ShamedSalmon's recent activity

  1. Comment on Why I am pursuing a life, professionally and personally, of Christian Virtue in ~humanities

    ShamedSalmon
    Link Parent
    Oh I definitely agree with you on all points. I was intentionally being over-specific with my examples, so thank you for additionally capturing more general example groups to demonstrate the...

    Oh I definitely agree with you on all points. I was intentionally being over-specific with my examples, so thank you for additionally capturing more general example groups to demonstrate the problem from other angles.

    7 votes

  2. Comment on Why I am pursuing a life, professionally and personally, of Christian Virtue in ~humanities

    ShamedSalmon
    Link Parent
    I think you may be missing the fact that you are responding to a Tildes user who is voicing their preference that Tildes not be used to preach at them from "those" groups in addition to "any type...

    Will folks feel as kindly to preaching when it isn't the umbrella faith they share, even if a different denomination[?]

    I feel like Tildes users would be more accepting of those than any type of Christianity, to be honest.

    I think you may be missing the fact that you are responding to a Tildes user who is voicing their preference that Tildes not be used to preach at them from "those" groups in addition to "any type of Christianity".

    To restate for clarity, while you may feel like Tildes users would be more accepting of being preached at from members of Islam, Asatru, Hinduism, and Wicca, a real-life Tildes user is telling you that they would not be, which is an actual, demonstrated counter to your assumption. On the other hand, in addition to you, the person who started this comment chain would also like to see Christian preaching on Tildes, which (in lieu of any other input from them) appears to further counter such an assumption.

    Based on this, the implied train of thought that Tildes users might be more accepting of preaching from those other religions and therefore Christian preaching should be permissible, is problematic given that no one yet has demonstrated such a preference for other groups over Christianity.

    It is also actually not clear what kinds of preaching would pass the "asshole test." For example, one could preach that 'even a ten-year-old girl who commits infanticide through abortion is still loved by our god and will be forgiven if she confesses her sin.' Such a statement could be found to be fabulously offensive assholish. It is possible that you too might find such a statement to not be as soft as you envisioned above. However, a more conservative preacher may argue that such a statement is not intended as ill-willed "being in people's faces", but was intended to underline their god's love and forgiveness for all.

    Yet, people do take issue with being called sinners for making deep, personal, life-changing decisions such as abortion. For you and everyone else reading this, is the filter system really enough to keep preaching that could be interpreted as slanderous of other members within the realm of civility on Tildes?

    8 votes

  3. Comment on Why I am pursuing a life, professionally and personally, of Christian Virtue in ~humanities

    ShamedSalmon
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    Oh interesting! When you allude that the KJV is the only true version of the bible, are you implying that the 1611 Jacobean-style Early-Modern English is most holy and authoritative, or the later...
    • Exemplary

    Oh interesting! When you allude that the KJV is the only true version of the bible, are you implying that the 1611 Jacobean-style Early-Modern English is most holy and authoritative, or the later post-vowel shifted Modern English of the 1769 edition that people use (and call the 1611) to this very day? What is the doctrinal basis for either edition's authority over the other? I have never received a good answer regarding this...

    What makes the KJV more authoritative, in your eyes, than the Textus Receptus (of which the KJV is based) or any of the other Greek texts?

    EDIT: Elsewhere, you also say, "I think some of the early texts were wrongfully excluded; apparently there some more women-positive texts out around the early first century." However, those texts are not in the KJV. How do you reconcile your belief that they were wrongly excluded from the canon with your belief that anything outside of the canon and format of the KJV is not authoritative?

    10 votes

  4. Comment on Why I am pursuing a life, professionally and personally, of Christian Virtue in ~humanities

    ShamedSalmon
    Link Parent
    Is the requirement of asking not a condition of receiving that love? For it to be unconditional, should it not be offered regardless of whether one asks? Regardless, you seem to be...

    I'm speaking here of unconditional, affirmative love... All you have to do for Christ's love is ask.

    Is the requirement of asking not a condition of receiving that love? For it to be unconditional, should it not be offered regardless of whether one asks?

    Regardless, you seem to be misunderstanding Buddhism as being a redemptionist religion in the same vein as your Christian denomination, when it is not.

    One thing I am not so clear on: many people who live in the West are Buddhists. When you say "I'm not 100% that if we [the West] fully understood it, we'd agree with it," what group do you place Western Buddhists in? Are they either not considered Western in this case, or perhaps not authentically Buddhist?

    7 votes

  5. Comment on Why I am pursuing a life, professionally and personally, of Christian Virtue in ~humanities

    ShamedSalmon
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    Just some food for thought, if this is going to be normalized on the site: in the event that a Protestant, Conservative, KJV-only Biblical-Literalist or a Catholic, Conservative, Latin-Rite...

    Just some food for thought, if this is going to be normalized on the site: in the event that a Protestant, Conservative, KJV-only Biblical-Literalist or a Catholic, Conservative, Latin-Rite Dominionist take to Tildes to likewise preach their own views, what criteria should the mods use to determine what is or is not appropriate for the site? How should it be handled in a way that is fair to all parties, religious and non, without alienating anyone? What doctrinal criteria would be considered on or off limits while still treating the various faiths of different preachers fairly? For example, anti-abortion is a critical part of the two aforementioned groups' social doctrines; should this be allowed to be preached? Is requiring others to filter it out a reasonable expectation on behalf of Tildes and it's mods?

    10 votes

  6. Comment on What does the delete button on a post do? in ~tildes

    ShamedSalmon
    Link Parent
    Like it or not, folks, this is the correct answer. In fact, if I were to go to google and search for the keywords "tildes.net" and my own username, then narrow the search results to a timeframe...

    Like it or not, folks, this is the correct answer. In fact, if I were to go to google and search for the keywords "tildes.net" and my own username, then narrow the search results to a timeframe that includes when I deleted a post, that post will show up in the results.

    (As an aside, it also goes to show you that Google's indexer still "works," they just continue to thwart the results in many other ways to keep the investors happy.)

    5 votes

  7. Comment on What is the best modern-ish OS to install on older computers? (Parameters within) in ~comp

    ShamedSalmon
    Link Parent
    OP, if you wind up being stuck on an older OS but wish to follow the network advice above, you might consider setting up a proxy machine to handle rendering web pages and serving them to your...

    OP, if you wind up being stuck on an older OS but wish to follow the network advice above, you might consider setting up a proxy machine to handle rendering web pages and serving them to your retro clients. Two worth looking at:

    Web Rendering Proxy

    Browservice

    The former serves up pages as a static image with a clickable overlay, making it compatible with Mosaic and onwards. The latter builds on this by running a Javascript component on the client to allow for things like text input, but this comes at the cost of needing a more powerful vintage machine and late-90s browser.

    5 votes

  8. Comment on What have you spent "too much time" trying to fix or streamline? in ~talk

    ShamedSalmon
    Link Parent
    That would be the very one! It also builds for x86_64 pretty well, if you don't mind giving up support for mods that have their own client/server libs, but this has always been the dilemma with...

    That would be the very one! It also builds for x86_64 pretty well, if you don't mind giving up support for mods that have their own client/server libs, but this has always been the dilemma with such engines.

    While it only builds for Intel, you may also be interested in the Far Cry linux port.

  9. Comment on What have you spent "too much time" trying to fix or streamline? in ~talk

  10. Comment on What have you spent "too much time" trying to fix or streamline? in ~talk

    ShamedSalmon
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    Have you tried applying the Denoise filter using NLMeans, set to Ultralight or light, tuned to Film? For 720p content, I tend to get a decent savings with very little noticeable change during...

    Have you tried applying the Denoise filter using NLMeans, set to Ultralight or light, tuned to Film? For 720p content, I tend to get a decent savings with very little noticeable change during moving playback.

    One time-saving idea you could try is passing the DVD .vob into lossless-cut to extract 15~30 seconds of Mpeg2 video that you can then experiment on in Handbrake.

    EDIT: I thought of something else to try! In Handbrake, on the Video tab, in Additional Options field, try declaring vbv-maxrate=6144:vbv-bufsize=5504. This will set a cap on burst bitrates. You can tune this to be lower or higher, but generally you want vbv-bufsize to be around 9/10ths the value of vbv-maxrate to ensure no hiccups with caching during playback.

    1 vote

  11. Comment on What have you spent "too much time" trying to fix or streamline? in ~talk

    ShamedSalmon
    Link Parent
    I am 16 years into serving files for my family and I have settled on an absurd level of organization and sharing that fits their general use cases. I have some 500+ movies, and 100+ TV shows....

    I am 16 years into serving files for my family and I have settled on an absurd level of organization and sharing that fits their general use cases. I have some 500+ movies, and 100+ TV shows. Here's a bit of a breakdown:

    • TV shows are 720p, H.264
    • Movies are 1080p, H.265
    • Music videos, trailers, and misc archived videos are varying sizes, H.264
    • VBR with a cap of 25mbps to balance quality, space usage, and playback performance
    • MP4 containers for all video files
    • File-embedded metadata in XML format (cover, title, description, rating, etc.)

    The file tree is set up like this:

    Video/
  |___Documentaries/
  |       |___Politics/
  |       |___Religion/
  |       |___Great Pumpkin/
  |
  |___Holidays/
  |       |___Christmas/
  |                |___Movies/
  |                |___Shows/
  |       |___Halloween/
  |                |___Movies/
  |                |___Shows/
  |                        |___Show Title/
  |       |___Thanksgiving/
  |                |___Shows/
  |
  |___Home Movies/
  |
  |___Kids TV/
  |       |___Movies/
  |       |___Shows/
  |
  |___Misc/
  |       |___Anime/
  |                |___Movies/
  |                |___Shows/
  |       |___Games/
  |                |___Game Title/
  |       |___Horror Classics/
  |                |___Gorror/
  |                        |___From Beyond/
  |                        |___The Deadly Spawn/
  |                        |___Xtro/
  |                |___Hitchcock Films/
  |                |___Romero Films/
  |       |___Music Videos/
  |       |___Sci-Fi Classics/
  |                |___Giant Monsters/
  |                |___Godzilla/
  |                |___Not So Classic/
  |                        |___Hercules Against the Moon Men/
  |                        |___Robot Jox/
  |       |___Short Films/
  |       |___Silent Films/
  |       |___Trailers/
  |       |___Youtube/
  |
  |___Movies/
  |       |___Movie Title/
  |                |___Extras/
  |                |___Movie Name.mp4
  |
  |___Shows/
  |       |___Show Title/
  |                |___Season 01/
  |                         |___S01E01 - Episode Title.mp4
  |                         |___S01E02 - Episode Title.mp4

    Holiday "shows" are particular festive episodes from the top-level Shows directory which are sym-linked to form a directory playlist. For example, Holidays/Thanksgiving/Shows/King of the Hill/ contains sym-links from Shows/King of the Hill/Season 0[1-9]/S0[1-9]E[01-26] - Ep Title.mp4 to easily look up those episodes. Same goes for The Simpsons, Friends, Everybody Loves Raymond, Roseanne, etc., etc.. So if my sister wants to throw on Christmas episodes of Doug, Hey Arnold, Spongebob, or Garfield, it's easy to go find them for some Christmas afternoon background noise while the kids play.

    I have standardized this file tree across several households so that each of us are familiar with where to find what we want to watch. Each household has it's own server. Each server is sharing via SMB (and DLNA for Roku, if needed). For about 12 years, I have worked to standardize using Apple TVs with the Infuse app as the television interface for this horde, and it has largely worked out. An advantage of this is that, because all files are tagged with their content maturity rating (TV-Y, TV-14, PG, R, etc.), the Apple TV's content restrictions can be used to password protect access to media that the kids shouldn't be watching unsupervised.

    Because all media is statically transcoded before being distributed, the servers can be very low power, inexpensive, and unobtrusive. If internet needs change or there is an outage, all content is available on a home's local network with no transcoding servers or media scrapers necessary. Likewise, because media is shared at a file level, users can easily copy content to their device of choice for various needs, such as plane or road trips.

    I only started doing movies in H.265 recently, as a space saving method, after I confirmed that the least of our devices could play them back with hardware acceleration. (I am also experimenting with something somewhat non-standard: downscaling 4K 21:9 to 1080p, so the resulting picture is 2160x1080, as opposed to the industry standard 1920x800 that gets called 1080p. I get 45% more pixels, and it looks fantastic on my LG 21:9 display, lol.)

    I'm not recommending you do this, however. Hopefully my neurosis reveals how green others' grass already is. ;)

    7 votes

  12. Comment on The best emulators of 2024 in ~games

    ShamedSalmon
    Link
    MVG's List: RPCS3 Cemu Simple64 ShadPS4 PCSX2 BigPEmu Vita3K These aren't in the video, but a couple of other emulators that deserve more foot traffic: Flycast Xemu

    MVG's List:

    These aren't in the video, but a couple of other emulators that deserve more foot traffic:

    7 votes

  13. Comment on Great shows with interesting premises? in ~tv

    ShamedSalmon
    Link Parent
    Definitely agreed! It's worth mentioning that what makes the show all the more interesting is that its creators have historically disagreed with each other over whether or not it was a...

    Definitely agreed! It's worth mentioning that what makes the show all the more interesting is that its creators have historically disagreed with each other over whether or not it was a continuation of the popular spy series, Secret Agent (originally called Danger Man in the UK), with arguments ranging from "no, it's its own creative venture" to "yes, but we had to avoid royalties."

    For people at the time though, rather than getting a fourth season of Secret Agent, they instead received rumors of the series' abandonment and, well, this.

    It was a new series, with many of the same writers and actors, with the same central star playing a spy, only he has just quit his job for reasons that neither we the audience nor his captors seem to know, serving as an excellent hook for fans of Secret Agent.

    Side Note 1: The last two episodes of Secret Agent would eventually air right around the time that The Prisoner was wrapping up.

    Side Note 2: If only Number 6 had known that it was Smitty Werbenjägermanjensen all along...

    6e seeing you.

    3 votes

  14. Comment on Looking for eclectic and little-known websites that bring joy in ~health.mental

  15. Comment on Looking for eclectic and little-known websites that bring joy in ~health.mental

    ShamedSalmon
    (edited )
    Link
    windows93.net - The OS of the future is here! fakenamegenerator.com - Fake name/identity generator. pointerpointer.com - You point; it points back. tired.com - Tired? Tell them why. fakeupdate.net...

    windows93.net - The OS of the future is here!

    fakenamegenerator.com - Fake name/identity generator.

    pointerpointer.com - You point; it points back.

    tired.com - Tired? Tell them why.

    fakeupdate.net - Press F11 to fool your boss for some downtime.

    corrupt-a-file.net - A free service!

    isitfridayyet.net - Is it Friday?

    isitchristmas.com - Is it Christmas?

    thisworddoesnotexist.com - Words that do not exist.

    zombo.com - The only limit is yourself.

    kagi.com/smallweb/ - Find random blog pages.

    15 votes

  16. Comment on Why am I the only person that loves the movie Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band? It's got Beatles music, critique of capitalism, and literal Heartland values. in ~movies

    ShamedSalmon
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    It probably got panned by those critics because they got the Strawberry Fields treatment, being turned into another one of FVB's mindless groupies. Get back, Loretta! EDIT: At the very least, you...

    It probably got panned by those critics because they got the Strawberry Fields treatment, being turned into another one of FVB's mindless groupies.

    Get back, Loretta!

    EDIT: At the very least, you are not alone; there are a whopping two of us. :)

    1 vote

  17. Comment on Searching for replacement parts for an aging game console controller in ~games

    ShamedSalmon
    (edited )
    Link
    Thankfully, the JDM-055 is one of the more common specs of DS4 controllers. Not so thankfully, replacement boards seem to be $30+ across the board, from what I have seen. (Source: I use the exact...

    Thankfully, the JDM-055 is one of the more common specs of DS4 controllers. Not so thankfully, replacement boards seem to be $30+ across the board, from what I have seen. (Source: I use the exact same controller.)

    I know you tried Ebay already for the whole controller, but it also has has sellers with the board in-stock, such as here and here. It looks like it will be a bit of a wait on shipping, though, and you may want to look around and message some sellers to find out more about the boards before you buy.

    AliExpress has listings for JDM-055 boards as well, but it looks like they tend to be refurbs with varying quality, as noted in the comments of this listing, for example.

    Everywhere I have seen, the board and inner-frame appear to be separated and sold separately, I'm sorry to say. Hopefully somebody else has an idea as I assume you are trying to avoid more soldering. When the motors were yanked, did their solder pads tear off the board, requiring you to score the traces to reattach them?

    Just some food for thought, after you find a replacement board, if you would like to future-proof your device, you might consider removing the old potentiometer joysticks and soldering in some hall-effect ones. They do not suffer from stick-drift like pots do, but they may also feel slightly different when in-game, so you may want to read up on them. Food for thought, though! Here's a reddit thread detailing one user's experience, with further links to updates and a video on stick calibration.

    Oh, one more thing, if you are interested: you can swap the old USB micro-B connector for a USB-C with a replacement board. Another future-proofing idea if your connector starts to get flaky. The mechanical strength of USB-C is much better.

    6 votes

  18. Comment on Morrowind doesn't have any rivers in ~games

    ShamedSalmon
    Link Parent
    I don't know anything about that. I never even met Morrowind! Nosy fish, you are.

    I don't know anything about that. I never even met Morrowind! Nosy fish, you are.

    2 votes

  19. Comment on Morrowind doesn't have any rivers in ~games

    ShamedSalmon
    Link Parent
    I see it as an extension of the illiteracy surrounding the 36 Lessons: "If I can interpret what I see literally, it must mean the developers intended this, were stupid, or just plain liars." The...

    I see it as an extension of the illiteracy surrounding the 36 Lessons: "If I can interpret what I see literally, it must mean the developers intended this, were stupid, or just plain liars." The key to Morrowind's neo-gnostic point is that word and world are not truly separate, and the Matrix-truth about what you (the player who is Nerevar) see before you is actually just beneath the surface, right outside of the light.

    This may be deep-lore, but the land in its current state is supposed to be the result of the Six Realities which simultaneously happened, hence the intentional discrepancies in the texts you find. Rather than pick an ending from Daggerfall to use as canon, the writers opted to make the dilemma itself an aspect of the mythos. They developed it into the notion that every time they come up with a new god (i.e. every time someone apotheotizes), the ouroboros of spacetime is severed and relinked to reflect the new reality of that person's pre-existing deification, e.g. the Red Moment of the Tribunal, the Warp in the West of Talos, etc. The Mundus never really functioned under the physics or definitions of real life.

    Morrowind itself exists to be at odds with Summerset, Veloth exists to be at odds with Trinimac, Nerevar exists to be at odds with Dagoth Ur—it's all a continuation of the circumstances which lead to Nirn in the first place: the conflict between Auri-El and Lorkhan, who are manifestations of Anui-El and Sithis, who are the personified reflections of Anu and Padomay—stasis and change, the two principles of Mundus' reality. They are the word-made-life out of The Elder Scrolls' oldest religious text: The Light And The Dark.

    All other aspects of the universe exist as arbitrary aids in contemplating and sorting that conflict, brushstrokes on a canvas of a world that exists between the game's medium (stasis) and it's player-observer (change).

    Okay, needless sermon over. lol

    In truth, this video is a fun bit of nerdiness and I really like how excited this person gets about rivers and waters in games. Does anyone who played Halo back in the day remember Frank O'Connor's Bungie Weekly Updates regarding Halo 3? I was so impressed with Far Cry's water shaders and physics, but I did not have a computer capable of running it for a long time. Reading his posts about Bungie's development of their water engine got me pretty excited to play with something similar (but better).

    2006-11-10 (bottom section)
    2006-12-22 (second paragraph)
    2007-01-19 (fourth paragraph)
    2007-02-23 (below screenshot)
    2007-03-02 (second section)
    2007-03-09 (first two paragraphs)
    2007-03-16 (second section)
    2007-03-23 (second section)
    2007-06-15 (first section)
    2007-08-10 (Q&A below comic scans)

    For how impressive Far Cry looked, it's waterways did not push you along the way that, say, Zelda 64's did. Seeing Halo pull off impressive shader effects and physics objects which not only floated, but moved with a virtual current are the kinds of details I love about certain games.

    13 votes

  20. Comment on Calls from the Depths in ~creative

    ShamedSalmon
    (edited )
    Link
    Hey, great work! We always need more poetry on here. I hope you don't mind, but I tried my hand at restructuring your text body a little bit: Click to Expand Calls from the Depths The sky...

    Hey, great work! We always need more poetry on here. I hope you don't mind, but I tried my hand at restructuring your text body a little bit:

    Click to Expand
    Calls from the Depths

    The sky unravels,
      thick with ash,
    A choking breath,
      a world's last grasp.
    The trees, once proud,
      now twist and writhe,
    Their shadows stretch,
      and darkness thrives.

    The wind hums low,
      an ancient curse,
    A whispered doom,
      rehearsed, rehearsed.
    It claws the earth,
      it bends the bone,
    And leaves the living
      cold, alone.

    Yet deep beneath
      the fractured stone,
    Where roots have bled
      and seeds have grown,
    A pulse remains,
      defying fate,
    A quiet spark,
      through dark, awaits.

    Its wings beat soft
      against the gloom,
    A fragile light
      within the tomb.
    Though darkness reigns,
      it does not see

    The dawn will come.
      It always frees.

    If you're interested in tinkering with your post, what I did was I placed two   (em-spaces) at the beginning of every other line. I maintained your pattern of four general stanzas, but broke them up into eight lines each, except for keeping the break at the last two lines as you had.

    EDIT: Corrected a little mistake.

    3 votes