Craig Maloney ☕ ✅ @craigmaloney@octodon.social

Hey folks,

If you have some spare Liberapay cash laying around would you please consider sending it to Sophie Lagace?

https://liberapay.com/SophieLagace

She outlines the reasons in her blog post here:

https://mechanteanemone.wordpress.com/2018/04/24/hard-times-and-good-friends/

Suffice to say they're going to though a rough patch and could use the financial support.

Thanks!

New here? Not sure where to start? This intro by @noelle might help out:

https://gist.github.com/joyeusenoelle/74f6e6c0f349651349a0df9ae4582969

Also I'd like to send you a quick "hello" and a note that if you're on octodon.social that our beloved administrator is @CobaltVelvet. She runs this place and keeps it tidy.

It's also not free as in beer so if you'd like to keep this place running please feel free to help out her Patreon:

https://www.patreon.com/CobaltVelvet

(note: I'm not an admin here, I just like this place)

I stand corrected, the air quality alert starts at noon.

It's 11:11 right now, so I'm sure the 45 or so minutes will make a large difference.

Pretty sure landscapers will be the death of us all.

It's an air quality alert day, which means:

"People and businesses are urged to avoid activities which lead to
ozone formation. These activities include...refueling vehicles or
topping off when refueling, using gasoline powered lawn equipment
and using charcoal lighter fluid."

And yet I hear the dulcet tones of a riding lawn mower (The upright version) zipping away on our neighbors lawn.

I blame our eventual demise on you, dear neighbor.

(OK, taking a break for tonight. Thank you all for liking and commenting on the #stuffilike posting!)

Scheme / Guile / Racket

I've often said that I would love to take @cwebber's brain and shake it to see what all pops out because I know that anything in there will be amazing. One of the languages that he introduced me to was Scheme. Scheme is a functional language that borrows heavily from Lisp. It's a teaching language but still retains a lot of Lisp's power. I haven't explored it fully but I want to get back there again.

#stuffilike

Blue Snowball / Blue Yeti

I wonder sometimes if Blue Microphones are more marketing hype than actual substance but what I've seen with these two microphones is a quality and ease of use that i haven't seen duplicated in any other microphone. They sound good, they look great, and they obviate the need to have a mixer / pre-amp to hook up to the computer.

I'm really happy with these microphones.

#stuffilike

Ed Mastery

@mwlucas took what could be a rather silly joke book and created a masterful book on something that normally would be lost to the ages.

Michael writes tech books the way they used to be written; full of opinions, humor, and a-ha moments that too often get overlooked in some modern books.

https://www.tiltedwindmillpress.com/?product=ed

(If only he made a book for the C programming language. 😁 )

#stuffilike

Mechanical Keyboards

I have two Leopold keyboards with Cherry Black switches and I find whenever I type for any length of time on another keyboard that returning to those Cherry Black switches just feels right.

#stuffilike

Rabbit Engineering

3D printed models of retro computers of a bygone age

https://www.rabbitengineering.com/products-store.html

For those of us who can't afford a proper Jupiter Ace but want a little one for our shelf.

#stuffilike

Sinclair Computers

Clive Sinclair is an inventor. His earliest inventions were stuff that nobody really needed but were interesting nonetheless. Pocket TVs that were visible from certain angles; portable radios of middling quality, and calculators that were inexpensive but sacrificed precision for chip count.

It was this spirit of cutting every conceivable corner that made the Sinclair ZX80, ZX81, and ZX Spectrum the most amazing machines on the market, even though QC was less than great.

Red Dwarf

There are few shows that can do space comedy for any length of time. Most of them become stale when they run out of material to parody.

Red Dwarf is an anomaly. It shouldn't work. THe story of a man frozen in time for 3 million years on a desolate ship with a resurrected crew member, an evolved cat, and a daft computer should not work. But it works, and works in surprising ways. Add to that the android Kryten later in the series and you have one of my favorite show of all time.

Pepper&Carrot, @davidrevoy

https://peppercarrot.com

(You knew this was coming)

Pepper&Carrot is the amazing comic strip of Davod Revoy, an unbelievably gifted and kind artist who releases everything he does with P&C under the CC-BY license. He is open to collaboration and contributions from the community and together they contribute storylines, translations, fan art, derivations, and much more. He's built an amazing community around a clever story and I adore everything about it

#stuffilike

Leo Babauta, Zen Habits (http://zenhabits.net)

There are a lot of folks out there who do the whole mindfulness gig. They're the ones that usually tell you the amazing benefits of mindfulness and focus and then have you exit through the gift shop of books, guided meditation, and courses.

Leo Babauta has all that stuff available but he doesn't make that his primary focus. He is genuine in his desire to help people.

His blog is public domain and folks have re-worked it into unique ways.

Getting Things Done methodology

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_Things_Done

I've been practicing GTD in one fashion or other since around 2000 when Palm devices were all the rage, and the Internet bubble was but a mere sphere in everyone's eye. It's the one productivity system that stuck for me and it's what I try to practice on a daily basis.

It's not for everyone, but I've had good luck with it.

#stuffilike

Ranma 1/2.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranma_%C2%BD

The story of a cast of characters, most of whom have been submerged in cursed Chinese springs where someone or something has met an untimely demise and has now cursed those who fall into that spring's waters.

Sure it's goofy but sometimes we need something a little lighter in our day.

#stuffilike

Doctor Who

When people ask me who is my favorite doctor I demure by saying that they all are. While it sounds like a cop out I really do like every doctor in their own unique way. Hartnell's kindly grandfather, Troughton's dandy clown, Pertwee's physicality, Baker's charisma, Davidson's charm, Baker's savvy, McCoy's Geniality McGann's quirkiness, Eccleston's urgency, Tennant's versatility, Smith's puckishness, and Capaldi's musicality. (And Hurt's burden)

All amazing.

#stuffilike

One Deck Dungeon

http://www.onedeckdungeon.com/

One Deck Dungeon does what it says on the tin. It's one deck of cards that simulates a rogue-line dungeon. It is a little fiddly to learn but once you do it's an engrossing and re-playable game.

And all of the heroes in the game are women.

#stuffilike

Zaccaria Pinball

https://store.steampowered.com/app/444930/Zaccaria_Pinball/

I love pinball, and I love Linux, so having a high-quality emulation of pinball machines. There are some great tables in here that are really fun to play.

#stuffilike

The Yamaha CDC-735 CD Changer:

http://www.hifi-review.com/153565-yamaha-cdc-735.html

This was the CD player that pretty much said "I am never going to find another CD player to replace this". And it was. This CD player holds 5 CDs and allows you to switch out four CDs while playing a fifth. The sound was amazing and the controls, while not immediately intuitive, did everything I needed. It even supported indexes on CDs (remember those?)

#stuffilike

Python (the language).

My first love was Atari BASIC. My second love was Perl. Along the way I learned Pascal, Java, C, and a few other languages.

But Python? That's when everything started clicking. Object Oriented Programming, Functional Programming; it all started to make sense to me with Python.

Sure it's not the fastest, and I've run into more type-checking errors than you can shake a stick at. But I still love it.

BBC Music Magazine

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Music_Magazine

I know I have a reputation as a metal head but I love reading about classical music. And BBC Music Magazine has been a constant companion of mine for many years. The cover CD is quality material (complete pieces, not snippets) and the reviewers provide a good perspective on the music.

#stuffilike