bigzaphod

bigzaphod, 2 days ago to random

Tonight's movie night movie will be, "Raising Arizona (1987)." This is another one none of us has seen for some reason. I guess it's time to remedy that!

bigzaphod, 2 days ago to random

When I started CS in college (~1998) the first classes were C++. Of course I already knew some Pascal, C, VisualBasic, C++, Perl, JavaScript, etc. so I was way ahead. I didn't need to learn any of the "how to think in code" stuff so the classes were pretty boring.

Back then, I programmed by typing a few lines, hitting build to make sure it was syntactically good, typing some more, hitting build, etc. This was before IDEs did that for you (at least none I had used) by showing errors as you type.

bigzaphod, 2 days ago to random

Tried 3D printing a simple box-thing for a project yesterday. A 5 hour job. Box-like structures always take forever to print.

It didn't fit quite right.

Dammit!

Slight redesign, printed it again over night.

It still didn't fit quite right.

ARGH!

(I am not an engineer.)

bigzaphod, 3 days ago to random

Happy Towel Day to all those who hitchhike across the galaxy!

bigzaphod, 4 days ago to random

So my sewer pipe (which has been an endless source of fun, let me tell you), runs through the power company's land and whoever cut their grass the other day was clearly daydreaming and mowed right over the pipe AND the bright orange fiberglass stick that was marking its location.

bigzaphod, 4 days ago to random

Sometimes I do things in front of my cat or dog and imagine how I must look like a magician or god or something. "OMG you made water appear out of a tube on the counter?!"

And then I come across some makers on YouTube that make me feel the same way. "OMG you made an entire robot out of a box of wires and a python script?!"

bigzaphod, 4 days ago to random

This came with one of my eBay orders that arrived today. They aim for FIVE STAR service... by demanding their customers only give them five stars. 🤔

bigzaphod, 4 days ago to random

I really appreciate that the long, illustrious internet tradition of shitposting is poisoning AI.

bigzaphod, 5 days ago to Ds9

It’s always dark in the mirror universe. #ds9

bigzaphod, 5 days ago to Ds9

Jake Sisko, who has never written on paper before, has perfect cursive handwriting. 🤔 #ds9

bigzaphod, 5 days ago to random

There are times (sometimes lasting weeks) where I can bang out a ton of fancy code. I wrote a huge complex thing over the course of a month or two that'll be Tapestry's sync/database. I think it's pretty darned cool and it was complex as hell.

But I'll be damned if, over the last couple days, I can do something as simple as rearrange a few SwiftUI views to make some progress on anything else.

Not because it's hard, but because I just... can't? Brain no worky.

bigzaphod, 5 days ago to random

Widespread artificial intelligence is getting so much time and attention and money and meanwhile natural intelligence is suffering.

bigzaphod, 5 days ago to random

Kid had a cheap little desk fan that charges with USB-C. He forgot it in back of the car for like... 6 months. After he found it he tried to make it work and it seemed to not work anymore. We figured the battery was probably toast or something.

So he took it apart and poked at with with a multimeter. And he couldn't figure anything out. So he brings it out to me. And I plugged in a random USB-C cable on my desk just to check assumptions and it worked.

So now we're like.. wtf?

bigzaphod, 6 days ago to random

The dumbest thing about "the market" is how companies will refuse to make some stuff and cite "the market" as the reason why. Like, "no one is buying widgets so we aren't going to make any widgets." And if no one is selling widgets, how, pray tell, is someone supposed to buy any widgets?!

bigzaphod, 7 days ago to random

Just found out, entirely by accident, that I'm under a tornado watch. I only discovered it because of a national news story I happened to notice most of the way down the page on CNN about an especially dangerous weather condition in the midwest.

And I'm like.. "Wait, I'm in the midwest!" I clicked the story.

Turns out, yeah, my county is in the watch area and there's a line of serious storms coming that have already spawned tornadoes and killed people today.

No trace of this in Apple Weather.

bigzaphod, 7 days ago to random

The first edge of the storm is here!

video/mp4

bigzaphod, 7 days ago to random

My feelings about this feature are somewhere between horrified and appalled.

I admit that sometimes it might be useful, but I think at this point I'm willing to live without it because... :yikes:.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/05/microsofts-new-recall-feature-will-record-everything-you-do-on-your-pc/

bigzaphod, 8 days ago to random

No one listens to the ancient oracles anymore. They’re old muse.

bigzaphod, 8 days ago to random

I'm beginning to think this OpenAI company I've heard so much about isn't entirely on the up-and-up.

bigzaphod, 8 days ago to Ds9

“Hail them!”
(0.003 seconds passes)
“No answer!!”

Sometimes they don’t even wait long enough for a person to push an answer button that their finger was already on let alone use a voice interface to accept the incoming call. #ds9

bigzaphod, 9 days ago to random

You may not like it, but this is what peak performance looks like.

bigzaphod, 9 days ago to random

Tonight's movie night movie will be, "The Core (2003)." None of us have seen this one before, but it fits right in with our "turn of the century disaster movie" kick that we've been on. Can't wait to see how deep the plot goes!

(Yes, I said "turn of the century." It's technically true! No, I don't like this fact either!)

bigzaphod, 10 days ago to random

Was doing a little soldering today. Messed up, of course. Wanted some solder wick to try to fix it. Didn't have any.

It's times like this that I really hate that my town no longer has a single proper hobby/electronics store that I'm aware of. There's nowhere to go to grab stuff like this when you suddenly need it on a Saturday afternoon. There's nowhere to buy extra resistors, or LEDs, or microcontrollers, stepper motors, breadboards, etc.

I have to order everything.

bigzaphod, 11 days ago to Ds9

They should put seatbelts on the Defiant. #ds9

bigzaphod, 11 days ago to random

This https://www.macrumors.com/2024/05/17/ios-17-5-bug-wiped-devices-photos-resurfacing/ is kinda bad, but it's probably NOT actually a bug anymore - it's probably only happening now because they fixed the original bug that prevented the originals from actually being deleted in the first place.

At least... I hope so!

They really need to comment on this, though.

Edit: Okay, I mean, obviously it's still a bad bug, but maybe it's on the server side now. Which is especially bad. But they could fix without an update.

They need to comment on this.