Depends on the music for me. Anything slow or super lyrical tends to break my focus, while more upbeat stuff I’ve heard dozens of times can help me hit a flow state (or at the very least drown out the goings on around me enough to focus on something). I’ve had good luck with video game soundtracks, like Bastion or FTL because they tend to be lively without demanding attention.

That or a wall wipe distance maybe? It’s been ages since I’ve used cura though…

I mainly use my printer as a tool to solve problems, so my decision process is very much grounded in arriving at a solution as opposed to just finding something to keep the machine busy.

My usual approach is to cast a wide net and go through all the models* that might do what I’m looking for. If I’m lucky, I’ll find something that I like enough to print. If not I’ll use it as a brainstorming session and either pick out a model or two that I can adapt (or at the very least pull critical dimensions) or get a feel for what I’d like to do differently. From there, it’s off to CAD where I’ll fire off slivers and prototypes until I’m happy with the fit and function of my part.

*printables is my go-to, but sometimes I’ll wander over to thingiverse if I want more options (and know I’m not working on something bespoke)

I would say so, my understanding is that lasagna is just a dish made from layering wide flat noodles, sauce, and other fillings.

My mom makes a white lasagna with ground chicken, spinach, Alfredo sauce, and cheese. It’s amazing! I prefer it to a traditional lasagna, but I’m biased since I’m not a huge fan of tomatoes.

That sounds pretty similar to how I have my network setup:

• PiHole has conditional forwarding configured (true,192.168.0.0/24,192.168.1.1,lan note: .lan is optional here, I uss it for my internal TLD) to get device names from router
• PiHole uses Unifi as the upstream DNS and DHCP
• Unifi uses cloudflare as the upstream DNS
• Unifi hands out the PiHole as the DNS via DHCP config

That way I get stats in all the places and can use Unifi for DHCP.

I’m partial to Biotech. Mostly in the sheer versatility, depth, and replay-ability it adds to the game, have you ever wanted to:

• robot army? Sure!
• raise children? You got it!
• mess with genetics? Why not!
• diversity beyond the standard issue human? Done!
• become a vampire cult? It’s an option!
• weaponize pollution? Absolutely!

The other DLCs aren’t bad, but aren’t quite as impactful/ noticable compared to the banger that is Biotech. Quick rundown for the sake of fairness:

• Royalty: adds a Royal faction with advanced technology and access to psychic powers. Unique win con is hosting/ protecting the emperor at your colony.
• Ideology: adds religion/ beliefs, that can shape how your colonists feel about various things (being underground, what they eat, how they feel about technology, and more) and other people. Also adds trees that spawn a dryad helper when your colonists take care of the trees. Unique win con is a treasure hunt quest line that has you partially restart your colony a few times.
• Anomaly: adds a horror twist to RimWorld. Fight and study monsters, raise the undead, and uncover horrors beyond comprehension. Unique win con is a study of the void and the entities beyond it.

I haven’t had a chance to play with the new DLC yet (modder’s curse), but it’s looking to be a serious contender for my favorite. Odyssey lets you build a ship that acts as a mobile colony and you can travel both the planet and it’s orbit collecting upgrades for your ship and other unique items. Unique win con is an ultimate showdown with the mechanoids in space.

RimWorld is meant to tell a story, so “despite our best efforts, we all lied on the ground, bleeding and dying as we watched everything we built burn around us. While the world continued to turn, indifferent to our struggles.” Is a perfectly fine way for a story to end (though I will admit it doesn’t always feel great to watch a colony die).

On a general note, weapons in RimWorld tend to be suited to different roles and fighting styles, and very rarely is it just a matter of “get guns (or whatever research), win game” (I’m pretty sure some bows can out DPS a gun, depending on the quality/ range (be sure to take a look at the info window on your weapons).

That said, other than the blanket advice of looking at each story as a lesson, it might help to know what kind of external threats are wiping you out.

Currently slogging my way though the late game (or at least I was until more pressing things came up), there’s some slight automation towards the mid game that helps a bit, but the grind doesn’t really go away. Mostly due to the fact that you end up spending Faith/ corpses/ gold way faster than you can get them. I find myself in a waiting pattern fairly often- there’s still things to do, but progress on major quests feels super slow (and almost unrewarding). The DLC is mostly regarded as filler, but if you’re a completionist (or like what they offer), it’s not awful at the current sale price.

Note: there are achievements that are gated behind having the DLCs if that’s your thing.

It’s not strictly a bad game, but I’d almost rather play Stardew for the farming/ story or Factorio for the automation.

That’s kind of awesome! I have a bunch of home lab stuff, but have been putting off buying a domain (I was a broke college student when I started my lab and half the point was avoiding recurring costs- plus I already run the DNS, as far as the WAN is concerned, I have whatever domain I want). My loose plan was to stand up a certificate authority and push the root public key out with active directory, but being able to certify things against Let’s Encrypt might make things significantly easier.

Seconding the confused Voron noises. I mean, I’d be really curious to see the 3d printer firmware market share beak down, but I feel like anybody building a custom printer is going to have a far easier time with Klipper, just because of how much easier it is to get dialed in.

Oscar the Grouch in the first panel too

It’s so weird seeing one of my mods on the list. Like one of my lost little orphans grew up and went off to college… So long Setup Camp 🥲

True, I knew that my Voron would work out to be more expensive than the leading competitor, but I also highly value the open source ethos and saw it as an opportunity to put my money where my mouth is. No regrets and I’m happy to champion it, but I do try to present other options on the field.

My broke college student days aren’t that far behind me and I can appreciate the hell out of a value option. I’m very curious what route you have in mind.

Agreed, it’s nice to see Prusa put up a modern consumer printer, but for the price I didn’t see anything in the announcement that would make it easier to recommend over the bamboo for the “I need it to just work” folks or the SV08/ voron for the folks that like to tinker (and value not living in a walled garden, Sovol’s hot end/ nozzles not withstanding).

Having just built an LDO 2.4 kit a few months ago, I have no regrets. The 350 kit + printed forward parts weren’t that much more expensive than what this is slated to retail at, but I get a comparatively massive build volume, nerd cred, and the open source nature means that I can tweak, mod, or otherwise upgrade to my hearts content, from being able to run whatever hot end/ extruder I damn well please, to custom parts (hell, I’ve already swapped the tool head mount for Vitalii’s metal one- not quite the COTS ethos of the voron design, but about a thousand times easier line up and tension, worth every penny), or more complicated projects like ERCF or Box Turtle.