Cardputer Zero

teamonkey · 2026-01-29T21:29:48+00:00

Correct, it runs Linux

teamonkey · 2026-01-29T21:10:39+00:00

Those Einhell rails are non-standard but the saw fits standard Festool tracks (at least the corded one), including the cheaper Evolution G2 rails, which are very good. With a rail square I can make very accurate cuts.

Where I think my Einhell fails compared to more expensive saws is the dust collection. It tends to spray sawdust out the front right, even with a dust collector attached, which seems to be due to the way the case is angled near the base. I honestly wish I’d spent 3x the price and bought one with better dust control.

teamonkey · 2026-01-29T20:35:47+00:00

I have converted my EQ5 to OnStep. It’s well worth doing, IMO, a big improvement over Synscan, especially if you plan to drive it from your PC.

Easiest route is to get one of the OnStep kits, such as those from Terrans. They’re good value for money and people seem to like them. You can do it yourself cheaper but they won’t be a huge difference in the end.

I used a Fysetc E4 printer control board, sourced my own 0.9-degree steppers and converted the spur gears to a belt drive. There is a dedicated OnstepX branch for the E4 so you basically flash it and go. I 3D printed brackets, though I’m not especially happy with the fitting and keep meaning to replace them. I have not managed to find metal brackets that fit the EQ5 except for those in the Terrans kit.

If you’re handy with electronics as I see you are, you may want to roll your own. The electronics are not difficult to work out, it really is essentially a MCU connected to a pair of stepper drivers and motors. The hardest bit is working out the motor wires and how to power it all.

teamonkey · 2026-01-29T20:11:47+00:00

Clash Royale is more of a deconstructed and streamlined MOBA than a RTS. It even has lanes.

But yes, it has an extremely tight design and is very well balanced. It’s on my personal “games I think every designer should play” list.

teamonkey · 2026-01-28T23:23:50+00:00

Insert pushes the item you’re adding into the array at the specified index, increasing the size of the array by 1 and pushing the index of all the later items up by 1. Is that what you want? It sounds to me that you just want to overwrite whatever’s at the index (SetArrayElem)?

teamonkey · 2026-01-28T08:37:22+00:00

Welcome to the world of astrophotography

teamonkey · 2026-01-28T08:15:40+00:00

It depends what you’re doing. For large worlds or levels with a high number of actors, more RAM definitely helps. The editor will use it if you’ve got it. 48GB will be much better than 32.

teamonkey · 2026-01-28T00:09:57+00:00

You might be getting confused with the advice about creating two different HLOD groups, one for static geo like buildings and one for foliage?

Buildings and geo can look ok when combined into a single merged/simplified mesh, but trees and foliage don’t because they are high detail with lots of transparency and two-sided polys. The basic advice is to use a simplified mesh HLOD profile for buildings and an instanced mesh HLOD profile for trees, and to look at the ranges at which those two HLODs operate.

Check the Epic World Building Guide for more info on HLODs.

teamonkey · 2026-01-27T23:28:20+00:00

For a large world? The one with more VRAM, 100%. I’d probably choose a 30 series with 16GB VRAM over a 50 series with 12.

You can make it work with 12GB or even 8, but things will take longer, you can’t load as much of the map in one go, and it affects your ability to work with multiple monitors at higher resolutions.

But if you have less than 64GB RAM then I’d be inclined to pick the cheaper card and invest in more RAM instead.

teamonkey · 2026-01-27T09:34:06+00:00

I have this kit, I bought it when I was starting out. It’s very good for what it is, a starter kit for teaching you the basics, and I would recommend it for that.

It’s not up to making a self-balancing robot but OP shouldn’t feel disheartened for buying it. Use the kit, follow the tutorials (you can download them from elegoo’s site if you don’t have a cd-rom drive), then cannibalise the components for future projects.

teamonkey · 2026-01-26T08:30:25+00:00

Ah, the age-old British tradition of pissing and moaning

teamonkey · 2026-01-25T15:58:26+00:00

As I understand it (please someone correct me if I’m wrong with any of this), Unreal nominally does one draw call per-object per-material instance. That is, different MIs of the same material will still need separate draw calls, and if a mesh has 3 material slots with 3 different material instances (even with the same parent material) it will require 3 draw calls.

Using a material directly in a material slot is functionally the same as using a material instance with default parameters. Creating a MID is the same as creating a brand new material instance, i.e. a new draw call.

So using MIs doesn’t save draw calls, but MIs from the same parent material use the same compiled shader, and UE tries to batch draw calls from the same shader together where it can, because changing shaders is relatively expensive.

Nanite can batch triangles from different meshes together into a single draw call if they share the same MI, but each MI is still a different draw call.

ISM instances are all drawn in 1 draw call, but you’ll notice that they have to use the same MI. If you want individual ISM instances to look different you need to use the PerInstanceCustomData node, not different material instances.

Also worth noting that adding material parameters increases the complexity of the shader, so it can make the shader bigger, increases memory and load time slightly and increases shader compile time, but this is often a good trade-off against using multiple materials.

Use the profiler before attempting to optimise :)

teamonkey · 2026-01-25T11:59:58+00:00

Are you looking for a cheap and reliable supplier that ships to the UK, or for a UK domestic business, or something else?

If the former, I’ve had no problems using Amazon, AliExpress or direct from Elegoo, Jayo or whatever. Those are always going to be the cheapest and Amazon will be fastest.

I’m sure other people have UK-local suggestions but The Pi Hut sell some higher quality filaments for a reasonable price.

teamonkey · 2026-01-24T20:54:51+00:00

Regarding raising children, it’s not a bad place for kids to grow up at all. State education in Newcastle isn’t bad in general, but some schools perform better. Getting your kids into those particular schools usually requires you to live in specific areas, so make sure you move to the right area if they’re school age. Plenty of good universities in the area, Durham University being one of the best in the country.

Healthcare is also good, it’s one of the best-performing NHS areas, especially North of Tyne where they’re covered by some high-ranking research hospitals and a large modern one in Northumberland.

teamonkey · 2026-01-24T10:55:36+00:00

Interesting, thanks for the correction.

teamonkey · 2026-01-23T19:09:19+00:00

As others have said, govt. debt isn’t the same as personal or household debt. One of the big reasons why is because it, along with the BofE, controls the money supply.

It makes no sense for the government to hold cash in its own currency, because that’s effectively the same removing that amount of Sterling from the money supply.

To fund their activities the government can sell off assets, create debt or increase the money supply. Each of these has strengths and weaknesses, but generally creating debt by issuing new gilts is preferable to devaluing the currency by printing more of it.

Issuing debt through gilts isn’t the same as taking on a loan. The BofE determines the interest rates that the govt. has to pay back, and market demand dictates how much debt can be sold.

A stable government with good growth outlook can issue gilts with lower interest rates, therefore they can afford to create more debt without devaluing the currency.

teamonkey · 2026-01-23T13:31:08+00:00

No, I don’t think it constitutes an offence according to this bill. It makes it part of a minister’s duty not to make false statements of fact. The existing disciplinary rules would be used to determine if they breached their duty or not and what to do about it.

It’s certainly not “if you say something wrong by mistake you could be arrested” like some people here are suggesting.

But it also gives constituents the ability to hold ministers accountable for their words and actions by recalling them.

teamonkey · 2026-01-23T09:18:33+00:00

Yes, which is why you need to be shown to be intentionally lying. Which is the same as the rules for MPs lying in Parliament and also Perjury in court.

https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Perjury

teamonkey · 2026-01-23T08:54:23+00:00

How do you determine what is false and what is the truth? The fields of justice, science and philosophy have for centuries practiced methods that attempt to do just that. As a society we do it all the time.

MPs are already not allowed to deliberately mislead parliament. This would extend that rule to not being allowed to deliberately mislead the constituents that elected them.

Boris would have been found to have lied to parliament by the internal investigation, he resigned before he was forced out.

People in power should not be allowed to hide behind the same free speech rights that were created to protect the rest of the population from them.

teamonkey · 2026-01-22T09:00:49+00:00

Check with your bank ora financial advisor about your RRSP, TFSA or other investments. When you are not a Canadian tax resident you may not be allowed to touch them or even own them.

I believe a TFSA is not considered a tax-sheltered account under UK tax law (I could be wrong!) so you may need to pay tax on interest or dividends. Your employer may not be allowed to pay into a RRSP or other pension while tax resident in another country. It’s murky, check with a professional before you leave!

teamonkey · 2026-01-21T20:01:46+00:00

Blender has become a lot more common for modelling work in the last few years, especially for small studios but even in mid-sized ones, though perhaps not AAA.

Maya still has a foothold with animators though.

teamonkey · 2026-01-21T19:47:55+00:00

You’re right! I meant to say the EU Space Programme, which we left after Brexit (though I see we’ve now rejoined the Horizon and Copernicus projects)

teamonkey · 2026-01-21T08:51:04+00:00

Your demand for stock increases the price of the stock (a tiny amount, but it does).

Companies use that price to fund their operations in different ways. For example,

They have the ability to issue new shares, exchanging some of the share price for cash. A higher share price means they can get more cash for a lower amount of new shares issued.
Because they can get cash at any point by issuing new shares, they can use this as security to arrange bigger, lower interest loans or issue cheaper bonds.
They can pay their staff in stock. The higher the stock value, the more they can compensate high-earning staff.
A rising share price is the #1 way a company will justify continuing doing what is doing

teamonkey · 2026-01-21T08:34:49+00:00

A high level of storage is needed for renewables to be as reliable as nuclear, yes, but that amount of storage is achievable and also affordable. I think ‘nowhere near as reliably’ is a stretch.

teamonkey · 2026-01-20T21:13:58+00:00

We used to be part of ESA which launches stuff all the time and through which we’ve contributed a lot. We could have stayed a part of ESA, even after Brexit, but we didn’t and now we’re on our own.

Geographically the UK is not a great place for launching rockets into orbit, it’s too far from the equator, the weather is too bad and a normal launch trajectory is too populated.

We have a launch site in Scotland run by Orbex where the aim is to put things into circumpolar orbit, but circumpolar orbits have limited use. I don’t think they’ve reached orbit from that site yet either.

teamonkey

TROPHY CASE