You might recall last month that I posted about my 3D-printed spectacles.

Enough people asked me for the files and for details on how to order lenses and mount them into the frames that I figured I'd release everything with instructions - and also redesign the hinges a bit so the temples fold more compact, something I meant to do for some time.

You might find this little tool useful:

3D-printed holes gauge block

This is a block with a series of vertical and horizontal holes from ⌀1 mm to ⌀3.6 mm (nominal) in 0.1-mm increments. I print this block with any new printer / new material at the layer thickness and speed I use most often and keep the blocks as references.

Then, when I want to print a part with a hole in it that will end up printed at the final diameter without any rework (or very close, but usually it ends up exactly right) I use the gauge block I printed with the printer and the material I intend to print the part out of to find out which nominal diameter hole I need to use in the model for the hole.

For instance, the block in the photo was printed on a Prusa Mk4 with PLA at 0.2 mm layer thickness. If I want a ⌀0.8-mm vertical hole with no interference in my final part in PLA out of that printer, I'll need to model a ⌀1.2-mm hole. I know that because the shank of a 0.8-mm drillbit will slide freely in the vertical hole marked ⌀1.2 in the block.

Or if I want a hole that I can screw an M3 screw into without having to run a tap through it, the block tells me I would have to use a ⌀3.2-mm hole to fit a ⌀3-mm pin in freely, and I back off 0.4 mm to get a hole in which the screw thread will engage well but reasonably lightly, or 0.5 mm for a tighter engagement (but with a bit more risk with horizontal holes near an edge, because the layers might separate) so I know I'll have to model a ⌀2.8 or ⌀2.7 hole in the model.

I use those gauge blocks all the time. They save me a lot of time on parts that I print often because I never have to ream or thread the holes: they come out the printer just right and ready to use.

This is the worst possible setup to print living hinges: PLA isn't terribly flexible, and here the flexible bits have to be printed vertically, which really isn't ideal to withstand cracking.

Yet when the application isn't heavy-duty like in this clamp-on connector, even PLA printed "against the grain" works well too: this connector can spread its hooks linearly 3 mm apart and the living hinges don't crack or weaken even after many cycles.

I'm generally left-learning and I enjoy the usual left-leaning comedians - you know, TDS, Colbert, Kimmel and the likes.

But I also pride myself on being open-minded and listening to all sides, and I don't know any good right-leaning comedians. And ya know, if it's funny, I'll laugh at anything said by anyone.

So please make suggestions! Whose jokes and commentaries are worth listening to?

And in case it wasn't clear, this is NOT flamebait: I'm genuinely looking for good comedy material from comedians on the side of the political spectrum I'm not on, for my own education.

So I'm on the market for a 4G or 5G mobile hotspot with a build-in VPN client I can carry around in my backpack and connect my cellphone to. I've looked far and wide, and really the only manufacturer that seems to make what I want is GL.iNet.

The two battery-powered models they offer that interest me are the Mudi v2 and the Puli: they only do 4G and I wish they did 5G too, but I can live with that. Other than that, they really tick all the boxes for me.

From what I could read, the GL.iNet company also seems very open and very responsive. That's a plus too.

But I have one giant problem that prevents me from whipping out the credit card: GL.iNet is a Chinese company, and those products are sensitive applications. I know I can flash OpenWRT separately on those devices to ensure they're not doing stuff behind my back, but I don't really want to do that because I'd lose the GL.iNet plugins and custom UI. Not to mention, I have no free time for that. I'm looking for a ready-made solution if possible with this one.

Anybody knows if GL.iNet can be trusted?

Also, has anybody ordered from Europe using their EU store? They say they ship direct from Europe but they give no details.

And finally, what do you think of those two mobile VPN routers if you own one. Do they work well? I read somewhere that they can be buggy with certain VPN providers. Do they work in Europe? I assume they do since they sell EU plugs but maybe there are caveats.

I'm investigating getting off the cell network permanently to avoid at least the constant triangulation of my position. I figured I'd look into getting a VoIP number and getting calls and texts over WiFi. I don't mind being unreachable when I'm not connected to a hotspot, so it's not a problem for me.

But before looking for a good VoIP provider, I decided to check if WiFi still worked in airplane mode. And indeed it works. But to my surprise, when I connected the WiFi, my cellphone provider's name also came right back up at the top right of the screen. In airplane mode? What the hell?

Long story short, after investigating a bit, I realized I had WiFi calling enabled. So I can in fact already get calls and texts without being on the cell network.

And I'm thinking, maybe that's good enough for privacy?

I mean I know SIMs leak information like ICCID / IMSI / IMEI so obviously they have no reason not to do that over WiFi also and that's not so hot.

But on the plus side, none of that information is linked to cell towers and location anymore - at least not precise location if I'm not on a VPN - the baseband processor is off and can't do whatever shady chit-chat it does with the SIM and the cell towers, and I can still use my normal phone numbers without having to change and tell a million people that I have new numbers if I go with VoIP.

Also, I don't store my contacts on my SIMs and I use a deGoogled Android. So I figure that limits how much adversarial software can exploit the SIMs to leak data.

So it seems to me that WiFi calling may be a good solution for me for better privacy without too many compromises.

Can you think of something I missed that I should know before using this feature?

If you use the Flameshot screenshot capture and annotation utility, you might have noticed that the Choose an app to open the capture (or Ctrl-O) option doesn't work right: something flashes quickly on the screen but nothing happens.

That's Flameshot throwing a fit because it can't open a popup window with the size it wants in i3. So to make this option work, let it 🙂

Add this line to your .config/i3/config:

for_window [class="flameshot"] floating enable

As a bonus, it also makes the configuration screen look better.

Before I open an issue, I'd like to know if anybody has encountered and solved this issue:

I want certain applications to open in a particular workspaces so naturally I have lines such as these in my ~/.config/i3/config file:

assign [title="^.*LibreWolf.*$"] $ws1
assign [class="org.remmina.Remmina"] $ws2                         
assign [title="^.*Thunderbird.*$"] $ws4
assign [class="Signal"] $ws4
assign [title="^.*ssh tunnels.*$"] $ws5

This works fine for windowed applications, but it doesn't work for fullscreen ones. For example, if I have those two lines:

assign [title="Xephyr"] $ws3                                                     
assign [title="feh"] $ws3                                                        

and I start Xephyr or feh fullscreen with Xephyr :1 -fullscreen or feh -F, they will start fullscreen in whichever workspace I happen to be and won't be moved to workspace 3.

I did find a workaround by creating a .desktop file in which the command explicitely switches to the workspace I want to use the corresponding application in before invoking the command. For example for Xephyr, I made this .local/share/applications/Xephyr.desktop file:

Name=Xephyr
Exec=bash -c "i3-msg workspace 3; Xephyr :1 -fullscreen -reset -terminate -query localhost"
Comment=
Terminal=false
Icon=xorg.png
Type=Application

It works but it's really dirty and it's not great.

Does anybody know if there's a way to convince i3 to start a fullscreen app in the correct workspace cleanly without resorting to hacks like that?

So I've been exploring the fabulous word of additive manufacturing for a few months now with my company's 3D printer - a Prusa Mk4 - that we employees are welcome to use for our own personal use when it's not busy printing tooling for work of course.

I've gotten really good at squeezing the most performance out of that thing: some of the functional parts I made with it at scales that are pushing the boundaries of what regular PLA out of a 0.4-mm nozzle can be coaxed into becoming, I'm properly proud of.

And I'm having a lot of fun finding ways to overcome the limitations of FDM. I don't really want a more precise printer: half the fun is witnessing a part that shouldn't exist come out of a printer that doesn't really have any right to be this good. Pushing the envelope... It's the spirit of hacking in the world of 3D printing and I love it!

But now I'm wanting a printer of my own. The company's printer is fine and all but when it's doing work-related things, I can't use it. And I have to wait to go back to work the next day to print something I modeled the evening before.

So I'm on the market for a good fast FDM printer that can print prints with different filaments at the same time, because I'd like to experiment with stretchy materials but keep using rigid and cheap materials for the supports, and also to play with colors. And I think I want a core XY printer because I've run into problems with big heavy prints with the company's bed slinger.

And finally, something that's really important for me: I want something as open source as possible that doesn't phone home, and ideally not made in China.

Money is not tight. The kids are out of the house and I have a well-paid job. I set my budget to 5k - dollars or euros.

So with those requirements in mind, from what I read, the best option for me is to stick with Prusa: it's more expensive for what it does but it's not sketchy Chinese spyware. Also, I know the brand already and I've been nothing but happy with it so far.

And in the Prusa line, I'm tempted by the XL with an the bells and whistles - namely 5 heads and an enclosure.

But here's the thing: I hear this machine has problems. Is it true? Would you have a better suggestion? Possibly another brand that I should consider?

Maybe there's something I don't understand here. I'd love it if someone told me how to do the following.

Let's say I have some really complex shape in a sketch left of the Y axis: it takes me forever to get it just right. Then I need to mirror it on the right side of the Y axis and connect the two halves.

In SolidWorks, it's trivial: mirror the stuff, done. If you change the master shape on the left, the change is reflected on the right.

In FreeCAD, the best you can do is make a mirror copy of the left-hand side elements - which also makes copies of the constraints which are completely independent from the original constraints on the left-hand side - delete the stupid new right-hand side constraints and slowly, painfully constrain the right-hand side copies to the original left-hand side elements, trying to dodge the dreaded orange over-constraints all the time. It's long, it's painful, and the end-result is usually so fragile that if you change anything significant on the left-hand side, the sketch turns orange and then it's back to hunting broken constraints again.

Surely it can't be that painful. Am I missing something obvious?

I have a need to repeatedly click in a application's window many times for testing purposes at work. Since I have not intention of doing that manually and developing RSI, I set up i3 to automate this for me.

You may find this useful too - for gaming, for instance.

Setup:

• Install xdotool

• Create a Bash script called start_stop_autoclick.shsomewhere (I have a ~/scripts directory in my home directory for that purpose):

  #!/bin/bash
  
  DELAY=$1
  BUTTON=$2
  CMD=xdotool
  ARGS="click --delay $DELAY --repeat 99999999999999999 $BUTTON"
  
  PID=$(ps -C $CMD -o pid,cmd | awk "/$ARGS/ {print \$1}")
  if [ "$PID" ]; then
    kill $PID
  else
    $CMD $ARGS
  fi
  

• Edit ~/.config/i3/config and add the following lines:

  # Start / stop autoclick
  
  bindsym $mod+Ctrl+button1 --whole-window exec --no-startup-id /bin/bash ~/scripts/start_stop_autoclick.sh 250 1
  bindsym $mod+Ctrl+button2 --whole-window exec --no-startup-id  bin/bash ~/scripts/start_stop_autoclick.sh 250 2
  bindsym $mod+Ctrl+button3 --whole-window exec --no-startup-id /bin/bash ~/scripts/start_stop_autoclick.sh 250 3
  

How to use it:

Hover over the button or element you want to click on repeatedly then press Ctrl+Meta and click with the button you want to autorepeat.

Be careful not to move the mouse otherwise it'll start autoclicking where you don't want and possibly wreak havoc in your windows.

To stop it, simply hit Ctrl+Meta until it stops.

How to modify it to suit your needs:

The three lines above in ~/.config/i3/config enable autoclicking on the left, right and middle buttons. If you only want it on one button, ditch the lines you don't need.

By default, they autoclick with a delay of 250 ms between clicks (i.e. 4 times per second). If you need it to click slower or faster, change the value of 250 to the delay you need.

And of course, change the key modifiers to whatever you want if Ctrl+Meta doesn't work for you.

I had new progressive lenses made, but the old ones are still fine and don’t have a scratch. They’re just a bit weak at near distance, but otherwise perfectly serviceable.

So I made new frames for them because I don’t like to throw away things that work.

All assembled, the frames weigh 3.5 grams, and 14 grams with the lenses mounted.

This was printed with a Prusa Mk4 and regular PLA at 0.15 mm layer height. The hinges use simple 10x1 pins - and I worked my magic to print the holes horizontally to the final dimension with interference fit, so no reaming or drilling is necessary. These glasses are straight out of the printer with zero rework.

I think they look pretty good as they are. If anybody notices they’re 3D-printed, I’ll say I’m gunning for that particular style 🙂

The front of the frames prints in 11 minutes and both temples in 12 minutes. I could break and make a new pair every day for the rest of my life and it would still be faster and cheaper than going to Specsavers only once.