Interesting thing, and I may be jinxing it, but my UPS hasn't shut me down in over a week since I reconnected the battery.

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Well, 59 laps around the sun, and what do I have to show for it?

Posted by: J Greely at December 31, 2024 07:00 AM (oJgNG)

Posted by: Mauser at January 01, 2025 01:35 AM (QE7eq)

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Trying to knock out these before the new season starts in earnest.

Akro Trip. I enjoyed this send-up of Magical Girls. Not satirical, not exactly a love letter. But a fun little romp where the world isn't really in danger from the least competent villain matched up with the least competent magical girl, and the ordinary girl who gets wrapped up in the madness.

Hitoribocchi no Isekai Kouryaku: Kinda Meh, and aimed below my grade level. Bloodless monster killing, a stat system that isn't explained very well would be okay if there were at least logic to it, OTOH, they didn't dwell on it too much so that was good. The cast was SO large there wasn't really much in the way of individuation, call them crew-served archetypes. No elves or other demi-humans.

Update 1/1/25:

Party kara Tsuihou sareta Sono Chiyushi, Jitsu wa Saikyou ni Tsuki:Finishing this just after Hitoribocchi is unfortunate, because they both turn out to have the same end plot. The local dungeon is overloaded, and vomits forth all its monsters to attack the city, and the only way to stop it is to find the dungeon master and defeat him. Some details may differ, but they are essentially the same. There's also the matter of the bloodless killing of monsters and their magic rock drops. The main difference is they play their skills straight in this show. No Cheat skills, no isekai, it's just a straight gamish fantasy adventure.

Update 1/12/25:

Finally actually finished Party kara Tsuihou sareta Sono Chiyushi, Jitsu wa Saikyou ni Tsuki: The very end of the final boss battle is astoundingly weak, especially with all the world-building about the end of the world being at stake. But other than that, it was still a pretty solid fantasy adventure, with decently realized characters compared to much of the isekai/fantasy slop out there. But the story wraps up tidily, leaves a few hooks for a sequel that will never come, I'm sure, but it's satisfying.

More to come

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We had a blackout a week or two ago that lasted 6-7 hours. My UPS kept my computer on long enough to hibernate, and kept the router and cable modem running so that I could check on the blackout website with my laptop periodically. but after 6 hours, it finally ran out of juice.

(I also had to fire up a generator a friend gave me to run the fridge. I don't know why it took me that long to figure out that I needed to.)

Since then, even though the battery seems to be charged, 13.5 volts, periodically you hear the relay click of the self-test and BAM, it kills everything and the alarm sounds. It doesn't happen every time, in fact, it's been pretty well behaved over the past few days until just now, but one evening it did it twice in a row.

So I've just disconnected the battery on the theory that it won't run a self-test if there's no battery.

But this is tremendously annoying. And I don't know if swapping in another lead acid lawn tractor battery will fix that.

Also, Comcast has moved my range of channels back up into the error zone. :-( 

I can still get over 300 Mbps, but it takes half the test to get there.

Update: Nope, it still shuts off with no battery.

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So I'm checking out the LiveChart anime listings (Link in the sidebar, it's super useful), and it looks like it's going to be a really grim season for you if you're sick of Isekai. It looks like there's more Isekai than even high school soap operas. And some of them are so lame, even the presence of a Catgirl or two isn't likely to save them.

First of all, it's good I checked the OVAs page, because there's a 13th episode of the final season of Beastars coming out. And WTF? I missed the third season? Kind of, it started December 5th. Batches are out of 1-12, but I guess #13 is going to be a surprise.

Judging by my backlog for the fall season, I've chosen way too many shows to follow.

Okinawa de Suki ni Natta Ko ga Hougen Sugite Tsura Sugiru "OKITSURA: Fell in Love with an Okinawan Girl, but I Just Wish I Knew What She's Saying"

"But Mauser," you might, possibly be saying, but probably not, "I thought you hated High School romance anime." Thank you for noticing, but I'm kinda curious about Okinawa. (Although I didn't watch the show about Gals from Hokkaido).

Re:Zero Continues. Beastars concludes, as I've already mentioned. And a new Fate series, "Fate/strange Fake" starts.

The Isekai plague continues. Some of these look SO stupid, I'm only giving them a chance because Catgirls. But I may finally commit to actually dropping some of these.

The champion of stupid-looking Isekais:

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at December 25, 2024 10:58 PM (LZ7Bg)

Posted by: Mauser at December 26, 2024 03:42 AM (nk1Z+)

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I have a co-worker who is really into FPV drones, and he's infecting the rest of the crew with his interest. I kinda got the bug too. Although I've been curious since I saw my first quadcopter in the early oughts at the Seattle Robotics Society. Naturally the FAA has quashed and regulated the shit out of those early heydays, but on the other hand, Consumer drone technology has really, er, taken off. The only thing you need to worry about are the fly-by-night Chinese imitators. Who unfortunately seem to dominate the marketplace. So now the wild west aspect is buying one without getting ripped off.

DJI is a pretty safe bet though. Except the only way to not pay through the nose is to buy through some reseller on Amazon over the official site. The other caveat-emptor factor is choosing the model wisely. DJI's model numbering scheme with a few SE's and Pro's thrown in does not form an even continuum. But the safest way to go is with the Mavic/Mini line, which being under 250 grams, frees you from a bunch of registration requirements, but still benefits from a lot of DJI's remarkable software. (The current models in that line are the Mini 3 and Mini 4K.) The Mini 4 Pro is over the limit, and hundreds of dollars more, but has a full suite of obstacle avoidance sensors and follow capability. Models over the limit are also required to have a Radio ID (RID) transmitter that broadcasts the location, serial number, and YOUR location. The Mini 3 and 4K are capable of doing this if you use the extended battery that takes them over the weight limit, which requires registration, and then you get into a weird legal state if you switch back to the light battery....

Right. So. For me, the big issue was, will the DJI Fly software run on my no-name phone that isn't on the compatibility list, and the answer is, it seems to. (alas, the simulator that is part of the separate DJI store does not appear to work. It loads to 95% and then punts back to the store.). The reason is that the Mini 3 comes with the controller that has a built in screen. But that also makes it a couple hundred more expensive. If the software worked with my phone, then I can save by going with the Mini 4K. There's also the matter of the "Fly More" package that includes 2 additional batteries and a sequential charger, and a carry case. It is not a terrible deal, and gives you a theoretical total flying time of 93 minutes.

The original list price of the Mini 4K package was $299. Amazon resellers brought that down to about $239, But I wanted the extra batteries etc, so the Fly More set ended up being $279 with tax free shipping... a rip-off...

... from China. From a company with a ridiculously long name that hasn't been on Amazon long enough to have ratings, but seemed to be the only one with the product.

So that's gonna take a couple of weeks. Of course, one thing not included was a powerful USB-C wall wart to RUN the multi-charger. You want one that supplies 18W or better. I found a cheap 30W one. Amazingly, there are devices out there that will send 100W down a USB line. You're not going to be recharging the batteries on your computer. I'm just surprised that one isn't included, but apparently the packages are universal.

The last thing I had shipped via China Post was the replacement WiFi module for Etna. It arrived and it works, but they have no tracking on it and Amazon still thinks the package might be lost, and I can't even find a way to say I got it.

At least I can read the manual while I wait. And take the FAA's "TRUST" certification test for recreational flyers, and learn about some interesting airspace maps you can access now.

Oh, and that multi-charger is an interesting bit of kit. If you only got the single battery, you had to charge it in the drone. With the Fly More kit, the charger has three slots for batteries (The original and the two additional) and it charges them sequentially, prioritizing the one with the most charge on it. And then for extra fun, it can ALSO be used as a power bank with the USB A jack on it (The only USB A anywhere in the ecosystem....)

Oh, and as you might have guessed, the extraneous K in the model name cleverly indicates it has a 4K camera. Photography is generally my interest in drones anyway (That and inspecting my eaves for wasp nests). And they've packed a lot of tricks into it. (The big extra feature in the Mini 3 and the 4 Pro is they can flip the camera sideways for portrait format video for instagrammers, and gimbal the camera up more. The pro has all the smart following stuff too). There are a lot of YouTube videos about what you can do with the camera on this drone, and it's pretty impressive.

If you're curious, here it is on Amazon (Affiliate link) and here it is on DJI (No credit for that) (And yes, that link says Mini 2 SE, but the page is updated).

edit: I killed the affiliate link. The seller on Amazon was a scammer. I managed to convince the Indian on the other end of the chat that the tracking number was meaningless, and I didn't have to wait until the 26th to ask for a refund. Once I got him to actually check and see that the seller had been deleted from Amazon, he gave me a refund. But then I looked at the new seller, and the new price ($359) which is the same as the DJI site, I noticed THAT seller had a pretty low rating. So off to full retail I go.

$359, plus tax, with free express shipping. But it's not More, because I shouldn't compare it to the too-good-to-be-true-and-it-wasn't price. I'm just glad I caught on so quickly because I was looking over the Amazon page in order to write this.

Blogging kept me from getting ripped off.

Posted by: Mauser at December 02, 2024 05:57 PM (nk1Z+)

Posted by: Mauser at December 03, 2024 07:02 PM (nk1Z+)

Posted by: Mauser at December 09, 2024 03:32 PM (nk1Z+)

Posted by: J Greely at December 10, 2024 11:34 AM (oJgNG)

Posted by: Mauser at December 15, 2024 04:00 AM (nk1Z+)

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Posted by: J Greely at November 24, 2024 10:11 PM (oJgNG)

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Just posted a ton of my own original Gun Memes on my Substack.

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