@brunogirin@mastodon.me.uk
@brunogirin@mastodon.me.uk avatar

brunogirin

@brunogirin@mastodon.me.uk

Technologist designing software to address the climate change emergency and helping improve diversity in tech.

Some things I enjoy:

  • travelling, by train or tall ship if possible;
  • contributing to my community orchard;
  • reading SF&F;
  • baking cake;
  • eating cheese;
  • cat pictures.

Some things I believe in:

  • trans rights are human rights.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

ohno, to random
@ohno@dny.social avatar

Hiya fedi, I need your knowledge! The family wants to digitise a big collection of old photographs, negatives and photo slides. I know there’s services we can send the material to that do this for a living, but grandpa is afraid to hand them off for fear of them getting damaged, lost etc. So I need to figure out how to do this “in house” as best I can.

I’ve figured out there’s specific photo scanners, instead of a flat bed scanner, that should be able to handle the negatives and the slides.

But what I don’t know is about good software to scan and archive them properly, what things to watch out for when doing this and what kind of software exists that could help restore and enhance the digital copies.

It doesn’t matter if this is a slow going process, there’s no deadline here.

If you have any recommendations for hardware equipment, software or documentation and protocols to read I’d be very grateful. I would prefer to do this using open source software but if there’s proprietary software that makes a meaningful difference I’m happy to consider it.

(I know how to search the web myself, so I’m looking for advice from folks with practical experience, not just a Google search hit or whatever an LLM misgenerated.)

Boost would be appreciated since unfortunately I’m short on folks with this type of knowledge in my own social circles.

brunogirin,
@brunogirin@mastodon.me.uk avatar

@ohno I used to have a slide + negatives scanner that had a SANE driver and therefore could work with most image capture software. Hardware wise, check that it has a SANE or TWAIN driver as it will offer the widest range of software options.

Software wise, it really depends on your workflow. I used to use Shotwell on Ubuntu to manage my image library because it was non destructive and always kept the original when applying image correction so I could always roll back any adjustment.

jessie, to random
@jessie@mastodon.social avatar

Weird question: are there other languages where governments are putting money behind affordable, general-access language education as a restoration pathway like Welsh?

https://learnwelsh.cymru/

Asking for me, who loves language learning but also keeping to budgets.

brunogirin,
@brunogirin@mastodon.me.uk avatar

@jessie oh good question! I'm interested in the answer too!

BathysphereHat, to random
@BathysphereHat@mastodon.online avatar

Wait, is a "hot minute" a long time or a short time?

brunogirin,
@brunogirin@mastodon.me.uk avatar

@BathysphereHat see also "ahorita" in Spanish.

girlonthenet, to random
@girlonthenet@mastodon.social avatar

Something that massively annoys me in TV and movies is when someone kisses a cis dude for like 5 seconds, slides their hand down his pants, then goes “oh... nothing’s happening?”

Of COURSE nothing’s happening? His dick is not a light switch.

brunogirin,
@brunogirin@mastodon.me.uk avatar

@girlonthenet indeed, and normalise foreplay.

RandomYarning, to random
@RandomYarning@mastodon.world avatar

I am making cakes to take to work tomorrow. I know I don't do this very often because the box of food colourings has a use by date of April 2022, and I've only opened the purple.....

brunogirin,
@brunogirin@mastodon.me.uk avatar

@RandomYarning only opened the purple? That's a surprise!

oldrawgabbit, to random
@oldrawgabbit@mastodon.world avatar

We put birdseed out, and a couple of these suet blocks in holders. The larger birds love them.
But I noticed how clever jackdaws are - I saw one actually trying to undo the catch to get the suet block out!

brunogirin,
@brunogirin@mastodon.me.uk avatar

@oldrawgabbit corvids FTW!

emma, to random
@emma@ruby.social avatar

Knee-deep as I am in this year's exam season, I am so over the adult-centric nature of children's education.

e.g. the forced delineation of knowledge into subjects, to fit the career path and interests of "a geography teacher", "a physics teacher".

see also: schedules that fit with an adult not a teenage brain; lack of real application of overwhelmingly theoretical teaching; subjects designed only to help the minority who study further; assessment oriented to career, not child, progression.

brunogirin,
@brunogirin@mastodon.me.uk avatar

@rgarner @emma a fair few years ago, I decided to scratch that fractal itch using Octave. It's all here if you're interested: https://github.com/brunogirin/octave-fractals

Sivation, to london
@Sivation@wandering.shop avatar

This weekend’s has me ending up at the Thames Barrier again, just on the north bank instead of the south. Didn’t intend it, but it turns out that the Royal docks have gone from a wasteland to a commercial wasteland

brunogirin,
@brunogirin@mastodon.me.uk avatar

@Sivation what about a bus, the overground or the Lizzie line?

thibaultmol, to random
@thibaultmol@en.osm.town avatar

Could someone send me the link to that post I saw today about over the counter E in spain/portugal/italy or wherever it was? (dm'ing is fine as well)

Have a friend who might be interesting cause her current E supply got cut off

:boost_ok:

brunogirin,
@brunogirin@mastodon.me.uk avatar

@thibaultmol no clue but it is probably Portugal as AFAIK it's the only one of the 3 that has fully decriminalised drugs.

brunogirin, to london
@brunogirin@mastodon.me.uk avatar

No photo of polling station because I voted by post this time round. If you haven't done so yet, go and vote!

evan, (edited ) to random
@evan@cosocial.ca avatar

Which of these body parts do you still have?

brunogirin,
@brunogirin@mastodon.me.uk avatar

@evan wisdom teeth: only half of them: I had 2 that were growing straight, 2 crooked so the dentist decided to let the straight ones live their lives.

polotek, to random
@polotek@social.polotek.net avatar

Questions for software engineers about estimates. Feel free to answer any of these in any order.

Have you ever had an explicit conversation about how to estimate projects? How did you learn?

If you feel that you were never taught the skill in any real sense, what do you feel you're doing at work when you're asked for estimates? Are you making it up? Have you developed your own personal guidelines?

On average, how confident are you in your own estimates? How do you measure success?

brunogirin,
@brunogirin@mastodon.me.uk avatar

@polotek as a product manager, that's more or less what I do with my team:

  • plan a piece of work that looks like it should fit in a quarter based on what we did the quarter before,
  • break the effort down into stories, in a collaborative way with the dev team so they can give an estimate for each story,
  • review total estimate against total of previous quarter and adjust scope if necessary,
  • prioritise leftover scope as stretch goals.
leonoverweel, to random
@leonoverweel@mastodon.social avatar

@solar_chase I just finished the “NEF startup chapter” of your book and loved it! I work at a startup that grew from 15 to 90 people in the three years I’ve been there, and I recognize a lot of the “professionalizing” stuff you described (even though we’re still independent and founder-led so far).

brunogirin,
@brunogirin@mastodon.me.uk avatar

@leonoverweel @solar_chase working in a company that went from 150 to 400 in 2 years, I would add that the "professionalizing" never stops.

aral, to ireland
@aral@mastodon.ar.al avatar

Folks, this is a deceptive design pattern. There is a very clear third option here (keep me updated on this campaign’s progress only) that is not implemented for marketing reasons.

I expect better from a platform that exists to effect ‘progressive change across Ireland’.

brunogirin,
@brunogirin@mastodon.me.uk avatar

@aral plus there's an obvious and simpler design pattern using one check box for each of "this campaign" and "Uplift". This amazing design pattern even scales to more than 2 entities, it's as if it had been designed for their use case!

timjonesbooks, to books
@timjonesbooks@mastodon.nz avatar

Ten authors where I’ve read at least 5 of their books - Lists 2 and 3 - compiled with the help of my old Librarything library:

Margaret Atwood
Alison Bechdel
Jorge Luis Borges
Bill Bryson
Angela Carter
C. J. Cherryh
P S Cottier
John Crowley
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Janis Freegard

Nicky Hager
Elizabeth Jane Howard
Stephen King
Helen Lowe
Mark Pirie
Tim Powers
Helen Rickerby
Kim Stanley Robinson
Martin Cruz Smith
J R R Tolkien

brunogirin,
@brunogirin@mastodon.me.uk avatar

@timjonesbooks warning: if you start reading books by @aliettedb , you might like them so much, you could reach that 5 book target very fast.

morgunkorn, to lacabine French

Pour le triple anniversaire dans ma famille, j'ai fait des éclairs framboise-coco, un entremet pêche-passion et des Paris-Brest pistache :) pour ce il reste des éclairs 😋

Entremet pêche-passion fait avec un moule silicone "perle" par Dinaka Kasko, glacé au glaçage neutre et paillettes or rose
6 Paris-Brest verts recouverts de craquelin vert et pistaches caramélisées, fourrés d'une crème au beurre pistache

brunogirin,
@brunogirin@mastodon.me.uk avatar

@morgunkorn l'entremet est trop beau, je n'oserais pas le couper! Et le reste me mets l'eau à la bouche.

smolrobots, to random
@smolrobots@mastodon.social avatar
  1. Continuitybot. When you start a new TV season or book or film from a series after a long hiatus, is on hand to remind you who everyone is and why you should care.
brunogirin,
@brunogirin@mastodon.me.uk avatar

@smolrobots does it come with a discontinuity warning when the producers mess it up from one season to the next?

fkamiah17, to random
@fkamiah17@toot.wales avatar

Twenty five years ago today, the Admiral Duncan pub on Old Compton Street was bombed. It was a warm Friday early evening in Soho, full of tourists and Londoners enjoying an after work beer.
It was the last of three bombings which took place over two weeks in the capital.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_London_nail_bombings

brunogirin,
@brunogirin@mastodon.me.uk avatar

@fkamiah17 I remember that evening well. I was walking to Soho with friends and we got stopped at a police cordon. We only learnt what happened the day after in the papers.

RandomYarning, to random
@RandomYarning@mastodon.world avatar

I've always said that Teen can have whatever music lessons they like, that I think learning music, any music, is important. Teen is 19 now, and not had any formal music lessons since 2020. Teen has just asked if that still applies, and whether it would include instrument rental, as they would like to learn saxophone.

So it looks like we're renting a sax and getting lessons for Teen :)

(Yes, that will always apply)

(I wonder if the same place does adult recorder lessons....)

brunogirin,
@brunogirin@mastodon.me.uk avatar

@RandomYarning one of my nieces used to take sax lessons. Unfortunately she never demonstrated to me.

KaraLG84, to random
@KaraLG84@dragonscave.space avatar

I'm a bit baffled about these browser extensions that take screenshots of entire webpages. Why would you want to do that?
I tried one once just for the hell of it with Project Gutenberg's copy of war and peace since it's all on one webpage. It split it into I think 3 images.

brunogirin,
@brunogirin@mastodon.me.uk avatar

@KaraLG84 it's useful for web developers when you want to document the full output of a page, or a bug that occurs on multiple parts of a page: easier than taking multiple screenshots. But yeah the use case is quite niche.

girlonthenet, to random
@girlonthenet@mastodon.social avatar

My Jaffa Cake consumption technique is second to none.

brunogirin,
@brunogirin@mastodon.me.uk avatar

@girlonthenet @SpenPErotica in the interest of extending The Knowledge, who got the other cake wafer?

vagina_museum, to random
@vagina_museum@masto.ai avatar

IMPORTANT LOST PROPERTY QUESTION! Did anyone visiting the Vagina Museum yesterday lose a little dalek?

brunogirin,
@brunogirin@mastodon.me.uk avatar

@vagina_museum what is it made of? Looks like clay from the photos.

solderandchaos, to random
@solderandchaos@mastodon.me.uk avatar

Where’s a fun place to get pronoun pins from these days? Please feel free to recommend personal choices or your own wares, but no search results type, I can do that myself!

brunogirin,
@brunogirin@mastodon.me.uk avatar

@solderandchaos we've got some at codebar, I'll ask where they got them.

brunogirin, to random
@brunogirin@mastodon.me.uk avatar

I don't want to alarm you but @JenJen has a new Kickstarter and you should definitely support it: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jenniegyllblad/farmor-stina

popey, (edited ) to ubuntu
@popey@mastodon.social avatar

Two days before 24.04 LTS releases, and the upgrade process seems quite badly broken. If you're an adventurous person, I'd wait for quite some time before upgrading...

Edit: With some brutal hardcore apt and dpkg, I fixed it.

brunogirin,
@brunogirin@mastodon.me.uk avatar

@popey oops!

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