Messages

1

Living Room / Re: Recommend some music videos to me!

« on: November 29, 2024, 02:12 AM »

...

Here a review from a proper opera singer.

Ah! The Charismatic Voice channel! One of my favs. Elizabeth is an utter gem in addition to being a knowledgeable vocal coach. She just recently released her own album. 

Not too hard on the eyes either. 

-40hz (April 29, 2022, 04:46 PM)

Here's The Charismatic Voice getting trolled into reviewing "Pisces" by Jinjer.  (IYKYK)

Of course, at the time, every "vocal coach" on the internet was being spammed with requests to review/react to this song and Tatiana's *ahem* interesting vocal delivery.  Elizabeth's wrap-up was actually very observant and complementary, check it out.

2

Living Room / Re: Do good mice still exist? Looking for recommendations.

« on: August 13, 2024, 01:35 AM »

Hey Deozaan, if you're still reading this, I have a solution.  Actually, Logitech does:

Logitech CEO Hanneke Faber recently discussed the possibility of one day selling a mouse that customers can use "forever." The executive said such a mouse isn't "necessarily super far away" and will rely on software updates, likely delivered through a subscription model.

https://arstechnica....ires-a-subscription/




At first I thought, "Wow, just pay your subscription and they send you a new mouse whenever it breaks? Sweet!", but nope.  They do briefly mention spare parts that can be ordered through iFixit, but seriously, if they're going to call it a "forever mouse", then hardware replacement should have been the first thing mentioned...
from CodeProject News

3

Living Room / Re: Recommend some music videos to me!

« on: July 08, 2024, 05:13 PM »

One more.  Apparently, this guy wrote this song and did the video when he was 16.
It is my firm opinion that no 16-year-old has any right to such a soulful voice, but here we are...

4

Living Room / Re: Recommend some music videos to me!

« on: July 08, 2024, 05:10 PM »

This isn't Country, more like Americana or something, but it's grown on me.  An ode to how the shortness of our lives adds to their preciousness and those we share them with. I like it.

5

Living Room / Re: Recommend some music videos to me!

« on: July 08, 2024, 04:20 PM »

Apparently the entire internet has seen this, but I haven't seen it here.  Some people get it, some don't.  I don't have major mental or medical issues, but somehow I feel a connection.
The ending bit after the music doesn't really add anything, IMHO, even though I know he's trying to be philosophical and encouraging.  Read the guy's backstory; it's brutal. 

6

Living Room / Re: More good web comics you've discovered

« on: June 22, 2023, 11:20 PM »

Hey, it's been awhile...

Just wanted to stop by and say that the Seed webcomic is now wrapped up with a three-page epilogue, and man what a wild ride it was.  With AI being a hot topic these days with all its attending "what-if"s, it's a more relevant read than ever.

https://www.webtoons...480&episode_no=1

7

Living Room / Re: Hard cherry candy almond shaped w/sugar

« on: June 19, 2023, 11:00 AM »

When I was a kid, my favorite candy was Flicks; a cardboard tube wrapped in colored foil and containing quarter-sized flat chocolate drops.  A new company re-issued them a few years ago, claiming to use the same recipe.  I got a tube of them and tried them, and they weren't the same.  I could probably come up with a bunch of reasons why (even the smell of the cardboard tube could be part of the experience), but I think the bottom line is you can't really go back. 

8

DC Gamer Club / Re: Space Awesome!

« on: May 28, 2022, 10:02 PM »

Haha!  I made it, too.  Somehow I cloned my weapons guy and after that I was able to win every battle I came across.  I was running out of fuel most of the time, and my cook and mechanic both died.  I scored 150,000 in 24 events; 3 died; 2 outposts visited.

-BGM (May 28, 2022, 07:04 PM)

Same here, but more dead crew.
Here's my scorecard:

9

DC Gamer Club / Space Awesome!

« on: May 28, 2022, 05:34 PM »

What I Learned Building the InterWebs’ First Firefly-Meets-Oregon-Trail Text-Based Game.

Edward Emanuel Jr. from Font Awesome tells the story of using some down time at FA to pursue a text-based adventure game in which the graphics are simply Font Awesome icons and CSS borders.

https://blog.fontawe...-tbg-learning-vuejs/



Play it here:
https://spaceawesome.io/

I successfully completed the mission, but at the loss of all crew, including a budget kitchen robot that went into a murderous rampage twice. 

10

General Software Discussion / Aussie++

« on: October 30, 2021, 10:52 AM »

 

Aussie Syntax
Oi mate! All your strayan lingo is valid syntax!

Boomerangs > Curly braces
Curly braces are for daft buggers, wield dangerous boomerangs as your block delimiters.

True aussie mode
Where uʍop ǝpᴉsdn characters become valid code

https://aussieplusplus.vercel.app/

from CodeProject News

11

General Software Discussion / Re: Seperate in pages a pdf

« on: October 16, 2021, 06:37 PM »

I'm guessing why it isn't in a page-by-page format is the manufacturer was lazy and simply provided the file they used to print the little folded-up manual/brochure that would have originally came in the box with the device. 
The best thing to do would be to use a PDF editor and manually crop out each "page", then re-compile to a new PDF that has everything indexed like normal.  I don't know any specifically to recommend, though I'm sure the full version of Adobe Acrobat would work though it's kind of expensive.  If you already have it, then stick with that.

12

Living Room / Re: Programming/Coder humor

« on: October 13, 2021, 11:12 PM »

Creepy, spooky, booleans...

-Edvard (October 07, 2021, 08:02 PM)

BOOleans

-Deozaan (October 10, 2021, 02:37 AM)

Doh! It was staring at me in the face and I didn't even see it.    Well played, Deo! 

13

Living Room / Re: Programming/Coder humor

« on: October 07, 2021, 08:02 PM »

Creepy, spooky, booleans...

14

Living Room / Re: ProtonMail deletes "we don't log your IP" after French activist arrested

« on: October 07, 2021, 07:54 PM »

My hope for the internet

-Deozaan (September 22, 2021, 08:56 PM)

I’ve long since given up any hope I might have had for the Internet.

When it was smaller and frequented largely by the technically literate there was a brief period of time when there was a naive belief, in many quarters, that it would be a transformative technology that would magically remain somehow divorced from acquiring all the negatives virtually every previous technological advance dragged along in its wake. And while it’s good to have a dream, most times those dreams completely ignore the lessons of history. And the Internet is just one more case of an advance being coopted for the purposes of the lowest common denominator.

Robinson’s Rule is inescapable:

”Nothing truly good ever survives being ‘discovered’”

-40hz (September 23, 2021, 10:36 AM)

Sometimes I wish Donationcoder forums had a "Like" button (or a reasonable facsimile).  You'll have to settle for being quoted. 

15

Living Room / Re: ProtonMail deletes "we don't log your IP" after French activist arrested

« on: September 22, 2021, 12:12 AM »

...
Anonymity is possible. But not on a public network…like… the Internet?

-40hz (September 21, 2021, 07:58 PM)

16

Living Room / Let Inspirobot inspire you

« on: September 18, 2021, 02:58 AM »

... to new heights of ridiculous.  An AI that generates "Inspirational Quotes" complete with ir/relevant background images

I'm InspiroBot.
I am an artificial intelligence dedicated to generating unlimited amounts of unique inspirational quotes for endless enrichment of pointless human existence.

https://inspirobot.me


Some may say it's just a Markov Chain engine, but this is far smarter.  I've played with Markov Chains, and there's a fine line between nonsense and plagiarism; meaning chains of 1-3 words can turn out meaningless babble, but around 6 words generated phrases start to make sense but more often are simply sentences lifted wholesale out of the source text, not "intelligently" remixed like Inspirobot does.

Some generated quotes are mundane drivel, some are "Um... wut?" and some are ROFLOL gems worthy of hanging on your wall.  Check it out, it's pretty fun, but beware - some of the phrases generated can be NSFW, and it can become addictive; it is possible to entertain oneself for far too long just repeatedly clicking the "Generate" button looking for a LOL.  Ask me how I know...     

A few of my favorites so far:







And one last one, just for Cody:

17

DC Gamer Club / Re: Latest GOG Giveaway

« on: September 14, 2021, 01:17 AM »

Samorost 1 is now on GOG, and is currently free. I'm not sure if it is permanently free or if it's a limited time promotion.
...

-Deozaan (May 28, 2021, 10:40 AM)

It is permanently free.  It's even free on the Amanita Design website: https://amanita-desi...ames/samorost-1.html

18

General Software Discussion / Croc: Command-line secure file transfer tool

« on: September 13, 2021, 03:47 PM »

Yes, there are tools like Mongoose, Civetweb, and Woof, and I have used them all and think they are very cool tools.  Croc is a little different...

Croc - secure and easy data transfer
https://schollz.com/software/croc/

croc is a tool that allows any two computers to simply and securely transfer files and folders. AFAIK, croc is the only CLI file-transfer tool that does all of the following:

• allows any two computers to transfer data (using a relay)
• provides end-to-end encryption (using PAKE)
• enables easy cross-platform transfers (Windows, Linux, Mac)
• allows multiple file transfers
• allows resuming transfers that are interrupted
• local server or port-forwarding not needed
• ipv6-first with ipv4 fallback
• can use proxy, like tor

More details at the Github site: https://github.com/schollz/croc
Neato!

19

Living Room / ProtonMail deletes "we don't log your IP" after French activist arrested

« on: September 08, 2021, 03:19 PM »

https://www.theregis...r_ip_address_police/

Cops can read SMTP spec too, y'know...
Encrypted email service ProtonMail has become embroiled in a minor scandal after responding to a legal request to hand over to Swiss police a user's IP address and details of the devices he used to access his mailbox – resulting in the netizen's arrest.

Their website prior to this event stated: "No personal information is required to create your secure email account. By default, we do not keep any IP logs which can be linked to your anonymous email account. Your privacy comes first."  Apparently, that wasn't quite correct.  They have changed that statement to something a bit more vague.
In their defense, they were served with a bona fide legal order from Swiss (not French, though it was vis-a-vis Europol) authorities, which they are legally beholden to.

In this case, Proton received a legally binding order from the Swiss Federal Department of Justice which we are obligated to comply with. There was no possibility to appeal or fight this particular request because an act contrary to Swiss law did in fact take place (and this was also the final determination of the Federal Department of Justice which does a legal review of each case).

The sticky question as to why they were logging access via IP address when their policy explicity stated that was not so is addressed in the comments at the article.  Apparently, they don't log IPs as a matter of course, but at the behest of a court order, they were obligated to do so.

Caveat Emptor.
Found at CodeProject News

20

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 11 Announced

« on: July 11, 2021, 11:04 PM »

systemd aimed to improve the startup speed - but they said it was especially good "for servers". Now how often do you usually restart your servers?

-Tuxman (July 09, 2021, 03:26 AM)

Heh, precisely.  I gotta hand it to systemd on that point though, my Linux of choice has never started up faster or more reliably.

Also, yup - if systemd would have remained a SysV init replacement, it would probably be ok-ish. Instead, they added stuff that renames your network devices on each boot.

Annoying, but strangely easy to ignore after getting over the initial annoyance.  I was more peeved about SDDM hard-coding my $PATH and ignoring .profile 

If you want reliability, you don't want Linux with systemd.

As badly as I wanted to hate systemd, I find that in day-to-day use on a desktop machine doing electronic design, music recording, photo manipulation and vector graphics and the occasional game, I... dont.
I can't stand Lennart Poettering's attitude and justifications for what he thinks Linux should be like, but for the most part, I can still tell stuff to stay out of my way and it does.  PulseAudio doesn't have access to my recording interface because I told it not to, and it dutifully complied.  I've even heard of some crazy folks running a systemd-tainted distro say that the binary logs are actually a peach to parse with the tools given.  Yeah, I prefer a healthy pipe-grepping session to anything else, but I'm not anybody important, and besides, even now you can turn on text logging and it's just as happy.  AND it's been rock-solid reliable even after systemd was introduced.

I'm definitely NOT a systemd fanboy, I'm just saying that In My Experience, I didn't see the world come crashing down around my head when it first showed up in my Debian updates, and I have no reason to believe it will anytime soon.  If it does, there's always BSD.  Always. 

Anyways, back on topic:
I won't be installing Windows 11 for my wife anytime soon, as there is no way we can afford the kind of machine it would take to run it.  Maybe in 5 years we can afford this year's refurbished model and give it a go, but whatever.

21

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 11 Announced

« on: July 11, 2021, 09:56 PM »

Looking forward to when they get rid of version numbers altogether.

-Tuxman (July 06, 2021, 07:36 PM)

Wasn't that supposed to be Windows 10?  Like, it was supposed to be a "rolling update" operating system? 
https://www.windowsc...nks-operating-system

22

Living Room / Re: Recommend some music videos to me!

« on: January 31, 2021, 05:14 PM »

I don't know what they're saying, and I can't help but feel that I'm being scolded for doing something wrong, but I can think of worse ways to be scolded.

-mouser (January 12, 2021, 10:57 AM)

That's Ievan Polkka.  It's gotten to be an internet thing since about 2006 or so.  Nope, they aren't scolding (well, maybe); check out the lyrics (farther down the page in the second link)
https://en.wikipedia...rg/wiki/Ievan_polkka
https://www.lyricsma..._lyrics_loituma.html

23

Living Room / Re: So, you really believe Microsoft now loves Linux, huh?

« on: October 23, 2020, 10:57 PM »

Link 1: High-profile Linux sites taken over by Microsoft and staff replaced with Microsoft shills.
Link 2: LinuxAcademy streaming site taken over by Microsoft shills CloudGuru; Linux shows dropped and/or replaced by MS-focused shows.
Link 3: At ZDNet, "Linux" articles are actually articles on how to use the new MSL (Microsoft Subsystem for Linux).
Link 4: Microsoft proclaiming they "love" linux when buying Github was just a ploy to keep Github users from fleeing en masse when Microsoft bought it.
Link 5: Suse are traitors because they promote MS SQL Server in Suse, and they apparently don't remember what happened to Novell.

Personally, I've never believed this "Microsoft Loves Linux" BS.  It's a one-way relationship.  When Microsoft does as much to make Windows technology accessible to Linux users as it has done to make Linux technology work for Microsoft, then I might consider it.  Otherwise, nope.  This is just the "Embrace" stage...

24

General Software Discussion / Re: desktop pubishing tools and comparisons

« on: September 01, 2020, 12:46 AM »

Back in the day, Pagemaker was my jam, and is in fact the very software that kicked off the Desktop Publishing revolution of the '90s.  I thought that since you were still considering Broderbund that it might do exactly what you need, but the latest that I could find is that it won't install on any Windows past XP.  It might be a nice exercise for your inner hacker to see if it can be done.  I don't know if Adobe will still sell you a license though...

Scribus is actually very nice once you get used to its workflow of separating content from layout, which is how it used to be done in the old pasteup-and-rubylith days.  My only gripe about it is it can't do Publisher-style automatic repeating layouts like for business cards.  It can be done, it's just more manual then I'd like for that functionality.

That said, and I hate to admit it being a Linux user, but for ease of use doing simple layouts, Publisher is a very nice and straightforward solution if you're willing to put up the money.  OpenOffice doesn't really have an equivalent, and Scribus is the closest I've found in the free options.

25

Living Room / Re: good Videos [short films] here :)

« on: August 02, 2020, 05:32 PM »

...

The video is no longer available

-Katie (April 20, 2020, 10:39 AM)

Try this one: