axby @ axby @lemmy.ca

See https://alexbarry.net/ for projects I'm working on, and contact info.

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I leave my credit card stored with some places, but I specifically don’t leave it on steam just to add a speed bump for me to avoid buying a game unless I really want it. I tend to add games to my wish list, then sort of impulse buy if they go on sale for really cheap, or remove them later if I’ve decided I’ll never get around to playing them.

I’m not too worried about security, worst case I can get a new credit card number. But it seems like steam and other online retailers are pretty good about not leaking your credit card number.

Thanks, this is something I was considering. I’ve always wanted to dive into the code for something like VLC or Firefox, but I feel like it would take a while before it becomes fun. I still plan on doing it when I feel like I have more free time. Maybe I need to find simpler projects.

I guess in this post I was hoping for something that could have meaningful progress made in a few hours, without a ton of ramping up time. Maybe that doesn’t exist?

I agree and am surprised that this isn’t more in demand. I like matrix.org and use it as a regular messenger for people that I’ve convinced to use it. But it is dependent on people hosting their own instances, or using the official public one (for free).

They do have a “peer to peer” matrix experiment that I’ve heard about but it was in its early stages when I last looked at it: https://matrix.org/blog/2020/06/02/introducing-p2p-matrix/

I’ve never been into tablets, are Surfaces as easy to install Linux on as a PC? Is there any bootloader unlocking or anything like on a phone, or is it more like secure boot on a PC?

I had installed Linux on an old Chromebook and it would always offer to wipe the hard drive on every boot, so now I’ve assumed that some hardware isn’t as Linux friendly as others. I think a lot has changed since I got my desktop and the last laptop that I installed Linux on.

And are the Linux touch screen interfaces any good? I tried a Fairphone that was running something Linux and the touch interface was lacking. (It was a great tiny laptop for using a terminal though).

And last random thought… I loved the 10” netbook form factor back in 2009 or so. I think tablets are a similar size, but the weight is in the “monitor” part, I preferred the bottom heavy laptop form factor. Are the Surfaces okay for that, or top heavy enough that they can fall over and can’t have the angle adjusted finely like a laptop?

I bought a 512 GB SanDisk one for $65 USD a few years ago. I don’t like Samsung software bloatware on their phones, but having 512 GB of storage for $65 feels pretty futuristic to me. I can’t believe more phone manufacturers don’t offer external SD card support… you’d think more consumers would demand it, given that the alternative is to pay a lot more, every time you get a new phone.

I’m basically able to keep like every photo I’ve taken for the last 10 years or so (though not at original resolution).

I was thinking this too, but consider some improvements:

• wireless printing seems to “just work” now. Besides having to painfully enter my wifi password with up and down arrows on my printer, it seems like my windows and Mac laptops are able to print to it wirelessly without any initial setup. (I use Linux on my desktop but haven’t tried printing from it yet). I think it even works from phones.
• cables: I don’t remember what type of cable printers used, but I remember the big keyboard cable, then the smaller purple and green PS/2 ones (I think keyboard and mouse were different?)… I vaguely remember multiple different peripheral cables, like FireWire? Giant parallel ports for things like scanners?

I hate that most printers don’t come with the USB (B?) cable that seemingly only printers need now, but I’m glad that it’s standard and that everything supports <strikethrough>USB-A</strikethrough> I mean USB-C (except my PC) now. Such a utopia.

I find that stove top popcorn is even less convenient (so less tempting to eat all the time), but much cheaper, and maybe tastier in some ways.

Get a ~500 g (1 lb or so?) bag of whole kernels for $3-ish, some oil that you use for cooking other stuff anyway, and salt. Heat the oil on the stove with a few kernels, then when those pop, briefly remove from heat and add more. Make sure the pot has a lid. Keep shaking it side to side to keep the popcorn from burning.

I find it adds just enough oil to taste good, but not so much that I’m eating something super awful for me. (And it’s much tastier than air popped). And I assume you could still add melted butter if you want an extra treat.

I want to get one of those movie theatre style things where the popcorn can fly out of the pot.

My problem may be related: how do you find people to follow? I wish I could just follow communities like on Lemmy. I’ve tried following hastags I’m interested in, but it seems like they aren’t always used.

I’ve instead searched for topics that I’m interested in, followed a bunch of people, then unfollowed the ones that post too much stuff I’m not interested in. But this seems like a pain.

I also don’t necessarily want to see everything that a single person posts.

Grazie mille! Ecco il mio primo tentativo di supporto per le traduzioni. Ho suddiviso le traduzioni italiane generate dalla macchina in un commit separato. Per ora ho tradotto solo l'applicazione web e le stringhe nel gioco Solitaire. Sentiti libero di aggiungere qualsiasi miglioramento, su github o qui o via email/matrix/qualunque cosa ti faccia comodo:

https://github.com/alexbarry/AlexGames/pull/15/commits/9e8d244998e79831ac1d3d0bcac1b9d19474f8f2

Le stringhe comuni dell'app web sono in data/strings/it.yaml, questo potrebbe non essere molto importante e ce ne sono molte di più di quanto pensassi. Le stringhe solitaire in src/lua_scripts/games/solitaire/solitaire_strings.lua sono più gestibili e potrebbero probabilmente trarre maggior beneficio dalla revisione umana (perché mancano di contesto perché sono stringhe più corte come "draw type" ("one", "three")).

Potrebbe essere più semplice dare un'occhiata veloce all'applicazione funzionante con le nuove stringhe, l'ho ospitata qui: https://alexbarry.net/dev/games/i18n/it.html

Probabilmente sarò impegnato per la prossima settimana o forse due, quindi non sentirti obbligato a guardarli tanto presto. Potrei anche unirli al ramo principale, ma non mostrarli automaticamente agli utenti a meno che non accettino, o almeno con un disclaimer che li traduca automaticamente.

Vorrei anche aggiungere a questa frase:

I giochi presenti sono diversi e, come detto, è possibile su alcuni è anche giocarci con altre persone all’interno della stessa rete.

Ciò è vero per la versione Android, in cui stai ospitando una versione websocket sul tuo telefono. (Questa era per lo più una bella funzionalità demo, ma è raramente utile).

Ma nella versione web, si connette a un server websocket su Internet pubblico. Chiunque abbia accesso a Internet dovrebbe essere in grado di accedervi. Quindi se apri semplicemente l'URL del sito normale, scegli un gioco, dovrebbe generare un ID casuale nel parametro URL. Quindi puoi semplicemente copiare e incollare l'URL per condividerlo con un amico e dovresti essere in grado di giocare insieme. Non devi essere sulla stessa rete. (Mi rendo conto che non è intuitivo e dovrei migliorare l'interfaccia utente, almeno mostrando l'ID multigiocatore).

E se non vuoi affidarti al mio server websocket (o anche all'HTML statico sulle pagine GitHub), sei libero di ospitarlo tu stesso, ho fornito un'immagine docker, vedi https://github.com/alexbarry/AlexGames per maggiori informazioni. (Mi dispiace che sia solo in inglese, spero che i file Docker siano abbastanza chiari)

Parte del motivo per cui ho lavorato a questo era per non dover dipendere indefinitamente da un software di hosting di terze parti e non introdurre modifiche che non mi piacciono, quindi ovviamente altri sono benvenuti alla stessa libertà :)

(Non parlo molto italiano, quindi sto usando Google Translate. Versione inglese qui sotto se la traduzione non ha senso)

Ciao, sono lo sviluppatore di questi giochi. Per favore, fatemi sapere se ci sono miglioramenti o nuovi giochi su cui vorreste che lavorassi! Ho provato a creare molti giochi come esempio e ad aggiungere una versione Android, ma non ero sicuro di quali giochi o piattaforme sarebbero stati più interessanti per le persone. Alcuni dei giochi sono incompiuti e potrebbero tutti usare una grafica migliore.

Inoltre, sarei felice di aggiungere traduzioni in italiano e in altre lingue, se fosse gradito! Almeno per i giochi più popolari, potrei aggiungere un'API per ottenere l'impostazione della lingua del browser e mostrare le stringhe appropriate.

Grazie anche all'autore per aver pubblicato questo! Non so davvero come condividere i miei progetti software, molti posti su Internet non accolgono con favore l'autopromozione.

Cool, thanks! This is what I was looking for. I've briefly tried playing with Nextcloud before, but this seems like another good option.

This is what I do for my own notes now, but could it work for students writing essays and that sort of thing? I suppose there must be some markdown to HTML/PDF/etc converters (also probably ODT or DOCX or whatever).

This is actually what I did when I was in school, and overall it was quite pleasant. There was some WYSIWYG LaTeX program too that I shared with some colleagues when we were working on a document together, I remember it working okay.

But I don't see the average student, especially studying non technical stuff, to pick up LaTeX just for normal sort of essays. Even I am fairly rusty now. And honestly I don't even know if I could have managed it during high school, where I had to write English essays and stuff with specific formatting for references. (I am grateful that my engineering education was less strict about that sort of thing).

I was hoping that someone would suggest a self hosted web document suite, I think "Nextcloud" is a popular one. Then it should work on any OS, and you don't have to worry about syncing files. Even if you can pay to have someone else host an instance (not sure if this exists), and ideally a program that can keep a local backup synced to your PCs would be a big step in the right direction. Syncthing seems pretty great, though I haven't used it much, and on iOS it doesn't seem to be able to run in the background.

edit: I just read another comment that recommended OnlyOffice, this seems like another good option (source: this reply: https://lemmy.ca/comment/9415293). Aside: is there a proper way to link to a comment on lemmy that will go through your own homeserver?

What do you recommend? I love LibreOffice on Windows and Linux, and it still works well on macOS but the GUI seems weird on it, the buttons are really large. I still use it but my partner is put off by it.

I already basically get that half the time I boot into windows after an update. They say “let’s finish setting up your PC” and try to get you to pay for one drive, office, even game pass.

I’m so glad gaming on Linux has gotten to such a good state. I barely ever boot into windows now. (The “ad” on boot up is probably only once every few months, but that’s about as often as I boot into windows).

I don’t think it’s only you. I remember him saying (and even tweeting) that 2015 will be the last FPTP election if the liberals were elected. I was younger at the time but I remember a lot of people reluctantly voted for him instead of the NDP just to finally end FPTP and be able to choose the NDP as their first choice in the next election (but still choose the liberals as their second choice, to keep the conservatives out). Further reading for anyone interested: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vote_splitting

Then they won, claimed that they couldn’t find an alternative that everyone liked, and apparently that was it.

My understanding is that many people would have been happy with “anything” besides FPTP, but weren’t able to agree on their first choice? …surely it’s not that ironic? Or maybe there’s more to it than that?

Anyway overall the liberals may have still been the best choice… but this wasn’t some minor promise that he made. I think this is what was most important to a lot of people. Err.. I think? No one seems to talk about it now.

edit1: added link to tweet

edit2: This article seems to summarize the timeline: https://globalnews.ca/news/3102270/justin-trudeau-liberals-electoral-reform-changing-promises/

edit3: this seems more helpful: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_Canada#2015_federal_election

Message me on matrix in #alexgames:matrix.org if anyone wants to try playing a multiplayer game together :)

(I'm not actually very good at chess or go)

Is it fun if one person is an experienced gamer, and the other person is more casual? (And often complains that the other person is too good :( )

Thanks a lot! Usually I'm okay up until I reach near the end ... spoiler-ish warning:

(end spoilers)

It's also possible that I had tried to challenge myself and set the difficulty to the mid level, but forgot.

Oh, also I often find myself running out of components, and just barely making it to component manufacturing before I run out. I always buy them all from traders, and try to conserve them. But even with component manufacturing, it feels like it takes forever to make one, even if I have like ~15 colonists, where a few are dedicated crafters. Maybe I just need to stay in this stage for longer, until I can get assault rifles for everyone?

And I never really read much about strategies, I generally just like to figure it out myself, but I suck at trying new things.

I guess the main thing is that I love the part where you try to survive against natural disasters and have enough food, but I've never gotten too into the combat. Plus it felt like it was always pretty easy up until I got to the kinds of enemies that you encounter regularly at the end of the game.