titusjohnson

Joined 13 years ago

Karma
238
Submissions
188
Member since
Aug 30
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Recent submissions

Comment · 11 months ago
About 5 years ago or so I was able to collect my Dad's C64 collection from my Mom's house, buy some new cables and an official C64 monitor off of eBay, and gift him his old computer back for Christmas.

I can't speak to cassettes, we had only cartridges and floppies. My Dad was a prolific pirate, so cases and cases of floppies. I'd say roughly 3 out of 5 worked, and we were able to boot the old game up. Karateka, 4th and Inches, Hat Trick, Bubble Bobble, Impossible Mission...

I was surprised the C64 worked, honestly. It had been stored for nearly a decade in an old Barn next to decrepit plow/cattle equipment from the early 1900's, not protected from the environment at all, just an old cardboard box literally busting at the seams. At least it wasn't on the ground.

Comment · 11 months ago
I used to budget the bulk of my yearly tax refund for a PC upgrade of some kind. A bit over $1k every year. Something was always due for a replacement in an endless treadmill of avoiding total system obsolescence.

Now, shit just lasts forever. I upgraded from a 1st gen i7 920 _this year_ into some mid-range Ryzen 5. I'm still using the 2070 RTX I bought over 5 years ago to power the HTC Vive and a 1440p monitor; with this new CPU the gfx card is finally getting a workout and has become the bottleneck while also giving me a massively better experience.

I'm tempted by the 9070 graphics cards but honestly, I just don't need it. I can tweak settings on any AAA game and get ~50fps of real frames and I'm just fine with that. I probably won't upgrade the graphics card until I pick up a dramatically better display device that requires it. Maybe the Frame will push the issue, maybe it won't.

Comment · 11 months ago
I take the pants that have insufficient pockets to a tailor, and ask them to extend the depth of the phone pocket. You can even ask them to do the extension in phone size if you want to restrict its movement in your pocket. On average I've needed about a 3" extension which both restricts lateral phone movement, and also carries it low enough on my thigh that the phone doesn't pinch into my hip when I sit down.

$30 or so later you'll have an integrated Pholster and don't have to carry another thing around with you. For $200 you should be able to update all the pants you have that lack a proper pocket. This is also an incredibly easy thing to sew yourself, by hand, while you watch TV. $30 for a tailor to do the first pair to give you a template to follow, $50 at a craft store will get you some decent scissors, needle, thread, and a yard of whatever material you like. You'll butcher the first pair of pants, but the second, will be better and the third will be perfect.

Comment · 1 year ago
We need mandatory licensing. It worked for Radio, it can work for Streaming.

There's no reason Netflix and Hulu couldn't both have ALL media available. Then they could actually compete on features and capabilities, not on media catalog.

Comment · 1 year ago
I'm a big fan of tasteful remakes/remasters/updates. I don't mind paying again. I liked the Monkey Island update, System Shock, Myst, and Oblivion. They hit the right balance of QOL changes to take advantage of modern control schemes and polishing up the gfx to match my rose-colored memories. Oblivion on my HDTV looks so much like how I remember it looking on my 15" Compaq my nostalgia bones vibrate.

> About 60 percent thought 5-8 years is the ideal amount of time between versions. Only 11 percent thought 10 years or more was preferable.

This I don't understand. 5-8 years old is the ideal age to remaster? So Skyrim should have had a full-blown remaster by now, if not 2?

I want to see 20 year old stuff get this treatment. Homeworld 1, Jedi Knight: Dark Forces 2, Zork: Grand Inquisitor, Max Payne, Mech Warrior.

Comment · 1 year ago
Comment · 1 year ago
Apple doesn't advertise this as the intent, but until the Air I felt that the Phone+Case combo is the complete phone, as it is intended to be used. Add any of Apple's official cases, leather, silicone, whatever, and that's the official "thickness" of the phone. The cameras are recessed, the front display is recessed, the whole phone is wrapped in leather and further customized to your style.

Now the Air has a bump that is so big no case can hide it without also being unreasonably thicc, breaking the trend. I wonder what a case mfg could stuff into the awkward space on the peninsula where the camera is missing so the case provides a uniform surface when laying flat, even if that means a bigger bump on the top when cased. The phone would have a natural angle towards the user, that's kinda nice. Maybe a little bluetooth speaker setup so owners of the Air can more efficiently irritate their fellow passengers.

Comment · 1 year ago
The problem with Art is Art is whatever the Artist says it is. There is no concrete definition of Art, it is wholy subjective to the perspectives of the creator and the appreciator. Comics & Manga certainly fall under the umbrella of art in a strict sense, they are first and foremost Comics & Manga.

Colloquially when people say Art they mean what they see in a museum, not what they can buy in the corner store. When I subscribe to a generic Art category I want to see artists showing techniques, cool paintings, breakdowns of how marble was carved, and most certainly not catgirl uwu. I might be interested in a post about how comics are made (high effort, interesting content), but I am not interested in a picture from issue #346 (low effort fandom attraction).

Comment · 1 year ago
Woah... gonna be honest I really thought I was using a v4. Well, Things 3 is fantastic and I highly recommend it.
Comment · 1 year ago
Not who you're talking to, but there is none. Browsers have had "Bookmark all tabs" functionality for ages, which completely replaces tab hoarding. Especially now that the content of the page you visited 5 months ago isn't actually loaded in memory. It's basically a bookmark, switch to the tab and the content is reloaded.
Comment · 1 year ago
For work I use Logseq, but I treat it like a .txt file. 90% of my use is the daily journal pages, adding NOW and LATER todos, notes, whatever. The ability to link nodes to other pages or nodes is just good enough to beat out a .txt.

For my personal life I use Things 4. I bought the Mac and iOS versions. Despite the steep price for the Mac version, I think it's worth it. I appreciate how the app is organized. I like that the "Inbox" dumping ground is totally separate from the "Today" queue, that it pulls in calendar events to the Today queue, and the differentiation of Anytime vs Someday. I would forget to check it too, if I hadn't placed a large widget right on my Home Screen. It's the first thing I see any time I unlock my phone, it helps a lot.

I am also an avid user of post-it notes. I like to keep a stack of them on my desk. These are for things I need to complete _today_, if not _up next_. This is how I stay focused when I'm in deep work. "add test for new sort fn", "better name for site/tenant var", "need new fixture for sortables", that kind of thing. When I leave my desk I should have no sticky notes on it, whatever left ends up in Logseq.

Comment · 1 year ago
Everyone I know charges all their devices over night. Nightstands everywhere have charging docks for all the batteries you cary about your person. The hotels I have stayed at have USB ports about 2 feet from your pillow. Bluetooth speakers are semi-permanently plugged in until they need to be portable. The iPhone has built in smart charging specifically for charging over night.

Unlike my RC Car's high capacity batteries, which come with warnings all over them about proper charging care, not leaving them unattended, no common consumer product I have purchased in the last decade+ has come with any kind of visible warning regarding charging habits.

Common Sense over the last decade or two has shifted towards charging at night so your devices function all day.

Comment · 1 year ago
Comment · 1 year ago
> The problem seems to be that my brain gives me a dopamine buzz for merely _imagining_ accomplishing the project, whether or not I eventually implement, publish, and get users for the it.

I get this same buzz from talking about my projects. So today, I do not talk about anything I'm working on because I know I can drain myself of all motivation with one excited conversation.

If I want daydream fuel I buy a Powerball ticket for $2. I get the same dopamine rush doing fictional estate planning as I did spending $10=$50 on a domain and fantasizing about the project succeeding. The Powerball ticket also doesn't circle back around next year asking for more money.

I've also found that having a small homelab that can support Dokku or similar is also very helpful when I want to be productive. Deployable from Day 1 and after every change is a game changer for me, and deploying to an internal host lets me be lazy in all the right ways, as long as I keep track of the sins I commit (you can go a long, long way on a project before you have to add the boring boilerplate that is proper auth, for instance).

Comment · 1 year ago
I might have to give that a try. It's been decades since I tried a netipot.

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