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WillAdams
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  1. It's worth noting that the concept of a "Compose" key seems to have originated on DEC's specialized word-processors (physical machines which just did text editing), and that when Windows came on the scene, someone at DEC created "COMPOSE.EXE" which brought that functionality to Windows --- it continued working up through very late Windows 95 betas, then was broken and never updated.

    There was a replacement in "AllChars" which is still on Sourceforge: https://sourceforge.net/projects/allchars/ but hasn't been updated for a while.

    Looks like:

    https://wincompose.info/

    is up-to-date, and if I wrote more, would definitely try out, but these days, either I write the accented character w/ a stylus, type out the LaTeX command, or use the on-screen keyboard via touchscreen.

  2. I can still remember a fellow student wanting to know how to write a 3D computer game, the professor being stumped, and my chiming in w/

    >Get Foley & Van Dam from the library

    noting it should be available to check out, since I'd just checked it back in.

    Several new editions since:

    https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5257044-computer-graphic...

  3. Yeah, ages ago, I installed all of Microsoft's Encarta on a CF card which I was using as a drive on my Fujitsu Stylist 2300ST --- it was way cool to be able to haul it out and look things up w/o a network connection (or a CD-ROM drive).

    Wonder if that would run in a current version of Windows...

  4. Any relation to the Daylight Computer folks?

    https://daylightcomputer.com/

  5. Will the screen be daylight viewable? (and no, trying to out-bright the sun on a battery-powered device is not a valid answer)

    E-ink or transflective LCD or maybe the modified LED used by the Daylight Computer folks.

    Agree that AI needs to go as not reliable enough for life-death situations.

  6. Add a mechanism for folks to file for a rebate for distance driven on private roads (an uncle's driveway is roughly a quarter mile, so half a mile six days a week 52 times each year would equal a 156 mile reduction).
  7. I wish we could get it's competitor TronOS to make a similar desktop version --- the demo of it displaying multiple video windows on an 80186 was jaw-dropping --- a shame the U.S. Trade Commission quashed Japan's Ministry of Education's plans to roll it out nation-wide in schools from elementary up through graduate.
  8. David Lindsay's _A Voyage to Arcturus_ is notable for having been one of the earliest available ebooks on Project Gutenberg, netting a few wider exposure than it might have had otherwise.

    Highly recommended.

  9. Heifer International presents a good face on doing this by introducing livestock, providing education to the new owners, and imparting an in-kind donation requirement so as to perpetuate and spread the gains.
  10. Michael Moorcock's _The Citadel of Forgotten Myths_ --- probably the last Elric book, it is an interesting closure to a series I've been reading since high school

    J.R.R. Tolkien's _The Bovadium Fragments: Together with The Origins of Bovadium_ --- probably the last "new" Tolkien book --- quite the hoot, and an interesting commentary on industrialism and the Oxford Don's opinions on same

    Donald E. Knuth's _TAoCP: Vol. 4, Fascicle 7, Constraint Satisfaction_ --- working through exercises now in the hope of finding a typo for the sake of getting an account at The Bank of the Island of San Seriffe to go w/ my physical reward check.

    Variety of other things, but those were the notable/interesting ones.

  11. Source of ready-to-go software for use/testing?
  12. I need to improve my facility with Python and math and geometry sufficiently to finish up my current project, a previewer for G-code which allows creating design files programmatically.

    Really need to get back to practicing archery on a regular basis as well (really need the exercise).

    Hopefully I can also find more time for woodworking, and hopefully I can figure out how to calibrate my 3D printers so that I can print PETG and PETG-GF as readily as PLA.

  13. As noted above at: https://www.hackerneue.com/item?id=46382915

    a single PDF will be provided once one more chapter is compleated.

  14. Very cool!

    I wound up mentioning this on the OpenSCAD mailing list.

  15. Books which I have read and would recommend include:

    - _Ashley's Book of Knots_ --- everyone should be aware of knots and now at least the basics interesting, _The Klutz Book of Knots_ was also mentioned once

    - James Clavell _Noble House_ --- part of his "Asian Saga", not sure if it has aged well --- if a person could read only one of these, I'd recommend _King Rat_, based on his experience in a Japanese prison camp in WWII.

    - Hesse _Steppenwolf_ --- that Hesse is no longer read saddens me deeply, and not just because this makes _The Glass Bead Game_ less likely --- his thoughts on the difficulties of interpersonal relationships resonate even now

    - Knuth _Literate Programming_ --- I _really_ wish this style f programming would gain traction and that there would be more instances of taking famous programs and re-writing as a Literate Program, e.g., http://literateprogramming.com/adventure.pdf

    - Knuth _Digital Typography_ (and not just because I have a reward check)

    - Knuth _Mathematical Writing_ --- if you do any work in math, you probably already have a copy --- if you don't, you probably need one

    - Dewdney _The Planiverse_ --- response to the classic _Flatland_, this has a real charm and despite the dated computer technology, has held up well

    - Walter jon Williams _Hardwired_ --- an amazing cyberpunk novel, part of which was published in _Omni_

    - Steven Brust's _Jhereg_ --- one of my favourite fantasy novels, which I've been reading since picking it up in a Waldenbooks when I was in high school, waiting for the last two books, and esp. glad of these since they made the "Paarfi Romances" exist --- anyone who enjoys Alexandre Dumas and fantasy should read _The Phoenix Guards_

    - C.J. Cherryh's _Regenesis_ --- her entire Alliance--Union series is amazing and books are so varied pretty much everyone will find something which appeals

    - Trevanian _The Eiger Sanction_ and _Shibumi_ --- not sure if this and _Shibumi_ have aged well or no, but the latter was a big part of my childhood

    - Ben Franklin's Autobiography --- read presidential biographies to my kind in chronological order as a trial and regret not continuing with the actual project: biographies of important persons in chronological order

    - Sanora Babb's _Whose Names Are Unknown_: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1197158.Whose_Names_Are_... (ob. discl., that was my mention)

    Other books which only I mentioned:

    - Hal Clement _Space Lash_ now available in https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/939760.Music_of_Many_Sph... --- I recommend folks read it in reverse chronological order, starting at the back, then working to the front and bailing when things get too quaint/old-school/golden-age.

    - H. Beam Piper "Omnilingual" --- this should be a part of the middle school canon, lightly updated version at: http://vrici.lojban.org/~cowan/omnilingual.html

    - _Foxfire_ --- a classic series what predated the "Maker" movement

    - Tolkien's _The Fall of Arthur_

    - Knuth _TeX: The Program_

    Books which were sufficiently striking that I have made a note of them to get to read (hopefully this will work out better than _The Black Swan_ which I found annoying)

    - _Visual Thinking in Mathematics_

    - _Hardcore VisualBASIC_ --- still a bit bummed that I managed to miss this and MacBasic....

    - _Phoebe and her Unicorn_ --- getting this for my daughter

    - _Harmony with Lego(R) Bricks_ --- book on music improvisation

    - Ornamental Origami

    Note that a number of books weren't actually mentioned, e.g., Isaac Asimov's _Book of Facts_

  16. I've tried that, and it always results in me staring at a partially completed sketch/model and totally lost as to how to proceed.

    I'll try to find time/energy to try again.

  17. It's one of my favourite tools.

    If/when your kids outgrow it, there's also:

    https://github.com/derkork/openscad-graph-editor

  18. If you have to modify an STL, you're doing something wrong --- go back to the original/source file.
  19. The world would be a better place if _Philosophy of Software Design_ would replace all mentions of the second book.

    https://github.com/johnousterhout/aposd-vs-clean-code

  20. This is being done for photographic inputs for shapes --- I believe at least one of these tools does that:

    https://www.shapescan.pt/

    https://www.tooltrace.ai/

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