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?)

Covid question.

Some countries are clearly doing a better job then others in regards to how accurately (and honestly) they're reporting their numbers.

Eg Iran was recently in the news for (probably) grossly under-reporting, but all the "Covid Counting" sites seem to keep right on reporting official numbers w/o consideration to their accuracy.

Has anyone seen any sites or articles that try to systematically analyze the relative accuracy of all countries' reporting?

Addendum: And yet, when I visit this media company's site today—along with various subsidiaries—they still warn me about the cookies they will inflict on me, and my uMatrix and NoScript plug-ins clearly show google-connected libraries in use.

WTF is this article talking about?

Harrumpf.

Oh yeah ... and are these guys hiring?

Dutch media company NPO ("the BBC of the Netherlands") abandons user-tracking and makes more money from advertising, than it ever made on user-targeted ads.

https://www.wired.com/story/can-killing-cookies-save-journalism/

Outlier, or portent?

And how do I tweak my AdBlock and uMatrix plug-ins to always whitelist anyone using this advertising model?

@lynnesbian

#AlpacaWorld

It gets better. We are now on an ill-conceived road trip, taking our infernal spoils of war to our neighbors, to cement the alliance. Everyone is in shock over Sarah's scheme. Yesterday, Sakura went on a foul-mouthed two-hour cursing spree.

And Sarah—normally our Rock—seems to have become unhinged by the stress of turning human beings into spare-ribs and rawhide. She is always remote, and has taken to dazed midnight rambles thru the wilderness.

@lynnesbian

#AlpacaWorld

Sarah may have lost her mind...

Last week, she received a dubious proposal from a prospective ally. Didn't tell us, just started preparing for it on her own.

Each night while we slept, our Night Owl worked in secret, enlarged the cave out back, and started butchering, skinning & tanning...the still-frozen bodies of the pirates that attacked us, which she dug up out of the graves we buried them in.

That's right...our new allies are cannibals.

Get the Coronavirus now, while it's still cool!

So, passing thought ... if you think you're probably going to get it anyway, then go out there and get it asap, while the hospitals still have beds and resources to spare.

Then, with your "I Survived Covid-19" t-shirt, you can enjoy bargain-basement airline prices and explore the World in (relative) safety.

... I'm only half-joking. Am I off-base here?

#duolingo #DuoPhraseOfTheDay

Today's Duolingo phrase of the day ...

(Credit to @dadegroot , who started this)

@lynnesbian

#AlpacaWorld

We've been stranded almost nine months now, on the downhill side of a cold, harsh winter. No casualties, and we've even adopted a few locals; we are now Six.

The three does all calved midwinter, despite a flu outbreak. Alpaca count: Seven.

We have begun wandering the countryside in search of wild local stock, but so far, we have seen none ... just bizarre, giant blue-furred bison. Ours could be the only alpacas on this gods-forsaken planet.

@lynnesbian

#AlpacaWorld

... it's a cold, arid world we find ourselves stranded upon ... one that is, nevertheless, inexplicably overcrowded with people, all desperately in need of soft, fuzzy alpaca wool parkas, t-shirts and tuques.

... and we - Sarah, Thornton and Sakura - are just the three bad-ass chicks who will bring it to them.

Meta — and why can't I make sweaters in this dumb game?!?

@lynnesbian

I started a new RimWorld game today, called AlpacaWorld. Thought of you.

Started w/4 alpacas instead of the default "1 random pet", and all 3 humans are animal experts.

The goal is to have 30+ domesticated alpacas, ASAP, and corner the Market on alpaca wool. Off to a good start ... the first alpacas were "gettin' some lovin'" before the pwns were even armed.

I wonder if any of the pwns know how to knit ...

Y'all remember that wonderful/depressing, awesome/horrific board game, Pandemic? So, without/before Googling/Ducking it, what do you think its sales look like these days?

I'm gonna find out, right after posting this.

Recent #Tusky update?

My UX is screwed up ... extremely hard to scroll down, it keeps wanting to page left-and-right.

Anyone else seeing this problem?

Hey. #covid . They keep reporting 2.3% fatality rate (or thereabouts). 86,000 sick, nearly 3,000 dead.

Basic math. Isn't that in the vicinity of 3.5+%?

Sure, probably add in a few thousand who have recovered and are no longer counted in that 86k ... but also gotta figure some of the current 86k aren't gonna make it, either.

Or am I missing something?

So, here is the danger of skim-reading the news in a language you only halfway understand ...

You learn about the latest hamster-buying frenzy ... no doubt some stupid new Twitter challenge (how many hamsters can you fit in your mouth? Post the video!) ... whatever. It's certainly not important enough for me to go look up 'hamsterkäufe' in my German-English dictionary.

Meanwhile, where's the latest news on that pandemic?

#OpenSalary @meduz

* 16 years, Milwaukee area
* 2-year degree, mostly self-taught
* Full-stack dev and consultant
* Mainly Microsoft stack — C#, T-SQL, ASP.NET
* Mostly gig work, project-specific, 2-month — 3-year gigs, ~15 overall

* Mostly, no perks at all
* Starting salary (in 2004) was $28k/$22k (gross/net)
* Since 2010, around $65k-90k/$50k-65k
* Often unemployed for months between gigs

* Last 2 years, voluntarily unemployed, living in EU
* Moving to Linux
* Burnt out (?)

#Nextcloud Talk ... Anybody successfully self-hosting this? Got a "how-to-set-it-up" blog or such-like?

I've been hosting my own NC server for years. Overall, very pleased.

Tried #Nextcloud Talk 18-24 months ago. Text worked (in fact, it still does - I never uninstalled it) ... audio and video never did.

I was told, outside of the LAN, you need your own TURN and/or STUN server(s), so I added those ... still didn't work (still doesn't - never uninstalled those, either).

Any tips, anyone?

The other day, I discovered the dog-version of reading while on the toilet.

Occasionally, while my dog is "in the position", he discovers some interesting smell in front of him ... and he stays in the pooping position long after he's finished, because he's busy considering the smell.

Celsius == Fahrenheit — tip for the Math-Challenged ...

Start at freezing, +5 & +9. So--
0°C == 32°F
5°C == (32+9=)41°F
10°C == (41+9=)50°F
15°C == (50+9=)59°F
20°C == (59+9=)68°F
etc.

Bonus, easy-to-remember--
Room Temp ... 22°C~==72°F.

Bonus-bonus--
-40°C == -40°F == 'effin' cold.

Not perfect, and yeah, there's still some math, but way easier than the actual conversion formula.

@bjarni

So it's been a few months ... what's your long(er)-term opinion on pleroma? Still running your own private instance, at home, thru pagekite? Is the tech mostly behaving?

How would you rate the set-up, and the on-going maintenance difficulty?

Danke