Eric the Cerise @[email protected]

Passing thought for trans folk, gender fluid, non-binary, etc.

In the Hungarian language, all pronouns are gender neutral.

ő == he or she
őt == him or her

OTOH, most Hungarians (at least outside of Budapest) are still pretty old-school in their views on gender identity.

The 9-to-noon protocol

I've been too distracted for too long by too many ancillary things in my life. Seems like I hardly ever write any actual code any more. Prolly average < 1/2 hr/day. Am I even allowed to call myself a programmer at that point?

Implementing new "9-to-noon" protocol, effective immediately. 3 hrs/day (minimum) devoted to coding. Not dinking with editor/IDE configs, not getting lost in Man pages, not binge-reading StackOverflow threads ... actual coding.

... and ... go.

An American in Sopron, pt 1,

I am an American expat, of Hungarian ancestry. Hungary allows for jus sanguinis (right of blood) citizenship, and thanks to that, I am now a Hungarian citizen, as well. I moved here about a year ago, for political reasons (details to follow, eventually).

Until now, I've used Mastodon intermittently, mainly as a tech-y news exchange. Moving forward, I hope to use it as an actual daily micro-blog about my life and experiences here in the EU (and beyond?).

An American in Sopron, pt 2,

I'm mainly targeting my friends and family, both here and back in the US, but perhaps others will find it interesting, as well.

I will mainly be making posts visible only to my followers. If this interests you, maybe you want to follow me. If you follow me now for my FOSS/tech stuff, well, most of my friends are nerds, too, so that's not going away, but there'll be less of it, so maybe prune me off of your list (it's probably getting too long, anyway, right?)

So, mark your calendars.

Friday, December 13th ... Good day.

Monday, January 13th ... Bad day.

Monday the 13th. It's gonna be a thing.

I want to start a thing, where Friday the 13th is a good-luck day (because as my high school geometry teacher used to say, all Fridays are Good Friday ) ... and instead, it's actually Monday the 13th that's the bad-luck day.

Among other things, it's an opportunity for a whole new horror-film franchise.

Tell your friends. Monday the 13th. It's gonna be a thing.

I have a LUKS-encrypted HDD mounted in my Turris Omnia router (think OpenWrt) and hosted as a NAS network share, via Samba.

It seems hooked up correctly, locally (via SSH), but I cannot access the share via the network. I get a "connection refused" error.

Any ideas, anyone? Danke.

Best silly "we use cookies" banner ...

On GOG,

"Not like it changes anything, but we are obligated to inform you that we are using cookies - well, actually, we just did. More info here."

Cool pics.

The 50 finalists in the 2019 Agora photo awards.

https://www.businessinsider.com/agora-awards-best-photos-of-the-year-2019-9

So, here's a thing.

This convenience-store chain is ubiquitous in Hungary. Store-name means "The National Smoke-shop". It's the semi-seedy place you buy your cigarettes, booze and groceries you suddenly realized you need at 2:00 am.

The thing is, I learned recently, it's actually State-owned, run by the Federal govt, for profit.

IDK about other countries, but to American eyes, this seems suspicious and weird.

Other countries' natives want to weigh in? Is this normal outside the US?

Hi @lynnesbian

I'm actually thinking about this one a bit, so bear with me.

What would you say your end goal is w/Nazi-types? if you could round 'em all up? ... Kill them all? Ban them from the InterWebs? Lock 'em up until they realize the error of their ways? Sterilize and penal-colony?

I think how they treat you online is a reflection of how they would treat you if they were actually in charge.

How you treat them online is your reflection.

Just my dos centavos.

Tip-of-the-tongue syndrome (TOT) tends to get more common as people age. It is also more common among people who speak multiple languages.

Multiple studies have found increased TOT among older people is not related to, nor indicative of, dementia. Color me relieved.

One study discovered TOT has comparable idioms in almost all languages (word stuck in the tongue/mouth/throat).

Curiously, Icelandic was one of the very few languages that had no idiom for TOT.

@bjarni , thoughts?

The Implausible Burger*: 100% plant-based, just like cows!

*Shamelessly ripped off from Colbert.

For the record ...

(ahem)

Ahoy, me Hearties!

Avast, ye landlubbers! T'is the day to talk like a pirate! So, hoist the poopdeck an' make sure yer buckles are swashed.

Aaarrrrggghhh!

T-shirt philosophy, pt 2

I just did a quick search, yeah there are a few variations out there now.

But while searching for the T-shirt, I hit this absolutely serious, 2012 "Psychology Today" article.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/unique-everybody-else/201209/is-there-something-wrong-people-who-dont-use-facebook

"...employers may be reluctant to hire people without a Facebook profile on the grounds that Facebook usage has become so common that not having an account is seen as somehow abnormal."

Gods, I hate that company. I'm pretty disappointed in humanity overall, too.

T-shirt philosophy

Back in the day, 8-10 years ago when Facebook was first becoming popular, there were many variations of a T-shirt you could buy, that said

"No. I'm not on Facebook."

I liked them, and was going to get one. But 1-2 years later, when I finally got around to buying one, they were no longer for sale, not anywhere. I Really looked.

Apparently, the "not on FB" consumer market had dried up.

Maybe (hint, hint) it's time for T-shirt vendors to bring this one back.

Disappointing day with my new #OryxPro. I got demonstrably bad advice from the #System76 folk, so predictably, I struck out on my own, started to improvise.

Luckily, that worked out okay. I got the keyboard and back cover removed w/o damage.

Unfortunately, I discovered that the SSD I wanted to drop into it is the wrong size. Prolly something I should've checked on before taking the laptop apart (or ... y'know ... ordering it).

Guess I'll have to make do with "only" 1.5TB.

I'm a fan of Scottish showers. First half as hot as you can stand, last half as cold as you can make it. I've been showering like this, most days, for 5-6 years.

It's the Poor Man's Finnish sauna. There are supposed to be assorted health benefits. I know I'm comfortable at more extreme temps, esp the cold. I'm often out in shorts and t-shirt when most people are in winter jackets.

Best thing, though, is knowing that—by 6:00 am—the hardest thing you'll do all day is probably already behind you.

#OryxPro operation is on hold until I hear back from the Priests of the Temple of #System76.

Keyboard won't pop out, plus there's an undocumented extra screw in the back that won't come out, despite being completely unscrewed.

Spooky.

Okay. Enough procrastination. I'm now starting to disassemble my brand new #System76 #oryxpro to drop in an extra SSD.

Wish me luck, and if you Believe, whisper a little prayer to the Spaghetti Gods of Tech for me.

I have a home-built, getting-long-in-the-tooth, desktop PC (dual-boot, Mint19 & Win07). I recently bought a high-end laptop, a loaded OryxPro, to replace it.

I'm cannibalizing the primary 1TB SSD out of the PC and into the Oryx ('cuz more closet space).

So, today I Cloned the SSD over onto an HDD to continue running the PC until the laptop is ready.

Worked like a charm, except holy crap, does it ever run slow on the HDD. How did we ever live with these things running OSes?

Just saw "Call Me By Your Name". Top-shelf film, great everything—acting, writing, directing, lighting, etc—and yet I didn't really like it.

The two main characters start out asshole-ish, then become more sympathetic later on. But I never got over my first impression.

It's critically acclaimed, so now I'm left wondering if the problem is with me. Plus, it's a gay coming-of-age film, and I'm a straight old white guy, so there's a voice whispering in my ear, "you homophobe, you".

Stupid movie.

One week into a new, alternate-day, Intermittant Fasting diet. Fasting on Sun/Tues/Thurs, lifting & working out on M/W/F mornings, before breaking fast.

One thing is clear. It's going to take at least 3 weeks before I can tell if I'm losing weight. Daily morning weigh-ins, my weight is all over the map, with day-to-day swings of 5-6+ lbs.

I've always paid more attention to my 10-day moving average. But now it'll take 20+ days of every-single-day weigh-ins to see any kind of reliable trend.

So, the "9-to-noon" thing is kind of working. It's turning into more of a "10-to-1" thing, but close enough.

Still spending too much time on supporting tools, rather than actual coding.

I dove back into Python yesterday, spent 30 minutes figuring out if (and if so, where) Pip was pre-installed on my machine, then another hour (re-)learning the whole multi-layered Python virtual environment thing, etc.

Still, 3+ hours/day dedicated to at least trying to program seems like a promising idea.