I have about a week of funemployment left before I start my new job, and one of the things I picked up this month was FL Studio to see if I can make a song. Does any have any tips/tricks or any recommended video tutorials? If it helps, I have some background in music theory and I play a couple of instruments and have a preamp setup with line in's and stuff.

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.

https://www.powercomposer.net/

I am not affiliated with this project, I just think it's awesome and deserves more publicity.

Power Composer is a piano-reel-style MIDI editor built in the Godot game engine (though it is a tool, not a game). It's intended to be lighter and more accessible than a DAW, but still quite powerful. The dev has been quietly working on it for a while now and just recently made a free early-access Windows build available!

I've been keeping an eye on it ever since it was featured in the Godot 2024 showreel, as I've wanted something like it for a while. Several years ago, I was playing around with Chrome Music Lab's "Song Maker" so I could use it in my classroom. I ended up having such a great time that I got incredibly sidetracked and spent a while just writing stuff. I know the grid-based sequencer isn't a novel concept, but something about that particular configuration just clicked with me.

Ever since then, I've been searching for something similar but more capable that still clicks in the same way. I tried Bosca Ceoil, LMMS, and a couple DAWs' MIDI editors, but nothing quite did it. Then I saw Power Composer. Now that I can actually try it, it's just as comfortable as I hoped! I'm a classically-trained music teacher and have been writing/arranging with software like Dorico for years, but something about sequencers (and Power Composer in particular) just feels more freeing to me than traditional notation.

It is not open-source nor is it planned to be, which is a bummer because I'd love to contribute, but I get it - being paid for your work is nice. No word on the release price or timeline yet.

The dev seems like a good guy. In addition to the website above, Power Composer has a Youtube channel and a Discord server, and he is actively taking feature requests and bug reports on the latter.

I've been exploring it a bit and I'd be happy to answer any questions people have about it! Really enjoying it so far.

Today's problem description: https://adventofcode.com/2025/day/1

Please post your solutions in your own top-level comment. Here's a template you can copy-paste into your comment to format it nicely, with the code collapsed by default inside an expandable section with syntax highlighting (you can replace python with any of the "short names" listed in this page of supported languages):

<details>
<summary>Part 1</summary>

```python
Your code here.
```

</details>

With Advent of Code upon us, I wanted to check out how everyone is planning on participating. If you hadn't heard, this year has been shortened to 12 days along with the removal of the global leaderboard.

• Any changes to how you'll approach this year based on the updated format?
• Are you using an interesting language/approach?
• Any goals you're setting for yourself?

I'm a sucker for puzzles in general, but I also love hearing about everyone else's experiences, so I'm excited to hear what y'all are looking forward to!

Scenario: I am frequently playing video games with my partner, and we have our PCs side-by-side. I am looking for a comfortable set of headphones or earbuds that will also make it easy to hear each other so we can talk while gaming.

Main priorities:

• Openness / Ability to hear physical surroundings
• Comfort for long wear duration (I wear glasses, which rules out most over-the-ear)
• Budget

Nice to haves:

• Audio quality decent enough for gaming (doesn't have to be 3D positional or anything)
• Audio quality acceptable for listening to music while playing some games (but nowhere near audiophile level, not expecting much bass from something light)
• Wireless (but not against a wired option - can be USB or 3.5mm since this will be used exclusively with my PC)

I've really only ruled out one thing: I'm not interested in bone induction headphones. I tried out a pair of JLab JBuds Frames that sit on your glasses, and while they aren't bone induction, the pressure against that area of my head, combined with nothing in my ears, would give me a headache after an hour or two. I suspect I'd have a similar issue with bone induction.

In a world that seems to prioritize noise cancelling, my search for other options has been inconclusive. There's a lot of negative reviews about comfort in options like the Cleer ARC series and Baseus clip-on styles. I found some of the suggestions in a previous thread on bone induction headphones to be interesting, but nothing seems to meet all of my criteria perfectly.

Hoping this fits, because... well, it is about eating.

I swear my mouth is more sensitive to physically hot temperatures than other people's. I burn the roof of my mouth with pizza multiple times a year while others with me can eat it just fine, and I have burnt my tongue on metal spoons just as often. Just last week my mom asked if I was going to eat my soup because I'd been sitting at the table for 5-10 minutes, and I was waiting for it to cool down because the spoon had already burnt my tongue. I even use a disposable plastic spoon for eating ramen, but obviously that's not good for the long-term.

So we tried to look for silicone spoons to use for eating... except apparently they might not exist? I can find silicone cooking ware, baby spoons, and some really hideous spoons that have a weird shape I automatically loathe, but not a single regular-shaped spoon for eating. Cursory research suggests some other non-metal silverware sets exist made of materials besides silicone, but I have no idea where to begin.

So, can anyone recommend some spoons that aren't metal and made for dining?

Looking to buy a new laptop, and of the model I'd like (thinkpad carbon x1), it seems like I can choose one with or without an NPU.

My surface-level understanding is they make built in AI processing and a couple other niche uses more efficient. Flip side, they're maybe a marketing gimmick?

Price aside (price difference doesn't seem too great), I'm wondering: should I buy a model with an NPU to help potentially future proof? Are there potential downsides to an npu model? Upsides?

I know there are lots of technical people here, I'd love to hear your thoughts or experiences!

So there used to be this vibrant community on macjams.com where DIY musicians congregated to share their music, collaborate, offer advice and constructive criticism, etc., but the site shut down in 2019 with nothing to take its place. Every couple of years, I'll start the search again, but I haven't found anything that scratches the same itch anywhere on the web. There are a few subreddits that attempt to create the same atmosphere and scope, but the overwhelming majority of content I've found is spammed out with self-promotion and endless empty threads.

Has anyone found a community similar to Macjams that I've missed or overlooked?

I recently “upgraded” my wife’s computer, since it was about 7 years old and I think the WiFi chip in the motherboard was starting to go (and the motherboard wasn’t Windows 10 compatible either, and she wanted to upgrade to Windows 11).

Of course, upgrading the motherboard to the latest WiFi standards meant upgrading the CPU (also swapped from Intel to AMD), which resulted in getting new RAM as well (a rough time for that, given the prices).

All of that to say, I’m now sitting on a mostly functional old motherboard, cpu, and ram. Basically an entire computer sans case and power supply (I’m sure I have a hard drive laying around somewhere).

Any thoughts on what I could do with it? I’d thought of trying to build out a NAS (or some other home server of sorts), but I’ve been thinking that for 2 years and haven’t done it yet because I haven’t really found a “need” for one. I basically just use my computer for gaming, and I don’t really have or plan to have media collections with seem to be the main use case of a hobby NAS.

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.

Add awesome game deals to this topic as they come up over the course of the week!

Alternately, ask about a given game deal if you want the community’s opinions: e.g. “What games from this bundle are most worth my attention?”

Rules:

• No grey market sales
• No affiliate links

If posting a sale, it is strongly encouraged that you share why you think the available game/games are worthwhile.

All previous Save Point topics

If you don’t want to see threads in this series, add save point to your personal tag filters.

Dear Mr. Sawatzky,

Both atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂) and temperature are increasing at an exponential rate, in lock-step. Atmospheric CO₂ levels during the Eocene have been estimated up to 840 parts per million (ppm); sea levels were close to 60 metres higher than today. CO₂ concentrations are over 425 ppm and still climbing. Pause a moment to consider what this will mean for all coastal cities.

What part of “keep the oil in the ground” that scientists have been shouting for decades do politicians not understand? What part of physics are politicians trying to deny?

I am opposed to allowing more oil tankers near our beautiful, fragile coast. I am vehemently opposed to marring our landscape with pipelines for transporting oil. Yes, $14 trillion dollars is a lot of money, but it will pale in comparison to the economic damage that exacerbating climate change will cause. Carbon capture and storage cannot offset our burn rate with any significance.

Earth has had a remarkably stable climate for tens of thousands of years; burning fossil fuels is destabilizing it.

I ask you to acknowledge that physics cannot be bargained with, show some foresight, protect our children's future, and care deeply about our planet's health. I ask that you tell our Prime Minister in no uncertain terms that selling fossil fuels is the wrong choice for the world and the wrong economic direction for Canada.

Week 4 has begun!

Post your current bingo cards.
Continue updating us on your games!

Quick links:

• Backlog Bingo Site
• Week 1 Discussion and Event Guidelines
• Week 2 Discussion
• Week 3 Discussion

Week 3 Recap

11 participants played 11 bingo cards and moved 40 games out of their backlogs!

There were 3 bingo wins. Congrats to u/dannydotcafe, u/kfwyre, and u/Wes! 🎉

• Nearly 70% of the games played this week had a one or two word title (one = 38%, two = 28%)
• The kitchen was a feature this week, with "knife", "eggs", "coffee", "garbage", and "Pepsi" being mentioned in game titles.
• If you play magnetic poetry with the titles, you can uncover some sage wisdom:

The darkest coffee must fandango.
Literature is irritating; torment.
Die, prodigal robot beasts of the midtown.
Katamari Caravan: stick, room, Tokyo, Sun

Game List:

• Agatha Knife
• Arco
• Arctic Eggs
• Baba Is You
• A Bird Story
• Cassette Beasts
• Children of the Sun
• Coffee Caravan
• Cursorblade
• Darkest Dungeon II
• Death Must Die
• Doki Doki Literature Club!
• Firestarter
• Grim Fandango
• Hacknet
• Inkbound
• Irritating Stick
• Katamari Damacy REROLL
• Lunacid
• Midtown Madness
• Moonlighter
• No Straight Roads
• Paper Beast
• Patron
• Pepsiman
• Planescape: Torment
• Prodigal
• Pushmo
• A Simple Garbage Sorting Game
• Skul: The Hero Slayer
• SOMA
• Starsector
• Super Robot Wars 30
• The Room 4: Old Sins
• Tails of Iron
• Titan Quest
• Tokyo Dark
• Trek to Yomi
• Vib-Ribbon
• Wanderstop