Instead of painting, you could try etching.

I don’t have any particular acid or lye in mind, as I never tried it, but that might be a good option.

I know it works for steel and some other metals like bronze, tin or copper, so maybe it also works for aluminium too?

You could cross-post this to !hydroponics@slrpnk.net if you want :)

I pretty much only find spider mites on already weak and highly stressed plants and only nearby windows.

Do you have them in soil? AFAIK they can only lay their eggs in organic substrates.

Systemic pesticides also do wonders when needed.

Still great to hear experiences from others! ✌️

Some phals need a slight temperature drop or photoperiod shift to bloom. Most supermarket orchids, yours most probably included, are ultra complex hybrids that are everblooming and don’t care much about that. Still, it might help.

The most obvious reason they don’t bloom tho is a lack of sunlight. Blooming costs A LOT of energy and doesn’t give the plant anything back. Give it LOTS of diffused light.

People (most often the seller itself) say they don’t need much light, but that’s total BS. They might survive, but not thrive.

Mine are usually behind a shear curtain (blocks half the light and diffuses it) on a SW window. VERY bright.

IMPORTANT:

• Don’t move them too suddenly when they’ve adapted to dark conditions
• Observe the temperature of the leaves. They can get hot fast. In my climate they don’t burn, but they quickly will when they get direct sun for too long.

They will quickly adapt to the new lighting conditions.

Show me a few pics of yours. Include some pictures of the roots and the leaves please, so I can help you troubleshoot.

Nutrients are usually not the primary issue. But they might. If they are, you’ll (or I) see it by the looks.

Kinda looks like this

Instead of soil (decomposing organic stuff), you use expanded clay balls, pumice, lava rock, or whatever inorganic porous material you prefer. I like LECA by far the most.

The medium is fully inert and can be heat sterilized and reused again indefinitely.

The inner pot is standing a few centimetres deep in nutrient solution (water with fertiliser), with a floating indicator that tells you when the pot is soon empty again. Due to the porous nature of the balls the nutrient solution is wicked up passively and held constantly moist with a lot of air gaps in between.

I only need to water every few weeks usually, need to repot very rarely, don’t have pests and the plants are universally loving it!

Thanks! ❤️

More pics will follow soon!

I have 5 or more orchids right now with a flower spike or buds already forming, that will bloom in less than a few weeks!

Then it needs more light. Flower/ fruit formation requires lots of energy

Android apps run via Waydroid?

You usually can access the settings from the status bar, can’t you?

Do you keep them indoors all the time?

How do you handle the very high sunlight and hibernation requirements?

Switching from a GNOME OS to a KDE OS or vice versa is problematic.

I did that a few times already on different installs and never had any problems, besides the window decorations/ theming being off and needing to set them again. What issues could be expected?

Cool thing is you can rebase anytime to any other flavour you want with one command and keep everything that’s yours!

You can use Ventoy and burn even more isos on it, for example rescue distros, Windows, etc.

What does it do better than Aurora/ Bluefin for example?

They offer the same pros - easy (no) setup, impossible to break, no maintenance, etc.

How does it look like at day?

Just for personal use. I’m a creative person and have lots of time for that, but no money.

So I just use my skills (many of which I aquire by doing exactly that) and build them to my own vision 😇 I wanna play musical instruments, but just buying something isn’t personal enough for me. The DIY route gives me a very unique object in the end.

Doing that isn’t easy tho. I have absolutely no experience with making music or playing instruments, so everything is done by research. For example:

• The strings of the tagelharpa, opposed to for example a violin, consist of up to 30 individual strings each, with the correct ratio of nylon to sewing thread (and I even included a few metal strings on the drone), which need to be twisted to create the characteristic deep dark sound
• Or, the steelpan needs to be tempered very specifically and then tuned by hammering on the note fields. Also very hard to do, and that’s the step I’m currently struggling with 😬

I already built a tagelharpa cello. Sounds great, but I currently have to upgrade the tuning pegs to proper ones because they don’t hold the tone.

And a dulcimer-harp-thing out of my broken washing machine. Works great, but the tuning pegs are impractical and need to be exchanged for better screws. I also wanna try out different string patterns and materials. Has a very heavenly echo!

My rain stick is also almost ready. Only needs a few minutes more of painting. No pic yet.

Currently I’m also building a handpan/ steelpan hybrid. Very WIP

I haven’t had the chance to post them on c/DIY, but will do it once I feel they’re truly finished

There’s an official Eurorack variant available too! Here it is

Sure, you may have a point. Or not, I don’t know, really.

But can we maybe just agree that it looks fancy? You’re literally creating music out of thin air. That’s why it was called “Etherophone” at first, because you touch the ether itself and create harmony ^(or, in my case, weird mosquito noises and sirens...)^

You usually don’t “wave” your arms blindly in the air, you have a defined set of fingering positions and movements. Once you’ve learned them, they’re in muscle memory, just like typing on a touchscreen keyboard instead of a physical one.

You actually have a huge scale range. The octaves are defined by the location of your hand, the notes themselves are by the fingers. It’s supposed to be pretty accurate and makes sense from what I’ve heard?

I couldn’t think of always hitting the exact correct note out of hundreds just by a slider.

If you want something with a slider, theres the Stylophone Theremin