convenient.email
Dave
Dave Pinned item friendica
Dear everybody: You're doing it wrong. Please stop.
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Dave
Dave friendica
Sitting in a coffee shop in Ottawa, I'm hearing "D&D" from the next table over, but I think they're actually talking about DND.
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Dave
Dave friendica
Thing I said today: "If I don't like it, I'll tell everybody I know that I hated it and they should read it so they can agree with me that it's terrible."
(I'm sure all the #BSDCan people will know exactly who I said it to and approximately about what.)
#bsdcan
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Dave
Dave friendica
In exactly seven days, I expect to be somewhere in the neighbourhood of Smiths Falls, on a train on the way to #BSDCan.
#bsdcan
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Dave
Dave friendica
Bah. Guess who spilled beer on their laptop? On a holiday weekend?

Fortunately (1) warranty service is one of the things Apple is good at and (2) I dual wield so I still have a computer while the Macbook is in for service.
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Prabhakar Ragde
Prabhakar Ragde • mastodon (AP)
Thirty-four years ago, I told the students in my complexity class that someday their boss would ask them to solve the halting problem and they would have to explain why they couldn't. One of those students just told me that today was that day.
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reshared this
Dave
Dave friendica
The cheapest package that included the prints I actually wanted also included this monstrosity, with no way to tell them to just not bother with that one.
What am I supposed to do with this?
I'm holding a giant (16"x20") print of my grad photo. It's close enough that it's hard to tell but I think it might be larger than life.
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Dave
Dave friendica
Why yes, company that I expect to do business with exactly once in my life, I would love to create a special account on your website just for you and then get told that you won't let me access the thing I've already paid for because you don't like my name.
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Dave
Dave friendica
LifeTouch, for grad photos. To access anything from the actual photo session (paid for up front before you get the chance to pay more for prints) requires a session ID (from the receipt they gave me when they were taken), an access code (from the "OK, we finally updated our database" email), *plus* the name of the person the photos are of. I had to call customer service, and give them the information, and they told me my name was misspelled in that database (but not as recorded on the receipt) and what to tell the website to get it to let me in.
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silverwizard
silverwizard • friendica
Ah good ol' Manual Data Entry

And lol - perfect
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Dave
Dave friendica
Alright, time to go run that victory lap.
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Dave
Dave friendica
Midterm 2 marks are posted. If I get a weighted average mark not less than -8.6% (yes, that's a negative minimum value) on the remaining coursework, I get to graduate on the Dean's Honour List.

(This update also includes reweighting the first two assignment marks, since assignment 4 did indeed happen. A3 marks are not out yet so not included here.)
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Dave
Dave friendica
According to my notes, a 60% on the midterm I'll be writing soon will bring the weighted average future mark I need to pass the course (and thus graduate) below zero. Based on the priors, I have a reasonable expectation of clearing that bar with plenty of room to spare.
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Independent State of Grace
Independent State of Grace • mastodon (AP)
A rare photo of Schrödinger's Cat...
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Dave
Dave friendica
Accidentally tarpitted prof's office hours by asking a question about one of the assignment problems. Turns out the obvious approach gives a non-physical result and he can't figure out why.

This sort of thing just follows me around, I'm not trying to cause trouble, I swear.
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silverwizard
silverwizard • friendica
I am curious what a non-physical even means in this context?
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Dave
Dave friendica
Does not follow the laws of physics. In this case, the electric field has a nonzero curl even though there are no changing magnetic fields, which violates Maxwell's Equations.

(If any physics nerds want details, I can give a description of the problem and why the result is non-physical, but I'll hold off on that until somebody asks.)
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silverwizard
silverwizard • friendica
Bah - that guy's work is full of daemons anyway
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Dave
Dave friendica
Different body of work. The daemons prefer the habitat on the thermodynamics side, this is E&M.
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Dave
Dave friendica
Based on what the prof said today, it sounds like I accidentally tarpitted his whole day, not just office hours.

In summary: The answer key for the textbook he got it out of has the naive, non-physical solution. He and the TA got far enough to confidently say that the correct solution is absolutely not an undergrad E&M problem.
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Dave
Dave friendica

Dave Vandervies

2022-05-03 01:50:03


I'm now dj3vande@convenient.email on the network named after pleistocene megafauna. If things are configured correctly, things I say there should still show up on twitter and things from twitter should land where I can see them.

(Nitter addon enabled: Twitter links via https://nitter.net)

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Dave
Dave friendica
Midterm 1 marks are out. If I get a weighted average mark not less than 25.4% on coursework for the rest of the term, I get to graduate on the Dean's Honour List.
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Dave
Dave friendica
Automated email from the Registrar's Office confirming that they've received my application to graduate. I think that's the last paperwork I _need_ to do to get the degree (but I still have to decide whether to walk across the stage in June to collect it or just have them mail it to me).
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Dave
Dave friendica
Second assignment marks are out. (Looking at the calendar, I'm starting to think there won't be an assignment 4.)
First midterm (of two) is written but marks aren't out yet.

If I get a weighted average of 43.9% on the coursework for the rest of the term I get to graduate on the Dean's Honour List.
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Dave
Dave friendica
(For clarity, that's the number to meet _or exceed_.)
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Dave
Dave friendica
Assignment 1 marks are up. If I get a weighted average of 48.6% in the coursework for the rest of the term, I get to graduate on the Dean's Honor List.
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Dave
Dave friendica
Oh. It's going to be one of those courses.
(My 76% on A1 puts me in the 90th percentile. Marker comments either don't say anything about what they were looking for or ask for things that I wrote down right next to where they commented.)
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Dave
Dave friendica
Was talking to an old coworker about what he's working on now over dinner today.

When I said "So you're basically building UUCP", he actually knew what I was talking about. I had thought he was younger than that.
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Dave
Dave friendica
One of these weeks, I'm going to wake up the morning after dojo night without my body reminding me that it's been two and a half years since I've been getting more exercise than walking on a regular basis.

This isn't feeling like the week.
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Dave
Dave friendica
If I average 50% in all my course work for the rest of the term, I get to graduate on the Dean's Honour List.

I expect the required average future mark to fall below 0% sometime in late November.
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Dave
Dave friendica
So. I'm a full-time student for the next four months. If things go according to plan, I'll be (up to paperwork) an alumnus by Christmas.
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Dave
Dave friendica
I continue to be astounded at the lengths companies whose business is selling transit via communication networks will go to to keep devices that access those networks out of the hands of consumers.
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Dave
Dave friendica
Lenovo seems confused; they invited me to write a review of my new Thinkpad with Linux.
(The Thinkpad shipped with not-Linux and runs a different not-Linux. It's very nice. The only complaints I have are unreasonable expectations set by the Macbook that it doesn't quite meet.)
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Dave
Dave friendica
The new Thinkpad feels like a real battery hog, but having run the numbers, I think it's just that the Macbook has raised my expectations a little bit too high.
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Dave
Dave friendica
Me: OpenBSD because it's a no-nonsense system that just works and my computer is a tool, not a project.

Also me: I don't like the battery status reporting tools I've found, I'll make my own.

Also me: Why does all the prior art use polling? Time to look at the kernel source.
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Dave
Dave friendica
I think I now have a list of things that aren't in # base that I can't use a computer without: git and rsync.

Of course if I want to use the computer *for* something, that's a longer list.
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Dave
Dave friendica
It's probably noteworthy that base includes tools that occupy the same space as these. The ones in base don't quite meet my needs but come close enough that they'd do if they were all that was available.
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Dave
Dave friendica
Just what I need, another computer.
At least I only have myself to blame for this one, whatever that's worth.
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Dave
Dave friendica
Oh, look at that. Another course I need to talk to an advisor to enroll in because there's a bug in the calendar.
(Unlike the last one, this one might at least have a reasonable excuse.)
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Dave
Dave friendica
Discussing an online purchase from a company whose location unexpectedly turned out to be relevant: "In hindsight I guess their willingness to quote me a price in CAD was a pretty good sign that they weren't from USA"
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Dave
Dave friendica
Up for review at day job:
18 files changed, 1 insertion(+), 476 deletions(-)

I've done better absolute line deltas before, but that ratio might be a personal best.
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Dave
Dave friendica
Today in easy to misuse interfaces: "Read the documentation and you'll get it subtly wrong in a way that causes an entirely different tool to dump core"
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Dave
Dave friendica
New stickers from @J T ! Now anybody familiar with my interests will be able to tell my computer apart from all the other Macbooks out there. #openbsd #aikido
A badly lit photograph of a space grey Macbook Air that, for now (at least in better lighting), looks just like almost all the other space grey Macbooks in the world. On the Macbook is a pile of stickers, with one of them positioned in the corner where it will soon find a permanent home. The sticker art shows Puffy, the OpenBSD mascot, wearing a gi and hakama and ready for a night at the dojo.

(Nitter addon enabled: Twitter links via https://nitter.net)

@J T
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Dave
Dave friendica
So apparently being on @silverwizard 's instance is a cheat code for any questions one has about Friendica. Thanks to the tip and doc pointer from @Tobias I should have proper alt text on this picture:
A drawing of a moomin holding a molotov cocktail. If you know, you know.
@silverwizard
This entry was edited (1 year ago)
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Dave
Dave friendica
I would not have predicted this would ever happen, but I've found a visual bell configuration that I actually like.
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Dave
Dave friendica
I apparently need to find where Friendica allows specifying alt text. Image description: A screen grab of the MacOS terminal bell config; all of "Audible bell", "Visual bell", and Visual Bell's subfield "Only when sound is muted" are checked.
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Tobias
Tobias • friendica (via ActivityPub)
Friendica is using BBCode for formatting of the postings @Dave for the ALT text of images, you can place the text in the middle of the [img][/img]-Tags. E.g.

[img=http://example.com/img/this_is_an_example.jpg]And this would be the ALT text for the image used on mouse over etc.[/img]

Have a look at your nodes BBCode documentation for more information about the implementation of the BBCode in Friendica, and things like the "abstracts" which other parts of the Fediverse use for CW.
@Dave
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Dave
Dave friendica
Looks like @silverwizard 's DB crash means I need to re-run my posted tweet. (Is it still a tweet over here?)
@silverwizard
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Dave
Dave friendica
I of course meant 'pinned'. Which appears to be represented here with a star and not a pin icon.
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silverwizard
silverwizard • friendica
We call it a status


Or, if you're on Mastodon a "toot"
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