trim's recent activity

  1. Comment on Advice/Venting: My car was destroyed by hail in ~transport

    trim
    Link Parent
    I really want an older MX5. I love the MX 5. Or maybe a Miata (I know). But mostly an MX5. Need to save my pennies.

    I really want an older MX5. I love the MX 5. Or maybe a Miata (I know). But mostly an MX5. Need to save my pennies.

    1 vote

  2. Comment on What are you reading these days? in ~books

    trim
    Link
    I'm on Bobiverse volume 5. This has been the most fascinating series. I'll be sad when I'm done with it.

    I'm on Bobiverse volume 5. This has been the most fascinating series. I'll be sad when I'm done with it.

    2 votes

  3. Comment on Advice/Venting: My car was destroyed by hail in ~transport

    trim
    Link Parent
    In racing games where I can paint my cars, I always end up with a garage full of cars of different shades of blue :) I own a grey car :(

    In racing games where I can paint my cars, I always end up with a garage full of cars of different shades of blue :)

    I own a grey car :(

    3 votes

  4. Comment on Presenting a new (old) way to solve the "album problem" when streaming music in ~music

    trim
    Link
    Apart from when I have my workout playlist on when I go running, I almost exclusively listen to full albums, even when finding new artists to listen to.

    Apart from when I have my workout playlist on when I go running, I almost exclusively listen to full albums, even when finding new artists to listen to.

    3 votes

  5. Comment on Bricks & Minifigs corporate stole a man's $200,000 Lego collection and told him to get bent in ~hobbies

    trim
    Link Parent
    I don't think it ended well at all. Unless you're the corpo who's up 200 grand of some old man's collection. I dunno. That might count as ending well in the USA I guess. I wouldn't know.

    I don't think it ended well at all. Unless you're the corpo who's up 200 grand of some old man's collection. I dunno. That might count as ending well in the USA I guess. I wouldn't know.

    7 votes

  6. Comment on Ferrari unveils its first all-electric car, the four-door Luce in ~transport

    trim
    Link
    Hey, he designed the Blandmobile. If I was in the running for a Ferrari, which I'm not, I wouldn't buy this one, which I won't.

    Hey, he designed the Blandmobile. If I was in the running for a Ferrari, which I'm not, I wouldn't buy this one, which I won't.

    4 votes

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

    trim
    Link
    Avowed : COMPLETE. What an amazingly disappointing game. One I had been looking forward to since that first trailer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3QkO8fy3tg What the hell happened to that game...

    Avowed : COMPLETE. What an amazingly disappointing game. One I had been looking forward to since that first trailer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3QkO8fy3tg What the hell happened to that game I was so entranced by? Lets get some points out of the way.

    What I liked was

    Some of the vistas, if you climb high and look over the land it can be very attractive. Not the same art style as I was promised, but good enough.

    er, that's about it

    Dislikes

    The art style actually. Most of it looks like an explosion in a haribo factory. Not for me this.
    The NPCs are devoid of life, you can't talk to them, they don't move, except the ones you can talk to and then ...
    You wish you can't. The dialogue is super bad. Bland and full of broken animations.
    Story. What story? It's terrible. Maybe I've been spoiled on my RPGs of late but man, this is worse than Starfield.
    Combat. I was wondering if to put this in the Likes or Dislikes to be honest. Perhaps in the middle third when power came online it was okay. By the last act though, it was so very very dull and repetitive.
    It promises much in exploration, the map is massive. But you can only explore a tiny fragment of it. Don't promise me a massive map and then welsh on it later.
    It lies to you about the build variety. All upgrade resources are limited one and done items. So although you could spend money (also a non renewable resource) to respec into a Wizard from my Ranger build, there won't be enough upgrade materials to build a wand, some tomes, appropriate armor, etc. So effectively you have to pick a class and run with it. The game's promise of respec and build variety doesn't really bear fruit. It's just another symptom of the hollow shell of a game this is.

    52 hours then, start to end. Played on PS5 Pro. It crashed a lot in the last act. And stuttered quite a bit too.

    1 vote

  8. Comment on What's your favorite personal gaming memory? in ~games

    trim
    Link
    I think it has to be the flight into Anor Londo when playing Dark Souls for the first time. I'd played Demon's Souls before that of course, and that had some spectacle, but that Anor Londo flight...

    I think it has to be the flight into Anor Londo when playing Dark Souls for the first time. I'd played Demon's Souls before that of course, and that had some spectacle, but that Anor Londo flight will stay with me for ever.

    I love watching first playthroughs of Dark Souls on YouTube still, just so I can vicariously experience it for the first time again.

    5 votes

  9. Comment on Lifetime Plex Pass will cost $750 USD after July 1st in ~tv

    trim
    Link
    I paid for lifetime at way less than this to get credit skip and intro skip. I would not have paid this much. In fact, I wouldn't have used plex at all, I'd have used something else

    I paid for lifetime at way less than this to get credit skip and intro skip. I would not have paid this much. In fact, I wouldn't have used plex at all, I'd have used something else

    4 votes

  10. Comment on London Grammar - Strong (2013) in ~music

    trim
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    I did forget about The Gretest Love didn't I. Interesting. I think it's because when Californian Soil came out, I was glad to be able to listen to them again, and stuck with it I'll give it a...

    I did forget about The Gretest Love didn't I. Interesting. I think it's because when Californian Soil came out, I was glad to be able to listen to them again, and stuck with it I'll give it a listen this coming week.

    (this coming week is now)
    Soon as I put it on it hit my memory. Of /course/ I've listened to Greatest Love before. But for some reason I gravitate to Californial Soil. I really like Greatest Love. Nothing comes close to If You Wait of course, but for me, three out of four ain't bad.

    I've listened to nothing else for 2 days now. Just Greatest Love on loop. I tend to get obsessive like that.

    1 vote

  11. Comment on Tildes Survey #4: What languages can you speak? (Results) in ~talk

    trim
    Link Parent
    I would say ou se trouve les toilettes and I learned my French in high school in the UK in the 1980s, haha. I might prefix that with "excuse moi, pouvez vous me dir"

    I would say ou se trouve les toilettes and I learned my French in high school in the UK in the 1980s, haha. I might prefix that with "excuse moi, pouvez vous me dir"

    2 votes

  12. Comment on Tildes Survey #4: What languages can you speak? (Results) in ~talk

    trim
    Link Parent
    Oh bother I forgot to reply. Native English, fluent Klingon, tourist French.

    Oh bother I forgot to reply. Native English, fluent Klingon, tourist French.

    3 votes

  13. Comment on A fast and accurate tuberculosis test that doesn't need phlegm in ~health

    trim
    (edited )
    Link
    I’m sure our TB test at school in the late 70s was a flower prick on the forearm. If it inflamed, you had antibodies already. Of my cohort in the 70s, mine was the only one to flare up. Oh how the...

    I’m sure our TB test at school in the late 70s was a flower prick on the forearm. If it inflamed, you had antibodies already.

    Of my cohort in the 70s, mine was the only one to flare up. Oh how the other kids laughed, took the piss and told me I was going to die.

    Oh how the turns tabled when they found out they needed the bloody awful BCG then they all went around punching each other on the tops of the arms for days afterwards for laughs.

    Apparently I must have had some kind of TB exposure as a kid but no one was quite sure why I was showing immunity.

    Avoided being scarred for life with that damnable injection though.

    7 votes

  14. Comment on London Grammar - Strong (2013) in ~music

    trim
    Link Parent
    Their first album was a triumph. One of my favourite things ever. So much so I stopped listening to it to keep it fresh. Second album was weak. Didn’t like it at all. I’ve tried a good few times...

    Their first album was a triumph. One of my favourite things ever. So much so I stopped listening to it to keep it fresh.

    Second album was weak. Didn’t like it at all. I’ve tried a good few times now and it just won’t grow on me. Third (Californian soil?) is okay. That’s what I listen to if I want some London Grammar these days.

    3 votes

  15. Comment on Really cool website from Noel Friedrich in ~comp

    trim
    Link
    Found this today. Collection of small games, and other bits and bobs in a cool style. Noel also has a YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/@noel.friedrich/videos

    Found this today. Collection of small games, and other bits and bobs in a cool style.

    Noel also has a YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/@noel.friedrich/videos

    3 votes

  17. Comment on Tiny robot drones learn to navigate the world like honeybees in ~tech

    trim
    Link Parent
    Vibes of Michael Crichton's Prey.

    Vibes of Michael Crichton's Prey.

    1 vote

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

    trim
    Link
    I am sacking off Alexa devices. One of the only things my Echo Show did well was event integration from my Tapo cameras so that when a detection event happened, the Echo Show would switch to a...

    I am sacking off Alexa devices. One of the only things my Echo Show did well was event integration from my Tapo cameras so that when a detection event happened, the Echo Show would switch to a live feed. Very handy.

    The first thing I did was to develop a service to monitor the camera event logs, and if detected, send a rich notification with photo of the event to my Apple Watch. Nice. That's pretty good start.

    Next I augmented that so if the service is running on a GUI equipped environment, either Mac or Linux (sorry Windows fans) it will pop up a live feed to my desktop.

    This is all made more complex because the Tapo wireless cameras don't expose RSTP so you have to use their protocols to do it. Fortunately, existing python module pytapo does much of the heavy lifting.

    Still no Echo Show though.

    So I got myself (another) Pi board, a 4GB Pi 4B and a 7" screen. Put that together, then wrote a GUI in pygame to show a little picture carousel, a monthly calendar, date, time, day, weather, sunrise and sunset in a nice little layout.

    To that I added some REST endpoints to trigger Camera View mode.

    Changed my detection service so that when it detects an event, it opens the video stream with pytapo and feeds it through ffmpeg and mediamtx to create my own RSTP feed of it, then it tells my desk display to connect to the stream view.

    All in all, about 3 weeks work on and off. Couple hours per night I'd say. Sometimes more, sometimes less.

    My biggest problem remaining is that the event detection is slow, because the event log in the hub is only updated after the normal event processing of the tapo software. Their app notificaitons, video recording and storage etc. has happened, which is about 30s after the actual detection event -- an eternity really, most times the trigger is long gone.

    So my final thing is to use SDR to attempt to detect the sub 1GHz signalling that happens between the camera and the hub. The battery camera is always on of course, but low power, doing detection only. Once the camera detects, it sends a burst of sub 1GHz to the hub, which then sends wake up and stream type commands to the camera.

    None of this is public protocol of course, but I'm hoping I can at least sniff the detection burst. Once I have that, I can easily hook it into my notification service to get it to begin the live stream much sooner.

    I've not done much sdr and my extant radio hardware is pretty terrible, but I'd like to see if I can make the radio part work with what I already have. This project has already cost me quite a bit in parts and time, lol.

    5 votes

  19. Comment on Help me test my chess bot in ~games

    trim
    Link
    I tried, and got challenge declined. No matter, I'd have lost anyway.

    I tried, and got challenge declined. No matter, I'd have lost anyway.

    2 votes

  20. Comment on Apple has reached a preliminary deal with Intel to make chips in the US in ~tech

    trim
    Link Parent
    Well, plus, if the PC handheld (or desktop, really) market in general starts drifting towards ARM for performance / power / whatever reasons, they could take advantage of that. Pretty small market...

    Well, plus, if the PC handheld (or desktop, really) market in general starts drifting towards ARM for performance / power / whatever reasons, they could take advantage of that. Pretty small market though I guess. But it could grow.

    4 votes