Paul Ganssle @pganssle@qoto.org

Might be a good idea to call your representatives about this.

Sssh, no one tell my life insurance company.

#electronics #cursed

Anyone have a recommendation for a case for the #Pixel8Pro? I basically want the thinnest thing that lets me put the phone down without the camera lying straight on the surface.

(Though also I guess I drop my phone all the time nowadays, and the back case of my old one is broken, so I guess impact resistance might be more important than it has been in the past)

#pixel

Though I guess they don’t really make 2TB SDHC cards yet, so my plan to get a tablet with a 2TB memory card and keep the originals on it might not work out as well as I had hoped.

Given how much space I saved, it might be worth it to use 1080p and just have that be the main thing I watch on both phone and tablet.

Since my new #pixel8pro only has 1TB of space and no expandable storage, I decided that I would keep all my “on device” videos as 720p instead of the 4k 60fps originals (it’s visually indistinguishable while watching them on the phone anyway, as far as I can tell).

450GB compressed all the way down to 21 GB, wow!

By the way if anyone knows of a better reliable way to get string than just randomly wandering around at night waiting for spiders, let me know.

#minecraft

This morning it became clear that I’ve been playing too much Minecraft when I saw some cobweb Halloween decorations and thought, “Ooh, I should collect those to make string!”

#minecraft

Aww yeah, Paw Paws delivered today.

#pawpaw #pawpawfruit

We’ll see how it does against the Gom Jabbar in a couple of years, I guess.

New lesson this week is that a 5 year old will definitely earnestly repeat the Litany Against Fear if you teach it to them, but also it isn’t as effective as you might hope for staving off fear of monsters at bedtime.

Anyone aware of something like the Speech Accent Archive (https://accent.gmu.edu/) but for Spanish? SAA has people (native and non-native speakers) read a short example phrase in English to capture their accent. I seem to remember encountering a similar thing for French years ago, I would be curious to hear the same thing with Spanish.

#espanol #Spanish #linguistics #language

I don’t understand why it’s 2023 and I’ve never seen a Bluetooth connection UI that allows filtering by the type of device you are looking for. I’m trying to pair headphones, I don’t need to see that there are 50 TVs and computers broadcasting their IDs around me.

Coming next year:

PEP 818: Biphasic physical storage of package metadata
Replaces: 517

I had a dream last night that Java came out with a new packaging spec that involved encoding your metadata as a crystal that you then dissolved in a liquid, and somehow my first thought was, “That seems convoluted, but who are we (Pythonistas) to judge?”

Having trouble remembering the difference between the flag of Belgium and the flag of Germany?

Remember this simple rhyme:
“Black touches Red, you’re in Germany like Kaiser Fred¹.
Black touches yellow, you’re in Belgium, so have a waffle with marshmallow².”³

¹This assumes that you know that Kaiser Frederick III was the second Emperor of Germany.
²This is only a slant rhyme, and it barely works since — while dessert waffles are associated with Belgium, and they would be pretty good with marshmallows on them — marshmallows are not particularly associated with Belgian waffles.
³Yes, I am not particularly good at coming up with mnemonics.

#flags #vexillology #mnemonics

Learning a new language: “Why are there two words that both seem to mean ‘very’ in this language? How am I supposed to know which one to use?”
Speaking English: “There really should be a word between ‘amble’ and ‘stroll’, ‘meander’ isn’t quite right.”