@zrb@astrodon.social
@zrb@astrodon.social avatar

zrb

@zrb@astrodon.social

Software engineer in astronomy. Interested in high-energy astrophysics, leftist theory, and permaculture gardening.

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douglasvb, to california
@douglasvb@mastodon.social avatar

Nice day out at today. We even saw the local freight head north! I think it might have been switching some cars at the power plant on its way north from Salinas before it crossed the slough.

At Moss Landing they're demolishing the old power plant units that used to feed into the twin huge smoke stacks. I wonder if they'll remove those stacks as part of that work.

Elkhorn slough tidal flats with big power lines visible in the distance.
A local mixed freight train with two engines and about 20 cars heading across Elkhorn slough.
Elkhorn slough in the distance with brown fields of wild grasses in the foreground.

zrb,
@zrb@astrodon.social avatar

@douglasvb wow, beautiful views! I was on the Coast Starlight just last week, but unfortunately it derailed in Moorpark so we never reached the coast to be able to see this. Next time though!

rvaweather, to random

Tweeted to NWS Wakefield asking them to please consider setting up shop on Mastodon, since they too are being rate limited, which is a real problem during severe weather events. I recommended DMV.community, naturally, given the regional focus aligns with their "jurisdiction"

zrb,
@zrb@astrodon.social avatar

@samerfarha @rvaweather plus, from what I remember from working on a small piece of NOAA web infrastructure, they have a ton of requirements for “operational” code (i.e., owning the servers and having frequent backups)

zrb,
@zrb@astrodon.social avatar

@samerfarha @rvaweather they barely tolerated us using GitHub. I’m surprised that NWS relied on Twitter for so long instead of publicizing RSS feeds

gwynnion, to random
@gwynnion@mastodon.social avatar

It's only taken 4 hours and some painkillers for me to not limp around the apartment feeling concussed.

zrb,
@zrb@astrodon.social avatar

@gwynnion I’m sorry to hear you were injured, hope you get well soon!

rose, to random
@rose@503junk.house avatar

I hate mastos CWs; I love mastos CWs.

I hate that the label frames the use of the feature as only being for a Trigger Warning. Then we all get in debates over if something needs a trigger warning, and the answer to that is always "depends on place and context."

But the feature has so many others uses that I love:

  • Subject/body: posting in a folded subject/body (like this post) can be really nice and format the message as an at a glance invite to learn more
  • Spoilers: sometimes you don't want to spoil the show, and this can help with that
  • jokes/punch-lines: you can hide punch lines for comedic effect
  • thread labels: creates a top level label for posts in a branching thread to help add context

and a lot more. The cultural question of when and how to use trigger warnings are general warnings over content are good to have, but when it becomes trying to nail down a static policy it turns into something I'm not interested in because it ignores all of the other uses for having such a field.

(this is apropos of nothing, I just wanted ramble)

zrb,
@zrb@astrodon.social avatar

@rose some mobile apps eschew the words “content warning” in favor of visual UI cues that indicate a folding field or title line like in an email

I think this is a good solution to combat the assumption that some people have that “CW are just for NSFW content”, and also remind users that you can also use it as a subject field

mappingsupport, to random
@mappingsupport@m.ai6yr.org avatar

Interactive map always displays the current weather watches and warnings. For details from NOAA, open the map, click any colored area and follow the link.

To search on your city or address, click Menu > Search.

For the legend and help with the map, click “Map tips” in the upper left corner.

Open map:
https://mappingsupport.com/p2/gissurfer.php?center=34.884782,-98.525391&zoom=4&basemap=USA_basemap&overlay=State_boundary,Weather_watch_warning&data=https://mappingsupport.com/p2/special_maps/disaster/USA_weather.txt

zrb,
@zrb@astrodon.social avatar

@mappingsupport are these available as WFS?

zrb,
@zrb@astrodon.social avatar

@mappingsupport nice, thanks!

zrb, to random
@zrb@astrodon.social avatar

After solely using stacking window managers like #KWin for years, self-introspection led me to realize that I only ever open applications full screen or split screen. I am therefore embarking on a journey into #TilingWM window managers; wish me luck.

mrcourtney, to photography
@mrcourtney@mstdn.social avatar

zrb,
@zrb@astrodon.social avatar

@mrcourtney wow, beautiful

marsroverdriver, to random
@marsroverdriver@deepspace.social avatar

These takes always seem so stupid to me. Are there too many options for you? Then just always take the one on the left. That's equivalent to what would happen if someone else arbitrarily reduced your choices; you're just doing it yourself, with a trivial algorithm that requires no thought and so should cause you no stress. And then the rest of us, who might prefer having choice, get to keep it.
https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2023/06/grocery-shopping-option-overload/674502/

zrb,
@zrb@astrodon.social avatar

@marsroverdriver respectfully, this is a bad take; sort of like saying “oh you have anxiety? Have you tried calming down?”

Analysis paralysis doesn’t come from the fact that there are many choices; rather from the ambiguity of which choices are optimal, and / or which ones you would regret later and should avoid. That may not be a rational way to think about the cereal aisle in the grocery store, but our minds don’t work rationally.

zrb, (edited )
@zrb@astrodon.social avatar

@marsroverdriver the issue, as I see it, isn’t the wide selection of choices of products; rather, that it’s normalized, expected even, for advertising to gaslight, mislead, and exaggerate.

It becomes an exhausting exercise to try and find quality in the sea of cheap imitation.

sundogplanets, to random
@sundogplanets@mastodon.social avatar

Apparently they just announced my asteroid (yes I really do have an asteroid named after me and it's one of the coolest things that's ever happened to me!!) at the conference dinner, and I'm feeling even more sad that I couldn't go in person. SIGH.

But I have an asteroid named after me :) And I can watch all the talks online, which is pretty nice. And I didn't have to fly or figure out childcare or farm-sitting (or dump it all on my partner), so I guess this is fine.

zrb,
@zrb@astrodon.social avatar

@sundogplanets I’m particularly partial to celestial body names that have guttural stops ‘ in them

cerulean_corvid, to random
@cerulean_corvid@kolektiva.social avatar

has anyone else noticed a trend in media where a nonbinary character is introduced solely for a lead character to get their pronouns wrong, get corrected, and then feel bad about it? Often to cement how the lead feels out of place in that environment, or feels like they’re failing at everything? And then the nonbinary character immediately fades into irrelevance?
I’ve seen this a lot of times and it never fails to make me uncomfortable.

zrb,
@zrb@astrodon.social avatar

@cerulean_corvid I’ve been listening to a radio drama recently that features a nonbinary person as one of the main characters, and they rarely if ever actually bring it up. It’s like, they just exist as a person, which is refreshing and makes the story feel more grounded somehow. Maybe that’s just my projection on my part though. It’s a podcast called Unwell, I recommended it.

zrb,
@zrb@astrodon.social avatar

@cerulean_corvid I do have to add the disclaimer: it does take place in Ohio, in case that’s a dealbreaker for you

amberage, to random
@amberage@eldritch.cafe avatar

cross-origin security my old nemesis

zrb,
@zrb@astrodon.social avatar

@amberage on the other hand, it’s often difficult for me to decipher code in a language I’m not familiar with when I don’t know what was imported and what is builtin

yet another reason to dislike wildcard imports

zrb,
@zrb@astrodon.social avatar

@amberage I do agree nodejs is garbage though, honestly javascript was a mistake in general and we should work as fast as possible to drop it in favor of webassembly

SuperManifolds, to random

Saturday night on the busiest rail corridor in the us and they run one train every 45 minutes💀

zrb,
@zrb@astrodon.social avatar

@SuperManifolds I hear you, last weekend the 6:40p southbound Northeast Regional was completely full including the cafe car, and we still had a 30 minute delay because we didn’t make the window to slip past the Acela

rose, to random
@rose@503junk.house avatar

a funny thing about cybersecurity is when people will come to me with outrageous concerns and over reactions to some random thing they read, but when I explain that using a password manager and 2fa are more useful precautions than buying a faraday bag or something they respond with "you security people are so paranoid". 🙃

zrb,
@zrb@astrodon.social avatar

@rose oh you’re a cybersecurity fan? Name every password.

jkohlmann, to apple
@jkohlmann@mastodon.social avatar

Hitting rock bottom on my search for and bookmark management apps. I’d like to get off and , but the options I’ve tried either have broken import functionality or perform poorly with tens of thousands of bookmarks.

zrb,
@zrb@astrodon.social avatar

@jkohlmann does fulfill your needs?

mcnees, to random
@mcnees@mastodon.social avatar

Artist Ralph McQuarrie was born in 1929. He is probably best known as the primary concept artist for the Star Wars movies, but he also did work for Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, and E.T., and he won an Academy Award for his work on Cocoon.

Image: Ralph McQuarrie

McQuarrie's 1975 painting "Y-Wing Attacks the Death Star" shows a metallic blue proto-Death Star in the background. Two Y-Wing fighters in the foreground are diving towards it.
McQuarrie’s concept painting of Luke Skywalker standing on a bluff, looking at a distant Mos Eisley through binoculars. He is carrying a long rifle, and his land speeder is recognizable behind him. You can just make out 3PO and R2 next to the vehicle.
Two droids, early visions of C-3PO and R2-D2, moving across a desert. The tall golden droid resembles the C-3PO of the movie, but has the sleek, art deco look of Maria from the film "Metropolis." A canister-shaped R2-D2 is in the background.

zrb,
@zrb@astrodon.social avatar

@mcnees when I was very young I would stay up late in bed rereading The Illustrated Star Wars Universe for the fortieth time, imagining what it would be like to live in those fantastical cityscapes and travel to alien worlds to meet alien peoples and cultures

zrb,
@zrb@astrodon.social avatar

@mcnees it’s some indescribably primal longing for new experiences and new customs that I guess is what drives the travel industry today

zrb,
@zrb@astrodon.social avatar

@mcnees I’m reminded of Carl Sagan’s famous quote from Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space;

“born too late to explore the Earth; born too early to explore the stars; born just in time to explore dank memes”

debian, to debian

Debian 12 has a disk usage of 365GB.

zrb,
@zrb@astrodon.social avatar

@debian wow, it’s gotten pretty large

rose, to random
@rose@503junk.house avatar

welp, getting fedora up and running on there was a breeze. It seems to work perfectly. With the custom kernel the hardware works 100%.

Keyboard attaches -> keyboard works; keyboard detatches -> tablet mode (with auto-rotate); full touch controls; pen works and is beautiful to use in krita; close the keyboard cover and it sleeps instantly; open the keyboard cover and it wakes instantly.

Only issue (which I knew going in) is that the battery life on this thing sucks. It's like 3-5 hours screen on time. I'm mostly going to use it in places where I can plug it in, and I'm doing some testing of drain while suspended.

Otherwise, would recommend the Surface Pro 6 as a cheap linux tablet.

zrb,
@zrb@astrodon.social avatar

@rose what music player do you use?

adamjcook, to fediverse

Which app (preferably for macOS) supports thread composing (I can write an entire thread "off-line" and then publish it all at once)?

I have tried @ivory and @MonaApp so far... neither seem to support it.

Killer feature from that I really need.

With support for image and video attachments.

zrb,
@zrb@astrodon.social avatar

@adamjcook @SimonRoyHughes it’s open source too, so I imagine if you really wanted thread compositing and knew Swift you could add it

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