bryanthompson

as long as it gets those blob dollars!

I used Mosaic Magic back in my high school journalism class to design a yearbook cover 20+ years ago! Turned out great - it won some kind of award iirc.

Area51/Rampart here. It was a better, simpler time.

One really nice use case for dithering that I've found is for building graphics for 8-bit (Pico-8 and Picotron) games and toys.

I made a ruby script that can take a graphic and scale it to whatever size, then it uses a closest color match to substitute colors for the _very_ limited Pico* palette and applies dithering to make it look attractive. I like Stenberg the most, but have played with Atkinson and am still feeling around a bit.

Of all the IoT contraptions and ecosystems, I hate garage door openers the most. My opener came with some sort of goofy base unit where you can hit the "close door" button and it'll sound an alarm, trigger close, and then the happy little LED shows you that it is indeed, closed.

My solution, after looking into every off-the-shelf option, was to take an esp32 running esp32home + Home Assistant and hot wire it to buttons and status LEDs on a remote + base unit and stick it on the shelf in the garage. It's not pretty, but it works reliably.

The whole system is infuriating. I stay pretty well in one lane for what I want to watch, and if I _accidentally_ click on ONE music video, the whole feed is wrecked for months.

Almost all NFC you find these days is going to be a form of EMV and is encrypted.

There was a form of contactless magstripe (MSD) that was not encrypted and has been phased out of usage as of like, late 2019 via card update bulletins.

There are some reasons it still exists, however, it is no longer required and merchants/POS systems ought to start phasing it out.

In the US, the way we do tip on receipt is a lot more natural if you're asking for a signature. Without a signature, you're just handing someone a tip option, which is awkward with our current way of doing things.

Some merchants opt to keep signature enabled because it gives them a fuzzy feeling and it's a point of closure to a transaction.

Also interesting how there are such specific requirements at grocery stories. None of my US-based cards could be used in several grocery stores in the Netherlands. When the cashier looked at my cards, they immediately knew it was because I didn't support whatever networks they expect.

The liability shift in the US that affected most retailers occurred in October 2015 -- basically, merchants are and have been liable for fraud that occurs on swiped transactions. I'd be curious to find out how the example presented by the parent article could change this -- a valid-looking card that only has swipe would definitely be taken by a merchant for fraud, and if the card doesn't claim to be EMV-capable, it seems like this would not be the merchant's fault. I would think in 2020, however, a mag stripe only card would raise red flags with humans at the counter, but gift cards are this way, so perhaps they would just breeze right through.

On this topic, if anyone can point me toward a US-based issuer where I can open an account and get a card that supports credit pin (not pin for cash advance on a credit card), I'll happily venmo you a pizza or something. The issuers I have spoken to[1] all tell me it is impossible to get such a card in the US, which seems ridiculous.

[1]: https://wallethub.com/credit-cards/chip-and-pin/ I discussed each of the cards noted here with the issuers, not one is actually chip+pin credit.

Same here. I only follow woodworkers and immediately unfollow anyone who gets outside the line of what i want in my feed. It has allowed me to find interesting niches in the hobby and connect with people with 10x the skill who like teaching and talking about technique, but it takes a pretty brutal type of curating to keep the influencers & garbage out.

Proxima and Ultima by Stephen Baxter hit along this theme and are a pretty good read.

I'm one account flag change or one password reset from being in this exact situation, and it's terrifying. I have been an Audible customer since before Amazon bought them. Somewhere in their account aggregation process, I've ended up with at least four distinct logins for amazon that all use the same email address.

One email address... And i use one password for audble, one for amazon, one for aws, and one for amazon affiliate. If I password reset on any one of those services, my accounts are all bricks. I've made that mistake once and had to frantically call audible support & climb through the support chains until someone could basically undo my password change.

During the process, they offered to try and deduplicate my accounts, but I think we're going to need a team of senior-level DBAs to sort this shit out.

Did you ever play Defend the Temple scenario? Spent soo many hours on that one and I havent found anything close in new games. Really hope this gets released on time and someone makes a new DtT.

I have a wife, kid, and a whole mess of dogs. Job is fairly demanding and I have some other loose-ends from past projects that require some babysitting. I aim for at least 15 minutes per day in my wood shop, a little more on the weekends. It's enough that if I plan well, I can practice interesting things or make progress on projects.

If you're doing online charges only, Stripe gets my vote. If you're building an app and need to accept cards in person, take a look at https://cardflight.com. I'm an engineer for CardFlight and in the past was lead developer for a gateway with stripe-like functionality.

Sure, but they're not going to even tell you if you're a good fit until you go through the entire expense of building for their gateway. I'd think one would spend that effort integrating with any number of other gateways that have some clear requirements. There's just no clear advantage here that I can see.

Did you get any decent action out of the API? I spent 2 hours tonight poking at it... Pretty certain I'm doing everything correctly, but I'm getting 403's and no usable errors.

This thing is a total disaster.

Some of their example code: https://github.com/VisaDeveloperProgram/SampleCode/blob/mast...

Docs are incoherent in just so many ways - and their quick start drops you right into like a 9 page guide for generating two-way ssl docs. Not exactly a quick dev onboarding path.

Request docs list attributes as required that aren't in their examples or runnable sidebar thing (the only cool part). Returns an error body with no error messages, codes, or info. You use some "correlation-id" (called "correlationId" in other places) to apparently get your error messages for a failed request.

Final rating: 1/7, would not play with again.

Once your application is completely functional, you email them (lol) and then they go through contract negotiation and application/security/etc. review where you get your terms.

Their on-site tools are total garbage, so I tried playing with their API... and it was also a giant pile of trash. Random exceptions, timeouts, incoherent structure all around. 0/7 would not play with again.

Apparently the board swiped left.

This is from 2012? It'd be neat to see some in depth follow ups on stuff like this. I'm just now going from proto boards to building schematics and boards, so seeing the evolution and thought process on projects like this can be pretty inspiring.

I really enjoy the radial arm saw, but it does seem like the sliding compound miters are taking their place. I figure if these work for most of the work I need to do, then it'll be easier to justify things like a planer & jointer.

Thanks for the tip! I'll try that this afternoon.

tl;dr: I got over whatever block I had and built a table & benches I'd been planning for years.

In High School, I really enjoyed shop class... after graduation, I bought random small tools and handled some household work, but always had some mental block about going out and buying wood and big tools to build the things I really wanted to tackle. The first project I wanted to take on was to build a replica of the picnic table my grandfather built about 90 years ago. I remember sitting with him at that table many afternoons, planning projects, talking about cars, life, etc. So, this table means a lot to me and even though I've taken care of it, the years have caught up and it is rotting away.

I built a Sketchup model of the table in its exact form, then I made a copy and started making minor upgrades (I think he'd approve). Here's the original table along with one of the benches, along with what the updated version is going to look like: http://cl.ly/image/2a2T0S1W280r http://cl.ly/image/1j2q3P2d3V2X

There _is_ a certain process and inherent knowledge that people who shop for things like wood, tools, supplies, etc., just inherently know that seem like huge hurdles for nerds like us. It's "just wood" just like it's "just typing" for us. When we're rude to a n00b, think about what "old timer" thinks of you going into his parts store or lumber yard in your khakis asking about stuff you don't know about. MOST of them are encouraging and want to share their knowledge, but it's really up to us as newbies to take initiative and learn how things work.

I had an opportunity last month to buy some shop tools (table, radial arm, band saw, sanding equipment), so I decided to finally give it a real shot.

First, I got the equipment set up and watched dozens of youtube videos about each piece of equipment - from keeping them clean and working well to calibrating every possible alignment & went to work making sure they were all perfect.

Next, I bought a set of precision rulers, protractors, etc., and made some practice cuts on scrap wood I had in the house/garage/etc.

Finally, it was time to buy wood. I must have watched 25 youtube videos about not just buying wood, but learning about the various cuts and ratings of wood. All very interesting, and I felt like I could at least identify a good bit of lumber from the bad, and it helped to catch up on some of the terminology & etiquette of the lumberyard. To make a long part of the story short - if you walk into a Lowes or any real lumber yard wearing shop-looking clothes and are carrying a notebook & pen, nobody's going to bother you. You can spend all the time you want looking over the selection, noting prices, etc. Seriously, this was a major milestone for me to realize. I ALWAYS feel rushed when I'm in a store... there was something different and nice about taking time to pick through and find the wood I thought was going to be great. Of course, if you do this, don't make a mess and put everything back the way you found it.

Another hurdle was that I didn't think (at first) I could fit lumber in my car. I drive a crossover and discovered that the passenger seat folds flat, leaving plenty of room for 8' lumber. I can fit 10' in diagonally if I let it touch the dash. You might be surprised what you can fit in your car when you fold the seats down & give it a measure.

Anyway, with the wood all loaded up, I got home and started planning my cuts. I printed the sketchup model and started documenting everything - making notes of how I can get the most of each board, figuring out which order I should tackle them in, how I'd arrange the mounting bits, etc. Honestly, I probably spent 5 minutes planning for every 30 seconds of cutting. I don't know if that's normal, but it was actually kindof exciting to make some cuts, get out the protractor, and find that I was dead on with what the model said I should be.

I wrote WAY more than I expected. This particular post and topic really hit me though. Here are some more pics of the work - I have most of the table completed and ready for assembly. The benches are finished & ready to be sealed, though. They came out pretty well, especially for my first project.

http://cl.ly/image/3z2C2F072M1K http://cl.ly/image/0Q06180Q2y3q http://cl.ly/image/2U3f3q1n2Y1W http://cl.ly/image/1Y3d0l123L35 http://cl.ly/image/1X410N281K11 http://cl.ly/image/3g2k3j3f3E1P

I remember when http://noteslate.com/ launched their site & demos and being excited, checking back weekly, then monthly, then realized that it was all a big cloud of vaporware.

I hope Sony actually goes through with this. I currently use an ipad mini & notesplus with a jot pro - it's a good setup and works well, but I still find myself reaching for legal pads half the time.

I think what he's getting at is that he's modeling the content expectations first, with no regard to the actual data they are based on. My team builds a lot of things this way - we start with mockups & presenters that have no actual data. Once we have that all locked in and approved, we start thinking about the data structures. Several of our projects deal with some really complex weather, insurance, and other info that can be hard to model & assemble upfront... so once we have our presenters worked out, it's rather easy to then decide how to model it, build our services and delivery mechanisms, and move forward.

We've found that going this direction leads to cleaner models, faster execution, and more decoupling of the entire front end from the entire back-end. We can query & build our data delivery however we need and feed it to the presenter as fast dumb objects (typically as Hamsterdam structs).

edit: removed redundantish wordery.

I'm giving away http://dontgobreakingmyart.com and getting http://kickr.in. No idea what I'm gonna do with this thing. DGBMA was for a friend who made blown glass things. I was giddy when I thought up that name for him :)