brad

@brad@posiwid.net

electrical engineer, synth designer, ham radio operator. alt of @kr4dio@mastodon.radio
pronounshe/him
websitehttps://posiwid.net

Ricardus »
@Ricardus@mastodon.sdf.org

I want to go see this band so badly. I need to relive that 80s Crimson experience.

youtube.com/watch?v=nm2fyZ5ICs

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Professor_Stevens »
@Professor_Stevens@mastodon.gamedev.place

@Ricardus

Oh, gosh. You do know how to pick 'em. Alas, time takes a toll. That's Mr. Belew in front, isn't it? He just doesn't have the pipes for that material anymore.

However, I shall have to go buy "In the Court of the Crimson King" today. Then I shall turn off my cell phone, draw the blinds, close my eyes, and pretend that it is 50 years ago for a little while.

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Ricardus »
@Ricardus@mastodon.sdf.org

@Professor_Stevens yeah that's Adrian.

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Professor_Stevens »
@Professor_Stevens@mastodon.gamedev.place

@Ricardus

Sometimes you just can't go back. After all the decades I have been playing and replaying their (rather small) oeuvre, I finally got to go into DC for a live performance by Kraftwerk. Necessarily, it wasn't the same four robots I first knew. but Ralf was on the stage. Now, common belief is that they don't actually perform. They just pretend to turn knobs while you see a recorded show. Well, fine. But they had rearranged all of it. It just wasn't... how it goes.

You can't go back.

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Ricardus »
@Ricardus@mastodon.sdf.org

@Professor_Stevens My friend Todd is a huge Kraftwork fan. He's seen them in concert also.

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Professor_Stevens »
@Professor_Stevens@mastodon.gamedev.place

@Ricardus

I went because they made such a lasting impression on me in the late '70s. So I felt I had something akin to a duty to go. Also, if I hadn't, I'd have spent the remainder of my life thinking, "I could have seen Kraftwerk..." The actual event was a big disappointment (I even left before the end). But, at least it cured me of any future fears arising from that particular strain of FOMO.

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brad »
@brad@posiwid.net

@Ricardus@mastodon.sdf.org I saw BEAT in Austin a couple of months ago and thought it was great at the time. But after more reflection, I felt like it wasn't much more than a nostalgia experience. I really preferred the 2017 tour incarnation of KC with Fripp and the three drummers across the front of the stage.

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Ricardus »
@Ricardus@mastodon.sdf.org

@brad a nostalgia experience is exactly what I'm looking for. I loved that version of the band.

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brad »
@brad@posiwid.net

In that case, I hope you get a chance to see them. Vai and Danny Carey are great "young" additions, and Adrian is still a rock star :)

Molly White »
@molly0xfff@hachyderm.io

If you've ever found yourself missing the "good old days" of the , what is it that you miss? (Interpret "it" broadly: specific websites? types of activities? feelings? etc.) And approximately when were those good old days?

No wrong answers — I'm working on an article and wanted to get some outside thoughts.

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brad »
@brad@posiwid.net

@molly0xfff@hachyderm.io This may just be my own personal journey, but I feel like the early-mid aughts were a special time with blogs, blog-rings, RSS, and aggregators. I remember building a proto-social-media site where local blogs were aggregated into a forum for discussion. A friend and I did a weekly podcast about underground rock bands in Shanghai. Pre smartphone photo blogs were amazing. Non-commercial sites like shanghaiist (gothamist franchise) and metafilter could survive on adword revenue. Google search still worked.

My memory of the "personal web" at that time is that it felt like it was a linear progression from BBSes, gopher, Usenet, and IRC. More graphical and more widely accessible, but with a lot of the same community spirit.

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brad »
@brad@posiwid.net

I just realized my good ol' days ended about the time smartphones became ubiquitous. I wonder if that has anything to do with it. How much of that old feeling could be recaptured just by using a desktop computer to "go online?"

CC: @molly0xfff@hachyderm.io

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brad »
@brad@posiwid.net

Travis County decided my house is worth about 4x market value, so I get to spend several hours this morning waiting for them to show up for my "scheduled" protest hearing.

Photo of the Travis County Central Appraisal District building with blue sky in the background

Alt...Photo of the Travis County Central Appraisal District building with blue sky in the background

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brad »
@brad@posiwid.net

The neighbors' falling-down shack finally fell all the way down. The kids and I were doing crafts when we heard a loud crash outside. The building was about 10ft from our property line. Before pic is from last summer.

Small house missing a couple of walls, leaning precariously

Alt...Small house missing a couple of walls, leaning precariously

Pile of construction debris

Alt...Pile of construction debris

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brad »
@brad@posiwid.net

Back home in Austin, and our sage bush correctly predicted this morning's rain

Texas sage bush with pink-purple flowers in front of a blue sky with wispy white clouds

Alt...Texas sage bush with pink-purple flowers in front of a blue sky with wispy white clouds

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brad »
@brad@posiwid.net

yt-dlp can also download subtitles, including automatically generated closed-captioning.
Formatting and screen captures would take some manual work, though.

CC: @Mnemonic@hackers.town

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brad »
@brad@posiwid.net

Weekend project! Arduino based eprom programmer: https://github.com/walhi/arduino_eprom27_programmer

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brad »
@brad@posiwid.net

While playing with my kids at Jinjiang Action Park (锦江乐园) earlier this week, I had a sudden rush of memories from my first time there in 2002-03. At the time, I still carried a paper pocket dictionary everywhere, but my Chinese had gotten good enough that I was able to make friends with people who didn't speak English. A couple of my "local" friends, S and X, wanted to check out this huge new ferris wheel that had just opened up. We walked around the outer wall of the park until we found a some construction debris we could use to climb over, then just hopped the wall. I don't remember what the ferris wheel cost, but it seemed expensive at the time, so S talked an attendant into letting us ride for free. They say the wheel is going to be torn down later this year.

photo of an amusement park with merry go round and ferris wheel

Alt...photo of an amusement park with merry go round and ferris wheel

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brad »
@brad@posiwid.net

Bluetooth audio has been broken on my Ubuntu Macbook since the upgrade to 24.04, but I finally got around to seriously looking for a solution today. After quite a few useless stackoverflow comments, I found the answer. Turns out it was as simple as blacklisting the snd_soc_avs module: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/pipewire/+bug/2063150

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brad »
@brad@posiwid.net

@w8emv@mastodon.radio Sounds interesting. Do you happen to have a link to the PDF?

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brad »
@brad@posiwid.net

If you've had ducks before you likely know better than I do, but I had better flow and fewer clogging issues with my garden fish pond drain when I switched to a dome-shaped bottom drain (think inverted salad bowl 1/2-inch above floor)

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brad »
@brad@posiwid.net

It's apparently a real word, but my brain independently invented the term eco-brutalist when I saw the 1000 Trees building looming over Suzhou Creek this afternoon

Photo of a large building with towering concrete planters beside a river

Alt...Photo of a large building with towering concrete planters beside a river

Photo of a large building with towering concrete planters

Alt...Photo of a large building with towering concrete planters

Photo of a large building with towering concrete planters

Alt...Photo of a large building with towering concrete planters

Photo of a large building with towering concrete planters covered in scaffolding beside another highrise

Alt...Photo of a large building with towering concrete planters covered in scaffolding beside another highrise

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brad »
@brad@posiwid.net

I feel fortunate to have had the chance to see a collection of Roman Verostko works in person at MUD Gallery in Shanghai. He was a great pioneer of generative and plotter art.

Artwork by Roman Verostko, colorful lines, thick black line

Alt...Artwork by Roman Verostko, colorful lines, thick black line

Artwork by Roman Verostko, colorful lines, thick black line

Alt...Artwork by Roman Verostko, colorful lines, thick black line

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brad »
@brad@posiwid.net

Uspol [SENSITIVE CONTENT]@requiem@hackers.town I'm not an infosec expert, but I don't see how the US government can monitor or limit what software people run on their own computers, as the first paragraph of the article implies.

The article goes on to say that Kaspersky is banned from providing software to US users, which I guess is possible to enforce to a certain extent.

I'm in Shanghai right now, seamlessly using a VPN to access blocked content (including the linked article), so I'm a little skeptical.

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brad »
@brad@posiwid.net

@ripper@chaos.social If you have a lot of PCBs to change, it's possible to use a regex in your language of choice to modify the file directly

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brad »
@brad@posiwid.net

@ripper@chaos.social select all, edit menu, edit text and graphics properties

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brad »
@brad@posiwid.net

I took a little walk around Fengjing Ancient Town (枫泾古镇) on the outskirts of Shanghai this morning

old Chinese buildings along a canal

Alt...old Chinese buildings along a canal

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brad »
@brad@posiwid.net

@tony@mastodon.radio @W1CDN@mastodon.radio Seconding this. I spent a lot of time tweaking controller settings in RetroArch to make my 8bitdo Pro controller usable for N64 games, and I'm still not really happy with it.

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brad »
@brad@posiwid.net

The park by the National Palace Museum is pretty nice

zig-zag bridge over a pond with koi

Alt...zig-zag bridge over a pond with koi

zig-zag bridge over a pond with koi

Alt...zig-zag bridge over a pond with koi

view of park with pond and pavilion

Alt...view of park with pond and pavilion

tropical trees with lots of air roots

Alt...tropical trees with lots of air roots

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brad »
@brad@posiwid.net

Sunny morning in Taipei

View over the rooftops of Taipei with Taipei 101 skyscraper and mountains in the background

Alt...View over the rooftops of Taipei with Taipei 101 skyscraper and mountains in the background

View over the rooftops of Taipei

Alt...View over the rooftops of Taipei

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brad »
@brad@posiwid.net

We're on our way to Shanghai (via Seattle and Taipei)

Airplane at gate with jetway attached and Delta baggage trolley

Alt...Airplane at gate with jetway attached and Delta baggage trolley

brad boosted

Paris Marx »
@parismarx@mastodon.online

Farmers in Bastrop, TX were hopeful when Elon Musk bought land nearby, but now he’s turning the area into “an environmentally hazardous industrial park.” Authorities won’t do anything because they’re understaffed and “intimidated by their powerful new neighbor.”

texasmonthly.com/news-politics

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brad »
@brad@posiwid.net

@paulrickards@mastodon.social I didn't have a modem for my VIC20 or C64 when I was a kid, but I happen to have one of those VICmodem cartridge near the top of my retro computing project pile. I was thinking about sticking an esp32 serial-wifi thing in the case.

VICModem cartridge, Hamtext VIC-20 cartridge, and serial port cartridge for HP85 on top of a TRS-80 pen plotter

Alt...VICModem cartridge, Hamtext VIC-20 cartridge, and serial port cartridge for HP85 on top of a TRS-80 pen plotter

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brad »
@brad@posiwid.net

@dylanbeaudette@mastodon.radio I use RG400 for no particular reason other than (I think) it looks fancy

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brad »
@brad@posiwid.net

@brad@posiwid.net @dylanbeaudette@mastodon.radio I try to always have a BNC adapter or jumper handy

RG400 coax jumper cable coiled with male RF connector and female BNC

Alt...RG400 coax jumper cable coiled with male RF connector and female BNC

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brad »
@brad@posiwid.net

There's been a lot of talk about enshittification lately, and this Baffler article is a really good look at the history of SaaS: https://thebaffler.com/latest/spreadsheet-assassins-king

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brad »
@brad@posiwid.net

The boys and I hiked down to the bottom of our hill this afternoon

Two boys facing away from the camera, climbing up a rocky hill with sparse vegetation under a blue sky

Alt...Two boys facing away from the camera, climbing up a rocky hill with sparse vegetation under a blue sky

Two boys facing away from the camera, walking down a rocky hill with sparse vegetation under a blue sky

Alt...Two boys facing away from the camera, walking down a rocky hill with sparse vegetation under a blue sky

History