jbmny
Joined 130 karma
- I vividly remember playing Genesis in my living room as a kid when my parents were having friends over from out of town. My dad and his friend came in after a couple beers and my dad explained what I was playing. His friend knew all about Genesis already: "We've got the Sega Channel. I play 50 games a year!" I remember being very fascinated until he started laughing, which to me signaled that he was pulling my leg. I spent the next 30 or so years thinking the "Sega Channel" was a dumb joke from an inebriated friend of my dad's. Until today.
Looking back, maybe my dad nudged him to change the subject so that I wouldn't spend the next month begging for a subscription.
- I agree with you. It comes down to risks vs benefits, and I feel that for a huge number of people that aren't predisposed to addiction, that don't need to drink to the point of blacking out, etc., it may very well be worth it.
I know that my "principled" refusal to drink in my younger years made socializing a lot harder and just generally put a barrier between myself and my peers. Of course, a stronger person could overcome those challenges without alcohol, but that seems like a Herculean task for someone who's already shy and lacking self-esteem.
I guess I just don't see it as black and white.
- Reminds me of the fatalities in Mortal Kombat growing up. All the regular moves were in the manual, but IIRC the fatalities were not. It was a form of secret knowledge, and it was really cool if you knew one. Granted, this was right before the Internet-connected home computer became ubiquitous.
- I attended, and one thing I learned is that being good at giving talks is often more important than the subject matter of the talk. It's all about keeping it slow and digestible and making sure you don't lose your audience. "Computational Origami" is an example of a talk I loved because of how well it was executed, not necessarily because of the subject matter.
- The "unattractive slobs" bit seems a bit excessive to me, but I absolutely agree with your main point: the issues are indeed respect and intention. As the professor describes it, it sounds like the perpetrators of this "prank" are turning this class into their own romantic playground without regard for their classmates' wishes. Their "help" comes under false pretenses. They seem to think their dating lives are more important than the education of their classmates. There's a fundamental disrespect and a bit of -- sorry to say it -- misogyny there.
An extreme example, I know, but I can't help but think of the movie Audition.
- Caught them live a couple months ago at Madison Square Garden. I couldn't believe how good they sounded or how energetic they were. Zach had to sit down throughout the whole performance due to an injury, but it didn't bring down the intensity at all. And you'd have absolutely no idea Tom Morello was 58 years old. I found myself wondering how much better their shows could have been 30 years ago -- it didn't seem like they'd lost a single step.
Needless to say, it was well worth the price.
- I've been roughly halfway through the book for years, so take this for what it's worth, but if they were actually footnotes I might have read them. Instead they are endnotes, meaning you have to pick up a solid pound of book and flip to the end each time you encounter one. And there are many.
I just found that dehumanizing. Lol
- I use vim-gnupg. It makes the whole thing a breeze. And in my experience, the author is completely right: I won't open up all the way unless I have guaranteed privacy. It's not that I have anything criminal to hide, but we all have things we're uncomfortable putting on the page and being forced to acknowledge as reality.
- I'd love to know too. I have a T530 from 2012. I ordered two replacement batteries from Lenovo's official supplier, and both bricked within a week of use. (Thankfully I was able to return both for full refunds.)
The machine still runs Linux like a champ -- I'd just like a new battery so I don't have to have it plugged into the wall at all times.
- Awesome project. I love the idea of recreating a game in the terminal. I tried doing an exact clone of Pokemon once (with graphics and everything), but keeping the frame rate up always requires getting into the low-level weeds. Sometimes it's nice to write a purely "high-level" game without worrying about that stuff at all. I feel like the terminal is a great way to do that.
- I really am starting to feel like any writing I do that is not intended to be read by others should be in list form. When writing prose, I often catch myself worrying about "meta" things that have nothing to do with the ideas I'm trying to convey: phrasing, rhythm, vocabulary, etc. I feel it's just impossible to write prose without worrying about this stuff. It's like I'm always trying to impress someone with my writing. I think there's a time and place for that, but not when the only audience is me.
- > one of my favourite things is to use secret undocumented APIs where you need to copy your cookies out of the browser to get access to them
I love this too. It's always a nice surprise when you realize you won't be needing to write xpath/pyquery/et al. after all... It's like the scraping has already been done for you!
- I use a sort of inverse tactic. While working, I often find that trivial questions pop into my head, and I get tempted to look up the answers and distract myself for a while. Stuff like "what does the word 'ducky' mean" or "what are the lyrics to the verse of that Blur song" or "what is the capital of Albania". I keep a text file open on my computer called "later", and when one of these questions comes up, I write it in the file, promising myself that I can look it up later. The truth is that I hardly ever do. The questions seem so burning when I want to be distracted. When I have the free time to look them up, I realize how silly they actually were.
- That feels like yet another aspect of Wordle's appeal to me: the fact that it starts with a "clean slate", where you can enter any word you want. It's an opportunity for creativity, spontaneity, and serendipity. One of my favorite parts of the game is pulling that first word out of the air.
- I have definitely gotten that dopamine rush, and I think I still do. It's probably a big reason why I'm a programmer. There's a certain satisfaction you get from knowing definitively that you "solved" the problem. Making music is another interest of mine, but due to its open-ended, creative nature, I don't think it can provide this kind of satisfaction.
- I don't know the ultimate fate of Wordle, but I'm comforted by the thought of thousands of programmers all over the world creating and hosting their own little versions and sharing them with friends and family. It's so simple that it practically begs to be implemented in whichever language you happen to be dabbling in at the moment.
- Without talking to somebody on the phone, often I don't have a lot of faith that the order will even be received. Sometimes the place closes but the app happily continues to take orders. Other times the order simply gets lost in the ether. After a while, you learn which places are not worth the risk of ordering from online.
- I've been using dwm for years. Oddly enough, I almost always keep it in monocle mode (one window at a time that takes up the entire screen). I rarely find myself wanting to look at two or more windows at once. More often, tmux seems the more appropriate place to split windows. Monocle mode also seems to help me stay focused.
Of course, when I do really need multiple windows, tiling mode is an Alt-t away.
I enjoy using a simple program to meet my simple needs.
It reminded me of my own habit of logging my pour-over coffee brews. For months I saved every variable about every cup, imagining that one day I'd analyze that data and arrive at the perfect recipe.
I never once looked at the data. Eventually I realized that I'd rather learn by just paying close attention to this cup, and using it to change my approach for the next cup.
It feels like a more human, living knowledge.