@eliocamp You are right. The problem is the long stretch. I could place them next to each other maybe?

It’s very satisfying loading that thing.

However, on the long slide at the bottom of the AA battery compartment, the batteries sometimes turn sideways as they roll down and get stuck. About 10 or so have to be loaded from the front, but then it works well […]

[Original post on oldbytes.space]

This week, I created this dispenser for AA and AAA batteries in #FreeCAD.

The FreeCAD file and STL can be found on Printables.

www.printables.com/model/1676944-ultimate-d...

#FreeCADFriday #diy #3dprinting #cad

A captcha asks: Select in this order <some Japanese symbols>. The image above shows a colorful background with painted Japanese symbols overlaid, which do not look at all like the printed versions.

I encountered this CAPTCHA today. Boy, did I have a hard time solving it. Maybe I am a machine?

Well, I just asked #Claude where I can download it's source code. It denies everything. 🤣

But the wayback machine had me covered.

web.archive.org/web/20260331152215/https...

#FreeCAD 1.1 is out.

Those new features are awesome 😍.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYdobpjTypg

@Setok yep, this is discovery all over again. A punch of cry babies in space 🤮

A picture of Silly Tilly.

Just watched #StarTrek #StarfleetAcademy episode 8: The Life of the Stars. What a pile of 💩. Real cringe. And the worst Star Trek character of all time is back.

@logicslayer Cool, I have Immich installed already, but I haven't had time to play with it yet.

And regarding phones, I would really like to try an alternative. Maybe a Fairphone + custom OS? But it's weird, as much as I like to tinker with computers and software, the phone is just a tool for […]

@logicslayer I am using an Android phone. I wish there were a truly free option that works as well as Android. But I keep my Google apps to a minimum. The Nextcloud client for syncing files, and Aqua Mail as my mail client. I’m still using Google Photos, though. But that’s one of the next things […]

A graph shows the sent and received emails over the last couple of months on Google Workspace. On January 18th, the graph drops to zero.

I run a small business and over the last couple of months, I’ve been working hard on reducing my dependencies on U.S. providers and #techbros.

Latest step: Email and docs are no longer on #GoogleWorkspace. I’ve moved everything to #mailboxorg and #Nextcloud […]

[Original post on oldbytes.space]

An ascii test file which contains a list of locales and each an example of the long and short date / time formats.

It was bothering me that the date format on my #Fedora / #KDE system was kind of wrong. I am Austrian, and we are used to dd.mm.yyyy. But on my system it was always displayed as dd.mm.yy (two‑digit year instead of four).

I thought surely it could be […]

[Original post on oldbytes.space]

Lot's of hand written numbers on a notepad written with a mechanical pencil.

Doing #AdventOfCode again. Working my way through 2020 and playing with numbers again.

3D view of the design in FreeCAD: a flat rectangular base with a cylindrical threaded socket on top.

The printed parts. Not assembled yet.

The printed parts assembled, with a battery and light bulb connected. The light bulb is shining.

Printed an E10 light bulb socket designed in #FreeCAD.

Files are on #printables:

www.printables.com/model/1548066-e10-socket...

#3dprinting #freecadfriday

Hand-drawn notes with a sketch of the placement of the USB ports, including notes about which port corresponds to which device and which ones can be passed through safely because they’re in their own IOMMU group.

Mapping out which USB ports are in which IOMMU group of my motherboard and can be safely used for PCI passthrough to a VM running on #proxmox.

#linux

The status screen of Advent of Code 2021. All 50 stars achieved.

I completed #AdventOfCode 2021 today by finishing day 25. I did it in #TypeScript, which was ok, but it’s missing some important features I’m used to, such as object equality and comparison mechanisms. The same goes for tuples, which can’t be compared by value […]

[Original post on oldbytes.space]

The solution for part 2 was also found by the program. My motivation to find the smart way is now around zero.

#AdventOfCode

The solution for part 1 was already found. Since part 2 can only take about 10 times as long, I guess the program will win.

btop showing all CPU cores running at 100% with process "solve-day24".

Doing #AdventOfCode 2021 day 24 the easy way. Wrote C++ code that uses all cores to look for the solution while I think of a better way. Let's see who will get the solution first, my brain or the program.

Personal status screen of AoC 2021. 19 stars reached.

Didn't I say I am glad, that #AdventOfCode was shorter this year? Look at me doing AoC 2021 now. 🫣

github.com/nharrer/AdventOfCode/blo...

My work place, which is a three monitor setup. The monitor to the left is in portrait mode. The screens contain browser windows, some shell sessions. One is running htop, which shows almost all CPUs maxed out, because a stress test is running. And there are windows with remote sessions to a Windows and an NixOS machine.

I’ve been a long time #Windows user (since 3.11). And I also use #Linux a lot for server stuff. But my working machine has always been windows.

But this year is the year. About a month ago, I completely switched to Linux, and I went all in. I’m now running a […]

[Original post on oldbytes.space]

My current machine is an AM4‑based Ryzen 5 3600 with 32GB of RAM that I built in 2019. I’m running #Proxmox, where one VM with PCI passthrough is my main/daily work horse. Works like a dream.

I planned on getting myself a new machine around this time, but with those RAM prices, no thanks. Grrr […]

Also, a shoutout and high‑five to a few fellow Mastodons who posted incredible stuff, interacted with me, or are just plain awesome:

@jochie
@movq
@alrj
@tipiak75
@RogerBW
@jeff
@everythingalsocan
@psf
@papajohn
@sol_hsa
@mina
@Tipa
@psychotimmy
@teotwaki
@mnvr

Thanks, #AdventOfCode was just […]

Some thoughts about #AdventOfCode 2025:

So that's it, folks, for this year. It has been huge fun again.

As usual, I'm sad that it's over, but also a bit glad it was shorter. It can be quite a burden with family, kids, work, the Christmas season, and AoC on top of it.

Altogether, I feel good […]

[#AdventOfCode Day 12 Spoiler]

Excluding those that clearly don't have a fit, because the total number of #s from all presents would exceed the region. All the others are valid without even looking.

Final AoC animation after solving all 12 days.

#AdventOfCode Day 12: Christmas Tree Farm

Sigh. I wasted the whole morning rotating patterns, throwing away identical patterns, pattern matching, and stuff. Then, on a hunch, I just entered the number of rows that could be solvable (eliminating those where […]

[Original post on oldbytes.space]

A graph of the puzzle input arranged with the nodes in a circle. It’s just a big, messy rat’s nest of connections among the nodes.

#AdventOfCode Day 11: Reactor

Wow, turned out to be the almost shortest and fastest code of this year. Enduring so many past AoC graph puzzles has finally paid off. I even finished both parts before breakfast. Okay, I’ll stop bragging now. There is still one […]

[Original post on oldbytes.space]

Another meme for #adventOfCode day 10

A meme pic showing a perplexed Arnold Schwarzenegger/Terminator with the headline "Realizing Linear Algebra Is Everywhere."

#AdventOfCode Day 10: Factory

Part 1 was easy, and I did it before breakfast.

But Part 2: Oh my! I tried to do it with combinatorics first, and it was too slow, even after countless optimizations. There is probably a dynamic programming way to do it, but […]

[Original post on oldbytes.space]

@ret I used Rust last year just to learn it, but the whole borrowing system very often got in the way. I got better after about 25 days, yet I never felt like I really mastered it.