pixelscript

pixelscript , 2 months ago to asklemmy in What todo app are you using?

A Post-It and a pencil, usually.

Not because “app bad” or “return to monke” or anything like that. Mostly because if I stow the note in a dedicated app, that somehow just makes me less inclined to write it down and read it later.

A scrap of papersticking out like a sore thumb on my desk or burning a hole in my pocket? I’m going to be cognizant of that all day long. But an obscure text file chilling in a disused part of my phone, or a txt file lost in the shuffle of random shit on my PC? Outta sight outta mind.

I also find all digital input schemes to be frustratingly less flexible than physical paper. Provided I have a writing utensil on hand that is functional (not always a given, granted) it is trivial to put anything I want on a note. Write anything I want. Draw diagrams. Underline or strike text. Write some things larger or heavier than others. All of these things are possible in note taking apps, but they come with the idiosyncracies of needing to know the selection techniques and menu options to activate them. In this way they’re all death by a thousand tiny annoying cuts for me.

I even had a smart phone with a built-in stylus for a good long while. It definitely extended the things you could do with ease, but it was a far cry from a pencil.

The only thing a note taking app can do in my mind that paper can’t is yell at you with a loud noise at a pre-programmed time. If I need one of those, I just set an alarm in my clock app.

pixelscript , 2 months ago to asklemmy in Why stand in line to board an airplane?

I live in the US and I consider it unusual to fly more than once every two years.

pixelscript , 2 months ago to asklemmy in What is an interesting fact that you recently discovered?

I always hear this statistic on how proper zipper merging increases traffic flow rate over no strategy at all, and I simply do not understand how it helps.

They keep pointing to how much of the upstream second lane is “wasted”. But like, from a strict perspective of flow rate, is it really?

The bottleneck restricting flow is the reduced speed single lane. Put a vehicle counter on it. Assuming no one wastes time getting through whatever funnel point there is, this flow is consistent. The same number of cars passing at the same speed are getting through regardless of whether the zipper point was a few cars back or ten kilometers back. Unless I can hear an explanation on how zipper merging changes this I remain unconvinced.

Zipper merging still has unquestionable advantages that are obvious to glean, of course.

Putting the merge point as close to the blockage as possible minimizes the time spent in the shared lane. Flow is the same, but the overall time spent in the jam is averaged over all drivers.

That “wasted lane” does not, as far as I can tell, improve flow. But it does improve storage. If cars are piling up at the choke point, utilizing the full extra lane keeps the pilup from backing up as far down the road, reducing potential domino effects through the road system.

Zipper merging is fairer to all vehicles by promoting a FIFO processing order. No one in the closed lane gets screwed, everyone gets through in roughly the order they showed up.

It has lots of advantages, and is clearly the winner, but I fail to see how increased flow is one of them.

Of course, I’m making a lot of assumptions about perfect behavior of drivers, while this statistic is supposedly real-world empirical data. That suggests there are significant inefficiencies in real-world human driving, and that the zipper merge addresses them somehow. But I can’t fathom what those are or why zipper merging is relevant to them.

pixelscript , 2 months ago to programmerhumor in Hal fixing a login form

I just got home from a 12 hour day of work. This has been my entire week.

Help.

pixelscript , 2 months ago to asklemmy in To those with 2+ monitors on your machine: What's your use case, and how much does it actually boost your productivity?

For work, it’s usually IDE on the right (my larger screen) and a live build of the thing I’m working with on the left (a laptop screen). Though it varies a lot throughout the day. Primary screen gets the app that needs most scrutiny, small screen gets auxilliary things like passive communication apps or reference materials.

For home use, where I have two monitors of equal size, it’s usually Discord on one screen and a web browser on the other. Comms on the left and active task on the right.

I don’t see a use case in my workflow for a third screen, especially not one that is a weird size or is in portrait orientation. But if one was simply bestowed upon me, I’m sure I’d find something to do with it sooner or later. There was a time where I though two monitors was overrated, I’m sure I can adapt my opinion again for 3+.

pixelscript , 2 months ago to asklemmy in Why do people say "Catholics and Christians" in (USA) when Catholics are also Christians, as if they refer to it as a different religion.

As an American who was raised Lutheran, who was taught a bunch of Romance-Euro-centric world history in school, I always considered Roman Catholic to be the “default” flavor of Christianity. Protestantism in all of its forms are hard forks. It’s in the name, even–the Roman Catholic church is what Protestants are “protesting”.

To unironically “-and Zoidberg” Catholicism out of Christianity while leaving Protestant flavors included feels completely backwards. I’ve never heard anyone do it.

But if I did, I could only assume it was due to some No True Scotsman bullshit. “Only we practice the correct way. Everyone else isn’t just interpreting it differently, but interpreting it wrong.” Sounds like an Evangelical line of thought to me.

pixelscript , 2 months ago to memes in I'm ready to build my own PC

1. Decide your budget
2. Go to logicalincrements.com
3. Find the tier that matches your budget
4. Buy that
5. Enjoy your PC

Once you get a feel for building and owning, then you can start making more informed choices about what you really need.

pixelscript , 2 months ago to programmerhumor in It's always semicolon, God damnit.......

it’d be poor style to put more than one statement on a line

Unlike Python, most languages do not endorse a specific concept of style. You’re free to dabble in all the bad style choices you like, on the off chance that once in a blue moon they prove to be situationally useful.

pixelscript , 2 months ago to asklemmy in Are you registered to donate your organs? Why or why not?

As a very strong believer in Danny DeVito’s quote, “When I’m dead, just throw me in the trash!”, if any medical party is even remotely interested in dumpster diving for my parts when I’m done with them, they can have 'em. Better than throwing them in a box and taking up land in a cemetary. The less of my remains uselessly taking up space on this planet after death, the better. If I get my way upon my demise, anything they don’t take is going into the incinerator anyway.

pixelscript , 2 months ago to asklemmy in Would you rather live in a big city or a small town?

The exception would be high-paid remote work, I guess. But with the reputation that corpos big enough to field those salaries have been recently building, going mask-off with no warning for no reason and asking employees to start filling desks again, I don’t know if I’d risk it.

pixelscript , 2 months ago to asklemmy in Would you rather live in a big city or a small town?

City. Around 100k is the comfortable size.

Not like I require the city’s wider array of amenities all that much. I will still be spending 97% of my time at work or at home.

But if I lived in a small town again (born and raised in a town of <8,000), that extra 3% of the time I wanted to go out I’d have to remind myself, “Oh yeah, I live in a dead end town in the middle of nowhere that services none of my personal interests,” and that 3% would rapidly become 0%. I’d live fine with that, but eh. Why take a strict net loss when I can simply not?

The walkabiity and community arguments for small towns are complete non-factors for me, seeing as I go basically nowhere and talk to basically no one. And I’m not persuaded by the cost of living argument for small towns, since lower rent would be almost equally counterbalanced by lower salary opportunities.

pixelscript , 2 months ago to asklemmy in What's something small you achieved recently that you're proud of?

Finally found out why I couldn’t renew my Let’s Encrypt cert.

Did you know fresh installs of Debian Testing come with firewalld installed and enabled to auto-block all incoming connections? Me neither!

pixelscript , 2 months ago to programmerhumor in How do we tell him ?

The only difference between a novice and a professional is that a professional checks what they are copying to understand it first before allowing it into their codebase.

Novices copy code to avoid having to understand it. Professionals copy code to avoid reinventing the wheel.

pixelscript , 3 months ago to asklemmy in What is something that 2020s kids will never get to experience?

Getting static shocked by the TV screen.

pixelscript , 3 months ago to asklemmy in What is something that 2020s kids will never get to experience?

A lot of folks blame this on kids simply not wanting to go outside anymore. But I believe a significant dimension to it also lies in the fact that the world is a lot more hyper vigilant about punishing things like trespassing, loitering, hooliganism, and the like.

The woods? Whose woods? Someone owns that land. Are they gonna call the cops on you if they notice you’re in there? Do they not want you damming up their creek? Is that going to be considered vandalism? Do they not want to be liable if you injure yourself on their property? All questions that probably aren’t in a kid’s head, but I imagine would be on a modern parent’s. The safety risks are high. Always were, that’s not new. But the legal risks are new.

And yeah, it’s not like getting in trouble for these sorts of things didn’t happen back in, say, my dad’s childhood. But I’d wager my dad would have gotten picked up by cops in his youth and sent off with stern tut-tut by the local sheriff for being just another incident of rowdy boys being boys, while my kid (if I had one) would be far more likely to make it out with a criminal record if they’re old enough, or trigger a lawsuit against me for my negligence if they aren’t.