A Thing I’ve Read 02/24: Take Us to a Better Place: Stories, published by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
A short story collection I came across because it holds one vaguely Murderbot-adjunct one by Martha Wells. All the stories are supposed to be health-related, mental/physical/community/…, and it’s your usual mixed bag of a collection. However, imo none of them was actively bad, even when they didn’t track for me.
Also, it’s free – just download one and see for yourself.
A Thing I’ve Read 01/24: System Collapse (Murderbot VII) by Martha Wells
In which our beloved SecUnit has not only to deal with wannabe corporate overlords trying to enslave a full planet, but also the pesky side effects of having human neural tissue fully capable of developing mental health issues.
I would not recommend this as an entry point (start at the beginning), but if you liked the other stories… why are you still here?
This is one part of a historic post that has been split up for republishing.
FutureSjut
Some Assembly Required.This is surprisingly easy, and I totally didn’t type this caption thrice.
Unicomp produces mechanical keyboards based on the classic IBM Model M. Those things are heavy, clunky, clicky and LOUD keyboards that provide a good amount of resistance against any use and misuse. I love this thing.
What I love even more is the fact that Unicomp also sells custom keycaps in various colours, both printed and unprinted. As you might have noticed, I ordered a set of blank key caps to force myself to finally learn blind typing. It works surprisingly well, albeit I currently find it easier to just delete a whole word and re-type it then to search for the correct key to correct a typo…
If you want a keyboard with a set of custom caps, order directly from Unicomp. If you just want a keyboard, try getDigital – retails price + shipping from the US roughly equals their price, and there wont be any hassles with customs.
This is one part of a historic post that has been split up for republishing.
FutureSjut
The other [sic] new toy is a Synology DS1515+ NAS. His name is GLADos, following established naming procedures for IT equipment.
Welcome Home.
I got myself a five-bay NAS because there is no kill like overkill, and I really wanted a RAID-10 and an additional back-up disc as well as the various additional playthings this model can run. For common home purposes, a RAID-1 with two big discs should be sufficient.
“What the fuck did you just say?” Okay. A NAS is a Network Attached Storage – an external hard drive connected to the network instead of your PC. A RAID is a Redundant Array of Independent Disks – several HDDs working as one volume. RAID-1 uses two discs and mirrors them unto each other – both hold the same data, if one fails you still have the other. RAID-10 is “two RAID-0 in a RAID-1”, wherein a RAID-0 spreads your data in blocks over two discs, resulting in faster access but no redundancy. The fifth bay holds an additional backup-disc where important data will be backed up to. I once lost 1.5TB of media, I am that paranoid.
But let’s start at the beginning: after ordering the NAS itself (Conrad had the best offer among big suppliers, much cheaper than the cheapest on amazon), five WD Red 4TB HDDs, two Noctua NF-A8 FLX fans (especially recommended as quieter than the ones provided by Synology) and a 4GB RAM block (all via amazon, and no, I do not get any money for this, even if I totally should), I ended up with… some several boxes.
This is a historic post that has been re-published with minimal touch-ups.
FutureSjut
So, The Lord GabeN, in all His glory, hath heard my prayers and gifted upon me a Shiny New Toy.
The Steam Controller. Why did I get it? Because I’m an engineer, the subsequent pathological love for interesting new tech-stuff, disposable income and poor impulse control. Also, I wanted to try out controller-based PC-gaming for quite some time and decided to save myself for the Light of the Lord GabeN, instead reverting to the tools used by the Filthy Console Peasants. But seriously: I really wanted to take a look at this thing. It arrived on Friday, I got it on Saturday, and over the weekend I tested a whole bunch of games with it. Here is what I found.
[Disclaimer I: I never really used a controller before, except in agony-filled afternoons when friends decided we would game on their consoles. I have no way of comparing this thing to any other controller, so I wont.] [Disclaimer II: Depending on how things work out, there might be a follow-up post some day, hopefully addressing problems mentioned here.]
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