@rick@ricko.social
@rick@ricko.social avatar

rick

@rick@ricko.social

I write code, fiction, and educational material. Enhanced with autism superpowers.

Photos I post are mine, and copyright by me. They may be reused under the CC-BY-NC-SA license, but not in any kind of machine learning.

My avatar is a 4-color animation-style rendering of me making a goofy hand gesture, in front of a pride flag for demisexuality. My background header is a photo of an electric truck parked off the road, overlooking a cloudy sky above a rocky coastline obscured by mist.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

rick, to random
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Help me out with recommendations for casual brain/puzzle games for Android, pretty please?

What do you play to pass the time and empty your brain? I'm about to have quite a bit of downtime at EV chargers.

I don't mind paying a few bucks for the game, or to remove ads. I already have:

  • Androminion
  • SortPuz
  • Jaipur
  • Splendor
  • Dresden Files Co-op Card Game

(Boosts appreciated, thanks!)

rick, to random
@rick@ricko.social avatar

Hey @reginasbread (and anyone else who wants to weigh in) since today is New Book Tuesday, and because I just finished an age gap romance yesterday ("At Your Most Beautiful” by Harper Bliss), I’d love to hear your thoughts on what makes for a satisfying age gap romance?

Do you enjoy when family is involved and the older one has angst about that? Is there a preferred age difference? Traditional maturity roles, or inverted?

What’s your perfect age gap romance formula?

rick, to queer
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I spent some time on pride infinity emoji. I don’t think they’re amazing — there are just too few pixels to work with, and some of the colors don’t really pop — but nor are they awful. License: CC-NC-SA.

:infinity_agender: :infinity_asexual: :infinity_autistic: :infinity_nonbinary: :infinity_pansexual: :infinity_progress: :infinity_trans:

(I didn’t get all the flags because I am fading fast. If you want yours, or the source, let me know!)

rick, to random
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As I approach 400 romance books read, I can't help but reflect on how that journey has affected not just my views on romance literature, but also romance IRL.

I need to do a longer write-up, but tl;dr:

  • queer romance books are usually far less toxic
  • but they also often just put rainbow glitter over the same tired power dynamics
  • I've soured on so many tropes I once loved
  • allosexual brains are so alien to me

But also: romance IRL is work and attention, not just butterflies and swooning.

rick, to random
@rick@ricko.social avatar

Photos taken earlier today at the Denver Botanic Gardens. I know nothing about flowers, so I can't identify any of them. Sorry!

See my bio for license and reuse information.

🧵 1/4

A purple water lily surrounded by bright green pads in dark brown water. The pads have the classic pie-chart shape. The lily has isosceles-triangle-shaped petals which are a darker lavender at the edges and lighter along the middle. The center is a bright sunshine yellow.
A tall, leafy flower of some tropical plant. Its stacked deep red petals are thick like the green leaves below them. They spiral around for a dozen or so layers, tall and mostly uniform in width, evoking a cross between a pine cone and an apartment building. Bright yellow pods of some kind peek out from near the top.
A pair of bright orange and yellow flowers, close to the soil amongst sparse green leaves of surrounding plants. Though they are the same kind of flower, they have distinct looks. The one in front has its petals spread wide, giving it an almost sunflower look. The one behind has its petals curled up, diving it a more spiky look. In both, the middle of each petal is a deep orange stripe, with bright yellow toward the edges.

rick, to random
@rick@ricko.social avatar

Solarium.

Taken just now. I have no idea how well a pano will be viewable on Mastodon, so here’s a link to the full image:

https://pics.rickosborne.org/solarium-20230507.jpg

rick, to photography
@rick@ricko.social avatar

It’s done! I started this Clawstrider at the beginning of the month, and finished just before midnight last night.

I didn’t work on it every night, but more than half. It’s ~7100 pieces, and probably took ~100 hours to assemble.

The instructions were … not amazing, and the kit was missing 10-20 specific pieces. It’s also fragile AF. Can’t really recommend it unless you are ready for frustration.

This shot is the reverse of the previous: still along the left side, but this time close to the tail, as the robot faces away from the camera. From this angle, you can see the wide fan of the blades along each side of the tail. The tail is articulated several times, with breaks in the armor plates, before it joins with the torso. Here, the grass obscures the hips and hind legs. Orange and yellow rips highlight the blade feathers, and almost blend into the golden grass.
A close-up of the head of the robot, in profile. The cerrated teeth stand out, while the strip of black chainsaw teeth are almost invisible in the shadow. This close, you can clearly see the grey tubes which run from the nose, back along the head, disappearing between the twin sprays of feather-blades down to the neck. Again here, the yellow and orange highlights here and there blend in well with the grass, while the otherwise glowing white armor plates stand out.
A wider profile shot, showing the robot from nose to elbows. This shows off how the feather-blades start at the top of the head, and continue down the neck, shoulders, arms, and down to the forearms. Those blades gain sharp yellow-orange tips as they cross the shoulders. Small claws tip each hand … until you look closer and see a collection of long black knife talons curled under and hiding below.

rick, to random
@rick@ricko.social avatar

One of the things I’m enjoying most about BookWyrm is how it wades through the reviews to put the ones by your follows right in front of you. Which means I get to randomly stumble across @shippychaos gushing over a book I also enjoyed:

> I’d like to add to my previous review… READ THIS BOOK IMMEDIATELY … I love a self-control freak, and the dark and withholding Charlotte was chefs kiss … I could not put this book down.

The book is “Those Who Wait” by Haley Cass.

rick, to random
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Corri realized neither of us has ever seen "D.E.B.S." (2005), so that's happening.

Let's goooooo!

rick, to random
@rick@ricko.social avatar

True story:

  • I hit 2600 miles driven this morning for
  • My phone just died. Like, bricked. (One might say: 2600 hurts.)
  • But, my entire route today is nothing but Rivian chargers, which are free to me.

So I should be able to get home, even without a phone. (Which would normally be tricky in an EV route of this length.)

I normally wouldn’t post this much personal info, but just in case …

(I’ll be fine.)

rick, to random
@rick@ricko.social avatar

Weird anecdote that's going to sound like a humblebrag, but actually really irks me.

Dropped into a phone repair place. The owner was there — a white dude, late 30s/early 40s — instead of the tech I've worked with before. He's nice enough, and clocks me pretty quickly as a techie, and thus dives into more detail about the repair than he'd normally give. I don't really need it, but he's excited about it, so 🤷.

1/🧵

rick, to Steamdeck
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Let's goooooo!

rick, to random
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I find it so odd how we accept that social media feeds are presented reverse chronologically, with new stuff at the top, read from the bottom-up.

I'm not nostalgic enough to miss IRC, but at least it read chronologically.

rick, to random
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Serious question: what is up with the YouTube videos that are robot-voiced and kind-of recaps/synopses of TV/films, but then have these really bizarre video titles which don't actually use the name of the media?

Is this some kind of money grab? Or is it like a numbers station steganography thing? What am I missing here?

rick, to science
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People who know about plant life cycles: what is this?

At first I thought it might be some kind of spider web, or insect eggs, or cocoon, but zooming in it looks like plain old bubbles. Do grasses blow bubbles as some part of their growth?

About one stalk in fifty seems to have this. But it's only on the prarie grass, not the St Augustine grass of the lawn.

rick, to random
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I don't know what it is about fajitas, but they always calm me down.

This place, Taqueria Michoacan in Ukiah CA US, makes fantastic fajitas, with the onions caramelized just right and strips of jalapenos just as big.

Happy place.

rick, to random
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I’m going to cheat a bit for because if you’ve ever been around harbor/spotted , you know they are anything but quiet.

Photos taken earlier today at Point Arena, CA, US. Licensed under CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 Intl.

A small group of four harbor/spotted seals sun themselves on a seaweed-covered rock in the ocean. The whiskered nose of a fifth seal can be seen just sticking out of the foamy water, as if about to jump up onto the rock to join the others. One of the four on the rock is massive, easily two to three times the size of the others, and a mottled camel brown. Another is a darker grey, and is the only one which seems to be alert, almost looking toward the camera.
Five harbor/spotted seals sun themselves on rocks covered in glistening seaweed, barely poking out of the ocean. All but one of the seals seem to be awake and alert, looking vaguely toward the camera. One of the seals is clearly a very young pup, a light spotted grey, next to its mother, and is looking directly at the camera.

rick, to random
@rick@ricko.social avatar

Fedi friends, I ask for your help: I need more nerdy, ugly holiday sweaters and hoodies in my life.

I always wait until it's too late. Well, not this year!

Pretty please, spam me with links to your favorite ugly nerdy holiday tops. Thanks!

rick, to random
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Mental Health provider intake paperwork. An attempt was made, I guess?

(I’m mildly saddened there’s no option for “effing complicated”.)

rick, to random
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(Watching 1x02. Going from one scene with Ortegas, to the next with Chapel.)

Corri: This is the gayest show on television.

(Spock completely misses Chapel flirting with him.)

Corri: Spock is every man I've ever had a crush on.

Rick: You have a type, honey.

Corri: I find befuddlement to be panty-dropping?

rick, (edited ) to random
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My company is looking for a Senior Quality Engineer. We have locations in CT and the SF Bay Area, with a mix of on-site and remote based on skill and independence.

>>> The Senior Quality Engineer will play a key role in the design, development, and production of high quality and compliant medical devices at identifeye, as well as the maintenance and improvement of an effective Quality Management System.

https://boards.greenhouse.io/tesseract

rick, to random
@rick@ricko.social avatar

Finished "How You Get the Girl" by Anita Kelly. 5/5⭐️.

Y'all. It's a heartwarming :pride_asexual: / :pride_demisexual: / :pride_agender: / :pride_genderqueer: journey of discovery, with some :infinity_mental_health: thrown in.

If you need a nice, sweet, comfy palate cleanser of a read, where it's just people trying to figure out each other and themselves, this is a good choice. It's book 3 in the "Love & Other Disasters" series, and has cameos but stands alone just fine.

rick, to boardgames
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Another thing on my list to figure out before June: how to give away a few hundred . We're going to keep some, but we don't need nearly this many.

If anyone knows of a or similar who could use an injection of board games, and is on the West Coast, connect us.

If we can arrange it before I leave for my road trip in a few weeks, I may even be able to just drop them off pretty much anywhere in CA, OR, or WA.

A wooden shelving unit, 2m by 1.5m with 5 shelves, covered in boxes of board games. There seems to be a theme of railroad, 4X, Cthulhu, and Horizon Zero Dawn.

rick, to RomanceBooks
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Two years ago last week, I shifted my reading preferences to .

In that time, I started 498 books, finishing 473 (~95%). Most were audiobooks, for ~4200 hours.

I rated ~11% at 5/5⭐️.

~90% were queer, which, on average, I rated ~½⭐️ higher than straight romances. About half of those queer books were written by authors who explicitly identify as queer.

~35% did not have a Big Dramatic Break-Up.

~75% did not have Content Warnings.

🧵 1/

rick, to random
@rick@ricko.social avatar

A few days later, how am I feeling about my switch from stock Android to ?

Mixed bag. Overall glad I did it, but it also shows me how much more degoogling I need to do.

I think locking down RethinkDNS to "deny by default" and only unblocking specific apps to specific domains is working out well for me. I expected more problems, and I still occasionally need to go adjust the safelists, but it mostly works.

But at the same time ...

🧵 1/

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