wordshaper

wordshaper, 1 month ago to random

I am amused that whenever I stop by the little Vietnamese place by the apartment for takeout they always give me a set of wooden cutlery but when my husband (who's Chinese) stops by he gets chopsticks.

wordshaper, 10 months ago to random

Well, booked the fall Paris trip. Going solo this time and honestly rather looking forward to it.

wordshaper, 1 year ago to random

Given that Fox News makes a large fraction of its revenue from per-subscriber cable fees, and is in large part insulated from pressure because of it, this story fills me with an extraordinary amount of glee.

And that's not even counting the "haha, screw you Comcast!" angle to this story.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/05/cable-tv-has-fewest-subscribers-since-1992-youtube-tv-is-the-only-riser

wordshaper, 5 months ago to random

Given this describes how I've experienced exercise (the effects of the mitochondria changes) pretty much forever, and doubly so since I started my blood pressure meds, I'm kinda hoping something comes out of this research to counteract it. That'd be lovely.

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2024/01/09/1223077307/long-covid-exercise-post-exertional-malaise-mitochondria?utm_medium=JSONFeed&utm_campaign=news&utm_source=press.coop

wordshaper, 6 months ago to random

Well, dammit. My one "good" reason for not getting a manual dough sheeter -- that I don't have a good spot in the kitchen to actually set it up -- turn out not to be valid because I do in fact have a good place to set it up. Dammit.

Probably a good thing the gadget's on sale, I can actually half-justify it. Sorta. Kinda.

wordshaper, 5 months ago to random

I should really sit down and make a list of all the interesting ways to shape bread-like things. You'd think that there wasn't any difference between plain spiral rolls, kanebullar-braids, or full-batch crowns, but there are. (Half of eating is seeing, so that makes sense)

I don't think I've ever seen a collection of shaping techniques anywhere else, which is a shame.

wordshaper, 9 months ago to random

This is neat -- optional 240W power delivery. (I wonder what the cable length limits are if you're drawing that much. It's not like the conductors are particularly large and I assume they get a little warm) Plus even higher speed data. AND it even has a bonus more amazing naming scheme! Mmm, USB4 version 2.0, genius!

At this point what I hope most gets announced with today's New Apple Toy Day is a USB-C cable test mode. Plug both ends in and get a cable type check.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/09/intel-confirms-thunderbolt-5-name-120gbps-tech-arrives-in-2024

wordshaper, 7 months ago to random

Yet another reason to not buy ebooks from a store that doesn't let you have the files available locally in a way that you can still use them once the reader/hardware goes away.

This is why I moved from Nooks to Kobos -- B&N dropped mac support so any new purchase could vanish at any time, which sucks. I am happy to exchange money for ebooks (and, looking at my library, do a bit more than I probably ought) but I would like to keep reading them into the future.

https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/16/23963663/barnes-and-noble-nook-old-models-support-store-shutdown

wordshaper, 2 months ago to random

After quite a while studying French, and with memories of studying its predecessor language in school, I am now firmly convinced that aliens exist and Latin Grammar (and the grammar of derived languages) is the proof. Granted, proof by “OMG this could only have happened because we were being trolled” but, y’know, take the proof where you can.

wordshaper, 8 months ago to random

I seem to have a talent for getting on the metro going the wrong way. Which is actually kinda fun given I don’t really have a schedule as such this trip.

wordshaper, 1 year ago to random

Oh, yuck, I hate this. Multiple kinds of charging ports are stupid and needs to die. We were getting there, with CCS finally being the accepted standard, and now Ford's building tesla ports (which aren't a standard no matter what Tesla says) into their cars. Bleah.

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2023/05/ford-evs-will-get-access-to-teslas-supercharger-network-in-2024/

wordshaper, 8 months ago to random

Just had part of an "everything bagel donut" (a yeasted donut with cream cheese filling and everything-bagel topping) and... it was actually good! Really good, surprisingly good, possibly dangerously good.

Not in any way sweet, that'd be really bizarre, but yeah turns out savory fried yeasted dough with cream cheese and bagel sprinkles is tasty. Wild.

wordshaper, 8 months ago to random

I do wonder what the cost savings is if you just... lay metro tracks on top of an existing road. Not dig them in or anything, just slap down ties and run rail along them. I know it's not 100% ideal but we have a lot of streets and I wonder how much money we could save or how fast we could get light rail going in cities that did this.

wordshaper, 5 months ago to random

One thing I do hope we get from the AI nonsense that's flying around everywhere is the death of boilerplate and bullshit privilege-gates like cover letters and entrance essays and such.

In many cases if you have something that can be done by AI it's a sign that thing needs to just die or should be automatic. And yeah, I'm looking right at programming languages -- if you have sufficient boilerplate in a language that AI autocomplete is valuable then fix your language to remove the need.

wordshaper, 1 year ago to random

Well, looks like AirFrance is the next to step back from Twitter.

I am more and more inclined to hack up a high-volume high-performance post spewer and see how it goes, since we're seeing more and more orgs that were using Twitter as an alert-distribution system... not. And there's not that great an alternative.

https://twitter.com/airfrance/status/1651944296336048128

wordshaper, 6 months ago to random

"Be assured that a walk through the ocean of most souls would scarcely get your feet wet" -- Deteriorata

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Axyqk5ERKQ

wordshaper, 1 year ago to random

Oh, huh, this is clever. Energy storage is a big issue with the switch to renewables, and using a liquified gas system to store energy for later use is sensible and doesn't seem particularly difficult from a tech standpoint, and should be a lot lower cost than things like batteries.

I do wonder how much energy you can store per cubic meter of gas (CO2 in this case) and what the cost tradeoffs are for the various gasses and the pressures required to store reasonable amounts of energy.

https://cleantechnica.com/2023/04/27/energy-dome-completes-new-funding-round/

wordshaper, 7 months ago to random

Mastodon needs an "Include me out" button you can push for a post that makes it so replies to it automatically don't have you in them.

wordshaper, 6 months ago to random

Are we taking bets on why Sam got the boot from OpenAI? I see the press releases and given everyone involved and what’s being said, my bet is something criminal. Probably massive fraud, but there could be a soupçon of sexual assault in there too.

wordshaper, 9 months ago to random

It's finally time to figure out how to set up a VPN server on the home server. Bah. On the one hand I'm sure this will be a lot more reliable than the one that MacOS Server used to stand up (I had to have a cron job auto-restart that one and it still wasn't that great), on the other it means I need to find and install a VPN server and configure the router to deal with it.

At least it seems fairly straightforward, just the kind of annoying sysadmin stuff I was frankly glad to stop doing.

wordshaper, 6 months ago to random

Just saw this dough sheeter used in a baking video and I want one so bad you have no idea. Luckily it’s ¥106,000 yen so I’m not getting one, but it’s phenomenally tempting.

https://japankneader.com/products/dough-sheeter-rs201

wordshaper, 1 year ago to random

Had some lime juice lurking in the fridge for a while so I decided to try something to see if it worked. Which it did, so today's #RandomBakingTip :

Lime jellies (in baker's percentages, 'cause that's the sensible thing to do )
Lime juice
100% water
40% sugar
1% baking soda (optional)
1.2% agar

Mix lime juice and water. Add baking soda if you don't want things too tangy, and stir to make sure everything reacts.

Add the sugar. Stir.

Add the agar. Nuke until boiling, then stir to make sure everything dissolves.

Pour into molds, refrigerate, then wonder what you're going to do with a bunch of lime jellies.

wordshaper, 1 year ago to random

What the heck's the deal with all these eBikes having fat tires? Is there something specific to them that warrants these seemingly goofy things or is it just a (hopefully mildly harmless) fad?

wordshaper, 1 year ago to random

Anyone else look at those pics we see of interstate highways clogged with cars and think "y'know, give two lanes to trains and most of this clog could go away" or is it just me?

I can't imagine it'd cost all that much to turn a lane of an interstate highway into a rail line. Most of the hard work of grade prep has been done for the road, and while miles of track isn't free it's not a significant portion of the cost for most rail line installation programs.

wordshaper, 4 months ago to random

I was curious how well the plastic bag bans would work. The answer, apparently, is "really well".

I know I've also 95% switched to using reusable bags, which is great except at recycling time. How long you need to use those to make them worth the cost to manufacture's fuzzy for me but I assume once you hit the 4 or 5 year mark they're definitely a win over one-use paper bags.

https://gizmodo.com/billions-of-plastic-bags-avoided-since-new-bans-report-1851192044