Yeah, of all the Tudor neologisms that didn’t really stick, ‘counterblaste’ is one of the more regrettable ones.

To be fair, James VI/I was a deeply, deeply weird dude, but he was ahead of the curve on second-hand smoke.

Definitely before they knew, but not before some suspected.

IIRC for Single vs Double the difference is they will enforce the “form of a question” part. In either round, they will let you mangle the pronunciation as long as you don’t insert or omit phonemes beyond what could reasonably be the result of only having read the word.

So “Alexander Dumb-ass” would be fine, though you’d likely get some gentle chiding, or maybe even have to refilm the question (“portions of the show not affecting the outside have been edited”) afterwards, but if you were expanding NASA and left the ‘s’ off the end of “Aeronautics,” it would be wrong.

He’s our little chonk. Was on “the list” at a city shelter when a rescue got him. He’d been a stray for quite a while, to judge by scars, weight, and polished footpads. Now his heeler stubborness comes out in determinedly refusing to do anything that isn’t relaxing. Our lifestyle is compatible, so he mostly only has to leave when he goes to the vet. To see him come out of shell and start feeling entitled to simply being loved has been very gratifying, though.

LOL, y’all are makin’ me sad. Stetson is alive and well, and still the same delightful curmudgeon he’s always been. If anything, the farther he gets from being a stray on city-shelter death row, the more relaxed and puppyish he gets.

Hmm, very possible, though I didn’t notice it the last time I was moving the print head by hand. I’ll let it sit and try again. The room also gets a bit dusty and the printer sits for a while between jobs, so I’ll make a point of cleaning the belt and rails before the next print.

Gonna have to upgrade one of these days to something enclosed and lower-maintenance, but I’m cheap with broad-ranging interests. I enjoy tinkering enough that, up to certain limits, working with less expensive “time-sink” hobby gear doesn’t bother me if it means I get to try something new.

Or rather, I’ve convinced myself that I do. :-)

My printer shares my home office with our bird (PLA printing only, and that not particularly often), and while I have an air cleaner that keeps it from being FULLY bird-dander central, dust is an issue for objects that sit. I’ll brush off the rail and belt particularly well for my next print.

Thanks. It seems like it’s fairly new, and the next print I did was similar in size and shape and with the same roll of PLA, but it has a less pronounced effect, though I can still feel it. I’ll check and see if any similar sized prints from farther back exhibit it, but I could very easily imagine something getting knocked a bit when I was last messing around with it. I had a roll of “Eco” filament that was giving me no end of trouble and eventually required a hot pull and new nozzle, and I changed out the plastic extruder for an aluminum one while I was doing stuff.

I understand that the trail divides here and one can either float the river or take the Barlow Toll Road.

I am pretty happy without a miter saw but with a decent table saw sled. I really like having a drill press, though. I’d also figure out some way to at least get a part-time router table; For most operations, I just like that workflow better than holding the tool.

I’d also say a mortising machine is very much a luxury, especially if you do get a drill press and a nice selection of chisels. Speaking of chisels, I assume you have a mallet you like?

It’s still a quirky old beast, but it’s much improved over the versions from years ago. They finally feel good enough about the assembly workbench, UI improvements, and topo-naming mitigation to release version 1.0.

Even if you’re not a veteran, Solidworks for makers is $48/year, or $38/year through “Titans of CNC.” You get a grace zone of up to $2000 in profit before they expect you to get a non-hobbyist license, which unfortunately is quite pricy.

For comparison, Fusion only gives you $1000 of revenue, but the cheapest commercial license for them is much cheaper; basically, they just want you to buy the license once you pull in enough sales to cut them their check. OnShape has no similar scheme, forces free users’ designs to be open, AND has a clumsily worded EULA that raises a distinct possibility that other users can take your stuff and sell it, but you can’t. Solid Edge is a simple “non-commercial use” for the free tier. Alibre doesn’t do free at all, but offers a very cheap version that’s limited by features instead of license rights.

Alibre is nice. I find the workflow pretty sensible, even if (like Solid Edge) it feels like there are sometimes extra clicks. The Atom version is super cheap and still has a proper parametric history, but is nerfed in ways that might feel limiting ( e.g. no Boolean operations, which makes mold-making and some other complex work quite difficult). When I was getting frustrated with FreeCAD, I was starting to look around at subscriptions and realized if I just waited for a sale on a permanent license for their Professional version (I also did payments), it would become a better deal than Fusion or Shapr3D within about two years.

Before that I was using a copy of “BeckerCAD 14 3D Pro” that I got from its German distributor for EUR20 with some reasonable success, but in addition to some truly aged and awkward camera controls and design choices, it also lacks a parametric history.

Best I can tell, Alibre does NOT support 3mf. It supports STL, STEP, and some other single part formats though.

It’s, oh jeez, six months old by now, but back in the spring I went through all the ones I’d tried. I ultimately settled on the middle tier for Alibre, with a permanent license. Pricier than Atom, to be sure, but feature complete for any needs I can imagine for myself as an utter amateur.

https://a.lemmy.world/lemmy.world/post/13801439

I don’t know why Solid Edge doesn’t get more love. IMO it’s comparable to Fusion for basic part design, and it’s fully local.

I actually got a license for Alibre, so I’ll keep using that until my hair finishes turning gray.

I was running into some errors with the FreeCAD Appimage in Linux, but the Windows version is running fairly smoothly, and it’s finally getting enough helper prompts and heuristic interface things to be less unwieldy, but it’s still FreeCAD. For instance, I’m still trying to find the easiest of three or four kludgey ways to project a face onto a sketch, and none of them are as easy as the purpose-built tool for that in Alibre.

One minor cultural artifact of this general idea:

Pease porridge hot, Pease porridge cold, Pease porridge in the pot, nine days old.

The only thing I’ll say there is that with burgers you can sometimes get out over your skis and take a tumble. A lot of sit-down places think some giant watery meatball is a good burger. While photogenic, it is not necessarily good, and a short-order smashed patty or (smashed patties) generally taste a lot better and are easier to eat.

The best burgers are almost certainly not fast food burgers, but the worst burgers aren’t either.

Like I said. Perfect!

That one tends to prefer under the bed or behind the recliner, anywhere he can have something between him and the mean ol’ world, so seeing him relax in the sunbeam is nice.

I had to look it up too, but it was Victoria. She was great as a celebrity wrangler to make sure they understood the vibe and would roll with the weirdness. I’m not entirely sure we need a Victoria just yet either, LOL.