JUN
2023 26

3D Modeling with ChatGPT

tl;dr: ChatGPT can do a pretty okay job writing SCAD code with a little help. I’ve got a basement with one single cold air vent in the whole 1800ft area. That sucks. I decided to run a portable air conditioner to one of the windows, since the windows have window wells and a more efficient window unit wouldn’t work. In order to keep hot air from pooling in the window well and then being sucked back in, I contacted Window Well Experts and had a well cover custom made with a vent hole on it. However, just because I have100

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JUN
2022 11

Uncategorized

Why I Drive Trucks in VR

I play a good variety of video games. As a long-time lover of games, I’ve had plenty of years to branch out and try what the world has to offer (despite some gaping holes in my list). However, of all the games I never thought I’d pick up, Euro Truck Simulator 2 has to be pretty high on the list. ETS2 came out in 2012, and has been continually supported by the devs since that time, receiving regular updates and new content in the form of DLC, substantially expanding the map, cargo, and truck options available. Suffice it to say,100

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MAY
2022 19

Communication, Misc, People, Tech

Message Reactions Ranked

How I yearn for the days when everyone used the same way to communicate by text. Email is heavy and ugly now, but SMS wasn’t so bad in its heyday. With that said, one of my favorite features of “modern” messaging is the ability to “react” to messages. This gives a level of nuance to conversations that I think is really valuable. In real-life conversation, it’s understood by most people that you don’t have to keep saying a lot of words to agree with someone when some simple body language will do. Laughter, nodding, smiling, frowning — these all play100

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MAR
2022 15

Misc, Products

Best Adult[ing] Purchases

This post is a place where I’m going to post the best purchases I’ve made as an adult that have had a stellar cost-to-outcome ratio in improving my life. I’ll post them as I think of them. I don’t use referral links. Shower Clock This thing is amazing. It has never fallen off of my tile wall, it doesn’t really drift, it has a timer if I really need it to, it has a thermometer to validate that it’s as cold as I feel like it is, and it keeps my ADHD ass from getting distracted in the warm shower100

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FEB
2022 21

Tech, Troubleshooting, Zoom/Conference

Zoom is Turning Me Green?

A couple months ago on my shiny new computer, I started having an issue — other people were reporting that my video was totally green-washed. This isn’t me (image stolen from u/OhYeahItsJosh) but it shows the issue just fine: What’s wild about this is that on my screen, it looked totally normal. My image preview was untouched. Well, it turns out that shiny new computer was the culprit. My new rig has an Nvidia GTX 3090 graphics card, and it turns out the new RTX 3000 line of cards is guilty of causing this issue when zoom uses them for100

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FEB
2022 20

Charity, Misc, Pins

The Trevor Pin

Last November, we lost an incredible human being. He was a friend, a colleague and mentor, a son, a partner, and a father. Trevor was one of my first friends — when I say “first,” I really mean it — we met when we were barely in elementary school. He lived next door to me, and his shy-but-effervescent energy was contagious from the start. I moved away a few years later and we lost touch, but in 2016 I tracked him down out of sheer curiosity and we became the closest of friends. He was my gateway into the music100

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FEB
2022 19

KVM, Tech

Spoofing Your TinyPilot Device ID

TinyPilot is an excellent IP KVM built by Michael Lynch for the Raspberry Pi. It emulates a keyboard and mouse as a relay with a browser-based frontend, and collects the output of the video card from the remote machine through an HDMI capture card. However, there are some reasons you might want to adjust it so that it indicates that it is a different kind/vendor of device. In this case, I reached out to Michael who provided me the following information: The values come from the init-usb-gadget script here:https://github.com/tiny-pilot/ansible-role-tinypilot/blob/master/files/init-usb-gadget#L26 [author note: link adjusted] The installer places that file at /opt/tinypilot-privileged/init-usb-gadget and a systemd100

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FEB
2022 08

Games, PUBG

PUBG: Places Not to Land

I’ve started playing PUBG again for the first time since about 2018, due partly to the recent bump in players resulting from the move to free-to-play. As I go, I’m starting to take some notes for myself about some of the more obtuse and less-obvious finer points about playing the game. Among those is the decision on where to land. In some areas (take school and hospital on the original map, Erangel, for instance) there can be a tremendous benefit to landing on top of a tall building and collecting your gear as you move towards the ground level, fairly100