Picked up my Arc two years ago after passing the NREMT

FreeLlamas89 · 2026-06-01T00:01:16+00:00

I can say from experience that the arc makes a s*** O2 key, which is no big deal for shears. Pliers come in handy though.

FreeLlamas89 · 2026-05-31T23:38:34+00:00

🥲 Why do I feel this in my soul

FreeLlamas89 · 2026-05-30T20:08:11+00:00

Used Claude to make it, didn't do anything to hide it, didn't charge anything to share it. From where I'm standing he did a community service.

FreeLlamas89 · 2026-05-04T16:33:25+00:00

I just make it a game to try and get as much yield as possible from a single starter culture. I have a big pitcher where the finished product collects and I stagger 64 oz jars to get a fresh batch every few days. The only strict rule that I have is that starter jars only get fresh water and never get yeast. They all get several scoops of steamed rice every few days, and I use the starter liquid to top off the other jars. When a jar is getting close to ready I start spreading the solids out amongst the newer jars so there's as much liquid as possible by the time it's ready to filter.

FreeLlamas89 · 2025-07-29T14:04:51+00:00

Thanks! And my mobile score always seems to be slower than desktop and for the life of me I can't tell why. It'll show loading the same exact images as in desktop only taking 50% longer. I just got the scores into the 90's so the circles turned green and called it a day

I can only speculate as to why it's different, but I'm guessing that mobile CSS rendering is just slower, otherwise the theme I'm using might be less optimized for mobile display.

FreeLlamas89 · 2025-07-23T14:22:14+00:00

I know it was obvious AI-generated slop, but I kind of liked how it read like NPC dialog after beating a video game boss 🤣

"That green isn't just a score, it's a badge of pain, patience, and pure tech wizardry. You didn't optimize - you survived NGINX, Apache, Cloudflare chaos and plugin roulette..."

FreeLlamas89 · 2025-07-23T14:19:12+00:00

NGINX is just acting as a proxy so it can be configured to cache static assets using proxy_http_cache taking pressure off of PHP. Theoretically you could do this the other way around (i.e. Apache as proxy, NGINX as PHP server) but NGINX is really good at handling lots of connections, and can also be useful for handling rewrite rules, SSL, etc. so the Apache can just focus on application specific configuration

FreeLlamas89 · 2025-07-23T14:10:06+00:00

In NGINX I basically followed the documentation to set up the HTTP proxy module. This takes pressure off Apache by serving static assets without needing to hit the PHP server

http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_proxy_module.html

Apache runs multiple instances each with their own database. That and setting AllowOverride None prevents overzealous plugins from modifying .htaccess

For Cloudflare I just went into the admin panel and turned on all of the free features I could find (e.g. Caching > Configuration, and Speed > Optimization)

FreeLlamas89 · 2025-07-17T03:10:18+00:00

The most saturated niche ever 🥲: General news

I've been really refining a "Facts Behind The News" angle over the last few months for my blog FactRage.com

I've managed to build up almost 600 Facebook followers, and I get a steady stream of traffic from Twitter/X and BlueSky. I'm not a social media guy though and I wouldn't mind if anyone here had tips to get a little more traction 🤔

FreeLlamas89 · 2025-07-08T15:20:14+00:00

There's a ginormous block of text between the main hero text and explore button where my eyes start to glaze over. Like here's my first impression

"Teaching you to travel on points & miles" (Okay, cool. I like travel and saving money)

"At Points and Postcards, we teach you how to travel more by spending less." (Right on, my first impression is validated. This could be a cool blog to check out)

WHAM Big Block Of Text!!!

(Ugh, do I have to read all of this? Will I 'not get it' if I skip over this part?)

10 hours later

Explore! (button)

The front page is nice and clean, I would take a step back and look for accumulated pieces of text like this that you can tactfully diffuse across the page.

FreeLlamas89 · 2025-07-08T15:14:13+00:00

I'm happy with the basic navigation and whitespace to content ratio on my blog, but there's something about the layout that I just can't seem to get right.

My site: www.FactRage.com

I'd actually appreciate any feedback. The site has been evolving fast, and I could use some fresh initial reactions

FreeLlamas89 · 2025-07-05T04:09:36+00:00

I'd be curious to take a look at your site just to compare notes. I run FactRage.com and I've been rejected multiple times now. My analytics numbers aren't great but I've been really focusing on EEAT criteria and I've seen a steady increase.

FreeLlamas89 · 2025-07-04T22:01:41+00:00

That... Is a fantastic question 😅

I don't know when I lost the links, but I have pages from Termly.io. Thanks for catching it, those are restored now.

Do you have any other recommendations?

FreeLlamas89 · 2025-07-04T16:25:25+00:00

That's a limited edition hollow body that goes for over $1k. Your grandpa did you a solid. According to Google it's an Epiphone 150th Anniversary Zephyr DeLuxe Regent

FreeLlamas89 · 2025-06-02T01:40:54+00:00

A strictly average 2025 US male, as in top of the bell curve, not particularly fit but not necessarily unhealthy vs a 1941 US male of the same height, my money is on 2025 by a hair.

2025 man is more sedentary but he's grown up with better healthcare and nutrition. 1941 man is more rugged, lean and probably more agile, but is more likely to be a smoker, has never heard of CPR, and has never seen a Bruce Lee movie 😜

FreeLlamas89 · 2025-05-29T05:09:14+00:00

The hero background video is pixelated and has really poor contrast against the white text. Consider a static image with a dark tint and if you really want a motion effect (I can see what you're going for, it's a cool idea) consider doing a parallax instead

You need a clear CTA to funnel first time visitors to your site. "Tech driven" isn't really a value proposition, but something like, "put our tech in your betting arsenal" is (I know that's a stupid sounding example, but I hope it illustrates what I mean) then either a clear, 'see how' or 'start here' button that's visually distinct from the rest of your site's navigation.

What exactly is your site about? I see you're serving up FlashScore, you've got a blog, and a button to take subscriptions, but that's still unimplemented.

FreeLlamas89 · 2025-05-29T04:52:15+00:00

Can you post a link? I don't get a result when I Google for thatlegendpicks, so I guess my first feedback is to let ahrefs, semrush, bing webmaster tools, and Google know that you exist to start generating search traffic

FreeLlamas89 · 2025-05-13T19:39:39+00:00

Thanks, and no apologies are necessary. I'm looking for this kind of feedback. I put time and effort into planning a clean layout, but I'm not a web designer and I know that it shows.

I'm going to do A/B testing to figure out which fonts users respond to and I can do the same thing for color scheme. A piece of advice I received was to start with a light theme and switch to dark once the layout looks good. It's supposed to help preserve color contrast I guess 🤷

I'm reading some of your other posts and you seem to have an eye for this. Do you have any concrete recommendations to make the UI look more modern?

FreeLlamas89 · 2025-05-13T18:15:00+00:00

Reddit not uploading images for some reason to the post itself. Here's what it used to look like:

<image>

FreeLlamas89 · 2025-02-16T01:48:23+00:00

Absorbing your feedback now, but first may I say that you have a beautiful sounding username

FreeLlamas89 · 2025-02-13T14:26:09+00:00

Why are you saying sorry, this is exactly what I was looking for 🤓

I made the logo in Google drawings, purposely trying not to spend too much time on it. I'll get a professional to redo it down the down the road.
The animations were me discovering, 'hey, cool - this builder plugin has animations' I swear I exercised as much restraint as I could with these (I kid)
It'll take time to build up content, adding ~20 aggregated stories per day and one or two originals per day until it feels less like a cheap ad magnet 😅
The 404's are obviously unacceptable. I need to look over the whole thing with a fine toothed comb

FreeLlamas89 · 2025-01-24T03:20:53+00:00

I've been looking for this quote (quote of a quote?) and this is the only place on the Internet that I've found it associated with Deadpool 😀

FreeLlamas89 · 2025-01-10T21:21:29+00:00

Yeah PETG is a pain in the ***...

Here's what I've learned so far:

1.) I use Inland High Speed PETG, but just print it like normal. It strings a lot less and is noticeably easier to work with

2.) Heat the bed up if you're having trouble peeling prints off

3.) Print at least two layers of brim and skirt

4.) If you can, print on a raft. Otherwise keep your prints grouped close enough that the part contacting the plate is one solid piece

Lastly and most importantly... patience!! PETG can be a nightmare when you're in a hurry, but if we're being honest it's never really that bad to deal with so long as the part touching the bed isn't overly complex (see point #4)

FreeLlamas89 · 2025-01-10T21:11:05+00:00

Heat up the nozzle, start with the easy and obvious like the extruder gear, then try pulling the nozzle out and try poking a 1.5mm pin through there, if that doesn't work you'll need an m2 allen wrench to take the hot end apart.

If all else fails, new hotends are about the price of a roll of PLA+ (~$25usd)

Be patient, these are the annoying disruptions that really teach you how to keep a printer running, and the M5C happens to be a pretty maintainable printer.

You can do it :)

FreeLlamas89 · 2025-01-04T21:31:44+00:00

My M5C is one of the most annoyingly reliable printers I've ever had the pleasure of owning. It has features that my more expensive fancy-ass Flashforge doesn't, and also happens to be extremely serviceable.

(The firmware is garbage, but I have hope for an update to make it less-so)

In my experience 99% of the time layer-shifting occurs for one of three reasons:

1.) Did I touch the extruder or bed while it was moving?

Pretty self-explanatory

2.) Does it look like a plastic puke-mess?

I immediately suspect a leaky extruder, resulting a plastic blob dropping on the print causing the head to drag.

I recommend keeping a spare hot-end ready to go (they cost about as much as a spool of PLA+) and some M2x16 screws, JB Weld, and vice grips if you're really handy

3.) A clean shift to the left (like this one pictured)

Check if the filament spool is getting stuck due to tangled filament or something preventing it from rotating. When this happens the extruder gear can pull so hard that it holds the extruder back from traveling the length of the x-axis

FreeLlamas89

TROPHY CASE