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.

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 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 want to give some context before I get to the meat and potatoes. I (M28) have IRL friends that I communicate and spend time with regularly. However, I do not engage in conversations with them daily. I'm not a texter, or a phone call person. If one of them has a question, or wants to share a meme, I'll respond, but I don't have digital conversations that stretch for hours. I prefer in person communication, and in person I don't shut the fuck up.

Additionally, I do not have any 'Online' friends. All of my friendships are with people I know in real life. I have talked with others on Discord, but again, I don't engage in casual chatter. I'll respond when prompted, but that's about it.

Now that that's out of the way, both of these things kind of got turned on their head in the beginning of November, when I met Alice (F28) through a Roleplaying Discord server. We had kind of eyed each other for a Roleplay session, and it went well. What I wasn't really prepared for, was her poking me in DMs afterwards just to chat. Not really my thing, buuuut, long story short we have now talked every day since then. We wish each other a good morning and good night. Sometimes we talk all day, sometimes we just get a few messages if we're busy. She's the first new friend I've made since high school, and that is a title I don't use lightly. The fact is, I just have zero interest in interacting freely with most people. Typically they end up annoying me in some way.

I'm not shy at all, not particularly introverted, I just really don't like talking to people.

And yet, somehow, I find myself trying to talk to Alice all day. I feel myself growing antsy when I go just a few hours without talking to her. Here's where the imbalance part comes from: Alice isn't like me. She has a group of people she talks with regularly, I'm just one of them. Whereas she is the only person I talk to daily. I completely acknowledge that this is 100% a me problem; I don't want this to come across as me being jealous of her friends. She struggles to balance time between her girlfriend, me, and her other friends, and most of the time I just feel kind of bad for her, like I'm a dog begging for table scraps, and she's trying to appease everybody.

On the other hand, I can also pretty confidently look at our older conversations, and note that we don't talk as much as we used to. Our conversations used to be long and while we still sometimes have longer chats, it's really only when I get her on a tangent involving a particular interest of hers. I don't want to dig too deep into why that is, it could be the 'met someone new' energy has worn off and I'm just not as much of a priority anymore, maybe I became annoying at some point and remain blissfully unaware of it, I dunno.

My question is, how do you handle wanting to spend more time with someone who just cannot spend that time with you?

TL;DR: Made a new friend online, and she doesn't have nearly as much time for me as I have for her.

It looks like there are a ton of options out there to get physical prints of digital photos - I’m seeing super cheap high volume websites, supermarket co-branded ones that look like a throwback to the old film development days, high price boutique services aimed at fine art photographers, and indie print shops attached to exhibition spaces. Problem is, I have no idea how to even begin differentiating between them!

I’m putting together an album of photos as a gift for someone, and right now everything’s digital (either originally or from scanned negatives). I need about 200 prints, so the price differences between the various options I’m seeing add up pretty quickly - I don’t mind spending on quality, but in my experience that doesn’t necessarily correlate to price anyway.

So, what hallmarks or hidden tells should I be looking out for that’ll help me find somewhere decent? Specific recommendations would also be great if anyone has suggestions that are in/ship to the UK!

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I just used the label on a comment and to my surprise it is not visible for me, neither is it visible when I log out.
On other comments I do see the label in both situations. This makes me think there is a condition where the label is now shown or that something might be up with tildes itself.

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.

I believe a few of us have Steam Decks, thus I wanted to do this kinda public announcement.

TL;DR

• If your Steam Deck reports low battery health (low % of original capacity) drain the battery until it shuts down and then fully charge and check again
• Use your Steam Deck until it shuts down from time to time (say once every 6 months?) to keep your battery level indicator (and remaining time) precise

Long version

I have my Steam Deck since May 2022 and I put certainly over 1000 hours in gaming on it. I would believe if it was even approaching 2000 hours.

Lately I played demanding game and battery was discharging rather fast with remaining time on full charge being under 1:30 hours, which I wasn't used to just a few months ago when it lasted over 2 hours even in demanding games (I limit to 30 fps and I also limit TDP/power). This weekend I jumped into desktop mode and checked the battery life which showed me what I feared - 65% of original capacity.

I went on iFixit page and the price for new one is hefty 95€, but since Steam Deck got me so much enjoyment, I was ready to pay for it - if it was in stock, that is. I'm glad it wasn't!

Since I have a bit of electronics and software background (hobby level), I realized that the charging chip (or whatever keeps the info about state of charge) was running since day 1 on relative data. What I mean: I have never discharged my Steam Deck lower than 10% and most of the times charging anywhere between 30-80%. And since the charging chip likely measures last fully charged capacity (and thus battery health) based on, well, how much it was charged and discharged all over again, it probably skewed its measurements in those three years.

So I went on a "quest" to play until dead. And I was surprised when Steam Deck reached 3% battery and kept running for another hour (ligthweight game) until it was finally dead. Then I fully charged it and voila - battery health 90%!

I have already said how it likely happened, but once more and in short: the charging chip needs to reach both limits, 0% and 100% of battery, from time to time = You have to let it drain fully here and there if you want your battery level indicator (and remaining time) to be precise or if you want to get the real state of your battery.

A bit offtopic: I've had laptop that had 50% of original capacity. I have changed the battery cells inside the battery and let it fully discharge and charge again but the vendor locked the chip from "learning" the real capacity making the new cells useless because the chip still reported 50% thus telling me when I booted it up that the battery has to be changed and also telling me non-relevant remaining time based on this 50% battery health... I'm glad that Steam Deck is capable of re-learning this data and not playing dumb.

Hopefully the title says it all, I decided to make this generic because I think all game randomization is cool.

To be specific, this is not about games which have random elements, this is about games which have been modded to introduce some form of randomization.
The Pokemon games are reasonably famous for having fun randomizers.

I posted this because I recently started a Dark Souls 3 randomized run and got given a heap of really nice sorceries and miracles right at the start of the game. Luckily also a catalyst too. It was like it was begging me to be a mage, even though it's apparently hard as hell.