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.

I picked ~misc and don't really have an idea of what tags would be appropriate. If there's stuff I can include in future posts like this I'll be glad to make sure they're there, just let me know. There probably won't be one for a long while but I'll remember. Technically I am advertising myself a bit, but I think I've framed it well enough that ya'll will see it's not really the point of the post. I'll never be bothering ya'll with offers and ads and shit.

This is a continuation from a post I made a while back about how it's going with the endeavor I've set in front of myself. In some ways, things proceed as I'd hoped, while in others there's been need for flexibility/adjustment. I wanted to give an update because a few big steps happened this past week which hopefully mean moving into a busier phase of the whole thing, and to add to the corpus, create the proof of what this all was as it begins if that makes sense.

The biggest thing has been an article published in our local paper. Two, actually, which were combined together into a front page spread I did not expect. Yes, there's a photo of us and our contact info in there, and yes, you're welcome to reach us if you've an idea for something you'd like to do. You'll be talking to me, and I'll be happy to go over details and land on pricing that actually does work for both of us. Primarily we are offering the space, with some ability to accommodate large groups and connections with folks who can provide stuff. It depends on what you want, how things will be priced. The less you need us to do, the less we need to charge. We don't want to regularly be a place where folks stay overnight, but I can probably swing that from time to time for someone coming from far away. If you aim to do something in the near term, do be aware it is hot as shit down here and very humid. The house is a-ok staying cool, but you'll want to be prepared for Mississippi in the summer. I have a dog too, so if you've got allergies you'll need to prep accordingly. She's gonna be 16 this year, she's nothing but friendly to people and sleeps a lot. Pets are welcome, provided they are house-trained and well behaved.

I am intentionally avoiding the internet on the whole for reasons I'll get into, but I do want to extend an offer to this forum in particular, as thanks for allowing me the space for expressing my thoughts as they took shape. I'm aware the site is public facing - what I'm going to share here is public already. I have to bite the bullet on sacrificing some anonymity and just try to control how that anonymity goes away, is how I've come to see it. You won't find me on social media, and what exists for the house/my grandmother is wildly out of date/largely inaccessible - it's gonna stay that way if all remains up to me, so this is just about the only way for someone outside of Brookhaven to know of us at this time. I'd like for at least a few people to know what we were up to, in a form that serves as proof of my intent from its actual beginnings. While the plan took shape before I ever wrote about it, it was in writing about it that I was able to make it clear to myself, what I aim to be doing, so I feel like it's part of completing things to share this stuff here.

The paper is very much a local thing, they got a few details wrong and you'll probably pick out how the quotes don't quite sound like me if you've read a lot of what I've posted. It's fine, the details in need of correction aren't critical. There isn't a lot in there about the more high-minded stuff I like to write about, because I'm not there yet. For now, it's simply building a business out of something, I have to make the something from which that business will spring. I'll think more about where it goes when I've got it moving. The article was free, which was pretty awesome. The paper is in a slow time, and it's mostly one guy doing a lot of the writing, they were just happy to have something to include. I think he did great.

The articles worked, too. I got calls the day the print version went out, and am expecting some followups soon to set dates and square away payment. I go walking downtown every day in the afternoon, and got some extra attention. While it's possible, while the pressure is light, I've been taking advantage by trying to advertise almost solely through word of mouth and face-to-face interactions, fully aware it will take a while for that to have an effect and that I may need to branch out fast if pressures change. Thus far, it's been the local paper, a print ad in a different paper that goes out primarily to local businesses, and a radio ad. There's a couple of reasons I've stuck to stuff like that.

The first is that I think it will provide a good foundation for sustaining the enterprise. If it's possible to have enough business to stay around purely from what exists around me, that means I can capitalize maximally if/when we do extend advertising outside our area, and it means security if for whatever reason those means can't be utilized. I don't want to be dependent on the internet for a livelihood if I can possibly manage it. It's not so principled a position that I'd refuse to do it at any point, rather it's like a back-pocket option, something to be engaged with strategically at what I determine to be either the proper time or because the needs have grown past what I can sustain without it, if that makes sense. My aim is to be a part of this town, to be of it, so I want to keep what we're doing as local and simple as possible. I have to be ready to constrain everything and take care of my grandmother too. I won't let that priority slip and will endure whatever hardship is necessary to fulfill it. It's easier to do that the smaller things are, a bit of a balancing act.

The second reason is much more practical and kind of silly. My grandmother's computer is the biggest security risk I think I've ever encountered in person. I refuse to introduce new online components when such a risk exists, if that makes sense, and I will endure whatever hit to efficiency/development it means until I can get it corrected. Her usage habits are minimal which is a lucky thing - she sticks to old fashioned stuff for almost everything. But, a priority of mine is that she can see and understand everything I'm doing, so I need this machine to be in a better state before I can take some of the steps with that. The challenge of it isn't technical at all, I could get the thing in good working order in a day, probably.

To give you an idea of what's difficult here, imagine for a moment you just ignored the internet as a whole since it began. You used it, you know how to do some stuff on it, but only by way of memorizing actions, the steps necessary to do a thing you wanted, a setup someone made for you. You never really engaged with what the stuff you use is designed for, you didn't follow how any of it developed, you're (blissfully, I'd say) unaware of pretty much that whole end of things. It's very difficult to explain the danger of something like an AI phishing scam, to someone who for all intents and purposes, never learned what phishing is, and further doesn't tend to believe in the shittiness of other people. That last part is one of the reasons I love my grandmother as much as I do, but it does make this task harder, and delays further action on my part.

I've gotten the machine to as secure a state as I can, and have gotten the data backed up, so hopefully movement really gets going on this and I can feel better about spreading out our net, so to speak. I think what frustrates me about it is having been there across years of time - a lot of why this machine is the way it is, is because other people took it upon themselves to "fix it" and almost none of them knew what the hell they were doing. They didn't explain anything to my grandmother either. Their interactions mean misunderstandings on my grandmother's part, and the lack of a foundation of knowledge means it's starting from zero in a way I have never actually encountered before doing this kind of work. I've gotten close, seen some pretty absurd things, but the lack here is just of a different kind, more complex than it seems. I've been writing about it separately/on my own because I think the experience stands as a sort of ultimate test of a lot of the stuff I did before I got here.

There is also health to think about. The priority, for now, is to set things up in a way which is compatible with what my grandmother can do. I'm trying to set up situations that let her do the things that make her happiest, and do all of the nitty-gritty shitty stuff myself. That means house maintenance, yard work, grocery shopping, cooking, arranging for stuff like an electrician when something breaks, learning how to do some of the fixing myself. I've only ever rented. I've never been in a position to maintain a house before, and as I'm sure plenty of you know far better than me, that's a good bit to learn all on its own. Especially with a home as old and complicated as this one with an owner who hasn't done a lot of that herself. Can't exactly tell me what needs doing when someone else was being paid to come do it for years. I feel good about it though, I like to learn and I like to fix things, and there's lots of opportunity. I've been able to eliminate a lot of costs and reduce regular expenses by taking on a lot of what others were doing and applying effective fixes to longstanding issues. It's very fulfilling, like getting to do the type of work I always hit a wall with in all my other workplaces, improve and optimize. That it's for my family brings together a lot of what matters the most to me, keeps me constantly motivated.

The town is nice too. It's been a few months so I've gotten more acclimated, the slower pace of things and friendlier atmosphere really does a lot for me. Here are a bunch of images of downtown I took on some of my walks. Because of the slower pace, I can be measured, precise, take the proper time to consider things and work out problems without feeling like I'm in some inner state of siege/under the gun all the time. At first I missed a lot of what was available to me elsewhere, but as time went on I came to realize a lot of that just didn't matter as much as I thought it did. As much as I love a good Indian restaurant and a computer store, not having them is not the detriment my mind used to pretend it was. Along with that has come an explosion of creativity, I've done a ridiculous amount of writing and reading, and am slowly getting myself up to snuff drawing things. The house exists on an art school campus, and from what I've gathered reading local magazines the presence of that school has done a ton to really give this place character and variety. My hope is to really lean into that, support it and see if we can have our space be a place for folks to work their creativity. Connections are taking shape and that's made me real happy to see. I cannot tell you how heartwarming it is, for example, to talk about this stuff with the guy who does a radio show and then hear him on the radio a day later saying "this place is really good you should go see it!" Folks are really beginning to grasp my aims when it comes to the scale and type of stuff we want to do, and I haven't really encountered much suspicion/doubt/etc. Folks tend to just trust the simple motives. I can't ask for more than that, the sense of gratitude I wake up with every day is beyond my ability to capture here.

So, there you go. Another step taken, one more further toward whatever comes, as precisely as I can manage to get to the goals. I wanted to post the followup because I said I'd do that and as part of the effort itself, share the vision and the way it plays out in the hope others spot what my eyes miss, and/or that they might take something useful for themselves from it. I'd love to read it if you have thoughts, opinions, advice, experience. Or if you just want to talk about the high minded stuff, I do like doing that. Helps me stay consistent. Anyway, i've said plenty, so off I go to walk around downtown again. I've got that phone on me all the time, call/text whenever (text if it's after 5pm CST, is my only request with that). As always, I very much appreciate you taking the time and giving me your attention.

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.

background: I've been reading nonfiction a bunch recently, and I take notes on most books that I read, either writing in the margins or in a notebook. I really like writing in margins but (a) if it's a pretty hardcover I feel bad about it, (b) it means I can't check out library books, and (c) I am reading too much nonfiction and running out of shelf space so I need to switch to a mix of library and digital lol.

I also want my notes to be somewhat multimedia - e.g. links to wikipedia, pasting in relevant images (e.g. maps) without relying on my awful art skills, etc. I do NOT want to type my notes, I want to handwrite.

I have used OneNote a lot on a touchscreen monitor for e.g. notes during Advent of Code, scratch paper for puzzles, etc. I like OneNote a lot and I would be happy to use this for the software, but I don't have my heart set on it if there's something else that works similarly. I do want a tabbed navigation like OneNote has so that e.g. I can have a page of abbreviations, a page with a timeline, a page with a list of important names, etc, for a history book

I have also used iPads as scratch paper before, but not for dedicated note taking. It seems fine-ish but I'm not sure how it would do with inserting pictures etc, and not sure what other software there is for note taking available. I would also like to be able to access my notes on my Windows PC, so not sure if iOS is the best option?

One other concern is I want whatever it is to be easy to hold while I also have a (possibly large) book in my lap.

Does anyone do notes like this? Do you have a setup you like?

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 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 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.

Following the recent upsets with both Twitter and Reddit, how have people here been exporting/archiving their bookmarked/favorited/liked/etc threads, posts, and the content within (images, links, etc) for later reference?

It hit me not too long ago that there’s a lot of good stuff I’ve bookmarked over the years on both and it’d be unfortunate for viewing it to be locked behind keeping accounts active. Additionally, more and more of it’s disappearing over time not just due to link rot (which seems to have been accelerating dramatically in the past decade), but also as a result of users deleting their posts on the way out.

I’m particularly interested in solutions that saves content locally, because exporting these things to e.g. a cloud read it later service or bookmark manager really just shifts the problem around instead of solving it, but beggars can’t be choosers and all that.

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 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.

I will soon have a home and figured now's the time to do a proper home server, especially since it's going to come with cat 6 run from the main panel to just about every room. I code for a living, but at the same time network is a massive gap in my knowledge, as are servers, and I was hoping to use this as a learning moment as well as just a way to optimize things. I've been doing research for a few weeks now on and off and feel like I've got more questions than I started with, so I'll just vomit them out and if anyone has some guidance I'd really appreciate it.

Some information:

1. I'm willing/able to spend to get quality/simplicity. Time is the much bigger crunch for me right now, and I'd much rather buy something that works even if it costs more than cobbling together some deals.

2. Related to 1, I'd like this to not become my fulltime second job/hobby. I will at some point try to expand to a full home lab, and do want to use this to learn about things I feel I should understand better for general knowledge and my career, but i'd love for core functionality to mostly "just work" after configuring so when I don't have time to do that I'm not stuck telling everyone "oh yeah it'll be broken until I find time to fix it".

Things I know I want-

1. Some sort of NAS. From my research Synology comes up a lot as the "it's expensive but it'll just work" option, and I probably want something like a 4 bay of NAS specific several TB HDD's in something like raid 5/6/10. Pricey as hell but I'm most willing to spend on this as the cost might very well be split by the family members who want me to guinea pig all this.

2. I will have a camera system and would prefer to not have it sending data outside my network. This is the area i've looked at the least, as it's a little farther down the road, but I know others who have things like Arlo and lets just say i'm not super impressed. Obviously this brings up question like remote access to said camera's and where I'm storing the data (nas? Somewhere else?)

3. I'd like to mess with a media server. Plex/Jellyfin constantly come up in my research, so I'll be looking into those, but I've also got a bunch of audiobooks that I'd love to be able to easily share, and I think there's software for that stuff as well.

4. Pihole strikes me as the other "well if you're going to do this, you might as well" option that i'm aware of. Realllly need to better understand networking in general, but I hear these days it can kinda be installed and quickly configured and then left to do its job.

5. Related to all of this, Casa OS keeps coming up as a very good tool for a beginner like me, since it streamlines the handling of docker containers and also file sharing. However it's not really an OS, since it must actually run on Debian (i think?) for now (zima OS still in testing?).

Stuff I'd like to mess with but doesn't have to happen right away.

1. Eventually the aforementioned NAS would be backed up offsite to another NAS at another family members house, once I know what the hell I'm doing.

2. Proxmox constantly comes up as THE tool to use, but it leaves a lot of questions for me. Obviously if I start trying to do lab environments and screw with VM's it's going to be great, but my understanding is that I probably don't, as a beginner, want to say load up a device with proxmox and then have it host debian which installs CasaOS as it'll get a little more tricky to have everything talk right? Unsure on this part.

3. Anything else I'm forgetting. One issue I keep having with this is a LOT of the information out there is either too complex for me to really grok or just says "well yeah you could do ANYTHING with this" and it just sorta assumes I know what the options are. If there's anything else worth checking out I'd love to know.

Hardware I've come across-

1. Synology - Already mentioned but seems like they're a common go to for a "more money than skill/time" situation like mine.

2. Zimaboard - My understanding is it's underpowered for its price, but the main draws are that it's VERY low power, small, and quiet. What it could actually do from my list above is where i'm unsure. I see people are supposedly using it for Plex servers and what not, and I'm pretty sure it's not going to make any kick ass lab environments, but being quiet, small, and maybe a bit closer to plug and play seems tempting (I know they make the blade and a few other products but it all seems greek to me).

3. Various mini computers - I've got a minisforum machine from several years ago that I currently use as a living room computer for light gaming and mostly playing movies and the like. Not sure if i could just wipe it and convert it to be the starting point (more on that later). I know used 1 liter mini pc's from companies like HP are also popular.

4. The MS-01 - Similar pile as the last one but my understanding is this is the kind of thing that's probably really cool if you actually know what the hell you're doing. I'm 99% positive it is vast overkill for my purposes, but I'd like to eventually get to the point where I could understand why I might want something like this. My understanding is if I knew what I was doing I could probably drop proxmox on this and do everything I could ever want and more, but I feel quite far from that.

Some general questions I have -

1. The thing that kicked this all off is my new place likely having fiber, and cat 6 drops throughout the building. Architecture is something I'm still a little shaky on. I assume i'm going to need my own modem/router (just because the cox routers are meh and not really configurable from last I checked), and then that routes to the server first???...or something(seems like a must if you want the pihole to do anything)? I've seen lots of niffty network diagrams at this point but they're all from people WAAAAAAAAY beyond my skill level doing much more ambitious stuff, so it gets hard to understand. If anyone has a simple home network diagram/guide to look at I'd really appreciate it.

2. I'm just in general going to need to learn more about networking, especially in a home environment. Should I eventually get those camera's set up, I want to understand how to let them talk to internal storage and what not ,but not get out to the web...or..something (again remote access seems nice, but also like a massive security concern). I know speed is also a big factor i'm going to need to better understand. Having a fiber connection in only to be bottle necked by a crappy router or a 1gigabit port is just a waste of money, so that's something else I'd like to better understand.

3. I'm a little unclear on how to deliver the media in a media server to the various screens throughout the building. I've got cat 6 to all of them, but I suspect i'm still going to need, at the very least, a cheap computer to hook up to it and then display the image to the monitor/TV? This is why I assume I can't just wipe my current mini PC and reuse it as a server, because I still need it to receive the data from the home server (or at least a web browser?). A part of me feels like if I got a powerful enough server it should be able to server the media direction to the screen, but then you'd need some sort of HDMI/DP drops as well from the server to all your screens?...or something?

Sorry for all the rambling but I've got an odd mix of knowledge and ignorance so it's been a little difficult to research when half the video is stuff I already get, and the other half blows past me or just assumes I know about the parts i'm trying desperately to learn about.

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.

I'm taking some time to set up a mastodon account, and am currently confused about how following other federated accounts is supposed to work.

Let's use https://lemmy.world/c/comicstrips as an example. I go to that link and I see posts from other federated sites, as well as posts made directly on lemmy.world (I presume). I can also view all posts from that community in r.nf as well (https://r.nf/c/comicstrips@lemmy.world). I see all the same posts from the lemmy link.

What I don't understand is why, when I follow @comicstrips@lemmy.world on mastodon I only ever am shown replies and boosts from the account. I don't see the original image post, which I was expecting.

What am I missing? For what it's worth I'm using Phanpy to interact with mastodon, but am experiencing the same behavior on mastodon.social as well.

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 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 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 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.

Hey there! I'm an office monkey doing IT stuff. I've mercenary'd my way across multiple teams for the last decade (level 1 support to basically DevOps for payment systems) with no formal training or certification at a fairly large company. It's nice that my bosses all seem to appreciate that I'm flexible, but my work kinda swells and relaxes every couple months, and sometimes it feels unstable since I've never actually put any of this knowledge into an accepted certification. I look into certifications but nothing jumps out; recently I gave AWS a shot in a self-guided course and realized I was pretty bored by it. Something that popped into my mind as I noticed that I don't really have a "portfolio" is that I have tons of car work, audio editing, off-the-cuff writing about games, etc things that have to do with my hobbies in gaming, cars, music, shitposting on the internet, etc that I'm happy to make without feeling pressured. I feel like if someone asked me to pick up something like this for pay and give me a deadline - a program to edit, a car to work on, an image or audio to manipulate, something analyzing a piece of art - I'd happily do it without even thinking about it, and they're the kinds of things I could do for hours losing track of time.

Being a breadwinner right now with a kid I don't have the risk factor to jump careers right now, but if I lost my job I feel like I'd want to give some different industry a shot. Problem is I just don't get how people... weasel into these things? Is that how this happens? Or do they just eat a ton of time/money making these laterals? Where do they get the experience, where do people find the connections? I'm curious - has anyone ever turned a hobby into a career? Did it work out?

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 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.

Hi logophiles! I am a total word nerd. Over the last six years--mostly accidently--I ended up creating a bunch of vocabulary learning materials and spent way too much time thinking deeply about how we learn new vocab and how to teach it. My story: basically, via word of mouth, people with kids taking the SSAT and the SAT kept asking me for my materials which I continually iterated on as I got feedback. It wasn't my day job, lol, it wasn't even a side hustle.... just an obsession :) As I shared my "system", I kept dreaming of even better ways to make vocab learning effective, easy, and fun.

Some interesting things about learning vocab. The "keyword method" is extremely effective. (The keyword method is associating a target word with a similar-sounding word (the "keyword") and then creating a vivid mental image connecting the keyword with the target word.) [Ávila & Sadoski, 1996; Shapiro & Waters, 2005]. Further, connecting the new word and its meaning to your own personal experience is much effective than rote memorization. ("...engaging in deeper semantic processing and relating information to personal experiences can activate distinct neural circuits compared to those involved in rote memorization." [Andreasen, O'Leary, Cizadlo, Arndt, Rezai, Watkins, Ponto, & Hichwa, 1995]).

There are a lot of other cool things I discovered on my (research-obsessive) path to make learning vocab radically easier. A core driver for me has always been thinking about the epistemology of word-learning. What does it mean to "know" a word? "Knowing" a definition is different from truly knowing a word, where you can deploy it effortlessly when the context is right. That led to endless rabbit holes of learning about polysemy, colocations, and a whole lot more.

The first day I saw Dalle my jaw dropped. This was it! This was the missing piece for learning vocab 2x, 3x, 4x(?) more efficiently than has ever been possible. The image generation AI tools can make a custom image that packs in your own favorite keyword mnemonic and your own personal story into a cool image. Whoa! Because what has been my total obsession could finally be created in the real world, I teamed up with two good friends with the technical chops to build what had been percolating in my brain for six years. We've built a beta version over the last four months and it is ready to test!

I love Tildes, and I don't want to self-promote, so I am not going to drop the app name / website, but I am here with an ask. We want feedback! We want to make this the dream app for anyone who is serious about growing their (English) vocab. We want you in our beta test group.

The commitment I'm asking of our beta testers is a bit onerous. I want to hop on a zoom call with you while you use the app for an hour or so and have you tell me what you love and hate. I want to ask you a bunch of questions about what you want to see in your dream learning app. Then I want to give you the app for a month a two; hopefully you'll use it and learn a bunch of words; then I want to hop on a 20 minute call with you and get your hot take on the whole thing.

It is such an intense passion project for me; I want to make the app just rock-your-world-awesome. That's why I want to do live user interviews. (Which is a little out of the ordinary for sure.) And I can't do that without talking to real people who care about growing their vocab who are willing to hang out with me for an hour or two. :)

As a thanks for your help, when we go to the paid version, you'll get three months free, and a massive lifetime "friends and family" discount. But more than that, you'll really impact what we build next, and how we can make it better. While it's maybe a little idealistic, or might even sound silly to some, I feel like better vocab = better communication = better relationships. So I am all-in, fervently devoted, and hopeful that you'll come along for the ride and help me make it epic.

Who is it for? Studying for standardized tests? Oh yeah. This will help a lot. Want to raise the ceiling on what you can read. Let's go! Want to improve your English skills? This is for you. Love words. Yep! I'd love to meet you! Basically, if you love words, and/or have something coming up that requires that you know more words, I really hope you'll be part of our test!

More interesting stuff about vocabulary:
--Average high school graduate has a vocab size of 16,000 words
--Average college grad, 20,000 words
--Average PhD. 28,000 words

Tildes is a very smart and well read group, so I' bet the average vocab size around here is 25,000 to 35,000. Want to know your (approximate) vocab size. One of the best (easy and fast) tests is here:
https://preply.com/en/learn/english/test-your-vocab
(I have nothing to do with that site or company, and do not endorse them. It's just that their vocab size estimator is really well done.)

Want to be a beta tester, or just talk more about vocab, shoot me a message!
pandacat@onmail.com

I wrote a blog post for basically my first time ever. It's a first draft, but whatever. I never share my thoughts because I lack confidence, but I want to work on that. I welcome criticism of the way I've presented my thoughts, but my main priority is just discussing Starfield here! I want to hear what y'all think, mainly about the world of Starfield.

I was starry eyed when I first launched Starfield, but it ultimately left me feeling spaced out. After spending around 25 hours with the game I've realized that I wanted something different from Starfield, and that the game just doesn't keep my mind engaged and imagination running. I feel some guilt saying that. It took a buttload of human working hours to bring Starfield to fruition after all, and I don't want to dismiss that work. It's a very pretty game, with a lot of mechanics, characters, and stories. On paper, it's an ideal game for me. It's a first person adventure through the stars meeting strangers and ogling at alien planets packed in with loot and rpg elements. That's my kind of treadmill to be running on. The type of game loop I enjoy. Ultimately though, it did not fill the space in my head that I wanted it to.

Starting with the core game play, it's what I had the least expectations for. I am no Bethesda mega fan, but I've dabbled in their games. Their combat, stealth, traversal and so on have always registered as just serviceable to me. That's not really even a criticism as I've never gotten the impression that Bethesda's intention was to draw fans on those elements. They want to provide a simple set of tools to interact with their worlds. The tools they've provided here in Starfield feel fine. They all work. Gun play feels fine, traversal feels fine, stealth feels fine. It's the way those tools interact with their environments, characters, and narration that typically attract me, but don't here. Even their newest game play addition in space ship combat echoes their standard approach. It feels simple but solid. No extravagance like a Star Fox 64 barrel roll, but there's enough going on to feel good. Like the rest of the tool set, it's serviceable enough to let the player interact with their world. The world is what has left me cold.

Bethesda introduces us to Starfield's world in a baffling place, a place almost opposite to space, a mine. Sure, they planet isn't Earth, but it might as well be Earth. It's dark, dirty, rocky and far from a feast for the eyes. It's no surprise that mines are in the game as Bethesda has always included similar spaces in their games. Such environments are perfect for stuffing loot and combat encounters into, but imagine if Skyrim had began in a cave instead of out in its beautiful landscape. Starfield could've opened in space on a ship or on a number of visually alien worlds, and I think it's a misstep to begin the player in the most unappealing of its environments. Unfortunately, I think it's telling of a large part of the way you will be seeing Starfield's world. From a lot of interior spaces. It's often easy to forget that I'm playing a sci-fi game set in an open world space setting.

Starfield's world looks like what I imagine it would look like if human space colonization were to actually happen. In that regard, I think they were incredibly successful. It's the realization of this image that I think held Starfield back. Just like a lot of our own real universe, it is often empty and dull. Many landscapes of the planets and moons of Starfield, while sometimes pretty, are more often unremarkable. Procedural generation is an incredible tool that can easily lead to unimaginative results. I'm never able to escape the thought that what I'm looking at was probably computer generated. After visiting around 15 planets, I began to feel as though I'd seen it all before, just in different colors. Often fauna and foliage looked strange but lacked a certain spark of hand crafted creativity. I was never struck by their beauty nor their horror but only their only seemingly random assortment of attributes. On planets with human inhabitants their lacked personality in their work and living spaces with exceptions being the hand crafted major settlements. Buildings and structures felt modular and mass produced by the same manufacturer. All of this is probably an accurate depiction of a real future where we branched out into space, but it doesn't make for a fun video game to see and soak in. Major cities like New Atlantis and Akira City lent much more life to Starfield's world with obvious heart put into their creation. You can see their influences from the sci-fi genre in their construction. Instead of aiming for a large and marketable open world, it's a smaller handcrafted galaxy I wish we would have gotten. Somewhere with its own politics and drama taking place on landscapes with intent and personality. A larger existing universe could be hinted at with follow ups in sequels. Bethesda is bursting at the seems with creative talent, but there was simply too much space to make aesthetically daring from every angle. Instead that talent was stretched an inch thin and a mile wild.

The inhabitants of Starfield are offensively inoffensive and so dry they'll leave you parched. They're boring, full stop. They lack nuance and detail in their personalities. They begin and end at their core archetypes. The meaning of their existence is only to facilitate the player and be impressed by you. In my 25 hours of play, I didn't find my self endeared to any character except for a sweet old grandma exploring space, but I only liked her because I like that trope. Characters are very formal and professional which I believe was Bethesda's intent. After all, the context of most every interaction has you acting in an official capacity for one of the factions. You're a representative for the professional work these factions are doing, like being a volunteer cop for the United Colonies or Freestar Collective's Rangers or an explorer-researcher for the stuffy Constellation. It makes sense that conversations would be formal, professional, and often to the point. Ultimately that just doesn't make for compelling conversation. I engage with fiction, especially genre fiction, for its strong sense of personality. The characters I found in Starfield feel like they're just going through the motions of their 9 to 5 job. Their framing as a talking head when having conversations with them only highlights their stiffness.

I believe Starfield is a well-done realization of Bethesda's intent. It's a very corporate and made by committee vision, but it's well executed. It seems they wanted to create a world that resembles a legitimate future where humans leave Earth and colonize the stars. The result is barren unremarkable planets, sterile labs, boring mining and manufacturing facilities, mass produce modular homes, and plenty of empty space. I think they're right, this is what a settled galaxy looks like, but it just doesn't make for a satisfying video game.

edit: fixed spelling from "feel" to "fill"

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 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 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 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.

Hullo! I'm very much a list person, but I'm also very much a visual person. So, I've found that simple grids of images work really well for me when I want to plan and organize information, aesthetics, etc. However, I've struggled to find my ideal website or program that allows me to do this.

My wants:

• To upload images with minimal clicks. (My workflow would likely be to find an image somewhere, get the image's URL, navigate to a page, and upload via URL, without necessarily needing to enter form fields or save an image locally first.)
• To display medium resolution images as clear thumbnails (e.g. anywhere from 200x200 to 500x500). Enough for detail, but not necessarily "HD".
• To offer the ability to crop (or even just display) images as square thumbnails (for the purposes of a neat and uniform grid) without me having to go through https://squareanimage.com (real website!) for every single image.
• To categorize images into groups (i.e. to display a set of images as a coherent little grid/gallery). I'm not picky about whether this is done via fixed category pages, or tags + filtering.
• To maybe add extra information attached to each image (e.g. descriptions, links, etc.) without necessarily cluttering the grid.
• As for whether the service is public or private, cloud-based or local, I don't really mind!

Some of the options I've tried:

• Wordpress: Really nice grid-based themes, but the "blog post"-based system feels cumbersome for what I'm trying to do (images only). So many clicks to add images and make new posts.
• Tumblr: Lovely for content discovery, the quick reblog feature saves a lot of clicks, and tagging is flexible. But, this has many of the same downsides as Wordpress (lots of clicks to upload your own images, post-based system), and Tumblr as a platform is so much more than what I'm looking for (don't want/need social features).
• Pinterest: 10/10 for content discovery -- their image similarity algorithms and image search are unmatched. Wonderful for quickly spinning up a collage of themed pictures. But, horrid for uploading new pictures, given that they'll become public pins with comments/links/etc. Too many clicks + unnecessary fields. I worry about attribution for artists with Pinterest specifically -- I don't want to perpetuate a lack of attribution with publicly re-shareable images. Also, the collages are very busy with ads and unnecessary text. Plus, it's kind of cumbersome to reorganize images between boards if you want to change your board scheme.
• Pinry: Open source, self-hosted version of Pinterest. Was a bit too rough around the edges the last time I tried to use it, but maybe it's good enough now?
• Are.na: A bit too... New York trendy? For my tastes. Also, the social elements aren't really my thing... Also, costly!!!
• Google Keep: Surprisingly good? Perhaps the best option I've tried? For image notes, it's very flexible with regards to grid-based layouts, tagging, adding optional details, adding multiple images to a single note, etc. My main criticisms are that uploading images and tagging notes does take quite a few clicks; the grid stops being aligned the moment your notes begin to differ (e.g. add images of varying size, add titles/details, etc.), so it can start to look a bit visually cluttered; the UI doesn't seem to be designed with many tags in mind; the default layout shows all notes (I never want this).
• Local files and folders: Dead simple, but with very few features. Thumbnail views in file explorers are really space inefficient compared to grid-based image galleries.
• Random photo organizing software: Largely geared towards actual photos taken with an actual camera (real life subjects, camera EXIF data, organizing by date taken, etc.). Too many unnecessary features for my needs, not enough features geared towards digital non-photo images (e.g. graphics).
• "Speed dial" new tab pages for browsers: Helps me organize bookmarks! I like being able to see the icons, like a desktop for webapps. I will use image grids for everything.
• Artwork grids in media libraries / tracking websites: Plex, MusicBee, Letterboxd, Goodreads, Anime-Planet... you are heaven to me.

Here is a gallery of screenshots for websites/services I have tried, to give you an idea of how I use these services. The first one (tumblr) is the closest to visually ideal (dense + uniform grid), but Keep is the closest to ideal feature-wise. Surely there is a website or service I'm missing that could be the best of both worlds!

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 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 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 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.

My weekly D&D group has been running for a number of years now and unfortunately our current DM is suffering from some pretty severe burnout at the moment (both in life and D&D in general). I think ultimately we're going to end up shuttering our D&D campaign, and may well never pick the game up again as we've almost all soured on WotC/Hasbro after the OGL debacle.

This week we entertained ourselves by messing around with image generation (velociraptor nun was a favorite result and became a bit of a running theme through the evening) but the fun in that can only last so long. We've also had some nights playing games like Dead by Daylight and Midnight Ghost Haunt but those are typically games we reserve for around Halloween. We also play some of the Jackbox Party Pack games, but they're only moderately fun to be honest.

We're usually a group of 7, and this particular formation of the friend group has been meeting almost exclusively online and will probably want to continue that way for the foreseeable future. I'd like some suggestions for games we could play together (either video game or TTRPG that works well online) that are: mostly cooperative or at least team based (we're not very competitive), something that won't become repetitive and dry after a couple of sessions (goal-oriented I guess), and something that we don't have to pay a subscription for. The ability to drop in or out as life dictates would be a plus too. Any thoughts?

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.