HWC: Asia Pacific — Minor UpdatesThe cadence of these virtual meetups have been chugging along quite well IMO. I’ve had the joy of hosting larger groups but also more intimate ones; oftentimes with new faces mixed in with “regulars”. There’s still a lot of room for improvement, on my part as a moderator, for example: Being able to guide the conversation back to topic without being too sudden Promoting discussion with open ended questions instead of specific ones Have “standby material” if and…

This article was originally a thread on social media, which is why it is formatted with lots of images and short responses.The text is about the image below that paragraph. I’ve been playing ‘Medieval Dynasty’, a great game set in the middle ages, but there’s of course always something to complain about, you know me. The trailer: So, the story is quite simple, it’s (roughly) 1000AD (I think) and you’re a young man escaping war and starting from scratch.You’re supposed to start a little…

To her, his job began and ended with supplying rich, empty people with poor, desperate victims. She only looked at the negative side of his job--never saw the good side, the kindness and help it let him give....the dust addicts who wanted and needed another chance; the working people who had sunk all their earnings into paying for the memory crystals; the victims of disease whose bodies were no more than mockeries of the human form; none of them would have had any hope of reconstruction if it…

Re: privacy concerns with Live Rewind / Siri Recap:A “don’t capture me” setting for iOS could anonymously signal nearby Apple devices, which would verify you’re actually within capture range and automatically disable those features around you. That verification could even use a short, inaudible acoustic handshake between the devices to confirm they’re sharing the same physical space.

A few weeks ago when I was preparing a yarn and ink palette I realized that I didn’t have any mint or sage green in my ink stash. I’ve got bright grassing greens, kelly greens, greeny teals and forest greens. But nothing muted or minty. I immediately went to JetPens and remedied that; I purchased a bottle of Sailor Manyo Ayame ($24 for 50mL). Ayame is a dual shading ink. It starts as a muted darker green (more of the sage) and then shades into violet and pink tones. I can also see bits of a…

Something about the current season of Ted Lasso feels off. I guess they’re trying to make the characters feel more nuanced, but I quite liked where everyone had ended up by the end of the last season. It almost feels like there wasn’t much reason to pull them out of retirement for yet another one, huh?

We're slap bang in the middle of 'Cask Ale Week' which this year runs from 17 to 27 September (I know, ten days, what were they thinking etc.) and as usual I find myself struggling to really see the point of it.I could trot out the usual trite-but-true sound bite, and explain that, for me, every week is cask ale week, but why even bother? It seems almost glaringly obvious that most people would either fall into this category anyway or not give a fuck about cask beer. And, that being the case, I…

No swimming today.

Home Assistant Transplant I have been running Home Assistant on a Raspberry Pi 4 for about five years now. A short while ago, homeassistant was suddenly no longer responding. Neither web ui nor a SSH login worked. So I cut the RPi's power and rebooted it. That seemed to have fixed it and I didn't think about it. Then this weekend I wanted to update Home Assistant and create a backup as usual beforehand. But somehow this backup always failed with failed to perform the action update/install.…

[This is a guest post by Antonio Auffinger. This blog post was initially written in a different file format and converted using AI. — T.] Despite writing papers in pure mathematics, much of my time in the past decade was spent talking (mostly listening, to be accurate) to biologists, computer scientists, and physicists. Theoretical physics and computer science are grounded in mathematics and thus share much of our language and, to some extent, our culture. The barriers between biology and…

I think it is time to update this list, as my thoughts and preferences have evolved quite a bit. I am introducing a new rule to myself: I can only include what I have extensively used myself, as to keep me from getting to hyped up on something I recently read. I am looking at you Ultraviolet Grasslands and Dolmenwood... Additionally, I like to think of these five books not just as my favourite RPG books, but also as all I would need to run the kind of D&D game I like, while keeping it…

I was going through a lot of old emails looking for something and found old correspondence with Sun Noodle. I figured it’d been quite a while, so perhaps trhey’d have some new stuff for me to review – and they did! Check out these amazing fresh varieties- they’re all quite good and worth seeking out! Sun Noodles Sends Fresh Ramen Varieties! The post Sun Noodles Sends Fresh Ramen Varieties! appeared first on THE RAMEN RATER.

When you are preparing data, a presentation for your boss, or an important conversation, it is natural to plan every detail. You want to think through the eventualities, anticipate questions, and be prepared for what might come. But there is a point where preparation stops helping and starts getting in the way. Too much planning can take away the spontaneity that makes a conversation natural. You start planning the exact words, the exact sentences, and even the order in which everything should…

[And the T lost.] In 2017, I ran a charity fundraiser/unsanctioned road race against Boston’s B Line, an MBTA Green Line trolley that very much does not put the “rapid” in “rapid transit”. In that event, approximately 120 folks raced alongside what we call “the T” for about four miles. The course began at the line’s terminus at Boston College and followed along Commonwealth Avenue to Blandford Street, the last aboveground stop. That race took place on a cold January day, and I ran hard just to…

Say Mama direct link) Informative article and comments at garage hangover plus a Mobie Records listing

When I showed my kids the Road Runner cartoons on DVD years ago, I concluded that the Bat-Man sequence is the funniest 52 seconds of animation ever committed to celluloid. So, like generations of Looney Tunes fans, I was dismayed when Warner Bros. Discovery unceremoniously cancelled a Wile E. Coyote movie in 2023 to write it off against tax. Coyote vs. Acme, a mix of animation and live action along the lines of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, was based on a 1990 New Yorker column by Ian Frazier,…

The words we use to describe the creation of software with AI tools are frequently inaccurate, namely the word “built”. To show this, I’ll construct an analogy between creating software and finding seashells on the beach. Then, we’ll discuss the negative effects of software incorrectly described as “built” with AI tools. SeashellsIf an 8 year old child picks up a seashell at the beach and shows their parent, did they: A) Find the seashell B) Build the seashell The 8 year old should answer A.…

Don’t be fooled by this summer of AI hype Describing them as “superintelligence” or “rogue models” ascribes agency to products rather than to the companies building them. This framing markets these companies’ products as “superhuman” and, at the same time, helps the companies evade accountability for their actions. These companies have gone rogue and don’t feel a responsibility to follow laws. I wish we had a government willing to enforce the laws we already have.

A collection of seasonal excerpts from the commonplaceEssays, blogs, and other prose: How Videogames Feed the War Machine, Lewis Gordon 10 Years in the Game Space, Jay Castello If there is anything at all that is authentic about me, it comes when I don’t know what to say. To write is to find a throughline, and yes, it should be honest, but it is always a flattening, a presenting of a part of something much more complex with all the edges sanded off. Alligator Alcatraz Isn’t Just An American…

A couple days ago a friend told me about the book Carry On, Mr. Bowditch, a fictional account of the life of Nathaniel Bowditch (1773–1838). I’ve been listening to the book on Audible, and apparently it’s only lightly fictionalized. Bowditch was a self-educated mathematician and astronomer, best known for his book The American Practical Navigator, first published in 1801. The book has been continually revised over the last two centuries and is still in print, available for download from the…

Players beware, this review of Arcana Unleashed is exclusively for Dungeon Masters. Read at your own peril. The post Dungeons & Dragons Arcana Unleashed Review (for Dungeon Masters) appeared first on Hipsters of the Coast.

‘@Play‘ is a frequently-appearing column which discusses the history, present, and future of the roguelike dungeon exploring genre. Violarium is another of that prolific genre of puzzle game, the grid- and turn-based series of progressively-harder problems where you learn the rules as you go, and new complications turn up periodically, until suddenly they’re all done and you’re looking at the credits. At the beginning Often this style of game takes the form of a block-pusher, but not this time.…

The Zz plant thrives in low light and minimal watering. 37 Zz Plant

A little bit ago, I was approached by KibiFig after they saw my review here about the figures I had ordered. I had also spoken out online about how pleased I was with the figures in general.They offered me an upgraded figure, 6" or 15 cm. There was no expectation of a review afterward so I dug through some images and found one I liked.Last Friday, the figure came in the mail. I already knew what it looked like because Kibifig had been using my little Larina in their most recent ads. I have to…

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday is the seasonal TBR, and aaah, there are so many choices! But there are a few books that I know are coming out which go straight to the head of the pile, for a start… and some books I’ve started that I want to finish, as well as books I got for my birthday. Let’s see! After the Disabled God of War Became My Concubine, vol 4, by Liu Gou Hua. I loved the first three volumes deeply, and I can’t wait for this one, coming out in early November. The happy ending seems…

Doug Brown has dug up something previously lost to time. In working with an early Performa, he discovered a true gem on its hard drive: This Performa 410 was a store demo unit! This is the kiosk software that would have been running on a demo Mac inside a store like Sears or Circuit City. The machine was never wiped back to factory state before being sold, and the original owner kept the demo software the entire time they had the machine. Such a cool find! It includes a comparison between the…

Plautus, Amphitruo 648-653 (Alcumena speaking; tr. Paul Nixon): Courage is the very best gift of all; courage stands before everything, it does, it does! It is what maintains and preserves our liberty, safety, life, and our homes and parents, our country and children. Courage comprises all things: a man with courage has every blessing. virtus praemium est optumum; virtus omnibus rebus anteit profecto: libertas salus vita res et parentes, 650 patria et prognati tutantur, servantur: virtus omnia…

Drizzle thinning into wind-blown mist by mid-morning. The sky brightens. A pileated woodpecker clings to a skinny locust tree as it sways in the breeze, taps a few times and then tilts her head to the side as if listening for a response.

Here are my recommendations for how I believe people should vote on the nine initiative petitions that Massachusetts residents are voting on this year. TLDR I recommend you vote: YES on Question 1 YES on Question 2 NO on Question 3 YES on Question 4 NO on Question 5 (strong recommendation) NO on Question 6 YES on Question 7 NO on Question 8 YES on Question 9 Question 1: Expanding the Public Records Law I recommend a YES vote on Question 1. Question 1 would amend Massachusetts’s public records…

Another nice day agai. 600 galls oil. Cleared bins, workshop and hay lab. Howarth’s new car. Cutting the holly trees at the far end of the tennis lawn.