bugsmith's recent activity

  1. Comment on A Parade of Horribles - Matt Dinniman (Dungeon Crawler Carl #8) in ~books

    bugsmith
    Link Parent
    I have thought about this on a million different occasions. This would be an absolutely killer feature for me.

    I have thought about this on a million different occasions. This would be an absolutely killer feature for me.

    2 votes

  2. Comment on You can now use your Gmail account in Proton Mail in ~tech

    bugsmith
    Link Parent
    As a burn victim, I can confirm it's an unfortunate truth of Proton. I transitioned to Fastmail as I realised that email encryption wasn't worthwhile when 95% of the people I email are on either...

    As a burn victim, I can confirm it's an unfortunate truth of Proton. I transitioned to Fastmail as I realised that email encryption wasn't worthwhile when 95% of the people I email are on either gmail or or whatever corporate email provider their company uses (likely gmail, office365 or something similar). Having not initially used my own custom domain has made getting everything moved over a long slog.

    I really like Proton as a company, but felt too much friction from their product. What ultimately pushed me was the lacklustre search capability. They can't offer server based search thanks to encryption, so they try to offset it with a local indexing and search option - but it's poor, or at least it was one year ago. I can no longer recall specifics but found it frustrating when searching for terms that were a substring of something like a sender address or a filename, and it would turn up nothing.

    1 vote

  3. Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games

    bugsmith
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    I booted up Divinity Original Sin 2: Definitive Edition after leaving it sat in my library untouched for months. I played DOS2 shortly after release, having been very excited by Larian's teasers....

    I booted up Divinity Original Sin 2: Definitive Edition after leaving it sat in my library untouched for months. I played DOS2 shortly after release, having been very excited by Larian's teasers. This game holds up so well. The world and character design is second to none and I adore the strategic and varied combat. I also love that it allows you to respec your characters without penalty, which stops me from my usual endless rerolling cycle I fall into in games with this much customization.

    I really need to pick Baldurs Gate 3 back up. I was having a blast with that, but having nearly finished Act 1 I just got bored in the underworld and haven't touched it in well over a year now. I think I've stopped literally at the point I'd just need to walk out of Act 1 now to progress.

    2 votes

  4. Comment on Maybe just eat the bean goo in ~food

    bugsmith
    Link Parent
    I can't imagine you're washing anything from the bean surface that isn't found at the same concentration in the remaining liquid. It's almost the reverse of people who don't wet the toothpaste...

    I can't imagine you're washing anything from the bean surface that isn't found at the same concentration in the remaining liquid. It's almost the reverse of people who don't wet the toothpaste because they're "washing the fluoride off". In both cases, the amount being removed is going to be negligible.

    I do know the taste you're referring to though. I find that it disappears as long as I bring whatever I'm cooking to the boil for at least a few minutes.

    3 votes

  5. Comment on Midweek Movie Free Talk in ~movies

    bugsmith
    Link
    Shoplifters by Hirokazu Kore-eda This was my introduction to films by this director and I'm going to go down the rabbit hole, because this film was exceptional. I stumbled across it when looking...

    Shoplifters by Hirokazu Kore-eda

    This was my introduction to films by this director and I'm going to go down the rabbit hole, because this film was exceptional.

    I stumbled across it when looking for something with a similar vibe to Parasite. I specifically wanted something set in East Asia, as I've become fascinated with the aesthetic and cultural differences to the west. This did tick the box, but without the thriller elements - which I was happy for.

    The film explores what it means to be a family. The story is warm and cosy, but with a constant background dread that everything will inevitably go wrong. Not in a horrific way. Just knowing that a nice but tenuous situation just can't last. Nice is probably not the right word. From an outside perspective characters are in a very dire situation living in poverty. But they are happy.

    It is a character lead plot, with superb acting and a tight narrative. Sakura Ando's performance, in particular, was stellar. There are several scenes with her that have stuck with me and left me pondering.

    Strong recommendation to anyone who enjoys character driven stories.

    2 votes

  6. Comment on Do you play knock-offs of celebrated indie games? in ~games

    bugsmith
    Link Parent
    Couldn't have said it better myself. I certainly hate cheap imitations that try to ride on the good name of the original. But if we didn't have derivative work, then many of our favourite games...

    Couldn't have said it better myself. I certainly hate cheap imitations that try to ride on the good name of the original. But if we didn't have derivative work, then many of our favourite games would simply never exist. Look at the many roguelikes and roguelites that ultimately take their inspiration from, as the name implies, Rogue.

    One could argue Rimworld is a "knockoff" of Dwarf Fortress, and even the beloved Factorio was made with inspiratation from the Minecraft mod IndustrialCraft (or BuildCraft).

    10 votes

  7. Comment on Fitness Weekly Discussion in ~health

    bugsmith
    Link
    I ran the London marathon on Sunday. A day of mixed emotions. It was incredible and breathtaking as you might expect. Running across Tower Bridge a little over half way through will be a core...

    I ran the London marathon on Sunday.

    A day of mixed emotions. It was incredible and breathtaking as you might expect. Running across Tower Bridge a little over half way through will be a core memory for the rest of my life.

    Sadly, I injured my knee around 20k in due to someone cutting in front of me during a narrow stretch. It wasn't malicious, they were in their own zone and impatient to get past people. But it caused me to stumble and twist my leg in catching myself.

    By 30k, my knee was in agony and I was ready to just stop and cry, feeling I'd wasted my chance and all the training.

    Fortunately, my wife and lots of my family came to support me and managed to spot me three times during the run. Approaching them to hug them and have them cheer me was like taking a senzu bean. It's hard to describe how good it felt to see them.

    My knee didn't really recover but adrenaline and grit kicked on and I managed to finish.

    My goal was 4:00 - 4:15, and I finished in 4:58.

    I am, of course, a little sad to have fallen short of a goal I'd trained hard to achieve. But this was my first marathon, and crossing that line was one of the sweetest feelings I've ever felt.

    London did an incredible job of selling itself during the event. It was incredibly well organised and the atmosphere was second to none.

    5 votes

  8. Comment on Reddit reports 69% jump in revenue, topping analyst estimates in ~tech

    bugsmith
    Link Parent
    I still use Reddit to access some communities that don't seem to exist in any meaningful size outside of Facebook, and I refuse to use the latter. I hate being forced to use the app just to have a...

    I still use Reddit to access some communities that don't seem to exist in any meaningful size outside of Facebook, and I refuse to use the latter.

    I hate being forced to use the app just to have a decent mobile experience. Fortunately, on android, Morphe exists. It's made by the old ReVanced team, and it transforms the official Reddit app from something hideous, into something not terrible.

    Still nothing on Sync, RiF or Apollo, of course.

    2 votes

  9. Comment on I love bioparks in ~travel

    bugsmith
    Link
    I'm not sure it hits the same flavour as other suggestions here, but Eden Project in Cornwall, UK Is super cool and definitely worth a visit. Then there is Kew Garden in London, which I'm sure is...

    I'm not sure it hits the same flavour as other suggestions here, but Eden Project in Cornwall, UK Is super cool and definitely worth a visit.

    Then there is Kew Garden in London, which I'm sure is the UK's most well known botanical garden.

    And for anyone visiting Oxford, there is the Oxford University Botanic Garden. What I love about this one, other than being local to me, is that it's pretty small and easy to squeeze into a day of other tourist activities.

    2 votes

  10. Comment on What is your favorite dinosaur? in ~talk

    bugsmith
    Link Parent
    The murder-chicken variety.

    The murder-chicken variety.

    7 votes

  11. Comment on What is your favorite dinosaur? in ~talk

    bugsmith
    Link
    Team #velociraptor checking in.

    Team #velociraptor checking in.

    6 votes

  12. Comment on Orbitals | Gameplay reveal trailer in ~games

    bugsmith
    Link
    The art style on this is insane. I've never heard of this until now, but consider me interested for that reason alone.

    The art style on this is insane. I've never heard of this until now, but consider me interested for that reason alone.

    3 votes

  13. Comment on Godzilla Minus Zero | First look teaser in ~movies

    bugsmith
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    Okay. That's enough to convince me. I need to finally bite the bullet and watch Minus One, because this is looking like it's going to be fantastic. For no reason at all, really, I've been putting...

    Okay. That's enough to convince me. I need to finally bite the bullet and watch Minus One, because this is looking like it's going to be fantastic. For no reason at all, really, I've been putting off Minus One for years.

    7 votes

  14. Comment on Things you didn't know about (Postgres) indexes in ~comp

    bugsmith
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    This is a blog post I wrote after having a couple of work projects lead me to learning far more about indexes than I'd ever bothered to in the past. In particular: Functional, Partial and Covering...

    This is a blog post I wrote after having a couple of work projects lead me to learning far more about indexes than I'd ever bothered to in the past.

    In particular: Functional, Partial and Covering indexes had never appeared on my radar. I felt like I couldn't be the only one to have slept on the capabilities of indexes beyond the more obvious single and composite index we use all the time.

    I'm sure this is less interesting to seasoned database engineers, but perhaps more so to software engineers that have not yet gone very deep with database optimisation.

    4 votes

  16. Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp

    bugsmith
    Link Parent
    Honestly, this makes Go my absolute favourite language for anything more than a short lived script. Statically linked binaries in a type safe garbage collected language is just magic. Not my...

    Honestly, this makes Go my absolute favourite language for anything more than a short lived script. Statically linked binaries in a type safe garbage collected language is just magic.

    Not my favourite syntax and it breaks me that we can't have (proper) enums or ADTs. But it wins so strongly elsewhere.

    4 votes

  17. Comment on Proton Meet isn't what they told you it was in ~tech

    bugsmith
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    I have to lead with this: I hate this trend of articles using scroll fade. It's horrendous. I couldn't get through this without relying on reader view. I have lost all interest in Proton's email...

    I have to lead with this: I hate this trend of articles using scroll fade. It's horrendous. I couldn't get through this without relying on reader view.

    I have lost all interest in Proton's email products. Early days, I was a huge fan. It was exciting to see a Google competitor picking up steam. And privacy by default too? Chefs kiss.

    But I find the whole thing fundamentally flawed. As pointed out here, if you're not receiving from another Proton user (or someone encrypting before send) then you're no more secure from the provider than with any other service.

    And when sending to a non-proton user, you must consider anything you said compromised as soon as it hits a Google server (or insert other big tech provider) in plain text.

    That all said, I don't actually think Meet is as flawed a product as the article makes out. My understanding is that a government agency would be able to see that you used the product but not who you interacted with. I think Proton could be far more transparent about the limitations.

    2 votes

  18. Comment on Adding live reload to a static site generator written in Go in ~comp

    bugsmith
    Link Parent
    Thanks talklittle, this was exactly the kind of feedback I was hoping to receive. I really like your suggested approach of writing in plain English without code, before adding examples back in. I...

    Thanks talklittle, this was exactly the kind of feedback I was hoping to receive.

    I really like your suggested approach of writing in plain English without code, before adding examples back in. I might even take that slightly further and have the code snippets collapsed, or condensed with the option to expand for those interested.

    I have a link to the full code in a repository at the end. Are you suggesting it might be better to have the full code written directly into an appendix?

  19. Comment on Adding live reload to a static site generator written in Go in ~comp

    bugsmith
    Link
    Hey folks. I'm sharing a guide I wrote mostly as a form of self documentation or "Blogumentation", a word I've recently come across and liked. I've never had a blog before, as I've never felt I...

    Hey folks.

    I'm sharing a guide I wrote mostly as a form of self documentation or "Blogumentation", a word I've recently come across and liked.

    I've never had a blog before, as I've never felt I had much reason to keep one. But writing more is one of my themes this year, and so, now I have one.

    I'd be really keen to hear feedback on any of: my writing style; the technical content of the post; or even the site itself, which is generated with the software I'm writing about (the dreaded "build a static site generator and then write about the process" trope).

    I feel a little bit ick about posting a link to my own site here, but it seems to fall within the guidelines and I don't know how else I'd find anyone to read it other than share it on forums I frequent.

    4 votes