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Joined 7 months ago
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Cake day: July 3rd, 2024

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  • This video says it both ways I’ve heard. The white people around me pronounce it like the one with the union jack (heavy emphasis on the B), the Spanish speakers pronounce it more like the version with the American flag background (ironic). Most of the other pronunciation videos I could find seem to be made by AI voices and mangle the pronunciation in a myriad of ways. This other video has an actual person speaking well (I can’t speak to the rest of the content of the video).









  • Dark table corrects lens distortion based on the design of the actual lens, not the image itself. The grid it just to check in after the fact. I’m not aware of similar tools in GIMP. It’s trivial in Darktable though, as long as your lens is in the database.

    Don’t use a fish-eye lens, it’s lense distortion will be the worst and most difficult to correct. Use a lens with a longer focal length, ideally a prime lens with a fixed focal length. If you maximize focal length and distance to your object as much as is feasible, you will have already flattened the image (minimized lens distortion) a lot. If you use a prime (fixed focal length) lens from a popular brand, Darktable can remove the remaining lens distortion.

    You can remove all lens distortion by using a pinhole camera, which has no lens. But that’s probably going to be a tricky setup without an expert.


  • The tracksuit and matching Adidas sneakers are kind of a give-away. Anyone can buy a hi-vis vest. No way a security guard or worker would be dressed like that to do any real work up there. And absolutely no way they would risk their life or their job to stop some nutter getting their Darwin award. Even if successful, they’d be fired for exposing the company to liability. They’d just wait by the door and have them trespassed on their way out.




  • I also have strong opinions about Christmas lights.

    Unfortunately, they do not perfectly align with Technology Connections. We agree is almost all respects: flickering is bad, purple is not a valid Christmas color, white lights should be warm and not bluish. I just can’t agree about this one thing though, I LOVE the super saturated colors of LEDs for the red, blue, and green lights. I care much less about the saturation of the yellow and/or orange lights.


  • I find this take fascinating because, although I also like watching athletes and sports, I see the fandom and names as a huge soap opera cast. I just can’t keep up with any of it, the names, the injuries, the rivalries, the trades. It’s all just a bunch of banal meaningless drama to me that I will never have the enthusiasm to track. It’s all the same old shit from season to season with a rotating cast of hot young fools, just like General Hospital. As such I can’t talk sports with people. I can watch, but the events wash over me without the same meaning or substance. For that reason, flamboyant and over-the-top drama (like hot tempers, trash talking, and general mischief) that happens during play is actually interesting as long as it isn’t too unsportsman-like and doesn’t interfere with the game too much. The soap opera drama is boring, the sports is interesting, but the performance and affectations are spicy.

    To be clear, your take is totally valid and I’m not really critical of it at all. I just have a different perspective.



  • Next time you tape over it, try this. Cut an old credit card, hotel key card, or something similar to just larger than the switch’s recess. Tape only the top edge to the machine so that the stiff plastic or cardboard covers the switch, but can be lifted up and out of the way when you need to access it. I’ve used a similar trick to protect light switches I wanted to occasionally use, but not accidentally flip along with the other switches in the next gang over.