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Author: matt

Downloading O’Reilly and Linkedin Learning content

Downloading O’Reilly and Linkedin Learning content

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I’m a subscriber to several online learning platforms, but sometimes you want to take videos offline to watch on a plane or when you’re off-grid in a remote location (like fire towers!)

My Online Learning Downloader is a Chrome plugin in that lets you download videos and books from O’Reilly.

Linkedin Learning Course Downloader can download Linkedin Learning courses and videos. Be aware you can get 12+ hour bans if you try to download too many videos in a single day

HLS Downloader can be used to download complex split-file M3U8 playlists that you find on O’Reilly and some other sites

Polaroid rendering

Polaroid rendering

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Matt Stark came up with a great little 3D viewfinder/polaroid effect in which you can take a photo then insert that geometry into the world – fully interactable. This is kind of like Superliminal, but with the whole world – not just individual objects.

I do love games like this that bend their worlds with effects like this, or non-Euclidean manipulations like Antichamber. The reality is that these types of games are almost always limited to single-player puzzle games. Makes me wonder if there are other applications of such projective techniques beyond puzzle solutions.

Excuses

Excuses

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A powerful true story about a priest who largely pursued his own desires and agendas. He survives a near death automobile accident to later have an experience of what his particular judgement would have been – and he was condemned to Hell.
It wasn’t because he had some big unconfessed sins or scandalous life. He even went to confession but admits he didn’t really commit himself to real conversion. The real reason he was condemned is because he pursued his own happiness/agendas. He simply served himself before his vow to serve God. Instead of conversion, he simply planned on making excuses for not trying harder to serve God. As he discovered, when standing in God’s blinding truth, excuses do not stand.

Lightguns for LCDs

Lightguns for LCDs

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We’ve all seen old standup arcade games that used guns – like one of the iterations of House of the Dead or VirtuaCop. At home, who didn’t play Duck Hunt on the NES?

Unfortunately, if you try those games today – they don’t work. The mechanisms they relied on only worked on old tube-type CRTs. People have tried to make alternative mechanisms – but they relied on having to attach messy sensor or light bars around the screen. Using mechanisms like sensor bars also means you must stay in the exact same spot or re-calibrate – something that is very annoying during a long gaming session. What to do?

Andrew Sinden decided to tackle the project and came up with a brilliantly simple solution. Simply render/detect the square around the border of the game being played determine your location from that rectangle. That input is converted to mouse input/direction and voila. It works on any size display, doesn’t need recalibration, and allows for multiple players. Andrew Sinden shows off how he developed it here:

He started an IndieGoGo project, and ended up raising a whopping $4.6 million of the desired $300,000 goal.

His startup project is now a full-fledged product and he sells them over at SindenShop. They make 2 guns: with and without recoil. They run about $170/$115 respectively and come in blue, red, black, and grey if you want different guns for different numbers of players. They also now make arcade-style foot pedals for games that use those.

AMD accidently releases FSR

AMD accidently releases FSR

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AMD recently published a new version of its FidelitySDK with FSR 4 upscaling and FSR 3.1.5 frame generation support. Unfortunately, they accidentally published the full FSR 4 source code on GitHub. Before AMD took it down, some media outlets and X users managed to record screenshots of the files, including Videocardz.

Update: PCGamer is reporting that AMD is having more trouble putting the genie back in the bottle than first thought because they accidently included the MIT license.

CIA method for making quick decisions

CIA method for making quick decisions

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How do you realize you’re becoming overwhelmed. How do you make decisions when you’re faced with making a quick decisions? How do you perform what is called operational prioritization?

Andrew Bustamante teaches you how to deal with being overwhelmed during your day – whether it’s work tasks or saving yourself from a terrorist. Instead of trying to think you can solve it all, do the ‘Next fastest/simplest thing’. The simplest solution is often a good enough to keep you moving towards success versus listening to inner dialog that doubts and can convince you that something cannot be done/overcome.

The CIA method for making quick decisions under stress

Articles

Van Gogh’s Starry Night

Van Gogh’s Starry Night

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An interesting link between atmospheric and astronomical turbulence and Van Gogh’s starry night. In investigating astronomical structures, astronomers noticed some looked like the flows in Van Gogh’s Starry Night. In analyzing his paintings, as he struggled towards the end of his life, his paintings with turbulent characteristics more and more closely represented actual mathematical turbulent flow.

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