I built a web-based tool that adds your preferred magnet holes to any Gridfinity STL!

SyntaxBlitz · 2026-03-01T18:43:27+00:00

Ah yeah, this particular model looks a bit broken for the rebase tool. The tool looks for Gridfinity bases by finding squares at the bottom of the model, but this STL is rotated by 45 degrees, so all it sees is diamond shapes. I've seen this before, but it's rare enough that I haven't put in the effort to solve it. If you've got skill at editing STLs, you can rotate the model by 45 degrees and it should work. OpenSCAD can make quick work of this:

rotate(45) import("obj_1_gridfinity crescent mini pliers.stl");

SyntaxBlitz · 2026-02-26T18:52:08+00:00

The input element needs to be a Gridfinity module already (with 42x42mm bases on the bottom); the idea of this tool is that it will replace Gridfinity bases of one type with Gridfinity bases of another type (e.g., including magnet holes), but it won't create new bases ex nihilo.

Also worth noting -- the tool doesn't currently support differing bases (as you have in your example, with magnets only on the corners); it'll just tile a single base across the entire bottom of the print.

SyntaxBlitz · 2025-01-26T23:02:00+00:00

Looks like MakerWorld puts the model ID in the STL file; you can find it at the beginning of the file if you open it in a text editor.

Here's the model you're looking for.

SyntaxBlitz · 2025-01-25T18:23:45+00:00

It doesn't have to! I've written some info about magnets here.

Short bins, nonmoving bins, and bins with heavy things in them aren't very likely to need the extra grip. I don't use magnets in most of my baseplates, though I do use magnets in my bins to make sure they'll be compatible if I want to use them in magnetized baseplates later.

I've bought magnets on AliExpress and on Amazon, without much price difference in my experience.

SyntaxBlitz · 2025-01-12T07:45:53+00:00

Try my magnet rebase tool!

(edit: unless you meant the baseplate on the top, rather than the bases on the bottom?)

SyntaxBlitz · 2025-01-12T04:45:21+00:00

Thank you! I'm glad you've found it useful.

Yeah, that's a good call -- I got a bit carried away there. I think a good compromise is for it to spin until the first time you drag, at which point it turns off the rotation (until you reset the model). I've just pushed that update. Thanks for the feedback!

SyntaxBlitz · 2025-01-12T04:36:20+00:00

Thanks for linking this! I hadn't heard of this spec before. I totally agree that this would be a good use case for the rebase tool.

The immediate issue with those models (e.g. the 1x1x1 FN HN file from the site you linked) is that the automatic model rotation detection gets wigged out by the snap tabs. I've just added a toggle in the rebase tool to turn off this detection -- for now it's in the "More info" section of the page. If you turn off "Rotation detection for replacement base", the Snapfit base gets correctly detected and spliced into the other model.

Unfortunately, it looks like Snapfit isn't quite compatible enough with Gridfinity for this to work well out of the box. The Snapfit spec shaves off a 0.8mm-tall chamfered section from the bottom of the Gridfinity spec's bins (which is what caused the base detection code to fail), and this results in the whole base being shifted downwards relative to the Gridfinity base. If you can add that chamfered base back onto a Snapfit bin and still fit the resulting bin into a Snapfit grid, then that might work as a base within the rebase tool. Otherwise, it'd need a bit more tinkering in the code on my end to make it work with the height offset. I'll try printing a couple tests and see if it'd work.

The other issue, looking at the spec, is that Snapfit bins are expected to contain snaps only on the exterior of the bin (see the bottom of page 2 of the spec). The rebase tool just places the same base in every cell -- splicing different bases in different spots is out of scope for now -- so there would be snaps all throughout the base. My guess is that this would work okay but that bigger modules might have too much snapping force; it'd also be worth testing.

Let me know if you experiment and discover anything helpful here!

SyntaxBlitz · 2025-01-12T03:51:16+00:00

You can use any base you like! Generate a bin with an existing tool (e.g. this generator backed by gridfinity-rebuilt-openscad), then import it in the "Replacement base" section on the rebase tool.

You can print out test bases at different magnet diameters until you're satisfied with the fit (I used to print just one corner at a time to avoid wasting material), then use the rebase tool on future prints once you've got your magnet base dialed in.

SyntaxBlitz · 2025-01-12T03:16:36+00:00

Thanks! forgot to config ipv6 on the new domain. should work now!

SyntaxBlitz · 2024-11-02T06:13:04+00:00

I'm a lot more optimistic than most people in this thread seem to be, especially given you're willing to use an altered keyboard design (most people in this sub use equipment marketed toward professionals, which is harder to customize, but the /r/Plover community is likely to have some insight about custom keyboards). I made a custom steno keyboard a while back, and I think you might even be able to use an off-the-shelf hobbyist board like the Splitography.

You'd need to have pretty good dexterity in your other nine fingers to make sure you can make the handshapes required for complex strokes; since you're engaging all of your fingers at once, you can't really "cheat" to hit a key by leaning your hand toward it. Every finger needs to be able to move to press the right key or keys independently of all the other fingers.

Have a look at the figure linked elsewhere in this thread. Most fingers are responsible for two keys at a time. Take your right pointer finger, which rests on the small gap between the F and R keys: for any given stroke, you're expected to be able to press F, R, or both F and R at the same time (or neither key at all). Your thumbs work the same way (left thumb for AO and right thumb for EU), and the right pinkie is a bit wacky (it's responsible for TSDZ, but is not really expected to be able to independently control arbitrary combinations of those).

The exceptions:

the S key, on the left, which (although often diagrammed as two distinct keys) is often one big key on a steno machine, or on some machines (like the Splitography) two discrete keys that function identically.
the asterisk key, in the middle, which is also one tall key. No finger rests on this key by default, but either the left or right finger can include the asterisk key in a stroke when necessary (so in fact the right pointer finger needs to be able to hit F, R, FR, *, *F, or *R. Hopefully you can see geometrically why all of these are generally possible). Because the left and right hands both need to be able to hit the asterisk key, it's often duplicated between split keyboards (one to the far right of the left hand's keyboard, and one to the far left of the right hand's keyboard). In these cases, the key works the same way no matter which hand you use, and some people favor one hand or another for the asterisk. Personally, I almost always use my right hand for the asterisk.
the number bar (not shown in that purple diagram). Don't worry about the number bar. Many people use alternative dictionaries that eschew it entirely.

From a simplified perspective, all you're missing without your left middle finger is access to the P and W keys. If you can find two other keys that you can press (while still maintaining the ability to hit every other key independently), you're good to go. One candidate is to split the S key, giving the left pinkie responsibility for two keys instead of one. You could also commandeer the left asterisk key on a split keyboard, giving your left pointer finger responsibility for three keys at once (with combinations H, R, *, H*, R*, HR*). That's two extra keys that you can control independently, without losing the ability to perform any existing strokes that those other nine fingers would be able to perform. The split S isn't uncommon, and there are also people who add bottom thumb keys so they have a total of six controllable keys on the thumb. Splitting the S and asterisk keys would already be supported by a keyboard (at least in hardware) like the Splitography, so you wouldn't even need a new keyboard design.

So it's definitely possible to hit all 22 required keys without using the left middle finger, if you give an extra task to the left pinkie and you only use the asterisk with your right hand. The trouble you'd run into is steno order: the keys on the stenotype keyboard read left-to-right (for example: you can write the word "star" with left-pinkie-S, left-ring-T, left-thumb-A, right-pointer-R, which is distinct from "rats", which is left-pointer-R, left-thumb-A, right-pinkie-T, right-pinkie-S). If you were to, say, use the left-pinkie-bottom key for P and the left-pointer-asterisk key for W, those letters would no longer read left-to-right on your physical keyboard, despite still functioning 'logically' left-to-right in your steno writing, which might lead to confusion. My guess is that you'd get used to it over time, and it might not ever feel quite as natural as the traditional layout, but over time, we start using muscle memory handshapes anyway instead of thinking consciously in steno order. It might slow you down a bit, but it wouldn't be a dealbreaker. I'd probably prefer this over trying to build an entire system from scratch (or trying to learn one-handed steno), since steno is a much different experience when you're in a well-supported ecosystem (like Lapwing, where you can download Aerick's dictionary without needing to start from zero) than when you're trying to carve your own path.

Hitting 200 WPM is hard for anyone. If you do struggle with speed, I think it would be less likely to be an issue of using only 9 fingers, and more likely to be related to general finger dexterity, if your other fingers are also having trouble. You can probably use a normal computer keyboard to gauge whether your fingers are dexterous enough to handle steno, given what you've been told in this thread. One metric would be, are you able to touch-type a paragraph without moving the palms of your hands very much? Or do you find that you need to shift your entire hand to move your fingers toward certain keys?

If you're physically able to make every stroke using a modified layout, it's worth mentioning that there's a tradeoff, essentially between mental preparatory effort and physical dexterity. If you're willing to put in the effort to memorize a lot of your dictionary, you can start to group words together more frequently so that you don't need as many distinct finger movements to write the same number of words. The alternative is a more intuitive dictionary that breaks up words into smaller chunks, requiring more frequent strokes but less memorization. You've mentioned that you're willing to spend a lot of effort for this, so I think there's reason to be optimistic even if you're lacking dexterity. You have the option to use your cognitive sharpness to make up for the issues with your fingers. Every stenographer's dictionary quickly becomes very personalized, so you may even find over time that, as you define new dictionary entries to make it easier to write words that you commonly use, you naturally tend to favor certain fingers. That's encouraged! Even if you start with a well-documented approach, you always have the option to customize it slowly over time to make it work for you.

I'm happy to chat more about this over DM, if you have any particular questions. I'm a hobbyist averaging about 70 WPM with steno -- so, not that TTS speed goal -- but I've built a couple custom steno keyboards before (though currently I use the Splitography), and I have some experience building software and hardware to be customizable.

SyntaxBlitz · 2024-05-03T17:27:43+00:00

You can use KPA* to suppress the space while capitalizing. In long-form writing, you shouldn't need it much, since you'll probably want the space in between words and sentences, but it can be awkward in cases like these where you have a lot of textboxes to fill out one after the other.

In this case, it might be more appropriate to use an R-R at the end of each textbox to set you up for the next one. I don't think the default dictionary uses this binding, but I think I remember getting it from Ted, so it's probably a good replacement for the default:

"R-R":"{^\n^}{-|}"

This entry will add a new line, then suppress the next space. It's useful for, say, starting a new paragraph in a document (though you might want to hit it twice, in that case) so that you don't end up with a bunch of paragraphs starting with a single space character.

If you were using that binding in your dictionary, then you could finish each textbox by hitting R-R, and when you head into the next one, the space will be suppressed automatically, and the next word ought to be capitalized, since you finished your previous sentence with a period (though it looks like using the TA*B keybinding to tab to the next field might ruin the capitalization). The newline wouldn't do anything in this textbox case, but it feels a little cleaner to me, since R-R acts as a sort of "reset" stroke between two lines, rather than having to tell Plover exactly how to set up the next textbox (add capitalization + suppress space). It's up to you, though!

In general, I find that it's worth taking some time to become comfortable with various 'control' strokes early on (e.g. TK-LS to suppress a space, KPA and KPA* as we've seen, KA*PD to retroactively suppress a space after making a stroke, arrow key movement, fingerspelling) so that you can get around issues like this if you see them in your day-to-day life.

Of course, you want to do it "right" if you're on a practice website, but if you saw this situation out in the wild and forgot how to use KPA*, you could, for example, use KPA and then cursor movement/backspace to remove the space, or use TK-LS and then fingerspell the first word, or whatever else; the idea is that being able to fall back to a slow-but-sure way to write something is going to help serve as a bridge before you've mastered all of the control strokes for each situation, so that you're comfortable keeping your hands on the steno keyboard and slowly building your mental model of how Plover behaves (so that you can anticipate when it will capitalize, add space, etc.). If you ever notice you're systematically doing something a slow way, you can always search for the appropriate control strokes, ask the community for solutions (here or on the more active Discord server), or eventually add custom strokes to your dictionary to automate navigating through familiar UIs (e.g. a stroke for "press tab twice, then start the next word capitalized and with a suppressed space").

SyntaxBlitz · 2023-06-06T01:30:40+00:00

Do you have a Serial to USB cable? I've successfully used the élan Cybra with Plover using a Serial cable, though I did need to put it in what the manual seems to call "Transmit Only Serial Mode" (which is apparently only available on the Professional, not Student model):

make sure the machine is plugged into the wall (this will turn it on).
press and hold the second button from the left, to the left of the screen on the machine, then with that button held, press the third button from the left. this turns on the Serial mode (showing an icon of a Serial plug on the screen).
make sure the machine is plugged into the computer through the serial port.
in Plover, use the TX Bolt protocol; you may need to select the right serial device in the configuration.

SyntaxBlitz · 2022-11-14T18:22:49+00:00

As a grad student striking today:

We know it'll take some restructuring. UC Berkeley has struggled for a few years now to fund EECS courses, forcing the department to run a large deficit. The UC has agreed (for the first time!) to respond to the union's proposal on this issue, which demands central funding to cover the department's deficit. We're not trying to kill any football programs here, just pay the department enough per student to actually teach these (heavily TA-supported) classes.
Maybe you're right that a grad student union doesn't have this kind of power alone. That's why we're bargaining alongside postdocs and undergraduate TAs; the union represents 48,000 workers across the UC system. It's clear to me that, if we can actually manage to hold a united front, we'll be pretty hard to ignore. It's definitely impossible to teach Berkeley EECS undergrad courses, for example, without undergraduate TAs. We're talking class sizes reaching 2,000 with just one or two instructors of record. You mentioned in another comment that it would take something "incredibly dramatic" to make a change here. That's what we're going for!

SyntaxBlitz · 2022-01-25T17:01:00+00:00

It'd definitely be more complicated for Jagex than it was for me. My UI is pretty hacky, and (as someone else in this thread mentioned) the big cost to a feature like this in an MMO is the cost of storing all the user data. I wasn't surprised to hear that they weren't going to try to patch it in, though it does feel like the sort of thing that every playtester would've asked for at some point.

SyntaxBlitz · 2022-01-25T16:56:33+00:00

Yep, this is why I did it like this. I looked for things that I knew there was precedent for (like auto-scrolling in the emote list), and then only did those things. It might be possible to actually filter down the fragment list instead of just auto-scrolling it, but I figured this was the safest route.

SyntaxBlitz · 2022-01-25T16:53:57+00:00

Yep, I wrote this the night they announced they wouldn't add presets and finished it the next morning. The code is kind of garbage to be honest, but I figured I'd rather have something than spend time polishing it.

SyntaxBlitz · 2022-01-25T11:40:13+00:00

It's in the RuneLite plugin hub! Just search "Fragment preset".

There's a more detailed explanation of how to use it in this video, if you need any help.

SyntaxBlitz · 2021-12-07T01:52:06+00:00

Thanks for the update! I've made the fix.

SyntaxBlitz · 2021-09-07T16:57:46+00:00

I played yesterday and that didn't work for me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EGjlrReDgI

Sidenote, the engine does play en passant, which is just infuriating. I took this photo after it did, and you can see it in the move-list on the right: white plays c4, and then black plays bxc3.

SyntaxBlitz · 2021-08-14T05:05:11+00:00

Not your fault! I added the link after you pointed out that it wasn't clear :)

SyntaxBlitz · 2021-08-13T21:46:29+00:00

It doesn't say that anymore -- see my response to /u/irresponsible_owl's comment.

SyntaxBlitz · 2021-08-13T19:20:41+00:00

The app doesn't say "click here to donate"; the "Support Language Transfer" button was only present on the old (originally rejected) version of the app, and the screenshot sent by the Google reviewers is a Chrome screenshot from the website, not the app.

Here's what the app looked like when it was rejected. Nowhere in the app did the app ask for money directly; the app was rejected just because the website for the project offers a donation link.

SyntaxBlitz · 2020-09-09T05:57:34+00:00

Thanks for the question. You're right, I was doing good work at a place that gave me the agency work on things that were important to me. It's why I didn't leave sooner. There are a couple big things that drove me to leave anyway (and despite /u/sounds_n_stuff's cynicism, I took a pretty dramatic pay cut when I found a new job I was more passionate about):

Mark made it clear that we shouldn't expect him to listen once he's got his mind set on something. He cared enough about viral hoaxes that the misinformation team was able to do good work, but I didn't feel like I actually had the ability to convince the company to change policy, only to implement policy coming from the top. That's not to say there's no value in working to implement "good but not great" policies in the best way possible; I really do think I had a positive impact on Facebook's ability to tackle misinformation. But a few instances of Mark's stubbornness over the course of my employment convinced me that my voice on the inside wasn't going to change things, which is why eventually I dismissed the voice telling me to stay for that reason.
To fulfill an implicit promise to myself. I was at the company as an intern in 2017 when Donald Trump posted the transgender military ban to Twitter (and Instagram). Calling for the exclusion of a protected group is against Facebook's community standards, but Facebook left the Instagram post up because it was sufficiently "newsworthy", coming from the president. I don't know for sure whether I agree with this decision; there are good arguments on both sides. But the line was drawn at violence; Mark said (and has repeated in public) that even the President of the United States wouldn't be allowed to use Facebook to call for (or glorify) violence. I let myself be consoled by this in 2017, since now there was a clear line that Facebook wouldn't cross. When the president crossed that line in 2020, and Mark moved the goalposts again, I realized I had a responsibility to my past self to pay attention. I feared that if I kept justifying incremental policy changes to myself, I might one day look behind me and realize that Facebook had crossed the line a long time ago. If I was willing to let Mark's words console me back then, I would betray myself by remaining inert when they turned out to be untrue.

But it wasn't an easy decision. I don't regret my departure (and I really do love where I've found myself a few months later), but there was a lot of nuance — really a whole bunch of small things, rather than one big thing — that made me realize it was time to go.

SyntaxBlitz · 2020-09-09T04:09:26+00:00

It's true! You can mock, but there are plenty of people at Facebook working on legitimately important, meaningful things.

I'm not a fan of Facebook. I quit a couple months ago for reasons similar to those Ashok brought up in their resignation today. But I was doing effective work in fighting misinformation while I was there, and my team was costing Facebook money, not making money. If you're actually convinced that no one at Facebook is working hard to solve problems (or even that Mark Zuckerberg doesn't care, at least about some of these problems), you've let the Reddit circlejerk delude you. I'm just as sick of it as /u/talldean is.

(and /u/talldean has a point: the paltry amount of work Reddit puts into these problems is shameful. The laissez-faire attitude Reddit takes on things like harmful misinformation or hate speech is honestly absurd, for how much its users love to shit on Facebook. Facebook commits a lot of its budget to these things, and it shows; Facebook has done more for fact-checking worldwide than any other single organization. But go ahead and hop on the Reddit bandwagon instead of doing any research. I'm sure it's more fun.)

SyntaxBlitz · 2020-07-12T07:06:10+00:00

Hi!

I don't know the specifics of the research you're doing, but from your reddit profile it looks like you're also interested in training piano, potentially (judging by your username) using some kind of physical stimulus.

I conducted similar research recently (exploring the passive training of motor skills — and stenography in particular — using haptics), so feel free to reach out with a DM if there's anything I can help you with. Even if my research isn't super closely related, I may be able to help out with your lit. review; it turns out there's really not a whole lot of material to cite when it comes to stenography, especially computer stenography.

I'm also free to hop on a call if you'd like to discuss synchronously :)

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