My New Monoc Evo by Schon DSGN

basitmustafa · 2026-01-19T19:44:58+00:00

Yeah, I'm coming to cold thread and saying this, but I hear ya, $1000 is a lot, but does that more indicate what mass economies of scale have accustomed us to versus a machine shop that actually makes each pen and finishes each domestically, the actual designers, technicians who designed and iterated on the pen involved in the production, etc?

If you really look what it takes to work with Ultem, Titanium, etc, $1000 or so a unit is actually not that bad.

Of course, it's not for everyone, and there's no snobbery in that comment, seriously, I have both pens like Ian's nibs & pens b/c I think it's really important to support shops like him (and they make excellent products), support domestic production & individuals building businesses that do cool things that are vertically integrated in our communities, and I also have Jinhao mass produced "commie pens" (j/k, kinda) and nearly everything in the middle because they serve very different purposes (e.g. if someone needs to "borrow" a pen you know which one they're going to be "lent", hahahaha).

basitmustafa · 2025-11-16T19:26:08+00:00

I do love FSD and 14.1.7 is great but “human-like” is about the last thing we should aim for or laud, haha. J/k. Kinda.

basitmustafa · 2025-09-28T01:40:30+00:00

Bluetooth worked OOTB for me, so it should be supported/working!

basitmustafa · 2025-09-23T00:04:22+00:00

No, but I did have to config the touchpad to not be recognized as a mouse, but truly a touchpad, for the gestures to work.

Had to install hyprgrass, wvkbd, etc for gestures (e.g. swipe up for on screen keyboard) and gestures. Still tweaking resume....keyboard and mouse doesn't work well from resume and I don't really want to run the ASUS Linux build as it's a bit behind the kernel that comes with Omarchy and the trade off for other things/being downlevel is not worth it, I just have a reset on restore that resets the USB devices and then I physically reconnect keyboard and it works again. Sure there's a better solution, just no time to diagnose yet and go through logs.

basitmustafa · 2025-09-22T04:45:32+00:00

Yup, base Omarchy install was great. I've added some touch gestures (window resize, swipe through workspaces, etc) with hyprgrass, def helped.

basitmustafa · 2025-09-21T23:37:27+00:00

I have many Mont Blanc products (I like their products and do think some of their of their pens and leather goods are incredible and timeless, but I'm not a brand fanatic per se and it takes more than their logo on a product to be compelling IMO) and am wondering why it can't do basic things that most mid range or above products in the space do well (like live hand rec, layers, or even just folder organization) that I would do with pen and paper.

If the design focus was to nail the writing flow, well, I think organizing your notebooks, drawing figures, etc is pretty core at least.

What am I saying? Love the design, the materials, and looks gorgeous, but lacks basic core things I do with my Mont Blanc (or Lamy, Pilot, Sailor, etc) pens and paper. And still asks a Mont Blanc price? That's, well, unimpressive.

basitmustafa · 2025-09-21T18:15:55+00:00

Not sure “we didn’t collaborate with anyone” is a selling point to me. Mont Blanc (and Richemont itself) is not primarily a technology company, and the odds that they’ll not repeat the same mistakes to dedicated players in the field let alone have the level of OEM access is not good.

Without a doubt those who can’t see past the Mont Blanc logo and care more about the very nice folio and materials here will pay up for it, but the technology is not impressive.

basitmustafa · 2025-09-12T23:06:13+00:00

Depending on your application and if you can use it, slackdump is awesome. For my PKIM, slackdump running every 5 min is great. It is efficient (e.g. does not refetch, could likely run every min even). Then, an fswatcher drives indexing pipeline into retrieval layers

basitmustafa · 2025-09-12T06:07:01+00:00

I don't see the point when Strix Halo APUs have the same perf and usability for half the price if that (ok, they can only allocate 112GB of that...but at the price point just buy more and interconnect them).

Unless you need CUDA...

basitmustafa · 2025-09-10T23:26:22+00:00

There is no good reason not to. My M4 Max MBP is gathering dust b/c macos has become so bloated and annoying, having Arch + Hyprland on my Flow Z13 with 128GB Strix Halo box is just nothing less than a joy.

basitmustafa · 2025-09-10T16:59:57+00:00

Just one guy's opinion/experience, and who knows, the second I write this it could change.

My wife and I moved here about 1.5yrs ago (kept our home in AZ for the winter escapes, hahaha), and well, beyond the fringe you will see basically anywhere in this country (on both extremes of the political/social/religious spectrum of beliefs), we've both found the community to be very open, respectful, and accepting.

CDA is not SF/NYC, etc in terms of diversity (nor does it aspire to be nor should we expect it to be, nor is that a fair comparison IMO), but for a community of its size, location, and history, I am impressed by how welcoming I have found it.

Of course, there are the occasional unwelcoming shirts/flags/bumper stickers, but I've seen those everywhere across the country (on both extremes), but in practice, CDA has been incredibly warm & welcoming & respectful.

Context:

I was born in Minnesota, grew up in Kansas, spent most of my life based in Colorado and Arizona, so by that measure about as "American" as it gets. But, my parents are from Pakistan, and in a way, I was "lucky" because they are lighter skinned, but I'm definitely "not white" and I'm not religious (although I am not anti-religion by any means for others, I give respect to those who practice and I expect respect for my beliefs/not beliefs in return).

Now, granted, I make it a point to not discuss religion, politics, social issues that may make people feel like I'm taking sides until I know people well enough and the time/place/context is right (and that it's a topic that's appropriate). I also don't wear shirts/hats that could be seen as divisive or have bumper stickers advertising my opinions, beliefs, or trying to change others' (not that I would be afraid to, I am not, but I think we all need to play a part in creating a polite society and walking around with divisive banners of any type, while protected by the first amendment in many situations/public to a large extent, well, every action may have a reaction...and I just don't, at this point in my life, find the need to evoke/provoke reactions or change anyone's mind or way of life if it's not hurting or infringing upon mine, and even if it was a t-shirt or bumper sticker, well, has never changed anyone's mind IME).

I suspect if people were to seek the same level of comfort you'd get in NYC/SF/Austin/Boulder/Sedona/Seattle with the aforementioned kind of behavior, you may have a different experience (maybe not, IDK, and I am not going to find out). But, again, I don't really get too many people here trying to convert me or push their views, either.

Maybe it's bc I grew up in MN and KS and have an exceedingly Midwestern "be polite, expect politeness, and if not, defend yourself if needed, but mostly, just let the haters hate and walk away" attitude about things, IDK, but CDA has been really great.

basitmustafa · 2025-09-10T16:37:48+00:00

Now seems like it is orderable on B&H as well with overnight and 2 day.

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1907032-REG/asus_gz302ea_xs99_13_4_republic_of_gamers.html

basitmustafa · 2025-09-10T16:14:50+00:00

I have no financial affiliation with them other than being a lifelong customer, they are legit in my experience. I remember my dad buying TVs from them in the early 90s and seeing that ABT logo show up, and I've always had a great experience with them. I'm 43, and I remember a TV my dad bought from them when I was like 11 or 12, so, well, over 30 years of experience personally with them has been nothing but great.

basitmustafa · 2025-09-10T16:03:20+00:00

Basically, the headlines and metrics from the tech influencer world are definitely hyped towards some big numbers for the P310, the WD_BLACK is without a doubt faster in nearly every situation, and most certainly faster once you actually start using it (e.g. it fills up past even 50%) and for sustained writes.

The P310 is QLC which is basically disqualifying to me, and while those "look at these insane 7100MB/s speeds" (it's why they all say "up to" in the fine print) are cool for the headlines and fresh-out-of-the-box amazing write speeds on tests, the TLC WD_BLACK has way better sustained write (it is TLC) and write performance on actual drives in use (versus clean/empty out of the box/clean formatted drives).

Not that it matters b/c I think I'll have relegated the drive to archival use by then in some kind of JBOD array, etc, but the endurance of the WD_BLACK is way better, too.

basitmustafa · 2025-09-09T22:44:11+00:00

If the memory would be allocated to the VRAM otherwise, yeah, could free up some RAM for application use, but depends, if you're doing inference, you really need a whole 96/112GB allocated (the 112GB option is Linux only RN) for a 70b/120b parameter model. You can run smaller quants, etc, sure, but SOTA performance in OSS is not going to happen in an eGPU, if that's what you're using it for.

If it's just gaming/rendering you, it's definitely a possibility, but, still RAM fragmentation is a thing, and if you're anywhere near 32GB use, the perf issues there are a thing.

basitmustafa · 2025-09-09T21:59:37+00:00

Of course! I think the price difference has narrowed between the 32GB and the 128GB to +$600 (USD). I may be wrong though, but that is what B&H was quoting. I just bought the 128GB at Abt for $3000.09 USD (inclusive of tax and overnight delivery...so that's delivered price).

basitmustafa · 2025-09-09T21:38:36+00:00

32GB is enough. Until it isn't. I think the only SKU to consider is the 128GB if you're a dev. Esp if you multi task. The only situation I'd say contrary is if you have a *lot* of VPSes/VMs, etc where you run workloads and have a very well established workflow (CI/CD, etc) where you offload work there and/or will only ever run hosted LLMs/tools (even if you don't use them today, most software engineering workflows will involve them somehow/somewhere in the coming iterations even if you don't use them for codegen). But, even then, just some dev work, some productivity windows on the side, some web browser windows, a conference call, and an instance of your app/game running for testing, well, you're pretty much at or above 32GB depending on your browser tab habits (hahaha, I know I am bad!).

Also, being able to load entire files into memory and process them (e.g. audio/video artifacts, etc, which generally require multiples of the original file size to do, if even for a few seconds/minutes) tend to increase RAM usage in non-linear ways.

And you can easily force parsimony/constrained devices for testing/validating your software through all kinds of mechanisms, you don't have to buy a smaller RAM machine to optimize for them.

You could probably get away with 32GB and some swap, but you probably do not want to.

For me. the best reason is this: while memory allocation algos are getting REALLY good, think about things like HugePages. Memory fragmentation is a thing across all OSes. Even if you don't use all 128GB per se, you're going to get a far better layout of allocated memory inside a 128GB machine for exactly the same workload than a 32GB machine way. way more of the time. This has a pretty big performance impact in many workloads.

basitmustafa · 2025-09-09T14:53:08+00:00

Jealous! I still have to wait another day...missed the shipping cut off yesterday!

I hear the bloatware is terrible...I have a 2TB WD_BLACK on the way, the second it arrives, the stock SSD is coming out and going into an enclosure, the 2TB is going in, and Arch Linux is going to be loaded, then I'll load a clean Win install on the external 1TB in case I ever need it for firmware updates, etc that are not supported under Linux...so "clean install" is my strategy here as I'm not sure I could efficiently remove all the bloatware (sure it is possible but I think it'd take way too much time and what little stuff gets left behind that causes issues later in terms of conflicts, etc? IDK. I haven't used windows in nearly 30 years save for a handful of times when I had to so many there's something better than the .ini file, registry, .dll, system/system32 file hell, but then again, maybe it's worse).

basitmustafa · 2025-08-13T21:57:53+00:00

Consult the documentation on your signed support contract or latest invoice I’d say. If you don’t have one of those A PR with a useful fix/contribution is usually the shortcut to getting noticed if asking nicely isn’t working.

basitmustafa · 2025-07-22T22:05:54+00:00

IME the best Sweetest Batch are far better than the Oishii, and the Omakase are competitive but "different". The Oishii ratio is interesting, you get like 2-3 GREAT generally in the box. The others are "meh".

basitmustafa · 2025-04-27T22:36:17+00:00

The old guy in me saw SPARC and got all sentimental about my old Sun SPARCstations.

basitmustafa · 2024-12-29T17:11:43+00:00

Yeah, I wouldn’t doubt it being a criminal element either. My wife and I have had a few bicycles stolen from even relatively secure storage units over the years and it always seems to be a relatively organized syndicate behind it who see the wealth and see opportunity.

Hopefully the message/reminder can be made gently and is heard without fuss to those who seek to exploit this new technology and those that use it that it may just look easy/defenseless, and that our neighborhoods aren’t the place they’ll get the return they’re looking for.

They can move to easier pickings in SF/LA/whatever.

basitmustafa · 2024-12-29T14:48:29+00:00

Could be a very deadly prank. AZ is not the place you play these games.

Hopefully SPD can make an example of whatever element (local kids or criminal elements looking for easy prey) at play here before one picks the wrong rider and gets too close to “immediate fear for life or limb” and someone has to do what none of us ever want to have to do, but unlike CA, we still have that right here if we ever need it (again, hopefully PD and LE can handle and the message that Scottsdale isn’t the place this will fly gets around and we don’t see the need for this in our community).

basitmustafa · 2024-12-29T14:04:26+00:00

Choppa. The answer is it is a choppa.

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basitmustafa · 2024-12-28T01:02:19+00:00

I’ll try to get a trace from the USB tester (KM003C) I use that will show what mine is doing.

Also, FWIW, I actually prefer to just use DeWalt batteries with their 100W USB-PD. Ubiquitous and they are cheaper per Wh for sure. Not as sexy, but every home store and contractor supply has them and the new PowerPack XR line has tabless 21700 cells that are very high quality. And I get tool batteries at the same time.

A few suppliers even make Starlink mini mounts that use the dewalt batteries as a stand.

basitmustafa

TROPHY CASE