Paul Ganssle @pganssle@qoto.org

Lol, seems like Vanguard changed their password rules to max out at 20 characters, and now my password is too strong to let me log in. Great job guys.

OK, I purchased something on Google Play on my son’s tablet before setting up Family Library. I’d like to add it to Family Library so we can use it on other devices, so I set up Family Library. There seems to be no option to add the app to family library on his device, is this because he’s a “supervised” account?

I can’t even change his age to be above 13 through Family Link…

#googleplay

In general, when you get into the making mind-set, all your problems become projects. It’s very empowering.

This goes for all kinds of making skills. My cargo bike doesn’t have blinkers, but it’s my main way of getting around. The cheap wireless blinkers you can get off of Amazon have all kinds of annoying problems (including silently running out of batteries so you don’t realize your blinkers don’t work!), so I got together a bunch of parts and wired up a full blinker system¹.

When some random part of a door in my house broke, I just designed a replacement with my 3D printer.

I’d also really like to be able to make or modify my own clothes, since I often have an idea for something I’d like to wear, but can’t find exactly the right thing anywhere.

As an aside, the fact that I saw the paper on perfect pitch acquisition and turned it into a usable app within a few days is one of the things I love most about being a programmer. When a tool doesn’t exist, you can just make it, and make it how you want it to be!

It is all open source and designed to be easy to fork and deploy if desired: https://github.com/pganssle/cim

If you are good at web design or music theory I’d be very happy to see contributions (including just giving feedback)! Doesn’t take much to be better at those things than me… 😛 (Exhibit A 😅)

I spent a lot of time this long weekend making improvements to my perfect pitch training app: https://pganssle.github.io/cim/

I’m pretty happy with how it’s shaping up. My son has been using it 4-5 times per day (the sessions are frequent but short), and it’s kind of amazing to see how good he is at identifying chords.

#music #perfectpitch

So I figured out how to do this with Inkscape, it’s just a bit wonky:

1. Make your shape as a simple path
2. Set the size of the shape to be between 0 and 1 (width and height) in some base unit
3. Set up the document so that the scale is 1 of whatever your base unit is.
4. Save an optimized SVG (not always necessary) to get a maximally simplified path (with no transforms or whatever).
5. Open with a text editor and copy the path into your <clipPath> SVG.

If that doesn’t work as expected, you may have to copy the path and paste it into a new document after it’s been scaled and moved.

If that’s still not working, you can copy-paste the path into this tool and play with the scaling: https://yqnn.github.io/svg-path-editor/

Some of the shapes I want to draw can be accomplished easily enough with regular CSS polygons, but I want to clip with something like star, crescent moon, teardrop, heart. I would much prefer to build that stuff in Inkscape or something.

Does anyone know a good tool for #linux that I can use to draw shapes and output clip paths for use in #HTML/#CSS that work to clip stuff?

What I’m getting from #inkscape is not clipping my divs correctly. Here’s a MWE:

https://jsfiddle.net/gawLvzqu/

(There should be three divs there, with the left two clipped on rounded triangles)

When are they going to add an app-specific “Contacts sandbox” for Android — or the ability to do app-specific spoofed permissions in general?

It is annoying that I either give WhatsApp all my contacts or none of them. For stuff like that I’d like to be able to share contacts on a per-contact basis (with the app unable to tell the difference between partial and full contact lists, mind you).

Something like that exists for file system permissions already. I’m surprised I haven’t seen it in any custom OSes or mods.

#android #privacy

Today I helped my friend get into her apartment when she was locked out. She was locked out because she was distracted trying to get her and her kids’ costumes on, so when we were breaking into her place, she was dressed as… a stereotypical thief, holding a bag with a dollar sign on it. Very inconspicuous. 😅

Does anyone have a good solution for typing emojis in any random box on #Linux? Right now I’ve got compose key shortcuts set up for a few of them, but I have to remember which ones I’ve defined, and that doesn’t exactly scale. Ideally I’d be able to define a hotkey that would bring up a little search box that I can type in “tada” for 🎉 and “flamingo” for 🦩.

#emoji #input