Trevor Flowers ⚙️⚙️ @trevorflowers@machines.social
Admin
I'm a machinist in training in Seattle Washington, a small-run manufacturer of (usually nerdy) collectables like tiny Memex, and an admin of the https://machines.social instance.
#machinist #coder #manufacturer #seattle
Joined Apr 2022
Pinned toot
I split my time between three accounts:
- Morning thoughts and dog pix: @trevorfsmith
- Maker/machinist/manufacturer chitchat: @trevorflowers
- Web-ish XR for Transmutable News: @trevorflowers
"To improve the longevity of SerenityOS, we need to make the system memory-safe." I'm glad to see him come to this conclusion. Better late than never.
https://awesomekling.github.io/Memory-safety-for-SerenityOS/
I'll probably have Windows on a couple of shop machines because some tools can't deal with Linux but they'll be cattle, not pets.
This year-long dalliance with MSFT products has been interesting but I'd rather return to my natural environment, Linux.
The new Inkscape (v1.2) is sweet! I already use Inkscape more than Illustrator but this might be the version of Inkscape that lets me uninstall Illustrator. The only other Adobe CC product I regularly use is Premier Pro but I'm going to take another run at getting Resolve working in Linux and if that works then I'm ditching Windows on my main machines.
If you're of the pythonic persuasion and use MicroPython on tiny boards then consider throwing the project some cash+love over on GitHub: https://github.com/sponsors/micropython
I switched to one of those USB-powered solder pens and friends, it's pretty nice. It's light, it quickly heats, and it has a wee display showing the exact temp. ⚡
Trevor Flowers ⚙️⚙️
boosted
Nice affordable dev kit for the Allwinner D1 RISC-V SoC https://www.seeedstudio.com/Lichee-RV-Dock-Allwinner-D1-SoC-RISC-V-Linux-dev-kit-High-Integration-Open-Source-p-5380.html #riscv #linux
I searched a bit to see if there is an existing project to build a FOSS ActivityPub federated web app that provides the niceties of code repo hosting and collaboration like GitLab as well as moderation and remote following like Mastodon. So far I've found a few proposals but no implementations.
Regardless of whether the spec was wrong, the wrong parts were procured, the supplier made them wrong, the installation was wrong, or the maintenance was wrong, when the problem was identified it had to have been a rotten day.
I can't imagine what it's like for the engineer[s] who spec'ed the valves that rusted and locked up before Starliner's orbital flight test 2. This report claims that it cost Boeing $600m but I'd guess that losing business to competitors will cost more.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/05/todays-the-day-when-boeings-starliner-takes-to-the-skies-probably/
Syncthing spawns a boatload of threads, huh?
I might actually be learning. I took all of yesterday to mill a part but today I made a second copy in two hours.
Despite having lived within the Moore's law era for more than 30 years, I think that my understanding of calculation speed and the scale of data that can be handled is still in many ways a linear projection based the first few generations of chips released as I started coding. The numbers are incomprehensible.
Trevor Flowers ⚙️⚙️
boosted
"Grass was the single largest irrigated "crop" in America, surpassing corn and wheat, a frequently cited study from NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration found. It noted that by the early 2000s, turf grass -- mostly in front lawns -- spanned about 63,000 square miles, an area larger than the state of Georgia.
Keeping all that front lawn grass alive requires up to 75% of just one household's water consumption.
America's obsession with grass can be traced back to 17th century England, where meticulously manicured lawns became a "symbol of status and wealth" because of the high cost to maintain them.
That idea of lawns as a demonstration of status really became embedded in gardening culture in this country with British colonialism, so it sort of traveled west with us and took all that labor in.
Besides the intensive water use, gas-powered lawn mowers emit pollutants that can cause cancer and planet-warming gases, which in turn contributes to the climate crisis and the region's drought."
Today I plan to cut a couple of adapters so that I can fasten my sloppy x axis to bearings running on an additional guide rod for a bit of extra rigidity.
Trevor Flowers ⚙️⚙️
boosted
i read a thing recently that blew my mind a little.
went something like:
people can imagine time travel to the past and one little act making massive differences in the timeline
but in their present they think even the greatest effort they can put in will not make any difference to the future
Well, that's fun. They suspect that an algae powered a microprocessor for six months while it measured its own current.
https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2022/EE/D2EE00233G
Admin
I'm a machinist in training in Seattle Washington, a small-run manufacturer of (usually nerdy) collectables like tiny Memex, and an admin of the https://machines.social instance.
#machinist #coder #manufacturer #seattle
Joined Apr 2022
