Tonight's film club choice is Silent Running. When I bought it on DVD, the salesperson at Fopp said it was a classic and that I would like it, but I found it very boring and grim (and dated - there are no women other than in music / computer voices, bit like The Deadly Assassin).
7:30pm UK time, remote over Skype - DM me if you would like to attend (we don't publicise the URL widely now as we used to get Zoom-bombed)
Tried again last night to see any aurora... Nothing. Not with naked eye, not with phone.
Light pollution sucks...
Friends only 5mi away all have amazing photos of it too!
Just saw the #Eurovision recap before for the voting. All the songs sounded the same, loud, fast and boring. Oddly the French sent someone to do a ballad in their own language and I think he could actually sing...
My desktop computer is 10 years old, and the CPU just isn't up to it anymore. I don't want a gaming system, but I don't want a overprices bottom of the range tat either.
I need something that will run #Debian, drive a 4K screen, be fine for editing pictures in #gimp, and doesn't need much local storage, that's what 1Gig #Ethernet and #NFSv4 is for.
Some of the small form factor PCs looks sensible, e.g. Bee-Link. Suggestions?
People who make their own bread or soup: is it possible to do this without using a lot of salt but still have an acceptable taste? I really like both bread and soup but anything pre-made has huge amounts of salt in (2g for a tin of soup, 0.5-0.8g for every couple of slices of bread or a roll, so a serving of soup + bread is often >50% of the RDA for salt).
#Linux#fonts need to be redone. Having a fonts.conf and local.conf file that apps ignore and the complexity of the file is silly. XFCE doesn't even seem to use it for settings, and #debian ships with a fonts.conf filled with fixes. Getting emoji's to work system-wide is super jank.
Can we not just have a simple Yaml / Toml file that everything reads and saves to for font configuration?
@tripplehelix can't speak to xfce but I would rather like to have fonts installed but hidden from font selection lists in LibreOffice etc, I don't need a million fonts, just a few. I know having a lot is useful for the browser though, but not everywhere else.
According to BBC Moneybox, for the first time the majority of cohabiting couples in England and Wales are unmarried.
Which brings into question how appropriate are the myriad of benefits there are in law for married couples.
@grifferz well if you vote blue then it's only fair to give tax and other legal benefits to encourage the sanctity of marriage. I only got married to protect my wife in case I die and hadn't done a will.
The whole institution seems a bit adrift and without proper purpose.
@sldrant looks like they do a HDMI and 4 port after all. How fast does yours switch? Some comments suggest the HDMI is slow to switch, 5 seconds or more. My current HDMI is pretty quick, faster than that I think.
@sldrant I switch between work laptop and client's laptop during the day - though sometimes not for months... Other computers are my home server and my personal desktop. Like you say they can sulk if no video device is attached when they boot from cold. Current KVM is fine for now but won't do 4K video and extra USB switching would be useful beyond current keyboard and mouse.
@sldrant okay the Windows time seems a little slow compared with mine, but I am running at a lower resolution too. I think your numbers seem similar to the comments on-line. Probably okay if you know that before you buy.
KVMs seem to have become the domain of no name Chinese firms, and all seem very similar.
The big farmers are drowning in EU cash and drowning the countryside in their toxic chemicals and shit. The little farmers are cut out by the big ones, and the public don't give a toss as long as the food is cheap.
Brittany beaches are covered in nitrogen (from manure) fuelled algae, that decompose to give H2S gas which kills people and animals...
I give up, #NewOutlook is utterly unusable and makes old traditional #Outlook seem actually useful. Can't say I'm a Microsoft fan and I never actually liked traditional Outlook, but I'm happy to be going back to it - which tells you how bad New Outlook is...!
You'd think after the stupidity of Trump and Brexit people would know better, but a daily dose of hatred from the media can eventually pervert enough minds to swing an election...
@GhostOnTheHalfShell Sexual selection is an odd topic because it can be observed empirically, but the maths didn't really add up.
Fundamentally if a trait is bad for your health but the opposite sex likes it enough then it can be selected, even if it's recessive. Recessive is just harder than dominant as it's only expressed when you have two copies.
Peahens clearly prefer peacocks with bigger fancier tails, but tigers eat them more than females or shorty males..!
@pwaring Been re-evaluating Star Trek recently and it is much better that I remember. I suppose the Beeb will be showing/streaming some classic episodes so I should watch them and see what I think.
The original BSG was far different on a re-watch than I remember from the original broadcast.
@glynmoody Most SUVs should be banned from most urban settings by default. Legitimate exceptions for a few cases, otherwise it should be a blanket ban. I don't even care if it's an electric SUV, there is no need for them in towns, nor space for them.
