Microsoft’s 2020 “Hour Of Code” considered harmful. By anyone sane:

…the accompanying Educator Guide suggests opening the 45-minute coding lesson (using Blocks or Python) with a 10-minute discussion of unconscious and conscious bias, including “prejudice based on race, ethnicity, age, gender, gender identity, physical ability, religion, and body weight.”

So, 45 minutes isn’t an “hour”, and 10 of those are wasted on deranged Leftist pap. Why not just call it “35 Minutes Of Instantly-Forgotten Pre-Digested Code Templates”? The teachers already have scripts for the propaganda, and will eagerly spend more than 10 minutes on it.

Wait, I think I missed a space in there…

Good advice, Hillary!

“​…should not concede under any circumstances because I think this is going to drag out, and eventually I do believe he will win if we don’t give an inch, and if we are as focused and relentless as the other side is”

Oh, wait, you meant the other guy.

“For everything else, there’s MasterCard”

I Speak Gcode To My Dremel

#!/usr/bin/env bash
#
# Send a print job to a network-connected Dremel 3D45 printer.
# Or with no arguments, report its current status and
# remaining print time.
#
# dependencies: curl, jq

IPADDR="192.168.187.150"

COMMAND="$IPADDR/command"
UPLOAD="$IPADDR/print_file_uploads"

if [ -z "$1" ]; then
  # just report printer status and exit
  curl -s -d GETPRINTERSTATUS $COMMAND |
    jq -r '[.progress,.remaining,.status,.jobname]|@csv' | tr -d '"' |
    awk -F, '{
      s = $2;
      h = int(s/3600);
      s -= h * 3600;
      m = int(s/60);
      s -= m * 60;
      printf("%.1f%% %2d:%02d:%02d %-8s %s\n", $1, h, m, s, $3, $4)
    }'
  exit 0
fi

file="$1"
if [ ! -f "$file" ]; then
  echo "$0: file '$file' not found"
  exit 1
fi

status=$(curl -s -d GETPRINTERSTATUS $COMMAND | jq -r .status)
if [ "$status" != "ready" ]; then
  echo "Printer $IPADDR not ready, status '$status'"
  exit 1
fi
echo "Printer ready"

message=$(curl -s -F "print_file=@$file" $UPLOAD | jq -r .message)
if [ "$message" != "success" ]; then
  echo "Upload of $file failed, message '$message'"
  exit 1
fi
echo "$file uploaded"

message=$(curl -s -d "PRINT=$(basename $file)" $COMMAND | jq -r .message)
if [ "$message" != "success" ]; then
  echo "Unable to print $file, message '$message'"
  exit 1
fi
echo "$file printing"

exit 0

By the way, I printed a full-sized ABLE corner connector, just to have a model to work with for designing smaller connectors in OpenSCAD. It’s a really well-thought-out system, but the fundamental problem is that making his sample table would require five days of continuous printing and more than an entire spool of filament. Ugly metal connectors at Home Depot are faster, cheaper, sturdier, and paintable.

For the tinkertoy-takadai, I’ve decided to simplify and just use 3D-printed T connectors so I’ve got wood against wood, with the plastic keeping things aligned. I can actually just replace the pins on top of my monorail koma design with an open cube to form the T; I know this prints quickly and cheaply (although I’ll do these at 100% infill for strength).

While those are printing, I’m going to lay out the arms on the floor to set the width, calculate the minimum required height from that, and the rest of the numbers fall out of the design I did three years ago. If I’m ambitious on Saturday, I could have it ready for a test braid.

“We’re gonna need a Bigger Bird”

Dear Apple,

Why did you create a Music.app playlist named “####!####”, containing all of my songs?

Dear Benny Hill,

I apologize to your memory for visualizing Joe Biden careening across the country to the tune of Yakety Sax, chased by an ever-growing pack of Leftists who just figured out that they were taken for a ride.

Dev Branches Matter

I am not yet in charge of the in-house Github environment at work, which is good, because the upgraded version includes the change where the default branch in new projects is now “main” instead of “master”, which will ripple through everyone’s automation.

Hopefully Microsoft refactored their code to accommodate future changes to the language more quickly.

Philadelphia Freedom

“Oh, come on, the last time they caught someone stuffing ballot boxes in South Philly was all the way back in (checks notes) March, and it was only one elected official taking bribes from a former US Congressman on behalf of his clients. Move On, Trumptard, you’re paranoid!”

“Speed, Groove, speed is your salvation.”

When I started downloading the new 4GB Genshin Impact update on my iPad Mini, it looked like it was going to take a very, very long time. After ten minutes, it was at 0.3%. Then I suddenly noticed that I couldn’t surf the web on my Mac, and looked down to see the update coming in at 15 MB/s or higher. Done now!

Tried a free 10x gatcha pull on the new all-girl offering. Got ten duplicate weapons.

Let me explain:

1. you need a total of five copies of a weapon to refine it to its highest quality.

2. you get weapon drops constantly while adventuring.

3. only one of my characters does not have a fully-refined weapon, and that one’s pretty darn rare.

4. there is no point to keeping “extra” weapons around to swap onto your characters.

5. ~90% of gatcha drops are weapons.

6. I will never pay for a gatcha pull that is completely, utterly worthless.

7. which means I will never pay for a gatcha pull.

8. which kind of undermines their monetization scheme.

On the bright side, you can now mark specific weapons as “locked” so you don’t accidentally recycle them into upgrades while cleaning your inventory.

Note: it is canon that Fischl is simply bonkers. Her chūnibyō-induced delusions seem to tie into the main character’s backstory, but I don’t think they’ve explained where she got it all from.

Most of the whistleblowers, eyewitnesses, videos, and actual indictments alleging widespread election fraud do not point to a sinister secret cabal of mustache-twirling villains. They point to a bunch of little people, secure in the belief that when their side wins, there will be no consequences, even if they get caught.

Hopefully they’re wrong. That “social worker” who thought it was a great idea to vote 67 extra times in the names of her patients? Now facing 134 counts of election fraud. In Texas.

Was there also a larger, more organized fraud, the sort that results in thousands of late-arriving ballots with nothing on them but a vote for Biden? That allegation is before the courts, where it belongs. As are others.

Update

🎶 “All in all, it’s just another glitch in the Fall”…

Clown Fusion

One good reason not to use the free-for-makers Fusion 360 is that exporting your design to STL requires saving it as a cloud project and then rendering it in the cloud. Which takes several minutes even on simple models.

“The Cloud is Mother, the Cloud is Father.”

(and I’m not even designing in it, just using the customization options from someone else’s design, the ABLE System connectors, created by a user with no Thingiverse profile whose only video doesn’t show up as uploaded by the user who owns it, who doesn’t seem to have any other archive or discussion of his work, by anyone, anywhere…)

This, by the way, looks like a better solution for a tinkertoy takadai than the Jonction-P system I mentioned earlier, largely because that one is incompatible with my monorail design for koma. I’ll just have to redo it in OpenSCAD to scale it to different square-dowel sizes, and then add a few custom parts.

The key feature of both is that they print at an angle both for strength and to eliminate any bridging that would require supports.

🎶 Monorail, monorail, monorail 🎶

“It glides as softly as a cloud” on a half-inch square dowel, and required no trimming or sanding. Printed with PLA at 0.2mm layer height and 20% infill, it’s quite sturdy, even the half-pins at the end that are 1.65mm thick. I’d give it some light sanding before trying out a fiber like silk, but I mostly prefer yarn anyway.

A takadai built around these koma would be roughly 18x18 inches, and capable of pretty much any standard single or double-layer braid. It would be able to take full-size bobbins (no more crowded than a Braidershand extended takadai), although not necessarily five pounds of them per arm. 😁

Fingers, Pointing

I’m going to predict that if it is proven that even one state was illegitimately flipped from T to B, even by a series of completely innocent mistakes, The Narrative will immediately switch from

“Trump’s making it all up”

to

“Trump’s behind it all.”

The incantation “Reichstag Fire” will be invoked.

Amazon Time Travel

Hey, remember that thing I bought one of?

Let’s order another one…whu?

Fail

This did not go well. Now I know what the “build plate adhesion” checkbox is good for.

(Update: I started a simpler print job and watched it fail to lay down the first layer consistently, so I stripped all the glue off the bed, laid on two new layers, and went through the manual leveling process again. Looks a lot healthier now)

Unicorn Chaser, Fillyment Edition

To be clear, I’m not claiming she’s responsible for my filament snarl. I’d forgive her instantly…

With a stage name like Yume Miru, you know she’s got some persuasive arguments…

We didn’t start the fire

Democrats: : we will heal the divide in our nation.

Also Democrats: : we’re making a list of collaborators, and they will be dealt with.

Dear Donald J Trump,

Until January 20, I think your priorities should be:

1. appointing judges,

2. signing executive orders,

3. declassifying everything.

Not necessarily in that order.

Let your legal team handle both the apparent shenanigans and the confirmed ones.

“When did it stop?”

Which reminds me, for all the folks who simultaneously insist that Trump (and before him W) stole an election while there wasn’t even a hint of fraud in the elections of Democrats, when did election fraud go away?

We know it used to exist in America. Lots of it. At all levels. We know it still exists all over the world, everywhere that there’s even a chance at scoring cash or power by bending, breaking, or shooting holes in the rules. We still remember when Democrats were shouting from the rooftops that Diebold voting machines would deliver phony Republican victories.

But it’s all gone now. Never happens. Certainly never in enough numbers to sway a major election.

When did it stop? How was it stopped? How do we confirm that it hasn’t started up again? How do we ensure that it doesn’t go undetected?

The answer is to do a lot of things that Democrats are violently opposed to, like auditing the voter rolls every year, requiring ID to vote, requiring ID to register to vote, cross-referencing registrations between all states, openly and transparently auditing the results, etc. Funny old world.

Speaking of voter ID, we’re told that potentially millions of citizens would be disenfranchised by an ID requirement at the polls. Yet the people making this argument aren’t willing to help them get IDs.

After all, these millions of citizens without ID are unable to get a job, buy liquor, enter a courthouse, rent a car, open a bank account, board a plane, start a business, take out a loan, etc, etc, etc. People opposed to voter ID are somehow fine leaving them out of the rest of society, as long as they can vote.

I think the amount of time Trump gets to contest this election should be no more than the Democrats took contesting the last one: four years.

😁

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