I’m always surprised when it happens. 99% of the time I’m just tolerated, but every once in a while someone asks. Happened last night. I was sooooooooo happy.
Me when someone asks me to tell/teach them about one of my special interests…
Me: For real‽
Them: Yep
Me: But like, how much do you want to know?
Them: Everything
Me: Even if it’s a lot of information and takes an hour?
Them: Yes
Me: And you’ll stop me if it’s too much?
Them: Yep, I’ll stop you if it’s too much.
Me: 😮 hold on. let me think…ok… 😮💨 …so…non-stop talking for an hour possibly using props and a board/paper for illustrations. several related tangential topics come up and added to a list of topics to discuss later.
I met a guy at a bar one night who was just starting his studies in cyber security. I’ve been doing it for years now and he was excited to hear all of my experiences, good and bad.
We entered a few CTFs together, but I’m not usually on the offensive side so he carried me a bit in the early challenges and we had to tap out when we got to the harder ones.
I find that texting someone something positive is usually well received. “Hey, person, been a while. I was telling someone about that fun time at blah-blah and it reminded me of you. how are things?”
haha, sorry if it made you uncomfortable! It’s a really common cue on a lot of profiles 😅 So many people use the apps now you just get used to the idea that everyone knows
I find that asking specific, pointed, open-ended questions over time usually gets people to open up. “You said, blah-blah, can you explain that more? I’m not familiar.” and just listen.
Oh man, when I meet an autistic person who shares a common interest…yes please give me that info dump. Not only am I interested but your enthusiasm is infectious, too.
In the department of Cher Napoleon established a vast forest of Oak. The purpose was to have materiel ready to built ships for his navy. This was a strategic resource, the same way steel, tungsten, etc. are today.
With the changes in shipbuilding, at least for naval vessels, the need was diminished for timber masts and planking.
The city of Montluçon had been a producer of cast iron for a long time. Canals are an ideal way to transport that long distances.
The oak forests shifted to being a source of charcoal both for the charcoal itself and for the production of cast iron. The ‘pigs’, ingots of cast iron, could later be wrought or further refined into steel.
Pretty much the tl;dr is that demand dropped off, because Oak was no longer needed for war and higher quality iron could be sourced more cheaply from the north and east, with better connections. It was thought that upgrading the canal was not cost effective, so it slowly died.
The canal itself had issues, it often suffered from insufficient (water) influx, and leaks. It was not terribly well waterproofed as the area is low in clay soil. It’s quite lovely through many parts, though there are some dry areas. The Locks still exist, and many of the Lock Keepers houses are there. They were all built to the same plan from Oak and stone, with lovely Tomette (hexagonal terra cotta tile) floors in the kitchen.
There is of course more, where it links (it doesn’t exist in a vacuum), the general depopulation of what the French call the ‘Diagonal Void’, and probably other important things that i will remember next week and think ’ that’s important, why didn’t I write that down? Now they think I’m an idiot’.
That was an incredibly interesting read about a topic I never knew I’d find interesting. Thanks!
I just read the Wikipedia page on that diagonal. Also something I had never thought about before.
And don’t assume I think you’re an idiot for not adding more. I knew nothing before I read this and now I know a lot. If you do remember something (and remember this comment), feel free to reply. I love learning stuff
Thank you, it was very nice of you to say. I really am better at it in person, I tend to get off on a lot more tangents, which can be interesting or tedious depending on your point of view.
There are some stunning areas in the diagonal, if I was a digital nomad with n EU passport that’s where I would base myself. Lots of beautiful old houses for little money, bit like Akiya in rural Japan.
God we’d be such fast friends in real life…if you could put up with my own tangents and rambling, anyway. I love having conversations that lead me to 10 tabs of Wikipedia
I had a long time partner who had her own things. It was pretty normal for us to talk during and after dinner, then retreat to our own worlds. She or I would ask what the other was doing sometimes, “nothing, just reading” meant you were 10 pages deep, and chasing all the citations.
I’ve never been diagnosed but I’m pretty sure I’m somewhere on the spectrum…it’s a shame I can’t just put “looking for an autistic partner” on a dating profile without looking like a wacko.
Because narrow gauge is always the odd man out. If you used narrow gauge (and there are many, the term encompasses quite a few different sizes) there was a reason. Could be something like tight turn radii, or as simple as bigger costs more.
Do not, I repeat, do not infodump on someone today.
Hi, my brain is wired so that it obsesses over details, combs through data and sifts through documentation, over decades even, only some poor soul to give me attention, which promptly opens up the spigot.
Please be advised, you will know why VST2 instrument plugins can take audio input, but only because Native Instruments sort of “hacked it in” during the 2000s, even though it wasn’t apart of the VST2 specification, which Steinberg obviously isn’t a fan of, because even to this day Cubase won’t recognise audio inputs from VST2 instruments in Cubase, but you can with VST 3 instrument plugins, and even though VST4 was at some point announced, it was presumably scrapped because plans for VST5 was leaked time after, but never actually came into fruition. Really though, vendors should be distributing CLAP plugins and contributing back to CLAP, because we could really use an open standard beyond Steinberg’s proprietary SDK, but then people like Native Instruments, Arturia, etc would have to “port their plugins” over to CLAP, which shouldn’t be too hard since it’s sort of API compatible - though not really - but since they won’t see instant returns they probably won’t dedicate the billable hours… so anyways, I program Maxforlive devices nowadays - oh, wait. Butterfly…
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