julian_t (u/julian_t)

julian_t commented on The Synology End Game lowendbox.com/blog/they-u... · Posted by u/amacbride

julian_t · 7 days ago

I got given a small Synology box by a brother-in-law, and have not been impressed by their OS or apps, so I just use rsync. It's OK, but as my needs are simple I'm thinking of using an RPi solution instead.

(What was amusing was that I kept finding it powered off, and spent quite a while trying to find why it could be shutting down. It turned out that, because I kept it on the floor under my desk, the Roomba would occasionally bump into it and hit the power button on the front)

julian_t commented on Strange CW Keys sites.google.com/site/oh6... · Posted by u/austinallegro

motorest · 7 days ago

Here we are railing against $500 mechanical keyboards, and some dude whips out $500 CW keys. The ultimate one-up.

julian_t · 7 days ago

The comparison with mechanical keyboards is spot on! Despite having nothing to do with radio or morse in any way, I was given a Vibroplex and it is quite a piece of kit - solid as a rock and obviously a tool well suited to its one task. It reminds me of some of the old tonearms used on turntables, with many springs, counterweights and possible adjustments.

julian_t commented on I tried every todo app and ended up with a .txt file al3rez.com/todo-txt-journ... · Posted by u/al3rez

julian_t · 25 days ago

I currently have three editors open: nvim (because I've been using it since it was vi), VS Code (because that's what work mandates) and Emacs (for org mode only). Horses for courses, and all that.

julian_t commented on Owls in Towels owlsintowels.org/... · Posted by u/schaum

pierrec · 3 months ago

That's something I've done a few times! Mostly from having lived in a wildlife shelter (LPO Ile Grande) for 2 months, since they have quarters for volunteers who wish to stay. Out of all the birds that collide and are unable to fly, you'd be surprised at how many recover, and I mean it's not as grim as some people make it out to be.

That shelter was especially interesting because it's near the nesting grounds of marine birds that are relatively rare in France or even Europe overall. Cargo ships in the English channel illegally dump oil waste all the time, and the oiled marine birds just float helplessly to the beach, still alive. People pick them up and bring them to the shelter where we literally hand-wash them with soap and put them in a bird drying station. The numbers could get overwhelming and we would have to make "bird washing assembly lines" on occasion.

It's a whole discipline with specialized equipment, passed-down knowledge and passionate people!

julian_t · 3 months ago

Years ago we found a large heron with a broken wing on the road outside our house in Wales. It had probably hit a power cable, and was hopping around dragging its wing. It was basically a homicidal needle beak, obviously not in the best of moods.

An elderly lady come out to see what the fuss was about, saw the bird, went back inside and then reappeared holding a block of polystyrene foam. She marched up to the bird, which very soon after found itself with a lump of foam on the end of its beak. That gave others the opportunity to wrap it in a blanket (bit big for a towel) and take it to the vet.

Those old ladies are tough!

julian_t commented on Inside One of America's Last Pencil Factories (2018) nytimes.com/2018/01/12/ma... · Posted by u/perihelions

perihelions · 5 months ago

There were predecessors to pencils going back hundreds of years before that, with very similar capabilities. They used soft metals that streak when dragged across a surface, particularly silver and lead (Pb) (also the etymology of "pencil lead"); and sharpened these into narrow points. The modern pencil sort of iterated on those ideas. Soft graphite powder, in a wax binder, leaves a streak superior to metals; and encasing it in wood was the solution to the graphite composite's brittleness.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silverpoint

Here's a zoomable example by da Vinci (don't you agree they look awfully similar to pencil lines?)

https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1860-0616-...

julian_t · 5 months ago

My wife does silverpoint. A couple of bucks worth of fine silver wire in an old mechanical pencil, and you're set for years of drawing. Pretty much the cheapest way to do art (and it looks good, too)

julian_t commented on Migraine is more than a headache – a rethink offers hope nature.com/articles/d4158... · Posted by u/rntn

tim333 · 7 months ago

I sometimes get shimmering patterns which I think they call visual migraine or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scintillating_scotoma but thankfully mine don't go on to migraine proper. They often seem set of by a bright light outside the center of vision like I'm reading a book with sunlight coming in from 45 degrees.

julian_t · 7 months ago

I used to get these two or three times a year, but then I had heart surgery last summer and had five in the first day after I came round from the anesthetic, and two or three every day for weeks after that. They've now settled down to one every few days. Annoying, but they go away fairly quickly and just leave me feeling a bit tired and headachy for a few hours.

julian_t commented on Hello, I'm Mr. Null. My Name Makes Me Invisible to Computers (2015) wired.com/2015/11/null/... · Posted by u/LorenDB

Krasnol · 7 months ago

We had a patient with a single letter as surname. Didn't go well with our patient web portal. She'll probably never be able to see her MRIs online since development is slow, and it seems to be an edge case.

julian_t · 7 months ago

I have several Indian coworkers who have a single name. Our company systems insist on first and last names, so they either end up with '.' as a last name, or the same name twice.

julian_t commented on Invisible Electrostatic Wall at 3M plant (1996) amasci.com/weird/unusual/... · Posted by u/Simon_O_Rourke

zombot · 7 months ago

Van de Graaff

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_de_Graaff_generator

julian_t · 7 months ago

The Daresbury Laboratory in the UK had a giant Van de Graaff generator housed in a high concrete tower. I remember staying on site and waking up in the middle of the night with a really creepy feeling that turned out to be caused by that thing operating.

julian_t commented on Sweden brings more books and handwriting practice back to its schools (2023) apnews.com/article/sweden... · Posted by u/redbell

dowager_dan99 · 8 months ago

the challenge is I don't love my books for the content, but for their essence, so ebooks just aren't as valuable. If my physically books were destroyed in a fire I would be sad because i lost the objects, not temporarily lost access to the contents.

julian_t · 8 months ago

For me it's a bit of both. A programming book that I wrote over 10 years ago - the content is long out of date but the weight reminds me of the effort I put into producing it. Then there's my father's library, all 2000 books of it. I've kept about 50, on a wide variety of topics, and I value them both for the unusual content (Ancient churches of Wales; Jazz record catalogs from the 1940s; English artists from the early 20th century) and for the fact that they remind me of him.

julian_t commented on Markov Keyboard: keyboard layout that changes by Markov frequency (2019) github.com/shapr/markovke... · Posted by u/dr_kiszonka

all2 · 9 months ago

There were, for awhile, some security systems had on-screen keyboards that would change layout on every key press.

julian_t · 9 months ago

Had this at an ATM recently, and it took a couple of tries at my PIN before I looked at the keypad and realized what was going on. One more wrong PIN and I could have lost my card.