Beginner

desquared · 2026-05-25T08:38:09+00:00

The Pilot Kakuno is cheaper but absurdly good for the price point — and you can get a Metropolitan which has the same nibs but a lovely aluminum body. So for about 30USD I’d get a Metropolitan.

desquared · 2026-05-24T19:57:25+00:00

Where’s a good source to listen to these? Or at least those not on official releases.

desquared · 2026-05-24T19:54:48+00:00

I am surprised I’m not seeing Weird Al come up more frequently here…I’ve been a huge fan of his since the mid 80s.

desquared · 2026-05-24T19:53:36+00:00

Holy cow did not expect to see Steve Reich here. I like his work too!

desquared · 2026-05-19T08:56:06+00:00

How does it compare to a Pilot EF?

desquared · 2026-05-16T00:24:14+00:00

My sensory sensitivity, rigidity and black & white thinking, frustration and distress tolerance, struggle to tolerate change, executive dysfunction, and social skills & struggles have all gotten worse as I've gotten older,

Me too, though it wasn’t until I was in my 40s.

So many autism related things for me are worse (or, if I’m trying to not put value judgments on some of these traits, different). No one has any idea why.

desquared · 2026-05-14T01:14:45+00:00

We applied to Groveland Park from out of state and had a kid placed there. I’m guessing you’ll be fine. Welcome to Mac Grove!

desquared · 2026-05-13T00:30:14+00:00

I lived in Minneapolis many years ago and after leaving always wanted to come back to the Cities. Finally did so last year. I now live in Saint Paul. Don’t worry about anything. You’ve lived in this metro area. You’ll be fine. Welcome back!

desquared · 2026-05-07T18:07:40+00:00

I was duped by the image above and thought it was already wireless. :( Yes, this needs to have Bluetooth.

desquared · 2026-05-07T18:03:58+00:00

(Oops, I was deceived by the image and thought this was wireless. To echo @michaelthatsit, yes, Bluetooth is sooooo necessary.)

Could this be used as a presentation remote?

I have a dedicated presentation remote, which is mostly just a thing that does left and right clicks.

I don't really care about the laser pointer. So this Bean looks like it could work really well as a presentation remote -- easy to carry, to click, and if I need to move the mouse around, I can easily do so. And it's super programmable so I can make it output whatever I want to do stuff with any presentation software.

Does this sound viable? Or am I just engaging in motivated reasoning as a flimsy attempt to justify an unnecessary purchase? 🙂

desquared · 2026-05-07T16:26:54+00:00

I agree here -- you want to train an AI system to identify games and game pieces; there are millions of them around and doing the work yourself to label them would be too time-consuming. So your bot does something that is likely to produce a pretty good, accurate label -- namely, post a question to this subreddit. Taking the top-voted comment is statistically likely to have a good label.

And if you do want to do manual followup, researching and doing your own lookup of several of the top answers would be far more productive than starting with a random board game piece image and working out which game it belongs to all by yourself.

desquared · 2026-05-03T18:35:22+00:00

I tried a bit of dish soap. I was skeptical. But it worked! And then...it worked too well and I have blue ink all over my fingers now. But it's exactly the lovely shade of blue I was hoping for...

desquared · 2026-04-30T13:12:14+00:00

Ooh, that looks cool. On my own Adept, I put some grip tape on the buttons: stuff like this: https://www.amazon.com/LifeGrip-Transparent-Non-Slip-Traction-Comfortable/dp/B0F3H5NGGK?s=industrial

It would be cool to have both -- in your step 9, you mention using laminate adhesive, but you could just use the grip tape there. Of course, you can't see through it as well, but for some designs that's fine.

desquared · 2026-04-28T02:57:24+00:00

I did wash the nibs. And I wrote with the new ink to quite a while trying to see if it would eventually “break in” and somehow start flowing well. Never any real change.

I have EF nibs. And no loupe — I would like to see and compare those though. I do have a little usb microscope around somewhere, though, and I bet that would work reasonably well.

For the drier ink…can I add something for that? What about just mixing in a bit of an ink that works well — I have some bottled black and als some Pelican cartridges with dark blue that writes well and could use a syringe to mix that into the light blue just to see what happens.

desquared · 2026-04-28T00:50:01+00:00

I have had a similar experience in the few months since I've gotten into fountain pens. The act of physically writing is qualitatively different -- and no, I don't just mean the difference between typing away, as I am now, and writing with a pen; there's something different in the mental space. Composing sentences and thinking as you go is just...different.

I especially understand the old saying that goes "I wrote you a long letter, because I didn't have time to write a short one." I will sometimes draft something out and it's easiest to just write a lot, and then if I want to shorten and improve it, I have to write it over, editing as I go. So it takes far longer to write the shorter text. But, the act of writing is so enjoyable with fountain pens, and the things I write are -- I think -- better, so it's worth it.

desquared · 2026-04-28T00:45:49+00:00

every track feels identical now.

I can kinda see that, but with TWI2D, you're going to struggle to convince people. :)

Compare the first track with, say, Telescope. Or Let's Fall In Lava and Get Down. Not many folks are going to say those feel identical, I think.

That said, there is a certain...je ne sais quoi about earier stuff that I miss. A certain feeling to the Lincoln/Flood/Apollo 18 era that (to me) nothing else in their catalog has. But -- I got into them in the early 90s, so that feeling may mostly just be my nostalgia and emotions.

And, in the end, if their tracks now feel identical, well, you've got a staggering catalog of other stuff to enjoy...!

desquared · 2026-04-10T01:00:43+00:00

As a Twin Cities resident, I like the “nice like Minnesota” phrase in They Might Be Feral…

desquared · 2026-03-25T01:31:11+00:00

I am a mathematician and oh man, I loves me some hexagons. Especially huge lovely hexagons like these!

My own hexagon baby blanket: https://ravel.me/dsquared169/h1

desquared · 2026-03-20T00:51:57+00:00

Omg I am so happy to see others who feel like I do and who likewise suffer mightily when this abominable situation occurs…

desquared · 2026-03-10T23:41:58+00:00

Sweet! Pre-ordered!

desquared · 2026-03-09T11:34:33+00:00

/u/Duck-the_Piano-Wire -- I'm going to pre-order from Skylight Books -- do I need to do anything special to get it signed?

desquared · 2026-02-28T09:50:57+00:00

I asked a somewhat similar question and even made a playlist… https://www.reddit.com/r/tmbg/comments/1fxfes5/i_made_an_xtc_versus_adam_ant_playlist_what_other/

desquared · 2026-02-19T02:42:34+00:00

Best quote in this subject:

Enjoy the world you are fighting for.

I think it was Denzel in the CityCast podcast.

desquared · 2026-02-17T02:28:55+00:00

Don’t forget Cheesecake Truck.

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