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mrdos.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy
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@mrdos.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy
3 followers 1 following 180 posts
💻🔨👍 Every time I think I have something worth posting, I write it in the wee box, and after I've read it back, my brain says, “no”.

Profile picture alt: a […]

[bridged from https://hachyderm.io/@MrDOS on the fediverse by https://fed.brid.gy/ ]
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mrdos.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy
Entirely predictably, the hot glue failed almost immediately (one within days, the other within weeks; good bonding to the plastic blanking plates, very poor to the metal mounting plates). After five months of guiltily averting my eyes from the APs dangling from […]

[Original post on hachyderm.io]
January 6, 2026 at 5:06 PM
mrdos.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy
That's it all back together again at least, ready for me to biff it off the nightstand again.

In all honesty, I don't think it'll go back into service – at least not right away. It's just too annoying. Like, no wonder I keep knocking it over; the snooze button […]

[Original post on hachyderm.io]
January 6, 2026 at 2:49 PM
mrdos.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy
Anyway. “Fixing” the thing we came here to fix is “just” a matter of holding the top two buttons in place while folding the back piece closed, while the stars align and Lucifer gives Michael a back rub. If it still looks depressed, it is (and so am I): the […]

[Original post on hachyderm.io]
January 6, 2026 at 2:28 PM
mrdos.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy
While we're in here anyway, we can see that the micro driving the show is a PIC18F46K22: 64 KB flash, 3.8 KB RAM. Dunno how fast they're clocking it; could be up to 64 MHz.
January 6, 2026 at 2:19 PM
mrdos.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy
This is the back of the “mode” switch that pushed in. It's simply part of the injection-moulded back housing, articulating on two plastic spars that they're betting won't eventually wear and crack, I guess. It rebounds off this tactile switch on the PCB. With […]

[Original post on hachyderm.io]
January 6, 2026 at 2:09 PM
mrdos.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy
The two plastic button inserts fall out when you open it – that's a classic case of poor design for manufacture. The other thing that fell out for me was this magnet. It's one of a pair mounted to the bottom of the main case, akin to another pair recessed into […]

[Original post on hachyderm.io]
January 6, 2026 at 2:02 PM
mrdos.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy
I think the failure happens because the enclosure is screwed together at the top, and (poorly) clipped together at the bottom. I keep knocking it over while flailing for the snooze button on the top, and so the case eventually pops apart, so the “mode” button […]

[Original post on hachyderm.io]
January 6, 2026 at 1:27 PM
mrdos.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy
The “mode” button on the back of my (wife's) Lumie Zest SAD lamp + alarm clock has gotten stuck pushed in. This is the second time this has happened. Hey, fun fact: if your product isn't very good, harping on about how it's designed and made in Britain just makes you look like a gammon.
January 6, 2026 at 1:21 PM
mrdos.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy
It's tryin'. I wouldn't say it's tryin' hard, but it's tryin'.
“It's taking a bit longer than expected, but we’ll get there as fast as we can”
December 30, 2025 at 2:02 AM
mrdos.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy
Windows 10 about as frustrated to be running under libvirt as I am to be installing it.
A screenshot of the Windows 10 OOBE running in libvirt Virtual Machine Manager. It says “OK, we got through this part of setup.”
December 30, 2025 at 1:46 AM
mrdos.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy
Wood: worked.
A wooden coat hanger on the wall of a red room. Some coats, a scarf, and a cowl on the hanger. A close shot of the hanger in situ. It's made from a white oak barrel stave, with seven brass coat-and-hat hooks arrayed across it.
December 2, 2025 at 2:38 PM
mrdos.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy
@glyph I have started three different responses and all three times my train of thought has gone like this. Good luck; God is not with you.
☝️😮 🤔
October 22, 2025 at 11:28 PM
mrdos.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy
@Edent Alack alas, and as is tradition, mobile Safari disappoints.
A screenshot of three different configurations of HTML meters. Despite surrounding text describing their supposed styling differences, they are styled identically.
October 11, 2025 at 11:53 AM
mrdos.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy
Every time I drive over to the west coast of Scotland, I get a real kick out of this telephone exchange and adjoining telephone box in the middle of nowhere. (It is on the A86, about half a mile outside of Tulloch.)
A telephone exchange beside a worn rural road. A microwave tower stands in front; a red telephone box behind. Purple heather frames the foreground as dark skies loom overhead.
September 20, 2025 at 9:52 PM
mrdos.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy
“Huh, I wonder what's taking up all the disk on this old laptop?”
A screenshot of GrandPerspective visualizing large files on a Mac. One single item is conspicuously responsible for about 25% of used disk space: it's Google Chrome, occupying 43.62 GB.
August 24, 2025 at 7:59 PM
mrdos.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy
Accomplished: extremely gruesome UK wall mounts for my new MikroTik wAP ax units.
August 4, 2025 at 11:58 AM
mrdos.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy
I use an ad blocker, so of course it makes sense for this retailer (Wayfair) to block me from browsing (and potentially spending money on) their online store.

Like I get it, they're not actually trying to block ad blockers; their concern is really scrapers, and […]

[Original post on hachyderm.io]
A screenshot of an error webpage. It says (in extremely low-contrast text) “Before we continue... Press & Hold to confirm you are a human (and not a bot).” and has a disabled button labeled “Press & Hold”. Below the button is a vibrant red error message that reads “Please check your internet connection or disable your ad-blocker.”
May 26, 2025 at 4:04 PM
mrdos.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy
What did you do with your Sunday afternoon yesterday? I wrote a terrible AutoHotKey script to rip all of the lyrics out of an even-worse old desktop hymnal viewer application.

I haven't really ever used AutoHotKey before, knowing of it only by reputation. I'm […]

[Original post on hachyderm.io]
February 10, 2025 at 1:55 PM
mrdos.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy
@ifixcoinops The largest I have is 40MB, practically all of which is two extremely large font files. As you can see here, of 252 epubs, the vast majority are under 5MB (which IMO is still pretty big).

My Kobo has I think 8GB of storage and it (and its kin) is […]

[Original post on hachyderm.io]
Histogram chart labeled “epub sizes”. Y-axis goes to 100, X-axis goes to 4.0e7 (40MB). The bins (which are around 0.9 units/91KB in width) show a sharp exponential decline in book size over the first 10MB of sizes.
January 29, 2025 at 8:59 PM
mrdos.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy
And that's it, I think I'm done for now! As @jimfl pointed out, there's lots of stuff visible in the background of these photos that has nothing to do with laser engraving. Lots of gardening tools, etc. This space is as much storage as workshop, and the laser […]

[Original post on hachyderm.io]
January 19, 2025 at 4:59 PM
mrdos.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy
Well, the firmware sees the storage device, but it doesn't list it as a (UEFI) boot source.

I wonder if I just set up Grub wrong when I installed Debian on it a few weeks ago?
January 19, 2025 at 4:00 PM
mrdos.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy
Oh. Perfect.
January 19, 2025 at 3:56 PM
mrdos.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy
“Cable management”, but it's all in there.
January 19, 2025 at 3:55 PM
mrdos.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy
The t520 has 100mm VESA mounting holes on its side, so I've fitted a low-profile mounting bracket (the same one as I'm using for the monitor, actually) and I'll fit its other half to the underside of the shelf. For the adapter, I've got perforated metal […]

[Original post on hachyderm.io]
January 19, 2025 at 3:05 PM
mrdos.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy
Back at it. A little off level, and the wire into the outlet isn't as straight as I'd like, but good clearance for an adapter now.

Let's get the computer mounted.
January 19, 2025 at 2:56 PM