Rose

Kind of sucks that my Commodore 1541 floppy drive (5.25" floppies) is giving me read/write errors, and I have no idea where I put my head cleaner floppy long ago. (Have to rely on SD2IEC on my Commodore 64, and it’s not compatible with some turbo loaders or other programs that do weird drive magic.) And, of course, while I might run into head cleaner tapes on specialty shops, good luck running into 5.25" cleaner floppies these days.

But as Blender becomes more popular in the CGI industry, perhaps this harrowing vision of future shall not come to pass.

Because it has potential for spoofing.

“Hey, download this press kit from https://totallylegitsite.com:stringofnonsense@document.zip/” looks like it’s going to a legit site, but it’s not.

Vendor lock-in is bad and Adobe’s business practices are bad, no matter how you cook it. There are so many viable alternatives to Adobe stuff.

Problem is, Photoshop power users don’t often want to hear about any alternatives. GIMP is just one of the most popular culprits in this regard. That’s exactly the kind of mindset that the vendor lock-in creates.

I’m kind of happy that I stuck with GIMP when I was younger. Now, I have absolutely no fear of trying out any software that comes my way. I do most of my photo work in Affinity Photo. Don’t have problems with GIMP either, use it for some other stuff.

The only way to get people to switch from Adobe is to wait for Adobe to make the life unbearable for their own customers. Some time ago there was a huge movement for people to switch from Premiere to DaVinci Resolve because Premiere really is pretty horrible these days.

Most of my time in Elden Ring has been 1) ogling at the landscapes going “Holy shit this is metal”, and 2) bravely running away.

I’m not exactly neurotypical and I’m not good at in-person interviews. When I did video interview when applying for a training course, I did fine, because I wrote down a script. …What I’m getting at is that this video interview could have been an email. (Edit: Also didn’t get chosen for the course, so, meh)

To just have the most recent data within reasonable time frame is one thing. AI companies are like “I must have every single article within 5 minutes they get updated, or I’ll throw my pacifier out of the pram”. No regard for the considerations of the source sites.

I’ve been incredibly happy lately dumping my GameCube/Wii games (using a softmodded Wii) and running them on PC with Dolphin. Perfectly legit way of playing games I already own, no matter what Nintendo says, and this is also a way to futureproof my GC/Wii collection the way I can actually trust.

I’m sceptical about how close to Dolphin the official emulation experience on Switch will be able to reach. Based on the N64 debacle, I don’t have massively high hopes. Either way, wouldn’t be paying extra.

If it had happened now, that figure might be accurate. However, this was originally exploited in 2022, so it’s probably pretty bad.

Colour palettes are collections of facts. Facts don’t have copyright protection and ability to claim copyright for a collection is pretty tenuous. However, copyright may apply to certain related things.

For example: Suppose you see that someone is selling a Photoshop colour palette for money, and included the entire palette in the store image. In that case, there’s literally nothing, legally speaking, stopping someone from prodding the image with a colour picker a bunch of times. But there would be copyright protection for the Photoshop palette file itself, because that’s a more tangible piece of data.

There are also other kinds of intellectual property laws that apply to colours. Pantone gets away with whatever shenanigans they’re doing because of trademarks.

“The new Windows Terminal is so slick! And PowerShell is soooo awesome! When will Linux get cool neat powerful stuff like this?”

“Uh… About three decades ago?”

(To be honest, PowerShell is neat. But it’s also cross platform, so if I really want it on Linux I guess I can get it there too? I don’t really need to, I’m in middle of rewriting some PowerShell stuff in Python)

Two points. I’ve never paid for anything by cheque (we have had bank transfers in Finland for ages) and Blockbuster didn’t operate here (we had our local video rental chains, and the convenience store chain that I used to go to is still in business, just, you know, not having movies for rent any more)

“Hi, I’m an ultra boring nerd girl. I’m on several Fediverse platforms. …No, I don’t know Nicole. Please don’t follow me. No seriously please don’t.”

I’m not very good at socialising, sorry

Wikipedia has plenty of this stuff. Great photos and diagrams to illustrate important concepts.

For example, when discussing Turtles, you need the perfect photo to discuss the Turtle Mode.

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In the beginning these were not available. Also I remember them costing the same as the C64 itself. As soon as I could afford one I got one obviously.

I guess I was lucky. My parents got me my first Commodore 64 C second hand, and it included the floppy drive. Guess it was affordable that way.

I just another item that could a generational riddle: the hole-punch that made your one-sided floppy two-sided.

Ooh, I didn’t have one of those fancy pieces of gear! I lived in a small town. Used to see disk notchers at the book/stationery store, which had the reputation of being slightly pricy place but was the only store in town that had computer stuff at the time.

Instead, I figured out a way to cleanly cut the notch using scissors. Two horizontal cuts, then two cross cuts, then carefully cut out the remainder.

Of course it evolved into a crab.

It was either that, or… something else I guess

The tape drive has a hole on the top for adjusting the azimuth, but one of my friends basically just removed the top cover entirely for easier access to the screw. I did that too for some particularly tricky tapes.

Another of my friends had basically an unearthly knack of adjusting this stuff. Dude would just walk up to the tape drive, masterfully tweak the screw for a second, and it’d work. Which makes no sense.

This was all a kind of mysterious part of the Commodore 64 culture to me. Because I had a floppy drive and that’s what I obviously preferred to use.

“How do I rotate this PDF? I need to print it.”

“Uh, you can just set it to print in landscape mode.”

(Scornful stare, for using space age words) “NO! I must ROTATE the PDF!”

I’m sure I had a conversation like this with one of the acquaintances of my dad

Short summary: Elon gives Elon some Elon and congratulates Elon for being such an Elon, that big money boy he is. Money!