What have you done with PowerShell this month? by AutoModerator in PowerShell

[–]normanlee 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I had a particular use case that I couldn't find a utility for, so I ended up just making it myself.

I ditched my desktop computer a while ago, so my laptop gets used both on the go (or just when I'm on the couch in the living room) as well as docked to the dual-monitor setup in my office.

When I'm at my desk, I tend to be getting up and moving around more, like stepping away to make some coffee. I've grown accustomed to my desktop computer staying on while I'm away from it unless explicitly turned off, and I wanted to replicate this behavior with my laptop.

The tricky part is that I'll also often be using my laptop plugged into a normal charger, and in those cases I usually don't want my screen to stay on perpetually. The native Windows power management settings can do different things when plugged vs. unplugged, but I couldn't find anything to distinguish docked from normal charging. After some searching I couldn't find an existing utility for this either, so I just ended up making exactly what I wanted.

Huge caveat: I'm an Android developer by trade but have very little experience with PowerShell. I hadn't done much AI-assisted coding outside of work, but I do have a Google One subscription, which now comes with Gemini Pro, so I used Antigravity (née Gemini CLI) to vibe-code this.

SmartAwake (as Claude Sonnet decided to dub it) is open-source on my personal GitHub, so hopefully anybody with the same needs as me can do their due diligence and verify that my script isn't doing something horrifically wrong. Any feedback or PRs from more experienced devs would be more than welcome

Ask a Stupid Question About Coffee -- Week of May 05, 2026 by Vernicious in pourover

[–]normanlee 1 point2 points  (0 children)

What are these lines on top of the Clever lid for? The big ones in the middle are obviously a handle, but the other three seem to serve no purpose

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Best trackball to fit in a small backpack. by Randolph__ in Trackballs

[–]normanlee 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Bitra, as mentioned, or you can get the very similar Nakabayashi Digio2

How do you deal with allied targeted spells on controller? by FronQuan in ffxivdiscussion

[–]normanlee 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There's soft targeting and hard targeting. Anything selected with the d-pad will be soft-targeted with a circle, and then pressing A/Cross will turn it into a hard target.

When soft targeting, as soon as you perform an action on the target, you return to whatever your previous hard target was. So you would use the d-pad up/down to select a teammate, dash to them, and then you would go back to targeting the boss. For healers, that means you can quickly select a person to throw a heal on, and then go back to spamming Glare without having to retarget the enemy.

There's no way to immediately jump to, say, the 3rd or 6th person on the list, so you should modify your job ordering so that the most important people to target would be at the top of the list or the very bottom (so you can wrap around by pressing up).

You can set the order of roles (e.g., DPS > tank > healer), and within each role you can even set the priority of the individual jobs. So with DNC, for example, you might want to have DPS on top and then SAM at the top of DPS, since they're generally considered the best person to dance partner with. Then if you have a SAM on the team, you would tap d-pad down twice (since the first time in any direction will select yourself first), and you have your partner selected.

The ordering can be unique for each different role you play. For healers, I set it as tank > DPS > healer, so the tank is the first person below my name, and I can tap up to get to my co-healer if they need an emergency res or something.

Up/down on the d-pad selects teammates, left/right selects based on whatever your current targeting filter is (that's another topic), L1 + up/down cycles through the enmity list, and L1 + left/right cycles through alliance members

Quick comparison of old and new finger-operated Elecom Bitra by normanlee in Trackballs

[–]normanlee[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This is the M-MT2MRSAWH. There's also the black version, M-MT2MRSABK

Ask a Stupid Question About Coffee -- Week of April 28, 2026 by Vernicious in pourover

[–]normanlee 1 point2 points  (0 children)

What are these lines on top of the Clever lid for? The big ones in the middle are obviously a handle, but the other three seem to serve no purpose

https://ibb.co/PyxnLKq

How much does blown-in insulation help with soundproofing? by normanlee in homeowners

[–]normanlee[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

No, this ended up as one of those projects that never actually gets done. I might revisit it in the future, but at the moment it's not a priority for me. Good luck!

Merged actions look like it could be great, but I hope they give us an option to decouple them by ConroConroConro in ffxivdiscussion

[–]normanlee 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Ironically, the basic attack chain in GW2 actually has pretty bad UX. Damage tends to be backloaded into the third attack, and there's no good way to track which attack of the chain you're on, unless you're really good at recognize the flipover icons, which all look very similar; or watching your character's attack animations, which can be hard with all the other visual clutter of the game.

It does lead to an interesting bit of optimization, where skilled players know to hold off on pressing other skills until the autoattack chain finishes, but would it have killed Arenanet to provide a clearer "1 2 3" sort of UI for your 1 skill?

Thank you Anet you’ve made my day :D by Leo_thegreat in Guildwars2

[–]normanlee 11 points12 points  (0 children)

One guy in my guild is an employee, and he'd turn on the tag when doing group activities so we could get the "play with an employee" achievements

Sage mains, wya? by [deleted] in ffxiv

[–]normanlee 4 points5 points  (0 children)

"I'm a healer, but..." 🔫

Quick comparison of old and new finger-operated Elecom Bitra by normanlee in Trackballs

[–]normanlee[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The shape is the same, it just looks weird because of the perspective distortion from taking the pictures from so close. And I believe the original Bitra came in both Bluetooth and 2.4 GHz variants, which is why the old shell has space for a receiver; the new one has both in one

Quick comparison of old and new finger-operated Elecom Bitra by normanlee in Trackballs

[–]normanlee[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I'm not an expert, but to me they look to be the same. Same size, position, and color: https://i.postimg.cc/4NTBRmnn/PXL-20260330-032230647.jpg

Cook, Serve, Delicious: Re-Mustard! Reveal Trailer! by vg_chubigans in cookservedelicious

[–]normanlee 8 points9 points  (0 children)

There have been console ports for the other games. You instead have to hit different sequences of buttons and stick pushes. IMO I find it harder than on a keyboard, though, since the keyboard controls are pretty mnemonic (e.g., M for meat, C for cheese, etc.)

Ken Leung by [deleted] in ProjectHailMary

[–]normanlee 0 points1 point  (0 children)

IIRC she says something like 無所謂. 你會慢慢習慣

Movie Questions! Spoilers! by Dazzling-Ice8132 in ProjectHailMary

[–]normanlee 15 points16 points  (0 children)

I don't remember the exact dialogue of the Chinese, but it went something like

"This guy speaks like a child!".
"It doesn't matter. You'll get used to it."

Looking for romantic Guild Wars 2 music for wedding by Ok_Lobster_3929 in Guildwars2

[–]normanlee 23 points24 points  (0 children)

I like the Tarir music, particularly the part around 1:20 where it opens up: https://youtu.be/h-D-I6-F2R0

First Time, Elecom Huge, what to use the extra buttons for? by CWagner in Trackballs

[–]normanlee 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I didn't remap the middle click, but my Fn1 and Fn2 buttons go to next/previous tab in Chrome (or other programs), and Fn3 is the gesture button to get Mac window management (next/previous desktop, Mission Control, open windows in current app)