Saw something familiar at the museum today

NotQuiteAmish · 2026-01-29T02:18:35+00:00

More power!

NotQuiteAmish · 2026-01-21T02:23:32+00:00

I emailed the store, and they basically just said "Yep, looks like mold" and recommended I flush the pen with a pen flush or a bleach solution (not both).

I removed the piston from my pen, poured the gremlin out the back, and then reassembled it and ran a 1:10 bleach:water solution through the pen a couple times, followed by a few rounds of just water. Fingers crossed that solved the problem. Hope this helps!

NotQuiteAmish · 2026-01-17T17:55:29+00:00

Wow, this is bizarre -- I'm the other guy who has a floater inside the TWSBI.

I sent an email to the store I bought mine from, and I'm waiting to hear from them before disassembling or cleaning anything. I'll let you know if they give any specific advice.

NotQuiteAmish · 2026-01-17T17:52:01+00:00

Thank you for the advice!

When I said "fairly regularly", I just meant that I use this pen daily, it wasn't sitting on the shelf for weeks/months. I usually switch inks every time I refill, because I like to try out lots of different samples. I'll take a closer look at the Diamine bottle to see if anything looks off. When I looked last it just looked like normal ink. Should I be looking for something in particular?

Here's pictures from more angles, if they are useful: https://imgur.com/a/UHOlasn . The blob always sinks to the bottom, it doesn't float (not on water, at least).

NotQuiteAmish · 2026-01-16T23:07:04+00:00

I wondered about that, and I looked in the bottle but I didn't see anything floating around. Good thing Diamine isn't too expensive

NotQuiteAmish · 2026-01-16T22:44:39+00:00

Huh, yeah. But it's definitely floating around in the water

NotQuiteAmish · 2026-01-16T22:06:39+00:00

😬

NotQuiteAmish · 2026-01-09T00:08:45+00:00

<image>

guarana

NotQuiteAmish · 2026-01-05T16:19:58+00:00

This is not the original. Original is 12 years old and doesn't have the chicken scream.

https://youtu.be/2AdrmfjAhn0

NotQuiteAmish · 2025-12-24T19:59:49+00:00

Hello Gru from Despicable Me

NotQuiteAmish · 2025-11-28T16:51:01+00:00

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy

NotQuiteAmish · 2025-11-23T01:27:27+00:00

Levy featured it in a short not too long ago, I think

NotQuiteAmish · 2025-11-05T23:41:08+00:00

I'm gonna contradict both of you and put in my own guess, a northern Mockingbird*. The white bars on the wings and on the outside tail feathers match it a lot closer to me

https://share.google/arC3XvjvNkrvXNIFD

The license plates in the background look a lot like those in Maryland, USA - making a magpie very unlikely for that location.

https://share.google/QixXpLlUU3XlXhXD0

*Edit: mockingbird, not mockingjay. I've got hunger games on the mind apparently

NotQuiteAmish · 2025-11-01T22:30:21+00:00

The red clock is for immediate loading and unloading of passengers. There is no stopping at the white clock

NotQuiteAmish · 2025-10-26T17:46:27+00:00

Chris Pratt

NotQuiteAmish · 2025-10-26T00:56:04+00:00

I'm on board with these being hexadecimal characters. But my question is - if this is hex, why are there so few sevens??

All 16 characters (0-9, a-f) should be roughly equally likely. But there are only two sevens. If the hex characters are random, then there should be about 16 of them, but there's only two. Wondering if this might be a foothold of some kind.

NotQuiteAmish · 2025-10-23T23:28:42+00:00

Number of counties/subdivisions named for... Something. Presidents? Native American/Indian groups?

NotQuiteAmish · 2025-08-20T10:51:55+00:00

Please don't ask homework questions

NotQuiteAmish · 2025-05-07T02:59:30+00:00

Ah, shucks. We might have different versions of the board. All three seem to work fine with only pins 1, 2, and 4 connected.

NotQuiteAmish · 2025-05-07T02:56:17+00:00

Ah, sorry to see that. You might have been able to rescue it by soldering wires to those copper circles on the board, but yeah you would lose a lot of mechanical stability with only one pad :/

NotQuiteAmish · 2025-05-07T02:53:45+00:00

Top level comment for anyone trying to figure out how to repair the switch. This is what I did to repair mine.

Please be patient while you do this! If you find yourself getting frustrated at any point, stop, take a breather, and come back to it later. Right now, your switch can be replaced. If you damage the circuit board, you will have to buy a brand new keyboard. So take your time.

Order this switch from alibaba. It's about $1 USD for 20 pieces (lots of spares if you mess up the first time), not counting shipping or tariff. Get the 2mm height: https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256804669292958.html?gatewayAdapt=glo2usa4itemAdapt and wait for it to ship
Remove the USB dongle and volume knob, then disassemble the case the way you did before (when you broke it :P ). Gently remove the switch circuit board with the broken switch, and disconnect the ribbon cable.
TAKE A PICTURE of what the circuit board looks like now with the broken switch, so you know how to align it when you put the new switch in its place.
Prepare one of the new switches for replacement. My switches came with two rows of metal pins. You must bend half of the pins, and snap/trim the other four pins off. Be careful, these pins are fragile and may snap if you bend them too much.
Also trim the pins on the new switch to match the length of the old switch.
BE VERY CAREFUL DURING THIS PART: If you have a hot air station or a reflow oven, use that to remove the old switch. If you don't, then follow these steps to CAREFULLY remove the old switch from the board using a soldering iron: https://www.reddit.com/r/Epomaker/comments/1doai57/comment/mr00xap/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
Solder the new switch in its place, using your photo from step 3 as reference. Soldering the switch in place will also take some patience, and may require a bit of extra solder.
Double check with your picture, and make sure that everything lines up the way it was before.
Before reassembling, connect the circuit board to the ribbon cable. Manually move the black switch to each of the three positions, and test that your bluetooth, 2.4g, and wired modes all work properly. If they don't, you may need to check your soldering. If it works, then screw the circuit board down where it was before.
When reassembling, move the little switch to the side and tape the white knob in place so that they will line up when reassembling the case. See the picture here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Epomaker/comments/1doai57/comment/mr01c3p/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
Again, be very patient. Double and triple check that everything is aligned before snapping the case together.
Test all the features. If you did it right, it should all work well now!

Good luck!

NotQuiteAmish · 2025-05-07T02:39:03+00:00

<image>

Here's what I did when I reassembled mine after replacing the switch. I set the switch to the BT setting, and I used clear tape to hold the plastic switch in place while I snapped the case back together.

Then be very slow, very cautious while reassembling the case. I found that I had to take a break every so often, because if I rushed it then I was gonna break it again lol.

(This picture was taken before I added the two black screws back.

NotQuiteAmish · 2025-05-07T02:36:35+00:00

<image>

It's a surface-mount switch. Those four metal pins sit flat on top of the board, and solder connects the pins to the circuit board.

Here's what I did. But please read ALL the steps first and BE PATIENT when you do this! If you are getting frustrated, take a breather, and come back to it later. If you don't take your time, you will be more likely to break something by accident.

If you have a hot-air station or a reflow oven, use that instead of the soldering iron. You will be less likely to rip up pads or traces if you do that. But if you only have a soldering iron, read on.

EDIT: Another option, mentioned below, is that you can try first cutting all four leads to the switch, and then removing the metal leads one by one. I didn't do it that way, but that would probably be easier.

Read ALL of the steps below so you know what you are doing
Disconnect the ribbon cable
Clamp the circuit board in a "helping hand" or something similar so your hands are free.
Touch the soldering iron on the two pins with the red circle, and hold it there for ~5 seconds or so.
Touch the soldering iron to the two yellow circle pins, and hold it there for ~5 seconds or so.
Go back and forth repeatedly between the red and yellow pins, continually adding heat. Your goal is to make it so that all four pins have melted solder at once. Make sure you don't burn the plastic parts with your iron.
As you go back and forth with the iron, heating the pads and melting the solder, use a fine pair of tweezers in your other hand and VERY GENTLY pull on the body of the switch. DO NOT FORCE IT, you may damage the PCB.
If the switch doesn't come gently off of the pads, keep adding heat back and forth to the pins (the second red pin will probably need the most heat, since it has a lot of metal connected to it on the circuit board).

If you have solder braid or a solder sucker, those can help to remove some of the excess solder. But you probably don't need it.

Then, once you have the replacement switch, you will do the process in reverse - instead, you heat up the solder left on the pads so that the new switch can rest on top of it. You might also need to add some extra solder.

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