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beespaceprogram · 8 months ago

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Sticker Cutter Research

I was looking into getting a sticker cutting machine, and I decided to start by looking into cricut which is a well known brand. I had a look at what models they had than their feature etc, but what I was most concerned about was their software. Printer companies like to lock you into a defacto subscription to support hardware you don't really own, and as I was to discover, cricut are operating in a similar way.

The cricut software is online-only*. To cut your own designs you need to use their software to upload your art to their server. There's no way to cut a new design without a logged-in cricut account and an internet connection. At one point in 2021 they flirted with limiting free accounts to 20 uploads/month but backed down after huge community backlash, as far as I can tell.

The incident spawned several community efforts to write open-source firmware for cricut hardware. Some efforts were successful for specific models/serial numbers, but require cracking open the case and hooking in to the debug contacts to flash the chip; not exactly widely accessible. Another project sought to create a python cricut server you can run locally, and then divert the app's calls to the server to your local one.

I restarted my search, this time beginning with looking for extant open-source software for driving cutters, and found this project, which looks a little awkward to use, but functional. They list a bunch of cutter hardwares and whether they're compatible or not. Of those, I recognised the sihouette brand name from other artists talking about them.

I downloaded the silhouette software to try like I did w the cricut software, and immediately it was notable that it didn't try to connect to the internet at all. It's a bit clunky, in that way printer and scanner software tends to be, but I honestly greatly preferred using it to cricut's sluggish electron app⁺. Their software has a few paid tiers above the free one, adding stuff like sgv import/export/and reading cut settings from a barcode on the input material. They're one-off payments, and seem reasonable to me.

This is not so much a review, as sharing some of the research I've done. I haven't yet used either a cricut or a silhouette, and I haven't researched other brands either. But I wanted to talk about this research because to me, cricut's aggressively online nature is a red flag. Software that must connect to a server to run is software that runs only at the whim of the server owner (and only as long as it's profitable to keep the server up). And if that software is the only thing that will make your several hundred dollars worth of plastic and (cheap, according to a teardown I read) servos run, then you have no guarantee you'll be able to run it in the future.

Do you use a desktop cnc cutter? What has your experience been like with the hardware and software? Do you have any experience from home printers with good print quality and user-refillable ink cartridges?

* Cricut's app tried to connect to more than 14 different addresses, including facebook, youtube, google analytics, datadoghq.com, and launchdarkly.com. Launch Darkly are a service provider that help software companies do a whole bunch of things I'm coming to despise, for example, they offer infrastructure for serving different features to different demographics and comparing results to control groups. You know how at various times you've gotten wildly different numbers of ads than your friends on instagram? They were using techniques like this to work out how many ads they could show without affecting their pickup/engagement rates. Scummy stuff.

⁺ Electron apps are web-pages pretending to be applications. They use heaps of ram, tend to have very poor performance, and encourage frustrating UI design that doesn't follow OS conventions. Discord's app is a notable example of an Electron app

#bee talks #sticker cutting #cricut #silhouette #research #garbage software

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cicelythereaper · 4 months ago

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If I wanted to get really into medieval welsh literature instead of just reading everything in our beloved Hergest duo, do you have any recommendations on where to begin?

hi! sorry it took me so long to answer this but hopefully the length of the answer means it's worth the wait. by "our beloved hergest duo" i'm assuming you mean the white book of rhydderch and the red book of hergest, and more specifically the texts collected as the mabinogion from those two manuscripts - if i'm wrong let me know. i'm also assuming that you mainly want to read in english translation, at least to start with.

there is a LOT of medieval welsh literature out there beyond the mabinogion but a lot of it is harder to access. this is a rough menu of options with my honest opinions about how easy it is to get at these things:

the triads of the island of britain (trioedd ynys prydein), aka a big long list of People And Things From Welsh Tradition (Some Possibly Made Up). for this you want rachel bromwich's edition and translation: there are four different editions of this and all of them are expensive (and three of them are out of print). i recommend keeping an eye out on secondhand book websites for the 2nd edition (1978) or the 4th (2014), or bugging your library to see if they have, or will buy, either of these. if you're currently at uni you may be able to get access to an electronic version of the 4th edition.

material about merlin. maybe start with geoffrey of monmouth's latin vita merlini - this is less a reflection of welsh tradition and more an extremely lengthy riff on it, but still very interesting. a new translation of it can be found here! medieval merlin material in welsh is basically all prophetic poetry, mostly from the black book of carmarthen. at the moment, the best place to find translations of this is in the romance of merlin, ed. peter goodrich (1990) - again i recommend looking out for a secondhand copy or talking to your library. hopefully the myrddin project at cardiff will soon have fresh editions and translations for us available online! (in the meantime, here's their twitter.) there's also armes prydein vawr, a somewhat different type of prophecy poem also associated with merlin/myrddin and generally dated to the 10th century, which you can find on archive.org here.

material associated with taliesin. this comes in many shapes and sizes. first of all, there's praise poetry attributed to taliesin and addressed to the 6th-century king urien of rheged: this is mostly translated in the two clancy anthologies i'm going to cite further down, but if you want the welsh text, the best place to find it is probably in ifor williams' edition (translated into english as the poems of taliesin by j. e. caerwyn williams, available from the dublin institute for advanced studies). second of all, there's All The Other Poetry Attributed To Taliesin: for this you want marged haycock's legendary poems from the book of taliesin and prophecies from the book of taliesin. again with these i recommend the secondhand or library approach. THIRD of all, there's a relatively late folktale about taliesin (this is where ceridwen and gwion bach come in): this you can find translated in patrick k. ford's the mabinogi (which it looks like you can get as a kindle or paperback comparatively cheap).

y gododdin, the massive poetic text attributed to aneirin about A Lot Of Dead Dudes In Southern Scotland. this is a tough one to get to grips with, i'm not gonna lie. if you want to get at the welsh text, the massive modern welsh edition by ifor williams (canu aneirin) is still the best there is, but he reorders the stanzas of the poem from the manuscript pretty radically. (to see the stanzas in order, look for daniel huws' facsimile edition of the book of aneirin - or, depending on how well you read medieval welsh handwriting, check out the manuscript itself.) for translations, i recommend joseph p. clancy's, which has multiple versions floating around - there's one in the triumph tree (ed. thomas owen clancy) and a slightly less full one in medieval welsh poems (joseph clancy's big anthology, now out of print). this is the most poetic while still being largely accurate, but if you're concerned about academic levels of accuracy, then i recommend balancing clancy out with kenneth jackson's the gododdin: the oldest scottish poem, which has the advantage of being designed to be used alongside ifor williams. FOR ALL OF THESE you'll need to hit up secondhand booksellers or libraries.

early welsh englyn poetry: by this i mean poetry in englyn metre about historic figures and landscapes. as academic sources/translations, if you can get your hands on them, i recommend jenny rowland's early welsh saga poetry (1990) and patrick sims-williams' new englynion y beddau (2023), but both of these are massive and expensive. a more approachable way to get at this material may be rowland's a selection of early welsh saga poems, which is intended more for classroom use - this you can get for relatively cheap as a paperback. you might also want to check out kenneth jackson's studies in early celtic nature poetry (dated, but i think he translates some of the less-studied englyn poetry in there: again, check with secondhand booksellers) and nicolas jacobs' early welsh gnomic and nature poetry (cheaper and easier to get, but untranslated, though he gives a useful glossary so you can attempt it yourself).

additional arthurian material. this is scattered across various places and manuscripts, but some good places to learn about it, if not necessarily read it, are o. j. padel's arthur in medieval welsh literature (2013, heavily recommended, you can get it cheap as a paperback); bromwich et al's the arthur of the welsh (1991), which iirc includes patrick sims-williams' translation of my beloved arthurian poem pa gur; and the new and exciting arthur in the celtic languages, ed. ceridwen lloyd-morgan and erich poppe (2019), which is going to give you a BIG and comprehensive overview of every text arthur has ever shown up in in welsh. for the last two you definitely want to go secondhand or through a library. EDITED TO ADD: [LOUD BUZZER NOISE] I DID NOT KNOW ABOUT NERYS ANN JONES' ARTHUR IN EARLY WELSH POETRY which came out in 2019! go buy it it's a £15 paperback! an absolute steal for what you get!

high and late medieval poetry of praise, lament and love: the bread and butter of the professional poet. these can be found in various places. for the gogynfeirdd, the high medieval poets, the medieval welsh texts (+ modern welsh paraphrases) can be found in the absolutely massive series cyfres beirdd y tywysogion, but this is not something to attempt to get without a powerful library on your side. the late medieval poetry, on the other hand, is edited in cyfres beirdd yr uchelwyr and can be found online here - which was news to me! much of this material has never been translated into english. for a good selection of translations of some of the best stuff, i really recommend joseph p. clancy's medieval welsh poems (find a secondhand copy or get your library to do it for you), and/or tony conran's welsh verse. a couple of good selections of the later medieval poetry are: the poetry of dafydd ap gwilym, ALL of which is available online in translation here; loomis and johnston's medieval welsh poems: an anthology; and dafydd johnston's galar y beirdd: poets' grief, which specifically collects poets' laments for their dead children.

RELIGIOUS MATERIAL, of which there is a shit-ton. my recommendations are definitely going to be missing some stuff (e.g. soul-and-body dialogues, descriptions of purgatory, etc) but here's what i've got. for material to do with welsh saints, i recommend this website, where you can find translations of a lot of the latin prose lives of saints and quite a few welsh poems about saints as well - and if you look at the bottom you'll see it lists a few more books you might want to look into. if you want an even fuller look at welsh saints' latin lives, albeit dated, see if you can get your hands on a secondhand/library copy of wade-evans' vitae sanctorum britanniae (1944). if you like genealogies, barry lewis i believe has just put out an edition and study of bonedd y saint, the genealogies of the welsh saints, available from the dublin institute for advanced studies (though it's not the cheapest thing out there).* there is also a lot of general religious poetry, which you can find edited in marged haycock's blodeugerdd barddas o ganu crefyddol cynnar (1994) and translated in mckenna's the medieval welsh religious lyric (1991).

*i should also say that if you're interested in medieval welsh genealogies in general, you want ben guy's medieval welsh genealogy - this is very technical and probably expensive but if you really need to know who's related to who in the welsh historical imagination, it's a great resource.

(pseudo-)historical texts: there are various of these. the most famous is geoffrey of monmouth's de gestis britonum (also known as historia regum britanniae, 'history of the kings of britain') - this you can find edited and translated by reeve & wright under the latter title. if you want to know about geoffrey's work but you can't get your hands on it or don't have time to read what is honestly a massive text, then i recommend karen jankulak's book geoffrey of monmouth - super useful and you can get it cheap as a paperback. then there are medieval welsh translations of this text (all known as brut y brenhinedd), some of which go on to become chronicles in their own right (brut y tywysogion). off the top of my head there are three different versions of brut y tywysogion which you can find in a good english translation: the peniarth 20 version (edited and translated by thomas jones, edition 1941, translation 1952); the red book of hergest version (ed. and trans. thomas jones, 1955); and brenhinedd y saesson (ed. and trans. thomas jones, 1971). you might also want to check out the medieval biography of gruffudd ap cynan (king of gwynedd 1081-1137), which starts as a latin text and is later translated into welsh. the latin text is edited and translated by paul russell as vita griffini filii conani (2005); the welsh text is edited as historia gruffud vab kenan (1977) and translated as a mediaeval prince of wales: the life of gruffudd ap cynan (1990) by d. simon evans.

edited to add: [LOUD BUZZER SOUND] I FORGOT ABOUT HISTORIA BRITTONUM AND SHOULD BE PUBLICLY SHAMED. this is a ninth-century latin historical text from north wales, it's weird as hell, i love it to bits and should probably actually read more of it. currently the edition everybody uses is john morris's nennius: british history and the welsh annals (1980), which is not the most expensive thing out there but certainly not the cheapest so get it through your library if you can. this is especially useful in conjunction with geoffrey's de gestis britonum because he was absolutely using it as a source.

the hardest thing to get at on this list: translation literature. by the time we get to the red book of hergest there's been a huge boom in medieval translations of french and latin texts into welsh - and these are often really fun and interesting to read, but under-studied! this is an issue because it means i basically cannot recommend you any english translations of them. if you're still interested and you want to plough through the medieval welsh yourself, here are some texts:

cân rolant, a welsh version of the 'song of roland' aka Violence Violence Violence, edited and translated by a. c. rejhon (1984) - the only thing on this list to have a recent translation, alas;

ystorya de carolo magno, edited by stephen williams, 2nd edition (1986) - a welsh version of the charlemagne legend, this is where cân rolant comes from;

ystoryaeu seint greal, a welsh translation of two french romances, queste del saint graal and perlesvaus: you can find the whole thing in the (very old, undoubtedly outdated) selections from the hengwrt mss volume 1, y seint greal, edited and translated by robert williams (1874-6), which is on archive.org here, and the welsh text of the first part is edited as y keis by thomas jones (1992);

ystorya bown de hamtwn, a welsh version of the romance of bevis of hampton, an absolutely insane text about the worst man in the world which i love dearly: the whole thing is edited (but not translated) by morgan watkin (1958); selected bits of it are edited with a useful glossary for classroom use by erich poppe and regine reck as selections from ystorya bown o hamtwn (2009);

a welsh bestiary of love, ed. g. c. g. thomas (2008) - a translation of the french bestiaire d'amour, aka Do You Want To Hear The Worst Man In The World Tell You Dubious Animal Facts? Of Course You Do;

kedymdeithyas amlyn ac amic, edited by patricia williams (1982), a welsh version of the french tale ami et amile about two identical friends;

chwedlau odo, a collection of fables, edited by ifor williams (1958);

chwedlau seith doethon rufein, edited by henry lewis (1958) - 'stories of the seven sages of rome'.

and finally, medical texts! if you want a look at medieval welsh medical practices and you want to learn a lot of plant names in middle welsh, check out diana luft's medieval welsh medical texts, which you can find online for free here.

i hope this is helpful! enjoy Experiencing Welsh Literature and best of luck getting your hands on it!

#cicely speaks #asnc things #cymraeg #medieval welsh

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thetomorrowshow · 2 months ago

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survival

esh au hiiiii

Announcement: I'm going to be doing whumptober! A week from now is the 1st of October, so in addition to the next oleander update, i'll also start posting my whumptober fics :)

He doesn’t stay in the city because of course he doesn’t stay in the city. He’s the prime suspect in a double homicide, after all.

Still, Jimmy sticks around the streets for a while, ducking into the shadows whenever he hears a siren. After all, it’s a bit suspicious to see a dirty teenager out on his own, nothing on him but his clothes and his backpack (still with his cheap geometry textbook and his assigned English reading stuffed into it, because they make for somewhere to lay his head that isn’t hard ground).

(He’d thought about going back to school, at first. How ridiculous is that?)

He sticks around for about a month—far longer than he wants to live on the streets, but his parents are cremated and so the funeral service isn’t urgent, and is held three weeks after their death.

Nobody notices the sallow sixteen-year-old boy loitering in the church front entrance, listening to the echoes of the eulogy. They don’t notice that he spent the last bit of his money on a white button-up from a thrift store, that he’d braved a homeless shelter to be able to shower. They don’t notice the tears that streak down his face, that he desperately tries to wipe away.

Then the loudspeaker in the entrance sparks and smokes and stops working, so Jimmy leaves.

He knows he has to get away. He’s barely been surviving nicking food from convenience stores and restock trucks. He doesn’t dare show his face at any of the homeless camps around the city, nor any of the charity food organizations. He’s certain that they’ll just turn him in.

But he doesn’t have the money to go anywhere, nor the survival skills to set up in the woods somewhere, so he does what must be the inevitable. He breaks into someone’s house and steals every valuable he can find.

The house he chooses has a lot—expensive electronics and sparkling jewelry, and he feels utterly awful about it but he decides against leaving an apology note and just runs, ignoring the way the door falls off its hinges behind him.

There’s an unforeseen issue, though: for a street rat, he doesn’t really have any connections—and he’s too much of a good kid to even know how to go about making connections. The one time he tries, he somehow ends up with three necklaces gone and a small packet of white powder in exchange. That he manages to pass off for some decent money, but he gets out of that area quickly before he ends up getting into the wrong sort of business.

From then on, he robs the nice-looking houses (he doesn’t really care about security and wears a mask and hoodie to do it, and when alarms are inevitably tripped he somehow evades capture) and only goes for cash. Eventually, he’s got enough of the stuff in his backpack to rent a place far away, a shady place he’d checked out online that’s a good thirty minute drive away from any sort of civilization (and quite far away from here) and the landlord doesn’t care that he’s paying in cash.

How to get there is the next question.

The cross-country bus doesn’t run in that direction, and even if it did the price would be over $300, so Jimmy nixes that idea pretty quickly. He can’t hitchhike, that would go poorly. He can’t steal a car—he’d never finished learning how to drive, and it would be a matter of time before a crash.

He ends up doing what he’s only seen in movies—he hitches a ride on a cargo train headed in the right direction. The trainyard at the edge of the city has very few cameras; it had been a piece of cake to sneak into one of the middle cars of what seemed to be a train full of grain and hide out between the stacks of it.

In that train, Jimmy sees the countryside for the first time in his life.

He’s never lived outside Empires City, and while he’d learned about rolling fields and corn for miles on end, he hadn’t actually believed it.

He believes it now.

It goes on for absolutely ages, field after field after field, occasionally broken up by barns or houses, but not nearly frequently enough. It’s insane. Some of the fields are for livestock—there are whole herds of cows, just roaming around out there.

It’s beautiful, but soon enough, the monotony gets to him. It’s nothing like the city, with its bright lights and forever bustle, and eye spy isn’t fun by himself. Jimmy ends up rolling up his hoodie and shoving it under his head, then lying back and falling asleep.

Somehow, the trip passes mostly uneventfully. He’d done a decent bit of research at a library computer (which had flashed error screens halfway through his scouring of train depot maps) and knows that this train will take him almost all the way to his destination, leaving him with a two day walk into town and then a day of walking to reach his rental. The walking part he’s fairly confident about, and there’s a couple of printed-off maps stuffed into his hoodie pocket to guide him. What he’d been worried about was the train.

The train doesn’t break down, though. The most that happens is a couple of bags split open, grain spilling everywhere. Jimmy doesn’t think too hard about it, just hugs his backpack a little closer to himself. He always gets a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach when his power manifests these days.

He hopes, if Lizzie’s alive, that she’s all right.

She hadn’t been found, either. The last time she’d been seen was by some friends at band after school on that fateful day. She’d vanished off the face of the earth, much like he had.

Jimmy swallows back the tears that burn at the corners of his vision. He can’t. He can’t think about her. He can’t think about his past at all. He just has to—he has to get away from everyone so that he never hurts anyone ever again, and then everything will become okay.

He sneaks off the train at his stop (a small depot, a couple of houses spread about and a place for the train to stop), slipping and faceplanting in the dust. He stumbles back up, hikes his backpack further up on his shoulders, and starts walking, through the tiny settlement and then along the side of the freeway that cuts through it.

There’s a gas station about three hours into his walk, thank goodness. He’s been out of water for far longer than he predicted, ever since his water bottle cracked down the side five hours ago, forcing him to drink all he could until the bottle was empty. At the gas station, he purchases a six-pack of cheap water and a pre-packaged pastry.

The pastry is moldy, of course. He eats around the black spots.

A two day walk. Into town, at least. Then another day to get to his rental. And after that. . . .

Jimmy’s not really sure what’s left of his life after that. Unless he can figure out how to control his powers, he’s stuck out in the middle of nowhere forever. He’ll have to become a farmer or something, raise chickens and grow food for himself so that he never has to subject the town to his misfortune.

For the first time, Jimmy stops to think about his long-term plans.

For the first time, Jimmy wonders if he should be alive.

The house sucks.

The fridge doesn’t work. There’s missing shingles on the roof, and the first time it rains the ceiling leaks all over the threadbare carpet in the living room. The air conditioning won’t turn on, and two weeks into living there the ceiling fan just falls out of the ceiling, narrowly avoiding crushing him (he walks away with some smarting scratches on his legs).

There’s some technically good things, he supposes. For instance, he gets pretty good at using a screwdriver after the cabinet doors and the doorknobs repeatedly fall off. Having a bed is nicer than sleeping on the ground, as he’s been doing for quite some time now. Even if the bedframe collapses on him during his second week. And rent is cheap!

Once a week, the city bus comes by to the bus stop a couple minutes out from the house, near the water tower (most workers at the water plant ride the bus to work), and when Jimmy eventually works up the courage (and entirely runs out of food), he rides it into town.

He doesn’t have enough money to last him forever. He can maybe survive for a year out here on what he has. If he starts a garden, though, gets some chickens like he planned. . . .

Jimmy goes back to the house with an armful of groceries, ten packets of seeds, and three chickens following him. It’s just getting to gardening season, so it’s the ideal time to set something up.

The work of turning the dirt with the rusted rake he finds in the garage is hard, but feels so unbelievably good. It’s awfully nice to have something to do, something that isn’t moping around the house, trying not to destroy everything he touches. He feels like he has something of a purpose, a purpose to plant a sustaining garden and raise three chickens and make something out of the profits.

If things go well, and he becomes less dangerous, maybe he can set up at a farmer’s market. Less exposure to the outside world than an actual job, so less chance of hurting anyone. Still bringing in a bit of money, enough to hopefully keep up with his rent.

His rake strikes a rock, which flies up and hits him square between the eyes. Right. Less planning for the impossible, more cultivating a garden.

For the second time, leaning on the handle of the rake as he rubs his forehead, Jimmy wonders if he’s meant to be alive.

By some stroke of luck, all goes . . . well.

The garden isn’t the best garden ever. The chickens are, perhaps, a bit more scraggly than the average chicken, their eggs more often rotten than not by the time Jimmy gets to them. But he can survive off of it, and for a teenage boy, he feels pretty proud of himself.

And he starts to settle in.

Maybe he can make this work. He can . . . he can just be a recluse, maybe work some sort of online job to pay the bills, survive off of his own garden and animals. If he saves up, he could maybe get a goat or two. Goats give milk, right? Edible milk? Having some milk would be nice.

It’s that autumn, of course, when things start to go wrong.

He’s heading into town for the first time in over a month, hungering for something other than bitter lettuce and tomatoes and eggs and Malt O’ Meal (his last box had run out that morning). Maybe he can spare some money on a frozen pizza (he knows he won’t—he’d already made a list for bread ingredients, a cookbook, and plenty of peanut butter and jelly).

The town feels . . . empty. He doesn’t pass anyone out walking or kids playing in yards, houses shuttered and doors closed. There are only three cars in the grocery store’s parking lot, and one of them is an employee.

The groceries are overpriced, but Jimmy doesn’t have any other choices. He’s thirsty, too, and stops for a bottle of water before heading to the single employee for checking out, but the shelves for bottled drinks are bare.

The cashier checks him out with an apology—

“Sorry, we’ll be getting more water on Tuesday, when the shipment comes in. If you can’t hold out until then, I’ve heard that our Belton location has some. Stay safe.”

And that, more than anything else, really worries Jimmy.

The library’s closed (it must be a holiday, or a weekend, or something), but there’s a newspaper box at the bus stop. It cracks open at his touch, so he takes a paper without paying and reads while he waits for the bus, hoping that it’s recent enough to have some news about what’s with the water.

As it turns out, it’s on the first page.

Hundreds ill. Contaminated water. Reports from analyzing labs that indicate that any water from the tap is deadly—as soon as it enters the water tower it becomes contaminated, but they’ve tried disinfecting the tower or gathering rainwater or taking it straight from the treatment plant, but nothing works. Anyone who drinks any water gets sick.

And Jimmy knows, instinctively, that it’s because of him.

After all, he lives within walking distance of the treatment plant.

It’s there, waiting for the bus, that Jimmy decides that he can’t stay here. He’d always known, deep down, that it wouldn’t work out. He’d hoped, of course. He’d hoped that the creaky old house could have contained him, held him there. That maybe he wouldn’t be dangerous if all he could hurt was himself.

Clearly, nowhere is far enough away. Even when he separates himself from civilization as much as possible, he can’t escape hurting people. He can’t escape himself.

He doesn’t move away immediately, though he’s so disgusted with himself (he can see the water tower through his window, and the now-frequent workers trying to fix it) that he wishes he could. Instead, he spends a week harvesting what he can—a few limp handfuls of lettuce and about a dozen tomatoes—and fixes what he can on the house.

When the time comes to leave, he doesn’t take the bus. He walks, his chickens following along behind, until he reaches the town.

Jimmy lifts the chickens one by one into someone’s backyard, leaving them a couple of tomatoes to eat until their new owner finds them.

He feels lucky that he hadn’t managed to kill his chickens. He really did come to love them—he had built the shoddiest of coops out of spare wood from his shed, and he’d petted each of them on the head every day, and frequently carried one around when he was too lonely to do anything. They can’t come back to the city with him, though—he’s sure that they wouldn’t survive the trip.

For back to the city is where Jimmy is headed. He’d considered just wandering, a vagrant, but he doesn’t exactly have the skills for that. He doesn’t know anything about scavenging or hunting, he hates stealing from people who aren’t already well-off, and he’s been feeling unwell for the past couple of days. He can’t survive wandering the country.

And in the city, there’s . . . well, there are more people to hurt, but there are more people to fix his problems. More places for people to go for help.

And maybe he can do some good instead of just isolating himself, get a job where he can be helpful. Balance out some of his karma.

Or maybe the train he hitchhikes on will crash and burn and he’ll die.

Jimmy’s not sure which would be preferable.

#empires smp #empires smp fanfic #jimmy solidarity #esh au #mas writes #i'm so inordinately attached to these chickens #I PROMISE I'LL ANSWER ASKS I PROMISE #i've neglected my inbox for like. a month #my main excuse is university #but clearly i have still had time to write for whumptober sooo #anyways someone please give jimmy a hug #he needs one #lmk what you think #love you guys

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saintjosie · 1 year ago

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hello i have a question. I want to start trying to make music digitally. But i am a cheap fuck and do not want to buy a synthizer or all the xpansive addons for fruity loops PC. Do you know if its possible to make music without a synth? All of the tutorials i see online requires a synth of some sort.

it’s reaaaal hard to make electronic music without synths but the good thing is that there are some very good free options out there!

vital is probably the best free synth and has pretty much every feature you would want in a synth - https://vital.audio/

helm is pretty similar and by the same guy but has a bit of a different feel - https://tytel.org/helm/

ALSO - within the next few months i am going to be putting out a music class! i’ll have more details on it soon but it’s through studio.com. they reached out to me and asked if i would like to make a course and i plan on trying to make a “adhd guide to learning music”. i also want to make it as inexpensive and accessible as possible!

hope this helps!

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follow-up-news · 2 months ago

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Chinese vendor Yin Xinwei sometimes makes close to $1,400 a day selling low-priced pill boxes, barbecue spits and other items to U.S. online consumers. The future of that business, and the bargain prices enjoyed by his American customers, is now in question amid a looming U.S. regulatory change aimed largely at two Chinese e-commerce platforms he sells on, Temu and Shein. The change, which comes amid rising trade tensions between the world’s two largest economies, is likely to have major consequences for already burdened Chinese sellers such as Yin who rely heavily on overseas markets. “The business model could disappear,” he said in a recent interview at his officein the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen. Both platforms have experienced explosive growth in recent years thanks to a customs exemption that allows packages whose contents are worth less than $800 to enter the United States almost tax-free and with minimal scrutiny. Each year hundreds of millions of packages, mostly from Chinese platforms, are sent directly to American consumers eager to take advantage of rock-bottom prices on clothing, electronics and other products. But this month, the White House said it planned to narrow the loophole, known as the “de minimis” exclusion, to prevent abuse and strengthen protections for American consumers and workers. That could mean painful times ahead for the Chinese sellers that supply the platforms — and higher prices for American consumers.

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semikart · 3 months ago

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#Electronic components distributor #Electronic parts distributor #Electronic component suppliers #Buy online electronics components #distributor for electronic components #cheap electronic components #Buy Electronic Components online #Best Electronics Components #Buy electronic components

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flipzone · 11 months ago

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Buy now- https://flipzoneonline.com/product/lenovo-hs11-smart-weighing-scale/

The Lenovo hs11 weighing scale is made from a durable steel frame covered in an elegant, scratch-resistant surface. It communicates directly with the free Lenovo Health app on your smartphone.

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voskhodart · 2 years ago

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Hey, do you want to learn how to play VHS tapes in the year 202X?

I know this is my art blog, but it has come to my attention that some of you are too young to have experienced the joys of the Video Home System in its prime. Come hither so I can teach you and we can embrace the beauty of physical media together. If you have a thrift store and a TV, this process should work for you.

Step 1: Get a VCR ($4-$15)

DO NOT BUY EXPENSIVE VCR/COMBO SETS FROM THE INTERNET!

The ones you find on sites like eBay and Etsy are insanely overpriced and might not even work. Instead, find a Goodwill, Savers, or independent thrift store near you and go to the electronics section. There’s a good chance they’ll have at least one VCR. If they don’t, try a different shop. You can also check local online marketplaces, yard sales, etc.

Good things to look for:

4 (or more) Heads — Heads are the things that actually read the tape. The more heads you have, the better your picture is going to be.

Auto Tracking — Poor tracking can create a rolling picture, which is a pain to fix. An auto tracking VCR does that work for you.

Pre-2000 — After 2000, electronics started being mass produced with plastic casings and cheap parts. VCRs made after this time are a whole lot easier to break. Ideally, you want something from the late 80s to mid 90s.

Well-known brands — Sony, Toshiba, etc. Japanese manufacturers tend to have the best quality. Early Emersons are nice too.

Generally good condition — If there’s a bullet hole in the case, it’s probably best to pass on. A bit of dust isn’t an issue, but major damage isn’t a good sign. If you can, plug the machine into a power outlet in the store and see if it even turns on.

Head cleaning indicator — Not something you *need*, but I find it nice to have. You’ll want to use a head cleaning tape when the indicator starts flashing.

This is the one I’ll be using for the sake of this guide. This is an old Emerson that I picked up from Goodwill for $7.95. (Notice the five price tags they slapped on top.)

Step 2: Get Some Tapes (¢10-$1)

This is the fun part. Almost every thrift store will have some VHS tapes, usually near the books/DVDs/records. I’ve seen them as expensive as a dollar, but some stores will just give them away for free. I suggest buying a few movies you like, plus one or two shitty tapes to test out your VCR with.

You may also find 20 different copies of Titanic in every store. This is a normal occurance.

Remember to check the condition of any tape you plan on putting in your machine. If the spool looks moldy, you *can* try to clean it, but you’ll need another VCR to do so. If the tape looks wrinkled or otherwise damaged, you can still probably play it, but it will look and sound a lot rougher than you should expect. If the casing is damaged, I wouldn’t risk trying to put it in your VCR at all.

Remember: VHS tapes stopped being produced commercially in 2006. Most tapes you find aren’t going to be in the best shape, because they’re all a few decades old. (Sometimes, though, you will come across a tape with an excellent picture, good sound quality, and subtitles! The Mummy tape that I own is near perfect.)

Step 3: Connecting the VCR to Your TV

For this step, you’re going to want a coaxial cable and a set of RCA cables (the red, yellow, and white ones). If your TV doesn’t have an RCA input, you’ll also need an RCA-to-HDMI converter. If your TV also doesn’t have an HDMI input for whatever reason, you’re shit out of luck.

You’ll plug these cables into the “out” or “out to tv” connection on your VCR, then plug the other end into the back of your TV.

Note: Not all VCRs have right audio (the red one)! That’s fine. Just leave it hanging free. The left audio (white) is your mono audio, so you’ll just have that instead.

Lastly, put the channel switch on the back of your VCR on 3 or 4. I keep mine on 3. This is the number for the channel you’ll go to on your TV to actually see what the VCR is playing.

Step 4: Setting up the TV

I use a little Roku TV, which is surprisingly steady to set up for VCR input:

Settings ➡️ TV Inputs ➡️ Live TV

From here, you’ll either be prompted to scan for channels OR you’ll have to select “scan for antenna channels”. It will ask you if you want to have channels 3 and 4, to which you’ll say “yeah, I do want channels 3 and 4” and click the button that lets you have channels 3 and 4. If you don’t have an antenna, you can skip the other prompts.

I haven’t done this on any other type of TV, but the process should be pretty similar: get yourself to channels 3 and 4 through whatever means necessary.

Once you’re there, it should look like this. Sad, blank, and lonely. But not for long.

Step 5: Playing Your Tapes

This is where things can go really really well or really really wrong. If everything is hooked up, you can grab your shitty tape and insert it into the VCR.

(Make sure there isn’t anything else in there first, though. Some people don’t remove their precious Titanic copies before donating these things.)

You’ll want a tape that’s fairly clean, with no casing damage, and already rewound (black tape in the left window). To insert the tape into a front-loading VCR, slowly and firmly slide it into the slot. Once it’s most of the way in, the machine should “grab” it and pull it all the way inside. You’ll hear the machine make some noises.

(If those noises are really crunchy, that’s probably not a good thing. Troubleshoot with your favorite search engine or head over to r/VHS to see if anyone can help you.)

Once your machine is only making some clunky whirring sounds, it should be safe to press the play button. Enjoy watching your favorite films in the least pleasant format possible. Don’t forget to rewind em when you’re done.

If you have issues, the freaks over at r/VHS tend to be really helpful, but you can also find decade-old YouTube videos that might answer your questions too.

#not art #vhs #retro tech #physical media #technology #analog #long post #tutorial #tape talk

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archergrid · 9 months ago

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“I had a dream. I was in a strange land. A vast wilderness. I went on and on, but met no one. I called, I shouted... but no one answered. I was alone.”

-Akira Kurosawa, Ran

<< Ch1-5 Ch 6-10>>

Chapter 1

Look, I get this question a lot for obvious reasons, so I know you won’t like the answer. It’s dissatisfying. But, because you asked, the best cybersecurity commercially available is something called an air-gapped computer.

An air-gapped computer has no network card. You won’t see a cerulean ethernet cord spouting from the stern of the case. There’s no hard, hollow plastic antenna to receive a wifi signal. It doesn’t have Bluetooth. My compsci professor at Tech explained it like this: there’s a literal wall of air—a gap—between the computer and anything that could inject it with compromising code. This abstinence-only approach makes air-gapped computers cheap, simple, and impenetrably secure.

But much like celibacy, not a lot of people opt for the air-gapped method. What’s the point of a computer, they ask, without e-mail and Twitter and porn? And I understand that. There were days I got so dog-tired of the manual data dumps, of examining each file down to the binary before connecting the USB, of hand-transcribing scraps of code onto sheets of paper, of the day-to-day ennui of existence inside those invisible walls. But when I broke into a system, all I saw back then was each and every way very, very bad things could get in.

The air wall was better. It let me breathe.

My laptop had to be online so I could access those vulnerable systems, but my desktop was air-gapped—a little black lockbox of my pdfs, jpgs, pngs, mp3s, mp4s, xls, txts, zips, bins, bats, dats, all my associate backgrounds and every line of my code. Knowing how safe they were in there calmed me at times like this, when I felt Julian Ek’s omniscient data network watching me like an enormous, electronic eye.

Notifications came like machine-gun fire into my phone. My apartment was dark, black under blackout curtains. I saw nothing, heard nothing, felt nothing but automated search alert after automated search alert filling my notifications: ek trial, julian ek trial, ek trial update, ek trial verdict, ek inc, joseph chambers, joseph chambers shooting, joseph chambers deepfaEk, deepfaEk, deepfaEk scandal, deepfaEk shooting edit, deepfaEk trial. More and more, on and on. I With dread, I went to Twitter, and there it was in blue and white. #EkAcquitted. It was the #2 trending topic, below #NationalVideoGamesDay. My hands began to shake. It had to be misreported—a mistake. I searched “Ek trial” and clicked the first link, scrolling past Ashlan’s disbarment and the Marshals’ conspiracy convictions to read the 6 words I’d dreaded for 4 years.

Julian Ek acquitted on all charges.

Ek walked. I went to the Herald for nothing; became a fugitive for nothing. I gave up my parents, my friends, my condo—my dream job obviously. I blew my whole life up, and now I’m stuck here, all alone on the other side of the world. Jeopardy attached, meaning I was officially of no use to anyone; meaning I could never, ever go back home. This dusty, pitch-black 300-square foot apartment really was my life.

I was hyperventilating. Breath after keening breath, air refused to reach my lungs, only rattle in the back of my throat. My head and stomach and knees went fuzzy. My phone screen smeared as it slipped from my hands. I reached for it and missed. The clatter of it hitting the floor—the dull pain of my thigh hitting the floor too—degraded into garbling static as I sank into gasping, grasping unconsciousness.

#wlw #sapphic #lesbian #lesfic #lesbian fiction #sapphic romance #wlw romance #ff romance #lgbt romance #lgbt reads

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elbiotipo · 9 months ago

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One thing regarding videogame consoles in Campoestela is that by the time it takes place ("500 years after Gagarin") most physical videogame consoles, cartridges, disks, etc. are degraded to be unusuable except for those carefully preserved in museums and antique societies (and there must be countless online games that are just... lost). Most, or rather all games from our current console era(s) are preserved in emulation. Another thing that is always a theme in Campoestela, however, is cultural and species diversity, it's a setting with hundreds (thousands?) of different sentient species and each with their own countless languages and cultures. Things like that are common in Campoestela, most common use things like clothes, electronics, utensils, tools, have to be made with many species in mind and are often tailored, like going to a spacesuit tailor, an electronicman, etc

While this removes the idea of my characters rummaging through street markets in search of ancient videogames, it does open some interesting possibilites. So instead of mass-produced standarized consoles, videogaming in Campoestela resembles building a PC, except even more artisanal because you have to factor anatomical differences... someone like Ragua could work with a human controller "fine", but come on, you do like REAL gamers do and go to your local electronics shop in the big space station and ask them to build a controller and console for you. This has bearing in the plot because Ragua was a cringefail gamergirl in her ancient precursor civilization, and besides being thrown into an unknown time away from everything and everyone she ever knew, she's also concerned all her favorite fandoms and videogames are now only known to archeologists, if that. So she is trying to learn what kind of 'future' videogames are there (the graphics suck so much).

In the separate Biopunk Future setting (2143, more 'realistic' even with the talking dolphins), consoles are still produced, even if Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft are long gone by successive global economic crises. In this setting, WW3 and the Ecocide managed to devastate global industries and telecommunication, lots of things preserved in the internet were lost and people are acutely aware of it, making physical media more important than ever. Melanie (the communist catgirl) was raised by her grandparents in one of the shops that dedicates precisely to recovering and emulating old media, with an especial focus on nerd and otaku culture. And that's one of the reasons why she's Like That. Overall, electronics have also taken in a more modular and conservative bent (almost back to brick phones), since the era of global commerce is reaching its twilight and society prefers things that are cheap and last long instead of flashy. Retro videogames are very much in, and since many characters have entered public domain and people are nostalgic for an era where things were simpler and half of the biosphere didn't die, there is a retro wave in the past decades. There was an era around the mid 21th century were lots of people were hooked to VR and AI characters and it was considered a global health crisis, but that was stupid and we don't talk about it.

#cosas mias #campoestela #soft biopunk #what is this a crossover episode?

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