I've got a basic garage in the backyard - essentially a sheet metal shed with a concrete floor. It would have been built in the 1980s so I doubt the concrete slab had a water barrier - or if it did it probably wore away over time.

When we have wet weather, the concrete gets damp underneath items on the floor - like rubber mats etc. There's also some mineral staining. Doing some reading online, it looks like concrete efflorescence.

I'm considering demolishing the shed and building a better workshop (insulated etc.) on the existing concrete slab. Can I make the existing slab a usable floor by sealing it with something like epoxy? Or would I be better off using the slab as a footing and building the new structure on posts with a separate floor suspended above the slab?

My goal is to avoid getting any damp or mould in the new structure.

If i have a lot of acrylic on canvas paintings and I want to produce prints to sell, where do you make the prints? Local Kinko's/staples?
Clear plastic bag or no? Brief artist blurb at the back? Post card?

Have you ever bought a print? What made you want to buy it or what stopped you, and what would have made it go from no to yes?

My mind is way annoying to listen to and I don’t like it!

I'm 45 years old and I have a hard time coming to term with the fact that the majority of my life---the one which supposedly should had been my golden years---lies in the past. I know I'm still alive but I just can't drum up much enthutiasm for an existence which I mostly see as sad leftovers of something which wasn't worth much either. I simply don't care much. I can distract myself for some time, but I have this deep feeling that, well, what's the point.

And I can ignore it, for some time. But ignorence can only go so far. At some point you need some hope, some sliver of meaning and purpose. And I just don't see it.

And this is all awful impractical, because whenever I try to strive for anything, my brain just goes, “narh, why bother struggle when it doesn’t lead to anything”

Is there any clever way to turn stuff like this around? Some NLP stuff to nudge me towards a less self-defeating mindset?

I have a cavalier king charles spaniel that has had some unfortunate health issues for the past few years. The most pressing one that I haven't been able to nail down and fix is her GI issues. Every now and then, she has an all night bout of diarrhea even though the only food she has eaten is her hydrolyzed protein dog food. I remember reading about FMT years ago for people who had GI issues and I'm wondering what the results have been for dogs (and other animals). It seems counter intuitive to fight shit with more shit, but at this point I am willing to try most non-invasive treatments. While taking her to the dog park and asking other dog owners if my dog can eat their dog's poo would be the cheapest option, instead I found a site that purportedly has capsules available.

https://doggybiome.com/dog-products-for-diarrhea/

However, because it is difficult to find more information about this company and because I don't want imagine how this type of business (if it worked) could scale up as an industrial factory farm, I am skeptical.

Any thoughts on treating IBD in dogs for an allergy prone, and sensitive dog? She is already getting fiber and she sometimes gets probiotic with her food.

Hey all!

(If this is the wrong place for this, please feel free to reassign)

During the winter months I can't get out to do much photography, but I love darkroom printing. Last winter I started buying antique photo negatives on ebay to have something to print.

It's been amazing! Many are from the 20's, 30's and 40's, with one set (of glass plates) having been manufactured pre-20th century!

I don't know how many I have, but it must be somewhere around 300-500 negatives. Currently they are stored in their original envelopes from the labs that developed them nearly 90 years ago, but that's not a good long term option. I love history, and I want to do this right, but I feel a bit overwhelmed with the volume.

Data I'd like to keep track of:

• The name of the person on the envelope the negative came from
• The date on the envelope
• The approximate date taken (if known)
• Ideally the specific envelope it came from

I'm going to try and store these in a binder of some sort, though that presents it's own challenges since it won't be possible to find sheets with sleeves that are the right size for the negatives. But that's a problem for me to solve haha. I've never had to index/catalog physical media before, so I'm pretty clueless on where to start.

More than anything it's really important to me to preserve this history in a safe way. For many of the people these pictures may be the only trace on earth that they ever existed, and I want to respect that.

For example, if I want to add ground flax to a brownie mix or oats to muffins? What if I want to add some extra dried blueberries to boxed blueberry muffin mix? The box instructions usually say 1/4 cup of oil and 1 egg, and I'm wondering if I need to double both or either if I want to add some more dry ingredients. Or is there maybe a max level at which I don't need to add extra oil/eggs, like a quarter cup at most of oats?

I know baking is a science and ratios are important, but still it'd be nice to have a way to make storebought convenience mixes a wee bit more filling or healthier. I'm used to substituting applesauce for oil in brownies, but I'm curious what else I could do with a storebought mix.

I'm failing. My usual tricks aren't working and I don't know what to do with my clothes anymore.

One of my ADHD symptoms is that needs to see everything. My "pantry" is open shelves in my kitchen. Everything in the fridge is up near the front of the shelves. I have a giant desk so I can spread out when I'm working. I need to see it all at all times.
So the issue becomes, how do I do that with clothes. My alligator brain wants them all over the floor so I can see everything. That's not gonna work lol. I used to be good with a closet with no doors, but my new apartment isn't laid out in a way I can do that.

Does anyone have any interesting clothes storage advice? The clutter is stressing me out, so I need to figure out whatever my new system is going to be.

I'm curious on how to get started in self hosting. I have computer experience, being an Android Developer, but I hardly have experience in Linux and backend/networking work.

I've been wanting to start up a Plex/Jellyfin server for a while, and I have an old system sitting around with a Ryzen 1700 with a graphics card in there as well that's been begging for attention, and maybe I can throw on a Minecraft server in there as well. Since I travel a bunch, it would be nice too to be able to access my media for when I'm traveling, or to let my parents or friends access some shows if they so desire!

What I'm worried about is exposing my network to the internet basically. I used to run a Minecraft server with port forwarding and such on a personal computer but now I'm realizing that that's probably a bit unsafe lol.

Basically, are there any guides that I can look at, or any of your own experiences that could potentially help me or anyone who's interested?

For the last few summers I've tried (and failed) to get a silent disco system working for a small group of friends. The requirements are

1. Anyone should be able to join (locally) with a phone and a pair of bluetooth headphones. With the absence of headphone jacks I've found most people rely on bluetooth headphones.
2. Low enough latency.
3. Decent enough audio fidelity.
4. No weird monetized apps you have to sign in to.

In a post covid age where we all had low latency video calls, it seems crazy there isn't an obvious way to have <10 people connected to one 128kbps audio stream. Here are the shortcomings

• Most silent disco systems (for events) use FM to broadcast to FM receivers. Broadcasting without a license is technically illegal, but easy enough to do. The lack of wired headphones means most phones no longer support receiving FM frequencies, as they used the headphone wire as an antenna. It's not ideal checking up on everyone's phone models to see whether or not they support FM ahead of time.

• Throughout covid we used Discord to listen to music together many miles apart. The trouble is bluetooth does not have enough bandwidth for speakers and a microphone. So - those with wired headphones it worked perfectly, but with bluetooth headphones the audio drops to landline phone quality, far below what's listenable. Discord supports 'Stage' calls where some participants are talking and others are only listening. Unfortunately this doesn't disable the microphone for the audience, and so the audio is still poor.

• Lastly is streaming. This solves everything above but the latency is too high. Using software called 'Stream What You Hear' allowed us to create a webpage with a stream running, but each person could be many seconds ahead or behind depending on when they loaded the stream. Attempts to sync everyone up would fail if someone accidentally locked their phone.

I'm wondering if the solution is going to have to be a bit more technically minded, which I'm open to investigating, but wondered if anyone here had any ideas to bounce.

Thanks in advance!

EDIT: I tried SnapCast as recommendation by @arch and it seems to do exactly what I was setting out to achieve, and FOSS software too! Thanks to everyone for their suggestions and help, I'm really excited to trial it.

Hi, I started trialing contact lenses (toric lenses, specifically) about a month ago, and have had a problem with them making my eyes seriously red. I've tried 3 different brands of contacts now, and the issue has persisted across all three. Has anyone else had a similar experience and figure out how to manage it? Thank you!

I want to upgrade my gaming setup, but I want to move towards a desktop replacement laptop for the compact form factor to free up desk space or even get rid of a desk altogether. I also want to try out Pop!_OS since I know it has good Nvidia drivers and that most games are compatible with Linux nowadays.

Has anyone had any experience with switching to Pop!_OS from Windows? What is software compatibility like? Pros and cons?

Also is anyone here using an 18 inch gaming laptop? I'm interested in huge laptops since I'm not really planning on taking it on the go.

I'm looking at starting to do a PC build and I'm a bit lost on which way to go CPU wise.

Proposed use case: linux, some gaming (usually older games), possibly trying to learn home lab/self hosting types of things probably in a VM but nothing really heavy. I do want to run Starfield when it comes out and maybe be able to try VR some time in the future.

I'd like to have a bit of a future proof system while getting value for my money, as in I'd like to spend less but I will spend more if it matters. This is where I'm sort of getting lost.

I tend to lean towards Intel because VM's and multitasking should work better (I think) but people seem to believe that AMD is better bang for the buck?

I feel like I'm likely not going to swap CPU's, but RAM, GPU, and storage are easy to swap so I'm not to worried.

I’ve always been a bit nervous of bleach. My white counters in the kitchen have been picking up stains, so I bought some bleach and have left it to sit. Hooray, the stains are gone!

BUT. Then I googled some bleach tips and discovered that you absolutely shouldn’t use undiluted bleach on your counters because it can ruin them 🤦🏻‍♀️

I didn’t pick up a lot of cleaning knowledge from my parents, and it’s been a lot of trial and error (so much error) figuring out how to keep everything clean enough. Now I have schedules and products and I do a pretty good job of it, but I moved out of home at 18 and I’m now 36 so it’s been literally half my life getting to this point.

So… what cleaning tips and tricks do you have? What product (remember to specify which country you’re in!) can you absolutely not do without? What products can be used for something unusual? Let’s hear it!

I tried finding other alternatives to reddit, which is what got me here. I still love the content of the subs that I followed and am not wanting to really step away. I'd like to as a matter of my own principles... but I still want it. So much knowledge has been amassed on that platform.

Do you guys still mess with reddit regularly? If not, how?

So, in the past, I have been able to find new poems I enjoy by reading a critical essay about poetry and taking the referenced poem and author and typing the information into Google search. It used to be that that technique turned up a copy of the text of the poem and typically more poems by the author 95 percent of the time for me.

This year, when I try that same technique, Google gives me general reference articles about the life of the poet, or news about celebrities with similar names (not the same name at all), or just no search results. Does anyone know what happened? Can anyone help me use the internet to find new poems again?

Thanks very much

I'm working on pruning the sources of information that come into my Readwise/Read Later feeds down based on usefulness/actionable in my life and quality. My priorities are for data sources to expand my 'reality tunnel', to provide unique insights (not an echo chamber), and to remove a lot of the 'noise' of the day-to-day information overload. I'm considering what those sources might be. If you have a moment, I'd appreciate your thoughts, advice, and links to any writings or videos that speak to this similar goal and how others have done it. Thanks in advance!

Nick Milo said:

The noise is deafening, but I promise to focus on the high-value signal.

I'm seeking to reduce the noise, and increase the signal of my Reader feeds.

I've been doing a postdoc in molecular biology in academia for a little while now, and getting ready to take next step. I'm looking into industry careers, but it's difficult to know what they entail since we don't often get exposed to them.

If you or someone you know works in biotech, I'd love to hear about it.

How did you get into it? What do you enjoy or not enjoy? Where do you see the industry heading? What are some of the positions like?

I have a server running Unraid at home. I have ~20 docker containers running at the moment with almost all of them only available within my local network. I just stood up an instance of Seafile on the server to act as a google drive replacement. Still in the early test phase before I commit to throwing important stuff on there. I have my domain proxied through Cloudflare so none of my local ports are exposed to the internet. Seafille has complicated passwords set for admin and user accounts (generated with Bitwarden, hot damn I love that app). I also enabled 2FA on each account. I know that I can further clamp it down using some of Cloudflare's extra access controls but in my admittedly limited experience, those all cause issues getting an app to authenticate with the service. Web apps don't have this issue of course.

So am I ok with this setup? I can encrypt the data before uploading easily as it's a built in feature of Seafile. Or would it be better to just run with local only and run a VPN to access when I'm outside?

I figure just about any effort along these lines I trust more than Google with my data. But I may be overconfident in that perhaps. I'm still learning the ropes with Linux and self-hosting in general.

I've only had exposure to Beyond Compare and would like your opinion/suggestions on what's good.

mostly, I use it to compare two different versions of similar csv and potentially to merge them. Next use case is to compare two versions of simple scripts to see what's been updated.

Command line tools are a little too much for me, but if it seem to be very important to learn I supposed I could be encouraged to do so.

With the growing fragmentation of online streaming services, I'm thinking of setting up a local media server for my home that I can use over Kodi to stream movies/tv shows to my chromecast. I might go Monkey D. Luffy for the content itself.

Basically the basic plan is to have some base features and some add-ons as follows.

Base:

1. Create a media server using a Raspberry Pi and some storage to serve as the base for all my viewing
2. Setting up Kodi on all relevant platforms to consume data from (1) [This should be trivial]

Add-ons:

1. Create a python script to check for new episodes of any existing show available on the net (Imdb, moviedb, wiki can be starting points to check this)
2. Automate download of shows from 1. Can be setup to run at some daily interval
3. Download subtitles for shows from 2.
4. Maintain some Github list to add new movies/tv shows that user might be interested to download. Script from 1 should be able to consume this.

I used Popcorn time was a software that was able to do most of this at some point, but I remember reading that there were some security issues identified with it. I never really checked it afterwards, but happy to be corrected if it's reliable.

Edit: Thanks folks, I did not know that the RR-sphere already solves most of these problems, will look into it. I was looking forward to the scripting, but I'm guessing these solutions handle security much better than I would at my end.

I've recently become interested in exploring history. However, though I am usually quick to read and process large amounts of information in other genres, I find myself struggling with the dates in history books. For example, here's a excerpt from the book I'm currently reading [1]:

During this period, tsarist policy was contradictory along its Western borders. In Finland, a Parliament was convened in 1863 for the first time in fifty-four years. In 1860, its own currency, the Finnish markka, was introduced, initially tied to the Russion rouble before being tied to the value of silver from 1865, which enabled the Duchy to trade more easily with the West. By 1906, Parliament had passed 400 separate pieces of legislation, and by 1883, Finnish had equal status as a language to Russian.

It takes me surprisingly long to process this; my mind struggles to put together the timeline and most relevant facts. This style is used throughout the whole book and others like it, where multiple dates (and names or facts) are mentioned in a short piece of text, often in seemingly random order. This makes it difficult for me to truly get something out the book -- either I don't remember the information well afterwards or I can't relax while reading because I'm constantly puzzling it together.

For people more familiar with historical works: are there any tricks to this? Does it perhaps get easier in time, when you become more familiar with the genre (similar to keeping track of the characters in fantasy books like Game of Thrones)? Or do some people have a natural affinity for dates, same as others have a mind for numbers or for languages? Looking forward to hearing your opinions and experiences.

[1] N. Taylor, "Estonia, A Modern History", 2nd edition, C. Hurst & Co, 2020.

Update: This was my first post here, and I’m loving the thoughtful replies. Here’s a summary of the tips so far:

• Combining specific dates into a higher level time periods, e.g. start/middle/late century.
• Using historical dates with a personal meaning as anchors to keep an overview of the time period.
• Paying special attention to the first line of each paragraph, the first section of each chapter, and the first chapter of each book, which should be a summary of the following paragraph, chapter, and book, respectively.
• Writing or drawing your own timeline of events, outside of the book.
• Adding context information to your own timeline, based on understanding why each event occurred in that time and that way.

First, forgive me for I am a first time DOSbox user. My O/S is Windows 10 home 64-bit

I went to old games and grabbed Doom & Doom II. I use to play these quite a bit and remember them fondly. I did the easy setup which added DOSbox 0.74 and the game. It loads up and runs just like I remember with the keyboard, just no mouse.

I did searching online, but the only solutions seem to be making sure autolock=true in the config file, and using cntl-F10 to capture the mouse. Toggling cntl-F10 does seem to grab the mouse in that the cursor disappears, but the mouse still will not function in either full screen or windowed mode.

I seem to be missing something obvious, but for the life of me I just don't see it. I'm reasonably computer savvy, but feeling stupid at the moment.

Any advice would be appreciated. TIA

Edit: Forked over the 5 bucks and went with the Steam version. Works perfectly.
Thank you everyone for your advice.

If I wanted to create an Instagram to try to build a brand but value privacy, what are some good tips and tricks for using the app and not have all your personal data harvested by Meta?

Of course they're going to collect whatever info I post but are there some mitigation strategies? Always use a VPN? Should I get a brand new phone number?

I'm thinking first order of business is cleaning and then I'd like to paint, and then cleaning up the unkept yard. But I still haven't even moved yet and I know reality will be different.

Does anyone who's been in this situation before have some general advice?

Anyone here go through a grounded play through ? I’m trying to currently and tbh…it’s kicking my ass.

Any one here got some tips or advice for this kind of play through ?

Or just discuss the game too! I’d love to join in.

Thank you in advance!!

Ever since I learned how easy homemade hot sauce is, I try to experiment with a new batch or recipe from time to time. My most recent batch highlights carrot and Ginger, with mild jalapeno heat.

It tastes good, and the ginger is very apparent, but my SO and I feel it's missing something. Of course you can't taste it through the internet, but based on the recipe, can you provide any suggestions for what can help round it out or take it from good to great?

Ingredients:

• 3 carrots, 4 oz
• 1 knob of ginger, peeled, 2.5 oz
• 4 jalapeños, 8 oz
• 4 cloves garlic
• 1/4 of a red onion, didn't weigh
• 1/2c apple cider vinegar
• 1/2c water
• 1/2 tsp kosher salt
• 1/2 bunch of cilantro, maybe a couple of tsp after chopping

Method:

1. Thinly sliced carrots, ginger, peppers, onion, and garlic
2. Sautee until brown around the edges (carrots and ginger took longer, garlic was just for a minute to avoid burning)
3. Blend with salt, water, vinegar, and cilantro.
4. Strain solids

Any ideas on what it's missing? Some kind of tomato product? Something earthy like cumin? More garlic or onion? Something else entirely?

EDIT: Thanks for all the great feedback! I poured a few small samples to test various additions based on your suggestions, and I ended up adding another 1/2 tsp of salt (for a total of 1 tsp), 1/2 tsp MSG, the juice of half a small lime, 1 squeeze of honey (estimated just shy of 1 tsp) and then thickened with 1/8 tsp of xanthan gum since it was really thin.

Next time, I definitely want to try roasting the peppers and veggies, and I'll try a blend of peppers. I'm curious about other ginger preparation methods, too, such as raw, roasted, or powder. But for a mildly hot ginger sauce, I'm calling this experiment a success!

My spouse and I were recently pre approved for a home loan; this evening, we will be going to look at a house for the first time. This will be our first house, and unless truly extenuating circumstances arise, we will not be looking to move or sell anytime soon.

There are plenty of existing threads and articles covering things to look for in terms of the state of the house itself, such as foundation cracks, new paint covering mold, water damage, etc; what I am looking for is more a question of things to consider potentially liking or disliking about a home, regardless of its state of repair, that we might not think of until it's too late.

For example, some things I've come across that are important and can't be changed about a house, but I wouldn't have thought to consider if I hadn't seen someone else mention them, include:

• whether we get good cell service when not using wi-fi
• whether the hallway is wide enough to move large furniture through
• what direction the house faces, and subsequently when/where light comes in

What other things might be easy to overlook about a property, but should be taken into account?

I want to get into growing chilis and I decides I want to get started with Jalapenos. I want to grow chilis but the problem is it's already the middle of Summer so if I plant now I can only harvest in fall/winter. Because of this I need to grow the indoors in pots. So my question toward my fellow chili growers:

How hard is it to grow Jalapenos in pots?

I can get my hands on 20L pots so that's not a problem, I can also get nitrogen and good soil (I found a recommendation to not get high quality one). One problem I faced is that I would need heat lamps to help the growing process. My guess is I can't go without them because in my country in late fall, winter, early spring it's pretty cold. How quickly do they grow and how tall they get? One concern I have is they will get to big to grow indoors since I don't have a ton of space inside. I have heard that there are kinds of chilis that stand the cold better (the ones with hair on them) so do you recommend me to get them? Or do you recommend me to wait till january? I'm really excited to start growing them and I'm a bit inpatient. Thanks for the advice in advance.

Hi,

I have a planted tank of 160L/about 40 US gallons. I had a few problems and want to get a center piece fish, but I also want to ask what might've gone wrong with my betta's. So this is a long post, sorry. I'll put a tl;dr in the end.

Currently there are 6 celebes rainbowfish, 2 hillstream loaches (P. Myersi), a whole bunch of bronze corydoras (they had offspring, ~12 fish), and 4 amano xl shrimps.

No ammonia and nitrites, I did get way too high nitrates but that's more and more under control (~50ppm now). The filter is a Sicce Whale 350 and there are two bubblers (Eheim 200 split in two bubblers IIRC). Temperature is about 25-26°C (77-79F).

I used to keep a singular betta in the tank with the cories and celebes, but I have had the worst luck with them. Three died in about 1.5 years. One disappeared while I was on vacation, so I don't fully know what happened (family came to check up on them, but they were also perplexed). The second one was sickly from the start and kind of wasted away with clear dropsy at the end.
The third one got stuck in a little glass vase I put on the glass with an anubia pinto plant. I got him out but he was barely alive, and although he seemed to slowly get better he eventually died of dropsy (but without clear signs of infection) in the end too.

My current working theory is that the tank is too busy, but as long as the betta is healthy it's fine. Yet betta's can't be fine all the time, and my nitrate spikes didn't help of course.

I also don't give the bigger betta pellets as the main feed anymore since the last one died of dropsy without clear signs of infection (I still have a betta in another 70l/20 gallon planted tank with shrimps), but I'm not fully sure if that's a factor that really mattered. Still, I feel like they can disrupt the digestion (especially since I tend to give too much of it) (I try not to).

I also tend to go for calmer betta's in the LFS that will probably not mess too much with my other fish in the community tank, but the second one was in retrospect too calm and hidey.
In theory they like almost still water, but I have a lot of resting places (esp near the surface), choose betta's with smaller fins and keep an eye out that they don't get thrown around in the tank.

So I'm looking for a centre piece fish with lots of personality, but who will most likely leave my other fish alone. I can return them to the LFS if it doesn't really work out, or if they don't need much space I have a 30l quarantine tank running in the background. So I can manouvre if it doesn't work out, but still.

I tried honey gourami's, but my Celebes fish were scared of them and only stayed between the plants. They were also quite dominant actually. I'm pretty sensitive about agression in my tank.

I'd love to just get another betta, but I don't want to guinea pig one after another till I perhaps find out my tank truly is too busy for them.

Tl;dr: want another fish in stead of betta's, that can handle other busybodies but doesn't dominate. No honey gourami's or livebearers please.

Some brief backstory that is super common, I'm sure. I played 5e with some friends before the pandemic and that broke the group up, of course. Then our DM moved away so we've been without D&D since 2019 or so. I was recently nominated to be our DM because none of us knows how to do it and they all thought I'd be a good fit. Which is great because I love world-building, playing characters, and writing stories.

But I'm nervous because I was barely competent at playing the game to begin with (aside from getting into character), let alone DMing it. The whole group was, really. Because of the pandemic we're effectively all starting over as new players. So I've got a forgiving group to DM, that's for sure.

To help me out, I bought the Essentials Kit and am building our first couple of sessions around that, albeit it pretty heavily modified. I kept the setting and one quest, but already created a custom quest with a mini-dungeon for them. Also managed to inject my favorite played character as the central giver of quests and backstory within the game. Sir Lord Craymond Zephyrson Ponce IV, former heir to Ponce fortune and originator of the Ponce-y Scheme. Think foghorn leghorn meets 1800s railroad tycoon meets Trump. Not a nice man at all.

Honestly I started modifying the pre-built way quicker than I expected. My original plan was to play it by the book for the first couple of nights, but ideas kept popping in my head and I just ran with it. Then I started creating a windmill out of popsicle sticks and tiny rocks. I think DMing might be a gateway drug to greater creativity expressed through arts and crafts!

Our first session is tomorrow night and I've been feverishly writing complicated notes in OneNote. I've got a notebook for each session. Then a section for The main outline, quests, NPCs, locations, encounters. Then pages for each individual item under that category. Then I'm using the nifty "Link to Paragraph" tool to let me quickly jump between pages. Here's a screenshot to show what I've put together -- https://imgur.com/a/yA6IYUJ I think eventually, after a few sessions, the notes will be more condensed, giving way to more improvisational storytelling. Between chatGPT and old fashioned generator sites that can crank out NPCs, dungeons, encounters, etc. I think it'll be a lot easier if I can work toward just having a simple outline for a given session and let the tooling and my imagination do the rest on the fly.

Anyway, any general advice for a new DM?

For the first time in my life, I'll be living somewhere other than my hometown— going half the world away to London!

Having never moved further than like an hour away from where I grew up, I'd love to hear about experiences, tips, things to keep in mind when moving to a totally new place. Anything centred on London/the UK is of course very welcome, but I'm also really into hearing from people more generally :)

I've been having a particularly rough time finding a new job in the field I graduated in. I'm doing pretty much everything most job sites have told me but networking is kinda hard.

I don't currently work in my field so I don't know anyone that would be particularly useful. Everyone I know is already aware of my situation and some of them have even found leads for me but no luck yet.

I have gone to events related to organizations I'm interested in and spoken to people there but it feels super weird to just approach people and tell them I'm looking for a job.

Similarly Linkedin is super foreign to me. This post is literally the most I've ever interacted with a social media site. What do I do once I open that app? Am I supposed to just stalk people on there that might hire me someday? I tried joining a "group" but it's been pending for a week now.

I'm sad to admit it, but several members of my household have a crippling egg addiction and all our local suppliers are getting pretty stingy with prices. So we're breaking into the supply chain and getting the good stuff right at the source

But seriously, looking to get some chickens soon and it's been difficult finding spesific details. Most of the resources I see either paint chickens as exceptionally easy and self sufficient, or details extremely technical info for business farmers. Just based on the info I can put together, I'm building a small coop (2.5m^2) and fencing a run that can extend out to about 10m^2. Think it should be enough for 5 or 6 birds and I'll line the house out with plenty of straw and make a little nesting nook. I'll need to let them out in the morning, feed them grain and kitchen scraps, close them up at night and keep a temporary pen for broody hens.

Is that it? Do I have to get spesific breeds or types? Will it be better to raise them from young or just get fully grown? Temps range from -5C to 32C trough the year so do they need insulation or cooling? Are the eggs just safe to eat straight out the chicken? What are the best chicken pun names?

Most importantly, are they good to keep around kids? My toddler has a very... enthusiastic love for animals but I know birds will not put up with her the way the cats or dog do. And is there any hygiene or parasite risks I need to be aware of?

Would really appreciate any advice or anecdotes people have to share about these animals.

The idea is simple: on any given day, I wanna know what TV show was on with new episodes 10, 20, or any number of years ago. To make it simple, let's restrict it to US television.

The reasoning behind it is that shows were made with that expectation (they are not "binge friendly"), and it was wonderful to have a different show every day of the week. It was magical to be able to randomly catch Monk, E.R., The X-Files, The Pretender, Psych, Star Trek TOS, or Early Edition on TV. Hell, even Game of Thrones made a lot more sense when I had to wait a week before watching!

So yeah, this is 100% about nostalgia. At least one day I week, I'm gonna watch whatever was on TV that exact day 10 to 30 years ago.

I'm gonna choose a decade and start from there.

But how could I do it, from a mechanical standpoint? I mean, where can I easily find the information of all the episodes that premiered on US TV exactly 10, 20, 30 years ago to the day?

Additionally, any tips on finding obscure 80s and 90s TV shows?

Thanks!

Edit: what I want it is really nothing complicated, I just wanna know what was on any day of the week for the past 30 years. No automation required!

This thread is officially retired. Please see the new version to ask any new questions.

We have a lot of new users joining the site. Welcome to Tildes!

This thread is for you to ask any question you have about the site, from “what is the moderation philosophy?”to “what does that blue line next to some comments mean?” to “what is the general vibe like here?” Tildes has a lot of documentation, history, and embedded social norms that can be daunting or opaque at first glance, so here’s your opportunity to get help with anything you need.

Questions about anything and everything are fair game. Follow-up questions are encouraged! No question is too simple.

Also, a quick note: the only person who can speak in any official capacity on Tildes is our admin @Deimos. Everyone answering who is NOT him is just a helpful community member!

EDIT: To be clear, is perfectly okay to ask any question — even if you think it’s been asked before, or even if you didn’t search for an answer beforehand. There are an overwhelming number of comments here to sift through, so don’t worry about trying to read all of them. Just ask away, and someone will answer you!

A year ago I bought a bunch of chili seeds that I planted and then kind of left to its own devices on my balcony together with 3 other types of chili pepper. I watered the plants but I didn't give them any other love.

Despite my negligence the plants thrived and some of the chili peppers developed a very particular appearance.
Perhaps 1 out of 10 fully grown peppers kind of resembled a flower with petals around its base. They aren't suppose to look like that.

https://i.imgur.com/Km2GFu3.jpg

I saved the seeds from the largest and most distinct "flower chilis" and planted them to see if the odd appearance of the peppers would come back in generation 2...and so far 5 out of 5 developed fruits have the same flower appearance. Some only have 2-3 "petals" around the base of the fruit but some have 5-6.

My four gen 2 plants have perhaps 60 more peppers in development (out of 100 flowers) and this year the gen 1 plant only have 2 out of 30 peppers that have the flower appearance.

I have only found one pic on the internets of the same base variety that have a hint of a "petal" but none that look like mine.

I know that new chili varieties aren't considered to be stable until gen 6-7 so I have more planting to do :) but which steps do I need to take to solidify the variety except replanting seeds and growing new generations?

I've done a large amount of research and got a consultation a few months ago, my doctor said I could get PRK as SMILE and LASIK weren't good options for my cornea. As I understand it the results should be very similar, just a longer/more painful recovery time. I've got family who is going to come into town for a week to help me with anything, but I wanted to know if any of you have gone through PRK and had advice or an experience to share.

Long story short my roommate has a surround system she got at Goodwill and I set it up for her but the internal amps are not functioning properly. It's only using the front two satellite speakers and sub which is independently powered. So it's 2.1 for now.

The front two speakers barely put out much sound even cranked to max volume. The sub is fine as again it's independently powered.

I've ruled out all settings, as there is a 2.1 output mode, and the radio is just as low so it's not an input issue. I have it hooked to her PC's output. I also have proper gauge speaker wire so that's not the problem either. I did hook up the center speaker to one of the front outputs too. Same deal.

So can an inline amp help at this point? Is there anything else I can try or rule out?

Also if this is not appropriate to post here in Tech I apologize in advance.

I'm wondering how to read this book. I'm about 2 chapters in, and I've read all of these footnotes/references to other material at the bottom of the page. So far, they basically mean nothing to me, and I think it was implied during the introduction that some of the footnotes are real and some of them are fake? Do they reference other parts of the book? Am I supposed to be flipping somewhere else in the book every time a footnote refences something? Or should I be going outside of the book to hunt down the references to read those? Is it worth it to try that if some are fake and some are real? Is there a wrong way to read this book? Can those footnotes/references be ignored sometimes or most of the time? Am I overthinking this and I should just keep reading normally without thinking about the footnotes?

So I have an old MacBook Pro (mid-2014) Core i5 which I've just installed Ubuntu 22.04.2 on. Most things are working fine but the screen randomly flickers and then goes black and then after varying lengths of time will pop back on again. I've been googling around and found lots of instances of similar graphics glitches but can't quite find a solution.

Any suggestions?

I see some nice watches that I like, but 80-90% of them are the silver/stainless steel color. I'm not sure why that color is so prevalent (probably the same reason 40% of new cars are white), maybe a lot of people love it but its not for me.

Let's say I found a watch I really liked, but wanted the case/bezel/lugs (and of course the strap) to be black stainless steel. Is this something a jeweler or watch repair shop would be able to do?

I just changed rooms, and my new neighbor makes noise. It's not much of a problem for other people, but I wake up at the slightest sound or the slightest change in lighting. Because of this, I am not able to sleep properly. I have tried earbuds and earplugs, but they hurt my ears. Can you suggest how I can become a heavy sleeper? Or how to sleep in this environment?

I have followed numerous discussions on here lately regarding extracting oneself from being Google-reliant, and they've all deeply resonated with me. For years now I've been slowly migrating numerous Google-bound things over to my own self-hosted alternatives. I've moved my storage, contacts, documents, and some (but sadly not all) of my calendars to home solutions, fairly easily too.

But the biggest hurdle I've been facing this whole time, the one I've been putting off the longest, is the act of figuring out how to get almost twenty years of mail archive and history on my primary account away from Google and into a space where I can access it separately. I have been steadily changing the main email on my more active external accounts to a self-hosted one, and now only seeing a shrinking handful of lesser-used services still attached to the old gmail. But that history is too precious to me, and I still find multiple occasions where I need/want to reference some communications from long ago.

I've tried searching the web for options, but so far all combinations of my queries are either really elementary "here's how to set up a new email" crap, or else aimed at moving from one Gmail account to another Gmail account. I've been thinking that the simplest approach might be just to set it up as a POP3 account in my mail client (eM Client, for the record), download it all, and then when I finally pull the plug just drag it into the local client archive, and then remove the account from the app. But I figure there have to be others who have done this, right?

This week marks my 8th year of working in IT, and I have been feeling more and more that I am ready to move onto something different. Both my undergraduate and masters degrees were in the arts (Japanese, and Linguistics respectively), and I just sort of fell into IT as a job because I was always good with computers and it seemed like it had a pretty great pay-to-effort ratio. Now that I am approaching the decade mark, I feel like it's not what I want to do any more. Even my current job (which I once described as my dream role) has lost its sheen, and the prospect of spending the rest of my working life having to study and learn new technologies, and keep up with the latest developments just fills me with dread. I don't want to be in my fifties and reading endless documentation to try and understand why MacJibbleGPT is now the preferred way to skilter a virtualised quallock. In short, I would like to relegate my computing to the level of "hobby."

The problem is, I really don't know what I would like to do instead. The last time I had an idea of a career that I wanted to follow was as a teenager when I wanted to be a doctor, but I didn't get the grades. Since then I've just sort of fallen from thing to thing, and been a bit directionless, just assuming that IT would be enough to carry me through my working life, and focus on my hobbies for fulfilment. Well my hobbies are now very fulfilling, but they just make the slog of the work day even harder.

So how do I go about figuring out what it is that I want to do? I have done a few quizzes online (via reputable organisations), I've contemplated the jobs of my friends and family, and I still just feel like nothing is inspiring me. There are a few problems that I need to try and work around with finding something new as well:

• At least for the next 6 years or so, I am geographically fairly restricted to being within a reasonable driving distance to my daughter's home
• Shit is expensive, so I need to minimise the hit to my salary
• I do not have the money to get a degree or similar vocational qualification
• I would like stable hours, and not to work weekends or evenings (this is more job-specific than it is career-specific)
• Hybrid working is preferable to full-time in the office or full-time WFH (ditto)

So I ask my fellow Tilderen, have you ever pivoted into a completely different career after several years of investing your time into another? How did it go? How did you go about figuring out what you wanted to do instead? What advice would you have for me, a nearly-31-year-old who still has most of her working life ahead of her?

I figured I would help kick off this new subgroup by starting a discussion on how people with ADHD try to manage it.

I had a late diagnosis a couple years ago as an adult, and I have been working with a counselor to develop some behavioral techniques (in addition to medication). Not all of them stick, which in my experiences is the primary challenge of this disorder, but I've had good results when I do use them.

Primarily, I have a calendar where I put reminders and plan things out. If I have parts of a project I need to get done, I lay those out and assign them to certain days of the week. Working in academia, I live my life a semester at a time and this helps me reevaluate certain goals and it feels reasonable to me to plan out a few months at a time.

One thing I struggle with when it comes to planning is coming up with accurate estimates of how much time it might take to spend something. This was always a big obstacle in my way when it came to planning things out before - I wanted to know the exact time on how long it took to do something so that my schedule would be perfect. My counselor suggested that I come up with an initial estimate of how long something should take based off my intuition, and then double it (e.g. if I think a task should take 30 minutes, plot it out for 60 minutes of my day). This has been great for me because usually it's a win-win. Often, my initial assessment is underestimating how long something takes, so by accounting for slippage in time I can better chunk out my day. On the other hand, if I do get it done sooner I can pat myself on the back and I now have extra time in the day to get other things done.

I wanna find better ways of trying to stay on track with habits. I've tried some different apps and none are working too well. Recently I picked up Sunsama which has helped in terms of reviewing the day and looking at subtasks, but as I've gotten busy with experiments I've kind of lost track of that. What are some things that you do to accommodate the way your brains works?

I recently got this plate at a yard sale and was curious if anyone has any info on it
I did some reverse google image search and couldn’t find much on it.
I’m not sure if this is number 28 made out of so many or number 28 in a set.
If this is a set I’d like to track down the rest and collect them because look how cool it is!!
I also apologize if this isn’t the right place to post as I’m fairly new to tildes.

https://imgur.com/a/6eUt9We

So, if I have stocks that were purchased during the class window of a class action lawsuit, is it okay for me to sell them?

It's not a large amount of money at stake here, but it'd also be nice to be able to recoup some of the losses I had due to the misleading information that caused me to buy the stock and ive filled out the forms but they didnt say anything about future actions just asked when i bought or sold any at the time of the suit. I am not sure if it's okay to sell them or if I should hold them.

Any one have recommendations? This is US stock exchange, and if I did sell they'd be at a loss and I have sold other stocks at profit so I would be looking at capturing the losses on my taxes.

Now, rationally, I suspect the answer is "Of course!". But I'm looking for general advice, if my fellow Tildesians would be so kind.

This question has arisen while investigating opening a Monzo account. Apparently, you can lock away some money for 12 months and get 5.3% AER interest on it - meaning for every, say, £1,000 I put in, I get £50 back, right?

My question: is that really worth it, in the grand scheme of things? Even if I put in £10,000, I'd be locking myself out of that much money for a grand total of £500. I understand that's a lot to some people (even me), but it hardly seems worth it.

Perhaps there's something I'm missing. Perhaps some bad maths on my part or some other type of interest that I don't know about. All advice is welcome and appreciated!