Acerola has a bunch of great graphics videos. In this one, he talks about why PS1 graphics looked the way it did.
I learned that PS1 actually had realtime camera distance tessellation – something that wasn’t available to desktop GPUs until the introduction of tessellation shaders.
Donating household items to St Vincent DePaul, Goodwill or other groups is good, but they don’t come pick up furnature. It turns out the Vietnam Veterans of America will send a truck out to help pick up donations.
I’ve never used them nor can vouch for how good they are, but this could be an option if you have an estate you need to clean out.
AskReddit had a great list of free internet resources. From research, to learning, to tools.
An amazing homily by Pope Leo XIV that describes just how radically different the interior life of a follower of Christ is from what the world teaches and perceives. Here’s some of the best bits, but the whole thing is worth listening too.
Our age is one of unprecedented sensitivity and unrelenting outrage. In the cultural moment we inhabit, to be offended is almost a virtue – a badge of honor. To express outrage is to signal moral clarity.
Saints did not seek vengeance, they did not get offended by the failures of others – because their lives were rooted in a different center. Their identity is not fragile because it is grounded not in ego, but in God. We are rooted in a deeper truth than the changing winds of human opinion and behavior.
It’s not indifference nor is it repression. It is not being numb or passive or weak. It is not merely psychological or about managing emotions or applying therapeutic strategies.
There is something almost otherworldly about a soul that has mastered the inner alchemy of turning offenses into peace. It is sanctity and nothing less than the imitation of Christ. It is the transformation of the soul so radical that only the grace of God can bring it to completion. We have been so thoroughly transformed by love that even offenses can become opportunities for communion.
MeTube is a yt-dlp based docker container that sets up a localhost service for downloading video/audio from YouTube and a huge number of streaming video sites. It lets you download whole channels, individual playlists, and extract the audio from streams. PinchFlat is another option, but I haven’t tried that one out.
ytmate.com is a decent online web side for downloading individual files.
Links:
This gentleman in the village of Pyramiden was caught by surprise by a polar bear. He fired off a round from his rifle at the bear, but it still charged him. The man fled on foot until he got onto a snowmobile and just barely escaped (no pun intended).
It was a bold strategy since polar bear can run up to 25 MPH.
In the 1950’s, Goodyear was playing around with Neothane as a replacement for polyurethane used in tires. What’s wild is that neothane is transparent. This allowed customers to put tiny colored lights in them and you had tires that matched the color of your car. You could even use them as turn signals or brake lights.
Unfortunately Neothane was more expensive than polyurethane, didn’t last as long, and performed poorly on wet surfaces and under heavy braking.
It was demonstrated on a custom built Golden Sahara II car.
Honestly, I don’t see why these absolutely couldn’t make a comeback for blinged out cars today. Line them with LED’s and you’d have quite the head turner.
Josephus Mohr was born 1792 from an unwed seamstress mother and a mercenary soldier in Salzburg. His father abandoned them before he was even born. The vicar of Salzburg cathedral took pity, saw that he was educated, and he began to show a talent for music. He became a priest and wrote the lyrics to Silent Night. 2 years later Franz Gruber put the poem to music and performed it at Christmas midnight mass at the church of St Nicholas in Obendorf. The song spread like wildfire around the world and into many of the languages.
The song is also famous for it’s appearance in the impromptu Christmas Truce of 1914 in which soldiers from the German side started singing Christmas songs – including Silent Night – which had by that point been translated to dozens of languages. The allied side started singing along in their language. As the night went on, they lay down their arms, left their trenches, shook hands, shared drinks/food, and even took pictures together.
It was an unprecedented development in the history of war. All brought about by the birth of a small child in a barn in the middle east almost 2000 years ago.
The Original Good Idea Girl notes there are more than 30 voice types (Fach types) in opera. I certainly had only a vague understanding of types. She does a magnificent job describing them with great actual examples.
There’s a lot of strange people in the Portland activist culture. Portland is increasingly seeing more and more radical and violent elements becoming influential at public rallies, protests, and labor events. Yet nobody in the local media seems interested in looking deeper. When they do, many times they find disturbing facts.
This isn’t academic, these leaders appear from nowhere and are doing lots of damage. One example is the recent teachers union strikes which turned into a complete disaster for the teachers. The union leadership, after pushing strong pro-Palestinian messaging during the negotiations and holding loud public demonstration protests, later found out the offers they had been given by the state were – in fact – the best deals they could negotiate. The activist leadership used the teacher’s union as a public platform for their personal pro-Palestinian rhetoric. It was a huge loss and embarrassment for the union – yet none of the leaders apologized.
At least a few people seem to be digging in. Here’s an article on Olivia Katbi present at rallies for the nurses union. Even a cursory review brings up some serious questions.
I sure hope our local news can start digging in to find the money and the network these folks use, because radical activism seems to be growing in Portland as was witnessed by 115 straight nights of violent rioting and looting in Portland during Covid.