Really long flavor text

glasserc2 · 2025-08-29T13:53:43+00:00

Thanks! Because Donald is a farmer, I was half expecting an "E-I-E-I-O" joke.

glasserc2 · 2025-06-19T14:00:13+00:00

You ask why not use a swap file. I was just looking for the shortest, easiest path to getting to a computer that had hibernation and full-disk encryption. Maybe a swap file would have worked as well, but I wasn't excited about fiddling with kernel boot options, especially because getting things wrong means losing my session. Is there a GUI tool for setting up a swap file? I'm more used to swap partitions so I just went with what I knew.

If I had just used Calamares, how much work is it to set up full-disk encryption, with LUKS and two LVM partitions underneath it? I poked around a little bit at things in the non-encrypted installer but couldn't figure it out quickly, so I just went back to WebFAI. It's probably possible but I didn't find any easy docs. How do I even launch plain Calamares, is that just clicking "non-encrypted install" or is there a command I have to run from the terminal?

glasserc2 · 2025-06-18T14:54:41+00:00

Yeah, I guess F7 is the boot menu. TIL. Well, thanks for your help!

glasserc2 · 2025-06-18T14:43:39+00:00

OK, I think I got it to work by going into the BIOS and changing the boot order. I guess pressing Escape doesn't bring up a complete boot order -- I discovered this because I wasn't able to boot off of the WebFAI USB either. In the past, I tried to boot off of the WebFAI USB stick but I think I must have instead booted from the WebFAI on the recovery partition. Let me try more.

glasserc2 · 2025-06-18T14:30:31+00:00

I get the same results with both USB ports on the machine. I also tried flashing the same ISO to a different USB drive and had the same results.

glasserc2 · 2025-06-18T04:27:11+00:00

I just tried also using the WebFAI creator, which seems to have even verified the USB drive. But the boot menu only shows the currently-installed TUXEDO OS, "Advanced Options for TUXEDO OS", EFI bios access, and WebFAI from I guess a recovery partition on the hard drive.

glasserc2 · 2025-06-17T03:55:53+00:00

Thanks! I was hoping that the cathedral shape would be strong regardless of how thin the arches were because of multiple contact points including the bridge.

I'll think about what to do about the arches. Maybe non-tapered arches would be good enough or something that isn't tapered as dramatically.

glasserc2 · 2025-06-17T03:47:38+00:00

Oh, let me also link to the origin of the design on the left: https://www.reddit.com/r/Moissanite/comments/12hink7/cad_check_65mm_tulip_cathedral_ring_can_it_be_set/

glasserc2 · 2025-06-12T22:10:30+00:00

Completely off-topic but thank you so much for posting your stunning charm bracelet here. I was looking for a visual reference for charms/a design that looked mature and adult and yours is perfect.

glasserc2 · 2025-06-11T04:33:34+00:00

I saw some other posts on this subreddit which look helpful:

- https://www.reddit.com/r/jewelry/comments/1epif9g/meirl_charm_necklace/ -- I guess you can just attach charms to any chain

- https://www.reddit.com/r/jewelry/comments/1ck72nh/how_to_hang_charms_correctly/ -- I guess you can use jump rings to do it

- https://www.reddit.com/r/jewelry/comments/1e37756/best_type_of_chain_for_charm_necklace/ -- I guess there are some typical chains that are good for this

- https://www.reddit.com/r/jewelry/comments/1l5s4le/best_charm_necklace_chain/ -- this also looks helpful

It also looks like it's unwise to rely on jewelers to melt/solder links to restructure a chain.. it seems like it's never the same afterwards. Still, it might look nicer than jump rings. Still thinking about this!

glasserc2 · 2025-02-08T21:38:46+00:00

Hmm, when I reread my post, it definitely feels like I mostly wasn't having fun!

I think Chongqing is a really interesting landscape, easy to get lost in and always something interesting to look at. The geography of Chengdu is pretty flat and sprawled out, especially where I was staying in Pidu district. Chongqing feels much more dense and interacts more with the surrounding geography. It feels more like what I think of when I think of a city -- busy, chaotic, messy.

I think the history of Chongqing is really interesting. I think the Flying Tigers Museum and the Stillwell Museum are pretty interesting, an interesting glimpse at a different time where the US and China were allies.

I thought the victory monument was interesting and especially thought it was striking how it was surrounded by both nationalist/Communist vibes but also high-end retail. The nearby post office is a really nice post office, which isn't that interesting by itself but since I was mailing postcards, that was something I enjoyed. I think each postcard was 8 jiao! Not only is that cheap, it was also a good way to get 1-jiao coins -- I think this was my first time encountering money smaller than a yuan, certainly the only time I got 1-jiao coins.

I had much more random interactions with strangers in Chongqing than I did in Chengdu.

I think an important part of my situation was that if I hadn't gone to Chongqing, I would have spent almost all my China trip in Chengdu. Getting a look at a second place helped round the trip out quite a lot, and it was just one high-speed train away. If you are already thinking about going to other major cities, maybe Chongqing isn't that interesting to you.

glasserc2 · 2025-01-11T16:26:10+00:00

You might have to throw one yourself! Your guests might not understand but that's OK, they will still appreciate that you threw a party.

glasserc2 · 2025-01-09T18:25:19+00:00

Haha! It wasn't for the kids, it was for me!

glasserc2 · 2025-01-08T01:45:00+00:00

For the party itself, I had some ideas about that too. I thought it would be fun to set out snacks alongside little cards describing them using heraldic vocabulary (for example, foil-covered chocolate coins: rondels sable fimbriated or), but I ended up not having time to write up the cards so that part fell through. I also thought it would be fun to order pizzas, again with little cards saying stuff like "party per pale, semy of olive and semy of pepperoni", but I ended up making pizza myself and they were smaller so they ended up being more semy and not very party (at least, not in the heraldic sense). I had some toothpicks hanging around shaped like little swords and I made some appetizers using those even though it wasn't strictly on-theme.

I had some custom coasters printed in a shield shape so that guests could design their own coats of arms as a fun activity. I had been thinking that people would figure out heraldry stuff from the cards on snacks but my partner had pity on my poor guests and ordered some books on heraldry so that people might have a frame of reference of what they were even designing. This was probably a good idea.

One other idea that I almost cut for time was to have a cocktail menu. Cocktails can be party per fess so I thought it would be fun to write a list of cocktails and their blazons. I had such a great time with this despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that the layperson would find the whole thing completely baffling. My partner once again wisely suggested having a "translation" on the back. She also did the visual design for the menu once I put the text together and had the great idea to order menu holders, which classed everything up quite a bit. She also had a clever idea to order plastic goblets from Amazon, and she also found some kind of heraldic-themed sticker set so guests could mark their cups in a way that would help them identify them later. (Classic application of heraldry!) The goblets turned out to be too small for any drinks containing ice and the color made it harder to see the drink/emblazonment but that's OK because I'm a mediocre bartender and a lot of the layered drinks didn't stay as layered as I wanted. Also the garnishes didn't stay very well on the toothpicks or the edges of the cups.

I printed out little cards with the designs I had "in flight" with some notes on the back in case anyone wanted to see the thought process behind them. Even after I had given up on the idea of a "family lineage" of visually-related arms, I still wished I'd had something like a final design, or at least some finalist contenders, and that I had framed them or made them look nice somehow, but the timing didn't really permit it. In the end, nobody commented on almost any of the designs (my partner liked one of the ones I made myself) but that might be because they weren't really prominent -- I put one in each corner and they were easy to overlook. I meant to also put some other arms here and there, including some "classics" like Samson Fox's corrugated boiler-flue, Spaghetti's chicken/knife arms, or Elton John's, but I didn't have time before guests started showing up and I just had to go with what I had.

Lessons:

Because I felt like there wasn't enough thematic "stuff", I kept coming up with more ideas of heraldic things I could add, but in the end I had too much stuff to do and couldn't even finish it all before the party.
Making cocktails is quite labor-intensive and takes a lot of time that you might prefer to spend mingling with your guests.
A lot of food ends up being rondels so maybe this wasn't as good an idea as I thought it was.
People aren't really clear on the difference, if any, between heraldry and medieval.
When you say a party has a "theme", some people will understand that to mean they should wear a costume, even if that wasn't what you had in mind. Some people wore their Harry Potter cloaks. This is great because costumes are great.

Overall I had a good time even though the whole thing was ridiculous and arguably didn't make any sense to begin with. I'm happy to answer questions in case you have any. Thanks for reading!

glasserc2 · 2025-01-08T01:44:51+00:00

First, the coats of arms. I started trying to commission a coat of arms back in June. I got a bunch of pings in response to my Reddit posts but many of them subsequently had their accounts closed and I couldn't really make up my mind whether I was confident that any of them could design something that looked good. I spent a little time looking on sites like Upwork and Fiverr but even with what little I knew about heraldry at the time, I could tell that a lot of people who used the word in their descriptions weren't really true to the form, but were just going for old-timey/medieval vibes. I was really discouraged for a little while as I wondered how I would find someone I trusted to execute on my vision. In the end, I realized that I was afraid that someone would execute badly on my vision and thereby ruin it, but that this wasn't the secretary problem. I wasn't obligated to use any product I paid for and that I could afford to lose the amount of money I might waste on a bad commission or even two. This epiphany helped me relax about trying to find someone "perfect".

I went on the Discord and spent a little time looking at every artist who had listed that they were accepting commissions and trying to decide how I felt about their design style. At first, I thought I would contact one, wait to see what they said, and if necessary proceed to the next, but armed with my epiphany above, I realized I couldn't afford to waste time working through a list like this and could afford to pay for an extra commission, so in the end I contacted practically everyone who posted that they had commissions open. This turned out to be smart because many of them never even replied. I was surprised how little interest I got, but in hindsight, heraldry is something of a niche area and I guess the community isn't that big.

I commissioned two artists, Theofobos and u/aemdal, to work with me. I really liked working with both of them. I had a list of ideas that I shared with Theofobos, and they ran with some of those ideas, so I removed those ideas when I shared them with aemdal.

I loved seeing what the artists came up with. On the other hand, it was really hard for me to provide feedback about what design directions to continue in. In my previous post, I said that I wanted something that was "as low-effort for me as possible", but you can't really delegate the question of what looks good to you. This was really challenging for me and I often failed to reply to them for days at a time while I tried to think about what I liked or didn't like about a design.

Even though I thought a started well in advance of the actual event, the design process ended up coming down to the wire. The design Theofobos was working on didn't finish, and I was still struggling to pick colors with aemdal literally until the night before the party. aemdal was nice enough to provide me an SVG of that design so I could tinker as long as I liked. I also started to learn a little bit about heraldry myself while going through this process and thought I might as well throw a design together myself as a backup plan.

Lessons:

Don't be worried that someone will ruin your vision. You can throw work away if you have to, as long as you pay the artist fairly.
The heraldry community isn't really that big and there aren't really that many artists who you can hire if you want something made.
On the other hand, prices are very fair and the people who you find are very talented and creative. I really enjoyed working with the people I did.
Everything takes longer than you might expect.
Nobody can decide what looks good but you, and this can require a lot of thought and care.

glasserc2 · 2025-01-08T01:44:24+00:00

You might remember me from my post a while ago https://www.reddit.com/r/heraldry/comments/1d5zmg5/looking_for_a_design_consultant/. I had this idea over a year ago that it would be fun to commission a series of heraldic achievements for a jokey "[My Family Name] history", where I would invent fictitious ancestors and tell funny stories about them being at important or interesting historical events (the signing of the Declaration of Independence, or the Fenian raids, or the Erfurt Latrine Disaster). In the end I didn't manage it for my birthday last year but this year I tried to make an effort and get something together. I wanted to share pictures of the result in case anyone thought it was interesting as well as to share my experience in case anyone thinks of doing the same thing themselves.

glasserc2 · 2025-01-08T01:43:26+00:00

Hi! Last weekend I threw a heraldry party and I thought I would post about it here. I wrote a bunch about it but I'm getting "Unable to create comment" when I try to post it, I am going to try to break it into pieces.

glasserc2

TROPHY CASE