Sorry Tabletiddles, couple of days late with the thread as I've been busy on the bank holiday weekend here in UK.

What boardgames have you all been playing this week? Please share your experiences,.no matter what you've been playing.

I suspect many don’t write anything down and do this largely by intuition/experience but I want to tease out some ideas.

when it comes to describing and designing a system from a blank piece of paper, what are the parameters you think of?

I’m thinking napkin sketch level of software design.

So things like:
Number of users, are they concurrent users, what load dimensions there are (disk IO, network IO etc.), target platform (everything is a web app these days), how do you design/visualise the data model?

Any decisions or constraints that impact what and how you build a proof of concept / MVP? How do you document this? How do you test it against the finished software?

I've recently been watching the old episodes of Patriot act, and it occured to me that since we cut the cord with regular cable I have no clue if there is a contemporary analog for that show. Basically, a left leaning, comedic news and current events show that tends toward actually doing it's homework on the topics covered would be awesome.

Happy Friday everyone! I'm making a post to see if anyone wants to beta test my Tildes.net iOS app Backtick.

Background

I've been wanting to create a Reddit app for quite a while, and just when I got started, the API change chaos happened. Thankfully, I remembered signing up for Tildes.net a few years ago and decided to pivot to make an app for this site instead! The app is still a work in progress, but I believe releasing early and getting as many eyes on it during development results in a better end product (and it's more fun for me 😊).

Features

Here are the current features of Backtick:

• Light mode/dark mode
• Login to Tildes.net (suports 2FA)
• Front page feed with sorting support
• View, vote, and comment on posts
• Reply and vote on comments
• Collapse comments
• View notifications
• Full markdown rendering
• Text-to-speech for posts and comments

Here is a video demo of the app in its current state (updated for v1.8.1): https://youtube.com/shorts/iukQJyJbtw8?feature=share

I know there missing features, but as I mentioned before, I would love to get as many people in as early as possible to help shape Backtick's future.

Testing

If you're interested in testing the app as I continue to work on it during my free time you will need:

• An iOS 16 device
• TestFlight (Apple's testing app)

You can access the beta here: https://testflight.apple.com/join/gNH18NE9. If you have any issues please DM me your Apple ID email and I will send you an invite manually.

Thanks, everyone! Have a great weekend.
- Ash

Edit:
Getting some great feedback! I'll be tracking bugs and potential features here if anyone is curious: https://chatter-brick-3d3.notion.site/Backtick-Tracker-888150b641ae4c0ab39dc0345783bc50?pvs=4

Edit2:
I created the Discord server to help facilitate better collaboration with those who wish to be more involved. It will be a place for discussion around potential features, bugs, and general chat. I will still be taking in feedback via TestFlight and Tildes.net, so it's perfectly fine if you don't want to join.
Join here: https://discord.gg/aah7nkfpBY

Edit: I've just purchased an Unraid license. I'll give it a go and it may not turn out well, but for the time being, the question is settled. I appreciate everyone for providing insightful and informative answers!

Hey everyone,

I've recently bought myself a NUC (NUC11TNHi3) that I intend to run as a home server, using many of my external USB drives as the storage.

My use case is very narrow. I'll use it as a Plex server and seed/leech torrents with it.

I've never built a home server like this before (I did dabble with it on a RPi, but that was just for PiHole), so I've never had to research what operating systems are available to me. After some research, I narrowed it down to two options.

1. Windows
   This option is the most straightforward given that it's the system I'm familiar with the most. My use case is also very narrow, so I could set everything up in a couple of hours. All I'd have to do is install Plex server, a torrent client, exposing them to the outside world with port forwarding or Tailscale (never used it before but seems easy enough), and share my external USB drives locally so that I can access them using my regular desktop computer at home. The downside of this is that Windows can be finicky. I'd also prefer to have my drives pooled under a single drive. A cursory research suggests that Windows can do this as well, but not in a way that inspires confidence.

2. Unraid
   I hadn't heard about this since last week, but it seems like a nice option. It costs money, it's proprietary, and I'd likely have to reformat all my NTFS drives to be able to use it but I was wondering if this would be the best long term solution. The learning curve will be there. Arrays, cache drives, share drives etc. are terms I'm not familiar with (though I can guess what purpose they serve) so it will be more time consuming to set things up properly. But given how narrow my use case is, as elegant a solution as it seems, is it necessary? I'm only considering this because seems like this is the best purpose built OS in the market right now.

Some clarifications:

• I'm sure someone will suggest a Linux distro. I have used Fedora as my main OS for a couple of years and I was quite happy with it, however I could never wrap my head around the Linux permissions structure, which Plex is awful with, as it creates its own user and look for drives under that user. I must have spent hours and hours to make Plex read my external drives properly before, but I've never managed to make it do so without some sort of hacky way and I don't want to do that with my home server. I don't want to have any doubts that things can go wrong. I want something that just works. (If only Synology had a capable device that could handle multiple simultaneous 4K transcodings. I'd have just throw my money at them instead of buying a NUC.)

• My use case will remain narrow. Maybe way down the road I can automate stuff with Sonarr or Radarr or stuff like that, but I don't think I'll ever consume enough recently released stuff to justify it. One thing is for certain, I'm never going to host my password server, feed reader, or something like that on this device.

That's about it. What should I do?

Given that I'm a novice is this area, I'd be all ears to listen any other related or unrelated advice for someone who's just starting to build their first home server.

Thank you in advance.

Hey all, hope everyone is well today and staying cool!

Lately I've been very interested in incremental mobile games, and also idle games. I'm not 100% on the terminology, but for whatever reason I've found myself enjoying games that simply make me wait. It's odd, I know, but I think it's related to a recent personal decision to distance myself from online apps; an oxymoron, I'm aware.

Anyway! Recommend your favorite incremental/idle apps please. I'm currently enjoying:

• Kittens Game

• Tiny Tower

• Pocket Trains

And.. that's it! If you have any recommendations yourself, let me know. Thanks in advance, and have a wonderful day.

PS: bonus points for outer space! I swear there's a space trading game that was mostly text-based, but the title escapes me.

PPS: Android!

I'm very interested in the inner-workings of a writer's room. I have seen glimpses in "making of" documentaries, but I don't feel that they show much of the actual process.

I'd love to see more about how the sausage is made. Bonus points if it's a beloved, popular tv show or movie. I feel like I would be most interested in seeing the best of the best at work.

I use Slack, WhatsApp, Discord and Facebook's Messenger. On my computers, rather than installing dedicated apps, I've always just used these services' browser versions. It allows me to block ads with my browser's ad blocker and modify the UIs with other extensions that I use.

But in terms of privacy — and more specifically, in terms of what the service has access to outside of their own walled gardens — is there a difference between using these services through a browser or their dedicated apps? I use both Windows and Mac computers, if that makes a difference. My browser of choice is Firefox and I run the services in their own containers.

On my phone, I just use the provided apps and get notifications that way. I am well aware that most of these protocols are not great for privacy to begin with, but I'm not currently looking for other messaging systems.

Hello ~hobbies, I've come to you in hopes of getting some guidance as a newbie.

I have never owned a camera before and am afraid of choosing the wrong one for my use case, so I was hoping some people could enlighten me, if not with model suggestions, then with what I should be looking for.

My main goal is to shoot video, not take photos (though of course I want it to take good photos but the primary use will be shooting videos wherever I go). And specifically 4k 60fps video. I have a 65 inch TV where I want to play these videos so that resolution is a must, as any picture quality flaws will be noticed.

I have a gimbal, a hohem iSteady MT2, which I use with my phone and would like to use with the camera, so whatever camera I get can't go above its 1.2kg payload limit. I really don't want to pay for a separate gimbal for the camera.

I plan on using a separate mic, probably the sennheiser mke 200 based on reviews I saw, so the camera must also be able to support external mics.

And lastly, the budget is roughly 1000€.

There are so many brands and models I really don't know where exactly to turn to. I've mostly been leaning towards cameras like the Sony ZV-E10L and similar as they seem geared towards vloggers and that's more or less the type of video I'll be making (not content creation though, these are just personal videos), but I'm wondering if I'm falling into a trap as the price is so much lower than say an A7 III.

Any advice, pointers, or recommendations would be greatly appreciated as I really don't know much about the world of cameras. I'm frankly not even sure what type of camera (DSLR, point and shoot, etc.) I should even be looking at so yeah.

My new Synology DS923+ should be delivered next week, together with 3x6TB drives for a RAID5 setup, 32GB of RAM, 2x1TB NVMe drives and an APC UPS. It's almost certainly overkill as I'll be using the NAS mainly for automated backups (of computers, web servers and cloud services) and as general file storage, although I will also be looking into file syncing, running background scripts, using the NAS as a light development server, and maybe also for surveillance cameras.

Any tips for a beginner? I can find my way around most modern desktop and server systems but I have never set up or maintained a NAS. Are there uses for the system that no one talks about but which you have personally found incredibly useful?

Hey all, hope everyone is doing well today. I've been using a Pixel 6A for going on a year now, and I'm not very satisfied with my purchase. It's a decent enough phone, but it seems that the fingerprint reader doesn't work more than half of the time, and Google Assistant is about as reliable. It also just has a lot of weird little things that add up (for instance, plugging in the battery may not indicate that it's charging until you unlock the phone). Not to mention that I'm just not fond of the company these days, and I'd like to gradually ween myself off of their applications and such.

I actually upgraded to this phone from a Moto G6 plus (bought for >$200 via Amazon, compared to this $500 device), and I find myself wishing I hadn't hopped in the hot tub with it in my pocket that day.

With that said, what sort of alternatives do you fine people suggest? I'm not too concerned with specs (as long as it plays Pocket Trains, I'm happy lol), mostly battery life, Android, and sustainable company practices if that's still a thing in tech.

Currently looking at the Fairphone 4, but was wondering what else may be floating around out there. Thanks in advance, and have a great day.

This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

I just finished season 2, and I’m itching to discuss - but no one else in my world is into it! I’m not quite at theory stage, but I have so many questions I want to bandy about. Anyone here ready to start a spoiler-heavy thread?

As a reference, I found this thread from 2019. There are several good recommendations, but I'd like to see if there's something new since then.

When I'm homeworking, my wife and I like to play short board games during lunch time. We're very casual players, and have Hive with all extensions, Onitama, and Jaipur. We both like Jaipur because it's more light-hearted and easygoing (and maybe non abstract), but it takes some time and space to setup. Hive and Onitama are much quicker to setup and play, but require more focus than I have during lunch :)

We'll probably buy Hanabi or Patchwork next, to get something cooperative. I'd also like to try another easy deck building game, but I have no idea what to get.

So, what do you like to play during lunch?

I'm looking to buy a new ebook reader to replace my old Paperwhite. I would like to be able to read comics on it as well as normal books. I know there are finally some color screen ebook readers on the market but from what I have read, they're not great for comics yet. Most of the comics I read/want to read are black and white anyway, so I figure my best bet is a b/w reader with a decent sized screen. Does anybody here have experience reading comics on ebook readers with or without color? Can anybody recommend a reader for this purpose?

Edit: Or is a tablet still the best choice for comics?

I need and want to buy a portable AMP and DAC. I have no experiance in this, a beginner. I want to choose between Fiio Btr5 and Fiio KA3. I also don't want to deal with battery issue in long term but bluetooth portability feels more convenient.

Can't decide what should i buy. Any advice

As an amateur photographer, I'm looking for recommendations to improve my process for reviewing and selecting the best photos from my albums.

Currently, it goes something like this:

• (after I copy the photos to my PC) I open the folder containing the album
• I open the first photo and start looking at the pictures using the default photo viewing app
• I note mentally, on paper, or in a digital notepad the names of the files that I like the most
• manually select the files that I noted down

My ideal workflow would be something like:

• open the folder, open first photo, look through them all
• each time I see a picture that I like, hit space or some other simple shortcut, which adds the picture to the current selection
• after I am done viewing, I have all the files that I want already selected to do with as I please

I have tried multiple apps over the years but I haven't come across anything that had something similar, or I was too stupid to figure out how to do it. The workflow I described is using windows/linux, on macOS it's even more cumbersome (since one needs to select all photos in a folder before previewing them).

Do you have any recommendations for an app that has functionality like this, or if not, on how I can make my workflow better?

Thanks

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

My 10 year old son asked me the other day what feminism was. He had never heard of the word and when I tried to define it on the fly he looked a little puzzled. It surprised me that he hadn't been introduced to the concept since he goes to a pretty liberal public school. I think the school has focused more on racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic diversity. Also, i have to admit that I feel a little guilty that he's practically a tween and he doesn't have a clue what feminism is (im feeling like this is a big mom fail).

Usually when I want to introduce a topic that I think is important with my kids, I find an appropriate book as a jumping off point. But I'm really stuck on this one. Everything is either way too young (picture books) or written with girls as the target audience. And the books don't seem to define feminism exactly, just give vague descriptions, slogans, and historical examples. I'm looking for something along the lines of Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You, which is a book his entire 4th Grade class read and discussed last year. ETA: He reads at a high level - for example, he breezed through The Hobbit. So a book at a High School level might also work.

Thank you in advance for your help!

So we are planning 11 days in Italy in the winter, flying in and out of Milan.

Time spent in the north we will use public transportation and visit regional cities including Bologna, Genova, Ravenna, Verona, Venice and Florence.

We will drive south and see Naples, Pompeii and Herculaneum.

Any general travel advice, restaurant suggestions, cities we missed that can be reached via transit, sights to see, customs or whatever you think is useful would be most appreciated. Also I need to find a moderate priced hotel or hostel with private rooms for Milan. Thank you very much!

I just finished playing through the Fata Deum demo and you can really feel the B&W roots, even if it's minus your pet.

While there's lots to be excited about off the back of Fata Deum, it does kill me that this IP was left for dead considering how innovative the gameplay was at the time and how much potential it had.

Does anyone have fond memories of other hits from now defunct studios?

Doesn't necessarily have to be war, could be a fist fight, music for killing demons, etc. Anything that makes you feel like a badass.

It's cheesy as hell but Hells Bells by AC/DC has gotta be top of my list.

I'm looking for input from the Tildes community about experiences with Android parental controls apps. My daughter is 8, but she rides the bus, so we want to make sure she has ways to contact us if something happens.

Other than that use case, I intend to limit her to offline content (audiobooks and music loaded directly on the phone) and some games.

The platform for this is an older phone (Android 9). I'm not averse to buying a newer phone if that makes the solutions workable, but I wanted to start with the "free" option.

I've installed Google Family Link on the phone. It does a nice job of restricting access to apps, setting time limits on individual apps, and filtering some content. The major limitation seems to be there's no way to restrict what numbers the phone can text or call with.

Bark seems to be the most visible alternative, and adds a lot of features for content monitoring social media, which is not really our use case. The main thing I'm looking for is an app that would let me administer the calling and texting features of the phone. I'm not opposed to paying for a service if that's what's needed.

Anybody have insights into tools? There's a ton of noise in the search results. Other solutions to the problem?

Premise - TL;DW -

A young chef from the fine dining world comes home to Chicago to run his family sandwich shop after a heartbreaking death in his family. A world away from what he's used to, Carmy must balance the soul-crushing realities of small business ownership, his strong-willed and recalcitrant kitchen staff and his strained familial relationships.

With season 2 being released this past weekend I wanted to see if anyone on Tildes was watching it. Right now, I think it might be my favorite show. There is no hamfisted comedy. The dialog seems shockingly/surprisingly human. It has stakes, but its not overwhelming or action-packed cheese.

The whole context of the show is surprisingly fresh, a lot of the characters have flaws but good even realistic redemption or growth. I think one of the most surprising things (for me at-least) is the lack of a love interest, I can't recall the last time a show didn't have one. I could go on and gush about this show some more, but I wanted to see if anyone here watched it.

If not, give it a chance. I think you might like it.

Have you watched any movies recently you want to discuss? Any films you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

I'm going to start with three questions but feel free to propose your own:

1. What if anything have you tried around finding and using more ethical sources of meat?

2. What cooking methods and recipes do you use that reduce the amount of meat you eat in a meal?

3. What vegetarian protein sources do you find palatable and tasty?

Watched Netflix Edge Runners and really enjoyed it. Similar series/movies out there? Never really been into anime and it just never grabbed my attention. But the stylistic approach and soundtrack for Edge Runners sucked me in somehow. TIA

Have you watched any TV shows recently you want to discuss? Any shows you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

Hey! I’ve been trying lately to get rid of big platforms from my life. One part of it is that I usually buy ebooks/audiobooks from apple, Amazon or google, however I’m then also forced to use their reading app, which is a vendor lock-in I’m not comfortable with.

I know there are plenty of ebook readers out there, but I’m trying to find

1. A store where I can buy ebooks that can be opened in a ebook reader of my choice.
2. A way to then sync my progress between phone and laptop. I have nextcloud setup, so if I can make use of that then it’s perfect.

Anyone here got any tips?

What have you been watching and reading this month? You don't need to give us a whole essay if you don't want to, but please write something! Feel free to talk about something you saw that was cool, something that was bad, ask for recommendations, or anything else you can think of.

If you want to, feel free to find the thing you're talking about and link to its pages on Anilist, MAL, or any other database you use!

This is quite possibly one of the greatest struggles to writers: choosing a title. You'd think that writing a chapter or story would be the hard part, and to an extent it is, but somehow I almost always draw a blank at the title. Sometimes, I get lucky and a title just comes to me instantly. Usually though, I'm left staring at the top of the page after finishing trying to figure out what to call it. This doesn't just include the overall story, but even the title of individual chapters. Last year when submitting a short story for a contest, I had no clue what the heck to title it and ended up going with something like "Hawksbills and Ospreys" because the deadline was right there.

I know this is a common problem for writers. As someone who's active in the fan fiction sphere, the most common trick I see (and that I've used myself) is to pull a title from song lyrics or poems.

What about you? What are your tricks for trying to get inspiration for titles, and what sorts of "guidelines" do you follow to try to make them stand out?

Hi everyone,

So I'm thinking (haven't actually decided yet) about getting into CNC machining in a very hobbyist, fun-to-learn sort of way sometime in the next year. I'm trying to use this as an opportunity for some discussion around the current state of entry-level hobbyist CNC's. I have wanted to have a small CNC and the ability to use it for small parts for more than 5 years now. I think learning CAM would be very challenging but useful also. I wanted to ask if anyone is aware of any desktop CNC's that are priced reasonably (ideally in the $3,000 or less range) that are somewhat similar to Prusa. In being similar to Prusa, I mean built with good quality parts but also with a sizable community for support and the ability to repair it yourself for long-term use. I would only really be machining wood & aluminum, although if small and very simple steel parts could be occasionally machined at a slow feed rate that would be freakin' awesome.

So with all of that said, what is my background and experience?

• Not an engineer, biology/healthcare background. But am generally good with computers and technology. No programming experience at all.
• Have been 3D printing for about 5 years
• Comfortable with modeling in Fusion 360
• Do not have a workshop of tools. No table saw, no drill press, no lathe, etc. Just 3D printers and some handheld power tools. I have no desire to have a workshop with large tools like that, either.
• Generally only make small functional parts. The ability to CNC small aluminum parts to add significant strength to larger 3D printed parts would be useful. Also, would be useful to copy small aluminum/steel parts of things that break around the house like, for example, a small metal part in my washer that broke off recently.
• I also do not have a laser cutter, and am open to input that that might be the better thing to get before a small CNC.

Thanks for any feedback!

What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something! If you've just picked up some music, please update on that as well, we'd love to see your hauls :)

Feel free to give recs or discuss anything about each others' listening habits.

You can make a chart if you use last.fm:

http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/

Remember that linking directly to your image will update with your future listening, make sure to reupload to somewhere like imgur if you'd like it to remain what you have at the time of posting.

Just wondering how other technically inclined individuals go about this.

For my daily driver machines I usually buy Macs and build towers, which are simple enough — on the Mac, figure out needs and slightly overbuy, and on towers put some research into parts to find those with the best reviews and bang for buck. Pretty straightforward.

I also keep around a generic x86 laptop though, and I might be replacing the one I have currently in the coming months. Shopping for its replacement unfortunately is not so clean and simple. There is to my knowledge no laptop-shopper analogue of PCPartPicker for laptops for instance and retailer search tools are terrible (especially Amazon's), which makes filtering out the noise practically impossible. It gets even harder if you're looking for certain features and especially less tangible things like build quality, QC, and battery life. Review sites often aren't of much help, with skin-deep reviews that frequently miss major points and pay little mind to things that may become issues in long-term usage.

And yet clearly, plenty of people are buying laptops, which brings me back to the topic question. How does everybody go about their laptop shopping?

An odd suggestion from a friend.

A dubious lifehack you read online.

A “well I can’t make the problem any worse, so I might as well try something” moment.

Whatever it was, you didn’t expect it to work, but, against all odds, it actually did.

• What was the problem?
• Why were you doubtful about it in the first place?
• How well did the novel “solution” work in the end?

I recently got some superb advice here on making a fun brewery adventure, and I had a few more questions for the more experienced DMs out there. To reiterate, I am DMing a group of lvl 3 characters for only 1-2 sessions so I can learn the ropes, and I would like to include some fun traps they need to look out for. I'd love to also make sure that everyone gets a chance to contribute, and not just have the rogue (our most experienced player) do all the detection and disarming.

What sort of things would be fun to set up so that players would all need to watch their step, but could also contribute a bit?

Party has a bard, ranger, druid, and rogue.

Anybody else play? Nebulous scratches a very particular itch that I didn't know I had. It's sort of like The Expanse meets The Hunt For Red October. The learning curve is fairly long - it doesn't take much to get the basics, but mastering EWAR, missiles, etc takes some work.

I’m going purely on YouTube vids for the technique. They all seem to agree to soak in water and then cook the rice cakes in stock, then add gochujang, gochugaru, soy sauce, sugar, cook until thick, top with spring onion and optionally add cheese. (I’m skipping the fish cakes).

Some recipes start by frying some garlic, some fry off the gochugaru etc for a minute, some add the white part of the spring onion much earlier… I’m not sure whether any of these steps are necessary/make a big difference.

Anyone who is familiar with the dish - is there anything extra you do to elevate this dish? Anything I should know about the cooking process?