SM57s still can get roughed up pretty bad with the plastic covering on the front of the mic (especially if miking a snare drum with a less than precise drummer). SM58 will survive a nuclear war.

Radeon 7770.

FFXIV!

Puzzling Places has been an unexpected joy after I got it in a bundle with Tetris Effect.

There needs to be a film about the FOSS movement that matches the vibes of 1995’s cyberspace masterpiece Hackers.

Definitely a long way off from how active they were a year or two ago.

I think about this all the time, I really could see myself getting into computer education ten years down the line.

What I would do is this:

• Focus on recreating styles of computing that produced our most digitally literate generation: Gen X (for context, I was born in 2000).
• Give everyone in the class a Raspberry Pi and a MicroSD card. Guide them through the setup process. This recreates larger, more complicated computers in microcosm.
• Start out with the Lite version of the Raspi OS, allow students to discover the different components of an operating system: Bash, window management, sound, the desktop, office applications. Take them through some common Raspberry Pi tasks.
• Do not allow the class to become the Adobe/Microsoft power hour. This is the number one way we are failing our students today.
• Have a unit focused around free software and the open source movement. Focus on social media literacy as well. Ensure that students understand how social media algorithms work, how these companies make money, understand that users are the product.

There’s probably more I could come up with if I sat down to really plan out a week by week lesson plan, but this is off the cuff where I’d put the focus. So many of these topics have Connections-style related points. “Why is my computer at home different from a Raspberry Pi?” gives you a great opportunity to expand on CPU architecture, which leads to how computers actually “think”. I remember when I was a child one of the things that I was most confused by was how a computer was able to turn Python into something it actually understands, that can be a fascinating lesson in the right hands. How does a computer know where to look on the disc when it boots up? It’s great!

Kids already know how to use phones and tablets. Take concepts from those, concepts they are already familiar with, and then explain the deeper process behind it. Computers are engineered by people, you can understand them, it’s not magic.

I want to play either Skyrim or Breath of the Wild for the first time again, knowing nothing about what’s out there to be discovered or the limits of the sandbox. Those games cast a special spell in their first few dozen hours before you know where the boundaries of the world are.

I can recognize that I love the Star Wars prequels for bad reasons.
But also they’re still masterpieces actually.

Do vinyl records count? I really like that they make beautiful noise from a simple electromechanical process.

It was the early days of a new technology and way of listening that was completely different compared to the past 60+ years of recorded audio. I guess as a more modern analogy it’s like those cheap 3D films at the height of the fad that felt the need to gratuitously shove objects directly in front of the camera to get the most out of the 3D effect.

Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys, who produced Pet Sounds, was actually deaf in one ear. Despite that, he got along just fine in a monophonic world, but the switch to stereo completely left him behind. It was a huge change in how music was mixed.

You have to understand that mixing consoles from that era were supremely limited in channels (think four, eight, later sixteen), to the point where they would often have to mix one section (say, the drums) and then record that mix to tape so it would take up a single channel and then do the guitar, bass, and vocals on another channel. The idea of having two of the same thing going through two channels was an exorbitant luxury they couldn’t afford!

Hey just so you know in many people’s minds SW doesn’t stand for software.

Fedora is what I’ve got on my Thinkpad right now and so far it seems pretty good! Silverblue is very intriguing to me but I chose not to go with it because I need to be able to modify aspects of how the lower system works (using JACK for audio for music production purposes; afaik this is not really supported through Flatpak). Compared to Arch or Nix OS or whatever else that’s popular with the hardcore Linux enthusiasts, Fedora is just right for someone that needs a working system to just get stuff done.

Genuinely the only way I want to use my phone. Everything I use daily is on the home screen, everything else I have to go searching for. White background, black icons, all notifications turned off. Simple and easy!

My general approach is to use Anki as my primary resource with the addition of the Genki textbook, video lectures and grammar videos on YouTube (Toki ni Andy, Game Gengo, Livakivi, etc.), and immersion content (Manga, anime, YouTube). I use Anki because I believe it’s the most effective method for me having used it previously to learn Esperanto; although I believe that you should use whatever method is the most fun for you, whatever will keep you coming back for daily work is good. Don’t fall for the “Bro Science” language learning people who promise quick shortcuts, there are none, these people are usually trying to sell you something.

My daily study consists of about 40 minutes of Anki per day. I split my time between two decks, which is suboptimal in terms of occasionally containing duplicates, but I like it as it serves as a method of chunking my study out throughout the day and as a way to recognize the same Kanji in different contexts. These two decks are the KanjiTransistion and Core 2.3k decks. I do four new cards from the KanjiTransistion deck and three new cards from the 2.3k deck. Following that if I’m in the mood I’ll return to reviewing my Hiragana and Katakana decks (you should do this first if you haven’t already!). I also use the Review Heatmap plugin to see my streak, which helps me stay focused on goals and milestones.

You should form your own opinion about what method of learning works best for you, but don’t fall victim to spending time strategizing and figuring out the scientifically perfect way to learn the language, there isn’t one. If you’re spending time planning how you’re going to learn the language, you’re spending less time actually learning. The only way to get good at a language is to literally be exposed to it and learning it for 1000+ hours.

100 days of studying Japanese every day

Element, one of the few (only?) entirely open source, encrypted, and federated chat platforms out there.

I’m definitely excited to switch to Wayland properly whenever I build my next machine and escape from my GTX 1060.