Linux gamer, retired aviator, profanity enthusiast

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 20th, 2023

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  • I definitely dig the idea of the Enterprise carrying a therapist, as a recurring character, possibly a civilian contractor so they can wear something other than a standard uniform so we can have some visual variety, and occasionally show up at planning meetings or whatever when psychology is at play.

    But Gene Roddenberry wanted a pair of legs in the center of the frame so she wore a minidress and sat next to the Captain with nothing to do. She wasn’t occasionally called up to the bridge the way Dr. Crusher or Geordi were, she was just always sitting there.

    Meanwhile Guinan the bartender was hell and gone a better counselor than Troi ever was.



  • I’m sure others have linked to Technology Connections’ video on the subject below, but there are two general ways it works:

    1. There is a humidity sensor in the microwave that will sense when food is done. In the case of popcorn, it senses when there’s a burst of steam inside when the bag inflates enough to open the vent, and then given how long that took it calculates how big the bag of popcorn is and thus how long to keep running the microwave for. The other sensor cook buttons look for trends in humidity that have to do with other foods. The microwave will likely indicate that it has this feature with the word “Sensor” or similar branding on the control panel, and when you press the Popcorn button, it just starts running because it can figure out everything it needs to know for itself.

    2. Small, cheap microwaves probably just use a timer. If it asks you if the bag of popcorn is small, medium or large at the beginning, it’s just a timer and you should just go with the instructions on the bag instead.










  • So, FreeCAD. It’s a beautiful hot mess. There’s a 1.0 in beta right now that’s bringing some much needed changes.

    FreeCAD has a lot of parallel capabilities; it has an architectural workbench for drawing buildings, a Drafting workbench for more traditional 2D drawing, the Part workbench for a weird kind of boolean approach, and the Part Design workbench for a more typical sketch-and-extrude parametric modeling workflow like Fusion360, Inventor or OnShape.

    The workflow is you create a sketch and draw a 2D shape, and then extrude (FreeCAD uses the word Pad) it into 3D space, then you can draw further features on that to design the shape you want.

    The basis of how it works is somewhat unintuitive at first. “Parametric” means you draw using rules. There’s a piece of software out there called OpenSCAD that is a very pure implementation of this because you “draw” by typing code in a kind of programming language. FreeCAD lets you represent rules by drawing things with the mouse. Rules like “this is a straight line. It is parallel to the X axis. It is 5cm long. The leftmost endpoint is 3cm from the X axis and 4cm from the Y axis.” There’s only one way to draw that line. Those rules may be called Constraints or Dimensions. The powerful part is you can later change one of the rules, like “Did I say 3cm from the X axis? I meant 4cm” and it’ll redraw the whole part for you. Get your head around that concept and CAD software will unlock.

    The UIs are different, but the general concepts are similar for FreeCAD, OnShape and Fusion360, sometimes tutorials for one will be useful for learning the others.


  • Stardew Valley is basically a love letter to/greatest hits compilation of the Harvest Moon and Story of Seasons franchises. It’s kind of the opposite of a management game. There is a little bit of automation later on, but most productivity gains come in upgrading your tools which can either plow more soil in one whack, cut down a tree faster, water large patches of fields, etc.

    I definitely see where you fell off because at first it feels like you don’t have time for everything, the clock runs no matter what, there’s only so many minutes in a day etc. Here’s the thing though: There’s no failure state, and the game repeats forever. Each day is short, but days never stop coming. So plant and water a little patch of crops, then look around the town, talk to people, explore. More gameplay styles open up as you play; it’s possible to focus on exploring the various mines or fishing or whatnot rather than farming.

    Definitely do give it up for Eric “ConcernedApe” Barone. It’s amazing what the man built single-handedly.




  • I’ll allow it (my authority: some jerk that doesn’t even have an account on this instance).

    Part of Reddit culture was hyper narrow focus on the topics of subreddits. I wouldn’t be surprised if the mods of r/samsung_galaxy removed “Overall I like my Pixel better” for being off-topic, even if it was a reply in the comment chain “I have both a Pixel 5 and an S22 and the S22 has the better camera.” “Other than the camera which of the two phones do you like best?” 7 day ban, rule 4: mentions another brand of phone without also mentioning a Samsung.

    That doesn’t happen here on Lemmy as much and I don’t mind it. While a NAS isn’t necessarily directly a piece of gaming hardware, I think a lot of gamers might have one. Any who stream might save video of their play sessions to a NAS, etc. So I think this article is of peripheral interest to PC gamers.