recs

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

rustingbridges:

andmaybegayer:

I’ve been wearing my respirator for a while now and I put on a normal trifold mask because I need to do a lot of talking and I forgot how hard it is to get a seal on these things. I keep on adjusting it because I breathe and get a jet of air in my eye.

right? that’s the worst part imo

Have you tried putting a strip of medical tape (or a band-aid) over the top edge?

It’s still more annoying to seal than an elastomeric, but a lot less annoying than trying to seal a mask *without* tape.

Tags:

#the first draft of this reblog had no text in the main post body and the tags #”potential-future me who works as an office receptionist is nodding and grumbling along with this post” #”I am reblogging it on her behalf” #but then I thought ‘wait does Kali know about the tape trick’ #’I should check that’ #illness tw #the more you know #reply via reblog #recs

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~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

animatedamerican:

supervillainny:

animatedamerican:

irresponsibleeyouth:

The trick is to not let people know how really weird you are until it’s too late for them to back out.

Absolutely the frak not, the trick is to immediately let people know how weird you are so you scare off the weak ones. The ones who stay because they like how weird you are? Those are the ones you want.

Post 1: workplace

Post 2: everywhere else

… you know what, codicil accepted

Tags:

#yeah pretty much #(me showing up to a job interview last summer in a dry-clean-only dress‚ a purse‚ and a university-branded cloth mask: #hello yes I am a perfectly normal member of the office-worker class in the year 2021) #((fortunately I don’t think I’ll ever have to go *quite* that far again)) #((we have a pack of KF94s now‚ which can pass for normie while offering much better protection)) #((Good Manner: for the normie in *your* life)) #in which Brin has a job #clothing #recs

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

rustingbridges:

rustingbridges:

I’ve really got to figure out how to actually use open street maps

@brin-bellway the sticking point that inspired this post was that I make fairly heavy use of google maps’ various annotation features. including the synchronization with contacts, but also various lists of things I’m interested in

I used to have annotations set up on some OSM based app, but that app decided to be expensive and I haven’t figured out how to do this on the one I’ve currently got downloaded (osmand+).

but the main one is that the search doesn’t seem to work very well and the directions often seem a bit wonky. so any time I’m in looking up directions and in a hurry I don’t want to fuck around with it, and just use google maps. which is most of the times I use google maps. and so because I never use it I never get comfortable enough with it to use it under pressure. so here we are

I never use Google Maps annotations, so I’m not sure if I can really help you there. I do use uMap [link] sometimes: is that the sort of thing you mean?

The search and directions can be a bit wonky, yeah, although I like how any map problem I run into is only ever a problem once (because I go on OSM and fix it when I get home). Nice to get the warm prosocial fuzzies.

Tags:

#reply via reblog #maps #recs #for historical reasons I will go ahead and tag this #Brin owns *two* 2010’s computers now #even though I now have a 2020-model smartphone

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

dankmemeuniversity:

8ea4e3c2106b16262c9a566690d384a1315a8292

(Shoutout to @another-normal-anomaly​ for writing a character who, upon being dropped into an alien universe, pretty much immediately goes “oh shit, there could be alien pathogens, better conjure some PPE” [link]. I loved that bit.)

Tags:

#~8th-grade chemistry was primarily a class in how to clean things very carefully and track levels and types of contamination #101 Uses for Infrastructureless Computers #recs #glowfic #reply via reblog #those of y’all who have watched sci-fi with me have heard me yelling about the spacesuit issue

How to peel a peach in 10 seconds! Easiest Method!

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

rustingbridges:

rustingbridges:

first, put it in your large pot of boiling water…

anyway I’m coming around to the conclusion that peaches are one of those fruits not worth smoothieing. if ya gotta peel it that’s too hard.

however I gotta eat like twelve pounds of fruit in the next week. that’s a lot of fruit. at least some of that is going to need to be blended with ice cream so I can pipe it straight into my body

The secret to peeling peaches is to buy nectarines and eat them with the skin on.

The *other* secret to peeling peaches is to buy canned peaches.

Tags:

#why yes these are the only two kinds of peaches I eat #food #recs #reply via reblog

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~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

rustingbridges:

poipoipoi-2016:

tarhalindur:

So, I am looking at the chip news and side-eyeing current news out of  and eyeing getting a replacement laptop now while supplies are still relatively available.  (Nothing too fancy, the use case here is mostly word processing + light gaming + web browsing – admittedly that last tends to involve *lots* of Firefox tabs.  Longevity is also preferred for the same reason I’m looking at getting a new laptop in the first place, which IIRC points more towards laptops intended for enterprise use.)  Which I have not done in some time.

Unfortunately, I’m a bit out of date on tech stuff and also short on more RL techie contacts at the moment, so I’ll ask here for the scuttlebutt:  What brands are the good brands now, if any?  HP used to be my go-to but they’ve been pissing me off for a while now.  AFAIK Dell still has their bad rep, I think Acer may also be on that list, Lenovo remains Chinese Commie and thus I don’t trust them, and I severely mistrust the Microsoft Surface line long-term given some of what Microsoft has been up to lately (laziness will be warring with that wariness wrt converting the old laptop to a Linux testbed).  Who does that leave?  And if I have to go for one of the aforementioned bad options, which one is least bad?

(Pinging @poipoipoi-2016)

So personally, for some historical reasons, I pay the Apple tax (that for various reasons wasn’t; that is one of the historical reasons) and dual boot for workflow reasons.

I also last bought a laptop in 2014 and you can still find “Greatest laptop ever made” posts about my admittedly slightly collapsing MBP from 2014.

Of course, Apple doubled down on China so…..

The Dell and HP business lines seem to be at least relative oases of competency comparatively though once again I couldn’t speak for Linux compatibility, I know there’s a couple of vendors doing Linux first laptops and someone on the feed was trying to buy one.

And also, frame.work is the new home of the 10/10 repairable Framework laptop with completely customizable parts. (Excellent job, also there’s a reason why we generally don’t let you do that). Currently only available in 13-inch form, but that might be where I’d put my money in 2021.

/Or hang out on NotebookCheck reviews until you find a set of tradeoffs you like.

is chip stuff continuing to get more fucked? should I give up on waiting out the fucked up chip stuff and just buy all my replacement parts now

ok I mean I basically have to replace my lightweight laptop now because in addition to slowly falling apart (2015 purchase! that’s $30/yr of depreciation baby) it’s also exiting the manufacturer support period. and running arbitrary linux on it will leave me with zero usable usb ports

I’d been aiming for one of my usual Dell business laptops for my most recent laptop purchase, but eBay was pretty picked over in the summer of 2020, so I ended up getting an HP ZBook 15u g3. It’s turned out pretty well for me (apart from those couple of weeks after my only Dell-to-HP power-cord adapter broke and I found myself with no power cords I could use; one is none, folks!).

—

Is Linux compatibility on PCs still an area of concern? I think it’s been quite a while since the last time installing Ubuntu posed me any major problems. Is that just because I’m using a (relatively) normie distro?

Tags:

#reply via reblog #Linux #101 Uses for Infrastructureless Computers #recs

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~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

rustingbridges:

apparently duolingo shuttered tinycards sometime last year, which, like, yeah, that’s exactly why I never tried it and refuse to use any online flashcard stuff except as a data source for export

I’d never heard of tinycards in specific, but yeah, same.

VitalSource tried to get me to use their proprietary cloud-dependent flashcard system to study for my commercial-law class, and I said “fuck you” and used Mnemosyne instead. I regret nothing.

(I also backed up the textbook despite VitalSource’s attempts to stop me.)

Tags:

#fuck cloud dependence and fuck VitalSource #reply via reblog #101 Uses for Infrastructureless Computers #recs #(the rec being Mnemosyne) #adventures in University Land

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~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

k-vichan:

Take it from someone who has been around the fandom block: 

fanfiction.net is dying.

all the signs are there. 

if you have no other record of any fics you have there… you might wanna… like… do something about that. 

 

k-vichan:

Whoops. I did not intend for this post to blow up in the way it did. I’m not saying this is gonna happen tomorrow or even this year. I don’t have any inside information, and I’m purely basing it off of past experience. They could surprise us. Who knows?

The signs I’m seeing are based off of watching other fandom-driven websites in their end days.

The biggest glaring red flag: they no longer have any visible active moderation team or admins that are working on Fanfiction.net specifically. Reports are going unanswered on everything from plagiarism to abuse to page-breaking ads. Emails are not returned. Twitter mentions are never addressed.

Based off of their limited Twitter activity, all of their resources appear to have been funneled to FictionPress, leaving Fanfiction.net to flounder. If a website does not have anyone actively attending to it, it will eventually die.

The abuse alone could drive users from the website. When users are receiving repeated death threats and they have no way of curtailing the abuse or banning abusive users from messaging them, users will eventually just leave. Admins would have the capability of blocking the IP addresses of people sending abusive reviews and messages, but… what admins?

The code update that went through a few years ago that broke many old fics was never fixed. Many users are reporting major issues in uploading fics. The more they leave the site unattended, the more things will break.

The domain is registered through 2028, but if they keep going in the way that they are sooner or later it’s just going to wind up as a barely-functioning corpse of a website.

I am convinced that the only reason they leave it up is to collect ad revenue. If users continue to leave due to abuse and unreliable service, that ad revenue is going to tank.

I’ve seen this happen to so many websites over the years, and they rarely – if ever – get a revival.

But again – they could surprise us. I’m not counting on it, though. Nobody’s home anymore.

 

demishock:

This is well-timed, because I logged on there a couple months ago to back up all my old fics. Put in my username and password. Someone else’s account information loaded up. I literally logged into some stranger’s account with my own user info. My fics were there, but the profile (including the user ID number) was someone else’s. I took a bunch of screenshots and sent in a support email aaaaaaaand nothing. I managed to snag all my fics and that’ll be it for me for that site. I don’t know wtf is going on there but it ain’t good.

 

nug-juggler:

Reblogging again because my friend mentioned being locked out of her account and ff.net blocks people from copy pasting, so she was afraid her fic would be lost forever when the site eventually goes down.

If you are in danger of losing all your old things, I found a reddit thread with a number of work arounds so you can get your fic off the site.

 

mommacomms:

As of 26 March 2021, the staff of FictionPress have confirmed they are migrating FFN to the same server – which is extremely bad news for that server and for FFN as a whole. 

Lots of technical stuff is going haywire too based on using the Inspect tool in Google chrome. 

Get your fics while you can.

 

sacchariwrites:

Hey! If you didn’t know you can copy and paste from ffn’s mobile site. If you want to copy paste from the browser for convenience sake go to m.fanfiction.net

 

starlingsinclair:

The librarian in me just went into panic mode. Boosting this post!

 

sessediz:

There’s another way to get your old fics! And it’s pretty simple too:

1) Go to the “Publish” button on the sidebar

2) Select “Manage Stories”

3) Click the title of the story you want to save

4) Select “Preview” at the top of the editor

5) Copy and Paste the first chapter into a word doc, and go through each chapter to copy then as well.

If your story is broken into a lot of chapters, this might take a minute, but it’s worth it if the site is going down

Hope this helps! ♥️

 

silvermoon424:

There’s an even easier way of archiving fics. There are tons of free applications and websites you can use to directly save the fic as a PDF/HTLM/ePub/etc file. This is the application I use (usable on both Mac and PC). Also, this website lets you save fanfics as ePub files. This is much easier and quicker than copy-pasting fics.

I for one am going to go on an archive binge of all my favorite fics, just in case.

 

tarhalindur:

@tsuisou-no-despair, this post might be worth paying attention to.

Adding to the downloader rec list:

If you’d like to make sure that all the original formatting is preserved, I highly recommend SingleFile [Firefox, Chrome, Edge]. My local FFNet archives are SingleFile-based: works great, and means I don’t have to worry about whether the format translation to ePub or PDF or what-have-you broke anything. (I haven’t tried the specific downloaders mentioned above, but I know the downloaders I *have* tried often struggled to translate webpages into non-HTML formats without losing images or information-conveying fonts or other such issues.)

SingleFile is also handy for a wide variety of other use-cases involving manual downloading of individual webpages. (For use-cases involving automated mass-downloads, you’d want to look at wget (here’s some Dreamwidth-specific tips) or grab-site.)

—

This isn’t super relevant *yet*, but for anyone who stumbles across this post later *after* FFNet has completely collapsed and is thinking they might be too late: here are links to a scrape of FFNet from 2012 and a more barebones-formatted scrape from 2015. You might want to dig around in those and see if the stuff you were worried about is in there. And if all else fails, ask around and maybe you can find someone who saved a copy.

Tags:

#101 Uses for Infrastructureless Computers #amnesia cw #recs #reply via reblog #FFNet

~ Brin ~ 2 Comments

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@moral-autism​ replied to your post:

Tell us about the web serials? Anything good?

—

I’ve seen one of each so far.

(I can’t find a way to sort either of these chronologically, so I’ve linked to the reverse-chronological pages)

—

Seattle by Night [link] (based on the author’s TTRPG campaign, by a guy who does a lot of those) started publishing in the spring of 2020 and is set in the-present-day-as-of-start-of-publishing. It is canon compliant.

It reminds me of the thread you were in once (at least I’m pretty sure it was you? can’t find it now, though…oh, wait, here’s a copy [link]) about stories that are *informed* by their speculative worlds without being *about* them, but applied to the real world: the story’s not *about* COVID-19, but its presence pervades everything. Seattle by Night has got its own stuff going on, but it’s *very much* set in the spring of 2020 and you will never once forget that.

—

The Chilliad [link] started publishing in 2018, is set twenty minutes into the future (basically present day but with self-driving cars good enough that blind people can use them independently), and has declared COVID-19 to be non-canon via a fourth-wall-poking joke:

“well, maybe some of us studied public policy and then a global pandemic hit so we are stuck at home without a full-time job, slowly going insane,” homer snaps.

“co-vid what?” asks donut mouth. “i thought you were a poet.”

“huh?” homer asks, blinking. “i don’t know. maybe i’m still drunk. i think i’m dissociating. you should send me to a hospital.”

“nice try,” says ray ban.

Tags:

#replies #moral autism #recs #storytime #covid19 #illness mention #Iliad #(fun fact: apparently Tumblr defaults to capitalising that ”iLiad”) #(some sort of buggy heuristic I presume) #fanfic

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~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

eightyonekilograms:

argumate:

ugh when your phone dies your authenticator accounts die with it, that’s a nuisance.

Authy stores your authenticator codes in the cloud, which seems like an unacceptable security risk until you have a phone die with no way of restoring from backup and it took all your 2FA codes with it.

If you’re using Google Authenticator, I recommend Authy with a complex passphrase instead unless you’re Snowden-level paranoid.

Back when I used Google Authenticator, I put TOTP on as few accounts as possible precisely because I was worried about the lack of backups.

Then I learned about andOTP, and now I put TOTP on everything that allows it and keep an export file in my backups. The password on the export file is a bunch of gibberish kept in a KeePass vault.

(*SMS* verification, however, is still bullshit.)

Tags:

#reply via reblog #recs #Brin owns *two* 2010’s computers now #101 Uses for Infrastructureless Computers #amnesia cw?