MxRemy

This is the best weather for reading a good book there, under a canopy.

Finally managed to actually design, CAM, and post process something all with just FreeCAD! Just a simple sign for a library patron. This finished item obviously still has lots of issues but they're mostly user error and I think I know how to fix them. HUGGGEEE thanks to clsergent for designing a postprocessor for Snapmaker machines, since the company hasn't bothered to maintain theirs for like years and years lol.

Overall couldn't be more satisfied, 10/10, FreeCAD is amazing 🔥

I've been looking for a long time for a solution to not having a desk, or room for one. This tiny bedside table barely fits anything... I was using a regular mouse on the bed and dangling a regular keyboard half off the table, which didn't work so great as you can imagine lol. Now I've got this Ploopy Adept trackball and a FalbaTech Atreus62_FT keyboard. Switched to Colemak-dh layout just to make the transition as jarring as possible 😝

At least where I live anyway lol. That wondrous single week where we exclusively eat elm samaras before they all disappear. All the ones here are the invasive Siberian ones too so I don't even have to be careful or considerate about harvesting them! This whole big bowl came from a single small branch.

Hopefully memes are ok! The rules didn't say not to. A patron brought this into my library to get digitized and I just couldn't resist lol.

Not sure where he said this, or even if he truly said this. His work has been almost completely lost to time, and it's hard to tell if what's left is even accurate. That said, Wikipedia credits this quote to a book from Princeton University press. The text for anyone who can't read it:

"One hundred years is the limit of a long life. Not one in a thousand ever attains it. Suppose there is one such person. Infancy and feeble old age take almost half of his time. Rest during sleep at night and what is wasted during the waking hours in the daytime take almost half of that. Pain and sickness, sorrow and suffering, death (of relatives) and worry and fear take almost half of the rest. In the ten and some years that is left, I reckon, there is not one moment in which we can be happy, at ease without worry. This being the case, what is life for? What pleasure is there? For beauty and abundance, that is all. For music and sex, that is all. But the desire for beauty and abundance cannot always be satisfied, and music and sex cannot always be enjoyed. Besides, we are prohibited by punishment and exhorted by rewards, pushed by fame and checked by law. We busily strive for the empty praise which is only temporary, and seek extra glory that would come after death. Being alone ourselves, we pay great care to what our ears hear and what our eyes see, and are much concerned with what is right or wrong for our bodies and minds. Thus we lose the great happiness of the present and cannot give ourselves free rein for a single moment. What is the difference between that and many chains and double prisons?"

The .stl and .fcstd files are at the link. All the test joints I printed fit together really nicely, but I'm worried the overall design might have issues that I'm too much of an amateur to identify. It'll need a LOT of filament... Good wooden marudai cost hundreds of dollars, whereas 1500g of my preferred filament is only like $45, but I'd still hate to waste that much of it. The printing itself I'm not too concerned about, it's easy stuff. Just a little bridging and no support. Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean the finished/assembled object will be functional. Thanks in advance if you have any tips!

PS: This is also my first use of the spreadsheet function, I usually just rely on named constraints from prior sketches. It's really neat. FreeCAD rules!

There's nothing super special about this print in particular compared to what people usually post here, just a simple Santa figurine requested by a makerspace patron. However, it's made from 100% pure PHA (polyhydroxyalkanoate), a natural polyester byproduct of common soil bacteria. Unlike PLA, it is fully home compostable. It can break down in any biome, in a very reasonable timeframe. Also unlike PLA, you can make it by feeding the bacteria stuff like old fast food fryer oil, and other waste products. The print settings are pretty similar to PLA, but it has some significant differences in material properties, like being less brittle.

There aren't a whole lot of people making 100% PHA filaments, but if you can find it, definitely give it a shot! It's our staple filament at the makerspace I work in. Hopefully this doesn't sound too much like an ad or something, I just really like this stuff and want it to catch on.

Oh also! The flexible version looks and feels really neat if you run it through a vibratory tumbler:

I'm pretty much a total novice to fighting games, but one of my BFs is super into them. We got talking about indie vs big studio games, and I did some digging for really niche ones just out of curiosity. That's how I stumbled onto Battle Craze, and now we're both super hooked on it!!

The art/animation is very quirky but don't let it put you off, it really grows on you, and the voice acting is amazing. The mechanics (according to my much more knowledgeable BF) are very advanced. It's just really fun in general.

The only thing is, the community is soooo small that everyone who isn't a beginner is some kind of super skilled veteran instead, so it can be hard to find a reasonable match. That's why I'm posting, hopefully more people will get into it 😝

If the only reason people care about NaNoWriMo is for the name and hashtag, somebody already pitched Writevember as a replacement. Honestly sounds better to me anyway.

I've heard other people say the tools/gamification/etc on the NaNoWriMo platform were really helpful though. For those people, how difficult would it be to potentially patch that stuff into the WriteFreely platform? As one of the only long-form Fediverse-native platforms still being actively developed, maybe they'd appreciate the boost in code contributions.

Or rather salt rising muffins, but still. For those unfamiliar, it's an obscure Appalachian bread. Rather than being risen by the CO2 produced from yeast or baking soda, it's risen by the hydrogen produced by Clostridium perfringens bacteria. This gives it a different texture and a funky/cheesy taste. Still fermented, so I hope it counts for the rules! Crumb shot:

Mine isn't great compared to anything you'd get from Rising Creek Bakery, who literally wrote the book on salt rising bread. As you can see, mine came out pretty dense, but that's definitely not because of the kind of bread it is. I think it's more because of the 100% whole wheat, and my own lack of skill. It took me like 6 tries to even get the starter right lol. But I thought, maybe people have never heard of this and would be interested. I used wheat berries from Castle Valley Mill, which is only a couple hours away from me, and ground them in a hand-crank mill.

The USDA's plant database shows something like 50-ish native viola species in Pennsylvania, where I live. As far as I can tell, they're all more or less edible, but what about the flavor? Are there any especially choice species that really stand out? Internet sleuthing doesn't seem to turn up much of anything. So far, I'm getting the vague sense that purple ones generally taste better than yellow or white ones, and that short species might be sweeter than tall species.

This seems like the sort of thing that somebody somewhere must have figured out by now, since violet used to be a pretty popular flavor. The classic liqueur Creme Yvette is very specifically flavored with these obscure Italian Parma violets, which implies that they must taste somehow unique. So what about the rest of them?