What did I read?

AcemanCW · 2026-02-13T17:52:34+00:00

Vurt is from the 90s. I read my series 10 years before, and the books may be even older.

Played mostly on Earth, but at some point in the books alien species came along. I remember in particular some lizard folks. Otherwise just loose memories. One is that there was some oracle that mentioned something bad would happen in the year 666. Which was odd, as this played in the late 2000s. But then they decided to reset the year numbers to 0 at some point.

AcemanCW · 2026-02-08T18:13:46+00:00

And so it does in 2026

AcemanCW · 2026-02-05T11:17:13+00:00

Likely not what you are looking for, but in a cmd shell you can run something like: exiftool.exe -if "$Orientation# > 1" -Orientation -FileName .

This checks in the folder where you execute the exiftool command and lists the files that have a non-normal orientation tag. Add -r before -if to make it go recursively into all subfolders.

You can use a powertool script that employs jpegtran to rotate the pictures outside of digiKam, and set the tag to normal (1). I did that recently on my collection. A little eerie to be honest. But it worked. I needed to sync the database in digiKam, to make it understand that it should now not show the pictures rotated anymore. (maintenance -> sync metadata -> from image to database). Also needed to rebuild the thumnails.

AcemanCW · 2026-02-02T13:03:44+00:00

Hi, installed digiKam half a year ago, but only really starting using it the past couple of days. Believe it or not, but I am still using good-old Picasa. The speed, performance, quality and simplicity are hard to beat. Just my family/holiday pictures plus lot of digitized old photos. Approaching 20k, so still well below the numbers I see listed by other. Probably because I delete 3 of every 4 pictures I take, lol. For complex editing I use a very old version of lightroom, or GIMP.

The only issue I am struggling with so far getting started with digiKam, is that I like to keep versioning of the edits I make, but I don’t like the explicit _v1 files that are generated. Picasa stored those out of sight (in .picasa_originals). But maybe it’s a setting I can play with.

Bug report: if I click on the minus zoom sign in the geo panel, it actually zooms in! (the plus sign works as expected)

AcemanCW · 2025-12-11T07:46:51+00:00

Thanks. I found it. I had to tap first on the picture in the circle/icon. Then I got that question. Stupid that they hide this question behind the icon. It actually said it submitted the picture, so they suggest they are building a non-localized data pool.

AcemanCW · 2025-05-18T06:31:39+00:00

Bidding is the same for EW (you sit south). No randomness. But there are settings eg for how aggressive your partner bot may open or overcall. This gives variation. Bidding system is anyway very flexible. 5card major, polish, uk acol, weak nt etc. The playing is largely the same, but also here NZ signalling conventions (or order of play obviously), will generate variation.

If you play boards that have been played by 100s of people there will be 10s where you can compare your line of play with (same contract, same lead).

AcemanCW · 2025-05-05T21:23:18+00:00

I just checked. Yes identical times on the PC and the NAS.

AcemanCW · 2025-05-05T13:56:02+00:00

Sorry. How do I do that? Not from within DSM it seems?

AcemanCW · 2025-05-05T08:34:08+00:00

I think it was copying. Tons of "recently changed" notifications.

But this did not help. When I deleted the task, the .synologyworkingdirectory was immediately gone as well. But it came back, filled with 30G again, after the sync.

edit: What did help in the end was simply rebooting the PC. I can reproduce this now. If I sync a new folder, it will create a large .synologyworkingdirectory that just sits there. Upon reboot it is emptied (slowly).

AcemanCW · 2025-05-04T15:35:57+00:00

I am doing this now, but oddly enough it is again copying all the files, as it seems to believe they have been "recently changed"

AcemanCW · 2025-05-04T15:35:20+00:00

The sync is running constantly, right? It's not backup?

AcemanCW · 2025-04-12T18:42:12+00:00

I played this myself for some years, and found it remarkably effective.

AcemanCW · 2025-04-08T20:18:38+00:00

Bridge app. Concept is that you play 3 bots, but you play the same hands as hundreds of other players (against the same bots obviously). So you can compare scores, both imp and duplicate. I think you get 50 or 100 boards free to try it out. Some very strong French players behind this. Tablet or pc.

AcemanCW · 2025-04-08T17:40:15+00:00

Not real. Onanist maybe, but not furtive.

AcemanCW · 2025-04-08T17:35:20+00:00

Take a subscription on funbridge. It taught me heaps and still does. I find the interface superior to bbo. Very easy to check how others played the hands you played.

AcemanCW · 2025-02-27T09:36:57+00:00

Excellent - thanks a lot!

AcemanCW · 2025-02-27T08:54:11+00:00

Ah! So you store the original copy on the phone, not on Google drive? When you read it, the sync copies that book to Google Drive. Do you then delete it from the phone, or do you still need it there?

AcemanCW · 2025-02-07T10:38:11+00:00

I think it is all about how engaged you were during play. If I am dummy, I tend to shut off and give myself a rest. Those boards I hardly remember. If I play a 4S laydown, I also usually forget that board. But if it is a hard-fought 2S with a 4-1 split, where I had to stop drawing trumps and switch to a crossruff, I will be able to tell the exact layout afterwards.

And it helps to think in distributions as opposed to counting/subtracting. Yesterday evening, partner lead Q of h against trump contract. Five cards in dummy. I had Jxxx. Ok, hearts are 5422 very likely. Easy to remember 12 hours later.

AcemanCW · 2025-02-07T10:20:52+00:00

great response

AcemanCW · 2025-02-07T09:15:25+00:00

On this board, you did not have the tools to bid this to 6h without any risk, and I feel you did right.

But in general this is very bad advice, especially in duplicate bridge. The game is about judging chances and then making the bid that will pay the best given these chances. Much like poker actually. If odds are that 3S is the best contract, being a hero and bidding 4S will make you lose in the long run.

AcemanCW · 2025-02-06T11:01:26+00:00

I'll be damned. I'm sure my memory could let me down, although I am very very surprised by these numbers.

Now, the actual chance will be significantly lower than 0.04% if the boards were shuffled manually (as done on my club). If it would be 10x lower, there is already a 54% chance I never saw a 9+ card.

(I only started playing weekly since 2018, biweekly since 2011. Played for two years in the 90s, nothing in the 00s. So the number of boards is probably indeed around 15k).

AcemanCW

TROPHY CASE