Toric's recent activity

  1. Comment on The Tiny Soapbox: a platform for small, low-stakes rants in ~talk

  2. Comment on Introductions | March 2025 in ~talk

    Toric
    Link Parent
    Oops, thanks for pointing out my mistake! Fixed. Mainz is a really nice city. Its actually about the same size, population wise, as the city in the US we came from, albeit Mainz has that...

    Oops, thanks for pointing out my mistake! Fixed.

    Mainz is a really nice city. Its actually about the same size, population wise, as the city in the US we came from, albeit Mainz has that population in a much smaller space.

    Coming from the middle of nowhere, USA, The public transportation is insane. (Its nowhere near the s and ubahn lines of the big cities, we 'only' have trams and busses, but its still so. much. more than we are used to). We elected to try going without a car here, and while its somewhat annoying when visiting friends that live in smaller villages, within and between cities is quite smooth.

    Mainz is beautiful in the spring. Trees are starting to bud, and the universities botanical garden is gorgeous right now. Really, my only complaint is that there arent too many places where our dog can be off leash. (she wasnt trained to be off leash except in fenced in dog parks).

    Id totally be up for a tildes germany meetup. I actually come up to berlin once a month or so for work, so berlin or the surrounding areas work well for me. (though getting from here to berlin on the Deutchlandticket on its own is painful, just paying for a cheap (if you do at least a month in advance) ICE ticket cuts the travel time from 9-10 hr to about 5.)

  3. Comment on Swedish study finds surprising number of environmental pollutants in hedgehogs, including polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and heavy metals in ~enviro

    Toric
    Link Parent
    Yup. technicaly, Uranium can naturally be found in all life, in PPB or even PPT ranges.

    Yup. technicaly, Uranium can naturally be found in all life, in PPB or even PPT ranges.

    3 votes

  4. Comment on Counter-Strike: Football — a competitive multiplayer FPS written in... PHP??? in ~comp

    Toric
    Link Parent
    Ran out of bash stuff, so moving on to other cursed implementations, I see?

    Ran out of bash stuff, so moving on to other cursed implementations, I see?

    5 votes

  5. Comment on RMK on the Ferris Sweep in ~comp

    Toric
    Link Parent

    Side question: How as transitioning to the sweep? Are you using home row mods?
    Been using the sweep for about a year now. The transition to the sweep took about 2 weeks, during the second week, I was good enough to use it for work. Im not using home row mods, per se. All my mods but the shift key are actually on the bottom row, the home row is where I put my layer shifts (combined with their usual letters in a hold/tap config).

    1 vote

  6. Comment on Introductions | March 2025 in ~talk

    Toric
    Link Parent
    To be clear, came from North Dakota, moved to Mainz, a medium sized city near Frankfurt. Was in North Dakota for college, its both me and my wifes Alma Matter, moved to Mainz for my wifes masters...

    To be clear, came from North Dakota, moved to Mainz, a medium sized city near Frankfurt. Was in North Dakota for college, its both me and my wifes Alma Matter, moved to Mainz for my wifes masters degree.

    2 votes

  7. Comment on Introductions | March 2025 in ~talk

    Toric
    (edited )
    Link
    How long have you been on Tildes? How did you find out about us? According to Tildes, since July of 2020. I honestly cant remember where I found out about Tildes, but I remember I had been lurking...

    How long have you been on Tildes? How did you find out about us?

    According to Tildes, since July of 2020.
    I honestly cant remember where I found out about Tildes,
    but I remember I had been lurking for a while before I reached out to demios for an invite.

    How did you choose your username?

    Ive been using the name 'Toric' since childhood for everything from video game usernames to early childhood games of 'make pretend'.

    What are your interests?

    Hoo boy. Long enough for a markdown list:

    • Linux
    • Rust
    • Nix
    • Ergo keyboards (and building them)
    • Embedded software (in Rust, wherever possible!)
    • General programming (everything but webdev)
    • Board games
    • Hard sci fi
    • Self Hosting
    • Open source
    • 3d printing (especially building/modding)
    • Automation Video games
    • Terminal programs

    A/S/L (age/(gender|pronouns|identifier)/location)

    28, cis male, (he/him). Currently in Mainz, Germany, moved here recently from North Dakota.

    What do you do? This could be in your spare time, for work, your passions.

    Do you want other users to PM/DM you from this thread?

    Sure, but I also welcome you to comment here to get a public discussion going.

    Give us a fun fact (or a link!)! If there is anything to know about tilderinos, it's that we value knowledge sharing!

    Among other things, I host my own blog which started out as a
    'I figured this out after google was zero help, so now at least theres something on the web',
    and ended up evolving into a genuine writing platform.

    Its currently hosted on a Hetzner box, as due to the move to Germany,
    my self hosting setup is a bit precarious.

    2 votes

  8. Comment on RMK on the Ferris Sweep in ~comp

    Toric
    Link
    A bit ago I made a post on RMK, a rust keyboard firmware, and said that I was trying to port RMK to my keyboard. While, I got it done, and wrote a quick blog post about the experience!

    A bit ago I made a post on RMK, a rust keyboard firmware, and said that I was trying to port RMK to my keyboard. While, I got it done, and wrote a quick blog post about the experience!

    4 votes

  10. Comment on Paged out! issue 6 in ~comp

    Toric
    Link Parent
    Another RJ-9 fan! I thought I was the only one! In theory, you could use USB-C connectors, but that comes with the issue of now you have 2 usb ports on your board, one of which must not be...

    Another RJ-9 fan! I thought I was the only one! In theory, you could use USB-C connectors, but that comes with the issue of now you have 2 usb ports on your board, one of which must not be connected to the computer...

  11. Comment on Paged out! issue 6 in ~comp

    Toric
    Link
    Ive been following this zine since sometime around the time issue 5 was published, really happy issue 6 is finally here. Full disclosure: I authored 2 articles in this issue, (under my real name...

    Ive been following this zine since sometime around the time issue 5 was published, really happy issue 6 is finally here.

    Full disclosure: I authored 2 articles in this issue, (under my real name 'Gabe Venberg'), but am otherwise unaffiliated with it.

    3 votes

  13. Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp

    Toric
    Link
    A while back I posted about rmk, a rust keyboard firmware based on embassy. I made a configuration for my ferris sweep, but couldnt get the communication between the 2 halves working without...

    A while back I posted about rmk, a rust keyboard firmware based on embassy. I made a configuration for my ferris sweep, but couldnt get the communication between the 2 halves working without lowering the baud rate by 10x. Turns out, this is a limitation of the RP2040, where its internal pull up resistors are somewhat weak, meaning that if you have a longer TRRS cable between your split halves, or even a badly routed trace, it can degrade comms.

    Turns out, QMK (the more popular C-based firmware for keyboards), also had to fight this problem, and came up with a solution to it, essentially by making the receiving side weakly pull the line up to simulate a really strong pull-up resistor. I implemented this solution in rust, and built a breadboard based 'keyboard' with 2 keys and 2 pi picos to test it without risking my expensive keyboard controllers. (Even though QMK uses this solution, I was still wary about making 2 pins pull a line in opposite directions, its the sort of thing that burns out pins.)

    Anyway, the tests went perfectly, and my pull request was just merged!

    2 votes

  14. Comment on Ploopy Classic 2 open source trackball in ~tech

    Toric
    Link Parent
    What split keyboard do you have?

    What split keyboard do you have?

    2 votes

  15. Comment on Ploopy Classic 2 open source trackball in ~tech

    Toric
    Link
    Ive owned one of their mice for ~3 years, its a very good piece of kit. Dont care especially for trackballs, but far be it from me to do anything other than celebrate another bit open source...

    Ive owned one of their mice for ~3 years, its a very good piece of kit. Dont care especially for trackballs, but far be it from me to do anything other than celebrate another bit open source hardware. Only thing bad I have to say about it is the name of the mouse gets raised eyebrows every once in a while.

    3 votes

  16. Comment on Beware tech career advice from old heads in ~comp

    Toric
    Link Parent
    Yup. It changed roughly in 2022, lot of tech layoffs that year, same year I was a junior in my CS program... Fun times getting an internship that year.

    Yup. It changed roughly in 2022, lot of tech layoffs that year, same year I was a junior in my CS program... Fun times getting an internship that year.

  17. Comment on Dutch parliament calls for end to dependence on US software companies in ~tech

    Toric
    Link Parent
    Her being a senior definitely helps, but her field is currently a bit oversaturated here. Of course, given the subject of the article, and other decisions like it happening across the EU, that may...

    Her being a senior definitely helps, but her field is currently a bit oversaturated here. Of course, given the subject of the article, and other decisions like it happening across the EU, that may change in time.

    2 votes

  18. Comment on Dutch parliament calls for end to dependence on US software companies in ~tech

    Toric
    Link Parent
    Software Developer that did exactly that here! Me and my wife moved to Germany about 6 months ago. Id say it heavily depends on her field. Im an Embedded Software Developer, and I didnt have a...

    Software Developer that did exactly that here! Me and my wife moved to Germany about 6 months ago. Id say it heavily depends on her field. Im an Embedded Software Developer, and I didnt have a huge problem landing a job. However, if your sister is in web technologies of any kind, she should be aware that the market is very heavily oversaturated in that area, and especially if she does not have very good proficiency in the local language, she will likely be passed over. The more specialized of a field she is in, the better. Keep in mind, though, my advice is probably only valid for Germany, Europe is hardly a monolith.

    Feel free to reach out if you have more questions, id be happy to help in whatever way I can.

    7 votes

  19. Comment on Post something from your notes app in ~talk

    Toric
    Link
    RMK https://github.com/HaoboGu/rmk A #keyboard firmware written in rust, using the [[embassy-780d9494]] framework. Seems to support everything I use on the [[ferris-sweep-5e423a14]], but does not...

    RMK

    https://github.com/HaoboGu/rmk
    A #keyboard firmware written in rust, using the [[embassy-780d9494]] framework.
    Seems to support everything I use on the [[ferris-sweep-5e423a14]],
    but does not (yet) support a trackball, sutch as on the [[charybdis-e23fa7b7]].

    Would have to write my own configuration with it, but it seems easy enough.
    QMK provides premade configurations for many keyboards out of the box,
    RMK expects you to write your own.
    However, RMK makes it significantly easier to write your own keyboard config.
    Definitly not for people new to custom keyboards,
    but for somone with experience with QMK and friends, its a perfectly viable alternative.

    Might also be a nice codebase to look at for learning embassy.
    Really interesting how it uses a proc-macro file to parse keyboard.toml at compile time.

    It does not yet have support for half-duplex serial, which is needed for the ferris sweep.
    It is in the master branch, but has not seen a release yet.
    The half-duplex serial also has a bug that renders it unusable with long serial cables,
    Im fixing it here

    Next release is focusing on input devices,
    so it should be possible to get it working with a trackball like the [[charybdis-e23fa7b7]] has.

    The [[foo-12345678]] links are internal links to other notes. I use zk to manage my notes.

    1 vote

  20. Comment on A sodium-ion portable power bank comes to market in ~tech

    Toric
    Link Parent
    Yah, this is assuming production goes up to a point where the price is competitive. Im guessing Li-ion batteries are cheaper mainly because all the manufacturing infra is built around making them,...

    Yah, this is assuming production goes up to a point where the price is competitive. Im guessing Li-ion batteries are cheaper mainly because all the manufacturing infra is built around making them, rather than other battery chems, and if Na-ion becomes a thing, that may change.

    8 votes