Paint.net is my go-to image editing software. I'm not a digital artist or professional photographer, I just need to downsize/crop/adjust the occasional image. I don't need the kitchen sink. Regular MS Paint is annoyingly basic and Krita, GIMP, et al., are too much UI-wise. That said, I use Linux daily but not for images so not sure if there is a Paint.net analog on Linux already.
Back when I was still on Windows(XP days), I made heavy use of Paint.net. Given Microsoft’s penchant for gobbling up smaller companies, I was always a bit surprised that they never bought the company and integrated paint.net as the built-in OS replacement for the original MS Paint.
I feel for you. Went one to two weeks without power a few times from hurricanes over the years. One time our power came on after two weeks just as I came home. I had two hours to enjoy it before a storm came through and knocked it out again. Had to wait a few more days. I had a super loud gas generator and was worried about the noise but my neighbor just begged me to use it to dry her hair. I threw an extension chord over the fence and told her to keep it there.
Anyone ever worked with data from SDSS? What have you done with it? I imagine it's a gold mine for university students. I took an astronomy class and was able to plot the largest structures in the universe from their data, which was cool but pretty basic. I've loved astronomy all my life and I've always wondered if there was anything more one person or a small team could do with SDSS data. I took the class in 2010 so I imagine there are more possibilities now with AI?
I bought the game when it first came out (2003? Boxed, from Target) and played with an online friend for a while. We mostly mined and we didn't really have a corporation, it was just the two of us. There wasn't much else to do at the time. At one point I fell asleep at my keyboard during a mining op. Gave up soon after.
In 2015 a coworker talked me into trying it again. We joined a small corporation, swore fealty to a larger corp (Brave? Band of Brothers?) and moved to low-security space. We got involved in massive 3000+ ship battles, some of which made the news. These are not as fun as you would think.
However, the most fun I had was joining 100+ ship bomber fleets that would warp in on unsuspecting mining operations and destroying billions of ISK (in game currency) worth of ships. We'd use Mumble for voice chat, which allows for a hierarchy of chat rooms, so that we could hear the fleet commander giving orders but he couldn't hear us. It was super organized and our fleet commander was really skilled.
In the end I couldn't keep up with the time commitments. For the fun stuff, you had to be online at a certain time and there was a lot of prep involved (buying the proper ships which changed all the time, getting your ships to the right station, etc). I still consider it some of the best multiplayer experiences I've ever had though. Nothing beats warping in and seeing those huge mining ships and then hearing the fleet commander start issuing targeting orders. It would raise the hair on my arms.
> I still consider it some of the best multiplayer experiences I've ever had though.
I played Eve for a few years as part of a corporation in Xetic and then Ascendant Frontier.
So many painful large battles (time dilation got added after I stopped playing), and some wild solo fights. My favourite was the time I got caught solo in a T2 Interceptor, when out scouting. We knew an attack was coming but didn't know where.
I screwed up, and found myself surrounded by 5 enemy player ships, with no possibility of escaping. The only thing going for me was that I was in an inty, and they were in larger ships, so I could outmanouver them. I knew I was done for. If I flew away they'd be able to hit me as the only thing keeping me safe was my radial velocity (I was orbiting the ship faster than their weapons can rotate, but that only really works 1 on 1, to the other ships you're not moving quite as fast)
It was really just about how long I could hold out and making sure I was ready to warp the moment I got podded. I constantly switched orbit between ships, trying to keep them close together so I could maintain high radial velocity, while taking pot shots at them and starting to chip away at armour, and taking glancing shots from them myself. It felt like that fight went on for hours, but it was probably only 5 or so minutes before they finally managed to pod me, and I managed to warp away to freedom. That was probably nearly 20 years ago (I stopped playing maybe late 2007 / early 2008?) and I still remember it vividly. Once I'd got myself to safety I remember just sitting in my seat staring at the screen, as the adrenaline faded.
I know exactly how you felt. I had many moments like that exploring, which was a mechanic they might have added after you left. Searching for loot in ancient artifacts (or whatever it was) and never knowing if you are being hunted until it's too late was so nerve racking.
My buddy and I were playing a bunch of years back, unaffiliated with a big corp, just doing our own thing in mid-sec systems. They added wormhole diving into w-space in one of the updates, and we decided to try it out, which was pretty fun. We both made enough resource to fly Drakes at the time.
In one of the wormhole there was an ambush, I got blown up but my buddy managed to lose them, but didn't leave the system. He started talking to them in local chat, and in the end we ended up joining them. We were playing together for a while after, but life ultimately took over for me. My buddy remained for a while. He was a long-haul trucker and would play in his downtime from various truck stops across US and Canada.
My coworker ended up defecting to a corporation that lived in wormhole space! The wormholes add so much to the game. A lot of times we'd find the mining ops by people scouting through wormholes. Another activity I liked was hacking those resource thingies (I forget what they were called, or even what they were). Doing that in wormhole space was so scary but the payoffs could be huge.
I watched a couple battles at the most time dilation over the shoulders of college friends. They would have entire days of needing having EVE open on their laptop through every class and that gave me enough of an understanding to realize I probably wouldn't enjoy that.
I got a lot out of Empires of Eve which tells a lot of the big stories of Eve in a very approachable multiple volumes of history books: https://www.empiresofeve.com/
The author put so much amazing work into those, including interviewing people that were there for many of those battles and compiling great visualizations to help make the battles easier to read.
NPSI romps were pretty fun. Been a few years since I've fired it up.
NPSI = Not Purple, Shoot It!
Squad up and then move to some objective location and raise hell shooting anything (w/ coordination from squad leader since the idea is to usually pool DPSl) not in the squad.
For the non-EVE players, when you join a fleet in-game, the other members of the fleet have a purple icon next to their name. NPSI is a play-style where you join transient fleets with the express intention of getting into battles.
Players in your own corporation and alliance typically have blue icons, and those you're at war with have red icons- this is based on manually-set "standings". Alliance roams typically have a NBSI policy: Not Blue, Shoot It!, which means you'll be attacking enemies and neutrals.
To expand on "time dilation": an EVE Online star system is served by a single compute node in their server farm at a time. Most systems are empty most of the the time, but some locations in the universe have much more player activity. Eve can dynamically move systems between server nodes, depending on player activity. Once the number grows into the thousands in a single system, the server CPU resources can't keep up. In the past (prior to 2011), this would make the game randomly unresponsive, or cause dropped connections.
Time Dilation is the in-game solution for this: the simulation is throttled so the game runs slower for everybody, but doesn't kick people off. Last time I checked, time dilation could go as low as 10% normal time- meaning you can only fire at 10% normal rate, move 10% as fast, etc. It feels like your ship is flying through molasses- it's not fun, but is also more fair for all players.
Alliances that know there will be a big fight can fill out a form with Eve Online to "schedule" the fight so that star system can be migrated to a larger server before the fight.
I was never part of one, but in case nobody with more experience chimes in: I'm assuming the large battles involve a lot of sitting around, pressing the occasional button to change to the next designated target, while stuck in massive game-time dilation:
Others have explained it pretty well in their replies. It's basically a slide-show. My big battle was the fight over the UALX-3 Keepstar that TEST was attempting to build as a FOB. My experience was sitting at my computer clicking my attack button when ordered and watching everything go by at a few frames per second. I had no idea if what I was doing was effective. The only fun part is knowing how momentous it was, with massive ramifications for each side depending on the outcome.
The system the fight is in experiences time-dilation, where everything slows down to 10% speed or even less. However, a few effects create a positive feedback loop that makes the problem worse.
All the surrounding systems still run at full speed. You can travel large distances and still arrive soon enough to matter in the fight. You can also die, respawn in another system, rejoin the fight, and barely miss anything. The positions in the fight therefore move even slower than time-dilation since ships on both sides are replaced so quickly.
Large groups have a massive advantage over small groups, so alliances are very large and join various alliances-of-alliances. The playerbase is often organized into only 2-3 major coalitions. At some points in history, nearly all the alliances have joined the same coalition, which leads to a strange pax-Romana called the "blue donut" (referring to all the ownable outer-systems being "blue" or allied with each other).
Also, nearly every player in a large fight just follows simple orders. Orbit A and shoot B. There are just a few people calling the shots.
Fights sometimes end just because people are bored, need to sleep, or go to work.
I was deep into the worlds of Quake 3 and UT99 back then. I made maps for Weapons Factory Arena, a popular spin on Team Fortress but much faster and frenetic (more like Overwatch). I also created all the weapons and some maps for the port of Weapons Factory to Unreal Tournament, which did well but was no where near as popular as the original. UT was by far the easier game to mod but there was something about the physics in Quake 3 that just lent itself better to that type of mod.
As for id drama, there was plenty after Quake 3. I remember a .plan update from John where he talked about people leaving and people getting fired...I think one of them was John Steed (rest in peace), one of the player modelers who was very active in the modeling community and well liked. Felt like a disaster at the time. I just think there was a lot of conflicting personalities at the company and it was doomed to fail (no pun intended).
I always faced left when riding a skateboard back in the day, otherwise known in skater parlance as being "goofy-footed". Facing right felt as difficult as writing with my left hand. I always wondered whether that was just the way I first rode a skateboard and it stuck, but if that was the case, I would expect the distribution of which skateboarders face which way to be about even. But goofy-footed riders are in the minority. I'm right-handed as well. I wonder what's up with that.
I think this is probably related to which eye is more dominant for you. I've never skateboarded, but if I imagine myself doing it, it would also be facing left. And it's because my right eye is dominant and I would like that to be facing forward.
> I think this is probably related to which eye is more dominant for you.
I think it's more about a person's personal stability/biomechanics. The back foot is the stable one, forward is the "quick" lead. The preferred "plant" foot when kicking a ball is the stable one (though many people use both, so this is best used only when there is a strong preference), the one used to push off with when at the bottom of stairs or jumping is the stable one (the lead foot is the `quick` one). The best way I found to help determine footedness: have a person stand straight (feet together) walk around them (pretending to look at posture or something), once behind them push them forward (evenly with some force). Watch for which foot they catch themselves with. Thats the lead foot.
As for the eye dominance, in archery having the right eye dominant means your stance is regular (left foot forward). An archery open stance is near identical to a snowboard neutral stance (~ +15°, 0°). The 2 most important things to get right in (olympic recurve) archery is eye dominance and a proper open stance. As a goofy footed snowboarder and a right eye dominant archer, the archery stance took awhile for me to adapt too. It still feels weird.
Quick test to find out which is pick a point in the distance, make a triangle with thumbs and fingers to look through, and slowly bring it toward your face. Wherever it ends up is your dominant eye.
Me too, but on a snowboard. (I suppose I'd be the same on a skateboard) My second time snowboarding was quite a few years after my first, and I just could not get the hang of it, wondering how I was faring so much worse than before. It took me all day to remember I was "goofy", and once I switched it was much better.
Yeah, I went snowboarding once in my life (loved it but it was exhausting) and naturally rode goofy-footed. They only thing I really needed to learn was slowing myself down.
I'm right-handed, but I snowboard goofy. Coincidence (or not?) my left leg is dominant. I can kick a ball just fine with my left foot, but when I try to kick with my right foot I feel like I'm going to capsize. When I'm riding a bike and I have to stop, my right foot goes down. When I start again I use my left leg to muscle the crank through the first revolution or two.
I'm goofy footed as well - skate boarding with my left foot forward is like trying to throw a ball with my left hand. I also found that if I was rollerblading or ice-skating, turning to my left (counter clockwise) with a foot-over-foot action I can do super easy, but turning turning clockwise I always struggled with.
Here is an interesting experiment you can try - think about it more like "skate with the right foot back" then "skate with the left foot forward" and see if it gets any easier for you. It definitely does work for me.
Obviously it won't sudenly make you a perfect regular-stance skater though. :)
I skate/surf goofy (or used to... haven't done much of either lately :P) and prefer to hold a baseball bat or a golf club lefty, despite being right-handed. And I have an immediate family member who's left-handed but bats righty!
I’m the opposite… write lefty bit bat/swing (rackets and gol) righty. Not sure about surfing - I only paddle board and the stance is more straight-on (because you paddle both sides to avoid turning in a circle).
Of course, I’m terrible at baseball and my handwringing is atrocious, so maybe I’m just broken.
If I were to skateboard, I would face port. When I'm coming to a halt on a bicycle I prefer keeping my right foot on the pedal and landing on my left foot, so I believe I'd have the same preference when skateboarding.
"Of the 4,000 skaters in the Skatepark of Tampa Database, about half are goofy (44%) and half are regular (56%). But this near equality between skate stances doesn’t align with statistics on handedness. According to Scientific American, 90% of people are right-handed." ¹
"Out of the 610 professional skateboarders, 291 ride regular and 329 ride goofy. This means that 53% of skateboarders ride goofy and 47% ride regular! Way more skateboarders than expected ride goofy." ²
Plank's length is an ok answer, but coast line reaches a steady state way before that. Nature only has approximate fractals.
Way before plank length you'll get the surface and line energies of the material interfaces dominating the total energy. Those tend to force very smooth and very discreet lengths.
I love the world of music production. I started with Ableton Live six years or so ago and it's been a wonderful hobby. It has such a vibrant cottage industry of plugins (sampled instruments, synthesizers, effects, etc) thanks to the VST standard.
I work professionally with music, including using ableton. I do create but don't sell/adverise, I'm strictly 'backstage'. I love everything about creating music, less so for reading about music (reviews, critiques, dissecting) though there are occasional exceptions. Are you putting your creativity online publicly?
Do you put yours online? I enjoy listening to other musicians. People give soundcloud a lot of grief but I love the service and the musicians I have met there.
Thank you. Your music is enjoyable, I listened to a couple (twice, first track and the fast one) and skimmed (four times) through others (my listening time is packed). Each piece has a filmic quality. The most impressive part is that they are (more of less) finished, which is a feat in itself. Very good.
I am very backstage, I don't wish to be known professionally, except by clients, all of which came via word of mouth - I wouldn't know how to advertise and I'd probably mess it up/give the wrong impression/attract the 'wrong' clients.
I won't link here but I do use soundcloud, I would say it's just ok. Tend to go Faircamp, bandcamp, geocities. MySpace lost 12 tunes.
I'll make a note of our exchange and if I change my mind I'll let you know. Some of my music is not dissimilar to yours, which is often the case, and not a bad thing - like you, it's the act of creation that brings immense pleasure. Thanks again for sharing I enjoyed listening.
Thanks for listening. Feel free to reach out if you ever want to share. I create music strictly for my own enjoyment so I understand where you are coming from. Take care!
I've found LLMs to be extremely powerful in research projects. A lot of code related to research is very bespoke by its nature. Using Codex, I've been able to iterate on ideas that I would never had the time or courage to explore before. As for code quality/brevity, it doesn't really matter in this context as long as it works. And it's incredible to have this companion that understands broadly every aspect of tangential knowledge required to execute an idea. I do think it helps that I have over 25 years of experience in my domain (geospatial), which helps me guardrail my interactions and get good results in as few shots as possible.
