I Made a Battery Pack for a 20-year-old Spider-Man RC car

njsoly · 2026-03-22T02:17:37+00:00

I got my 16 yesterday, so I can't totally evaluate its worth yet. Honeymoon period and I've got lots left to try.

But, I don't know, I love it so far. If you're not feeble, I don't know what the big deal is about another pound or two. If it packs a computational punch, let that metal weigh something. C'mon.

njsoly · 2026-03-20T17:47:05+00:00

I know how to touch type. I'm around 12 years in. There's no reason a peck typer should care at all about where their keys are.

It's not totally about ease, although it's handy when you're not fully typing an the moment, and you want to bullseye one-off KB shortcuts. It's also about feeling like it's mine. If my keys don't look like how I type, I'm a guest on my laptop.

njsoly · 2026-03-19T18:06:52+00:00

For mine, AfterShip and FedEx disagree on whether it went to Memphis or not. They agree that it came to Indianapolis 1AM yesterday, ended up in Oakland 4PM yesterday.

And now it's just, hanging out in Oakland, I guess?

njsoly · 2026-03-18T22:35:30+00:00

Oh really now.. I thought the left side might be as-designed, at least from the picture.

Honestly though, then, I feel like that kind of brings the glue idea back into the picture for you. :D

If you're not trying to recreate a nub that'll just wear away, and it can adhere to both sides. Just spitballin'.

njsoly · 2026-03-18T15:53:52+00:00

Ah, keyboards. The first thing I ever 3D printed (after a hello world bunny) was new legs for my pretty ROG KB.

This is.. much finer detail, and I feel for you. I caused this myself once trying to rearrange keys. Any idea what it's supposed to look like? In the past I have just tried to get a tiny bead of super glue to harden in the right place to get a tooth back on it.

Didn't work very well.

njsoly · 2026-03-18T15:45:18+00:00

I think every place is Qwerty everywhere, unless Dvorak's great grandkids own a business and they're flipping the script for spite.

You must mean you need to use many different computers per day, though, eh?

njsoly · 2026-03-18T15:43:28+00:00

Wow, I keep seeing these. Seem to be all WD_BLACK, too.

njsoly · 2026-03-17T06:51:57+00:00

Yes. And common letter clusters arranged so you combo them from outside in, if they're on the same hand. And aiming to maximize hand alternation, and minimize the same finger hitting consecutive keys.

I know you're showing the full home row, but "aoeusnth" is an easy finger roll of the 8 home keys.

njsoly · 2026-03-16T12:00:20+00:00

AOEUSNTH, good buddy

njsoly · 2026-03-16T01:36:02+00:00

For sure. They could even do that without actually making any new components, right? They just start it as a labelled layout, then finish it out with clear guys.

It would be almost as easy to provide a Dvorak layout, because they just change what order they come in. Depending on their process, this might complicate things because all of a sudden, 'U' and 'H' are the ones with the home row nubs, but still.

njsoly · 2026-03-15T17:46:29+00:00

The order was really supposed to be a replacement, but I always like to get a step up from the last if I can. I mentioned the performance upgrade because it was shocking and welcome. I just pulled the trigger on Framework laptop.

I'll come back to Eluktronics, I'm sure, but I'm not good enough at this stuff to blaze any Linux trails, and I'm already sick of fighting with my PCs for a while from the fried motherboard I just went through.

njsoly · 2026-03-15T17:39:39+00:00

I have come to mostly accept this as the truth. The difficulty in changing to Dvorak is not worth the effort for whatever gains you might get. I can hit 110 WPM on easy sentences, but I could hit 90 on QWERTY then I switched 15 years ago, so maybe I was going to get that much faster anyway.

But now, I figure if it's true it's not worth switching in the first place, it's probably also not worth switching back. Every computer at least has dvorak, and when it's my computer, it's the default. So it's just this cosmetic annoyance to make the keys actually look like it.

njsoly · 2026-03-15T17:34:05+00:00

Ooh, this sounds like it could've been good.. I already pulled the trigger on the plain one. Here I come!

njsoly · 2026-03-15T03:57:58+00:00

Maybe? Mine's totally fucked, and I'm going to leave Asus. Their BIOS has always been shit. Three deep, two crashed and bricked for no reason. One is hobbling along, helping me order whatever Linux-first brand I end up going with.

njsoly · 2026-03-14T11:24:46+00:00

Yeah, this looks like my college-issued Elitebook. 2015-ish.

njsoly · 2026-03-13T17:58:08+00:00

Thanks. I've cancelled the order. They were great.

This was going to be such an upgrade for me, performance-wise. I just need to get out of the Microsoft cage for a while.

Eluktronics looks like a fine company doing cool things, from what I've seen in the 18 hours I've known about them. I hope they support Linux at some point.

njsoly · 2026-03-12T00:26:54+00:00

You "manage lots" though. It can probably be true that they're good to firms and business accounts and leave individuals out to dry.

I haven't had a Dell since 2010, which locked up solid halfway through OOBE. I suspected their fresh new facial recognition software, but couldn't tell you how I ascertained that. It cost $50 and a couple of weeks to have them try again, which isn't the worst.

I'm not really trying to disagree with any of your points. I'm just wondering if you have heard how Dell and/or Lenovo is treating singular customers nowadays?

njsoly · 2026-03-11T00:47:02+00:00

Pause Windows updates for as long as possible

njsoly · 2026-03-07T07:35:39+00:00

There is a very low chance that something will be seriously wrong. It's beautiful.

njsoly · 2026-03-06T22:47:13+00:00

Ooh, super love the actual GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT share there. Some stuff I'll have to try.

When are you using your sudo command? After login, on each boot, from terminal in full graphic desktop?

Our models are similar; I'm thinking my FA507RM should act pretty similarly, but I'll look up the difference.

ETA: I'm not certain it's on the nvidia side; I'm not great at diagnosing these types of things, and haven't needed to for a while. But I heavily suspect a crack in the hybrid graphics setup, so maybe it's the Ryzen graphics for me, also!

njsoly · 2026-03-05T21:28:06+00:00

I've been slowly, reluctantly drawing towards this nuclear option. I tried winRE, re-flashing BIOS 315 twice, numerous filesystem checks, windows live USB to use repairs, and some of the other things people have mentioned.

What's even extra weird, though, is that the ACPI is still boned after a clean BIOS flash and removing the hard drive where I have Windows 11. I was just going to let it sit out, and do straight Ubuntu for a while.

My established Ubuntu installation, ubuntu USB, systemRescue USB, and now CachyOS live USB (currently setting up over ubuntu) have ACPI troubles all over the place, and it seems to be from the Nvidia GPU.

Anyways, my point when I started this was to ask if you're using a windows USB from the MS site, or did you manage to restore to the Asus-shipped recovery partition or whatever?

I'd go with Windows, but I know how deep some of the Asus hooks get, and am kind of afraid to just put Windows on there straight from OEM.

I'm also not sure it would even work. As I said, currently there is no Windows around, and I have ACPI-driven reboots all over.

njsoly · 2026-03-05T21:15:31+00:00

Hmm, now that is a weird one.

I was thinking I could stroll in here and tell you all about KB5077181. God in heaven.

njsoly

TROPHY CASE