sparkle's recent activity
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Comment on Fitness Weekly Discussion in ~health
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Comment on Megathread: April Fools' Day 2026 on the internet in ~talk
sparkle Link ParentThis is hilarious because this was actually how housing worked in Archeage. You had to pay weekly taxes to keep your house/farm and if you were in a player faction zone, the castle lord (aka...This is hilarious because this was actually how housing worked in Archeage. You had to pay weekly taxes to keep your house/farm and if you were in a player faction zone, the castle lord (aka usually the most egotistical asshole in gaming) could set the taxes to whatever they liked, though they usually set them fairly low. Oh and in the spirit of it being hardcore, there was also pvp in most housing zones. So you couldn't even sleep in your house without fear of getting ganked by some dipshit summoning a meteor on top of you.
In fairness though, these were open world housing while WoW is instanced, so that makes it funnier there lol
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Comment on Mumford & Sons: NPR Tiny Desk (2026) in ~music
sparkle (edited )Link ParentHey thanks for the recommendation. Was having a stressful day and decided to give the album a listen at lunch. Definitely has that same "mind feel", almost nostalgic? but simultaneously novel....Hey thanks for the recommendation. Was having a stressful day and decided to give the album a listen at lunch. Definitely has that same "mind feel", almost nostalgic? but simultaneously novel. Something familiar and comforting but different and yet not different enough to cause undue stress. Really brought me back down to level which is nice. I'm on my third play through now. Noticing lots of little motifs that call back to Babel/Sigh No More and you're right - a lot of layering on top. Makes me want to take a road trip now. And also dig out my mandolin and get it tuned up haha
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Comment on An unstoppable mushroom is tearing through North American forests. Fungi enthusiasts are doing damage control. in ~enviro
sparkle Link ParentI love The Black Forager! I grew up in a similar area and knew a few of the common edible things like acorns, honey locust, black walnuts etc. but her knowledge of the lesser known items and love...I love The Black Forager! I grew up in a similar area and knew a few of the common edible things like acorns, honey locust, black walnuts etc. but her knowledge of the lesser known items and love of nature is infectious and inspiring, not to mention her applications of them. I'm just a fiend for wild berries these days - thankfully we have a large thicket of raspberry canes in our yard and I get to graze on it all summer long
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Comment on What’s something you’re putting up with? in ~talk
sparkle Link ParentI'm sorry this is happening to you :( I went through this during the Adderall shortage of 2012 I think. It sucked immensely because my family doctor was 5 hours away (I had just moved and hadn't...I'm sorry this is happening to you :( I went through this during the Adderall shortage of 2012 I think. It sucked immensely because my family doctor was 5 hours away (I had just moved and hadn't found a new doctor yet) and none of the alternatives worked for me. Vyvanse, Ritalin, Strattera, even a hail mary to try off-label applications of Abilify and Wellbutrin.
My outcome in the end of that was not positive so I won't regale you with those tales of woe. Suffice to say I'm in a better place now - it just really fucking hurt and sucked a lot to to get there.
My hope is that full sails and fair weather lie ahead for you
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Comment on Mumford & Sons: NPR Tiny Desk (2026) in ~music
sparkle LinkWow cool, haven't thought about these guys in a long time. Was a huge fan of the first two albums, they were generational for me. Marcus looks great too and they still sound pretty good.Wow cool, haven't thought about these guys in a long time. Was a huge fan of the first two albums, they were generational for me. Marcus looks great too and they still sound pretty good.
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Comment on US regulator bans imports of new foreign-made routers, citing security concerns in ~tech
sparkle Link ParentThis is exactly what Jeff Geerling advocated for in his brief video on the subject. "No sir that's not a network router made in China, that's a mini computer with 5x 10gbps SFP ports made in...This is exactly what Jeff Geerling advocated for in his brief video on the subject. "No sir that's not a network router made in China, that's a mini computer with 5x 10gbps SFP ports made in China"
You'd also be correct on the tiktok analogy. Sounds like the "conditional approval" is basically a bribe to the FCC.
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Comment on Our commitment to Windows quality in ~tech
sparkle Link ParentBased on my time working in corporate IT, yes. Yes they do. We had an air gapped computer for scanning USB drives that customers would bring us. This was for a bank, so a lot of the customers were...Edit: now that I think of it, does the average user even keep around a USB drive anymore? Cloud storage has taken over everything and corporate laptops now typically block USB storage anyway.
Based on my time working in corporate IT, yes. Yes they do. We had an air gapped computer for scanning USB drives that customers would bring us. This was for a bank, so a lot of the customers were using their own computers to do finances on. They were flabbergasted when we told them the loan officers computer had USB blocked.
This was a few years ago, but I don't doubt they still do the same thing
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Comment on Need help deciding if I need to replace my Pixel running grapheneOS in ~tech
sparkle Link ParentAh - for some reason I'd completely forgotten subsidized phones were a thing. I remember always wanting a Fi plan but I never lived in a city big enough for them to do business in :/Ah - for some reason I'd completely forgotten subsidized phones were a thing. I remember always wanting a Fi plan but I never lived in a city big enough for them to do business in :/
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Comment on Need help deciding if I need to replace my Pixel running grapheneOS in ~tech
sparkle Link ParentWow, where are you getting a Pixel 10a at that price? I can't find any for under about 400USD on eBay, Kijiji, Amazon, or Facebook Marketplace here in Canada. The 9a I do see around 250USD but not...Wow, where are you getting a Pixel 10a at that price? I can't find any for under about 400USD on eBay, Kijiji, Amazon, or Facebook Marketplace here in Canada. The 9a I do see around 250USD but not often.
You've piqued my curiosity on upgrading - my Pixel 4 is getting a little long in the tooth. Didn't realize the 9a could be had at that price. Or if the Motorola models come to Costco, I might look into one of those too.
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Comment on Nathan Fillion says 'Firefly' animated series in development in ~tv
sparkle Link ParentAh I meant more a good place in time, not necessarily a good place in the story.Ah I meant more a good place in time, not necessarily a good place in the story.
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Comment on Nathan Fillion says 'Firefly' animated series in development in ~tv
sparkle Link ParentYou're right, I shouldn't have spoken in the absolute there. I've not seen Severance so I can't comment on it, but Apple TV has really been hitting it out of the park with their sci-fi. A lot of...You're right, I shouldn't have spoken in the absolute there. I've not seen Severance so I can't comment on it, but Apple TV has really been hitting it out of the park with their sci-fi. A lot of really unique and well done programming with sometimes risky ideas find a good home there. They're the exception to what has sadly become the rule though.
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Comment on Nathan Fillion says 'Firefly' animated series in development in ~tv
sparkle LinkWell this doesn't give me great hope. Almost as red-flaggy as finding out the Shannara TV series would be airing on MTV. At least the first two seasons of Arrow weren't awful, but it's one of the...Married writing-producing team Marc Guggenheim (DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, Arrow)
Well this doesn't give me great hope. Almost as red-flaggy as finding out the Shannara TV series would be airing on MTV. At least the first two seasons of Arrow weren't awful, but it's one of the few shows I've stopped watching mid-way because it became unbearable.
It doesn't sound like they'll be adapting any existing work as the comics only cover post-Serenity if I recall (maybe some flashbacks) and this series will take place between Firefly and Serenity? Sounds safer as audiences are more familiar with it. The comics weren't particularly great anyway.
Personally I'm actually happy with the brief time we got in the 'verse. When I was younger I wanted more but now that I look back, I'm more of the mind that it ended in a good place. Maybe one more season would have been ok but I fear it would have rapidly gone downhill and then it would go the way of GoT.
I've also personally been getting real tired of all the "nostalgia porn", for lack of a better term. Capitalism ruined Hollywood by incentivizing only making safe stuff. Nobody wants to take a gamble on anything and create something truly unique. But I suppose I'm not the target audience so I'll go back in my curmudgeonly corner >:)
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Comment on ‘I took two bites and had to spit it out’: US candy makers are phasing out real cocoa in chocolate in some products in ~food
sparkle Link ParentIs that the chocolate company from San Francisco? My wife visited a number of years ago and brought back probably 250$ worth of chocolate bars from there that we slowly consumed over a few years....Is that the chocolate company from San Francisco? My wife visited a number of years ago and brought back probably 250$ worth of chocolate bars from there that we slowly consumed over a few years. Definitely the best chocolate I've ever had, couldn't believe how complex the flavours could be and it was ethically sourced. I likened it to high end wine or coffee tastings where subtle process differences make a huge impact on the final product in unexpected ways (if you're not a master brewer/roaster/chocolatier, that is).
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Comment on Fitness Weekly Discussion in ~health
sparkle LinkI got my ass handed to me at an off-ice exercise class on the weekend with my figure skating club. Lottttt of rhythm training, keeping feet moving to a beat, while doing figure skating postures,...I got my ass handed to me at an off-ice exercise class on the weekend with my figure skating club. Lottttt of rhythm training, keeping feet moving to a beat, while doing figure skating postures, but on dry land. Harder than it sounds. Anyway, I had pretty intense DOMS for three days after, but at least today I was finally able to get back to running. I will definitely be doing a proper warmup/cool down next time. And also add some calf/ankle exercises to my weekly calisthenic routine!
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Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp
sparkle (edited )LinkA few weeks ago, somebody mentioned setting up paperless-ngx for their document organization and it reminded me that I'd been meaning to do the same for the last year or two. So after one...A few weeks ago, somebody mentioned setting up paperless-ngx for their document organization and it reminded me that I'd been meaning to do the same for the last year or two.
So after one afternoon scouring the house looking for a 4-port network switch I could swear is here because I didn't think I'd need dual cat6 ports in that area, I gave up and resolved to use a spare Raspberry Pi 4B to interface with the old Epson flatbed printer/scanner I have lying around. I set up Arch on ARM, installed
saneand built a simple shell script to take command line arguments likescan.sh 300 adf colorto facilitate automation, allowing me to provide resolution, source, and color/grayscale.My next steps currently are adding physical interfaces - I'd like to have physical buttons to choose what kind of scan (I'll likely just have two or three mapped to the basic functions I need, e.g., gray adf or color adf or color flatbed) along with a small OLED screen to output status.
I also still need to actually setup paperless-ngx. For anybody who has done this, what kind of resource usage have you needed to allocate? Would anybody recommend offloading any work to the Pi? I believe it's only a 2GB model - currently it just processes scans into pdf with img2pdf and dumps them into a network folder. I also need to tweak the scan settings to the point I can balance size with legibility. I plan to digitize an entire filing cabinet worth lots of text, so most will be grayscale.
Paperless will live on my main docker server with all the other containers, though I can put it in an LXC or a VM of its own. Does anybody have any suggestions on workflows for scanning? I know paperless has divider sheet support, does anybody have experience with that? Or is it preferable to just scan a batch in, ingest and tag it in paperless, then move on? Are there any small local LLMs that can be used in combination with OCR to categorize things? I don't want any of my documents to leave the house in any way so local model is the only way. I can't imagine a simple OCR LLM would require much processing power - my server is old but not ancient with 64GB RAM and an i7-6700k and a GTX970 that I haven't bothered to set up passthru for yet.
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Comment on What's an obscure book/series that you've read that you would like to recommend? in ~books
sparkle Link ParentIf you care to share, are you on the West Coast? I wonder if that is why I had a hard time finding them after we moved from the PNW to the East CoastIf you care to share, are you on the West Coast? I wonder if that is why I had a hard time finding them after we moved from the PNW to the East Coast
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Comment on Wondery App and Wondery+ Service being shut down by Amazon in ~tech
sparkle Link ParentI liked some of their audio dramas like Blood Ties and The Last City and that one Wolverine one I think? but I was never concerned about listening the minute it dropped so I was fine waiting until...I liked some of their audio dramas like Blood Ties and The Last City and that one Wolverine one I think? but I was never concerned about listening the minute it dropped so I was fine waiting until they were freely available on every other podcasting platform.
Seems like Wondery+ was aimed at the FOMO people or hardcore podcast consumers which apparently must not be a large enough crowd to keep the lights on. At least it seems like everything will move to Audible so nobody's out of a job.
I also was unaware until this moment that Wondery was an Amazon thing, so I'm equally glad I never bought into it
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Comment on Two Amazon Web Services Middle East availability zones down after data centre fires in ~tech
sparkle LinkPossibly unrelated, but I had some New Relic synthetic monitors based in Bahrain failing around 0500 UTC today. Fairly certain NR uses AWS as the host, though the checks were quickly resolved. I...Possibly unrelated, but I had some New Relic synthetic monitors based in Bahrain failing around 0500 UTC today. Fairly certain NR uses AWS as the host, though the checks were quickly resolved. I figured it might be some critical infrastructure losing power and a backup generator taking time to kick in or automatic re-routing taking time to fully spin up.
Sounds like it might be more serious than that. Thankfully we don't have much business in the Middle East but I can't imagine working at a datacentre and having your day interrupted by missile strikes. Must be horrifying - hopefully no casualties now or in the future.
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Comment on What's an obscure book/series that you've read that you would like to recommend? in ~books
sparkle (edited )LinkThese are probably only obscure due to age, but the Mushroom Planet series by Eleanor Cameron is especially dear to me. My dad introduced these books to me as he read them as a kid and passed them...These are probably only obscure due to age, but the Mushroom Planet series by Eleanor Cameron is especially dear to me. My dad introduced these books to me as he read them as a kid and passed them on to me. I credit them with being my introduction to STEM and driving so much of my curiosity throughout my childhood and adolescence.
I've yet to meet anybody (besides my dad) who has even heard of them. I remember trying to track down some physical copies a few years ago as I was uncertain where our originals were and the number of libraries carrying them was few and far between.
They were fantastic stories of whimsy and wonder with a bit of an environmental twist - I vaguely recall the mushroom planet aliens being afflicted with something caused by their proximity to earth. I also remember that in comparison to the formulaic drivel of Tom Swift books, these were much more inventive, though maybe a bit less sciencey.
I'll agree with cfabbro here - I used to do bodyweight exercises 3x a week and could do 60+ weighted feet elevated pushups with rings at my peak.
After a two week vacation, some illness, and a bout of depression, I didn't exercise for probably six to eight weeks. When I started back up finally, I couldn't even do one pushup on the rings as my arms were shaking so badly. I thought I'd lost all my muscle too but read up on it some more and decided to reduce the workload and go back down the progression ladder.
So instead of elevated ring pushups, I just did plain pushups until I felt stronger, then worked my way back up through progression to where I was. It really only took 2-3 weeks to get back to where I was. Your time to recovery will likely be different, but as long as you persist, you'll get back there!