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.

What have you been watching and reading this week? 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!

It's October, spooky month! So I figured I'd ask if anyone has any creepy, spooky, scary or unexplained experiences they'd like to share. I may have been waiting all September to post this These stories are always fun to read on AskReddit, so I figure it's only right to ask here on the spookiest month of all.

I am a pretty big fan of the PCMR Battle station posts where everyone shares their computers and desk setups. I have never seen one here so I figured I would start one!

Here is my desk, three 32" monitors (two facing the desk, one facing my living room on the back ). I primarily use my lower monitor and have background stuff on the upper (spotify, torrent client, youtube, podcasts, winamp, twitch, discord, etc etc). I have a bunch of old Xbox360 controllers and enjoy playing PC games on the couch on my rear monitor (as well as streaming obviously). The rear monitor also has a firestick and my only source of sound (other than my headset) is an Amazon Echo (which also controls my living room lights). The PC is a prebuilt from iBUYPOWER, it was my first time buying a prebuilt (I was hesitant to do so) and the only reason I did was because I was wanting to build a new rig right as crypto mining was driving up the cost of everything and I was able to get a great deal on this one. So far it has performed great. I still have two RAM slots open so I think that is the next thing I am gonna do.

I built my last computer in 2008 so I was way overdue for a new one and my S.O. has informed me I went a little overboard =)

9200 i7-8700K 6-Core 3.7 GHz | Liquid Cooled | Z370 Motherboard| GeForce GTX 1070 | 16GB DDR4| 1TB HDD | 240GB SSD |

Lets see what you guys have!

EDIT: sorry for the low picture quality, my cell phone is garbage.

EDIT2: forgot to include a screenshot

It's the same background on all three, but the taskbar is basic on the two secondary (and icons are only on the main). And if anyone was confused about the random monitor hanging off of the back of my desk this kinda shows it better.

What do you guys do to really listen to music in a mindful manner?

I don't do streaming, but I have a really big collection of albums in digital format, but the way I listen to music is to just shuffle everything and listen while doing other things.

I was contemplating entering the vinyl hobby, but living in Brazil this gets extremely expensive just to start. This would allow me to bring back the "ritualistic" aspect of listening to music and have good equipment to focus on what's being played.

I guess I could just force myself to not pirate music and buy an album a month on bandcamp. That would at least assure that I have good quality flac files instead of trusting random people on soulseek, but in the end it would probably end up in the shuffle pile.

Do you guys do something to try to be mindful of the music you are listening?

What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started a new diet or have a new recipe you want to share? Anything else health and wellness related?

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.

What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started a new diet or have a new recipe you want to share? Anything else health and wellness related?

Tildetablers,

What board games, card games and whatnot have you been playing this week? Don't be shy, share those sessions!

For me it was a single game of Western Legends with expansions. I've played this game, sans expansions, a couple of times and have never really been blown way, but the expansion certainly helped and I enjoyed it a whole lot more.

The game sets you as a character in the wild west. It's a bit of a sandbox game: there are a bunch of things you can do and you have freedom moving around and doing them. You can hustle cattle, play poker, buy upgrades, prospect for gold, fight, steal, &c. You basically earn points by doing each of these things and working your way up various tracks to earn legendary points which are victory points.

The expansions added a whole frontier area to explore and added story cards, which are basically thematic events that give you goals to claim. I feel like extra board and story cards really improved the experience and immersion and it was much more enjoyable this time around. We also played two characters each, which may also have helped, as this made it possible to explore different strategies at the same time.

I'm still not massively impressed with the game, but I don't think I'll disappointed if it's suggested now. If I were forced to rate it I'd probably give it a 1.8/π.

So, everyone, what have you played this week? What did you think? What are you hoping to play next?

Kvass is a traditional Slavic beverage that is made by fermenting rye/wheat bread/flour/malt. The result is low alcohol (usually <0.5%), carbonated, and balances sweet, bready flavor with a refreshing tartness reminiscent of kombucha. It's a great substitute for beer, in my opinion, for people who can't tolerate significant amounts of alcohol.

This is not a common beverage outside of Eastern Europe. I've had freshly made kvass a couple times at Russian restaurants in the US, but it seems like the only other way to buy it is to find an store (brick-and-mortar or online) that imports canned or bottled kvass from the Slavic homeland - it doesn't seem like there are any US-based kvass brewers. On a lark, I bought some Russian kvass online - a brand called 'Букет Чувашии' (Buket Chuvashii - 'Bouquet of Chuvashia') - and it was actually pretty good compared to what I've had in the past. I'm interested in trying other brands as well, but looking through reviews, it seems like a lot of brands are more akin to weakly-flavored bread soda than a real fermented drink. I wanted to see if other people who drink kvass have any recommendations for what brands to try.

Another option is to home-brew kvass. Theoretically, this should be similar to brewing kombucha, or any other lightly fermented food or drink. It looks like there are even a few places where you can buy kvass 'starter kits'. A lot of instructions for homebrewing kvass suggest using brewer's yeast though, and it seems like it would be harder to limit the alcohol content this way. As far as I can tell, traditional kvass cultures are a mix of yeast and lactic-acid producing bacteria (again, similar to kombucha) - would using a kombucha starter culture work to brew kvass? If anyone here has experience brewing kvass, I'd love to hear about your experiences!

I love fried chicken sandwiches. I have loads of fast food options as well as one off restaurants around me that offer fried chicken sandwiches, some that it is their claim to fame. It doesn’t seem to matter where I go in search of the best fried chicken sandwiches, or how much money I spend, Popeyes is always the best.

Two topics to start discussion:

1. What is your favourite fried chicken place where you live? Bonus points if you live around Vancouver, BC, Canada and can introduce me to a new favourite chicken place.

2. What does Popeyes do to get such consistency across all locations, and why the heck is it so good?

In the spirit of u/gdp's post on escooters, does anyone ride motorcycles or motor scooters (e.g. Vespas)?

Compared to cars, motorcycles can be far cheaper in purchase cost, gas, and insurance. Additionally, lane filtering or riding the shoulder in gridlock can prevent you from being part of the traffic holding everyone up. Going fast is also fun, if that's your thing.

What have you been watching and reading this week? 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!

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 examples have to do with tech/media, but it could be anything - old fashioned or "outdated" ways of cooking, communicating, hobbies, or mending things rather than replacing them, etc.

Owning DVDs

Earlier this year my husband and I had an irresistible urge to watch the masterpiece film that is Shrek. I hoped that one of the most popular animated movies of all time would be available at no charge to me, but of course it was not on Hulu, HBO, Netflix, or included with Prime. So that's great, I'm paying something around $50 a month for all these libraries of media, and somehow find myself paying extra whenever I want to watch something specific. Fair enough though, that's part of the deal I guess.

We decide to rent the movie on Amazon for $5. A couple years ago, I'm pretty sure renting movies like this was more around $2-3 and they've been slowly bumping it up. Okay. Everything gets more expensive. We try to start streaming the movie, and Amazon gives us this pop-up that says they've detected the hardware we're streaming it on (it's apparently a bit outdated,) so it's going to choose a specific version of the movie for us, one that didn't use some new technology related to streaming quality. That's fine in itself, but it just got me thinking about how much control these streaming companies have over all of this. My TV is at least 15 years old, works perfectly fine, and I don't see myself replacing it anytime soon. My imagination went the dramatic route, picturing a future where Amazon and its ilk will only stream to newer computers/TVs, either for a legitimate technological reason, or because they've struck a conniving secret deal with the TV manufacturers. Again, dramatic I know, but my point is just the general idea that these companies make all the decisions with streaming; we own and decide nothing.

Ultimately, I realized I could have easily found a DVD of Shrek for $1-2 at practically any used bookstore, and I would have not only saved money, I would have avoided giving my money to Daddy Bezos, and gained ownership of a fairly permanent copy of the movie. And what could be better than the ability to watch Shrek on repeat for the rest of my life?

So basically my husband and I have started a DVD collection. We have date nights at used bookstores and pick up all kinds of unexpected treasures. Childhood favorites we had forgotten about, classics we haven't seen in years, DVDs with extensive special features, some with really nicely designed packaging. For some reason, browsing the DVD shelves is like the fun version of scrolling aimlessly through endless streaming catalogs and not being able to decide what to watch. It reminds me of one of the greatest joys of growing up as a child in the 90s - getting to go to Blockbuster (or in my neighborhood, "Mr. Movies") and frolicking around with your friends/siblings, physically checking out the cases, and debating over which ones are the best (Mom is on a budget, after all.)

I have been pleasantly surprised by how novel and enjoyable it has been.

Owning Music

My second thing started when I realized I really want to spend more time away from my phone. I've also been jogging recently and have been annoyed/confused about what to do with this massive phone that I want with me for music (I try to buy small phones but they barely exist anymore.) Probably inspired by my recent "discovery" of the joys of DVDs, I decided to spend $25 on a tiny, simple mp3 player that clips onto my clothes. A music player that isn't also a social media machine which is connected to the entire world and every human being I've ever known, at any given moment. Just music.

Then I realized that I haven't owned any music (or paid any artist directly for their music,) in at least a decade. I genuinely didn't even know where to buy music at first. The last time I bought music, I was 17 years old and hadn't yet freed myself from the Apple/itunes ecosystem ("freed" myself from it, right into the Google/Pixel ecosystem, of course.) Someone suggested Bandcamp, as when you buy music on there it comes with the option to download mp3s. I've had fun discovering some new artists on the platform. And although I really like supporting artists directly, to make my collection a bit more frugal I've started picking up a couple cheap CDs when we go shopping for DVDs. I just export the music as mp3s with some free software. I'm not an audiophile, and the quality seems just fine to me. Next, I think I'll visit my parents and get some mp3s from their boomer CD collection.

All of this also prompted my husband to dig out an old hard drive of his, which we found had a massive goldmine of all the music he listened to in college (and he had/has fantastic taste in music!) Some of my favorites, plus all kinds of random bands and genres that I wouldn't necessarily think to seek out on Spotify, but they're in my lovely collection now, so why not listen? :)

(A bonus to exploring the old media was finding some ridiculous photos and memes he had saved from college. Bless him and his radical vulnerability, I couldn't believe he was willing to browse the hard drive with me while having no idea what was on it. Thankfully for him, it was mostly just good music, along with photos of sharks with large human teeth photoshopped onto them. He is so pure.)

The DVD/MP3 thing seems like a no brainer now that I've tried it, and I'm sure it will seem silly to some of you, but it simply didn't occur to me for years. Maybe something about my age - being 31 years old, the transition to streaming media happened just about exactly when I graduated from highschool and became an adult. I had no personal DVD collections to bring to my first apartment, and I certainly wasn't going to buy any - Netflix was all the rage, around $8/month, and practically no one actually paid for their own account. And having only purchased one or two physical CDs in my life, I did have a large mp3 collection from iTunes and Limewire as a teenager, but that died pretty quickly once we moved from iPods to phones for music, which happened around the same time. I think I transferred MP3s to my first one or two phones and lost them after that.

Anyway, in a world increasingly impacted by enshittification, with companies relentlessly pushing towards the breaking point of what we will tolerate when it comes to how we spend our time and money, I'm sure there are other "hidden in plain sight" realizations I'm missing out on.

What game mechanic, boss or puzzle in a game got you to give up?

For me it was a drivers license test in Gran Tourismo 2 on the Playstation. I was so into racing sims that I had a decent steering wheel and pedals set (like $80 in 1999). I even found a better coffee table to more comfortably fit it all. I had so many hours into GT1, various NASCAR entries, MOTO Racer, various Need For Speed games, etc.

GT2 had a system where you had to upgrade your license to unlock more tracks. There was one where you had like 15 or 20 seconds to slolem through a course and then do it in reverse. After hours almost every night for a month straight of getting to within .5 seconds of qualifying for the license to unlock more tracks I just couldn't anymore. I gave up racing/car sims for nearly 15 years until XBox heavily pushed Forza Horizon and I gave it a try.

It certainly didn't help that I had just recently been scarred from being stuck in a similar system in X-Wing vs TIE. There was a training mission where you had to take your X-Wing through a course with barrel rolls before you unlocked something (another ship or more dangerous missions?) that I was stuck on. After like 6 weeks of getting within a second or less to completion I finally found a cheatcode to bypass it. By then the damage to my enjoyment of the game had been done and I never did finish that game.

I'm curious if anyone here is currently using the 6GHz channel with WiFi 6E devices and whether you're seeing a benefit in your experience. Do you feel it was worth purchasing a router/access point with WiFi 6E over WiFi 6? I've been following the rollout of WiFi 6E for a while but I haven't heard much real world feedback.

Context: I have 3 access points at home all at the WiFi 5 standard and I'm considering updating each to WiFi 6/6E. I have few (if any) 6E devices at the minute but would plan to keep the access points for at least 5 years or more.

P.S. this is my first post so apologies if it's in the wrong location or a duplicate. I searched and found no other WiFi 6E discussions ✌️

In the corners of Tildes that I read on, I’ve noticed that a lot of us on here subscribe to online services like - Netflix, Kagi, Spotify, Dropbox, Mailbox.org, Patreon, Twitch, Bandcamp, etc.

I, myself, am kind of stingy about subscriptions but lately I’ve been considering subscribing to some online services.

So I’d like to know which online services (like those with monthly and annual fees) have you subscribed to (which tier if applicable) and which ones do you think is worth it and which ones are not?

To get the ball rolling, the only regularly recurring monthly payments I have right now are with Namecheap for the domain and IONOS for my server (the cheapest tier).

I’ve managed to avoid subscribing for entertainment like Disney+ or YouTube Premium or even music streaming platforms. Though I’m considering Deezer for the hifi option.

I’ve at some point subscribed to Patreon, Bandcamp and Twitch for artists I really liked.

And I’m currently looking into productivity apps that might be worth it to me.

—-

PS: It’s my first time posting and if this post would be better elsewhere, don’t hesitate to move it. Thank you!

There's a good thread going around on Tildes right now about sleep hygiene tips. One of those is making sure you stop using your electronics before bed, to help with circadian rhythms and whatnot.

Determined to make a fool of myself in spite of the above thread, last night I stayed up until 4am in bed reading various junk sites on my phone. As a consequence, I slept in until noon 😭. I don't want to do this anymore! I want a regular sleep schedule... 11-7 or 12-8 would be my dream.

I've tried blocking the problematic sites in the past, and it largely works for me for several months... Until I hit a bad mood patch and get antsy and bored, craving the dopamine hits, wanting to turn my brain off and just scroll mindlessly. (It's very much a self-soothe behavior...)

I think it would be easier to solve this problem if I had an arsenal of things to do that are nice and engaging, but don't involve using a phone or computer. Yet, I'm at a bit of a loss... Seemingly everything involves a computer or screen one way or another these days. I'd love an e-ink device that let's me listen to Spotify or something, but alas, I think I might need to look into low-tech solutions.

What do you do at night that doesn't involve screen time?

This topic is part of a series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss creative projects they have been working on.

Projects can be personal, professional, physical, digital, or even just ideas.

If you have any creative projects that you have been working on or want to eventually work on, this is a place for discussing those.

I’m not a child, but I very often eat peanut butter sandwiches for lunch. They’re quick and easy to make, and I can leave them in my bag until lunch and then just eat them as-is. With banana slices inside, it’s a decent meal. I also prefer not eating meat, so it gets points for that too. But it’s not particularly exciting, not particularly well-balanced, and I frankly feel a little childish eating it.

The problem is that I very often have no refrigeration and no means of re-heating. I used to just have leftovers for lunch, but room temperature leftovers usually aren’t the most appealing.

For those of you who don’t buy lunch out, what do you do? Any recommendations for something that’s still tasty after sitting in a bag the whole morning?

Completely ignoring gameplay, which game do you think has the most amazing graphics? Which game do you look at and it makes you question how far technology has come? Or maybe which game has such effective art direction it completely sucks you in?

For me, it's Horizon Forbidden West. I just went back to the DLC after taking a break from it. I forgot just how good it looks! I swear it looks like every grain of sand is modeled, and the character models are insane.

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.

We recently had a big thread about all of the subscriptions we find valuable.

This is a follow-up to that: how do you keep track of and manage your subscriptions (if you do at all)?

I’d love to have a sort of one-stop subscription management tracker where I can toggle things on and off and it can email me when something is coming due soon, but I’ve yet to find something like that I love.

If anyone has any tips, tricks, or pointers, I’d love to hear them!

I recently turned 36 and found a sense of nostalgia sending me down a rabbit hole, mostly around the "old internet" of my childhood. I know "old" is subjective, but for me, it was the time period of like 1998 to 2005 - my middle and high school years.

AOL had just really brought the internet to the masses. I remember the mad rush of trying to log in to the Nickelodeon chatrooms and messaging my friends on AIM. Up until AIM shutdown a few years ago, I would log on every once in a while to my old account and just look at the usernames - recognizing friends, and trying to place others.

I had a group called "Pokemon" on my account, which sent me searching to find anything on an old Pokemon Battler bot for AIM that was by a developer, "CoolKid". I got to the point where I was beginning to think it was something I made up, before finally turning up "SuperPokemon! by CoolKid" on archive.org. I wonder whatever happened to the developer, as nothing about them remains on the internet, but I wish I could thank them for all the fun times I had with my friends.

Which then led me down to thinking of some of the online friends from my past. In retrospect, I wasn't as careful as I should have been online, but I never had any bad experiences - everyone was super nice and helpful in the little communities I found myself in. I've only been here a few days, but tildes reminds me of that time in my life.

Curious to hear from others: What random hits of nostalgia do you have you had lately? Is there some random, highly specific thing from your past that you miss, like my AIM Pokemon battler?

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.

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.

Server host: tildes.nore.gg
Dynmap: https://tildes.nore.gg

The server operates on a soft whitelist. Anyone can log in and walk around, but you need a Tildes account to gain build access.

Server Changelog

• All registered players now have access to /co inspect. This command will allow you to see block changes from the last 14 days so that you can hopefully resolve land disputes without admin/moderator intervention.
• There is currently an alpha version of a treasure hunt script (source) running on the server. Once every few days you'll see a TREASURE HUNT! message in chat and a 10 minute race for an elytra or netherite loot begins.
• There is a page to see each player's time on the server in the last 30 days.
• I have disabled Phantoms entirely

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!

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!

What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started a new diet or have a new recipe you want to share? Anything else health and wellness related?

I understand with the rise of music streaming people have been introduced to a wider variety of bands than ever before, but what's your favorite band that no one has heard of? I think everyone has that one band that they love that no one in their friend group has ever heard of.

I think I have a few, but I'll throw out Kadavar who have a Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath feel to them.

I'm a little late on this, admittedly. $dayjob is requiring us all to set up a pair of YubiKeys, and I'm using them for the first time and my mind is a little blown.

I was seeing articles about "passkeys" all summer, not really grokking what they were talking about, clinging to my usernames and passwords and 2FA codes coming out of 1Password, etc.

I just set it up on a few accounts today, initially as an additional 2FA source, but when I set them on GitHub, I saw for the first time how exactly they are used instead of the username and password and 2FA combo to log in, and it seems incredible to me!

For long-time YubiKey users: what are some cool things in the ecosystem that you would recommend looking at?

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?