Random Tech Questions you want answered.

Robear wrote:

With a one inch diameter, he’s gonna be loud no matter what fan you find, because it’ll have to be high RPMs… That’s kind of what I was getting at…

Unless you're talking about not a direct 1:1 replacement, but maybe building an external air-supply module with a large fan, and an output port that narrows down to the 1" diameter that Mr. Floppy desires.

merphle wrote:
Robear wrote:

With a one inch diameter, he’s gonna be loud no matter what fan you find, because it’ll have to be high RPMs… That’s kind of what I was getting at…

Unless you're talking about not a direct 1:1 replacement, but maybe building an external air-supply module with a large fan, and an output port that narrows down to the 1" diameter that Mr. Floppy desires.

True, my idea was to build a quieter setup. The cheap motor that it came with was screeching loud and of poor quality. This was the problem I hoped to remedy.

So you need like a one inch circular fan with about 75 cfm? Maybe... A cabinetry thing? Or, how about getting a simple 4" or 6" USB fan and just taping his base to the front of it?

ZombieCoyote wrote:
ZombieCoyote wrote:

I'm having troubles sourcing a replacement keycap mechanism for a Gigabyte Aorus 5 KB laptop.

Quick update. I found this: https://www.quikfixlaptopkeys.com/?p...

Final update. Success!!!

I got the pieces today, figured out how they snap together and was able to put the original keycap back into the laptop. It seems to feel exactly like it did before!

Nice! Did you ever find the pieces that popped off?

Unfortunately, no. I wasn't present when the key came off but the report it that the missing piece fell behind some heavy furniture (loft bed) that would take some serious room rearranging before we could look behind/under it.

That's super cool Zombie. That company you worked with sounds like they have excellent customer support.

Edit: Maybe not technical enough for this thread?

I’m looking for a monitor arm with really long reach. More than a couple feet. It will only be supporting a 25” monitor that weighs 6 lbs (2.7kg). I’m likely mounting it to a flat horizontal desk surface but could mount it to a flat vertical surface if I had to although that would position the base really oddly for this location.

So far the main candidate I’ve found is the “VIVO Single 13 to 32 inch Computer Monitor Desk Mount, Extra Long Adjustable Arm” which has good reach but no real articulation other than horizontal.

The other ones I’ve found are big expensive ones for doctors offices and things.

Who makes great versatile and long monitor arms?

pandasuit wrote:

So far the main candidate I’ve found is the “VIVO Single 13 to 32 inch Computer Monitor Desk Mount, Extra Long Adjustable Arm” which has good reach but no real articulation other than horizontal.

The other ones I’ve found are big expensive ones for doctors offices and things.

Who makes great versatile and long monitor arms?

I have this one and love it:
Dual Monitor Mount Stand

They stay exactly where you put them and are easy to move around. I don't have a tape handy for measurements, but the monitors are 22.5" wide left-to-right (not diag) if that helps.

The arms were $80 when I bought them in January. They have gone up in price, unfortunately.

-BEP

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/mchpeBO.jpg)

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/JKvWSvA.jpg)

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/PczSqua.jpg)

Because of an open-source project I maintain, over the past few months several different people have reached out to me who are "working on a metaverse project" or similar, as if that was a specific thing. Does anyone here know what "metaverse" means here, in a modern tech/biz context? Is it a technology, a business model, or what?

I heard about that, though the articles I read didn't shed much light on the subject. But the contacts I've been getting go back some months, well before the facebook news.

I think I've seen metaverse references in the NFT community. I follow a lot of digital artists so I cross paths with NFT references often.

As far as I know. The metaverse is going to be a connected 3d (likely virtual reality) internet kind of deal.

So somebody read/watched Ready Player One and said "Hey lets make that."

You mean read Snow Crash, right?

You mean read Burning Chrome, right?

Useful article, thanks!

Robear wrote:

You mean read Burning Chrome, right? :-P

Burning Chrome wasn't about a metaverse though from what I remember. Definitely cyberpunk but not the 'alternate virtual reality you can live in' like Snow Crash was. It has been a while since I read Gibson though.

Looking at the Metaverse descriptions, I see what you mean. Standardized interfaces between companies means that your social media presence would be portable from one site to the next, and maybe even would translate from, say, one MMO to another (a la Charlie Stross’s “Halting State” and “Rule 34”, the first two parts of a trilogy which was overtaken by real life lol). So Cyberspace is immersive VR, Cartesian “ghost in the machine” stuff, while Metaverse is avatar-based extensions of reality. More AR than Cyberspace.

In January, my wife and a visiting professor from France who will be staying with us will be teaching classes remotely and I'm likely to be doing a lot of video meetings as well. In anticipation I'm thinking of upgrading our router and am looking for suggestions.

Some additional info:
- Two story house with the internet coming in on the first floor and a lot of the teaching on the second floor and of course basically the other side of the house.
- Not really easy to move the location of where the router needs to sit.

Thanks

Rahmen wrote:

In January, my wife and a visiting professor from France who will be staying with us will be teaching classes remotely and I'm likely to be doing a lot of video meetings as well. In anticipation I'm thinking of upgrading our router and am looking for suggestions.

Some additional info:
- Two story house with the internet coming in on the first floor and a lot of the teaching on the second floor and of course basically the other side of the house.
- Not really easy to move the location of where the router needs to sit.

Thanks

Don’t move the router but instead add a wireless range extender to your current network. Or if you want a cohesive full house network grab a mesh wifi kit like TP-Link Deco X20 (or whatever) and put it in access point mode connected to your current router and disable your main router’s wifi. One access point is wired into your current router and the others only need power. A 3 pack of something like the Deco X20 can cover a huge amount of space. They have good range and can be daisy chained to further locations. The furthest one doesn’t need to be in range of the main AC just in range of any other AC.

astralplaydoh wrote:

As far as I know. The metaverse is going to be a connected 3d (likely virtual reality) internet kind of deal.

I got more info from one of the companies that contacted me, and... um, their reply contained many words. NFTs, metamaps, Ethereum, and minecraft all appear to be involved.

Can't say I understand it, but I guess I follow what it's adjacent to...

If NFTs are involved, it's a scam.

No idea if this is what they mean but one of these days an ubiquitous augmented reality is going to spring up. It’s going to also support VR but the core experience for most will be augmented reality requiring only a phone with a viewer app. I just hope it’s open and not mostly owned and controlled by major corporations. I expect the first versions of it will be in commercial spaces but I’d love to build a private one with my kids in our house. After seeing what Hololens Minecraft was we got really excited over here. The Minecraft game that is like Pokémon go didn’t stick but actually getting to build a Minecraft world in our house and yard would be amazing.

The Metaverse talk of today reminds me a lot of the VR promises of the 90s.

Pandasuit - thanks for the suggestion!

Someone suggested a panda suit? That would make for interesting VR or metaverse

bepnewt wrote:
pandasuit wrote:

So far the main candidate I’ve found is the “VIVO Single 13 to 32 inch Computer Monitor Desk Mount, Extra Long Adjustable Arm” which has good reach but no real articulation other than horizontal.

The other ones I’ve found are big expensive ones for doctors offices and things.

Who makes great versatile and long monitor arms?

I have this one and love it:
Dual Monitor Mount Stand

They stay exactly where you put them and are easy to move around. I don't have a tape handy for measurements, but the monitors are 22.5" wide left-to-right (not diag) if that helps.

The arms were $80 when I bought them in January. They have gone up in price, unfortunately.

-BEP

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/mchpeBO.jpg)

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/JKvWSvA.jpg)

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/PczSqua.jpg)

I ended up buying a “VIVO Premium Aluminum Single Monitor Pneumatic Spring Arm” and while it is really nice it does not reach quite far enough for my use case. I’ll keep using it here until I find something longer but it’s about a 12” shorter reach than I want. I’m going to try re-arranging where it is mounted to see if I can make this work better.