Year: 2019

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First world problems: temptations.

Part one of the first season of That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime is available for a really good price, right now. Which is to say about 50% off the original pricing, or about what it should actually cost, lol. And that puts it in the same price range of season two of Is This a Zombie?, one of my favourite series.

Both will eventually join my Blu-ray collection if I have anything to say about the next ten years, and the latter is one of the leading ideas of what Christmas time is going to look like.

Thus the trade off problem: that the latter will continue to be available at the usual price versus the former won’t float up to “Ugh, that sucks” pricing, before I finally can pull the trigger. And this is part of why budgets are depressing things o/. Actually, thinking about the definition of ugh pricing jacks makes me remember: better off getting one of my favourite series off eBay. Because through “Regular” channels like Amazon has too many digits to it, and as years go by even the original publisher isn’t a good source. SMH.

On a positive side, my very strong aversion to dust collectors and nick knacks means decorating my home didn’t involve a decade of debt, so much as stuff that’s been in my family since before I was born, lol. This does of course, not prevent me from having to dust stuff once in a while. Yeah, let’s not think about that.

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You can guess how it is around here.

Coincidentally, Willow typically chooses a spot nearby where she won’t be disturbed by my movements, and Misty just wishes I’d stop fidgeting, lol.

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Watching Small Soldiers (1998) for the first time in a very long time, I think there is just so much wrong with the story that you’ve got to remember the suspension of disbelief factor. Even as a kid, I found it amusing that it calls for compressing at least a decade of R&D into three months to create a children’s toy: that would have to cost more than most people’s first car, just to break even. That’s the least of the issues versus reality.

Thing is, much as when I was a kid, the concept is entertaining enough that I can do that suspension of disbelief thing 🤪

Reality holes aside, there’s a lot more to it that makes it an entertaining yarn. Actually, I kinda wish they had made a sequel just for the hell of it.

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Windows 10X Leaks Show A Mobile OS World I Want No Part Of

There’s probably two kinds of people that crept out of their terminals over the decades. Those that want what they’re used to, and those who want something new. You can hazard a guess as to which the author is.
Personally, I don’t really care about having a “Desktop” experience on my laptop, so much as desktop class processing power. Why? Because it’s software that’s become the bottleneck.
There’s a reason why we still say “Desktop” experience but laptops came to dominate the PC world. As the laptop form factor evolved: it came to run the same software as the microcomputers people were already using. We were just pulling off a functional desktop, and no one had the resources or the inclination to optimize software for a mobile device, nor learn how to navigate it. Yet laptops largely came into the own because they are mobile devices, and able to run the same applications as our desktops with close enough processing power to be worth it. Whether your mobility is every day or every month, a laptop is a mobile device compared to hauling a tower, monitor, keyboard, mouse, and a cart with a car battery around.
So needless to say, the most fucks anyone has had to give in the land of desktops is where laptop capabilities and older desktops intersect on specs. Beyond that, software developers don’t tend to distinguish much between desktop and laptop.
But now phones and tablets exist, and make your desktop centric human interface guidelines look more like a calculator watch than something that adapted your fingers. Laptops are becoming more tablet like over time, and the software experiences have to adapt to the changing norms of hardware or face the long roads to obsolescence and extinction. 
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iPadOS Challenge – Ditching the Laptop for a Week

The issues of file system and persistence from about 15 minutes onwards, are the two I notice most frequently, being a tablet whore from imported from another platform.

How Brad describes the gap between a folder and the photos app as a file system, is a real systemic problem to the operating system. Because traditionally, iPhone doesn’t have a file system for people to go mucking with. And while that’s usually a good thing in my opinion, there are just times when having the whole files thing at your fingertips is productive. Considering that iPadOS 13 is the first time Apple shipped a real file manager, and the Files app actually shipped two years ago, I have some forgiveness for that one. Because let’s be honest, the platform has spent most of its life without any real file system.

The way I look at this is pretty simple. Open app → go browse file crap, isn’t how I want to use my machines. But being able to stuff a file in a folder with special meaning to apps, is a handy thing.

The issue of persistence is a simple reality. iOS, and Android prioritize what you’re doing, and have a history of, by modern standards, very memory constrained environments. One of the things I liked about Android Jelly Bean and the rise of 2 GB of memory was how rare things would get reaped. In Android land, it’s kinda disappeared as an issue as devices begin to have comical levels of memory for a mobile. iOS also works pretty well but occasionally blurps. I mostly see grumbly things in the sense like Evernote → switch app, lock screen, whatever, and then → Evernote again, often my position is reaped. I might be in a previously snapshotted note or I might have to wait for the note to refresh, and have to go reset my cursor position. That gets old, when you’ve got like ten screenfuls of text in a journal entry. To keep your current task fast, you’ve got to reap your previous tasks in some form.

Difference is if you workhorse your desktop: you will grind it to a halt. That’s why our machines now have oodles and oodles of memory, and slow spinning platters are going the way of to floppy diskette. ‘Cuz speed and good over cost. If you’ve ever experienced what true virtual memory trashing is like then you’ll never want to trade a blazing fast system for crap again. Compared to what an iPad offers, you can do a hell of a lot of shit before a modern desktop will have comparable pressure.

For reference, my desktop has three times the memory of iPad Pro, and my laptop has four times the memory installed. My iPad has two to four times as much memory as most iPad models, depending on whether you’re looking at what’s currently supported or production history.

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The Remarkable Tablet Is Better Than the Apple iPad for Taking Notes Hands (and Pencils) Down
http://flip.it/T_MjbI

As much as I would like to see more devices like this, and think the reMarkable is a pretty damned nice offering, I kind of disagree with the conclusion. Based on how well my various pen packing Samsung tablets have worked over the past seven years, and my iPad Pro 11, I expect that most people would get more value out of the cheaper Tab A and iPad models.

Because for comparable cost, you wind up with a general purpose tablet with all the benefits of a widely supported, popularly developed for operating system. What’s lacking is the more paper like experience (overrated, IMHO) and the power efficiency.

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While I can’t say that I’ve ever had much opinion of codfish, Kroger having frozen family sized packages (2 lbs) on sale for under $10, I couldn’t resist last time I went shopping. Plus some tater rounds, because why the frell not?

Thus, tonight went to frying four or five of the fillets. Which a were large enough to cut into about as many frying sized pieces, each. Working on the assumption that I don’t need to eat enough food to feed a family, in one sitting, I’m pretty sure that I’m going to be having leftover fried fish for a good while.

Picture not taken because belly too full, and dog glares at life threatening levels between bribery with a chip.

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Zombie Night Terror is probably what happens when a bunch of hungry developers get ravenous together, and decide to feast upon the living.

Also way to freaking fun to be on 90% off sale for under $2.