thismachine's recent activity

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

    thismachine
    Link Parent
    Is the PSP hacking and homebrew scene still alive?

    Is the PSP hacking and homebrew scene still alive?

    2 votes

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

    thismachine
    Link
    I'm slowly porting changes from Python 3.10's pathlib to aiopath, an async pathlib replacement for Python. pathlib was stable for several Python 3.x releases, but some changes were introduced in...

    I'm slowly porting changes from Python 3.10's pathlib to aiopath, an async pathlib replacement for Python.

    pathlib was stable for several Python 3.x releases, but some changes were introduced in 3.10a7 that affects code aiopath relies on.

    3 votes

  3. Comment on What are you doing in your garden? in ~hobbies

    thismachine
    Link Parent
    They're mostly for decoration, but I plan to make pumpkin curry with them. I live in an area with a humid continental climate, and there are native prickly pear cacti that are able to survive the...

    They're mostly for decoration, but I plan to make pumpkin curry with them. I live in an area with a humid continental climate, and there are native prickly pear cacti that are able to survive the relatively harsh winters here.

    1 vote

  4. Comment on What are you doing in your garden? in ~hobbies

    thismachine
    Link
    I'm growing vegetables this year, and peonies. I want pumpkins for the end of the summer or beginning of fall, so I'm planting some seedlings soon. There are some native cacti that are able to...

    I'm growing vegetables this year, and peonies. I want pumpkins for the end of the summer or beginning of fall, so I'm planting some seedlings soon.

    There are some native cacti that are able to survive the winter here (I'm thousands of miles away from the desert), so I want to get a cutting and trying cultivate it. I've been meaning to do this for years, but I never get around to it.

    2 votes

  5. Comment on Looking for recommendations for half-hour shows in ~tv

    thismachine
    Link
    I just finished Servant, and the episodes are generally a half hour long, but some are longer. It was pretty good.

    I just finished Servant, and the episodes are generally a half hour long, but some are longer. It was pretty good.

    1 vote

  6. Comment on The former Netflix DVD library is a lost treasure we’ll never see again in ~movies

    thismachine
    Link Parent
    A drive that reads a DVD at 1x takes about two hours to read a ~4GB DVD. A 24x drive can take about 5 minutes. That's only if you're creating an image of the DVD you're copying, though....

    A drive that reads a DVD at 1x takes about two hours to read a ~4GB DVD. A 24x drive can take about 5 minutes. That's only if you're creating an image of the DVD you're copying, though. Re-encoding the DVD into a video file depends on your quality settings, the codecs you're using, and whether or not you have hardware acceleration for video encoding.

    1 vote

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

    thismachine
    Link Parent
    Awesome. I love the new Firefox for Android, by the way. Seems to get a lot of undeserved hate, but it works great for me, and I've been using Firefox on Android for several years now.

    Awesome. I love the new Firefox for Android, by the way. Seems to get a lot of undeserved hate, but it works great for me, and I've been using Firefox on Android for several years now.

    3 votes

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

    thismachine
    Link
    chromecast_mpris is a daemon for controlling Chromecasts from Linux that I've added a few new features to, including a new dark mode icon and support for displaying more metadata. Having trouble...

    chromecast_mpris is a daemon for controlling Chromecasts from Linux that I've added a few new features to, including a new dark mode icon and support for displaying more metadata. Having trouble replicating this issue, though. Also, I found out that Linux Uprising took the time to write about chromecast_mpris, which is pretty cool.

    I added an async API to play_sounds and better support for making sure that spawned player processes are killed when the parent process doesn't shut down cleanly. play_sounds provides a simple API over the cross-platform idiosyncrasies that Python's sound playing ecosystem presents.

    I'm writing documentation and fixing bugs on aiopath, an async pathlib replacement for Python.

    2 votes

  9. Comment on How do you choose a desktop wallpaper? in ~talk

    thismachine
    (edited )
    Link
    I just use one of the sunsets that came with desktop Ubuntu several years ago. I customized my Plasma color theme around it, so that's the reason I haven't changed it. I used to use hi-res NASA...

    I just use one of the sunsets that came with desktop Ubuntu several years ago. I customized my Plasma color theme around it, so that's the reason I haven't changed it.

    I used to use hi-res NASA photos. The most recent Jupiter flyby pics are pretty and look really great on high DPI screens: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/juno/images/index.html

    6 votes

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

    thismachine
    Link
    I just released aiopath, which is a reimplementation of Python's pathlib, but is compatible with asyncio and the async/await syntax.

    I just released aiopath, which is a reimplementation of Python's pathlib, but is compatible with asyncio and the async/await syntax.

    7 votes

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

    thismachine
    Link Parent
    play_sounds relies on two backends, playsound and boombox. playsound works on Windows, however it requires GStreamer and its PyGObject bindings on Linux, the latter of which can be a pain to...

    play_sounds relies on two backends, playsound and boombox.

    playsound works on Windows, however it requires GStreamer and its PyGObject bindings on Linux, the latter of which can be a pain to build, while boombox can take advantage of several sound playback options on Linux.

    boombox will only play WAV files on Windows, though, so play_sounds provides a cross-platform API over boombox and playsound.

    It also provides an API for asynchronous playback, which neither of the two base libraries provide.

    If you're targeting multiple desktop platforms and don't want to get mired down in the details of when and where to use playsound or boombox, or if your project uses async/await, you can just reach for play_sounds and call it a day.

    1 vote

  12. Comment on What is a class in Python? in ~comp

    thismachine
    Link Parent
    Everything is an object in Python, including classes and types, and their types, too. In [1]: isinstance(type(type), object) Out[1]: True

    Everything is an object in Python, including classes and types, and their types, too.

    In [1]: isinstance(type(type), object)
Out[1]: True
    2 votes

  13. Comment on Anyone using a lightweight browser with Linux? in ~comp

    thismachine
    Link
    I've got Firefox running on a 32-bit Intel Mac with 2GB RAM from 2006, and it works very well.

    I've got Firefox running on a 32-bit Intel Mac with 2GB RAM from 2006, and it works very well.

    1 vote

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

    thismachine
    Link
    Working on onhold's Windows support. Turns out that playing sounds in a cross-platform manner via Python is tricky. Check out onhold if you think shell tools like pv are cool. I'm also packaging...

    Working on onhold's Windows support. Turns out that playing sounds in a cross-platform manner via Python is tricky. Check out onhold if you think shell tools like pv are cool.

    I'm also packaging chromecast_mpris for distribution beyond Arch.

    1 vote

  15. Comment on Biblically accurate angels and the first sphere of the angelic hierarchy explained in ~humanities

    thismachine
    Link Parent
    You're not alone, I'm seeing it everywhere, too.

    You're not alone, I'm seeing it everywhere, too.

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

    thismachine
    Link
    I'm working on packaging chromecast_mpris for Linux distributions. The app lets you control Chromecast and Android TV devices from Linux. Right now, it's packaged for the AUR, but I want to...

    I'm working on packaging chromecast_mpris for Linux distributions. The app lets you control Chromecast and Android TV devices from Linux.

    Right now, it's packaged for the AUR, but I want to release it for Debian and Ubuntu distros, too.

    2 votes

  17. Comment on WTF happened in 1971? in ~finance

    thismachine
    Link
    I remember seeing a r/BadHistory post about this site. A Google search bring up this thread, but it might be a different one than I'm thinking of.

    I remember seeing a r/BadHistory post about this site. A Google search bring up this thread, but it might be a different one than I'm thinking of.

    7 votes

  18. Comment on If you could rewrite 1 element of modern computing, what would it be and why? in ~comp

    thismachine
    Link
    I'd breathe life back into Palm or HP and webOS, along with Nokia's Maemo, and even Windows Phone. Apple and Google both abuse their monopolies on both mobile OSes and mobile app distribution, and...

    I'd breathe life back into Palm or HP and webOS, along with Nokia's Maemo, and even Windows Phone.

    Apple and Google both abuse their monopolies on both mobile OSes and mobile app distribution, and they could use some real competition.

    3 votes

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

    thismachine
    Link Parent
    Not silly at all, I ended up using something very much like this.

    Not silly at all, I ended up using something very much like this.

    1 vote

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

    thismachine
    Link
    I made a few changes to onhold that makes it faster and more efficient on Unix-like operating systems. onhold is a tool that plays sounds while and after shell jobs complete, and can be used to...

    I made a few changes to onhold that makes it faster and more efficient on Unix-like operating systems.

    onhold is a tool that plays sounds while and after shell jobs complete, and can be used to construct shell pipelines.

    For example, the following will play music while an ISO downloads:

    $ export URL="https://releases.ubuntu.com/20.04.1/ubuntu-20.04.1-desktop-amd64.iso"
$ http "$URL" | onhold > /dev/null

    onhold used to use Python for-loops to iterate over data that was piped into it and pipe it out again. For-loops in Python are slow and I only achieved a max speed of 150MB/s.

    On Unix systems, onhold will open a subshell and use cat to iterate over stdin and then output it. I get speeds of over 3GB/s using this method.

    It's a little convoluted, so I'm hoping I can find a method that's faster and doesn't rely on having a Unix shell available on the system.

    1 vote