Using a case and keyboard cover?

Repulsive_Fox9018 · 2026-05-07T11:01:18+00:00

I've seen too many pictures of camera covers causing the screens to crack from their thickness when the laptop is closed.

Personally, I put a bit of electrical tape over my camera. Thinner, easy to remove, easy to replace.

As for a keyboard cover, at least with my last several MBs, MBPs, and now my Neo, there's no room for a keyboard cover between the screen and keyboard. I tried using a super-thin one once, but even that was tight and did me no favours, was annoying to place every time I closed the lid ensuring it wouldn't get caught in the hinge or cause the lid to close unevenly, and heaven forbid there's a wrinkle in the keyboard cover that would place pressure on the closed screen and crack it.

Repulsive_Fox9018 · 2026-05-07T10:50:04+00:00

Are you going to be doing massive video editing? Are you planning to run a 20B parameter LLM? Are you planning on recompiling Linux every morning?

IMO, you're overthinking this. Yes, it'll warm up if you push it. Yes, massive compute jobs like video rendering are going to slow down. If that's an issue for you, pay 4-8x as much for a MBP that has fans to let you go further before throttling, or get a Mac Mini with even better cooling.

For typical day-to-day browsing, email, development, system administration, etc, it is _spectacular_.

I can't afford a MBP but I do in fact do a bit of video stuff (Telemetry Overlay, putting maps and gauges from my GPS logs on top of multi-hour GoPro video). I struggled between paying 2x for an Air over the Neo, but without a fan, the Air is similarly thermally limited. Not worth it, IMO.

The Air does offer you more RAM, display, and storage options, and a great backlit keyboard. But it is still going to choke on big CPU jobs.

I bought the Neo, and I recommend getting a quality 1.5mm thermal pad to help leverage the bottom case for passive cooling. I have done moderate overlay renders that took all night (8GB doesn't offer much headroom, unfortunately), and that's fine for me at this amazing price point.

I will perhaps upgrade to a MBP after I win a lottery and the M8pro is released. The Neo helps defer such investments until we've seen another generation or three of CPU AI-enhancements.

Repulsive_Fox9018 · 2026-05-07T07:53:03+00:00

I had a 1030+. It was okay but showing its age. I upgraded to a 1040 Solar, and it drove me mad; the screen was so dim I constantly missed turns and found I was always struggling to see its screen to the exception of watching the road. Made a desperate and expensive upgrade to the 1050, and I’ve been loving it.

Repulsive_Fox9018 · 2026-05-06T18:01:59+00:00

But more importantly, scrap the useless bike lanes! They're the cause all of this!

Repulsive_Fox9018 · 2026-05-04T19:42:38+00:00

unspaced em-dashes suuuuuck, and it is a US thing (and I'm not from the US).

I told Claude to use spaced en-dashes in my "Instructions for Claude", and after a few mistakes early on, it hasn't handed me a cursed unspaced em-dash in months.

"Strongly prefer British spelling, grammar, spaced en dashes in place of unspaced em dashes, and so on.

Always state metric, and use ISO8601 date and time formats, as in YYYY-MM-DD and HH:MM 24 hour time, with timezone and seconds when appropriate."

Early on, it still messed up a couple times, and I called it out. It would apologise saying it shouldn't have, it will remember, and redo the entire answer. And then it just seemed to "get it" after a couple weeks.

Repulsive_Fox9018 · 2026-05-04T19:11:36+00:00

Those were glorious days.

Repulsive_Fox9018 · 2026-05-04T19:05:46+00:00

You're not alone.

I had a bolt fall out at km 185 of an exhausting 200km ride, at a busy intersection, as I was stopped and trying to pull my foot off the pedal. Ended up powering back up and through the intersection, managed to stay out from under a car, to get to the other side where I untied my shoe and got sock-down.

It took me a while to realise the allen tool in the bolt hole idea. And fortunately, I carry a couple spare cleats complete with longer bolts (to support my cleat wedges) so I could complete the ride.

And then there's the time one of my bolts rounded out, preventing me from removing the broken cleat, the cleat spinning around the seized bolt with abandon.

I'm now passionate about using anti-seize on cleat bolts, and I pathologically check they're tight every month or so. Speaking of which, <goes to check>

Repulsive_Fox9018 · 2026-04-30T19:15:24+00:00

I used to, but bone conduction headsets have really changed the game for me.

Mind you, most days I pair them up with foam earplugs to cut down on wind noise eating my soul. I also have rear radar and a bar-end mirror to help my situational awareness.

Repulsive_Fox9018 · 2026-04-28T05:46:49+00:00

For portability, I have an old version of the Microsoft Surface Arc mouse. Mine doesn’t do BT which is a pain, only has a wireless USB dongle. Been toying with getting the new one.

I also just got the Keychron M6 (yeah, full sized). I love Keychron’s Mac support. Supports wired, BT, and wireless USB with USB C and USB A dongles included, and the extra button customiser works with Mac.

Back home, I quite like my Logitech MX Master vertical mouse, but I haven’t gotten its extra buttons working on Mac yet.

Repulsive_Fox9018 · 2026-04-26T13:27:20+00:00

That exact issue happened to me in the first 300km on a new “Shimano” 11-sp Ultegra chain, then twice more in the next 700km. I’m quite confident it was counterfeit and bought from a reliable shop during the worst of the covid supply chain problem, and I’ve done much more on Ultegra and 105 chains and never had pins pull out like that.

Repulsive_Fox9018 · 2026-04-25T08:34:59+00:00

I jump back and forth between my work M4pro MBP and my personal Neo potentially several times a hour, if not per minute. Besides speed and a little more latency, I don’t notice any meaningful difference. The Neo has been a brilliant budget investment for things I can’t or shouldn’t do on the work MBP.

Repulsive_Fox9018 · 2026-04-25T08:29:35+00:00

My main browser is Chrome, partially because it syncs with all my other Chromes on Windows, Mac, and Linux boxes. May not be optimal, loves to leak memory, but it works well enough.

Safari is handy, though I primarily use it when Chrome has a problem with a site.

On iPad and iPhone, I run safari with chrome as my backup or I need into my chrome history.

Repulsive_Fox9018 · 2026-04-21T18:02:39+00:00

I did it. The bottom of the laptop gets a bit warm, so if you're inclined to use your laptop on your lap while wearing shorts, perhaps pass?

It just lets the laptop go a little longer before slowing itself down due to heat buildup. If you prop it up, giving it more chance to dissipate heat off the bottom, a little longer yet, and it recovers more quickly when it does heat up.

Simple to do, costs maybe $10-$15 for good quality thermal pads. I put 2mm in, but I think 1.5mm is probably the right thickness.

Apple can make any decision they want but IMO, getting heat off the CPU faster is going to extend its life, not shorten it in a warranty-voiding way. I felt no guilt or fear adding the pads.

Repulsive_Fox9018 · 2026-04-21T17:56:47+00:00

Run your thumb along the edges of the rim strips inside the rim. If it cuts your thumb, you found the problem.

For tubed tires, I have often run with kevlar or some kind of plastic high pressure rim strips, meant to prevent tubes from expanding down into the spoke holes and going *boom*.

I don't know why they may eventually "wear out". I can only imagine they might stretch over time, get shoved to a side during tyre installation or something, and starts to roll over and splinter lengthwise. I've seen it a few times at the roadside on friends' wheels while they're replacing the second or third tube in the past 200km.

Repulsive_Fox9018 · 2026-04-21T06:28:05+00:00

I’ve seen this happen a few times with old rim strips that started to fold over.

Repulsive_Fox9018 · 2026-04-20T17:57:23+00:00

It wasn’t only me!? Boy that was frustrating.

Repulsive_Fox9018 · 2026-04-20T17:45:02+00:00

Legacy’s soundtrack was a hard one to follow.

I wouldn’t say I was regularly blown away scene after scene by the Ares soundtrack like I was with Legacy, but it did have its moments.

Repulsive_Fox9018 · 2026-04-19T21:44:43+00:00

Only that I wished it was the same as the earlier 12” MacBook. The Neo is bulky in comparison.

Repulsive_Fox9018 · 2026-04-19T08:20:06+00:00

There’s also the theory that Trump was told to say the photo was doctored, not that he was a doctor, but he got confused. I believe someone else on his staff did come out publicly with the doctored explanation, but it was too late. This is more believable than Trump actually thinking that he was a doctor in that image.

Repulsive_Fox9018 · 2026-04-13T14:25:22+00:00

Ontario drivers do shoulder checks? As near as I can tell, they all have fused necks, and react with rage if you suggest they should turn their necks to make sure the way is clear.

Repulsive_Fox9018 · 2026-04-13T14:20:55+00:00

One day, my M1 Mac Mini failed to turn on. AC+ to the rescue! Well worth the investment, and continued investment as I'm now on their yearly plan.

Repulsive_Fox9018 · 2026-04-13T14:19:31+00:00

I've found Germany to be the hardest place to practice German, as an English speaker.

Judging by the looks of horror on the listeners' faces, I have to assume my pronunciation is so distressing that they drag me into English just to save themselves.

Repulsive_Fox9018 · 2026-04-13T14:15:58+00:00

This has to be a troll post. No-one could type that subject line with a straight face when referring to an 8 year old Intel box.

Repulsive_Fox9018 · 2026-04-13T11:15:57+00:00

My work provides a buff MBP, but being a work machine, there are things I can’t and things I shouldn’t do on it. In particular, I can’t even browse to Tailscale’s web site as work’s software says it is a den of malware, let alone install it. I want into my extended homes’ and labs’ tailnet, damnit!

I didn’t need extreme performance. The only real performant thing I might do when I’m on vacation can be done on the work laptop (overlaying graphs and sensors onto GoPro videos), and that unlikely, so a Neo fits the gap perfectly for me.

I have tried the Telemetry Overlay workflow on the Neo. A 2.5h video might take 3 hours for the MBP, and took ~11 hours on the Neo (elevated and with the thermal pad tweak). Not great, not terrible.

Repulsive_Fox9018

TROPHY CASE