1338's recent activity
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Comment on What are your personal reading "rules?" in ~books
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Comment on What works do you think should be added to the literary canon? in ~books
1338 Link ParentIt was written in 1960 (the year on the website is from a subsequent publishing edition)It does look like that list cuts off around the mid-late 1950s.
It was written in 1960 (the year on the website is from a subsequent publishing edition)
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Comment on Cancelled Powerpuff live-action reboot trailer in ~tv
1338 Link ParentYou're not alone! It seems like an entertaining subversion and clearly triple tongue in cheek. I could think of far worse things to watch.You're not alone! It seems like an entertaining subversion and clearly triple tongue in cheek. I could think of far worse things to watch.
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Comment on Framework gives its 13-inch Laptop another boost with Ryzen AI 300 CPU update in ~tech
1338 LinkI think that's the most exciting of today's announcements. Not enough companies do the transparent plastic thing since the 90s/00s ended. Though it does seem we're approaching a renaissance on...Framework is now selling translucent purple, green, and black bezels and USB-C expansion cards you can use to add a little flair to your laptop.
I think that's the most exciting of today's announcements. Not enough companies do the transparent plastic thing since the 90s/00s ended. Though it does seem we're approaching a renaissance on that matter.
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Comment on Framework’s first desktop is a strange—but unique—mini ITX gaming PC in ~tech
1338 LinkSo the brand defined by its modularity introduces a product that's less modular than the status quo... strange. The pre-order is up to batch 2 already so apparently there's a market for it.So the brand defined by its modularity introduces a product that's less modular than the status quo... strange. The pre-order is up to batch 2 already so apparently there's a market for it.
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
1338 LinkI had played Steamworld Dig 1+2 back when those came out so I bought the steamworld collection during the holiday steam sales last year. I recently got around to playing Heist. I got several hours...I had played Steamworld Dig 1+2 back when those came out so I bought the steamworld collection during the holiday steam sales last year. I recently got around to playing Heist. I got several hours into it before starting to get a bit bored of the gameplay loop. Not a bad game, would probably like it more on switch/mobile.
I switched over to Build and found it's more my type of game. I like its pacing, it does a good job of introducing the additional units/building types gradually but more quickly as you dig deeper so it's not overwhelming but also not like you're being spoonfed. I'm still on my first game with the tutorial mode set so I'm curious if replayability works out as well as most city builders as it is more objective oriented than sandbox. But there are a lot of mode options when starting a game so I'm hopeful. I also like how the game doesn't feel like its developers have an adversarial view towards players.
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Comment on What are you reading these days? in ~books
1338 LinkI read Taste of Control: Food and the Filipino Colonial Mentality Under American Rule. I really didn't know much about the Philippine's time under US rule. Honestly I still don't really know that...I read Taste of Control: Food and the Filipino Colonial Mentality Under American Rule. I really didn't know much about the Philippine's time under US rule. Honestly I still don't really know that much about it in terms of hard history but certainly know more about it on the person-al level. The book covers a lot of primary sources detailing how Americans felt about the Filipinos and their food from things like journals, ads, menus, and cookbooks. Given it was only a century ago there's a heck of a lot to pick from and it feels super "real" looking at it through that lens. Like you might expect the book is mostly about how racism, paternalism, and capitalism dictated so much of what changed in the Philippines over half a century or so. The unique part of the book being the simple insight that food, being such a major part of daily life and the economy, serves to underscore events, intentions, and perspectives in a relatable way. It did leave me with a bit of an appetite for learning more specifics about Filipino food as the book didn't get much into that (understandable since it's not a cookbook).
I'm currently midway through Nevernight and The Girl Who Stole An Elephant
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Comment on Framework (2nd gen) event: 25th February in ~tech
1338 LinkGuess I'll put off those thoughts of buying that chassis.Guess I'll put off those thoughts of buying that chassis.
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Comment on Framework 13 chassis available for $400 in ~tech
1338 LinkThat link just takes me to the main order page, I don't see anything about the chasis there. But found it after navigating at https://frame.work/products/framework-laptop-13-chassis-p6100 That...That link just takes me to the main order page, I don't see anything about the chasis there. But found it after navigating at https://frame.work/products/framework-laptop-13-chassis-p6100
That does feel tempting, especially to experiment with the RISC-V mainboard and maybe eventually switch to one of the discounted mainboards... Then again my old thinkpad is still hanging in there and I already have 10 million other toys I've been meaning to play with
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Comment on What are you reading these days? in ~books
1338 (edited )LinkLast book I finished was The Middleman And Other Stories by Bharati Mukherjee. It's from the late 80s and a collection of stories about immigrants, refugees, or displaced people. A lot of the...Last book I finished was The Middleman And Other Stories by Bharati Mukherjee. It's from the late 80s and a collection of stories about immigrants, refugees, or displaced people. A lot of the stories are more sedate and down to earth than the typical things I read. They're stories with an opening, conflict/climax, and resolution, but often that climax is just a conversation while the resolution is the character thinking about the future in a way that leaves you feeling as unfulfilled as the protagonist. The book for me falls into this sorta "temporal uncanny valley" I notice with other books written in the late 20th century where the small differences between then and now really stand out. For instance "oriental" to refer to people being presented as the polite term or references to the world trade center (including one unfortunate comment about needing to hurry up before the twin towers disappear). Maybe due to this combination of factors, I found reading it in only a few sittings had this light fever dream effect as you're shunted from one world to another -- the author certainly did an excellent job in making the disparate stories and life experiences feel like separate worlds.
I decided to do the "storygraph reads the world" challenge. Trying to do a variety of genres with this too. Planning to do...
Australia: Nevernight
Belgium: The Art Thief
China: Journey to the West
Egypt: Beer in the Snooker Club
Iceland: The Saga of King Hrolf Kraki
Kenya: The Girl Who Stole an Elephant
Malaysia: Deplorable Conversations With Cats and other Distractions
Mexico: TBD... I bought "Her Body And Other Parties" but I might count that as half credit and do "Drug Cartels Do Not Exist: Narcotrafficking in US and Mexican Culture" as the other half.
Netherlands: We, The Drowned
Philippines: Taste of Control: Food and the Filipino Colonial Mentality under American RuleI started to read Nevernight but I'm only about 20 pages in.
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Comment on Bluetooth receiver with a sane low-battery warning? in ~tech
1338 LinkThat drives me crazy! I went through a series of cheap bluetooth earbuds a few years ago and that was one of my top annoyances alongside charging headaches and issues with alternating mono...That drives me crazy! I went through a series of cheap bluetooth earbuds a few years ago and that was one of my top annoyances alongside charging headaches and issues with alternating mono operation. I spent a while looking for any sort of review site or even reddit thread where people compared headphones by such concerns instead of audiophile metrics to little avail.
I don't have experience with receivers but on the headphone side the only solution I found was paying more for a brand name. The cheap generic ones don't have enough TLC to address bad low-battery UX. I use a pair of soundcore earbuds now which gives a mobile alert as well as a couple auditory alerts spaced out. That's much better than the cheap ones where it'd either be constant like you mentioned or super freaking loud regardless of the volume you're listening to. I do wish it'd let you configure the notification, maybe just set it to the mobile notification and fully turn off the audio notification, but I doubt that exists.
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Comment on Why are American dogs so obsessed with Lamb Chop? in ~life.pets
1338 Link ParentI'd put the number closer to 30 (at least in the US). I remember lambchop being referenced randomly in different shows and movies and the character is sufficiently self-explanatory for passive...I'd put the number closer to 30 (at least in the US). I remember lambchop being referenced randomly in different shows and movies and the character is sufficiently self-explanatory for passive awareness without having seen the original show. I'm below 40 and the main reason I know of it is from having a hand-me-down stuffed lambchop.
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Comment on Five Disney animated canon films will be destroyed and you can choose, which five do you pick? in ~movies
1338 Link ParentFor similar chaotic curiosity reasons I'd go with: Fantasia Make Mine Music Wreck-It Ralph Frozen MoanaFor similar chaotic curiosity reasons I'd go with:
Fantasia
Make Mine Music
Wreck-It Ralph
Frozen
Moana -
Comment on What are you reading these days? in ~books
1338 LinkI'm on ASOIAF 5: Dance with Dragons. My reading rate has plummeted since the end of the holidays, which has me feeling like I'm never going to finish this one but it's good to take my time since...I'm on ASOIAF 5: Dance with Dragons. My reading rate has plummeted since the end of the holidays, which has me feeling like I'm never going to finish this one but it's good to take my time since this is the last one (probably ever). Definitely an improvement over #4, which was a bit of a disappointment compared to the others (but still a good book). I'm at a point where I remember barely anything I'm reading from the TV show and I struggle to tell how much of that is just from me not remembering the middle seasons of the show well and how much is due to the show diverting away from the books over time (like Aegon being totally absent).
Feel like also calling out a book I finished about a week ago: "Comfort is an old Barn". It's an autobiography from a local reporter from Maine. Runs from her childhood through to various people she met doing human interest type stories on the job. It's far from the most intellectually stimulating or exciting book but it's a pleasant read. Fits cozying up next to a warm fire vibes.
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Comment on What were your favorite books that you read this year, and why? in ~books
1338 LinkI mentioned in a different thread this was my first year returning to reading with any focus. As a result a lot of the books I read and loved this year are classics and/or super popular. The ones...I mentioned in a different thread this was my first year returning to reading with any focus. As a result a lot of the books I read and loved this year are classics and/or super popular. The ones I rated the highest of those are: George RR Martin's ASOIAF (started it in December and I'm on book 4 now), Neil Gaiman's Coraline and Graveyard Book, Goldman's The Princess Bride. So much has been said about why those books are good I don't really feel I have much more to add.
The books I enjoyed the most are Erin Morganstern's books: Starless Sea and Night Circus. I don't have much intellectual reason for why I enjoyed those books so much, the author's voice and the world she builds just gave me this wonderful magical feeling like nothing else I read this year.
The King's General by Daphne du Maurier: this was an early year read for me and the first book that really captured me. It's a novel set in the English Civil War and does a great job building and establishing that setting. It's a love story but not really a happy one with both the highs and lows well captured from the protagonist's perspective.
Small and Remarkable Life by Nick DiChario: this book is officially considered scifi but certainly isn't the typical scifi. It's set in the 1800s US and alternatingly covers the life and death of a "foreigner" with a weird name, unusually colored skin, and unpopular religious views. Touches on all the expected themes of prejudice and acceptance. I liked the way it tied everything together at the end but I could have done without the epilogue.
The Dirty Tricks Department by John Lisle: a history of the precursor to the CIA and its antics during WWII. I appreciate reading about the ingenuity of the inventions and techniques. It has both crazy boondoggles that'll never work like bat bombs and devices that are now mainstays like timers. The end of the book is much darker when it describes how the OSS led to the creation of the CIA for all its MK Ultra shame. Overall it's a fascinating bit of history and the book is written in a very enjoyable way.
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Comment on Journal that published faulty black plastic study removed from science index in ~science
1338 Link ParentI ordered a new set of metal utensils after seeing the articles about the math mistake. The immediate cause was me snapping one of my plastic utensils in half (when I should have been using my...I ordered a new set of metal utensils after seeing the articles about the math mistake. The immediate cause was me snapping one of my plastic utensils in half (when I should have been using my electric mixer). I normally would have just replaced the one but all the hubbub had me compare the price of grabbing a basic metal set instead and frankly for the price difference might as well get the sturdiness upgrade. The reduced (but certainly not eliminated) risk of random bits of plastic or random chemicals flaking into my food is just gravy on top.
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Comment on What's something new you started doing this year? in ~talk
1338 LinkThe main two for me are reading and working on projects outside of work. Both of those were things I wished I would do going back years. Ever since leaving schooling I just struggled to read...The main two for me are reading and working on projects outside of work. Both of those were things I wished I would do going back years.
Ever since leaving schooling I just struggled to read books. I would obsess over page counts (Only 27 pages until I get to page 100... only 26 pages until I get to page 100) and get this obnoxious anxiety rather than really getting into the book. As a result I couldn't really remember if I had properly read a book in close to a decade. I would do audiobooks frequently but the actual act of reading just had this wall for me. I think I finally hit a point where I was able to push past that and so I ended up reading Murder on Sex Island in the first week of January. I then also read a silly book aimed at kids I had sitting around that month so I decided to call it a new year's resolution to read at least 2 books each month. I accomplished that a week ago when I finished my second December read, Game of Thrones! I'm at 43 books/13.5k pages so far this year (will be at least 45/14k by year end but I'm hoping I can get closer to 48/15k to make it rounder)
And this year I started a programming side project. I'd struggled to have the energy to put into such a thing in the past but at this point I do so little actual coding in my typical day I've found I have a lot more coding energy to put into side projects (life energy remains a challenge as always). I found there was a tool we use at work that was dead and had no ideal replacements, so started developing what I'd want that to be. That also gave me an opportunity to learn new languages/tools I hadn't had much opportunity to use at work, plus helped remind me what I liked about coding when I was a teenager.
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
1338 LinkI've been playing Amber Isle. It's yet another entry in that "life sim" category like Stardew or Animal Crossing. A lot of the mechanics remind me of Dreamlight Valley more than any other (but no...I've been playing Amber Isle. It's yet another entry in that "life sim" category like Stardew or Animal Crossing. A lot of the mechanics remind me of Dreamlight Valley more than any other (but no microtransactions or Disney). Maybe comparable to My Time At series but with much less fleshed out characters, less story, no combat, and with selling focused more than crafting. You run a shop selling things you craft from the wood/stone/etc you find on the island. The core gameplay loop is a simple matter of going through 4 phases per day, for each phase you either run the shop or go harvest material. Mixed in there you unlock more biomes on the Island, build (well, place) houses for your new residents, and run sidequests for them which mostly consists of giving them materials you harvested.
It lacks the depth of the big names in the space, that is there's not many side activities/minigames you can do to break things up. You're running the shop 3/4 times per day and the rest of the time wandering the map collecting materials and looking for sidequests. There's no time limit per phase, so you spend more real-time harvesting until your pockets are full than anything else. But the gameplay loop of those two activities gets a bit redundant after a while. It works out decently for me because I like to read in the evening too, so when I get a bit tired of the repetition I take a break to read a chapter... But that's hardly a gold star characteristic.
The art style is nice, the characters are numerous and have colorful, cartoonish personalities with likes/dislikes. Sadly that color blends together after a while with how many residents there are and how little you interact with each (and with no nostalgic IP like Dreamlight Valley). You can build relationships by selling to/talking to/hanging out with them which gives you more money when in your shop. It's fully family friendly so there's no "Relationship" mechanics.
I've hit a few bugs but nothing game-breaking. A bit more polish would be useful though. There's some things I quite dislike, such as the need to memorize the categories of your items and likes/dislikes of residents. it doesn't explain things like "why do some residents randomly dislike your store layout" and there's not a mature wiki to reference for such issues. Overall it's yet another life sim for those who enjoy the genre, but hardly one I expect to ever go back to after I move onto another game.
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Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp
1338 LinkI've been a bit distracted from working on tilegroxy lately. But main thing I'm working on adding currently is support for automatically reloading the configuration upon change. Thanks to...I've been a bit distracted from working on tilegroxy lately. But main thing I'm working on adding currently is support for automatically reloading the configuration upon change. Thanks to viper/fsnotify the building blocks are there and I made the thing with the expectation of eventually adding this so it wasn't hugely hard. The most annoying thing was getting the change transmitted down from the top-level "command"/config code down to the request Handler. Currently I'm doing that with pointers to functions, which is pretty ugly. Internally debating whether refactoring it to use channels will really improve much.
I also have my exam to get the CKAD cert coming up. Which means I'll need to get Ubuntu installed and usable in the next few days -- ironic the Linux Foundation has such limited linux support for their tests.
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Comment on What are you reading these days? in ~books
1338 (edited )LinkI'm almost done with a combo book of The Lair of the White Worm and the Lady of the Shroud by Bram Stoker. I read Dracula and then the Icelandic translation/fanfic Dracula earlier this year so was...I'm almost done with a combo book of The Lair of the White Worm and the Lady of the Shroud by Bram Stoker. I read Dracula and then the Icelandic translation/fanfic Dracula earlier this year so was curious about some of his lesser known works. I'm disappointed.
The Lair of the White Worm, putting aside the racism/sexism, really felt like the timing was way off. They discover the "monster" way too quickly off too little evidence, it has a lot of filler that doesn't advance the plot or meaningfully establish much, then suddenly it's resolved in a rather unsatisfying manner.
The Lady of the Shroud started a bit slow then got good, but then had the big plot twist way too early. The back half of the book has been entirely focused on B-plot lines I really don't care about. I kind of wonder if Bram Stoker resented being viewed as "the vampire writer" and this is his way of capturing gothic horror fans into reading political intrigue. Maybe something will change in the last 30 or so pages I have left but I'm not optimistic.
edit: nothing changed in the last 30 pages
I track with storygraph.
I only do audiobooks and physical books. Audiobooks for me come in spurts (often when I'm overly caught up on podcasts) and I tend to do certain clumps of things. Like recently I listened to a bunch of old canon star wars novels and before that did a bunch of christmas stories. I similarly like listening to King novels. There's not much reason to it besides I tend to do audiobooks for things that I'm ok if I don't pay as much attention to.
I tend to be an impulse purchaser for books but I tend to stick to older/cheaper/used for the most part so I'm usually paying under $10 max. Like if I run across mention of something online and it seems amusing I'll grab it. Or I'll go to my local bookstore's basement where they have $2 used books and grab random crap that seems ok based on a quick scan of covers and reading some random paragraphs. I try to be a bit more intentional with non-fiction and buy things that seem intellectually interesting and not too dry since those are more of a commitment of focus. I recently decided to do the "reads the world" challenge so been mostly trying to knock out books for the countries in that (and repeatedly discovering midway that the book I picked from the {apparently unmoderated} list didn't actually have anything to do with that country)
After buying a book it goes on the to-read in storygraph (as well as my physical to-read pile). I track reading in there and enjoy the stats it gives. I rate almost everything relative to the other items I've rated so I get a nice bell-curve and a better sense for what I actually like.
I usually switch between reading what seems most appealing in the moment and trying to alternate the type of book I'm reading. Like if I've just read a few fiction, will pick a non-fiction. Sometimes I'll pick something that seems like an "easy win" if I've been bogged down on a larger book (or vice versa if I haven't read something substantial recently).
I try not to fully give up on books unless I just literally can't keep going. But I do sometimes lose interest and it might be a year or two before I get back to it. I only have maybe a half dozen books on that list. For books I'm actively reading I usually do one at a time but sometimes will do two, with one at bedtime and a different one during the day. I really only read at home so reading two at a time will mean one book sits next to my bed and the other in the spot I tend to read at during the day -- usually either my couch or hammock depending on season/weather (well I keep the book inside, but near the door).
Once I finish a book it goes on my book case in the far right side of the current year's "have read" section.
I've also got a small bit of a collection bug going. Have several older (couple hundred years) books and there's this publisher's series of classics I like and I'm trying to get a full set of. I also try to get a signed copy of books I especially like (4.75+ rating) if possible.