I recently had the urge to get a fun, colorful summer watch. But I can't justify the expense of even a beautiful, beautiful Tsuyosa right now, so I built my own for less than 70€ :D

Built around a Seiko/SII NH35, all parts (case, bracelet, dial, hands) sourced from Aliexpress. Fit and finish are OK (I'd say a bit below pre-reboot Seiko 5), but these are very cheap parts anyway.

I "branded" the dial by experimenting with toner transfer. It looks like shit up close, but at wrist-length, it's fine.

I silenced the cheap-ass, rattly-as-fuck bracelet by thoroughly soaking it in bike chain grease.

Wrist shot: https://i.imgur.com/iIiJCwW.jpg

I've watched a lot of resources about toner transfer over the last few days, and while everything was quite experimental and empirical, the main gist was : heat + pressure = toner transfer. As I didn't want to, for obvious reasons, cook a dial full of unknown glues, paints and metals in the family's kitchen oven, I started experimenting with my printer's bed.

So I made a janky setup. I printed my design mirrored on a laser-compatible transparency sheet, cut it to size, secured it on a sterile dial with a bit of Kapton and cut a bit of rubber to try and spread pressure evenly. I then clamped the contraption to my printer's heated bed.

Advantages: It's basically free if you already have a laser printer, transparencies and a 3d printer laying around.

Inconvenients: It looks absolutely unprofessional up close. At regular wrist distance, it's fine.

My first attempt was 30 minutes at 100°C. Way too much heat and/or pressure, the printing was smooshed and uneven pressure meant that parts of the design didn't transfer properly. The sheet's cutout shape was clearly imprinted on the glossy dial.

My second attempt (pictured here) was 15 minutes at 95°C. Much crisper lines and if not for a tiny bit of the logo that didn't transfer (probably a speck of dust underneath), would have been perfect. The sheet's cutout shape was still slightly imprinted on the glossy dial, on matte dials it might not be visible.

This process deserves to be refined as it brings an easy way to customize dials if you're not aiming at super macro beauty shots, unfortunately I don't have any spare dials anymore to experiment. I think a lower temperature and/or a lower pressure might work even better.

Edit: Here are my two attempts at making this dial:

https://i.imgur.com/QWKhzYG.jpeg

The SV08 is marketed as a mass-produced Voron 2.4, with a much lower price and a very quick setup. They even say they donate a small amount to the Voron project for each sale.

Has anyone here bought/tested it? What are your thoughts about it?

Are there some limitations/downsides compared to a Voron?

Is it possible to upgrade it Voron-style (Stealthburner, enclosure etc)?

A very minimalist theme, based on the amazing work of https://draculatheme.com/

Red/orange: {"other":{"black":"#23252e","white":"#f8f8f2"},"primary":{"100":"#ff5555","900":"#ffb86c"},"zinc":{"50":"#f8f8f2","100":"#f8f8f2","200":"#ffb86c","300":"#f8f8f2","400":"#f8f8f2","500":"#ffb86c","700":"#23252e","800":"#23252e","900":"#23252e","925":"#282a36","950":"#282a36"},"slate":{}}

Orange/yellow: {"other":{"black":"#23252e","white":"#f8f8f2"},"primary":{"100":"#ffb86c","900":"#f1fa8c"},"zinc":{"50":"#f8f8f2","100":"#f8f8f2","200":"#f1fa8c","300":"#f8f8f2","400":"#f8f8f2","500":"#f1fa8c","700":"#23252e","800":"#23252e","900":"#23252e","925":"#282a36","950":"#282a36"},"slate":{}}

Green/Yellow: {"other":{"black":"#23252e","white":"#f8f8f2"},"primary":{"100":"#50fa7b","900":"#f1fa8c"},"zinc":{"50":"#f8f8f2","100":"#f8f8f2","200":"#f1fa8c","300":"#f8f8f2","400":"#f8f8f2","500":"#f1fa8c","700":"#23252e","800":"#23252e","900":"#23252e","925":"#282a36","950":"#282a36"},"slate":{}}

Purple/pink: {"other":{"black":"#23252e","white":"#f8f8f2"},"primary":{"100":"#bd93f9","900":"#ff79c6"},"zinc":{"50":"#f8f8f2","100":"#f8f8f2","200":"#ff79c6","300":"#f8f8f2","400":"#f8f8f2","500":"#ff79c6","700":"#23252e","800":"#23252e","900":"#23252e","925":"#282a36","950":"#282a36"},"slate":{}}

Synthwave: {"other":{"black":"#23252e","white":"#f8f8f2"},"primary":{"100":"#8be9fd","900":"#ff79c6"},"zinc":{"50":"#f8f8f2","100":"#f8f8f2","200":"#ff79c6","300":"#f8f8f2","400":"#f8f8f2","500":"#ff79c6","700":"#23252e","800":"#23252e","900":"#23252e","925":"#282a36","950":"#282a36"},"slate":{}}

I own a rainbow of beautiful colors, mostly from Diamine, but what I really miss a a truly black ink for formal days. I have a big bottle of Parker Quink Black, but I almost never use it as it's actually a middle-to-dark-gray ink even with my flowiest pens.

So what are your favorite, deeply saturated black inks?

Bonus points if it's (very) affordable and easily available in Europe (so no noodlers).

These days I'm experimenting with tibicos as an (almost) non-alcoholic, low carb yet still festive alternative to beer with a very fast turn around. I usually tend to brew quite strong beers in the Belgian tradition (8-12%) because these are my favorite styles, so not getting smashed while still enjoying a tasty drink is always nice.

I was wondering if any of you have ever tried brewing beer with it. The composition of tibicos grains is suspiciously similar to a lot of sour beer cultures (mostly various strains of S. Cervisae, lactobacillus and acetobacter). I was thinking something along the lines of a Berliner Weisse or some light gueuze/lambic.

My favourite theme for Atom/Pulsar by colortom, now available for Photon ;)

{"other":{"black":"#292929","white":"#bfabab"},"primary":{"100":"#db9243","900":"#428a58"},"zinc":{"100":"#6e9ba8","200":"#d3294e","300":"#bfabab","400":"#bfabab","500":"#85af4e","700":"#2c2e33","800":"#2c2e33","900":"#242424","925":"#292929","950":"#292929"},"slate":{}}

Edit: Fixed secondary accent color.

As there is no documentation (yet), I've done this by trial and error, feel free to tell me if stuff doesn't behave correctly :D

Based on the amazing color scheme by Ethan Schoonover: https://ethanschoonover.com/solarized/

{"other":{"white":"#fdf6e3","black":"#002b36"},"primary":{"100":"#859900","900":"#2aa198"},"zinc":{"50":"#eee8d5","100":"#eee8d5","200":"#d33682","300":"#eee8d5","400":"#eee8d5","500":"#2aa198","600":"#93a1a1","700":"#657b83","800":"#0b3f4d","900":"#073642","925":"#002b36","950":"#002b36"},"slate":{"25":"#fdf6e3","50":"#fdf6e3","100":"#eee8d5","200":"#eee8d5","300":"#eee8d5","400":"#2aa198","500":"#268bd2","600":"#0b3f4d","700":"#0b3f4d","800":"#0b3f4d","900":"#002b36","950":"#002b36"}}

For future reference, here's what I've gathered so far:

Slate (LIGHT)

• 25: Central window background
• 50: Global background
• 100: instance, background hover left bar, pictures background
• 200: outlines
• 300: buttons bottom outline
• 400: ???
• 500: instance
• 600: sidebars text color, OP username, post date, reply button
• 700: ???
• 800: ???
• 900: titles, comments, upvote/downvote buttons
• 950: ???

Zinc (DARK)

• 50: ???
• 100: titles, comments
• 200: upvote/downvote buttons, settings comments
• 300: post text
• 400: sidebars text color
• 500: user instance
• 600: theme buttons outline (?)
• 700: button top outline
• 800: outlines, background hover left bar
• 900: Buttons, instance, cards background
• 925: Central window background
• 950: Global background

Primary

• 100 Main UI accent color - DARK
• 900 Main UI accent color - LIGHT

Other

• Black: ??? Seems to always be black
• White: card background - LIGHT

This is my very first Gunpla and I have some opinions :D

I loved building it, it's a very cool puzzle and once I got in the flow, it was great.

The arms are kinda bad, one of them doesn't extend fully and I don't understand why as it's identical to the other. The hands are awful. Everything else is great, the legs in particular are incredible.

Panel lining with cheap acrylic paint diluted with water and dish soap works very well, and since the paint doesn't adhere completely even when dry, it's very easy to clean.

It's... flimsy. Very flimsy. I don't know if it's this model in particular or if all Gunpla are like this but posing it is more stressful than fun. The arms and the shoulder armor in particular pop off constantly, and I had to glue the crest because it kept flying off.

!RX-78-2 Gundam with Hyper Bazooka

!RX-78-2 Gundam with Beam Saber and shield

!RX-78-2 Gundam with Beam Saber and shield

!RX-78-2 Gundam mocking you for being tiny

I've been diagnosed by my former therapist but I feel things are getting worse these days.

I mean, I have my vape in my hand, and one second later it's nowhere to be found. Maybe it's in the bedroom where I swear I haven't been in the last 5 hours. Maybe in a bathroom cabinet. Maybe on the table but I wouldn't tell because my fuckin brain is incapable to discern any object in the middle of clutter.

Is there a strategy to remember where I've put something I was holding? It's gotten to the point that I'm getting preemptively mad when something I'm looking for is not where it's supposed to be because I know I'll have to turn the flat upside down just to find it, just to lose it again a few minutes later and/or do the same song and dance for the next thing I need.

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/20255211 >I'm sur a lot of you have seen this video from James Hoffmann discussing the massive differences observed when spritzing some water on the beans before grinding. > > So I took the plunge and bought a spray bottle, and tested it immediately on my mildly-disappointing, home-roasted medium-light Yrgacheffe in my Mythos-modded DF64. > > Of course I don't have a particle analyzer to replicate the results, but I can still count on my senses to see if there is an actual difference between dry and spritzed beans. > > The beans were dialed-in at 18g in, 45g out, 30s when dry. > > Then, the 3s-spritz beans went in. I didn't see much difference when grinding (maybe a bit less retention), but when pulling the shot, wow. It started to drip much later and slower, and took around 42s to complete the shot. There was a bit of spraying so channeling may still be happening though. The taste was incredible compared to the baseline. Every flavor was turned up to 11, with much more body, sweetness and complexity, with still a clear acidity cutting through the syrupy goodness, and a taste that lingered in my mouth for a very long time. > > I dialed back the grinder for a 30s shot. This one was very disappointing and obviously under-extracted: sour, with a lingering astringency, and the flavors were kind of muted. So the beans really seem to benefit from extra contact time with seemingly no drawbacks in terms of overextraction, or the initial delay acted as a sort of preinfusion. > > So my takeway is this: invest in a $£2€ spray bottle, either dial-in with dry beans or aim for a 35-45% longer extraction compared to your baseline, and enjoy! > > Have you tested it? What are your results?

I'm sur a lot of you have seen this video from James Hoffmann discussing the massive differences observed when spritzing some water on the beans before grinding.

So I took the plunge and bought a spray bottle, and tested it immediately on my mildly-disappointing, home-roasted medium-light Yrgacheffe in my Mythos-modded DF64.

Of course I don't have a particle analyzer to replicate the results, but I can still count on my senses to see if there is an actual difference between dry and spritzed beans.

The beans were dialed-in at 18g in, 45g out, 30s when dry.

Then, the 3-spritz beans went in. I didn't see much difference when grinding (maybe a bit less retention), but when pulling the shot, wow. It started to drip much later and slower, and took around 42s to complete the shot. There was a bit of spraying so channeling may still be happening though. The taste was incredible compared to the baseline. Every flavor was turned up to 11, with much more body, sweetness and complexity, with still a clear acidity cutting through the syrupy goodness, and a taste that lingered in my mouth for a very long time.

I dialed back the grinder for a 30s shot. This one was very disappointing and obviously under-extracted: sour, with a lingering astringency, and the flavors were kind of muted. So the beans really seem to benefit from extra contact time with seemingly no drawbacks in terms of overextraction, or the initial delay acted as a sort of preinfusion.

So my takeway is this: invest in a $£2€ spray bottle, either dial-in with dry beans or aim for a 35-45% longer extraction compared to your baseline, and enjoy!

Have you tested it? What are your results?

I'm planning to make a modular synth from scratch, but I need to start with the PSU. Do you see any issues with this schematic?

The main difference between this design and traditional linear PSUs is the replacement of the transformer/rectifier/filter circuit by Mean Well IRM AC/DC converters. The linear regulation circuit is basically the reference design for the 78xx/79xx.

Do you think there would be an issue once scaled? The AC/DC converters have a lot of headroom, as I plan to make up to 3 regulation circuits like so:

!full schematics

(the regulated outputs will actually never go nowhere near 1A per rail)

You're about to take your first steps in the wonderful world of Linux, but you're overwhelmed by the amount of choices? Welcome to this (I hope) very simple guide :)

The aim of this guide is to provide simple, clear information to ease your transition as a beginner. This is not a be-all-end-all guide nor an advanced guide.

Preamble

Make sure your hardware is compatible

Nowadays most relatively recent hardware works perfectly fine on Linux, but there are some edge cases still. If you don't use niche hardware and your wifi card is supported, chances are you're golden. Please note that nVidia is a bad faith player in the Linux world, so if you have a GeForce GPU, expect some trouble.

Make sure your favourite apps are either available or have a good replacement on Linux

If some proprietary app is essential to your workflow and is irreplaceable, consider running it in a VM, keeping a Windows partition for it or try and run it through Wine (this is advanced stuff though).

Be aware that Linux is not Windows/MacOS

Things work differently, and this is normal. You will probably struggle at the beginning while adjusting to a new paradigm. You may have to troubleshoot some things. You may break some things in the process. You will probably get frustrated at some point or another. It's okay. You're learning something new, and it can be hard to shed old habits forged by years on another system.

What are the best resources out there?

Arch Wiki without a doubt. Despite being heavily tied to Arch, most of its content is readily usable to troubleshoot most modern distros, as the building blocks (Kernel, systemd, core system apps, XOrg/Wayland, your DE of choice etc.) are the same.

Okay, now to the most important questions

Which distro should I use?

There are a metric fuckload (or 1.112 imperial fucktons) of distros out there, but these can be broadly put into two main categories: general-purpose distros and niche-distros. I advise you to keep it as mainstream as possible for your first steps. A distro with a large user base, backed by a large community of maintainers and aimed at being as fuss-free as possible is always better than a one-person effort tailored to a specific use-case.

Beginner distros

These are great distros for beginners as well as more advanced users who just want to have a system that needs almost no configuration out of the box, just works and stays out of the way.

• Fedora Workstation: Clean, sensible, modern and very up to date and should work out of the box for most hardware. Despite the community's rightful backlash against Red Hat, this is still a great distro for beginners and advanced users. Even Linus Torvalds himself favors Fedora as a daily driver. Fedora is the flagship distro for the Gnome Desktop Environment.
• Linux Mint: While I haven't used it myself, there is a lot of praise here for this Ubuntu derivative from beginners and advanced users alike. Its main goals are ease of use and being the flagship distro for the Cinnamon DE, which is very similar to Windows and may ease the transition for new users.
• Pop!_OS: Backed by hardware Linux vendor System76, this Ubuntu derivative shares some of the issues with its infamous parent, but its heavily modified Gnome DE looks and feels nice.
• I do not recommend Ubuntu nor Manjaro: despite being marketed as "beginner friendly distros", and despite often running perfectly fine, these two have major issues in management, packaging policies or philosophy that might make your life as a beginner difficult. Ubuntu suffers from it's parent company's goal to make Ubuntu kinda-Linux-but-not-really, and there are some great derivatives like the ones cited above that work equally well but revert some of the most controversial decisions made by Canonical. Manjaro might seem appealing as a "beginner-friendly" Arch derivative and some of its tools are fantastic to remove some configuration burden, but ongoing mismanagement issues and the fact that it needs regular maintenance as updates often break stuff prevent it from being a truly beginner distro.

Advanced distros

So you've taken your first steps, you're starting to be really comfortable with Linux, and you want to get your hands dirty and really learn what's happening under the surface? These should not be installed as your first distro, unless you like extremely steep learning curves and being overwhelmed.

• Debian: as one of the oldest, still maintained distros and the granddaddy of probably half of the distros out there, Debian is built like a tank. A very stringent policy of focusing on bug and security fixes over new features makes Debian extremely stable and predictable, but it can also feel a bit outdated. Still a rock-solid experience, with a lot to tinker with despite very sensible defaults. It is an incredible learning tool and is as "Standard Linux" as can be.
• Arch: The opposite of Debian in philosophy, packages often come to Arch almost as soon as the source code is released. Expect a lot of manual installation and configuration, daily updates, and regularly fixing stuff. An incredible learning tool too, that will make you intimate with the inner workings of Linux.

Which Desktop Environment should I use?

This is entirely up to you, and depends on your preferences.

• Gnome: Full featured yet very minimalist, Gnome is a great DE that eschews the traditional Desktop metaphor. Like MacOS, out of the box, it provides the strongly opinionated developers' vision of a user experience. Fortunately, unlike MacOS, there are thousands of extensions to tweak and extend the looks and behaviour of the DE. Dash-to-dock or Dash-to-panel are great if you want a more MacOS-like or Windows-like experience, Blur My Shell is great if you love blurry transparent things, Appindicator is a must, and everything else is up to you. Gnome's development cycle is highly regular and all core components and apps follow the same release schedule, which explains why a lot of distros choose it as their default DE.
• KDE Plasma: Full featured and maximalist, Plasma does not cater to a single design philosophy, is very flexible and can be tweaked almost ad infinitum. This may be an advantage for people who like to spend hours making the perfect environment, or a disadvantage as the possibilities can be overwhelming, and the added complexity may compromise stability, bugginess or completeness. There is no single development cycle for core components and apps, which makes it a bit more difficult for distro maintainers.
• Cinnamon: If you want the most "windows-like" experience out of the box, Cinnamon is great. As I have no experience with it, I'll let the Mint users praise it in the comments :D
• Lightweight DEs for old or underpowered machines: The likes of XFCE, LXDE, LXQt are great if you want to ressurect an old machine, but lack the bells and whistles of the aforementioned DEs.

Philosophical questions, or "I heard conflicting stuff over the Internet and now I'm scared"

You've done your research, you're almost ready to take the plunge, you even read a lot of stuff on this very community, but people seem very passionately for or against stuff. What should you do?

Shoud I learn the command line?

Yes, eventually. To be honest, nowadays a lot of things can be configured on the fly graphically, through your DE's settings. But sometimes, it's much more efficient to work on the command line, and sometimes it's the only way to fix something. It's not that difficult, and you can be reasonably productive by understanding just about a dozen very simple commands.

I have a very old laptop/desktop, should I use a distro from this era?

Noooo!. Contrary to Windows and MacOS which only work correctly on period-correct computers, Linux runs perfectly well on any hardware from the last 20 to 30 years. You will not gain performance by using an old distro, but you will gain hundreds of critical security flaws that have been since corrected. If you need to squeeze performance out of an old computer, use a lightweight graphical environment or repurpose it as a headless home server.

Should I be concerned about systemd?

No. In short, systemd is fine and all major distros have switched to systemd years ago. Even the extremely cautious people behind Debian have used systemd as default since 2015. Not wanting to use systemd is a niche more rooted in philosophical rather than practical or technical reasons, and leads to much deeper issues than you should concern yourself with as a beginner. (Thanks @GravitySpoiled@lemmy.ml for the precisions)

Should I be concerned about XOrg/Wayland?

Yes and No, but mostly No. First off, most distros install both Wayland and XOrg by default, so if one is not satisfying to you, try the other. Remember in the preamble when I said nVidia was a bad actor? Well, most of people's complaints about Wayland are because of nVidia and their shitty drivers, so GeForce users should stay on XOrg for now. But like it or not, XOrg is dead and unmaintained, and Wayland is the present and future. XOrg did too many things, carried too many features from the 80's and 90's and its codebase is a barely maintainable mess. Wayland solves that by being just a simple display protocol with a much smaller codebase, and offloading feature development to the compositors.

Should I look for a gaming-focused distro?

No. General purpose distros are perfectly fine for gaming. You can install Steam, Lutris, Heroic, Itch etc. and use Proton just fine on almost anything. Even Debian. In short, yes, you can game on Linux, there are great tutorials on the internet.

Should I be concerned about Flatpaks and/or Snaps?

Not really. Flatpaks are great, and more and more developers package their apps directly in Flatpak format. As a rule of thumb, for user facing applications, if your app store gives you the choice between Flatpak and your native package manager version, choose the most recent version. Snaps however are a Canonical/Ubuntu thing, so as long as you avoid Ubuntu, its spins and its derivatives that still include Snaps, you should be fine. They tend to take a lot longer to startup than regular apps or Flatpaks, the snap store is proprietary, centralized and Canonical controls every part of it. If you're fine with that, have fun. (Thanks @GravitySpoiled@lemmy.ml for the precisions)

Should I follow The Way?

Yes. One does not speak unless one knows. You can take your helmet off in public tho.

Feel free to help correct, expand, or simplify this guide :)

Don't get me wrong. Hyprland is great. I like it a lot. It looks fresh, it's easy to configure and the keybindings are super easy to implement, but it's also very barebones. Most of the functionality expected from a DE come from external software. Be it a top bar, an app launcher, a notification daemon or anything else. Each has to be configured independently, which is good for some people, but not really for me. I could probably make Waybar look good if I spent a lot of time on it, but as of today, meh. Rofi is neat, fast and minimalist, but looks straight from the 90', and as a result feels janky next to the hypermodern look and feel of Hyprland (Edit: OK I've found some nice themes for Rofi, just need to find a way to add blur behind the window). Quick settings are inexistant, or could be implemented with a collection of shell or Python scripts I'm not really motivated enough to pursue. A full Hyprland DE with top bar, quick settings and app launcher, with unified looks and centralized setings would actually be awesome and might make me switch (I know it's not the philosophy of this project).

Which brought me back to Gnome 45. I wouldn't use vanilla Gnome without extensions, but with a few QOL or eyecandy extensions like dash-to-dock and Blur My Shell, it can look as fresh and modern as you want. The quick settings popup may have made me lazy, but it's an incredibly efficient tool for switching Wifi networks, audio devices or power profiles. All the media keys work out of the box. Gnome Settings is what a settings app should be, complete yet simple to navigate and use. I love the new workspace indicator in the top bar.

Gnome is "boring" in a good way. It's a complete and unified experience, works great out of the box, is predictable and lets you be as productive or procrastinating as you want without getting in your way, while being infinitely extensible to let you tweak as little or as much as you want.

Thank you Gnome devs for your awesome work. Thank you Hyprland devs for letting me try something new and fresh, even if it's not for me.

I'm typing this with my new ergo keeb right now. Holy fuck it is hard. I cannot seem to be able to hack my brain, I've spent 2 WEEKS desperately trying to learn the first SIX MOST FUCKIN COMMON LETTERS and I'm still completely unable to use them even remotely quickly or reliably. I am completely unable to even break the 70% confidence line on keybr on I,E,S and R despite hours of efforts. Worse, now my accuracy goes steadily down the toilet even if I slow down to a grind in an attempt to improve it.

I fuckin suck at this. It is despair and rage inducing. How the fuck do you manage to even learn new layouts?

I spent almost an hour typing this fuckin message.

But hey at least my keyboard looks awesome.

!

Edit: it seems using keybr is actually damaging my progress instead of helping. I'm switching to another tool.

Edit2: after a few days on monkeytype I'm up to 17 WPM and 91% accuracy in french, up from 4 WPM and almost negative accuracy. Not great BUT it's still a big win for me. I mostly know my layout now, except for the dev layer. I can only progress from now.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/1088465

> This post was originally posted on r/espresso in 2020. I’m manually moving my content here before probably nuking my reddit account. Fuck that little pigboy u/spez. > > For years, I struggled with my espresso machine (Lelit PL41TEM) ever since I got a naked portafilter. I tried everything, and I thing I learned a lot and tremendously improved my skills doing so: Weighing coffee, weighing shots, timing pulls, WDT, stockfleth, nutating tamp, NSEW tamp, playing with dose, grind, temperature, bean freshness... > > I had good shots, terrible shots, and once in a blue moon excellent shots. But I never achieved consistency. I always struggled with channeling, even with super fresh beans. > > The single element that I couldn't control was the pressure. My machine was factory set at 13bars blind and I could only brew decent shots at 11 bars. > > Thanks to this video featuring my exact machine and a few pushes from people here, I adjusted my OPV to 10 bars blind, 9 bars brewing. This has been a game changer. I still pull meh shots, but my constitency is now through the roof, and even "bad" shots are actually okay.