Boojum's recent activity
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Comment on Colossal Game Adventure: September 2026 nominations topic in ~games
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Comment on What's a show you love that's from before your time? in ~tv
Boojum Link ParentNick-at-Night fan? "That's the second biggest <X> I've ever seen!"Nick-at-Night fan?
"That's the second biggest <X> I've ever seen!"
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Comment on That book you remember some details but can't recall the title in ~books
Boojum Link ParentI had one of those cases of a short story that I'd read in a sci-fi anthology as a kid, had always stuck in my mind, and than I had gone years without being able to find again. A couple months...I had one of those cases of a short story that I'd read in a sci-fi anthology as a kid, had always stuck in my mind, and than I had gone years without being able to find again. A couple months ago, I tried a free AI and it was able to find it for me. (It turned out to be Bubbles by David Brin.)
They also helped me track down another lost anthologized short story that had stuck with me (The Short Ones by Raymond Banks).
Say what you will of modern LLMs, but they are pretty good at this sort of thing.
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Comment on What are your "how on earth did I not learn this sooner" tech moments? in ~tech
Boojum Link ParentIt gets better! By default on most systems, man just pipes the manual page through the less pager to do the actual viewing. The above tip about slash, N, and Shift-N is all less behavior. And you...It gets better! By default on most systems,
manjust pipes the manual page through thelesspager to do the actual viewing. The above tip about slash, N, and Shift-N is alllessbehavior. And you can use less to view any file you likeless filename.txtand get that ability to scroll around and search. Or pipe the output of some program to it:find ~ | less -
Comment on What are your "how on earth did I not learn this sooner" tech moments? in ~tech
Boojum Link ParentSuppressing history and alias expansion Replying to my own post with some additional tips that just occurred to me. These two actually were ones that I'd gone many many years of using Unix/Linux...Suppressing history and alias expansion
Replying to my own post with some additional tips that just occurred to me. These two actually were ones that I'd gone many many years of using Unix/Linux without knowing:
- If you prepend a space before your command, it won't go into your shell history! Good for dangerous commands you don't want to accidentally redo, commands that involve a password or some confidential info, or giant multi-line commands that you don't want bloating the history, etc.
- If you prepend a backslash before a command, it'll run it without expanding the alias. I have my
pscommand aliased asalias ps="ps -Heo pid,pcpu,user,rss:7,args"and sopsgives me the fancy aliased version, while\psgives me the vanilla, unaliased version. Likewise, I havelsredefined withalias ls="ls --color=auto"and so\lsshows me the listing without colors.
Extended globbing
And some Zshell tricks that I'm fond of, if you have extended globbing on:
- You can use
<#-#>to match numerical ranges of numbers within filenames. E.g.,IMG_<975-1025>.jpg - You can append some additional qualifiers in parenthesis to the ends of filenames in globs. These are the two I use the most, but there are many others for things like modification dates,
m, and file sizes,L.(/)matches only directories. E.g.,*(/)is all subdirectories,*foo*(/)is all subdirectories withfooin their name, etc. Or I can dols -d ~/*(/)to see a list of just the top-level directories in my home directory.(.)matches only files (i.e., the opposite of the directory filter in most cases).
- Double stars,
**, can match a set of nested subdirectories, producing a recursive scan through an entire subdirectory hierarchy. - Oh, and this works in bash and many others too, but in case you didn't know, you can put a list of alternatives in braces:
*.{jpg,png,gif,webp}.
And of course you can combine them, e.g.:
photos/year<2018-2022>/**/*vacation*(/)for a contrived example. That would match, say, a subdirectory namedphotos/year2021/boo/jum/eurovacation/. It's pretty much completely replaced my use offind, especially since it's both more concise and can be plopped right in the middle of a command.Shell syntax highlighting
Oh, and one last one! A while back I discovered zsh-syntax-highlighting (
zsh-syntax-highlightingpackage in Fedora) and added this to the bottom of my.zshrc:[ -f /usr/share/zsh-syntax-highlighting/zsh-syntax-highlighting.zsh ] && source /usr/share/zsh-syntax-highlighting/zsh-syntax-highlighting.zshI'd been nervous that it might make my shell sluggish, but so far it's been great!
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Comment on What are your "how on earth did I not learn this sooner" tech moments? in ~tech
Boojum Link ParentHah! Clipboard sharing, huh? If you want to chain together some tips I've mentioned in this topic, you could always do wl-paste | qrencode -t ansi.Hah! Clipboard sharing, huh? If you want to chain together some tips I've mentioned in this topic, you could always do
wl-paste | qrencode -t ansi. -
Comment on What are your "how on earth did I not learn this sooner" tech moments? in ~tech
Boojum Link ParentI never use ! because it always feels a little dangerous to me. I don't want !r matching some rf -rm in my history. Instead, I prefer hitting Ctrl-R and typing some text to search my history,...I never use
!because it always feels a little dangerous to me. I don't want!rmatching somerf -rmin my history. Instead, I prefer hitting Ctrl-R and typing some text to search my history, since it interactively shows me the matches (with additional taps of Ctrl-R to go further back in history until I find the match I want). -
Comment on What are your "how on earth did I not learn this sooner" tech moments? in ~tech
Boojum Link ParentFWIW, Ctrl-t,k,y,a, and e there are all taken from Emacs.FWIW, Ctrl-t,k,y,a, and e there are all taken from Emacs.
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Comment on What are your "how on earth did I not learn this sooner" tech moments? in ~tech
Boojum Link Parentwl-copy and wl-paste for the equivalent on Linux (Wayland)! (Also works within WSL on Windows.)wl-copyandwl-pastefor the equivalent on Linux (Wayland)! (Also works within WSL on Windows.) -
Comment on What are your "how on earth did I not learn this sooner" tech moments? in ~tech
Boojum Link ParentI use this one all the time. I'll add that you can hit it multiple times to bring back your tabs in the reverse-order you closed them in (useful if you quickly close several tabs and change your...I use this one all the time. I'll add that you can hit it multiple times to bring back your tabs in the reverse-order you closed them in (useful if you quickly close several tabs and change your mind about one of them).
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Comment on What are your "how on earth did I not learn this sooner" tech moments? in ~tech
Boojum (edited )LinkSome of these may be well known, but just in case, in most editing applications and windows: Ctrl-Left / Ctrl-Right - move a whole word to the left or right Ctrl-Home / Ctrl-End - skip to start or...Some of these may be well known, but just in case, in most editing applications and windows:
- Ctrl-Left / Ctrl-Right - move a whole word to the left or right
- Ctrl-Home / Ctrl-End - skip to start or end of the document
And most importantly: hold down Shift while tapping any of the other cursor motion keys or combos to start a text selection or change one. Then you can do Ctrl-X or Ctrl-C to cut or copy it, or Ctrl-V to replace it with a paste from the clipboard. Or just start typing to replace the selection with some whole new text.
Oh, and here's a couple of other handy ones:
- On Linux, you can generally do
ifconfigto see your machines network address (usually local, right after where it saysinet). Then, assuming you have Python installed, you can dopython -m http.server 8000to spin up a little webserver that just serves the contents of the current directory you started it. Go to another machine on your network, point a browser athttp://a.b.c.d:8000/(where a.b.c.d was the address thatifconfigshowed, and note thehttpand nothttps), and you can easily direct copy files between machines over your network. Or usewget -r http://a.b.c.d:8000/to batch download the contents of the directory. (On Android, I'll often use the Share option to send a few photos to Termux, then do the ifconfig/http.server trick in a Termux shell to locally serve them from my phone to my desktop over wifi.) - Want to quickly send a URL or other snippet of text from your computer to your phone? Install
qrencodefrom your package manager and then runqrencode -t ansi https://tildes.netor such.
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Comment on What are your "how on earth did I not learn this sooner" tech moments? in ~tech
Boojum Link ParentAnd in apps where those work, CTRL/CMD + X to cut. Hint: look at where X (cut), C (copy), and V (paste) are on a typical keyboard.And in apps where those work, CTRL/CMD + X to cut.
Hint: look at where X (cut), C (copy), and V (paste) are on a typical keyboard.
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CGA-2026-08 🗡️🛡️❤️🔺 REMOVE CARTRIDGE ⏏️ The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
Warning: this post may contain spoilers
(Cross-ref: INSERT CARTRIDGE topic)
Thanks to everyone who joined me on playing A Link to the Past this month!
Whether you were playing it very first time or the twentieth time, and whether you were playing vanilla, randomized, or multiplayer randomized (!), I hope you had a good time. I definitely look forward to hearing about everyone's experience, e.g.:
- How do you think it held up for a nearly 35 year old game?
- How do you like this style vs. the newer franchise entries?
- Would you likely play it again?
- Did you 100% it and find every last heart piece for a full health bar?
- Any particularly tough puzzles or fights that stood out to you?
- Did you have to resort to any hints or guides?
- If you did a randomizer, what was the craziest thing you encountered?
- Who was your favorite NPC?
(Personally, I had a blast trying the randomizer for the first time, with oddities like getting the flute for fast travel in the first two minutes while going without a shield for several dungeons, not to mention seeing the quirky changed dialogue and trying to get faster at my runs. I'll definitely be playing the randomizer more in the future.)
Next month, we'll be taking a break from our recent sword-and-sorcery run (Castlevania -> Lufia 2 -> Zelda), with u/J-Chiptunator hosting Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 as the final game in this season of CGA.
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Comment on Who likes GTA? in ~games
Boojum LinkLike you, I've personally never gotten into GTA. Thinking it over, I wonder if the issue for me is that it's just a little too close to everyday real life? I spend enough time driving around in...Like you, I've personally never gotten into GTA.
Thinking it over, I wonder if the issue for me is that it's just a little too close to everyday real life? I spend enough time driving around in the city in which I live for real, and there's a significant enough level of drugs, crime, and violence here, as well as homelessness. People in my neighborhood living broken lives...
I'm not against violence in games - I co-led a UT instagib CTF clan in my younger days, for Pete's sake! And I've played plenty of violent games. But as I mull it over, either all the violent games that I've played have either had fantastic settings, or on the occasion that they involve modern real-world mundane settings, it's abstracted out in some fashion. In general, I think one of the things I enjoy the most about video games beyond the challenge is the escapism, and GTA just looks a little too close to home for my tastes.
Perhaps I'm missing out a great series by not bothering with GTA. But I'm sitting on a Steam backlog big enough to last me for years if not decades, so I'm not too worried about missing out.
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Comment on CGA-2026-08 🗡️🛡️❤️🔺 INSERT CARTRIDGE 🟢 The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past in ~games
Boojum Link ParentOn your Randomizer Round 2 Thanks for posting that. I finished it just now as my second ever randomizer run. 195/216 on collection, 4:43:44 time. Still definitely behind your time, but much...On your Randomizer Round 2
Thanks for posting that. I finished it just now as my second ever randomizer run. 195/216 on collection, 4:43:44 time. Still definitely behind your time, but much quicker (by about 4 hours) and closer than my last time. Admittedly, one thing that helped this time was using a tracker site on my phone for the first half or so, to jog my memory of where I could visit as I acquired each new item. That, and having done the first randomizer run recently, so the dungeon routing flows were much fresher in my mind.
That seed was kind of wild, what with having got the flute and so fast travel before nearly anything else, including the sword. (The timer screen at the end showed something like a minute and a half to the flute.) I did breath a sigh of relief after getting the first sword a couple of minutes after that; encountering those first soldiers while defenseless was not so fun. (Though the little punching animation was pretty funny, I didn't want to rely on it.) I remember also being amused at getting a bottle pretty early that had the golden bee in it. It was also crazy how I think I went a couple of light world dungeons before finally getting a shield. I'm used to having that right away, so there were a couple of times where I stood still and ate a ranged attack like a nincompoop since I was so used to having the shield. I did notice it seemed like a bunch of the heart pieces and heart containers were kind of backloaded. I felt like I was sitting at eight or nine hearts for a long while as I was generally finding equipment, rupees, bombs, and arrows instead. I was wondering if I'd end up facing Ganon with only the top bar of health, but then as I was going for crystals to unlock the tower, I started finding a bunch. In the end, I think I was three heart pieces short of max health. Weirdly, I had more trouble getting the timing right on Ganon's final (silver-arrows) phase. I kept being just a little too slow hitting him with the Master Sword before he teleported away again. Not sure why; maybe I was just a bit more tired this evening.
Anyway, part of me is kind of curious to try your round 3 with keysanity, though I probably won't get to that until next weekend at the earliest (when I'm finally home from vacation). The other part of me is thinking of pressing on with my Lufia 2 playthrough before I forget where I was in it. (I made one attempt at it many years ago and got pretty far but never finished, though I'd enjoyed it. I'd been hoping that last month would be a good excuse to try again and finally finish.)
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Comment on CGA-2026-08 🗡️🛡️❤️🔺 INSERT CARTRIDGE 🟢 The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past in ~games
Boojum Link ParentOn vanilla replays That makes sense. I usually head to the Swamp Palace right after Palace of Darkness, just because the Hookshot has been one of my favorite items, ever since my original SNES...On vanilla replays
That makes sense. I usually head to the Swamp Palace right after Palace of Darkness, just because the Hookshot has been one of my favorite items, ever since my original SNES playthrough. But after that, yeah, I'll often do Thieves' Town for the mitts and sword. I also prefer to do Misery Mire before the Ice Palace, just because the Cane of Somaria makes the later so much less annoying.
For Mothula, I almost always use something of a cheese strategy that I discovered as a kid. I load up my bottles on the free green potions from the fairy, then go to Mothula and try to corner it while using the Cane of Byrna. The cane obviously provides protection from the boss and the annoying spike traps while continually whacking the boss if it's properly cornered. Often the cane alone is enough to finish the boss. (I see Mothula as mainly a DPS race boss.)
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Comment on CGA-2026-08 🗡️🛡️❤️🔺 INSERT CARTRIDGE 🟢 The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past in ~games
Boojum (edited )Link ParentMy own thoughts on that seed and the randomizer in general. Okay, I finally finished up that seed this evening. That was an interesting experience, being my first every run with any randomizer,...My own thoughts on that seed and the randomizer in general.
Okay, I finally finished up that seed this evening. That was an interesting experience, being my first every run with any randomizer, let alone one for ALttP. I don't typically watch others do playthroughs of games, so I was not prepared for the silliness of the changed up dialogue, but did kind of enjoy it. I also thought it interesting in how it mostly skipped all the normally obligatory dialogue like you'd normally get at the end of dungeon or to get an important item, and instead just gave you the crystal or whatever item. I could see how that would be convenient for someone who does randomized runs frequently. Likewise, it was kind of nice how they sped up the Waterfall of Wishing and the Pond of Happiness.
As to the seed that I posted, I agree that it felt quite generous at the start, and I ended up defeating the majority of the bosses with the Golden Sword which was pretty interesting. It was fun to see how quickly some of them went down with that sword. For example, it was pretty funny with hammering the Helmasaur King's mask taking the usual time and then him going down in two swings of the sword. Getting the late-game swords, good armor, and the mirror shield relatively early were nice aspects.
On the other hand, I spent a huge amount of time back tracking around looking for the Bow, Hammer, and Cane of Somaria. That was super frustrating. Like getting to the end of the Eastern Palace before realizing that I needed to find the bow somewhere before I could get to the boss chamber, because the doors to the final chambers wouldn't open until I killed the Red Eyegores. And I've gotten used to doing Misery Mire before Ice Palace so that I can use the Cane of Somaria on the switch at the bottom. So yeah, a lot of backtracking around looking for them. At least I found the three in quick succession once I finally did get them. But the frustrating part for me was that everywhere I tried for getting one of those three, it seemed like I just got either rupees or bombs - and mostly bombs! (Admittedly, seeing the buildup at the Master Sword pedestal, only to get a red rupee was pretty funny - though mostly because I'd already got past the Hammer/Bow/Cane bottleneck by that point.)
204/216 on checks, 8:35:53 on time. So you were way faster than I was; I'll have to try to do better next time. I did at least clear all of the dungeons, including the Castle Tower; not being able to get into the tree by the lumberjacks house was driving me nuts, even if I could see that I'd just be getting more bombs there. So in the interest of completion, I quickly ran Castle Tower after finishing Ganon's Tower.
In terms of time, I might also have to try a tracker. I was searching and checking locations based purely on my own memory, and I think I did my last ALttP playthrough about a year and a half ago so some details were fuzzy.
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Comment on CGA-2026-08 🗡️🛡️❤️🔺 INSERT CARTRIDGE 🟢 The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past in ~games
Boojum Link ParentI'm in the same boat of not being able to do it right now but thinking it sounds like a lot of fun. I'd be up for trying it later with you if you like.I'm in the same boat of not being able to do it right now but thinking it sounds like a lot of fun. I'd be up for trying it later with you if you like.
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Comment on CGA-2026-08 🗡️🛡️❤️🔺 INSERT CARTRIDGE 🟢 The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past in ~games
Boojum Link ParentI could see that! I remember my first time encountering him and being very confused too. I think I ended up doing some tests with carefully resetting the SNES console (so as to undo the curse...I could see that! I remember my first time encountering him and being very confused too. I think I ended up doing some tests with carefully resetting the SNES console (so as to undo the curse without saving it) and testing the magic used by one of the medallions with and without the curse just to convince myself that it was actually a benefit. Even then, I think I was still a bit nervous that I might have overlooked something.
Fortunately, this isn't the kind of game to give you long term status impairments. (The worst is probably getting temporarily bunnified.)
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Comment on CGA-2026-08 🗡️🛡️❤️🔺 INSERT CARTRIDGE 🟢 The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past in ~games
Boojum Link ParentGreat, hope you can make the time! (And I know the feeling on having to miss many of the CGA's; I missed many of the first round of them.) Regarding manuals, from one of the Tildes surveys a...Great, hope you can make the time! (And I know the feeling on having to miss many of the CGA's; I missed many of the first round of them.)
Regarding manuals, from one of the Tildes surveys a couple months back, I noticed that I was almost exactly a standard deviation older than the mean Tilderino's age. So I wanted to try to convey some of the flavor of what gaming as an 80's/90's kid was like. And the printed manuals were an important part of that, I think.
So of my all-time favorites for manuals were the old Maxis' sim games. Sim City, Sim Earth, Sim Ant... The Sim Earth and Sim Ant games were packed with a lot of background information and were surprisingly educational. The manual for the original Sid Meier's Civilization game also stands out in my mind.
Nomination: Ys Origin
A fun action-adventure RPG from 2006, now with modern ports on PC/Switch/PS4/PSV/XBO ($5 on Steam currently). Especially once the series went 3D, Ys makes for an interesting counterpoint to the Zelda series in that it's all about speed! It feels kind of like an arcade game meets Zelda in that it rewards you for aggressively chaining from one pack of enemies to the next and mowing them down as quickly as possible, while rocking out to up-tempo music and arcade-like sound effects.
Origin is a nice entry point for the series in that it's a distant prequel, and it's relatively short and linear (so not too much of a commitment). You start at a base camp at the entrance to an enormous demonic tower and try to make your way through the different sections to the top. And if you finish early in the month, there are multiple playable characters, each with a very different play style and a slightly different story for their route.