I loved my manual transmission cars, and wasn't even that bothered by the "1st-2nd-1st-2nd..." highway congestion that I'd encounter every now and then. But when my driving got to be a little more adventurous (lane and a half wide gravel forest service roads on steep hills) I reluctantly gave in and got an auto. Some day I hope to own another fun manual car...
Readit Newsobombration commented on How America lost its love for the stick shift cnbc.com/2018/09/05/audi-... · Posted by u/acheron
Very nice designs. It's been interesting to see the explosion of headless, fanned-fret guitars over the last few years. Kiesel and Strandberg seemed to be the only places to reliably find them a few years ago.
obombration commented on Sound and fury: how pronunciation provokes passionate reactions theguardian.com/books/201... · Posted by u/kawera
As a midwesterner, I would certainly appreciate it if people would focus on the other 95% of what I said, and not that I said "bag" ("bay-g").
Since someone already mentioned electric guitar, I'll go with: Petzl Grigri 2[1]
I was initially pretty skeptical of Grigris. Climbers have used far more primitive devices for a long time, why do I need a big, bulky hunk of metal and plastic to catch falls? But now that I have one, you'll have to pry it from my hopefully not cold or dead hands. I don't need to have a death-grip on my rope if my climber is hanging for a while. I can go hands-free on rappel to get stuck gear. Most importantly, it has certainly helped prevent some accidents that could have been catastrophic--one particular incident left me with a broken foot, but without the braking assistance from the Grigri, I may have instead walked over to a cratered climber. Best $99 I've ever spent.
[1] https://www.petzl.com/US/en/Sport/Belay-devices--descenders/...
obombration commented on Ask HN: Which Berkeley Courses Should I Archive? · Posted by u/berkeleyarchive
Anyone want to chime in with a way to simply grab them all?
If there's a YouTube playlist for the course, you can easily grab them all with youtube-dl.
obombration commented on Hydrogen – An advanced drum machine for Linux hydrogen-music.org/hcms/... · Posted by u/ferrantim
Pulse/alsa/jack shenanigans make audio production the only thing I still use MacOS for.
Do you use an audio interface? What have you found is supported well by Linux? Saffire Pro 24 + Addictive Drums + Logic is what is really keeping me tied to macOS at home.
obombration commented on Ask HN: What is the worst software that you have to use? · Posted by u/zxcvvcxz
At work, it's probably JIRA. Tons of UI noise, text markup isn't what I expect it to be and nobody around here can seem to agree on what features should be used for a particular scenario.
Past work, it would have been Identity Finder by a landslide. Awful UI, awful support, super intrusive, a total pain to administer, just bleh. Glad I was able to wash my hands of that.
Personal stuff, iTunes. I genuinely like the interface (at least on macOS) but it's huge and bloated and doesn't do some of the things I want it to. If they ripped out everything that wasn't related to listening to your personal (local) music library, I'd probably like it quite a bit. I wish it would write metadata to file tags rather than its own database, but I forgo that if it got rid of all the other crap.
obombration commented on Ask HN: How to best teach a group of children how to code? · Posted by u/jiblyyyy
I taught a group of 9-12 year old basic logic and algorithms using Scratch to animate a scene.
One kid wrote a basic brick breaker and another pong. They all seemed to enjoy the process since it's pretty straight forward drag/drop logic.
Agreed. I taught a CS club to 4th and 5th graders during college and they all loved Scratch. It's very easy to get going with audio, images, animation, etc., which got them really interested quickly. Even for older (middle school aged) kids I'd probably start with Scratch because it teaches most of the CS concepts you'd use in any other language, but doesn't require the tedious environment setup (editor, compiler/interpreter, etc.) that "real" languages need. Spark their interest using the concepts, then sprinkle in the boring parts.
I really like the Steelcase Leap I use at work. I find it much nicer than the Aeron I was using before.
Tangential question: how do you get around how overtly racist these bands are? You're citing Darkthrone, for instance, which is basically the poster-child band for teenagers using metal as an excuse to shoot people and burn things.
> You're citing Darkthrone, for instance, which is basically the poster-child band for teenagers using metal as an excuse to shoot people and burn things.
No, they aren't. You're thinking of Varg Vikernes of Burzum, and maybe Faust from (early) Emperor. Fenriz, Nocturno Culto and most of the rest of the Norwegian scene had nothing to do with Varg's 'black metal politics'.
As for getting around how "overtly racist" those bands are: you can't, at least with releases like Fullmoon's United Aryan Evil. If the subject matter bothers you, you simply don't listen.