When I was a teenager, I had an Italian greyhound who would collect fallen apples from our tree in our back yard. He'd make a pile and leave it for a week or so. Then he'd go out and chew on the apples before running around the yard at full speed until he passed out in the sun.
Once we figured out what he was up to, I'd keep an eye on him so I could go pick him up and lay him inside on the cool tile next to his water bowl when he was done for the day.
It's not really "random", there is a coherent story (and a moral to that story) underneath all the weirdness and you'll sometimes forget how crazy it's gotten because your current objective tends to make sense (ex: "defuse the bombs").
But all MGS games are basically playable Kojima manifestos with sci-fi trappings. The actual minute-to-minute gameplay for them is really, really good so even if you don't dig the story they're worth playing.
The previous poster is right that MGS4 does clear a lot of this up. But MGS4 also slams more weirdness and callbacks to the previous games on top of it.
Agreed. If you want to just make parts and not tinker with a CNC machine, get a Z1.
I had near-zero experience with CNC and got a Cavera Air last year and it mostly "just works" from the hardware side. I just fixture stuff and run my gcode, zero issues with the hardware. The Z1 seems to be even more streamlined w/r/t things like chip evacuation.
But, my god, Makera's firmware/software is fucking garbage. Especially the CAM workbench.
The community firmware and controller software (https://github.com/Carvera-Community) is so much better and feature-filled that it's kind of sad. They also have a tool library and post-processor for the FreeCAD CAM workbench in that repo which will let you make a clean break from Makera's terrible software.
On the upside: Makera apparently won't invalidate your warranty for using the community firmware/controller software, which is nice.
I've been a watercooling "enthusiast" for about 20 years now and, while the DIY-ness of the old school builds was a lot of fun for young me, I'm also glad I can just buy some off-the-shelf (or at worst "small batch") components that let me get really effective and near silent performance by just slamming some stuff together.
No more scouring junk yards for a particular heater core from wrecked cars or modding aquarium pumps.
That being said, I also never really understood the "add colorful lights to your PC" aspect of some builds.
> Is it all to support the biggest and baddest high end GPUs that cost more than the rest of the system?
I think it's more to have a big window with lots of RGB LEDs to show off on the internet.
Newer SFF cases from Ncase/Formd/Louqe are designed with perforations or mesh on every exterior surface to maximize air flow. They can support an air-cooled 5090 and an AIO or massive tower cooler for the CPU. Put a 1000W SFX PSU in there and I don't know if you'd really be wanting for anything spec-wise.
In the US (at least for now) the angle grinder crews are mostly limited to nights when they can steal a lot of bikes a once and chuck them into a truck/van (ex: bike racks near student housing in college towns).
But the exception is always high-value bikes. That's why I called out bikes that aren't "obviously worth a grand+". If you leave out a nice eBike or a superlight road bike, the thieves have solid financial motivation to risk breaking out the cordless grinder and making a ruckus to steal it. Hell, sometimes thieves would straight up wait for people to come back to their bikes after brunch or whatever and mug them for it after they unlocked it in Albuquerque. No tools needed other than a knife.
>If anyone has recommendations for stealth theft detection/tracking devices I’m all ears.
If you have a bike lock/chain that can resist bolt cutters, you're probably fine for everything other than leaving it overnight. Casual bike thieves are looking for easy money and likely aren't going to bust out an angle grinder in the middle of the day unless your bike is obviously worth a grand+.
Yup, I definitely remember the first episode being on every shareware CD I had.
I went back to play the other episodes a few years back and it's interesting how far he was able to push a Wolf3d-style engine. There's lot of interesting little details and extra gameplay tweaks like the vending and slot machines. But it's a rough game to play in its entirety due to repetition.
Once we figured out what he was up to, I'd keep an eye on him so I could go pick him up and lay him inside on the cool tile next to his water bowl when he was done for the day.