@lachlan@mastodon.social
@lachlan@mastodon.social avatar

lachlan

@lachlan@mastodon.social

#Christian. #Musician (#Guitar). #Boardgames Designer (#18XX, #CubeRails). Software engineer, not a code monkey. Former lawyer. Occasional #artist (#charcoal, #pencil, #acrylic).

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amoroso, to VintageOSes
@amoroso@fosstodon.org avatar

A young developer who never used Windows 98 back in the day stumbled upon an introductory book on the operating system and posted his impressions on skimming it, which brought him joy. He wrote:

"I was also left with the impression that perhaps I would like more software to come with a physical manual."

https://jamesg.blog/2024/05/19/windows-98-manual

lachlan,
@lachlan@mastodon.social avatar

@amoroso As a kid - I loved the MS DOS 5 and Windows manuals. I read them all the time.

This, btw, is not a joke.

eniko, to random
@eniko@peoplemaking.games avatar

pandoc is so useful as a developer. i use it for all sorts of things like creating nicely formatted documentation from markdown files to integrating it into our script processing tool to easily output nicely formatted scripts for voice actors with their lines bolded

lachlan,
@lachlan@mastodon.social avatar

@eniko Once you go down the 'plain text source' route, everything becomes so great.

Pandoc is how I've had rules for board games I've written go in source control... with a temptation to give them CI/CD!

lachlan,
@lachlan@mastodon.social avatar

@oblomov @eniko I've been experimenting with fountain.io for something... very weird that may or may not get finished - but it's felt pretty great to use through a vscode extension. Haven't quite tried pushing it into pandoc yet...

I'm curious to see whether I can make ScrumMD work with Pandoc. I'll leave that one in my mental 'what if' backlog for later.

atomicpoet, to random
@atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org avatar

Star Wars Trilogy on VHS.

The best version—where Greedo shoots first. 😉

But my kid has never seen a Star Wars film, and this will be her first time seeing it.

I’ll start with Empire Strikes Back since that’s the best Star Wars film ever.

lachlan,
@lachlan@mastodon.social avatar

@atomicpoet I would never suggest the seven seas - but theoretically, of course - the "Demastered" editions are fantastic: they basically got the best source available for each scene, and made sure it was cut identically to the original.

Theoretically, of course.

kcarruthers, to random
@kcarruthers@mastodon.social avatar

Ok I gave strawberry yoghurt one more chance. TBH it is not for me. It burns my tongue a bit. Does that mean I’m allergic?

lachlan,
@lachlan@mastodon.social avatar

@kcarruthers That's not my reaction exposed to peanuts, but I've got a friend who figured out he was allergic to walnuts after discovering they weren't supposed to be - almost, but not quite - spicy.

Sounds like an allergic reaction to me.

(If it's giving you grief - keep some over-the-counter anti-histamines handy. If an actual diagnosis matters to you - feel free to reach out, and I'll tell you about how I got my diagnosis and baby got his)

tante, to ai
@tante@tldr.nettime.org avatar

There's a funny thing you see in many scientific papers - especially papers: The paper will prominently include a link to a GitHub repository with claims of code availability "soon" but when you go there (months after the paper was released) there's either just a placeholder or the paper text.

People use GitHub links to score browny points for "doing open science" but most of it is just not there. Especially with statistical systems when you realize that you don't get the training data, you don't get the code, you don't get model weights what you get are results and a "trust me bro".

lachlan,
@lachlan@mastodon.social avatar

@tante In the LLM sphere, what's the general attitude so far been when researchers have been asked for a copy of their model to attempt to reproduce the results?

lachlan, to random
@lachlan@mastodon.social avatar

Almost there with to be willing to say 'ready for other people'!

Look at that nice visual board in the console. Can customize to group by anything.

lachlan,
@lachlan@mastodon.social avatar

@airwhale I'm hoping that by the end of the year, the usage of ScrumMD might have doubled, tripled, or even quadrupled!

mcc, to random
@mcc@mastodon.social avatar

2008, me: I love the idea of cryptocurrency

BITCOIN: The word "cryptocurrency" now means "financial scams based on inefficient write-only ledgers"

2018, me: I love the idea of the metaverse

FACEBOOK: The word "metaverse" now means "proprietary 3D chat programs with no soul"

2022, me: I love the idea of procedurally generated content

OPENAI: From now on people will associate that only with big corporations plagiarizing small artists and turning their work into ugly content slurry

lachlan,
@lachlan@mastodon.social avatar

@mcc Sodding tech companies ruining everything and painting it a slightly off green shade of homogenised beige

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

So given it’s Saturday night, I thought I’d have a little fun with Kitten and make a tiny collaborative drawing toy.

You have a 20×20 grid and only black and white to draw with and everyone shares the same canvas.

https://draw-together.small-web.org

Have fun + looking forward to seeing what we all, umm, draw together.

:kitten:💕

PS. It took about 60 lines of code.

View source: https://codeberg.org/aral/draw-together

lachlan,
@lachlan@mastodon.social avatar

@aral An elegant design when I checked it out

tubetime, (edited ) to random
@tubetime@mastodon.social avatar

New release: the Goodgreat DS3, the Apple II sampler card i reverse engineered from an album cover!

Download the design here: https://github.com/schlae/goodgreat-ds3

lachlan,
@lachlan@mastodon.social avatar

@tubetime Is the story of your reverse engineering somewhere? That sounds fascinating

lachlan,
@lachlan@mastodon.social avatar

@tubetime Thank you!

Migueldeicaza, to random
@Migueldeicaza@mastodon.social avatar

Today Dropbox's paper, my favorite tool to write and share documents lost two documents that I had been editing for hours.

I can reproduce at will. No trace left of them.

I suspect this loved product is falling into neglect.

I tried Notion, but god it is slow. Are there other alternatives, for shared document editing that are fast and use Markdown for their backend?

lachlan,
@lachlan@mastodon.social avatar

@Migueldeicaza How shared? We talking async, or wanting to see cursors at the same time?

I've been using git for this recently, but it surely won't be for everybody. But it's stable as hell.

MissingThePt, to random
@MissingThePt@mastodon.social avatar

If you are patient enough, you can build your very own Boeing airplane out of parts that fall from the sky.

lachlan,
@lachlan@mastodon.social avatar

@MissingThePt I got it one piece at a time, and it didn't cost me a dime
You'll know it's me when I fly over your way...
Well it's a 707-27-37-37-37-37-47-67-67-77-87-87 Boeing Airplane

ajsadauskas, (edited ) to tech
@ajsadauskas@aus.social avatar

What should I add to my '90s website?

So I'm currently toying around with NeoCities, and decided to trial it by building your classic mid '90s Geocities/Tripod/Angelfire pastiche website.

Some of the most important elements are already in place.

Tile background? Large font? Heading in bright pink with a shadow? Unusual colour choices? Random cat gifs? Under construction gif? Check! Check! Check!

In the true spirit of the '90s DIY web, some more pages (including the links page) are coming soon.

(I'm thinking of adding a page dedicated to either Britney or a nu-metal band.)

You can see the page so far here: https://that90ssite.neocities.org/

There are a few things that I want to add to make it complete, and I'm looking for suggestions.

The first, is to embed a midi file that plays automatically. Any suggestions on the best way of doing this?

Second, it's just not going to be complete without a guestbook.

Third, any webring suggestions?

Fourth, what's the best way of adding a java chat room in 2024?

Finally, anything else that really needs to be a part of a great '90s website?

UPDATE: Thanks for all the feedback! I've added more annoying GIFs, a guestbook, a links page, and a cyber cat hangout.

UPDATE 2: And added even more gifs, an amazing Amiga demo, and a ton of links.

@asklemmy

lachlan,
@lachlan@mastodon.social avatar

@ajsadauskas @linux Image maps? <marquee>? A digital view counter, or one of those gifs of a spinning odometer.
A link that goes to a clip art digger saying 'under construction' in 90s office clip art.

lachlan, to random
@lachlan@mastodon.social avatar

Hindsight is fascinating. 40 years later, I think we can safely say, Broderbund cocked up on this decision.

(From @jmechner's The Making of Prince of Persia)

arstechnica, to random
@arstechnica@mastodon.social avatar

FAA closes Starship inquiry, and SpaceX details causes of November accidents

"Several engines began shutting down before one engine failed energetically."

https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/02/faa-closes-starship-inquiry-and-spacex-details-causes-of-november-accidents/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

lachlan,
@lachlan@mastodon.social avatar

@arstechnica "Energetically"

gvwilson, to random
@gvwilson@mastodon.social avatar

Sometimes I think about Earth-1217, where every CSV file has two header rows: column names and units (which imply data type). At first glance that world is indistinguishable from ours, but after wandering around for a while, you realize that Earth-1217's programmers are noticeably happier than ours.

lachlan,
@lachlan@mastodon.social avatar

@gvwilson Oh - do they also have sensible timezone rules?

kcarruthers, to random
@kcarruthers@mastodon.social avatar

The kids are obviously a problem: Trump Ally Says Key to Republicans Winning Elections Is to Stop College Kids From Voting

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/04/clea-mitchell-donald-trump-restrict-college-voting

lachlan,
@lachlan@mastodon.social avatar

@kcarruthers When your purpose has gone from 'enact the will of your constituents' to 'win elections no matter what', you've betrayed your purpose as a party.
And when you start suggesting 'they won't vote for us, so they shouldn't vote', you should be hitting 'are we the baddies?' if you have even an iota of self awareness or shame

lachlan,
@lachlan@mastodon.social avatar

@kcarruthers Without a doubt

arstechnica, to random
@arstechnica@mastodon.social avatar

Musk’s X sold checkmarks to Hezbollah and other terrorist groups, report says

X (aka Twitter) accused of violating sanctions by taking payment from terrorists.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/02/musks-x-sold-checkmarks-to-hezbollah-and-other-terrorist-groups-report-says/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

lachlan,
@lachlan@mastodon.social avatar

@arstechnica What a knob

rodhilton, (edited ) to random
@rodhilton@mastodon.social avatar

Paramount kept their staff on hand to handle stressful conditions, surely kept lots of folks on-call to ensure the Superbowl could be streamed on their service, had record viewership numbers and then immediately laid off 800 of the people who helped give them that success the next day so that the executive leadership could pocket all the profits without sharing it with the labor force who built it.

Seriously. Eat the rich.

https://deadline.com/2024/02/paramount-global-layoffs-begin-ceo-bob-bakish-1235824028/

lachlan,
@lachlan@mastodon.social avatar

@rodhilton Perpetual requirements for quarter on quarter growth is a hateful damaging folly

mcc, to random
@mcc@mastodon.social avatar

Everyone who's played the new Prince of Persia that came out in 2024 seems incredibly positive on it

lachlan,
@lachlan@mastodon.social avatar

@mcc I haven't played a PoP since 1/2. Tempted by this one.

threatresearch, to random

NO, YOUR MOM IS MALICIOUS 🤦🏼‍♂️​

lachlan,
@lachlan@mastodon.social avatar

@0xabad1dea @threatresearch Ooh. I like that ink.

lilithsaintcrow, to random
@lilithsaintcrow@raggedfeathers.com avatar

“Despite the fact that publishing company workers talk about Goodreads ratings in nearly every meeting, because it’s the only source of ratings and reviews so early in the publishing process, there’s no evidence that Goodreads itself sells books." https://misshelved.substack.com/p/lets-talk-about-goodreads

lachlan,
@lachlan@mastodon.social avatar

@lilithsaintcrow I switched to StoryGraph for my personal tracking to get away from the monster, but even that has got some weird AI stuff. Afraid it's on the road to enshittification too. But, it's still not buying Bezos another yacht.

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