AernaLingus

joined 2 years ago
[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Now you've got me thinking about Trump fumi-e

[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago (7 children)

Never been much of a gearhead, so I wasn't even aware there was Gibson discourse! Are sales of Epiphones/Gibsons on the decline? They're nice guitars, I suppose, but I prefer a thinner neck myself.

[–] [email protected] 41 points 7 months ago (13 children)

you joke, but...

I found a thread for this in a Harley-Davidson forum and one of the responses opened with

They can't even figure out what gender they want to be.
They don't know how to drive a manual.

beyond parody

[–] [email protected] 44 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (3 children)

motorcycles geordi-no

bicycles geordi-yes

also ngl I thought this was fake, but regardless of whether it is or not this Harley forum was eating it up.

One of my favorite exchanges:

what i think would attract the younger riders into buying is show sexy young women posing on the bikes in there advertisements...

nope. Have to make an app for it, and showcase it in a video game. These youngsters wouldnt know what to do with a good woman if she sat on their faces.

the absolute state of boomerbrains

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

Boban seems like a nice fellow, so I could get behind this

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

Well it was nice knowing y'all

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

Aside from the incredible story, I was surprised to learn about the Unification Church ownership of the New Yorker Hotel building. I stayed there a good while back (needed a cheap hotel on short notice), and while I can confirm the rooms are absolutely tiny I had no idea that I was sleeping atop the Moonies.

Whenever I go to NYC I always think back on that trip, since the New Yorker Hotel sign is one of the first things you spot when emerging from the Lincoln Tunnel, but now I'll have something else to chuckle about.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

I just tried the turning off method and it worked great on my electric smoothtop! Brought the water to a boil, put in my pasta, left in on for three minutes, and then covered for the remaining seven minutes. It did boil over a bit after covering, but that's on me for setting too high a temperature after adding the pasta. Still came out perfectly al dente! Now, this was with Mueller's, which is an American brand that I find significantly better than the standard US-produced Barilla even though it's a bit cheaper (highly recommend giving it a shot!), but I wouldn't call it fancy--will be interesting to try it with De Cecco and see if I encounter the gumminess you mentioned.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

It is an older phone, so I don't expect things to run perfectly, but I don't think I've ever seen a site lag as badly as ProleWiki did, and the fact that it runs perfectly in Chrome makes me think there's some small quirk of how the pages are generated that Firefox's rendering engine chokes on.

...although idk, I just went back and it seems fine nowβ€”maybe it was just something transient with my device.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Cranky's takes, taken straight from the manual:

Story

So let's see what nonsense they've made up for this game, shall we?

Hmm... well, I have to hand it to them. This time they've managed to come up with a decent sotryline that doesn't involve the usual golden bananas. Only joking kids! This one's worse than all the previous efforts put together! I know you probably aren't expecting a best seller, but wait till you hear this load of rubbish...

Chimpy Controls [which has a picture of the N64 controller]

Arrgh! What is that thing? Which way do I hold it? There are too many buttons... and this wobbly stick-thing feels like it's broken! I can't believe players use this silly controller contraption to play games! A good solid joystick and one button is all I'd need!

Cranky's Special Abilities

Ah, this is where I come in. Let's face it, the Kongs' basic abilities are only a pale shadow of my former skills. In order to give them a chance to progress, I will generously let you buy a few of my special potions from time to time in order to make those kids a little less embarrassingly useless. Some abilities can be used anywhere, but others require the use of my pads or barrels with the fate of the appropriate character on them.

Monkey Multiplayer

It's true, I'm afraid. They've gone and included one of those awful multiplayer modes that seem to be all the fashion these days. This means you and some other whippersnappers can huddle round your flickering screen and play a few games that I reckon were thrown in at the last minute and will be average at best. I sure hope I'm in some of them thoughβ€”I'd just love to whup some of these young wannabes' behinds!

The Levels

Now where did they put the level I designed? Hmm... I can't seem to find it. It was called the "Great Girder Grapple" as I remember. Oooh, I must hove spent at least 3 minutes working on it. I even drew them a fancy little picture. Bah! It must have been too good for them. The kids would have refused to play their fancy 3-D levels once they'd gotten o taste of my 2-D girder action! Don't give up hope though; they might have hidden it somewhere like a priceless gem, hoping that no one will ever find it...

Cranky's Tips

Tough luck kid. I've told to keep my mouth shut, as they want to keep all the good stuff for a money-making strategy guide. I'm sure some of it will appear on that newfangled "internet" thing as well, so I suggest you take a look-see there. You could also ask your friends, assuming of course you've got any. If all else fails, you'll just have to play better.

(PDF of the manual)

[–] [email protected] 31 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (10 children)

Huh, interesting! They also mention pre-soaking the pasta for two hours to save more energy (since most of the time is really spent rehydrating rather than truly cooking) which can cut the cooking time from ten minutes to one or two minutes. Might have to give it a shot out of curiosity!

 

This song is somehow simultaneously paint-by-numbers generic anisong #136 and a total banger. Been jamming to it ever since the anime started airing and the full versions just dropped today to coincide with the final episode of the anime!

Honestly, paint-by-numbers is a little harsh; I think it sounds like that at first blush since it doesn't do anything particularly innovativeβ€”Cry Baby, it's not (there are English subs!)β€”but it's well-written and blends a lot of typical J-pop tropes in just the right way such that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. I love that they did a bunch of different versions--the piano one really allows you to appreciate the voice leading, while the acoustic guitar one emphasizes the rhythmic elements. Maybe it's just because it executes something really well that I'm a sucker for: taking the same melody and recontextualizing it by changing the underlying harmony (the first melodic motif in the chorus is repeated three times, and each time it gets different chord changes!). And the hook is such an earworm:

β™« MAGICAL LOVE, BE WITH YOU! β™ͺ

 

Ever since I got introduced to the joys of Minesweeper by Girl_DM_ I've been having a lot of fun playing it as a little timewaster. I'm specifically playing the version from Simon Tatham's lovely Portable Puzzle Collection (more specifically the Android port via F-Droid) which unlike the original Minesweeper does NOT require guessing. Most of the time, I'm well-versed enough in patterns and testing candidate solutions that I'm able to clear a 16x16 board with 99 mines in about 3-5 minutes. But on a fairly regular basis I'll run into situations where I get stuck and it seems like I'd either have to calculate an inordinate amount of possible solutions or just make a random guess, neither of which are appealing. Here's one such example:

with annotations

without annotations

There's probably some cool Minesweeper shorthand I could use to describe the constraints, but what I tried to show with my annotations is how I understand that, for each of the annotated squares, there is a mutually-exclusive binary choice (or in the case of the 3, two choices) for where a mine could be located. Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, while the choices are internally mutually exclusive, it doesn't seem like there's any permutation of those choices that is invalid so I can't eliminate any possibilities. My usual strategy is to fix one choice and see if it results in a contradiction. For instance, if the other mine for the 2 is the upper choice, we can clear the lower square. That means the lower square for the 1 must be a mine, and this still leaves either of the two bottom choices as valid for the 3 (so this is a possible configuration based on these constraints).

The only remaining sections have a lot of freedom which makes them daunting to analyze. Of the remaining unanalyzed squares, from top to bottom they have 2, 2, and 3 mines remaining, respectively, which is quite a lot of options to fully check, and I can only eliminate a few heuristically (e.g. the top 3 must have at least one mine in either the east or southeast space, since otherwise the 4 to the south can't be fulfilled; the 4 must not have the remaining mines all in the east column because otherwise the 2 and 1 can't be fulfilled). I'm sure if I went through them methodically I would eventually arrive at an answer, but that's pretty tedious, so I usually just give up and generate a new board in this kind of situation.

TL;DR: am I missing some neat heuristic(s) that will allow me to either slash the possible solutions to a more manageable number or eliminate individual solutions very quickly, or is this kind of difficult spot just an inevitable outcome for some boards?

 

I like all of Scootertrix's videos, but I found this one to be particularly delightful

 

Channel is full of bangers (some of my favorites are The Hustle and Microservices)

 

This is one of my favorite videos of all time, perhaps even surpassing Watch for Rolling Rocks in 0.5x A Presses (although obviously not as iconic). It just perfectly scratches that itch of someone using a combination of technical skill and lateral thinking to complete an absurd video game challenge, all presented by an even-keeled narrator with clear visualizations and a bit of humor sprinkled in. I think I've watched it half a dozen times at this point--it's my "comfort food" for when I'm having trouble sleeping.

Kind of amazing that the very first video the creator has put out is such a banger, not just in terms of content but in terms of production value. He did say that he'd be making another video, so I'll be looking forward to that--tough act to follow, though, not unlike Watch for Rolling Rocks.

Can anyone recommend any channels/videos along the same lines? I've devoured the following:

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