Just got back from grocery shopping at the Mart of Walls. And SCORE! Totally unexpected in the DVD section, a BABYLON 5 BOXED SET! Having heard of how bad the semi-pirate ones you find on Amazon are, and once suffered from a BitTorrent that some "Clever" guy thought he could compress by speeding the episodes up, I'm looking forward to an official re-release. $60, and worth it, I'm sure.

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More!

Posted by: J Greely at November 03, 2024 05:30 PM (oJgNG)

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One thing I did to help pass the strike-time (which frankly, I wasted with extreme profligacy) was pick up an Ardruino Uno R3 project board and kit from Eligoo, along with the extra 37 sensor pack. And since then I've been slowly working my way through the tutorials. Which isn't so much tutorial as connecting the wires and running the example code. Although occasionally I would edit them a bit.

I hit a hitch though when it turned out that one of the examples was bogus. After doing the one that ran a simple 7 segment display using an extra 8-bit latch chip, the example that ran the 4-gang 7-segment display didn't actually light up each digit differently and strobe through them, it just ran them all in parallel. Eventually I found someone else's example which skipped the latch chip (which, unfortunately consumes more pins) but I made it work.

It was also around this time I discovered water damage and possibly a little black mold in the basement drywall (Could just be dirt though, there was some mud-like buildup on the concrete below). I traced the source and discovered the dishwasher was leaking through a little tiny seal around the shaft that opens the drain valve. It only leaks about two ounces of water per load, so it never became visible under the dishwasher. I might have never noticed the problem if they had not stopped the vinyl flooring just under the front of the machine. Instead, it soaked the particle-board underlayment in a well defined pool, and eventually made it through the OSB flooring into the wet-wall of the laundry room downstairs. I'll deal with the damage later. The leak was addressed with a couple of YouTube videos and a minor parts purchase on Amazon. The actual part installation should have been simple after I got the machine out, but one minor mistake turned it into a major undertaking, as the shaft the drain valve plate rotates on came out, leaving the plate rattling around inside the pump housing with no way to take it out. Still, I eventually prevailed. And I tossed an old cookie sheet under the dishwasher just in case, but it's really not necessary.

But the reason for that roundabout story is that to get from an $11 parts kit to free shipping, I picked up a few more toys to hook up to the Ardruino. a set of three 32x8 grid LED displays and 5 of these microscopic <1" 64x128 OLED screens. The funny thing is, the chip that runs the 8x8 units (4 of which are daisy chained to make the 32 LED length) was originally designed to run 7 segment displays (plus the decimal point). And theoretically, all three units can be daisy-chained together to make something like one of those scrolling displays you see in some stores. There are code libraries that can make these displays do all kinds of tricks. the OLED displays are just pure bit-addressable space. But again, there are Arduino libraries already written to do sophisticated graphics and fonts. It's almost too easy. It all worked the first time I hooked it up. And they each only use four wires.

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...but this is a thing:

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Somehow, I'm all caught up.

Ah, that's why, I've been filing the Monogatari and Re:Zero shows into their own category....

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You'd think by the third episode we'd be past infodumps, but no. On the other hand, we finally get our tanned-white-haired girl (shame about the heterochromia). But since she's been trained to be a deadly assassin instead of a seeker-scout, she needs shit explained to her.

Okay, that's interesting, I just noted that the Ember release has two sets of English subs. I'm not quite sure which is more literal.

Anyway, Alma seems to alternate between sweet and innocent and jaded and cynical, depending on how closely the topic is related to the assassin's guild, which she was forced to leave after her Grandfather, the leader and founder, died a month or two ago. The new management is more interested in working intel for the monarchy than being into murder for hire, so she was booted.

He gives her a test to see how compatible with his buffs she is, and the answer is very. So they set off to do a bandit protection job for a small town as a first task for their new clan. Halfway there they get stuck in the last room available and some level-setting occurs.

Anyway, have a de-panned shot.

Posted by: J Greely at October 17, 2024 03:33 AM (oJgNG)

Posted by: Mauser at October 22, 2024 02:35 PM (nk1Z+)

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"Acro Trip" - Ep. 03

This is an epic farce, and if you're not watching it, you're really missing out. Hell, I have to pause periodically just to finish laughing my head off.

Chrome is the most reprehensible of villains! His latest plan? He's going to be in the park (conveniently situated near Chizuko's home) and at the appointed time, he's going to sit on a swing and NOT get out of it for any little kid who wants to swing! The horror! How Vile! He even had the Kuma Kaijin passing out flyers in town with this declaration to make sure Berry Blossom gets it. And in her normal guise as Noichigo Kaju, she does indeed get one.

But the next day, the weather is horrible! The wind is blowing like mad. Chrome wants to cancel. But on the off chance Berry Blossom has shown up, Chizuko wants to see her. And there she is, clinging to a tree for dear life, with her cat (later we learn his name is Mashirou, he has business cards) clinging to her hat, trying not to be blown away. Unfortunately a trash can is not so dutiful in clinging to its place and flies through the air and smashes Berry Blossom in the face, and she's down for the count. Chizuko offers them shelter, and tries to stuff Chrome in another room, but once the infodump is over (Mashirou is her manager, and he's the one taking all the vids, which is why nobody's seen him), you know Chrome is not going to stay put. The question of why Chrome is in the house does not get answered. And with the weather clearing, Mashirou takes the still napping Berry Blossom and beats feet.

The next day, Mashirou shows up at the house with a thank you gift. And per their morning discussion where Chizuko came up with a far more evil idea than Chrome could conceive of, Chrome decides to take Mashirou hostage, tying him up with a jump rope. Then he gets on the phone... and Mashirou's phone rings. So Chizuko has to help him with it and dial Noichigo for him. When she picks up, Chrome grabs the phone to make his demands... but she doesn't recognize his voice. He collapses, gives a very convincing death speech to Chizuko, and she takes up the cause, naming herself General Dante, right in front of Mashirou.

Taking up the phone, Chizuko prepares to deliver her first villain speech, but she is overcome by Berry Blossom's cuteness. She can't do it, and falls down too. Gramps unties Mashirou and sends him on his way, and Mashirou contemplates that they have a new, formidable (?) enemy in Dante. And Chrome has Chizuko cornered into evil again, since she's now been identified as being on his side.

This is fun!

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My internet speed has been... well, it still can reach its top speed, but it takes a while to get there. Or at least, that's how it was up until today. I bookmarked the address of my cable modem, because it shows some interesting data, like a list of all the channels it's using and their respective Signal to noise ratios, power levels, and corrected and uncorrected errors. There's not much you can DO with that data. I was considering calling customer service, but getting past a bot so someone who can understand what I mean when I say "Every channel above 39 is very degraded" would be unlikely.

But I guess that telemetry is available to them too. When today's shows downloaded in less than a minute and a half, I knew something was up. I checked the modem, and it was using a much lower range of channels, and they all had fantastic s/n ratios. SpeedTest jumped almost immediately to 350 mb/sec, instead of taking half the test to get there. So I'm pleased.

I've mentioned my Substack, where I've been moving some of my writing and posts about writing from Wordpress. It has been somewhat less than stellar. In fact, the lowest ranking of all my posts are the first three chapters of my WIP. But if there's one thing Substack loves, it's Memes. I made a post of about a dozen of the latest memes that I've made myself, and it BLEW UP. In under 24 hours it's gotten ten times the views of the average week. And about ten times the likes of the best day.

And since I've got so much free time on my hands, my last Amazon order included an Ardruino Uno R3 board starter kit, and a 37 additional sensor kit.

Of course, I still haven't finished figuring out the proper compile for my Ender with the Big Tree Tech board in it to implement the MicroTouch sensor. That's been sitting for too long.

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Kimi wa Meido-san - "You are Ms. Servant" Ep. 01:

Sheesh. What a Moeblob. And yet the slapstick seems more cruel than funny.

And the guy, "Well-meaning idiot" isn't much of a personality either, but it's more grating.

On the one hand, she's not too bad to look at, but things need to pick up in episode 2.

If it weren't in the title card, I'd disagree with the English title.

Posted by: Mauser at October 09, 2024 02:18 AM (nk1Z+)

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