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content/blog/2024-04-07-hello-world.html

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+<p>+++
+title = &quot;Doing something with this domain!&quot;
+date = 2024-04-07T19:34:53Z
++++
+I've moved this website to use <a href="http://cobalt-org.github.io/">cobalt</a>! Hopefully I should be making posts here, too. ^^</p>
+<p>I have a few ideas for posts here, including talking about starting with using the RTL-SDR v4 and my experiences so far with the Framework 13 laptop.</p>

content/blog/2024-04-07-the-first-month-of-life-with-the-framework-13.html

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+<p>+++
+title = &quot;The first month of life with the Framework 13&quot;
+date = 2024-04-07T19:34:59Z
++++</p>
+<h2>Preparation</h2>
+<p>I was starting to feel as if I needed to upgrade away from the Lenovo Thinkpad x270 because of performance issues and I had the money laying around to finally perform that upgrade. I settled upon the Framework 13 for ideological reasons, especially wanting a laptop that could last me a long time and be upgraded as I see fit, through generational improvements of the mainboard.</p>
+<p>I ordered the Ryzen 5 7640U version without <abbr title="random-access memory">RAM</abbr> or an <abbr title="non-volatile memory express">NVMe</abbr> <abbr title="solid state drive">SSD</abbr>, so I was going to have to source myself both elsewhere. With help from a dear friend, I picked out the Kingston Fury Impact 32GB (2x16GB) 5600MHz DDR5 SODIMM set alongside the Crucial P5 Plus 1TB (which, I should've got a fancier larger SSD instead of, much as the dear friend suggested). These were ordered from Canada Computers with the help of the wife, so they took like a week to arrive (because coast-to-coast...).</p>
+<p>I ordered 4 expansion cards with my Framework, 3 USB C expansion cards and 1 USB A expansion card. I am now aware that the USB A expansion card causes a constant power draw due to oversights in the design. I will eventually attempt to get another expansion card of some other variety, I already have a few ideas. I may even make my own!</p>
+<p>I ordered an intel BE200 a while before this, intending to upgrade the Framework 13 to have WiFi 7, as at the same time I was upgrading the home WiFi to a Ubiquiti U7 Pro.</p>
+<h2>Day 1!</h2>
+<p>Upon receiving the memory and storage, I prepared to install them on stream. Things went okay at first during the installation, the procedure for putting together the laptop is very straightforward, I would call it fun! The first thing I did was to install the WiFi 7 card, then the RAM and NVMe SSD. Upon attempting to boot it for the first time, it simply did not boot.</p>
+<p>After troubleshooting for an hour, I discovered that the Intel BE200 is not in fact compatible with non-Intel platforms. I don't actually have any modern Intel platforms worth using this modem with, so it has effectively become e-waste to me. That really sucks, thanks Intel.</p>
+<p>I set it up with a 75% charge limit to ensure longevity of the battery in the UEFI settings.</p>
+<p>With this, my setup began; I installed NixOS with bcachefs for the root filesystem with <abbr title="full disk encryption">FDE</abbr>.</p>
+<h2>Week 1</h2>
+<p>I decided to start modernizing my setup, so I moved to Hyprland initially as my window manager. I eventually got set up on that for a while, but I realised that Wayland has no way for taking ICC color profiles because the standard for such is currently being worked on as of 2024-04-07. I got settled in with the laptop and began to thoroughly enjoy the experience; 3:2 is probably my favourite aspect ratio for a display.</p>
+<h2>Week 2</h2>
+<p>From here, I moved to GNOME 3 and at the time I was working on this setup, colord was broken due to an update to 1.4.7. I eventually decided to move back to Hyprland after a quick jaunt over to KDE in the process. I had to update konawall-py to have GNOME 3 and KDE support in the process of these moves.</p>
+<p>I got secure boot working with the help of <a href="https://github.com/nix-community/lanzaboote">lanzaboote</a>.</p>
+<h2>Week 3</h2>
+<p>I continued using the laptop during this period, but did not contribute to my infrastructure project. I spent the weekend in the United States of America and used it during then, too. I loaded games up on Steam and Lutris for potential play while there; Higurashi Chapter 1 seemed to work a charm with Proton, but not natively. Presumably this is due to missing dependencies in the FHS environment; I did not feel like investigating.</p>
+<p>During this time period, however, I did put stickers on the laptop! ^~^</p>
+<p><a href="framework-laptop.jpg"><img src="framework-laptop.jpg" alt="The laptop covered in stickers" /></a></p>
+<h2>Week 4</h2>
+<p>Instead of actually fixing the systemd service with the 3 lines required to set the state directory, the maintainer eventually opted to downgrade to 1.4.6. This was good enough for me, and now I can have moderately accurate colours.</p>
+<p>I spent significant time loading up on old games and decided to move over to XFCE with Chicago95, just to add to the retro feels. To do so, I had to update konawall-py to have XFCE support.</p>
+<p>Here's a picture of the results of my customizing:</p>
+<p><a href="framework-desktop.png"><img src="framework-desktop.png" alt="A picture of the desktop of my Framework, running XFCE with Chicago95 and konawall-py running." /></a>
+Here's the lists of games I have installed, as pictures of the applications:</p>
+<p><a href="framework-lutris.png"><img src="framework-lutris.png" alt="A list of games installed via Lutris" /></a></p>
+<p><a href="framework-steam.png"><img src="framework-steam.png" alt="A list of games installed via Steam" /></a></p>
+<p>This brings us practically up to the current day, 2 days before a month has passed since the laptop was made operational. I have felt no buyer's remorse, no bad feelings about this laptop whatsoever.</p>

content/blog/2024-09-14-2-months-into-my-first-3d-printer.html

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+<p>+++
+title = &quot;2 months into my first 3D printer&quot;
+date = 2024-09-14T19:26:06Z
++++
+<a href="printer.jpg"><img src="printer.jpg" alt="Ender 3 V3 SE" /></a></p>
+<h2>Pre-arrival</h2>
+<p>I ordered the Ender 3 V3 SE while it was on sale at C$229 on 2024-06-29 from Creality directly. It arrived a week later on 2024-07-05.</p>
+<h2>Problems start - extruder and build plate</h2>
+<p>Upon receiving it, I couldn't get anything to come out of the nozzle and this was ultimately a combination of bad instruction manual and improper seating of the ribbon cable connector that attaches to the extruder body. The last pin on it was the extruder gear, and it was not attached properly.</p>
+<p>Wondering if the problem was z-level offsets, I tried to level the bed and instead drove the nozzle right through it. I replaced the first bed with a dual-sided PEI and PET bed, one with a fancy carbon fibre pattern on one side.
+It took two days for my fiancée to notice the actual problem to its full extent and rectify it.</p>
+<h2>Slicer - Cura</h2>
+<p>We had started using Cura when we received the printer, via nixpkgs. We moved to using the latest version on our Windows desktop to get the required profile changes for our printer. Ultimately, I disliked Cura, but its use did not change for months.</p>
+<h2>Problems continue - screen detatchment</h2>
+<p>A week or so into ownership of the printer, the heat-set inserts that connect the screen attachment to the body of the printer itself came out, freeing the screen from the actual body itself without having a heat-set insert attachment for your soldering iron from which to fix them.</p>
+<p>I 3D-printed a <a href="https://www.printables.com/model/575623">standalone mount</a> that let me relocate the screen away from the printer body itself.</p>
+<h2>Despite the problems, still enjoyable!</h2>
+<p>I had started getting into gridfinity and multiboard during the whole process of becoming accustomed to my printer. I had been watching Zack Freedman for a very long time prior to my purchase. I was mostly using PLA and I hadn't investigated getting bed levelling good enough to actually print PETG onto the bed itself.</p>
+<p>The stock firmware seemed to do a terrible job at actually making sure the bed itself was level.</p>
+<p>We had purchased high-speed 0.6mm and 0.4mm nozzles to be able to extrude filament faster for certain kinds of print. 0.6mm nozzles were worth it as a change from time to time where resolution is less of a priority.</p>
+<h2>Creality are awful at everything and anything!</h2>
+<p>I bought myself a filament sensor attachment on 2024-07-16. On 2024-07-31, I also purchased an LED strip upgrade kit. I was working myself up to doing the install for them, but I could tell by looking up details about these that the process was going to be arduously fucked.</p>
+<p>The instruction manual was very, very wrong. The connector on the motherboard is 4 pins and marked FILAM, but the connector they point out on the instruction manual is a 3 pin one. Equally, the method they provide of routing it through the aluminum extrusion... in doing this, I actually broke the cables of both of the upgrades all in one go, on 2024-08-02.</p>
+<p>The LED strips, while they had routing places in the arms for them and the top of the gantry, I discovered that when I used them it would clamp the wires regardless.</p>
+<p>The printer itself is okay, but I can't help but think there are better printers and printer manufacturers out there. I would rather Bambu Labs, now.</p>
+<h2>Klipper, or why the stock firmware sucks ass and Creality are assholes</h2>
+<p>I had noticed that my prints were alarmingly slow, and that Creality sold &quot;tablets&quot; which improved print speed. This indicated to me that they effectively artificially limited the power of the printer within their firmware.</p>
+<p>On 2024-08-06, we endeavoured to replace that firmware with a <a href="https://github.com/jpcurti/ender3-v3-se-klipper-with-display">custom version of klipper adjusted for the printer</a>. You can see the current version of the configurations we are running <a href="https://github.com/gensokyo-zone/infrastructure/tree/main/nixos/klipper">here</a>. We are building the package <a href="https://github.com/gensokyo-zone/infrastructure/tree/main/nixos/klipper">here</a>. We should probably move to the upstream of that repository instead of my fork.</p>
+<p>We were already running Octoprint on a laptop (my prior laptop before upgrading to the Framework, a Thinkpad X260) near the printer. We continued using this for Klipper.</p>
+<p>The migration to Klipper with Moonraker and Fluidd went well and we managed to have Motion continue to provide webcam services for the 3D printer.</p>
+<p>Once we had switched over to Klipper, it was obvious from the print speedups that it was not artificially limited like the stock firmware.</p>
+<h2>Filament Holder Changes</h2>
+<p>These changes to the filament holder were performed on 2024-08-13.</p>
+<ul>
+<li><a href="https://www.printables.com/model/792537-ender-3-v3-se-608-bearing-filament-spool-and-sampl/">608 bearing filament spool holder</a> - The body and pins are printed at 40% infill. The roller and the spacers were printed at 20% infill.</li>
+<li><a href="https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6631744">90 degree offset spool adapter</a> - This was printed at 40% infill, I think?</li>
+</ul>
+<p>These significantly reduced the vibrations caused by the printer requesting more filament from the spool, which improved print quality a surprising amount.</p>
+<h2>Slicer - Orca Slicer</h2>
+<p>We switched to Orca Slicer on 2024-08-23. We had to derive a customized version of the Ender 3 V3 SE printer profile to use the Klipper gcodes and macros. Switching away from Cura on Klipper made our prints 10 minutes faster at least, to begin with.</p>
+<h2>Second attempt at the Creality-branded upgrades</h2>
+<p>I spent an evening time taking apart the cables for the printer and replacing the long stretches of cable that had been damaged by attaching the functional parts of the wire up to be usable over dupont connectors. (This can be seen in the above image!)</p>
+<p>For anyone who has purchased the Creality official LED strip and filament sensor upgrades, I genuinely strongly recommend not running them at all through the aluminum extrusion and instead running them on the outside of the printer, however ugly this appears to be.</p>
+<h2>Moving the system away from the laptop to an SBC</h2>
+<p>My fiancée had a Pine-A64 (non-LTS) that she was not using, and offered it to run the printer stack. The NixOS configurations for it are <a href="https://github.com/gensokyo-zone/infrastructure/blob/main/systems/sakuya/nixos.nix">here</a>.</p>
+<p>The relevant modules/folders can be found <a href="https://github.com/gensokyo-zone/infrastructure/tree/main/nixos">here</a> within that folder.</p>
+<p>I 3D-printed a <a href="https://www.printables.com/model/301005-pine-a64-case">case</a> before we relocated it.</p>
+<p>The printer now lives in my office, like shown in the picture at the top of this post.</p>
+<h2>Conclusion</h2>
+<p>Don't buy things from Creality. Ideally, buy Bambu.</p>
+<p>Despite this, I love my 3D printer and I love 3D printing. It has gotten me to learn CAD software like Fusion 360 and learn a lot more about the world in general.</p>
+<h2>The future?</h2>
+<p>In the future, I'm likely to get a G10 bed for the purposes of not having to expend glue for prints while still getting decent bed adhesion. If I had known it was an option ahead of time, I definitely would've bought it initially in the first place.</p>
+<p>When finances are less rigid, I intend to upgrade the belts on my printer to using linear rails where possible instead.</p>
+<p>A full picture of my intended upgrades can be found <a href="https://wiki.gensokyo.zone/3D-Printing/ender3v3se#future-upgrades">here</a>.</p>

content/blog/2025-06-20-keyboards.html

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+<p>+++
+title = &quot;I built two keyboards over the last year!&quot;
+date = 2025-06-20T07:53:17Z
++++</p>
+<h2>Handwired</h2>
+<p>Design: <a href="https://www.printables.com/model/347534-void40-a-40-ortholinear-keyboard">Void40</a></p>
+<p>Inspired by a video sent to me by a friend, <a href="https://youtu.be/PDguuYMG0IQ">&quot;Building a Split USB-C Handwired Keyboard&quot; by Joe Scotto</a>, I started initially with a 3x3 macropad in the same style as Joe Scotto.</p>
+<p>I moved onto a Planck-like shortly afterwards, initially I was using a large RP2040 devboard, but I settled on an RP2040 Zero (not pictured!).</p>
+<p>Keyswitches:</p>
+<ul>
+<li>Inner: Matrix Lab FFFF (Tactile)</li>
+<li>Outer: Nightwalker Glow-in-the-Dark Nightcall (Silent Linear)</li>
+</ul>
+<p>Stabilizers were hand-lubricated.</p>
+<p>Keycaps were KAT Cyberspace.</p>
+<p><a href="handwire-keyboard-matrix.jpg"><img src="handwire-keyboard-matrix.jpg" alt="The matrix of the keyboard" /></a>
+<a href="handwire-keyboard-mcu.jpg"><img src="handwire-keyboard-mcu.jpg" alt="The wiring of the matrix and mcu of the keyboard" /></a>
+<a href="handwire-keyboard.jpg"><img src="handwire-keyboard.jpg" alt="The finished keyboard" /></a></p>
+<h2>Sofle RGB</h2>
+<p>Case design: <a href="https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5407420">&quot;Sofle V2.1/RGB Sandwich Mount Case w/ Tenting&quot; by onglez</a>
+PCB vendor: <a href="https://pandakb.com/products/pcb-kit/sofle-rgb-mx-pcb-kit/">PandaKB's modified Sofle RGB</a> (I did not use the kit!)
+Keyboard design: <a href="https://josefadamcik.github.io/SofleKeyboard/">&quot;Sofle&quot; by  Josef Adamcik, &quot;Sofle RGB&quot; by Dane Evans</a> (Sofle RGB)</p>
+<p>Keyswitches:</p>
+<ul>
+<li>Turquoise Tealios (Linears) for alphas</li>
+<li>Zealio V2 (Tactile) for all other keys</li>
+</ul>
+<p>Keycaps are KAT Cyberspace.</p>
+<p>I spent an awful lot of time debugging issues that were fundamentally my own fault for following the build guide wrong in one way or another, but I feel like it turned out very pretty.</p>
+<p>[<img src="sofle-rgb-finished.jpg" alt="Sofle RGB" />]</p>

content/blog/2025-06-20-taimihud.html

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+<p>+++
+title = &quot;TaimiHUD - finally, I can play Guild Wars 2 on Linux!&quot;
+date = &quot;2025-06-20T07:53:23Z&quot;
++++</p>
+<h2>An unbelievable quantity of thanks to:</h2>
+<ul>
+<li>Sarah, my beloved friend, for:
+<ul>
+<li>inspiring this whole mess with a conversation</li>
+<li>continued inspiration with markers, rendering</li>
+<li>being there for me</li>
+<li>advice</li>
+<li>putting up with me</li>
+</ul>
+</li>
+<li><a href="https://github.com/arcnmx">arcnmx</a>, my wife, for:
+<ul>
+<li>supporting me in many ways during this period</li>
+<li>helping me with Rust</li>
+<li>being a wonderful contributor/co-author</li>
+<li>being an absolute darling</li>
+<li>putting up with me</li>
+</ul>
+</li>
+<li><a href="https://github.com/Connicpu">Connicpu</a>, for:
+<ul>
+<li>taking the torch and doing an amazing job with Pathing</li>
+<li>being a wonderful contributor/co-author</li>
+</ul>
+</li>
+<li>E for Effort [SIGH], my guild, for putting up with my bullshit</li>
+<li>deltaconnected, for creating <a href="https://www.deltaconnected.com/arcdps/">arcdps</a></li>
+<li>Delta, for creating <a href="https://raidcore.gg/Nexus">Nexus</a> and confusion with deltaconnected ;)</li>
+<li>Zerthox, for creating <a href="https://github.com/zerthox/nexus-rs">Zerthox/nexus-rs</a> and <a href="https://github.com/zerthox/arcdps-rs">Zerthox/arcdps-rs</a></li>
+<li>those who are testing or have tested TaimiHUD</li>
+</ul>
+<h2>Screenshots</h2>
+<p><a href="taimihud-pathing.png"><img src="taimihud-pathing.png" alt="TaimiHUD, showing Pathing, Markers and Timers windows and paths visible." /></a>
+<a href="taimihud-timers.png"><img src="taimihud-timers.png" alt="TaimiHUD, showing a timer." /></a>
+<a href="taimihud.png"><img src="taimihud.png" alt="TaimiHUD, showing Pathing, Markers and Timers windows." /></a>
+<a href="taimihud-timers-ui.png"><img src="taimihud-timers-ui.png" alt="TaimiHUD, showing the timers UI." /></a>
+<a href="taimihud-markers-ui.png"><img src="taimihud-markers-ui.png" alt="TaimiHUD, showing the markers UI." /></a></p>
+<h2>Introduction</h2>
+<p>Repositories:</p>
+<ul>
+<li>Personal: <a href="https://github.com/kittywitch/TaimiHUD">kittywitch/TaimiHUD</a></li>
+<li>Organization: <a href="https://github.com/TaimiHUD/TaimiHUD">TaimiHUD/TaimiHUD</a></li>
+</ul>
+<p>For the longest of time, I've felt like that Windows users have a far superior experience of GW2 with addons than Linux users do. This is a real shame, given the amount of people who could play now from a Steam Deck, let alone daily-drive Linux to avoid the horrors of modern Windows. The Windows users had BlishHUD and its modules to turn to.</p>
+<p>The things that irked me most were the accessibility challenges, I found myself longing for things like:</p>
+<ul>
+<li>encounter timers</li>
+<li>auto marker placements</li>
+<li>pathing for achievements, races, ...</li>
+</ul>
+<p>Inspired by a beloved friend, I began work on the above one goal at a time.</p>
+<p>I had prior made a <a href="https://raidcore.gg">Nexus</a> addon for Guild Wars 2, <a href="https://github.com/kittywitch/gw2buttplug-rs">gw2buttplug-rs</a> that facilitated output for buttplug.io via DPS-metering with the help of my wife to get me started with it, as my first GW2 Rust project.</p>
+<h2>Timers</h2>
+<p>Milestone by milestone, I reimplemented Timers following the same data format as BlishHUD's, so I could load Hero's Timers Pack, until eventually we had everything but Bandit Trio working.</p>
+<p>Bandit Trio seems to not work due to perculiarities of how the Bandit Trio timer itself works, which will eventually require a complete change of how Timers are handled under the hood, to properly support health/HP/CC event triggers.</p>
+<h2>Licensing</h2>
+<p>I decided to license the project MIT, to allow the community the freedoms over the software that they rightfully deserve.</p>
+<h2>3D rendering</h2>
+<p>I started work on a DX11 rendering engine for the game and got to the point of having models load and a billboarded marker from Timers working.</p>
+<p><a href="taimihud-cats.png"><img src="taimihud-cats.png" alt="TaimiHUD's cat model testing" /></a>
+<a href="taimihud-billboard.png"><img src="taimihud-billboard.png" alt="TaimiHUD's billboard test" /></a></p>
+<p>It was at this point that I went to attend to Commander's Markers!</p>
+<h2>Commander's Markers</h2>
+<p>With Timers handled, Commander's Markers was next on the chopping block, two formats to support and my own to be created. I even made it so that it automatically places it based upon a location trigger, and drags the minimap for you if it can.</p>
+<h2>Pathing?</h2>
+<p>By this point the source code was very available, and an experienced Rust developer called <a href="https://github.com/Connicpu">Connie</a> showed interest in working on the codebase for the purposes of Pathing. At first, with a trail, and very recently POIs. I couldn't be happier that this is no longer a solo effort, given how much of my time the last several months this has been.</p>
+<p>My wife also made contributions to the codebase; providing Pathing with the depth buffer stolen from the game via Retour, alongside refactoring the addon to be compatible with being loaded by either Nexus <em>or</em> ArcDPS.</p>
+<p>Given the way this continues, I want to migrate all development into a GitHub organization and set up a community in our own right, hopefully refactoring TaimiHUD into a set of addons and libraries.</p>
+<h2>Nexus, ArcDPS and arcloader</h2>
+<p>Delta (the author of Nexus, not to be confused with deltaconnected, the author of ArcDPS (not to be confused with arcnmx, my wife)) has been a relatively accomodating addon loader creator, although we have our share of disagreements. In Nexus's future, I would like to see it licensed under a proper open-source license, instead of simply being source-available, whether or not I think the codebase is the epitome of what it could necessarily be.</p>
+<p>Often, it feels like decisions are relatively slapdash, disconnected from the context or potential use an addon might have for things... an example of this would be textures being a shared asset amongst addons, thus never being unloaded/garbage-collected/..., causing &quot;memory leaks&quot; should one use Nexus's own texture loader implementation for their code.</p>
+<p>Given that Raidcore's own internal project on Pathing for the last year has been a ...gentle fiasco in its own right, I do find the closed-source nature of those developments upsetting. At least if they had shared our paradigm, someone else would be able to take the torch and continue the work that needs doing, working from the source-code, however low the author's own opinions of it are?</p>
+<p>My wife has a lot of opinions on the current state of Nexus, and I think she should make a blogpost of her own to talk about them in detail. Her work in wanting to be able to load TaimiHUD without using Nexus led to her own project, <a href="https://github.com/arcnmx/arcloader">arcloader</a> and I think it's very cute! (it's also MIT licensed 💜💜💜, what a chad!)</p>
+<h2>Long-term</h2>
+<p>As I said prior; I would like to see TaimiHUD turned into a set of addons and libraries, this would probably be along the lines of:</p>
+<ul>
+<li>coordinates conversion library</li>
+<li>coordinates conversion API DLL</li>
+<li>3D rendering library</li>
+<li>3D rendering API DLL</li>
+<li>Pathing component addon
+<ul>
+<li>non-optional requirement for 3D rendering</li>
+</ul>
+</li>
+<li>Markers component addon</li>
+<li>Timers component addon
+<ul>
+<li>optional 3D rendering use for Directions, Markers</li>
+</ul>
+</li>
+</ul>
+<p>I think it would also be ideal to keep this detatched from any one particular modloader?</p>
+<p>I have a fondness for my wife's arcloader, and would like to see it a project under our umbrella, we would ideally be more arcloader-centric in the future if it continues development, but I have no interest in being attached at the hip to any one modloader.</p>
+<p>My wife contributed us the revamp to support ArcDPS and I see no reason why we should not continue to support any reasonable loader options in future.</p>
+<h3>Community</h3>
+<p>Look out in the near future! I will likely be making a discord and so on for this project.</p>

content/blog/2025-07-08-moved-to-zola.html

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+<p>+++
+title = &quot;I moved from Cobalt to Zola!&quot;
++++
+I was particularly unkeen with how Cobalt was handling datetimes and so decided to move to Zola, especially since TaimiHUD's website is going to be using it also. This setup is basically derived/duplicated from the TaimiHUD website setup.</p>