Hi lazyweb. I'm feeling thoroughly annoyed at Autodesk fusion. Any recommendations for free & open source 3d cad systems I can go learn? Desktop apps only, nothing web-based. I know blender is a thing, but it's a 3d modeling system, and I'm looking for much more of a cad app.

Once again finding myself wishing there was a way to tell swift concurrency “under no circumstances run this on the main thread.” #swiftlang

Editing my next video and I’m taking out a decent chunk of the “however” transitions that I had originally written into the script. It’s interesting how things like this are fine when reading the script, but become grating as I edit the video.

Noticed an issue with one of our solar inverters today. Did some basic troubleshooting (literally, just flipping a couple breakers), and when that didn’t work, I called the installer on the same day! I am so proud of myself for making that phone call. Phone calls are the worst.

Installing the flaperon on the glider's wing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flaperon It's a full-span flaperon, in two halves. Each half is almost 12 feet long. Each flaperon half has 8 hinges made of a pintle/gudgeon pair. (1st photo) […] [Original post on universeodon.com]

Spent a long weekend up in Seattle! I am definitely falling in love with this city, and, concerns about winter aside, I could see us living there someday. We spent most of this trip in the downtown area, so we were exposed to the most urban/pedestrian friendly […] [Original post on hachyderm.io]

I don't know why this surprised me. I've dealt with floating points long enough to know why. But it did: po Int(Double(Int.max)) error: <EXPR>:8:1: invalid conversion: '9.2233720368547758E+18' overflows 'Int' Int(Double(Int.max)) ^ For those who are scratching your heads: It's because Ints are […]

I’m strongly considering keeping my phone on iOS 18. I don’t even remember what other features are in the OS, just that liquid glass looks so bad. Skipping 26 and seeing what 27 looks like feels really compelling.

Taking my wife’s Brompton on an airliner for the first time. It’s just going to be a carry-on. I’m like “yeah, people do this all the time.” And she’s worried about “what if the gate agent says no?” And I told her “dear, this is still smaller and lighter than most bags people try to shove in the […]

[USpol, aviation, good news] Oh, hey, the pilot’s mental health act (HR 2591) just passed the house! Maybe there’ll be a second thing out of this administration that I agree with. The other thing is the MOSAIC ruleset announced in July. Funny how aviation, which is 99% straight white cisgender […]

Oh joy, planning a flight for tomorrow. The choice is between dodging fire TFRs (temporary flight restrictions), going way out to the east to avoid most of the fire TFRs, or delay departure until the marine layer burns off enough that I can fly along the coast […] [Original post on hachyderm.io]

I made some fiberglass 'angle iron' that will be used as braces for the top of the glider's instrument panel. The mold was a piece of square steel tubing, well waxed. Note that one of the fiberglass pieces is made from shorter scrap fabric, so the middle […] [Original post on universeodon.com]

#swiftlang will have made it once there are working groups that do not meet over webex.

I just did the math of how much of my private pilot training was spent doing pattern work. I had thought it would be something like 35% or so. Nope. 47%. Nearly half of my hours logged up until my checkride were just spent practicing takeoffs and landings. No wonder I was able to consistently […]

I actually made notable progress on the electric mountainboard today! First time in months I've actually made progress on it. I printed a tap guide that properly aligned the mountainboard hangars with an m12 tap. Then I opened up & tapped the formerly 10mm holes for m12x1.25 threads. Now the […]

Discovered that my GoPro’s battery had become a spicy pillow. And to my surprise, I didn’t put off taking it to be disposed of. Probably the shortest ever duration for me between discovering a spicy pillow and actually taking care of it. I can still shave time off of that - I finished what I […]

Enough has changed from my initial polling confirmation for Swift Testing pitch that I was asked to put up a second pitch thread! So... here it is! This is much more mature, and I will be eternally grateful for all who gave feedback and helped bring this where it is! […]

[Climate change, but good news.] Oh, huh. Looking at France's short-haul domestic flight ban, the criteria for banning a route meant that it only applied to 2.6% of domestic flights (https://asuene.com/us/blog/frances-short-haul-flight-ban-a-bold-step-toward-climate-resilient-mobility) […]

This year, I've been trying to learn how to play guitar + write my own music. One of my goals with this is to make it so I don't have to rely on the same royalty free music everyone else uses (<3 Kevin Macleod, you carry most of youtube). I'm still bad at this, but I wrote a (very simple) song […]

[Discworld book quote.] “One reason for the bustle was that over large parts of the continent other people preferred to make money without working at all, and since the Disc has yet to develop a music recording industry they were forced to fall back on older, more traditional forms of banditry […]

[Food] Now I’m grabbing a late lunch from the local food truck pod. Pupusas!

[Links to Instagram (not mine)] Elliot Seguin (a highly accomplished test pilot) is doing some firefighting ops in Montana, and sharing the flights as instagram stories. It’s so cool to see a first-hand account of firefighting ops. https://www.instagram.com/edseguin #avgeek #aviation […]

Looked up flights and trains from Portland to Seattle on a random weekday a couple months from now. Trains: 7. 6 cascades (~3.5 hour duration), 1 coast starlight (~4 hour duration). Flights: 20+. At least 1 an hour on Alaskan alone. Flight duration: 1 hour. Ugh, we need faster, more frequent […]

It’s 100 F/38 C today. And I have errand to run. I need to pick up a white parasol to walk with. My main umbrella is black and gray, which helps, but the black heats up significantly during a walk.

#RIP “Jim Lovell, the astronaut who commanded the famous Apollo 13 mission, has died, NASA announced Friday. He was 97.” https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jim-lovell-dies-age-97-apollo-13-commander/

Getting a head start on a potential move next year by filling out forms to put myself on various hangar waitlists in the area. We’re not planning to move until, like, May at the earliest.

I suspect the answer is no, but is there any way I can tell Final Cut to use more resources to execute background tasks? It’s frustrating seeing a large list of transcoding tasks only running one at a time, with activity monitor showing that my machine is basically idling. Like, I get that […]

Wish I knew this before I bought a couple. :( https://social.lol/@adam/114959554043586459

I discovered today that I can't send email to gmail/google addresses from one of my domains using fastmail. I wonder why that is, and more importantly, how I can fix it.

Apparently the uavionix echoUAT I have is failing. No idea the vintage of this unit, but the echoUAT was first released in 2017, and is now discontinued. I'd believe this is the result of an early now out-of-warranty unit having a defect. Not only has it refused a configuration update to a new […]

[#onPoli court nixes bikelane nonsense \o/] Court finds Ford government’s bike lane removal plan would ‘breach’ the Canadian Charter of Rights. - Globalnews.ca https://globalnews.ca/news/11311369/ontario-bike-lane-removal-plan-court-defeat/ #bikenite #biketoot #dougfordiscorruptaf

In the Q&A at an all hands (in which the VP praised AI and such), I asked how do the VP & the company reconcile the externalities of genAI. The response was impressive considering the earlier pro-AI statements. Basically saying "we're still feeling this out. It's promising, but if the costs - […]

My internet was down for just over 6 hours today, and my cell data was terrible. Was somewhat productive today, but kept running into issues with wanting to look up docs. At least it was only my internet that was out, so I was just back in the 1990s, not the […] [Original post on hachyderm.io]

Oh. Good. Filed a request last week to remove my name/address from the public FAA n-number registry, which has now been fulfilled. I don't really care that my name is attached to the aircraft registry. I do care that my home address is. It used to be that the only way to hide your name/address […]

Flew along the Oregon Coast the other day. Absolutely beautiful terrain. Dense forested mountains abutting deep blue ocean. Breathtaking. I'm so lucky to be able to do this. #avgeek #aviation #oregon #oregoncoast

Flew along the Oregon Coast the other day. Absolutely beautiful terrain. Dense forested mountains abutting deep blue ocean. Breathtaking. I'm so lucky to be able to do this. #avgeek #aviation #oregon #oregoncoast

Hey #hamradio friends, any recs for VHF/UHF HTs that can listen to the VHF aviation band? Preferably something recent enough to have USB-C charging? #itsnotevenlazywebthankstosearchenshittification

Doing my yearly tradition of listening to Fisk arrival while I simultaneously appreciate not actually being at airventure. Maybe one year. But not this year. #aviation #avgeek #eaaairventure

I'm going to order some linear hall effect sensors and see if I can get proportional regen on my ebike (i.e. how much regen you get corresponds to how much you pull the brake lever). I know my controllers proportional regen, but I wonder how much hoops I have to jump through to get this to all work.

I finished Final Fantasy Tactics on the PSP today! It's a really good game. Very frustrating, though. I ended up putting it down several times over the course of playing it. Instead of posting a multi-post review of it, I just put that same writeup on my knowledge repo. Spoilers for a nearly 30 […]

Oh sweet deal! I made iOS Dev Weekly! https://iosdevweekly.com/issues/717/ #swiftlang #iosdevweekly

Put the finishing touches on these chocks. If I ever have to make more, I’ve deeply fucked up. But they look nice!

Just ordered my first part from Vans for my rv-9a! This little piece of 0.050" x 0.5" x 20" 4130 bar stock. Why do I need this? I am much shorter than the previous owner. For comfort, I want to move the rudder pedals forward a bit. I'm going to do that by making […] [Original post on hachyderm.io]

Finally got the email from Nintendo to buy a switch 2, and... meh? I think I'm going to pass for now. I'm going to buy one later, but maybe not until Metroid Prime 4 comes out?

Submitted a talk proposal for NSSpain! It'll be about Getting Started Writing Tests on iOS. I'll find out whether I got accepted on the 11th.

“What's new in Testing, 2025 Edition” by @younata #swift https://rachelbrindle.com/2025/06/26/whats-new-in-testing-swift-6-2/

A couple weeks ago, I gave a talk at @omt_conf on What's New in Testing. That talk was recorded, but while I wait for it to be edited and published, I published an edited (and updated!) version of my speaker notes from that talk. There's a lot new in testing since last year. I'm still surprised […]

The Zohran-Quake heard round the country is happening

Woohoo! Completed the insurance-required transition training today! I learned so much about how to fly this thing, I feel so much better about it. Also, I made my first grass-strip landings! 3 landings at the instructor’s home field (we met up at a different airport with a paved runway, and I […]