[X] My Assistant

AMD 6970 was a good card.

The best in the old days were the 6950s that could be upgraded to a 6970.. though it was only certain chips / cards that could do it.

Changed my VPN today since my nord subscription finally ended.

Windscribe doesn't have a nice zip file full of openvpn config files like nord did, so I'm having to parse some JSON, but soon I should have my 'random VPN server' script up and running again.

I hate point-n-drool tools.

Another thought: I hate javascript. Even when it works well, I hate it, but I especially hate having to parse JSON outside of a browser because that almost always ends up dragging a javascript interpreter (in this case Duk) into whatever I'm working on.

Edit:
Actually, my brain just had a nice idea that is about a billion times simpler to implement.

CODE

curl -s https://assets.windscribe.com/serverlist/ikev2/1/1|grep \"hostname|sed 's/^.*: \"//;s/\".*$//'|sort

If I run that through shuf, I basically have everything I need to generate openvpn config files on the fly.
OOPS, I forgot that that would include the free VPN servers too. I specifically want the p2p ones, so I think I will have to parse the json properly after all.

I'm so glad I sat down and took a while to figure out simple regular expressions. They're annoying to read, but pretty easy to write once you understand the rules.

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: Jan 6 2022, 10:03

H@H, or rather the Java running it (knowing it's like that from past experiences), crashed near midnight, turned back into pumpkin or something.
Tried to find a reason, but I don't have the abilities it seems, found no potential culprit, the nearest thing I found was some time change, but there are tons of them, so it should not be it.

Out of memory?

Increase the maximum heap size of the runtime?

CODE

DVI-0 connected primary 1920x1080+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 510mm x 290mm
   1920x1080     60.00*+
DVI-1 connected 1920x1080+1930+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 510mm x 290mm
   1920x1080     60.00*+

Apart from the 16:9, that sounds pretty nice.

Edit:
So I finished my OpenVPN configuration scrape-y thingy, which is an amalgamation of Javascript that was constructed on the fly by a shell script that gets evaluated by duktape, only to then notice this on github.
[github.com] https://github.com/wilmardo/windscribe-ovpn...fig-scraper.git

God dammit.

Edit again: Ended up being handy that I had my own, because even using his the filenames were annoying for my purposes (I like the country code being at the start of the configuration file names, so that I can easily shuffle and know what country I'm going to end up going through. I was able to look up country codes via the JSON by cross referencing with the file names.

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: Jan 7 2022, 03:21

Successfully repaired my expensive headphones. I couldn't afford to replace them. Getting someone else to do it, could be expensive with parts + labor.

Luckily they have moved production of their cheap models to China, so I was able to get an oem cable for a lower model. The cable was half as thick but the sound seems to be nearly the same. Much better than one ear cutting in and out.

Apparently its a problem they have only addressed recently. The plastic sheath they used on all their headphones goes hard after about 10 years then its prone to going hard, splitting then eventually damaging the wires. It was barely tolerable when their headphones cost $500 but now they cost $1k for the same model.

Only recently have they started switching to braided cables in their higher end models (eg after 40 years...)

My shitty boses that I've had to rubber cement together probably at least eight times now have a female TRS connector on them (and it's not dangling on a cord; it's in the body itself). It's 2.5mm which is irritating to find an adapter for, but I can just use aux cords with them.

RIP my Galaxy S7, screen died. Getting another one, but for now on a Galaxy A12.
This phone is larger in every dimension, no home button, and usb-c.

At least Samsung SmartSwitch was able to drop all my apps and data right into this phone

My shitty boses that I've had to rubber cement together probably at least eight times now have a female TRS connector on them (and it's not dangling on a cord; it's in the body itself). It's 2.5mm which is irritating to find an adapter for, but I can just use aux cords with them.

I've had those superlux headphones where it does dangle on the cord and that small piece of cord is the only thing that ever broke in my time of owning it, before eventually after many bodges and fixes one of the drivers gave out completely. never changed any of the cords, just that small dangly bit.

in other thoughts, made a usable fire alarm, finally I can solder in peace but also not have my place burn down (as quickly), still no fire extinguisher though

That's a nice hack. Wish I were allowed to do that in my apartment.

Instead I just unplug them when soldering/seasoning iron pans.

I realized I could have just adjusted the Rate Factor value with a decimal of 0.5 in case the final bit rate is either too low or too high. Tweaking aq-strength or psy-rdoq wasn't necessary.

That's a nice hack. Wish I were allowed to do that in my apartment.

Instead I just unplug them when soldering/seasoning iron pans.

Jesus... I was soldering and didn't even think about the smoke detectors lol. I lucked out I guess. I had windows and stuff open but that would have been a close one.

FML, my graphics card is now broken and I am so desperate for a new GPU yet nearly every GPU is out of stock. And those GPUs in stock are so expensive. It looks like I would have to borrow a good old 750ti from my friend for now.

FML, my graphics card is now broken and I am so desperate for a new GPU yet nearly every GPU is out of stock. And those GPUs in stock are so expensive. It looks like I would have to borrow a good old 750ti from my friend for now.

what did you have before? if it wasnt too new you could still have some luck snooping around the second hand market, or even if it was might be able to get something older of higher spec

FML, my graphics card is now broken and I am so desperate for a new GPU yet nearly every GPU is out of stock. And those GPUs in stock are so expensive. It looks like I would have to borrow a good old 750ti from my friend for now.

750 Ti is a great card. I use one. Low power consumption and still good enough to handle pretty much anything if you don't play at max settings.
I always try to keep one older card as a backup. Right now that's a Galaxy GT 630 with a replacement fan (the original seized up) for me.

If I get that 1060 Ti that I anticipate a 40% chance of actually getting, then I'll probably sell off/give away the 630. But maybe not, because Kepler cards run pretty nicely in Nouveau.

Thought:
This is sort of technology-related, I guess: but I've fallen in love with cast iron skillets.
Used some of an older relatives' over the holiday for some simple cooking and it all turned out fantastic. Even with the new, rough-textured, pre-seasoned, $9 chinese pan I just bought from Macy's I'm getting nicer results than I was with my old anodized aluminum stuff ([i.imgur.com] GHC Magnalite Pro).

I guess the pan will smooth out after a few years of heavy use as more oils polymerize on the surface, but it's still a shame they don't sand them down after casting anymore. And I don't care enough to sand it down myself and re-season since it's working acceptably now (even if it could be better). Maybe if I have better tools for it in the future I'll make an attempt though.

Maybe it's not quite on the level of another relatives' fancy hugely expensive copper cookware, but I think for $9 it's still fantastic (since I let it heat up before I use it).

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: Jan 9 2022, 19:22

730 must have been a great card considering its being sold again. ...

That galaxy a12 was quirky and huge. I did like the app permission management of android 11 vs 8. Also appreciated being able to set 'answer call' to the volume up button (no home button). Overall unimpressed though. It'll be a backup phone and maybe thing for watching youtube now. Got another S7 and got everything setup right again. I suppose I'll factory reset the old S7 and either junk it or just see how hard it is to open.
Android 12 hit stable recently, so I have to imagine this new S7's days as a daily driver are already numbered. Turns out it is waterproof, so it'd still be a good media device.

Thought:
This is sort of technology-related, I guess: but I've fallen in love with cast iron skillets.
Used some of an older relatives' over the holiday for some simple cooking and it all turned out fantastic. Even with the new, rough-textured, pre-seasoned, $9 chinese pan I just bought from Macy's I'm getting nicer results than I was with my old anodized aluminum stuff ([i.imgur.com] GHC Magnalite Pro).

I guess the pan will smooth out after a few years of heavy use as more oils polymerize on the surface, but it's still a shame they don't sand them down after casting anymore. And I don't care enough to sand it down myself and re-season since it's working acceptably now (even if it could be better). Maybe if I have better tools for it in the future I'll make an attempt though.

Maybe it's not quite on the level of another relatives' fancy hugely expensive copper cookware, but I think for $9 it's still fantastic (since I let it heat up before I use it).

is it true you just never clean them? my grandparents always swore by it but I was never convinced. tempting though on that quality alone.
no clue where that skillet went now that I think about it.

This post has been edited by cate_chan: Jan 10 2022, 19:02

is it true you just never clean them? my grandparents always swore by it but I was never convinced. tempting though on that quality alone.
no clue where that skillet went now that I think about it.

My family members usually will put a little dish soap in the pan and rinse with hot water, running a sponge along the surface to pick up grime. But that's because the oils polymerize and a light wash like that won't make most of the hardened coating come off.
Then you dry it really well with paper towel or whatever. You do not want to let water sit on one for very long (rust).
It is true that some people never wash them. And if you just keep the gunk and crumbs and such out of it, that should be okay, too. That's up to who owns it. My grandparents wash theirs though.
Also, you should NEVER put one in an automatic dish washer. That's the one thing you definitely don't want to do.
You do want to leave some 'protective coating' on it. It also acts as a 'non-stick' coating. But you don't have to obsess over maintaining it if you just don't do a handful of things.
My favorite thing is that they hold heat really, really well. And they work on induction cooktops if you have them. And new ones are very cheap. If you want an antique it can get silly though.

Another thought:
FLTK is fucking great.
I had to patch something in the toolkit itself today, and it took about three minutes to find it and make it work. The code is actually readable.

I have a program I wrote which does quirky things, and FLTK makes it easy to static link, so I just built a special version of it for my program without changing the library system-wide. Also, compilation of the toolkit takes under a minute even on my very modestly powered laptop from 12 years ago with SMR hard disks.

Another another thought:

POSIX is really stupid sometimes. To get the PID of an unrelated process on the system, the only "standard" way I can find to do it from C code is to run 'ps -A -o "pid,comm"' in a pipe (popen() or pipe/fork/execl) to extract the PID and associated process name.

Just wrote a program to kill wpa_supplicant and OpenVPN for me, and I wanted it to be portable to the BSD's and other Unixes. Had to do it in C to be able to run it with the setuid bit.

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: Jan 11 2022, 23:09

I want to make a script that deletes all files from a specific folder every week or so were I can just pipe all my downloads. Everything that I don't move to the appropiate location will just vanish (like a setup.exe that I only use once)

On my old pc I made a crude batch script that did the job and run it with the windows task scheduler on sunday noon.

The downside was, I sometimes forgot to move something that I downloaded the day before. I'd rather have it keep track of "last accessed" or "created at" dates and move it to a different folder after 7 days with no access. Like a second recycle bin, haha.. but I'm not gonna use the real one >:)

Maybe a python script would be more useful? I don't like batch, the syntax feels really clumsy to me :S