Peter Drake, he/him, LFHCfS 🔥 @peterdrake@social.cleverlibre.org

Autumn leaves.

College faculty: are you getting a lot of spam with subject lines like "Scholarship opportunities for <your institution> students"?

Our financial aid office thinks these are a borderline scam. By giving out a small scholarship (a few hundred dollars), the sponsors can buy a lot of eyeballs to sell to advertisers.

A snake who's dating the head on the other end of his body can't spell AMPHISBAENA without HIS BAE.

I was confused by the advice to shuffle step (or hop with both fee together) when (unavoidably) in the vicinity of a downed power line. Why, I wondered, would it be more dangerous to have one foot in the air?

After some web searching, it appears that the real danger is having your feet far apart. This is because of two things:

1) There is a voltage gradient across the ground. This makes a greater voltage difference between more distant points.

2) Electricity can flow more easily through your flesh than the ground. If your legs form a "bridge" between two points, the current may flow through that longer path rather than through the ground.

Can someone with a better understanding of such things confirm and/or clarify?

#electricity #safety

Cosmic Express continues to be an exquisite puzzle game and, eventually, a series of brutal lessons about making assumptions.

"Well, clearly, my first two steps have to be..."

"Do they? DO THEY?"

Fun with Xbox wireless controllers vs Unity:

Within Unity: works correctly.

WebGL on the same Ubuntu machine: sticks work, but the buttons are mapped differently. The right button does one thing within Unity and a different thing in WebGL.

WebGL on MacBook with bluetooth turned off: reacts to keys as if they were controller buttons. (I explicitly examined the “joystick” keycodes within Unity.)

WebGL on MacBook with bluetooth turned on: refuses to connect with or forget bluetooth controllers.

#unity #unity3d #GameDev #xbox #why #whyyy

Sometimes Unity loses track of my Xbox controllers. I suspect this happens because the controller goes to sleep to save batteries. Restarting Unity fixes the problem, but is there an easier way?

#unity #unity3d #GameDev #ubuntu

Today's #GameDev work music: "8 Hours of Whale Sounds Deep Underwater for Sleep and Relaxation"

I'm in the market for a new podcast. Desiderata:

* Diverse voices. (I listen to "No Such Thing as a Fish" and "Shut Up & Sit Down", which are overwhelmingly white British men.)

* Fast, smart host(s).

* Facts and ideas, not guests talking about their personal journeys.

* The option to subscribe to get an ad-free version.

Watcha got?

#podcast

Wow -- the first hit in a Qwant search for paypal was a paid ad for an obviously fraudulent site. (How do I know it's bogus? For one thing, this isn't a Windows machine.)

Does anyone have an ad-free search engine the like? I'd rather pay a subscription fee than have useful results buried in ads.

#qwant #search #enshittification

Spot the dog. #Violet #DogsOfMastodon #NoSpotIsAVerbHereNotTheDogsName

OUR SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT CLASS WILL SOLVE YOUR PROBLEMS

[Limited to the Portland, OR area. The semester is Jan-Apr 2024.]

Every year, students in the CS 488 Software Development course at Lewis & Clark College work in teams of 4-8 to build software for an external customer. That customer could be you!

Previous years' projects have included:

* A video game to teach people about earthquake preparedness.
* Creative animation software for an artist.
* A tool to help a faculty member organize course content.

Do you (or someone you know in a local organization) have a computational problem for which you need a piece of software? Let us know and maybe we can help you out.

WHAT YOU GET

Free custom software! This comes with some caveats:

* We usually produce stand-alone desktop applications. Other things are possible, but it's easiest to stay within this realm.
* These are mostly seniors working on their first large piece of software. We can make no guarantees as to quality; you might get something that you can use to do real work, but you might just get a fragile "proof of concept". We use an "agile" development technique that regularly reexamines goals, priorities, and expectations; this leads to a good probability that we'll have something working by the end of the semester, even if some of your more optimistic features have to be dropped.
* There probably won't be anyone to maintain your program after the semester is over. You might be able to hire some juniors to do more work on it.

WHAT YOU GIVE (We'll work with you on all of these things)

* Create an initial description of your project.
* Create and maintain a list of "user stories" (things that you want your program to do).
* Commit to meet [IN PERSON] with the students every other week to discuss progress and priorities. This must be a firm commitment; it's a disaster for the students if a customer flakes out.

Please DM me ASAP if you're interested!

[I normally teach this class, but as I'm on sabbatical it will be an adjunct this semester. I can put you in touch.]

#SoftwareDevelopment #ComputerScience #education #pdx #portland

I saw a bumper sticker that just said "ASSHOLE". I don't know if they were self-identifying, accusing the reader, or simply labeling that part of the car.

Today's model from the origami fold-a-day calendar could become an xmas present, but who gives a flying duck? #DamnYouAutocorrect #origami