I've seen a few posts about the Framework Laptop on Tildes and since I received mine, I thought I'd do a write up for it.

I've been using the Framework laptop for a few weeks now and it's been great so far. I was originally skeptical but I decided that I would take a shot at it as I've been growing increasingly unhappy with the design decisions that Apple has been making with MacOS.

I ordered the DIY kit, which was nice since I already had an NVMe SSD I could use with it, so I ended up saving about $150. It only took about 20 minutes to get the RAM, SSD and wifi card installed.

Specs:

• Intel i7-1165G7
• 32 GB of RAM
• Intel WiFi 6E card

Total cost: $1,422.03.

Unfortunately my first laptop arrived with a dead display. The Framework support team was pretty helpful and quickly sent out a new one, which works perfectly.

After toying around with Linux Mint and a few other distros, I ended up installing the Windows 11 beta. Getting the drivers installed was easy, since Framework offers a single download that runs one script to install all necessary drivers in unattended mode. Just hit one button and restart - all the drivers are installed. I wish all manufacturers offered something similar.

Overall construction is great. For something as modular as this, it feels extremely solid and well built. While the build quality isn't equal to something like a MacBook, I'd say it's on par with a Dell XPS or similar high end machine.

The screen is nice and bright, with accurate colors. I've always been a fan of 3:2 screens on laptops and moving from a MacBook Pro with a 16-inch 16:9 display to the 13.5-inch 3:2 display on the Framework doesn't feel like losing too much real estate. Having the taller display is great for sites like Tildes, where it can fit almost the same amount of content as a much larger screen.

The keyboard and trackpad are both great. The keys remind me of the older pre-2015 style MacBook keyboards before they switched to the butterfly mechanism. They are bouncy and responsive, with a nice feedback that doesn't feel too harsh like the butterfly keyboards do. The trackpad is pretty good and it uses the Windows Precision drivers, so it supports swiping and pinching if you like that. It does sound a bit louder than my MacBook Pro's trackpad.

The speakers are a bit disappointing. The max loudness is pretty anemic. Even in a normal acoustic environment (A/C running in a house), you have to actively listen to hear. Coming from a MacBook Pro 16-inch, I would say that the speakers are the biggest downgrade.

The main draw of the Framework is the expandability and upgradability.

The Framework modules are a fantastic idea and I love them. While they don't save you from having to carry around adapters, it is really nice to have those adapters slot in to your machine and feel more integrated. I purchased 2 USB-C, 2 full-sized USB, a DisplayPort, and an HDMI adapter. Being able to just slot in a USB A port and swap it for a display out one on the rare occasion that I need it has been great. I love being able to adapt the ports on my laptop to a situation without having to have dongles coming out of the side of my laptop.

The adapters are tiny and easily fit in any backpack or carrying case. I'm really curious to see what new adapters they offer in the future and what crazy niche ones third parties come up with. I'd love to see a cellular modem jammed into one of these things. Or maybe one that can hide a dongle for my wireless keyboard and mouse?

Battery life is...fine. It's an all day machine, but you'll definitely need to charge it every day if you're using it a good deal. The battery is on the smaller side, but it gets me through a normal work day so that's good enough. But when the battery goes bad (as all Lithium-Ion batteries do), it's an easy fix.

In terms of upgradability, getting into the laptop is dead simple. There's five screws on the bottom and then entire top deck (keyboard and trackpad) comes off. Everything is easily accessible and sensibly laid out. It's also all labeled with QR codes that take you to specific guides on how to install/upgrade those components. I think the educational component is great. It really shows people who would have never thought to upgrade their RAM or storage how easy it can be.

That's the big selling point for me. If I decide in a year or two that I need more than 1TB of storage, I can just buy a larger drive and stick it in there. Or if my display dies, I can get a one for a lot less than the cost of replacing the laptop. Or if the keyboard or trackpad dies, then I can easily replace just that component. On my MacBook Pro, replacing the keyboard is an $800+ repair, since it involves replacing the entire top case, which includes the motherboard and other expensive components.

For years we've been hearing from manufacturers that they can't make a laptop thin, light and upgradable. This laptop proves them wrong.

My biggest concern is the long term viability of the company. It's nice that they made an upgradable laptop, but if they aren't around in a year or two to keep selling replacement parts, then it doesn't matter much.

Overall, I'm pretty impressed with the Framework and I plan on keeping it and making it my daily driver.

EDIT: I forgot to mention my absolute favorite feature, one that I've missed ever since Apple went all USB-C on their laptops: It has a light on the side to tell you if it is currently charging or fully charged!

I moved into a new apartment and was surprised to see that all my rooms have CAT 5 Ethernet ports in the wall. However, cue my disappoint when I try to naively plug my router and machine in two separate ports to find that the ports don't actually work. After searching various forums, I found that I have to:

1. Locate the panel where all the ethernet ports connect
2. Wire them to an ethernet switch.

I found the panel but all the wires look like this:

https://i.imgur.com/Qzm72g0.jpg

I'm not sure what I need to do from here to plugging into my network switch. Any guides or advice would be extremely helpful. I don't need every port connected to the switch, only one or two. None of these look labelled so I might have a difficult time isolating which cable runs where.

And about the network switch... Any qualms about using an old router that has the AP turned off?

A while ago I mentioned I was going to attempt making a knife for the first time. Well, I did.

Apologies in advance for there not being many photos of the process - steel is really messy to work with so I mostly kept my phone safely out of the way. I'll try to get more pictures next time, although there are plenty of videos and picture tutorials around if people are super interested in the process. I shall endeavour to describe what I did in text, however.

I started out with a bar of 01 tool steel (wiki) which I cut into a rough knife blank. This I then hit with a ball hammer a load of times to get some texture. Then I used a belt grinder to put a bevel on the edge side, although only enough to thin the knife down to roughly the right shape, not actually sharp. Once that and a few other minor shaping tasks were done, it was time to heat treat it.

Heat treating changes the structure of the metal to make it harder. Hard steel will hold an edge longer, but it does make it much more difficult to work, hence doing most of the shaping before heat treating. To harden steel you need to heat it to a particular temperature, which depends on the exact alloy being used but 'bright orange' is close enough. Fun fact - when steel gets to it's 'critical' temperature, it stops being magnetic, so that's another way you can test it. The steel is then quenched, this one in oil, which makes it hard.

Hardened steel is very brittle so it's usually tempered after hardening. For 01 steel that means putting it in an oven at 160-200C for a couple of hours. You lose some hardness but you gain back some toughness and flexibility.

After tempering, cleaning, polishing, polishing and so much polishing. Steel is so dirty and difficult to work with compared to the silver, gold and copper I'm more used to. But eventually, and after glueing and bolting a sycamore wood handle on, then giving it a final sharpen on my wetstone, I had a knife.

It is a Japanese-style Nakiri knife. Usually used for cutting vegetables, it's really nice to use. Lightweight and agile, the balance is nice and it's comfortable in my hand. It's not perfect and there are a few things I'd do differently but I can see myself using this on a daily basis. More pictures

I have already laid out and started shaping my next knife, which will be a slightly more complicated bunka knife

Any questions, please just ask and I'll do my best to answer.

Some days ago I came back home to visit my parents during these holidays.

Yesterday evening, while we were watching a movie, nature called and I had to go to the bathroom. Because I'm a lazy bozo and it is closer to the living room, I did what no man should ever do - I used my parents' bathroom.

Stumbling in the dark in this unfamiliar place I had no right being in, I clumsily bumped on the towel rack (an old 80s coat hanger looking thing) and to my horror, managed to snap one of its plastic arms off.

Because it's a relic of its time, and perhaps because the bathroom is a sacred personal space which should never be altered if not for strictly necessary reasons, mom and pops were upset.

I felt like shit, an outcast whose madness lead an entire family to despair and misfortune while trying to save himself literally a handful of pitiful steps.

But a shining beacon of hope came from a fading memory, one which sounded utterly absurd, yet in times of desperation still came out as somehow plausible.

"Just use baking soda and Loctite forehead"; this had been uttered from a German friend of mine while he had been admiring the broken mess that is my duct taped ps4 controller some time ago. Was it a joke? Was it a serious suggestion? German humor is often lost in translation...

Still, I had to give it a go. I had to try something. And this morning an attempt was made.

I'm still feeling ecstatic. Never have I hever felt this good about a DIY tryout. I can confirm that baking soda is an incredible catalyst for super glue; the result while somewhat sloppy-looking is rock solid.

Pops couldn't believe his eyes when he saw his good ol' towel rack hanger thing stoically standing where it always did, in its rightful place, with no defects at all.

Thank you baking soda and super glue, you saved Christmas.

To all of you whose plastics need some fixing, remember this combo and give it a go - it will save you as well.

Any other similar hacks that you might want to share are very much appreciated.

TL;DR
Baking soda and regular superglue are incredible for fixing plastics.

Edit: forgot to put tags in post. Apologies.

I'm looking to get a couple of remote controlled dimmer sockets for a quite specific use case (heat lamps in a tortoise enclosure), and I'd like to control them directly from a Raspberry Pi. I've found a couple of decent looking fairly generic options - examples from Trust and TKB - and there seem to be several appropriate radio modules, either USB or GPIO.

Detecting and pairing with devices seems (hopefully) straightforward. My sticking point is trying to figure out how standardised the actual messaging is; there seem to be several brands of hub and device that can be used interchangeably, but a few that can't. In my case, of course, the RasPi will be taking the position of the hub and speaking to the devices directly.

I'm having trouble finding reliable info on whether a command like "dim to 70%", or "read output power" will be the same across all devices, whether it will follow some kind of standard but it may be one of several competing formats, or whether it's completely proprietary.

Any insight on how easy it is to programatically talk to these things would be very much appreciated!