Adam Dalliance (Pre) @pre@boing.world

I now own a battery speaker that I could, say, put in a backback to go busking if that should ever be a thing I wanted.

I find that because of this I can also play/program my #synth from the couch.

After this discovery, my productivity on other tasks for the weekend took a nose-dive.

I still managed to do a *couple* of hours of #VR #animation this weekend though.

I think draft-one of the car movements is done up to about 140 seconds.

That is the milestone when the first explosions happen.

They now happen as a result of the complex interleaving braid of cause an effect that these cars all trace through time, as they should. And one asshole impatient driver trying to overtake.

They also don't look *too* stupidly pointing-in-the-wrong-direction as they do so.

The tools I built to let me do that are working okay at last!

They work until I have to make the characters act inside a moving sports car anyway. There are definitely going to be more issues to solve there.

Till then: just more playing with VR toy-cars basically. That's supposed to be the fun part, so would hope for motivation to do more than three hours in a long weekend really.

Oh well.

#Piano skills levelled-up a bit at least.

Hey #windows people. Are there windows #audio people here?

How come my speakers passthru-monitor a copy of the jack-mic input all the time, even though all the settings say not to?

Spacial-sound is off.

Volume-mixer doesn't seem to have any microphone controls on it.

Sound settings have the USB-mic selected anyway, which does not passthru. But if I select the Jack-mic and reduce volume to zero: still get the pass-thru.

In the Sound Control panel, the jack-mic can be set to "disabled", but you still get that pass-thru.

It's properties there have a "listen" checkbox: the pass-thru happens whether it's checked or not.

The "Playback through device" is set at "default", but the pass-thru still happens to the main speakers even when that's set to some other device and applied.

I'd be assuming it was just that the sound-card had a built in always-monitor for some dumb reason, only it doesn't do it when I boot the same machine to Linux.

It only starts doing it when Windows boots up.

And here's a Weights and Measures inspector's take:

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1438559713604608003.html

"...Certificates of approval for imperial metrological equipment have long since lapsed. Will you subsidise the industry cost of certification?

Most imperial local standards and testing equipment have long been retired. Will you subsidise Local Authorities for the cost of this equipment and the creation of new metrological laboratories?

A local standard mass comparator costs £30,000. Are you willing to spend many millions of pounds reintroducing such equipment?

Imperial measurements have not been taught in schools since the mid 1970s... is this, like your Bridge to Ireland, a nonsense policy only to distract form the appalling way you are running this country? "

I for one am sick of having to buy 1 liter glasses of cider in pubs.

This radical imposition of the EU on my daily life is intolerable and I'll be glad to going back to buying by the pint instead of having to accept glasses with 473ml in them instead.

Not content with confusing one generation with a switch of measuring standards, the UK propose we switch back now, and so confuse another generation about measuring standards too.

This time while also diverging from the standard measures used by literally the entire scientific world.

Hurray! Brexit truly makes us a global Britain, unique among the world for measuring things in fucking feet and inches and furlongs?

:headdesk:

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/david-frost-emily-thornberry-brexit-government-british-b955813.html

So farewell then Clive Sinclair.
Thanks for the introduction to computers and programming.
Turned out I liked that.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/sep/16/home-computing-pioneer-sir-clive-sinclair-dies-aged-81

Haha

In light of the #uk government suggesting all our #tv shows should be more British, that great British institution "b3ta" is running a photoshop challenge to brit-up the movies.

It's all brilliant.

I think that a show is British and reflects British Values if everyone drinks tea all the time and the day is saved by a Jammie Dodger.

https://b3ta.com/challenge/tvorfilmmoreBritish/popular/

Hey @onan is this #slack?

Amazing.

War is peace. Slavery is freedom. Ignorance is strength, and people need to keep flying in order to help cut carbon emissions.

#uk government member outlining the government's position: "we need the #aviation sector to be successful, so that it can invest in those technologies that we know will drive towards technological solutions"

[ https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/cop26-carbon-emissions-flying-net-zero-aviation-uk-b1920556.html ]

Context:

The EU wants to scan all your uploads and use crappy AI to send your nude selfies and flirty texts to private companies to be reviewed by corporate employees.

Ha.

https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/message-screening/

When is the internet going to interpret all this nonsense about upload-filtering and content-scanning as damage and route around it?

Probably not till everyone stops using the big centralized proprietary services and self-hosts more I guess.

Here's hoping for that to happen soon.

A Thursday-night pringles-and-primula sandwich is a ridiculous tradition to have, and I do not recommend you start one.

Not even twice in a row.

Especially not with sesame seed bread and grated Stilton.

You definitely should not do this.

#Thursdaynightcrispsandwich

First collect the ingredients: bread, pringles, sliced tomato, grated stilton, a tube of primula.

Second spread the primula liberally over the bread. Each bite should feel like liquid cheese.

Layer the pringles on top of the bread.

Crunch down the layer of pringles with the upper layer of bread. You may add decorative side-pringles for aesthetic and crunch reasons.

The company I work for got an award from the queen. Here's the queen's representative giving it to the boss. And also the cake.

Royalty is weird. Even the queen's regents and representatives make people feel things. Could see the boss affected by it.

I refrained from mentioning cutting off any head's.

Mostly.

I have repaired the windows "upgrades" that Microsoft sprung on me during the night when my machine was in the middle of rendering things.

Five reboots at least. I have to jump in as soon as it does each one to prevent it booting back into Linux. Then anther reboot after a while when things were still not quite right so lets try that.

I have scanned broken hard-drives.

I now consider one of them suspect, and in need of replacement. Though it seems okay at the moment. I was never fast enough anyway.

I have pulled the server cupboard apart to check what slots I got to see if I can handle this fastest type of hard drive they have now.

And put it back together, thinking how it being so hot in there is probably what screwed up the drive in the first place.

I planned a new-hard drive setup, and some fans to get some air-flow around the cupboard. I have ordered a jigsaw, which makes me feel very out of my depth.

I think maybe I can actually do some animation tonight though.

September Digest is out and being emailed to anyone who's kind enough to subscribe.

https://dalliance.net/vPre2/september-2021-digest

The censorship at Facebook continues to deepen.

Nobody can be a pseudonym any more.

The avalanche of unicorn memes and inspirational posters roll over the landscape like tumbleweed through the adverts and the spam.

At any given time maybe 2% of the Facebook citizens are in Facebook Jail for violating community standards.

Meanwhile, Facebook's community standards are to spy on everything you say and update their models of how best to manipulate you into buying things and voting their way.

The majority of the population still haven't even noticed. Haven't started heading for the life-boats where freedom of speech is still a thing and you can joke without being thrown in jail and you're allowed pictures of titties.

They will notice, when those tumbleweeds of unicorn memes and inspirational posters are all that's still allowed out side of jail.

But by then will it be too late to stay in touch?

Or will you have visited https://dalliance.net/subscribe ?

Still. Maybe next week we'll get to play the solo set into a device that actually records.