopropanol helps to transfer the sharpie from the stamp to the skin. it is likely that half of the ink stays on the stamp but in this ones experience this tends not to be a problem. it is possible to touch up the tattoo using an ultra fine point sharpie after it is stamped. in the event that the tattoo is unrecoverable, one may wipe it away using more isopropanol and try again.

depending on the geometry of the location the stamp is being applied to, it may not be possible to use a flat stamp. one may heat up the stamp using the 3d printers heated bed as a hot plate, making it somewhat pliable, then bend it into a curved shape. this will likely have the effect of compressing the image in one axis, so one may wish to scale the model in that direction accordingly before printing. it is worth noting that for qr codes this will likely not affect functionality due to the skew correction qr code scanners apply.

qr code skew correction assumes the code is on a flat plane. it cannot compensate for image distortion caused by the code being on a curved surface. generally this can be worked around by ensuring that the scanning device is directly perpendicular to the center of the code. this limitation is not present with 1d barcodes but this one has not experimented with those yet.

a word of caution: not all markers are skin safe. standard sharpies are generally skin safe as long as they are not applied to open cuts. nonstandard sharpies, such as metallic sharpies, should be assumed to not be skin safe unless proven otherwise. "king size" and "magnum" sharpies are not skin safe as they are formulated with xylene. do not apply xylene to the skin.

this one has found that version 1 qr codes (21x21) work well when printed at 48x48mm. it is important to apply the stamp while any applicable joints are in the orientation they are expected to be in during scanning. this helps prevent skew.

if one has any questions about this process, or would like to show off what it has done using it, they are encouraged to contact this one; it would love to see! contact information is available on the homepage of this site.

what follows is a non comprehensive list of telegram's failing points:

• the company is run by fascists. they have put nazi dogwhistles in at least one feature announcement blog post.
• they lied about handing data to cops for several years. i always operated under the assumption that they were doing it but they lied about it.
• they did nfts
• damn near every ad on the platform is crypto or sex scams.
• theyre adding grok, twitter's ai.

we moved the desk out of my room the other day and i have a desk in my car to replace it. havent gotten around to bringing it inside. given my past history i would expect to be itching to have my setup put back together. i would have expected to come to some awful compromise with everything set up on the floor or something. maybe have the computer plugged into the tv. but i dont have any urge to do that? i just... dont care? its not like ive been pulling my laptop out instead, i just did that for the first time today. all i used it for was hitting a toggle in a settings page that i didnt want to deal with on my phone. but ive also not been using my phone for things, not any more than usual anyway. i just seem to be notably less attached to computers than before.

want to listen to music? use the ipod. want to play a game? theres plenty on the 3ds. want to watch something? just throw a dvd in the xbox or whatever (i dont have a rempote for my blu ray player yet). writing this blog post? thats happening on a laptop that i would rather be an alphasmart neo. there are definitely some tasks that are best served by the desktop computer such as complex 3d modeling but thats not something i constantly need to be doing. and if i did need to be doing that? i have a desktop set up at the local not makerspace. yeah its like 20 minutes away but thats fine. i booted it up once in the last week to slice a benchy for a printer i was working on. i could just as easily have used one of the laptops that sit there.

so what changed? how did i go from "needs a computer to be comfortable" to "its just another tool"? i mean like, yeah i kinda despise the industry these days but surely that cant be the whole reason? its not like the alternative ways of doing computer tasks are things that only recently became available to me. ive had the ipod, 3ds, xbox, etc for many years now. i also find myself using my phone less now that i think about it? i can pinpoint the cause for that though, the phone dependence posts talk about it. not caring about having a computer setup or not feels... both completely normal and odd at the same time? the feeling itself feels normal but the feeling about the feeling is odd. if that makes any sense. i guess the lesson of the day is that sometimes core things about ourselves change and thats okay.

tak came into existence as a fictional game, written to be the chess or go of a book's universe. ill probably never read the book because im not too big on fiction but i do like the worldbuilding ive seen surrounding tak. turns out fiction authors are good at creating lore. who would have thought. the game has two general playstyles: "courtly tak" and "street tak". the object of courtly tak is not to simply win but to show that you are a better player than your opponent. street tak is more cutthroat with players competing not only for victory, but glory. it is said that street tak is frequently played in taverns with money at stake.

personally i think i prefer the style of courtly tak. i would definitely be down to play some street tak here and there but courtly tak is more like cooperatively solving a puzzle and that seems more compelling to me. as the object of courtly tak is not to simply win but to show your skill, it isnt uncommon for players to work together to see what moves would be best for each other. i find this quite neat. if one player is better than the other they dont just crush them repeatedly and the game remains enjoyable for both. the object of the game is no longer to win the game but to enjoy the game.

i do enjoy the lore behind street tak a fair bit more though. sometimes called the "travellers game", the street variation typically comes with a lot of unique variety that you wouldnt see with a pristine set used for courtly tak. as the lore goes, most any tavern would either have tak boards ready to go or scratched into the tables by people looking to play. if one doesnt have a board handy they can simply play without one by marking the center of the board and playing the pieces where the squares of the grid would typically be. such a setup wouldnt be great for playing chess but works fine for the traditional street tak 5x5 grid. street tak players often carry their own sets of pieces with them, sometimes self made, which leads to incredible variety for the kinds of pieces youd see. it is also not uncommon for street tak players to carry their own capstones (a special piece of which you typically only use one) even when they are intending to use a set owned by someone else. many players then opt to compete not for money, but for each others capstones.

as someone in the mechanical keyboard hobby i cant help but look at custom capstones and think of artisan keycaps. i would love to make and collect artisan tak capstones in addition to regular pieces and even boards. ive been wanting an excuse to get into the more artistic side of design for a while now and i think tak sets could be a very neat way to explore that. i think it would be very fun to get a wide group of people playing tak and carrying custom capstones and sets with them.

i highly encourage you to learn to play tak and show the game to others.

image: a turtle amidst some leaves

like, i know they live there given i was at a lake and all but its still neat, yknow? also the lake smelled like lake. have you ever smelled a lake? its nice. its a different smell than the ocean. it still has the wet sand smell but it doesnt have the ocean smell. it also has like a wet dirt smell and wet rock smell too. you should go smell a lake. touch it too. touching the lake is neat. the smell of lake reminds me of minnesota. theres so many lakes there to smell. so much grass to touch. ive never been one for being in water but i still like lakes. water is pretty, i just dont want to be in it.

i was always in charge of pool chemicals at my parents house. i never really got in the pool but i still tended to the chemicals. i dont know how it became my job. probably some combination of me taking initiative at one point and my autistic perfection of making sure what was done was done right. eventually it felt a bit unfair that i was always made to be in charge of pool chemicals. sometimes it felt more like a chore than anything else. i still think overall i enjoyed it. its the closest i ever got to a chemistry class, being homeschooled and all. im still interested in learning more about chemistry so theres that at least.

one time we got all the water in the pool and i got to work with the chemicals. the thing i usually did first was to get the pH and alkalinity where i wanted them. now, usually these are the same thing, but with pool chemicals they somehow arent. i suspect the thing they call alkalinity really is something else. this particular time the pH was high and the "total alkalinity" was low. this makes no sense from a chemistry standpoint but pool chemicals dont care what makes sense i guess. i started with lowering the pH by ading muriatic acid. youre supposed to do this by filling a bucket with water and carefully pouring the muriatic acid into there before pouring it into the pool. this reduces splashing, which is generally a good idea when working with acids. after a couple buckets of diluted muriatic acid the ph started to budge, but only a little. the total alkalinity, however, had plummeted. i added some "alkalinity up" product which if i recall correctly was just some household thing in pool packaging. probably baking soda or some shit. this brought the total alkalinity back up and the pH stayed put. fantastic, time for muriatic acid round two. fill the bucket, pour the acid in, pour the concoction in the pool. pH a little lower, total alkalinity dropping again. more alkalinity increaser. same deal, repeat. eventually i gave up on the bucket thing. yeah its the "right way to do it" and all but lifting 5 gallons of liquid isnt easy. or maybe it is. idk, im weak as shit but i make do. the rigamarole of getting the bucket, filling it, and stirring in the acid was getting old too, it wasnt just the lifting. at some point i realized i had made two or three trips to lowes just for a gallon or two of acid and decided to just buy four gallons of the stuff at once. fun fact: they dont check your ID! they dont even look at you weird! just some teenager walking away from self checkout with nothing but four gallons of muriatic acid. not weird at all. this stuff is usually used to etch concrete by the way. like, its definitely acid. its no hydrochloric acid but thats still a lot of acid. wait hold on. whats that? no that- huh. okay. sorry, uh, im getting word that its the same product. like, actually literally the same thing. reports seem to differ on whether muriatic acid is diluted hydrochloric acid or just straight up hydrochloric acid and i dont really feel like looking into it more right now but like, yeah. i did know this at the time for what its worth, this was just me doing a bit for some reason. so yeah, theres your lesson for the day: hardware stores dont really give a shit if you are a teenager buying 10 gallons of acid in the span of a couple days. not suspicious at all.

oh also? go touch some grass today. its nice.