I like to set up workspaces for general categories of software. For example, I tend to have a “work” workspace and a “communcation” workspace. I’ll have my IDE, a terminal window, my notes, a web browser etc. open across my two monitors in one workspace, and then email, Slack, Signal etc. open in another.

They all stay open all the time, and stay where I put them on screen, no minimizing. I nearly never look down at the window list to process if an app is open. If I hear a message arrive notification, I don’t really have to think about it, my hands just go to the hotkey, and my eyes look where the window should be.

Tiling everything on one workspace, even with two monitors doesn’t leave enough from for doing much work, and minimizing things means you have to consciously process “what app was that? What does the logo look like? Move mouse to, click there, where’d it open? Ah.”

I would buy a router + table before I bought a miter saw, drill press, band saw, or even a jointer/planer.

Decorative edges and mouldings, mortises, dados, grooves, slots, rabbets, hinge mortises, hell all of the operations that go into panel doors. And you can use a router, especially in a table, as an edge jointer, so in a pinch you can get into making panels without buying a jointer. Routers are hella versatile.

Bringing things out of “early access for developers and enthusiasts only” isn’t something Pine64 does. They’ve got a laptop, phone, watch, tablet, ereader, and probably shit I’ve missed, none are ready for prime time and never will be.

I also think there’s a certain…let’s slide into whiskey, for a minute. Whiskey affectionados, the ones who know when to spell it with or without an E, own their own glencairn glasses and such, tend to dislike Crown Royal effectively because it’s a basic bitch whiskey. There’s way more exciting whiskies out there than Crown. Crown Royal sells a LOT of whiskey, a lot of it to people who don’t even recognize it as whiskey. In their mind, “it’s Crown Royal.”

So the whiskey critic who went to booze school and got a master’s degree in liquoroloy will pan it, and folks who just want something easy to drink over rocks or to booze up a diet coke will read the expert review and say “This man is obviously a rock chewing idiot.”

Yes. Very yes. the G in GIMP stands for GNU. GIMP ran on Linux before it ran on Windows.

Sounds like they don’t want your business anymore.

Nope! Not me. I’m kinda hoping to undershoot the median age. My warranty’s expired and I really don’t know if I’m up for the “maybe we can find parts at the You-Pick” stage of existence.

“Amazingly old spacecraft is starting to break.”

Voyager 1 has had an exceptional service life, the poor old thing is tired.

In the somewhat distant future you’re looking to switch to Linux. Okay, the question of distros can wait.

What you want to do in the not-too-distant-future if possible is start finding FOSS alternatives to the software you use. Stuff like LibreOffice and Krita have Windows versions, so in the meantime start learning and using those apps. Because that’s the real pain point.

As for distro…distros don’t really matter. Most of the user experience comes from the desktop environment, and that’s a matter of preference so personal that the real answer is “try several and use the one you like.”

It can do math on all unitless numbers.

Opening a new FreeCAD document, creating a spreadsheet, I get the following results:

=5+5 evaluates to 10

=5" + 5" = 10"

=5" + 5 returns a Quantity::Operator Unit mismatch error.

=5" * 5" returns 2’1"

=5" + 5mm returns 5"+3/16". I’m working in fractional inches and have it set to 1/16" maximum display precision. Right clicking the cell, going to Display Unit and typing in mm that cell computes to 132.00mm

Note everywhere I typed a " can be replaced with ’ in’. FreeCAD will parse both.

If you’re working in the sketcher, it will let you type “5” in for a distance constraint, and is smart enough to go “A unitless length? Okay, we’ll assume the unit is the document default setting” and will insert 5mm or 5 in. So it will automatically–and quietly–assign a unit to that unitless number you typed in.

In the expression part_a.length + 5, part_a.length is in inches, 5 is unitless. It can’t add those. It can do part_a.length + 5" though. with the " meaning inches. or part_a length + 5 mm.

Note that when mixing inches and millimeters, it may round numbers for display. There’s a setting in the options for maximum display precision, it’s so you don’t end up with something like 152.00231078422872 mm or 1 93/2048". I do believe that it calculates and renders geometry precisely though. Like above adding 5 inches and 5 millimeters is maybe a bad example because it does just so happen to create a round number.

Doesn’t help with her wet food. We have to feed that to her half a can at a time.

I wish I could just decide to sleep. I wish I could go “I have to be awake in 10 hours, I will sleep now.” Nope. I can go forward but not backward. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve wrapped around the clock, staying up for 20 hours and sleeping for 10. The abiltiy to go “man I don’t need to be up at 1AM, I have shit to do in the morning” and go to bed at 11 and actually sleep. That would be useful.

Ah no, it’s not assuming the 5 is in mm, it’s assuming it’s unitless. Like imagine if part_a is 5 times as tall as it is long, part_a.height = part_a.length * 5 will work just fine. But if it’s 5 inches taller than it is wide, part_a.height = part_a.length + 5 won’t work because 5 what? you have to say part_a.height = part_a.length + 5 in and that will work.

This is flexible enough to allow you to work in metric and standard in the same document, 15 in + 4cm will parse just fine.

You are under no obligation to answer the phone.

Well here’s the real skinny on wood itself, various species and types: I sincerely think you have to learn this by experience. Reading lists or articles about different species and their characteristics has nothing on building a spice rack out of pine, then building the same spice rack out of maple.

I have to imagine the contract that Samsung has is “We’re Samsung. We basically ARE Korean technology. We can build our own mobile OS if we want to and cut you out entirely. That’s a lot of spying on customers you wouldn’t get to do. We get our own app store or we walk. Oh look, LG just exited the smart phone market. Do what must be done.”

She’d scream herself to death while I was loading it.

I wish Izzy could stop eating when she’s full. If you put too much food down for her at once, she’ll eat it all and throw it up. She has to be fed by the teaspoonful about ten times a day or my world will be turned to cat vomit. “Ability to stop eating when full” would be a nice trick.

In the options menu you can put it into inch mode, which will stpp it defaulting to mm. Internally it stores dimensions in mm but it will translate for you, so you can work in inches.

It would be nice to have a simple inch-fraction system, in kind of tired of seeing 1’ 2 3/32" just say 14 3/32".

I’ve been contemplating doing a woodworking CAD package from scratch in Godot. Whould require less laziness though.

I can imagine making a GUI that does it. But most aren’t able to. “That could include a check option of…” yeah it doesn’t though, is my point. GUIs are for doing things manually.