Curious_Canid

Curious_Canid, 10 months ago

Too many universities have transformed what used to be broad liberal arts programs with technical majors into narrow vocational programs. The focus now is on training to get a job and make lots of money. Interest in anything outside of that is discouraged in all kinds of ways.

I think some of this is the result of conservative attempts to eliminate critical thinking skills from the educational system. More of it is a side-effect of the more limited opportunities offered by our late-stage capitalist economy.

I have a computer science degree, but I studied anthropolgy, literature, and history as well. It pains me to see all of that devalued and ignored.

Curious_Canid, 10 months ago

IBM bought the Weather Underground. It had a set of developer APIs that allowed small-scale apps to make use of their data. As soon as IBM bought them the APIs were changed and replaced with a set priced to be affordable only to other mega-corporations.

It killed a tiny little free app I had built around it. The real irony is that I took a deep breath, looked around, and adapted the app to use the Dark Skies API instead. A few years later Apple bought Dark Skies and killed off its API too. {heavy sigh}

Curious_Canid, 10 months ago

As has been said, I expect those will fill in before too long. The wave of fledditors (including me) are still finding our way around and creating new communities that we miss. In a few months the landscape will look a lot more solid.

Curious_Canid, 10 months ago

You have a magnificent lion.

Curious_Canid, 10 months ago

I had never thought about this. (Of course, I'm a rightie.) It's fascinating how many things like this we take for granted.

Curious_Canid, 10 months ago

Ouch.

My father is left-handed and has a lot of similar stories. Things are slightly better these days than they were in his time, but the world is still designed for the right-handed.

Curious_Canid, 10 months ago

I love it! Cognitive dissonance is always fun to watch.

Curious_Canid, 10 months ago

What lead size do you prefer?

Curious_Canid, 10 months ago

You have excellent taste. :-)

0.5mm seems to be almost everyone's favorite. I've been experimenting with 0.3mm, but I will never abandon 0.5mm entirely.

The Rotring 600 and 800 may be the best-looking mechanical pencils on the market. I have a black 600 in 0.3mm, but I keep wishing they would make an 800 in that size too.

Curious_Canid, 10 months ago

Most of my pencil use is for notetaking. I’ve found that I can take notes quickly by writing very small in non-cursive, although I’m not sure why that works so well for me.

When I used a 0.5mm I had to turn it regularly to avoid the thick lines produced by the worn side of the lead. With 0.3mm I no longer have to do that. It took some time to get used to how fragile it could be, but using a stronger lead (Pentel Ain Stein) and developing a lighter hand did the trick.

I favor the Rotring 800 because I generally carry a pencil with me, but the 600 is perfect when I’m in my own office. The only pencil that comes close, at least for me, is the Pentel Graph Gear 1000. That and the 600 are the most precise pencils I’ve ever used.

The only problem with the Graph Gear 1000 is that the lower body section is plastic and tends to break at the threads eventually. I recently ran across a guy who makes exact replacements for the lower body in aluminum and brass. I bought one of each on eBay. Not only do the fix the one weakness, they also improve the balance, which I’ve alway found to be a bit top-heavy. The brass replacement does a particularly nice job of shifting the point of balance down to the grip.

Curious_Canid, 10 months ago

Ain Stein lead is good for any purpose, but what it’s best at it minimizing breakage. I use it in all my 0.3mm pencils.

If you aren’t having problems with breaking leads you may want to try Pilot Neox. They are still harder than average to break and they are the smoothest writing leads I’ve ever used. You get both a better writing feel and a cleaner line with Neox.

Fortunately, all of the major companies make good quality leads these days. If you aren’t having trouble with what you can get easily there’s probably no reason to change.

In 0.5mm I generally use B grade leads. 0.3mm is enough finer that want at least B and I prefer 2B for a slightly darker line. I’ve tried some 4B, and it looked nice, but I go through the softer leads awfully fast.

We have a lot in common. I’ve been working as a software engineer for almost forty years. I do more consulting and architecture work these days, but I still write code almost every day. The field has changed just a bit since I started. :-)

I hope you enjoy college. I learned an awful lot from it, not all of it from classes. And I had a great time doing it. For what it’s worth, I recommend not focusing entirely on your major. Take some classes outside of your field just because they sound interesting. Having a broader range of knowledge and, especially, a broader perspective on the world really pays off in the long run.

Curious_Canid, 10 months ago

Nicely said!

Curious_Canid, 10 months ago

A few years ago I wrote a simple app to pull data from the Weather Underground site via APIs. Because of API limits I did exactly what you're proposing. The app had an easy way to enter a key and each user was responsible for signing up to get a key and putting it into the app.

This was a very small scale app, so the data may not be meaningful, but for every person who used it I got two or three comments from users who chose not to because it was just too difficult.

Bear in mind that the "difficulty" involved going to a website, entering your name and email address, and pasting the key it provided into the app.

I suspect that any app where you have to get your own key would have to overcome a lot of resistance.

Curious_Canid, 10 months ago

Those are neat little knives. The blade shape is very strange, but it seems to work well.

Curious_Canid, 10 months ago

The world needs fewer cynics and more skeptics. That is especially true of social media.

That was a lovely eulogy.

Curious_Canid, 10 months ago

I think "reasoning" may be too strong a word for what is currently going on among reddit's upper management.

Curious_Canid, 10 months ago

People like you cause unrest. I respect that.

Curious_Canid, 10 months ago

There is something charming about tiny throwers. Unfortunately I don't have much use for them.

I do prefer 14500 lights that can run on a AA, but the built-in charging port mostly makes up for that.

Curious_Canid, 10 months ago

My large Husky / Akita / German Shepherd mix is working hard at becoming a lapdog. He has figured out how to put a lot of his weight onto the arm of my easy chair so he can lay his head in my lap and snuggle. It's adorable and heartwarming.