Why aren't more practical frameworks taught in school?
I took cooking class & made recipes, but never learned salt, acid, fat, heat
I took PE & exercised, but never learned how to structure a workout
I took sooo many English classes, but never learned the keys to storytelling
Twitter user Steph Smith thinking about learning frameworks
]]>I used to just walk into a store and explain what I need in vague terms and wild pantomime to a guy until he went "Ah, yeah what you need is called Röhrensiphon, here's ten different models", proceeded to reveal their pros and cons and gave DIY mounting advice.
As opposed to that, trying to type "thing which connects sink to wall" into a hardware store's online search mask is a significant challenge for me. Hence my motivation to write down the correct technical terms. Since I also keep forgetting the measurements, here goes.
Bike tire measurements for my mountain bike: 26x1.75
, i.e. 26" diameter by 1.75" width, which translates into ETRO 47x559
, meaning 47mm width by 559mm diameter.
(Imperial and metric standard phrases switch up whether diameter or width come first. Ugh. At least it's all written on the tire itself.)
Don't forget to mount in the correct direction, it'll say ROTATION
or DRIVE
with an arrow symbol. Also don't lose track of any shims (ring washers) that might drop onto the floor during disassembly.
Sink drainage (Röhrensiphon
): The important measurements are diameter in inch for the plunger connector(?) which plugs into the sink itself, and diameter in cm for the end which plugs into the wall (needs a different kind of large seal called Muffendichtung
).
1.25" and 1.5" seem the only common measurements sold, but they're written as 1 1/2"
and 1 1/4"
respectively. Outlet diameter for bathroom sinks is either 30cm
or 32cm
, with 32cm the most common.
For the bathroom sink, I need 1 1/4"
by 32cm
. While you're at it, also swap out the gaskets (rubber seals) for new ones since rubber tends to get porous.
See also Nate Steiner's neat post on house maintenance - he's an XXIIVV webring participant as well.
]]>I used to hate ironing clothes and merge conflicts, until I got pretty good at ironing clothes and merge conflicts. Some chores are just unfortunate realities of life, or I’m just too proud to outsource them. I can’t bring myself to pay someone to do my cleaning for me, so my near future has a lot of laundry and vacuuming coming up. The best way I found to stop dreading these things is to get as good at them as possible.
One of two things will happen. Either you get good enough at the task to make it fun, or you’ll get fast enough to not notice the pain.
So do your homework. Look it up on YouTube, RTFM, ask a friend, read a book. Buy the right tools for the job. Practice, practice, practice! Be happier and more productive. You always have the option of avoiding the task like the plague down the line.
As happenstance permits, I had a laundry-related "Eureka"-moment recently as well. I hate doing laundry. But once I stopped bitching about it and got a second drying rack, it's gotten much less inconvenient. Instead of fumbling to fit clothes onto my first tightly packed rack, I just drape the other half of them over the second one.
And lest you think I was foolish enough to think this was only about laundry and git
, I've also practiced writing law analysis ad nauseam so that it doesn't bother me nearly as much any more.
Note: Since George's site is temporarily down, I've mirrored the content or linked to archival services.
]]>Felix, what in the world has gotten into you?
]]>Then coat the waffle iron in a thin layer of butter and bake away.
]]>Very cathartic.
While going through all my old stuff, I also realized I:
There I thought I was just going full Mr. Home Improvement, but ended up realizing a things few about myself.
I still miss my friends. About time this whole situation blows over.
]]>Please enjoy "Leave the Bottle" by the excellent Forget the Whale.
This is song gave me an instant stinging pain in the heart the first time I heard it. It evoked the feeling of driving klezmer flow and made me remember quite vividly my turbulent year in Jerusalem. Good times, whirlwind of experiences and emotions, and if I think about it, an important step in forming my identity.
And some stories, man, I got some stories. Crazy times, special people. A buddy of mine - who used to rent a tiny flat just down the street from Bibi Netanyahu with his equally insane roommates- brazenly pinching a bottle of Jack from Uganda bar and the following morning once again being entrusted with the keys to the great archives of Yad Vashem. Hours spent on the roof of the Austrian Hospice, overlooking the old city. The souk. The beginnings of Protective Edge. Shelled-out houses in the Golan Heights. Camping and hitchhiking between the national parks and having endless trust in other people. Good times.
I guess nothing quite captures the highs and lows you used to experience in your youth. But one can reminisce…
The whole album "You. Me. Talk. Now." is available from FreeMusicArchive "for free" under a Creative Commons license (CC-BY-SA). Don't forget to pay for the music you like though! There is a small "tip the artist" button on the top right corner of the FreeMusicArchive page. I've pitched in $25 and you should too.
Listeners to "Forget the Whale" also enjoyed: 17 Hippies, especially "Der Zug um 7.40 Uhr" or "Die Frau von Ungefähr". You don't have to understand a word of German to be swept up in their music.
]]>Be really cautious with the amount of baking soda. 1 knife's tip is more than enough.
Adapted from backen.de - Engelsaugen
Image: © Felix Elsner 2021, CC-BY 4.0
]]>Tangentially related lecture: The hard parts of open source.
Collaborative engineering has more problems in collaboration than engineering. Those 'soft' skillsets do not correlate well with technical expertise, especially when filtered through asynchronous (and often pseudonymous) text-based communication. Additionally, some foundational assumptions about the nature of improving technology and society turn out to not work so good.
The patterns of behavior that people fall into because of software are rarely positive for themselves or others. Use and development both invite what Skinner would call superstitions: spurious connections between actions and outcomes. […]This extends to human interactions about software. People can be driven to sociopathy, apathy, obsessive placation, or anything in between, thanks to the sparse, arbitrary, and frankly batshit crazy stimuli they're subjected to.
We're not dutifully working around harmful narcissists out of conscious tolerance or demographic over-representation. They just blend in with all the other assholes we've become.
Reddit user "mindbleach" on Why I'm not collaborating with Kenneth Reitz.
]]>I seriously wonder how the productions of Patricia Highsmith's novel inevitably ended up being so… glamoruous. There's nothing remarkable about Tom, apart from his insidious, innate drive to claw his way up the top of the bucket of rats. Neither is Highsmith's spiteful and contemptuous writing - yet I find myself quite pulled toward her Novels, be it the full Ripliad, "Strangers on a Train" or "Cry of the Owl", or dramatizations such as the excellent BBC ones or "Carol" (The Price of Salt).
The films, however, are a sight to behold. The Talended Mr. Ripley's cast is riveting. Quite the difference to view them as young as they were back then:
So, please enjoy this blast from the past with Tu Vuo' Fa l'Americano as performed by Rosario Fiorello and the Guy Barker International Quintet.
Or perhaps you'd enjoy the song as performed by the Gypsy Queens?
The meaning behind l'Americano fits with some of the story’s themes in a funny way, with Tom as narrator remarking that Americans immediately go for Italian suits, while in turn Italians have a penchant for English cuts.
The rest of the soundtrack is also swell, with Sinead O'Connor’s Lullaby for Cain eerily setting the mood, and composer Gabriel Yared building great soundscapes as well.
Well, the supposed "Vesuvio" nightclub was apparently really in Rome ↩
Sing Jan Swing - Kinetic Type by designer Krystina Burton on vimeo
]]>You don't need any more than plain python and the requests
module to run it.
The SonyDevWorld bot
While working on the bot, I familiarized myself once again with deploying small isolated services with systemd
and it's --user
features. Pretty neat.
I also wrote a small ansible role to deploy the bot onto a server.
]]>For that, we use the styleSheets.cssRules browser API.
Try it! toggle dark/light
function toggleDark() {
let stylesheets = document.styleSheets;
for (let sheet of stylesheets) {
try {
ruleList = sheet.cssRules;
if (ruleList == undefined) {
continue;
}
} catch (e) {
// Catch CORS denials and skip stylesheet
continue;
}
let dark = "(prefers-color-scheme: dark)"
let light = "(prefers-color-scheme: light)"
for (let rule of ruleList) {
/* type 4 == CSSMediaRule */
if (rule.type !== 4) {
continue;
}
let text = rule.media.mediaText;
if (text.slice(0, 22) == "(prefers-color-scheme:") {
rule.media.mediaText == dark ?
rule.media.mediaText = light :
rule.media.mediaText = dark
}
}
}
}
Caveat: If testing this on local file://
URIs, CORS will
bite you, either on Chrome or FF.
On FF, at least you can remedy this by setting privacy.file_unique_origin=false
in about:config
.
See CVE-2019-11730.
For Firefox, you'd be better off installing the website-dark-mode-switcher add-on instead.
]]>prefers-color-scheme
. Not nearly as much work as I'd thought, lots of fun and the results look stunning.
See Dark Mode rework for details.
]]>]]>So we sit in empty rooms and dream our lives away
While the spirits come and go without a sound
Yeah just like you and me, they're tryin' to find a way, find a way, find a way home.
See also: VDiff climbing
]]>Yes, this entry is pretty braggadocious. I felt the need to write it down nonetheless.
]]>I’d rather re-watch 2001…
So much attention to detail, but fails on the larger points. It took me a while to understand what the story was even about.
]]>Solid, but forgettable.
First Tarantino movie that made me realize he's actually still a child. Not because of violence fantasies or lazy non-/racism or whathaveyou, but because he can't let anything in his movies have an emotional impact. Even when a character dies, he just makes you go “huh”, shrug, and carry on.
]]>Even lazier than vice news. I understand the circumstances of the creation might've been difficult, but what an insult. As Jackie Chan says: “Will you go into every theater and tell the audience how hard the shoot was?”
Kinda mesmerizing, mood-based rather than story-driven. Ryan Gosling is so bland, but somehow his movies always end up being very enjoyable, and his "character" somehow remains interesting.
Who would have thought the German film industry could produce a proper thriller? Quite nicely done. A bit outmoded in terms of plot - “Agent uncovers shady weapons deals with evil country, weapons industry and politics/spooks are conspiring, he wants to get the truth out” - but the pacing is good and the actors are performing well (for German standards).
It's got some good shots. The action and combat sequences were great, but the aftermath of the café bombing had the best one: An aerial shot of the city with a plethora of blue lights blinking in the near distance, an understated way to emphasize the state of emergency. The lakeside location was a good touch, and you immediately know it was in Bavaria because the onion-domed tower managed to squeeze into the shots. Another nice one: Behrens paying Lemke a visit in his flat. Lemke just wants his cigarettes, unperturbed by the threat of physical violence, and seems so happy to find them stashed on the ledge. Only when both men have calmed down does the exposition start - that's good pacing.
Scenes of military operations, drone footage, the intersection of the civilian, politics and military, high-ranking civilians involved in military operations - seems we as a society collectively have a hard-on for these things since Sicario. But then again, I also always think “Sicario did it better” with regards to the atmosphere of dread portrayed.
What I didn't like: How the characters were just thrown at the viewer in the briefing scene. You didn't really know who was who, and to the end I still was not clear about Rauhweiler's, Vossmeier's, Schilling's or Grünhagen's position, I thought they were all some medium-ranking underlings in the section. Only after the thing (no spoilers) happens to Grünhagen and did I realize he was the president of the BND, and it seems Rauhweiler was a hotshot on some government committee on weapons oversight with real influence.
Also, German films have a tendency to use disheveled appearance and lacking personal hygiene as a shorthand for toughness, and it's not working at all. Give your protagonist a proper shave at least.
Having Global Logistics be the mysterious cabal steering everything was lazy (and having it be only German seemed even lazier), but the reveal of it being just a cog in the global security machine worked well. Sadly, the resolution and Lemke’s explanations were rushed.
But all in all, very enjoyable. And finally a mature ending! Instead of the family-friendly “evildoers brought to justice”, some proper, believable devil’s advocating and then - revenge instead of “the truth”. That's grown-up cinema. Well done.
]]>Doesn't it still miss the major sticking point; Google Play Services? That's not a problem for Huawei in their native China, where Google barely have a presence, but every western market consists of Android users who already have access to Google Play Services, and already have phones loaded with applications that take advantage of it.
Not having access to Google Play Services has historically crippled anyone who's tried to launch an alternative OS that could otherwise run Android apps.
Blackberry BB10 could run Android apps. Despite being a recognised and trusted name, Blackberry got nowhere with it.
Amazon launched the Fire phone, which was based on AOSP, ran Android apps, and even had it's own preexisting app store loaded with Android apps. In the end, Amazon couldn't give those phones away.
Samsung have Tizen; the in-house OS from the world's largest Android OEM. It too runs Android apps. Tizen's mobile market share is below 1%.
It's the Google Play Services that matter; not just the Android branding or access to Android apps.
Without Google Play Services, every developer whose app relies on location services will have to redevelop their app for whatever alternative location service Huawei provide.
Without Google Play Services, every developer will need to redevelop their app for whatever payment process Huawei provide for buying apps and making IAP's.
Without Google Play Services, any developer whose app relies on SafetyNet validation (nearly every banking app, many DRM related media apps) will need to redevelop their application for whatever alternative Huawei provides. It took years for banks to get onboard with things like mobile payments with Android; will they be any quicker with Huawei?
Without Google, any apps that rely on Firebase (Google estimates there are over a million devs using Firebase), will need to be redeveloped to work with whatever alternative Huawei can provide.
Without Google Play Services, any apps that run as app bundles will need to be redeveloped to run on Huawei devices.
What's the incentive for app developers to do any of the above, when they already have their hands full supporting hundreds of devices and billions of users in an established market?
Furthermore, without Google Play Services, any Android user moving to a Huawei device will lose the ability to backup and restore to their new Huawei device, making Huawei phones uniquely hard to migrate to.
None of the Huawei devices running their own OS will be able to Cast, or access Google Assistant. And, regardless of what OS Huawei use, none of them can be sold in the US.
Not to mention, any existing Android users who move to Huawei's in-house OS will need to repurchase the Android apps they already own, and the executive order blocking Google from engaging with Huawei applies to other US companies too; so in addition to Google's apps being unavailable, Huawei's app store won't include any apps by Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, eBay, PayPal, Amex, etc.
Given the big names who have tried and failed without some of the disadvantages Huawei now face, and in light of the above challenges, how likely is Huawei to succeed here?
Commenter Jimk4003 on Huawai's plans to forge its own path without Google's Play Services
]]>The "protagonist" of a story, the way the Greeks used the term anyway, was the guy who set events into motion. Thanos wants The Tesseract, The Other sends Loki [the "ally"] and The Chitauri to get the Tesseract, and it falls to Nick Fury to stop those guys from doing that. This, technically, makes Nick Fury the antagonist of The Avengers. To make this distinction seems picayune, but, in fact, this protagonist problem is why so many superhero movies suck — it is inherent in the genre that the protagonist of the narrative is the bad guy. The moment you have a main character whose job it is to run around stopping things from happening, you have a reactive protagonist, which means a weaker narrative. When you have a weaker narrative, you end up throwing all kinds of nonsense at the screen, hoping that no one will notice that you have a reactive protagonist.
This is, incidentally, why Batman barely even shows up in Christopher Nolan's Batman movies — he understood that the protagonist of his Batman movies had to be Bruce Wayne, not Batman, and that, for his narratives to succeed, the bad guys had to be reacting to the actions of Bruce Wayne, not Batman reacting to the actions of the bad guys.
Originally: toddalcott.com (Superhero stuff is complete bullshit, but Chris Nolan's films are interesting, so read this)
]]>Charming, but tame. Essentially a children's film from a story point of view. It's odd that until quite recently they were making almost only those… maybe cinema used to be more of a "family experience" back then?
James Garner is incredibly charming. So much so that he makes you forget what a type that "Simple Newspaper Boy from Winnipeg" really was. That 80s infatuation with all things "business" really hasn't aged well either. Go watch Support your local Sheriff instead.
]]>Broken dirty cop with a heart of gold. Nice execution, I liked the limited space idea. The twist toward the end is great. Be careful with the dub, since the movie hangs on the voice actors.
On its own, a great movie. If you're familiar with the Farhadi formula, you wish he did try something different sometimes. But still, riveting.
Homeland cinema: Better than I expected. Not very educational, kinda small-minded.
Masterpiece.
I have the feeling it could have been more cohesive without studio influence. Mediocre. If you're not plugged into current Yankee politics, it will be even less interesting.
Meh
]]>make effort sexy again
(Quote source: jamie loftus)
…the irony of my as of late low-effort reposting of twitter quotes is not lost on me
]]>It's incredible that one of the best things you can do in America, which is speed along Mulholland Drive late at night, is free
from Dan O'Sullivan
]]>Blockchain tech is the intersecting black hole in the Venn diagram of everything wrong with the tech industry. Delusional anti-govt rhetoric, utter bullshit alternating with fraud, solutions in search of problems, environmental waste—a vast domain of vicious uselessness.
Itamar Turner-Trauring on the blockchain hype
]]>Dystopia used to be a fiction of resistance; it’s become a fiction of submission, the fiction of an untrusting, lonely, and sullen twenty-first century, the fiction of [mass media manipulation], the fiction of helplessness and hopelessness. It cannot imagine a better future, and it doesn’t ask anyone to bother to make one. It nurses grievances and indulges resentments; it doesn’t call for courage; it finds that cowardice suffices. Its only admonition is: Despair more. It appeals to both the left and the right, because, in the end, it requires so little by way of literary, political, or moral imagination, asking only that you enjoy the company of people whose fear of the future aligns comfortably with your own. Left or right, the radical pessimism of an unremitting dystopianism has itself contributed to the unravelling of the liberal state and the weakening of a commitment to political pluralism.
From A Golden Age for Dystopian Fiction by Jill Lepore.
In a broader sense, there's nothing to be gained by despairing at the current situation, assigning blame, reacting instead of acting. Create, don’t disparage. Don’t get tangled up in petty debates, have a vision and convince people by laying the groundwork.
]]>Neoliberalism is a kind of statecraft. It means organizing state policies by making them appear as if they are the consequences of depoliticized financial markets. It involves moving power from public institutions to private institutions, and allowing governance to happen through concentrated financial power. Actual open markets for goods and services tend to disappear in neoliberal societies. Financial markets flourish, real markets morph into mass distribution middlemen like Walmart or Amazon.
[…] [Greta Krippner’s] thesis is that the liberal democratic system was dismantled because it was too explicit about who was making choices. People would get mad at politicians when they didn't have, say, mortgage credit, or when the price of milk went up too high. The answer came to be neoliberalism, or creating a veil of financial markets to make all those decisions seem apolitical. […]
Neoliberalism is not faith in free markets. Neoliberalism is not free market capitalism. Neoliberalism is a specific form of statecraft that uses financial markets as a veil to disguise governing policies.
Matt Stoller trying to define the word everyone tends to project their hate onto.
]]>[Some dipshit] quits working and writes spammy blog shit for a living. Hackernews decides people don't like to work because all work is either meaningless or evil, but it's definitely everyone else's fault. Also the entire monetary system is worthless, we should envy the impoverished, capitalism will kill us all, and they all quit jobs they loved because someone was mean to them. The unanimous consensus: take a couple years off and just fuck around.
n-gate on 'cutting ties with the evil corporate world and pursuing your passion' types
Traveling, writing, photographing, ESL teaching etc. is just, to borrow the phrase, ‘fucking around’ and will not make a positive impact on the world. Do what makes you happy in your spare time and start shouldering some responsibility.
]]>]]>The inescapable “taint of sin on all historical achievements,” the necessity to make “conscious choices of evil for the sake of good”—these are soothing doctrines for those preparing to “face the responsibilities of power,” or in plain English, to set forth on a life of crime, to “play hardball” in their efforts to “maintain this position of disparity” between our overwhelming wealth and the poverty of others, in George Kennan’s trenchant phrase as he urged in a secret document of 1948 that we put aside “idealistic slogans” and prepare “to deal in straight power concepts.” Herein lies the secret of Niebuhr’s enormous influence and success.
If procrastination is anxiety towards the imperfection of creation, maybe the best way around it is to adopt the idea that all creation are iterative steps towards perfection - even failed steps.
Apocryphon on squandering time
]]>so random schmuck today finds himself in the following situation: if he goes anywhere, taking uber, all his travel is in [some usage database].
if he visits any website, both amazon and cloudflare have records, which can even be compared. how's that for ECC asciilifeform !
obviously if he pays anyone anything that's tracked. and in his dumbass case, this includes bitcoin
which he buys via amazon instance > cloudflare and he spends via amazon instance > cloudflare.
might as well use fucking visa rather than all this wastage.
then when i say bitcoin is not for the poor, people are like ‘oh noooo…’
why waste all the fucking cycles to do visa poorly ?
Mircea Popescu on payment anonymity
]]>Buying a home is stupid. It may make sense in a strictly financial sense, but I think people who recommend buying your own house completely ignore opportunity cost of that money, and the fact that it locks you into the same career, house and area for many years. In my opinion, buying a home isn’t worth it.
Gabriel on The Hustle
]]>If it makes you feel better about yourself, go ahead and let your toilet stink or take shorter showers, but don't pretend that will have any kind of measurable effect. It's nearly as pointless a placebo as separating your trash is. All aggregate personal use can't hope to even compare to what is done at industrial scales. Remember: the damage that BP did in the Gulf every five seconds completely obviated all the recycling you personally ever did in your life.
Jamie Zawinski during the California drought
]]>Simplicity and elegance are unpopular because they require hard work and discipline to achieve and education to be appreciated.
Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.
Alan Perlis
]]>when you don’t create things, you become defined by your tastes rather than ability. your tastes only narrow & exclude people. so create.
]]>There’s a plugin for MusicBrainz Picard that works with tango.info, which has previously been discussed. Support for tango releases on MusicBrainz is notoriously spotty, since its focus lies mainly on English-language music released by major record labels in the Anglosphere. Hence, relying on MB tag data is not a viable option for mass tagging.
‘El Tango - Pasion y Emoción’ is a good example. The tango.info listing makes a few critical mistakes, so another source is needed. Probably the most complete and accurate information is provided by tango-dj.at.
This script that takes any tango-dj.at URL as input and
spits out formatted text that can be pasted into puddletag or MP3Tag:
scrape-tango-dj-at.py
The pattern, which of course can be modified: %title%~%artist%~%album%~%genre%~%year%~%composer%~%lyricist%~%vocal%
Best to use only a single album at a time.
Before writing the plugin for Picard, I had been using a hacked-together snippet of code for scraping tango.info. It is available here: tinfo.py.
]]>May you never lie, steal, cheat or drink.
But if you must lie, lie in each others arms.
If you must steal, steal kisses.
If you must cheat, cheat death.
And if you must drink, for god's sake,
drink Whisky!
Just put it into your plugin directory, and if your tracks have barcode
tags, it will do all the magic for you. It currently sets genre
, date
and vocal
(singer/s) metadata, but it can be easily adapted for other fields.
The code is here, including usage instructions.
Update: The plugin has been merged into picard-plugins, which means you should be able to download it directly from the picard website. It should be included in the next release of picard, which will be version 1.4.0.
]]>Fleeing the military dictatorship, he travelled via Spain to Paris, arriving, by chance but to his delight, in May 1968.
Imagine Phil Davison sitting there, smirking and altogether being very content with himself for producing this one great sentence.
Onto the music; very refreshing to hear nuevo without the ubiquitous presence of the bandoneón, and the rhythms… not really Candombe; something very similar, simple and moving.
Two pieces for late-night listening: Toca Tango and the great Tango Negro
]]>Listen to it here. There is also this version which is played more often.
]]>