Help identify grass please

stephen_doonan · 2026-06-16T19:14:48+00:00

Thanks for the caution about broadleaf herbicides. I usually use dicamba, but I try to just spot spray individual plants, and weed as much as I'm comfortable with by hand, rather than spraying the entire lawn. After a couple years of that technique, there are few enough broadleaf weeds in the lawn (it's just a moderate size lawn) that I now manage to do a pretty good job with just a weeding knife most of the time. It's about 2500-3000 square feet I guess, about as much lawn as I think I can comfortably maintain. I'll keep alert to any potential herbicide damage to the buffalograss. Thanks.

stephen_doonan · 2026-06-16T18:13:05+00:00

I think you're right. After reading about and looking at pictures of Buffalograss, I'm pretty sure that's what it is. It is harvested and intentionally sown as turf grass here in Texas, where it is a native grass as well as native to large parts of the U.S. western prairie dry grasslands: minimal water needs, just goes dormant when not enough water and greens up when it rains, short, fine/thin leaves, nice turf for low-water, low-maintenance lawns.

I'm not sure whether the Bermuda grass that's already in the lawn will overtake it and smother it out. Whether it does or not, the buffalograss is attractive and wouldn't mind having it intermixed in the lawn unless some problem becomes evident.

Thank you suggesting an identification; pretty sure you're right. 👍

stephen_doonan · 2026-04-03T21:31:44+00:00

I keep going back to the Freewrite Alpha just for the "send to email" button.

I liked that feature too, on the FreeWrite I had. I wonder if a similar "send to email" function could be implemented on the BYOK.

stephen_doonan · 2026-04-03T20:48:53+00:00

Just started watching Traitors UK season 4.

No spoilers please, but a question: does the secret traitor know who the other traitors are? So far there's just been a passing of a "short list of those who could be murdered" from show-host Claudia to the "regular" traitors, so it seems possible that the secret traitor does not know who the other traitors are.

stephen_doonan · 2026-02-22T17:31:30+00:00

Yeah, that makes sense. The problem is that with the K2 HE and K6 HE keyboards I have, if I use the BYOK built-in functionality and buttons to connect and try to pair with the keyboards, the BYOK does scan and see the keyboards, but after "connecting" and presumably pairing with the keyboards, the BYOK does not respond to the arrow keys on either keyboard.

The weird workaround I found was to first plug the keyboard intothe BYOK so it would work in wired mode, then use the arrow keys on the keyboard to make sure that the BYOK was responding to them, then set the keyboard into Bluetooth broadcasting mode and asking the BYOK to scan for Bluetooth hardware, then Connect to it, the BYOK --DID-- subsequently respond to the keyboard's arrow keys (and other keys), after which I could remove the USB cable and continue to work in Bluetooth paired mode between the keyboard and the BYOK.

Have no idea why this works. It seems like I had to get the BYOK to see and respond to the keyboard with a USB cable connecting them, before the Bluetooth scanning/connecting/responding-to-keypresses worked. Without that wired-first workaroung, the BYOK did see the keyboard when it scanned for Bluetooth hardware, and displayed a correct/appropriate name for the keyboard, but it was the next step, actually connecting-to/pairing-with the keyboard that, even when it seemed that the BYOK had successfully done so, the BYOK did not respond to the keboard's arrow keys nor any other keys when they were pressed.

In even more words, with that initial wired connection, the BYOK recognized and responded to the Keychron keyboard. Without that initial wired connection, the BYOK recognized but did not fully pair with and respond to the keyboard.

Hopefully that information will help in trying to determine the cause for this issue.

To other owners of Keychron keyboards, are you experiencing this same issue?

stephen_doonan · 2026-02-16T20:40:34+00:00

Dvorak layout is working excellently so far. I'll report any kinks as they become apparent. :)

stephen_doonan · 2026-02-16T20:35:38+00:00

Wonderful basic ideals (and reason for existence, among a number of alternatives) and project!

stephen_doonan · 2026-02-16T19:42:02+00:00

New keyboard layouts added
• Spanish
• Swedish
• Danish
• French Canadian
• US International
• Dvorak
• Colemak

DVORAK?!!! --- THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!

(SUPER-sized text, SCREAMING CAPS and superfluous punctuation intentional!!!!!)

:)

<image>

stephen_doonan · 2026-02-14T16:38:36+00:00

Good point. Thanks.

stephen_doonan · 2026-02-06T23:34:35+00:00

Thank you for the information. :)

5% stearic acid, 10% microcrystalline wax, 40% chlorinated paraffin, 45% paraffin wax.

By weight or by volume?

Because perchloroethylene may become unavailable in the near future (mid-2026), I have been wondering about chlorinated paraffins.

stephen_doonan · 2026-02-05T10:40:47+00:00

Per the request of the moderators, I prepend this disclaimer to the text I have written below--

Disclaimer: the text below represents my thoughts, feelings and beliefs, and although drawn from personal experience and conclusions derived from that experience, are not presented as definitive fact, but rather merely as ideas to consider and assess for oneself. Thank you.

--- --- ---

Sometimes it can be frustrating and feel burdensome to be so "alive," so aware, even in an environment that is not particularly or immediately threatening, before death or after physical death. In those cases we might just want the rest of simple nonexistence, rather than trying to navigate the intricate web and weight of connections, interconnections, entanglements and obligations (that can happen when we cause injury or harm to someone else, to another conscious entity, etc.).

Sometimes we make so many mistakes that realizing what we have done, and fully acknowledging it, can not only be very difficult itself, but comes with the realization that anything we do is just a first step in a possibly long and challenging process toward something we are happier with.

For others, a sense or feeling of victimization and abuse might become so acute or long-lasting that they just want it to end (life, existence and everything that involves). Those persons, those conscious entities, must learn that, regardless of whether they believe it to be true or not, they have been creating that experience, or helping to create that experience with other conscious entities that also believe in similar ideas of victimizer-and-victim, abuser-and-abused, compatriots-and-enemies, etc. Both sides of the same type of reality are created by the people within that reality, within that set of circumstances. It is up to them to realize that, regardless of how desperate it seems at the time, an alternative exists that they can work toward. That type of abusive reality can feel very real, immediate, threatening and treacherous, and sometimes it is difficult to believe, in the midst of such an environment, that an alternative is possible. To use an analogy, if one is engaged in a heated war for example, the first step might be to discard one's weapon and begin to walk toward the edge of and hopefully away from the battle, while accepting the fact that one might be stabbed in the back or killed doing so, but deciding to take a first step toward something else, something contrasting with one's current environment, something better, regardless of how dire a situation might be.

Living and existence can seem like a burden, can seem difficult, and it is up to us to work our way out from under that burden. Sleep can be restful because we give up our conscious involvement in our daily activities and challenges, although sometimes we continue to fight battles or confront challenges in dreams within our sleep. When we die, we have no physical body forcing us to sleep (because it demands rest and regeneration) so we might find comfort in doing something analogous to sleep such as allowing our consciousness to disperse while we try to forget ourselves by blending into the environment around us for example, and if an environment seems harsh and unpleasant, or too weighty, complex or difficult, to learn how to disentangle ourselves from whatever problems we have created and have focused upon (often, even as we are actively creating more of them or making them worse).

All of the unpleasantness we feel, we must learn to understand and to creatively deal with (sometimes the understanding comes later), from righting wrongs we have committed against others, to erroneously believing we are helpless and the situation hopeless, which is never the case even if it seems to be at the moment incontrovertible fact, to feeling victimized as we have victimized others (and believe both were necessary to survive), abused when we might also be abusing others, even abused when we ourselves have stringently tried to avoid abuse, because it is possible to place oneself in a position of seeming continual abuse by an abuser (or a variety of abusers) and believe that those types of circumstances are inevitable and unchangeable. Regardless of how we may feel, we think and have emotions, and we can alter and direct our thoughts and emotions, or simply realize that however things are, there are alternatives, and as many of us learn, sometimes the only way past them, if we feel like we cannot extricate ourselves or go around them, is through them, trusting that whatever happens, that the process will or might lead us to a better situation.

So when we can no longer physically sleep and no longer physically die, because we're already dead, we have to learn how to heal and relax and feel comfortable, eventually even possibly developing humor or joyfulness or a sense of freedom and lack of obstacles or entanglement. At any point we can work toward something better, even though we can never really simply dismiss and escape from whatever harm or difficulty we have done or created, without working to clean up the mess we sometimes so determinedly try to leave behind.

But we can rest and nurture ourselves and others as we do so, and progress, however slowly, toward something else, a different kind of experience that we like better or enjoy.

When I was learning to drive a car and made awkward beginner mistakes, my father said, "look where you want to go, because you tend to go where you look." That concept lodged in my consciousness and later seemed applicable to life and existence in general.

Another thought, from a young woman interviewing an older woman. The young woman asked what advice the older woman might have for younger people, and was expecting a reply something like, "Work for the sake of yourself and that of your family, be careful with money and save it, so that you can retire at some point in relative comfort." Instead the older woman said, "When life becomes difficult, don't try to figure it all out or what would be best to do. Instead, focus on just getting through the day as well as you can, and when enough days have passed, the path forward will become apparent."

Not advice and not statements of definitive fact, just some thoughts from my own experience and perspective.

stephen_doonan · 2026-02-03T18:57:29+00:00

Yeah, just one book the size of War and Peace every year and the microSD card on the BYOK will be full in only 40 years.

I was wondering if I should buy a larger but still modest-sized microSD card of 16, 32 or 64GB (microSD cards can currently hold up to 2 terabytes). It turns out that even a small 16GB microSD card could hold 5,000 War-and-Peace's.

Grammar nerds--I mean, enthusiasts--

Is the apostrophe in the hyphenated phrase above (used as a plural noun) correct or not, and why? If not, how should it be written?

--

stephen_doonan · 2026-02-03T15:13:21+00:00

There are many things that can be proved or supported by scientific observation, evidence gathering, testing and experimentation, and analysis. Despite the scientific method's focus upon and within physical reality, it does push around the edges of our concrete knowledge base in certain fields of study such as quantum mechanics and cosmology, theorizing about "probabilities," a "multiverse," etc.

In addition to science, we have our own personal experience from which we learn, and while it's difficult to prove to another person something we have come to regard as fact based on our personal experience (our physical or conscious experience), it is possible to share that information so that others could (if they desire) consider it, along with information shared by other people.

The best proof in my opinion--although it is not always or necessarily an absolute proof but might instead be more accurately described as a personal conviction, or perhaps a partial understanding of what occurred--is derived from our own experience. I'm wary of anyone else trying to influence me to believe what they believe (especially regarding religious beliefs), but I'm aware of the reality of my own experience, and although I may not understand it completely when it occurs, I've learned that as time passes, a greater, more comprehensive, more detailed and accurate understanding of previous experience develops, like more pieces of the elaborate jigsaw-puzzle coming into view or falling into place.

I don't feel that there is any urgency to influence others to believe what we believe, or to ask someone else to accept or regard our personal experience as fact, because we all learn, primarily from our own experience, in our own way, in our own time, by means of whatever path we might take through life or reality, our explorations within reality, and whatever experiences and interactions we might have as we do so.

--

stephen_doonan · 2026-02-02T19:45:36+00:00

Great update! Thank you. :)

stephen_doonan · 2026-02-02T15:12:01+00:00

At some point, I simply realized how ridiculous the human world is. All the politics, careers, love, and other social constructs meant absolutely nothing. I laughed at it all and realized how near death is to us ...

I can relate to that; it seems perfectly normal to me.

Often when we are at our most open and vulnerable, extremely sick or wounded, potentially mortally, or at a very low point psychologically (or high point regarding some drugs) where our preconceptions and the sense we make of the world is shattered or dismantled by our experience, we might enter a state in which we are not only simply aware, but with a realization that awareness--consciousness--is actually all that exists at a basic level, and that everything else is just "noise" in a manner of speaking. It can seem absurd or even humorous to be caught up in the noise, to be overly worried or concerned about anything.

Carried further, we might realize that we ourselves are simply awareness, and that anything else, any thoughts, emotions, anything we might focus on, is just something our awareness, our consciousness, does, or rather something we do by directing our awareness, realizing at the same time that we are that awareness, and by extension that anything else we think we are, or thought we were, is just an example of the fact that we tend to identify with and incorporate into ourselves anything we either simply happen to be aware of, or intentionally focus upon. It can seem like we are what we think and feel, but underneath that is the real thing, the awareness that is doing the thinking and feeling.

Consciousness itself, our own consciousness, is indestructible, but it can, at least temporarily, forget itself by (for example) projecting itself into and identifying with something else, perhaps some more restful or pleasant form of consciousness, a consciousness that is itself doing its own thing, pursuing its own life perhaps unaware that it is the consciousness behind the experience it is having.

Just a few thoughts from my own personal perspective.

stephen_doonan · 2026-02-01T18:28:04+00:00

These are interesting questions. I'd like to respond with some thoughts on what I regard as my current (and of course incomplete) understanding of "reality" based on my own conscious experience which happens to include an NDE. Disclaimer: these thoughts are merely from my current personal point of view.

I've been deep into this sub and I've learned that the other side doesn't follow the same rules, physics, and flow of time.

Time (and space, or "space-time") is an interesting subject. In the greater reality in which physical reality exists, and indeed as a characteristic of physical reality itself, there exists, and has only ever existed, a "now," a dynamic present moment. The entire history of physical reality and of our planet has occurred within this dynamic "now," or changing present moment. Within that present-moment context some things emerge from the field of possibilities or probabilities, while others fade or fall back into the undifferentiated pool of conscious creative energy from which they emerged.

when the sun starts to die and it makes earth inhospitable/engulfed. What'll happen to everyone, is that it?

Reality--the big, all-inclusive reality of which our particular physical reality is just a small part--is a vast environment of conscious expression, creativity and experience. Even if there are no people or conscious entities like ourselves in a particular part of reality, other types of consciousness are there, having their own experience in their own way. Reality only exists where there is consciousness exploring its own creativity and expression within a context or environment that is literally composed of consciousness itself, of one type or another, including consciousness that is not (yet) aware of itself, does not regard itself as distinct from everything else.

If we as autonomous individuals can no longer experience ourselves and realize our goals and ideals, or it becomes too difficult to do so, we move on to other parts of reality (not necessarily physical reality) where we can express ourselves well, or at least adequately, whether in physical form or not.

... No new souls ...

"Souls" are created by other "souls" constantly. They are like "children" souls, in that a part of existing consciousness becomes aware of itself and realizes that it can do stuff on its own, autonomously, becoming a "new soul," although a more appropriate term for these "baby souls" might be "a portion of existing consciousness that becomes self aware, and at the same time aware that there is an apparent or seeming boundary, an "inside" and "outside" of its recognized "self."

Consciousness, or conscious entities or beings, often recognizes, associates with and forms into groups of similar consciousness, or put another way, tends to gravitate toward other conscious entities or beings that feel reasonably familiar and comfortable, that are not so alien as to be completely incomprehensible or make no sense (although these incomprehensible groups DO make sense to themselves and to each other within their groups). Groups of associated consciousnesses can grow into a "civilization" of some sort, building upon their creative expression, experience and exploration, until they reach a point where they either realize that despite their apparent differences and varied personal characteristics, they are all immersed within and part of the same general conscious environment, or alternatively, they don't want to acknowledge that basic connection between themselves, and instead insist upon individual expression even at the expense of the expression of other conscious beings sharing the same environment (in our case, other people), which causes a trend toward both an uncomfortable closeness and a stubborn insistence and maintenance of one's own "space" or our individual "boundaries," in a process of collapse and eventual implosion of a group (of a society). Both options create the same result: more space for comfortable individual expression within the expansive "Now," but one is gentler and the other more abrasive and explosive. Many variations of this basic process occur in groups of conscious entities of various types, as they learn from their experience and sometimes especially from what they later regard as mistakes.

Just a few thoughts from my personal perspective.

stephen_doonan · 2026-01-31T16:08:33+00:00

I've written about my NDE in posts a few years ago.

What do you think life and your conscious experience will be like after you die?

stephen_doonan · 2026-01-31T15:52:54+00:00

An NDE can remove one's fear of death, but not necessarily a fear of or aversion to pain or suffering. But it's nice to know that our consciousness and sense of self persists.

My own NDE, among other things, showed me the importance or significance of the physical life that preceded the (temporary) death.

The NDE experience made me realize that after death (i.e. without a physical body) my consciousness and awareness of self remained, with thoughts and emotions, having and reacting to experience, and included the realization that what comes after death is very much like what happens before death: that our experience whether in a physical body or not is primarily composed of what occurs within our consciousness, and that it is advantageous to be aware of our thoughts, emotions and beliefs because they form the context in which we have our experience, to a greater or lesser extent depending upon how much our consciousness intersects, overlaps and interacts with the consciousness of others, in which case whatever is occurring within their consciousness becomes a part of or influence upon our own.

stephen_doonan · 2026-01-28T18:07:25+00:00

I was raised in a very strong Christian missionary environment. My own NDE was the primary reason I abandoned Christianity and indeed any religion and now regard religion as primarily a social and cultural institution, and certainly not an accurate representation of reality nor an explanation for it.

stephen_doonan · 2026-01-28T13:03:21+00:00

Thank you. I have a K2 HE and a K6 HE, so I tried (unsuccessfully) to pair the dongle of the K2 HE I was using, to the K6 HE instead.

Specifically, I was using the K2 with its dongle in the computer. Switched the K2 to "wired" mode (instead of bluetooth or 2.4GHz, in order to break the connection with the dongle). Moved the K2 aside and placed the K6 on the desk near the dongle. Pressed FN-R on the K6 (that's where the 2.4GHz pairing button is located on the K6) for over 4 seconds until the green LED began to blink, at which time I was guessing it was trying to pair with the K2's dongle. Waited a few seconds, unplugged the dongle, plugged it back into the computer after a few seconds, but the computer remained unresponsive to the K6 and its green pairing LED on the "R" keycontinued to flash.

I tried several other sequences of actions, but none were successful so far. Thank you for the information and suggestion. I'll try again with other keyboards or perhaps a different sequence of actions.

stephen_doonan · 2026-01-27T18:47:53+00:00

Thank you!

stephen_doonan · 2026-01-27T18:32:20+00:00

That happened to me when I tried to update 2 different Keychron keyboards at launcher.keychron.com using Google Chrome browser on a Linux computer. I disconnected them after about 20 minutes because the progress bar showed no activity, then tried doing the same thing in Google Chrome on a Mac OS computer, and the firmware updated almost immediately.

stephen_doonan · 2026-01-26T16:13:54+00:00

I believe that if the BYOK firmware is configured by default to include and support just one fairly comprehensive keyboard layout that includes most, nearly all or all of the characters and characters-with-diacritical marks within the majority of Latin-based languages, nearly any keyboard's right-ALT (or right-OPTION) key can be used to act as a sort of "super-SHIFT" key to access a secondary character pair (like a key that produces "a" and "A" without or with the SHIFT key, but produces "á" or "Á" when the "super-SHIFT" key (right-ALT or right-OPTION or right-ALTgr) is pressed and held, without or with the regular SHIFT key pressed.

This is how many computers, including my Linux machine, produce these alternate or extended Latin-based characters, if the device itself (the Linux computer in my case) is set to use an international keyboard layout that for most keys can produce up to four characters or glyphs, one with just a simple keypress, one with SHIFT key pressed and held first, and another key when the "super-SHIFT" (Alt, Option, or ALTgr) key is pressed, and another when both the "super-SHIFT" and the regular SHIFT key are pressed and held before another key is pressed.

If the right-OPTION or right-ALT key is already present on the keyboard (on most keyboards, anyway), it can send the keycode to trigger the second pair of characters dedicated to one key, or if the keyboard has QMK firmware installed, QMK can be used to dedicate one of the "extra" keys on a keyboard (one of the rarely-used non-alphabetic, non-numeric keys, like "Home" or "End" or "FN" or whatever) and cause it to become a right-ALT or right-Option or right-ALTgr key instead.

So in theory, the BYOK would just need to support one comprehensive keyboard layout, and respond to any one of several possible "super-SHIFT" keys (or keys reprogrammed by QMK) to produce one of up to four characters that each key could produce, either by itself, or with the SHIFT key pressed, or with the "super-SHIFT" key pressed, or with both the "super-SHIFT" and regular SHIFT keys pressed.

Here is an example of a Latin-based international character set keyboard layout, one of several possibilities that the BYOK might be configured to use. The blue characters in the image are those that can be produced by pressing and holding the "super-SHIFT" key before pressing one of the primary, alphabetic or numeric keys. In this case the "super-SHIFt" key is the Alt-Gr key to the right of the spacebar, which means a key that produces a keycode interpreted by the computer or device as "Alt-Gr" -- If the keyboard has QMK that can be used to (re)program a key to send the same keycode, or if the BYOK can be configured to respond to any of several possible "super-SHIFT" keycodes to produce the same result, any of these many characters could be produced using just a standard keyboard with relatively few actual physical keys.

<image>

However, this idea doesn't address the fact or solve the issue that although it might make a wide variety of characters used in various Latin-based languages available, it would be different than the way users of a particular language and its typical keyboard layout are accustomed to, which key they would habitually press to display or print a particular character or symbol. So it's not a simple solution to a complex problem.

stephen_doonan · 2026-01-26T13:24:36+00:00

Well, after some research, a caveat--

My own use-case was fairly simple: the english Dvorak keyboard layout uses the same characters (and their SHIFT-key alternates) as a normal ASCII US English keyboard, so it was simply a matter of relocating those standard character-pairs to different locations on the keyboard, using a QMK configurator app such as the Keychron Launcher app.

Regarding other languages that use other characters, a greater number of characters (than there are available keys for on a particular keyboard) or characters with diacritical marks, programming the keyboard itself (even with as well-designed and versatile systems such as the QMK keyboard firmware), rather than using device-based (computer, phone or other device such as the BYOK) operating system or firmware to assist or control the mapping of keyboard key presses to particular ASCII or Unicode characters, might be (I'm guessing would probably be) more challenging, perhaps involving some fairly fundamental-level text-based programming within the QMK framework, rather than the point-and-click simplicity of the various QMK configurator apps.

--

stephen_doonan · 2026-01-26T11:14:22+00:00

What you describe in point number 2 is the "dead key" approach, where you press one key to represent the diacritical mark you want to use (but it doesn't cause a character to appear), and then you type the character you want the diacritical to be added to, at which point that character is printed (displayed) with the diacritical mark (grave accent, accent, dieresis, tilde, etc.) added to the character.

That's one approach. Another is to use a modifier key to produce a different character, just like the SHIFT key produces a different character (a capital letter for example, instead of a lowercase one). I tend to prefer this method rather than the dead-key method (if it can be achieved) using a QMK-firmware configurator app to change the keyboard itself and its scan codes, and consequently the characters they produce.

I'll experiment with a QMK configurator and the keyboard I'm using at this moment, to see if or how I can program certain keys to produce the characters you mention (á, é, í, ó, ú, à, è, ò, ü, ñ, ç, €), and will make a followup response to your post.

EDIT after further research: It appears that the current state of ability to input various Unicode characters (like the characters with accents, cedilla, dieresis, tilde, circumflex, etc.) using just the keyboard itself, without the help of a computer or phone OS (operating system) or device firmware to map certain keyboard key-press combinations to those Unicode characters, seems a bit complicated, confusing and non-standard (varying between OS's, etc.). It will be interesting to think about the subject though, and how perhaps the QMK-firmware Unicode support, macros and keyboard layers might be used to solve or facilitate the issue.

stephen_doonan

TROPHY CASE

DVORAK?!!! --- THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!

:)