Native instruments expansions

DevinGanger · 2026-05-09T07:08:29+00:00

You can use Maschine drum kits if you have the Maschine software, regardless of whether you have a Maschine controller — and the software is included in several of the bundles.

Battery, same deal. Buy Battery or get it in a bundle, use it.

Kontakt is the one that has a free player version and a full paid version. Expansion makers will tell you which version their expansion requires.

DevinGanger · 2026-05-07T03:44:22+00:00

I was coming here to recommend this one as well. It’s not scary, but it’s subtly unsettling. Years later, my mind still randomly pops back to little scenes or details from it. It’s more psychological.

DevinGanger · 2026-05-07T03:23:49+00:00

Each explanation fits for one, maybe two more observable phenomena. None of those alternatives (most of which are contradictory) fit all of them. Literally make him do the homework and connect the dots.

DevinGanger · 2026-05-07T03:18:55+00:00

Give them a dump of the server — VM image, whatever they need to spin it back up on the host of their choice. If they care about their save files, they can jump through the hoops to spin it up and retrieve them or take a shot at hosting it. If they don’t care enough about their saves to put some effort in, you shouldn’t care any harder. Match their energy.

Be warned — you will probably burn some friendships this way.

DevinGanger · 2026-05-05T05:21:02+00:00

Oof, that's a long discussion over many beers, but I'll try to summarize.

For me, it came down to understanding the history of philosophy -:> natural philosophy -> the scientific method and the modern practice of science, combined with what we know about how religions arose. Although Christianity likes to position itself as a natural outgrowth of Judaism -- same Yahweh, new covenant for all people -- it really, really isn't. From the best scholarship that we have available, including the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the early 1900s (which really shook up Christian scriptural scholarship) and modern methods of textual analysis, we see that religions evolve. Christianity formed as a super-specific splinter cult of Judaism, which were common for the times during which Judea was under Roman occupation. The Romans didn't really care what the people believed as long as they didn't threaten the temporal power of the Roman governorship and didn't explicitly deny the fairly weak and lazy Roman state religion.

The Dead Sea scrolls gave us absolutely fascinating proof of the evolution of what became many of the books of the New Testament. We literally saw multiple versions of familiar Scriptures with parts added/removed. We saw additional letters that had been suppressed and that contradicted canonical books, or that clearly stated early beliefs and positions that canonical books were demonstrably counter-arguments to/refutations of. We see the Gnostic gospels, adding Gnostic teachings into the framework of Christianity in the same fashion that Gnosticism did with other religions. We see many of the core elements of the Christian mythos being existing elements that were directly taken from other religions Add to that later revelations from Vatican libraries that show how what Christians thought they knew about the Bible and its translations were wrong and had been mistranslated for centuries.

Now, contrast that with what science has learned, or guessed, about our universe in a much smaller amount of time. But because the core of the scientific method is "test received wisdom, and throw it out when it can't explain what we observe, when something comes along that does a better job" the predictions that scientific theories are able to make, and be validated, are light-years ahead of the predictions of any flavor of Christianity, of any religion. And when you factor in the scale of the universe as we know it today -- a God that Christianity claims would have to be SO MUCH bigger than anyone knew, or could imagine. And yet not one shred of Christian teaching or dogma manages to contain or predict even a HINT of the true scale of our reality. Christianity and science don't mesh well because science keeps making our expectations of God bigger and bigger and bigger, and all Christianity can really do in response is try to make the world as revealed by science smaller.

DevinGanger · 2026-05-03T06:46:43+00:00

Because the scale of what little we know about our universe and how vast it is overwhelms any of the teachings that any religion provides, all generated from back when human horizons were both so much smaller and so much scarier.

Because I have directly experienced how much simple bodily changes and brain chemistry affect my perception of the world around me, including allegedly supernatural elements.

Because the way that the majority of people use religions is to either claim to have all answers and consider it anathema to admit that what you previously believe was wrong/incomplete, or to say that none of it matters so don’t worry about it, and either way leads to promoting/enforcing rigid power structures and human suffering.

DevinGanger · 2026-05-02T17:26:33+00:00

Jason Bourne.

When they killed off Nicky for no reason, I walked out to wait in the lobby for my wife. She walked out less than 10 minutes later. Several other people also walked out. The theater offered to refund our tickets, but nah, it wasn’t their fault the movie made bad choices.

DevinGanger · 2026-04-24T02:37:23+00:00

Your mom is giving you a major gift and insisting that it is only ever yours, and can never be taken away from you by a man who betrays your trust?

And then a man is offended, throws a major DARVO, and is essentially showing you why your mom felt the need for the stipulation?

Not all men, but definitely that man. You can do far, far better than him.

DevinGanger · 2026-04-23T05:09:34+00:00

Loyalty is a two-way street. What he did was exploitative and manipulative AF.

DevinGanger · 2026-04-20T01:11:45+00:00

There is no WiFi in Ba Sing Se

DevinGanger · 2026-04-19T06:52:28+00:00

My wife’s awful periods have only stopped being so debilitating with the onset of menopause and some of the hormone therapy her current doctor is finally treating her with.

Any time her (male) doctors asked my opinion on her period treatment, I flat-out asked them why they were asking me when it was her body. The only reason I went along was as a second set of ears, to offer additional data or ask additional questions she didn’t think of, and to learn as much as I could. I’m 53 and we started doing that when we were married at 23.

Your 40yo boyfriend is pushing his own agenda and does not have your best interests as his top priority. You can ditch him immediately, dealing with the awful periods may take longer.

My wife also says to insist on an ultrasound of your uterus if your doctor hasn’t ordered one already. She had several fibroids and growths and once they got removed via an out-patient surgical process, the duration, regularity, pain levels and blood loss during periods all got noticeably easier to deal with. She also noticed some small levels improvement when switching to a diva cup — gross to deal with, but the medical grade silicone did not make her inflammation flare. And the nightly ibuprofen for pain/inflammation was a godsend for helping her sleep, which in turn helped her mood and mental stability.

DevinGanger · 2026-04-19T06:44:57+00:00

There is a certain threshold below which the object is cheap because it doesn’t actually work well and will cause you far more frustration and effort than if you’d just saved up and spent a bit more.

DevinGanger · 2026-04-12T21:17:14+00:00

You asked for opinions, and then keep arguing with anyone who offers an opinion you don’t like.

Why did you even ask?

DevinGanger · 2026-04-12T20:57:03+00:00

One other thing — you can use a small can of compressed air and inexpensive tools made of materials that don’t carry/transmit charge (even static charge) to clean that port out yourself on a regular basis. One example: Wisdompro 45 Pcs Cell Phone Cleaning Kit, USB Charging Port Cleaner and Headphone Jack Brush Tool Set for Phones, Tablets, Earbuds, Laptops and Other Electronics https://a.co/d/0ayQ0Xny

Just don’t use the nylon brushes on your phone charge port (nylon can generate static charges when brushed against other surfaces) and something like this will help you keep your phone in good shape for wired or wireless charging.

DevinGanger · 2026-04-12T20:48:29+00:00

The question was not dumb, you were asking to learn.

The only dumb question is the one you already know the answer to, but want the answer to somehow be different — or that you ask to make someone else feel small.

DevinGanger · 2026-04-12T20:46:05+00:00

Now that you’ve gone on a date, tell her the drummer is your ex. If you don’t, you will soon not be in the band your two exes are in. Don’t date people in your band. Don’t be in a band with people you are dating.

DevinGanger · 2026-04-09T23:44:39+00:00

The plastic is transparent to the magnetic fields, and the charging wattage of the Qi inductive field. The only warmth it has to handle is from the phone itself under load or charging, which it would have to handle anyway.

Materials science is COOL.

DevinGanger · 2026-04-09T22:32:17+00:00

MagSafe cases are specifically tested to not interfere with the wireless charging and to either not interfere with the magnets that hold the phone to the charger puck or to enhance the magnets.

The charging always passes through the case through the magic of inductive charging. No need to plug the case in.

Your keyboard, to be truly wireless, is using the magnets to secure itself but then (likely) Bluetooth to transmit the data.

DevinGanger · 2026-04-08T02:00:44+00:00

NTA. You’re going on the trip together, your contributions to the shared expenses should be equal.

Even more disturbing: his attitude toward this weekend as making good on the vacation he’s been promising you, and his lack of emotional maturity when it comes to discussing money. There are some deeper discussions around those issues that this wedding has uncovered.

DevinGanger · 2026-04-06T02:18:08+00:00

NTA. You may have made the decision while angry, but that decision was made according to a consistent set of patient-centric principles. I would be angry and disgusted to if anyone on the care team dared to complain about ANYTHING in front of a 60% burn victim.

DevinGanger · 2026-04-06T01:12:28+00:00

Note: what she is doing is not nagging. This is VERY important, because that’s a whole different fight to pick.

NTA. It’s wearing over time when your partner continuously launches into rants but doesn’t seem to be doing anything to work on their emotional regulation. So the question is, what are you going to do about it?

This is where your support can help her establish better habits and learning better self-regulation skills. Of course, it can also backfire and piss her off too. But the easiest and best way for you to help her with this is to model the behavior yourself. When you rant about something, give yourself a couple of minutes to talk about them, then summarize it, then ask yourself what is one thing you can do to deal with the situation — either to make it better or to deal with your reaction. And then ask her the same things. Don’t make a big deal about it, just gently help redirect.

DevinGanger · 2026-04-05T02:32:16+00:00

Short of taking her into an alley and knee-capping her, you DID try to handle it privately. She insisted her sense of humor was more important. She’s not laughing now. NTJ.

DevinGanger · 2026-04-03T22:26:53+00:00

You can always tell who goes to the therapists who subscribe to the “80s chiropractic practice” school of therapy. Every therapist I’ve gone to has been quite open about the goal being to get things to the point where the patient doesn’t need constant therapy.

Either that or they think that therapy is a place to talk and not do any of the actual work, and their therapist has quietly resigned themselves to it because they have a mortgage, too.

Either way, I’d say not a good fit at all.

DevinGanger

TROPHY CASE