Palacegalleryratio [he/him]

Red panda because Dirt Owl said so.

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 29th, 2023

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  • My personal favourite is to break from staring after 30 mins, exclaim, “Hang on, we’re going about this completely back to front!” then spend the next hour deriving from first principles, only to arrive back at the original problem, but now with slightly different notation. At which point I realise that all I’ve done is get myself back to my starting point… Then it’s back to the staring.







  • There definitely should be a good open source e-reader, but for what it’s worth I use a Kobo Clara 2e (newer models are available in both black and white and colour eink) and it works fine for me.

    I download books from various resources; like Project Gutenberg and use Calibre for managing them. Works pretty seamlessly, especially with the Calibre Kobo plugin for automatic conversion to the kepub format too. However this obviously requires the use of a computer, which may be a dealbreaker. Also Kobo works well with Overdrive for borrowing library ebooks, which is neat.





  • “From the moment I understood the weakness of my flesh, it disgusted me. I craved the strength and certainty of steel. I aspired to the purity of the Blessed Machine.

    Your kind cling to your flesh, as if it will not decay and fail you. One day the crude biomass that you call a temple will wither, and you will beg my kind to save you. But I am already saved, for the Machine is immortal…

    …even in death I serve the Omnissiah.” - some bird in New Mexico apparently




  • iirc the no windows 9 thing was actually because a lot of software ran a compatibility check like:

    if windows version = “windows 9*” then open legacy mode
    

    This worked for software written for newer windows like xp but still allowing a legacy mode on older windows versions like 95 and 98. Problem was this also put that same software running on windows 9 into legacy mode. So they called it windows 10 to sidestep the compatibility issues.


  • You know what, this is on us. Chat GPT is just a prediction engine that tries to say what words it thinks follow a preceding prompt, and it’s looked at millions of examples (written by us) and it’s seen hapless clients and users complain about bugs and be told: “user error, works fine” so often chatGPT just thinks it’s just the culturally accepted polite response to a bug report, in the same way as responding to “thank you” with “you’re welcome”. This is a dark mirror on our profession.




  • Hey, I don’t have a powerful desktop any more, however I opted for the steam deck over a new desktop just for lifestyle reasons. I don’t have very much free time, and what free time I have isn’t spent entirely on gaming. For me the steam decks secret weapon is that it goes from ‘off’ to ‘gaming’ in seconds, then if I’m needed, off again in seconds even mid cutscene, then when I am free again I press the button and I’m resumed. I can get some gameplay in a precious spare moment which I could never get in if I had to boot my pc, launch steam, install updates etc. it’s too slow. Also I can play anywhere in the house, which means I’m not glued like a recluse to the pc upstairs. With a pair of open backed headphones I can still interact and talk to people in the room with me, whilst not disturbing someone watching the tv (I recommend the Koss KSC75s, super cheap, sound good and they fit in the weird hollow in the back of the deck case when you’re not using them). I do have a usb c dock with connected screens and mouse and keyboard which I could plug the deck into for a desktop style pc experience, it works well but I don’t often plug it in. It’s just better to play on the sofa. For me it’s the only way I’d find any time at all to game. 10 years ago: different story, but now, if I had a desktop pc it would just gather dust.