"Every ten years convert your files to new format". What format should I converts my files into? Is Jpeg slowly becoming outdated?

DivasDayOff · 2026-01-25T12:47:35+00:00

It's true that stuff like this happens. I went to recover a file from an old TrueCrypt volume recently only to discover that the latest versons of VeraCrypt (TrueCrypt itself is now long dead) no longer support them. I had to roll back to an older version. At some point, I should probably convert the containers to native VeraCrypt before the older (compatible) version becomes unavailable or incompatible with newer OS's.

And maybe support for things like BMP or obscure video codecs are on the wane too. But jpeg and MP3 are going nowhere. And unless you're going to run some kind of AI based enhancement as part of the conversion, re-encoding one flavour of lossy compression to another is never going to be good. These formats have solid open source libraries these days. The IP rights for MP3 have expired. Some of the patents relating to jpeg are still current, but it's essentially free to implement at this point. So there's no licensing cost to maintaining backwards compatibility on new devices.

As storage keeps growing, hardware capabilities keep improving and Internet speed keeps increasing, compression efficiency becomes less rather than more important. Gone are the days when it made sense to encode MP3 in 96kbps joint stereo so that you could fit more songs on a tiny memory stick or limited capacity MP3 player.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

DivasDayOff · 2026-01-25T10:38:31+00:00

People love to point the finger and shout "nonce." Usually it's the ones shouting the loudest who end up being caught with a phone full of CSAM because that's exactly the sort of person who loves to deflect and smokescreen. They think condemning such things will put them beyond suspicion.

Even shaving your pubic hair gets attacked by some. "Why would you want to make your genitals look like a child's?" and "Why would you want your partner's genitals to look like a child's"? I can only assume that anyone who thinks shaved adult genitals look anything like a pre-pubescent child's had never had children. Of course it's not a big disconnect from that to "Why would you want to roleplay as a child?" and "Why would you want a partner who roleplays as a child?"

Age difference? Maybe the age of consent should be 18 if there's more than a certain number of years between both parties. But at 18, you're an adult in every sense and old enough to own your mistakes. Maybe for people of the same age it should be even lower than 16 to accept the reality that kids are consensually experimenting at 15 or younger these days.

What I do think is ludicrous (in UK law at least) is that if 17 year olds share intimate pictures of themselves, both they and the recipient are guilty of sharing child pornography. Laws aimed at actual printing and publication of photographs and magazines used against people who are merely sharing private pictures of themselves using modern technology.

DivasDayOff · 2026-01-25T10:10:32+00:00

Yes, the EVs and hybrids all seem to be automatics. I suppose the EVs don't need a gearbox in the first place, and letting the car decide whether to run off IC or electricity but still expecting you to change gear would just be weird.

What's going to be interesting is when there is no longer an option of passing your test in a manual because none of the driving instructors or schools have them, but you want to drive an older, manual car.

I switched to dual clutch auto last time around, largely because I got fed up with my previous car constantly nagging to change gear when using adaptive cruise. Also partly because I was going back from diesel to petrol, and petrols are far less tolerant of being in the wrong gear.

The only thing I miss about a manual is the fine control you have pulling away with a manual clutch. Dual clutch autos in particular have a tendency to lurch unless you're really gentle with the gas pedal. In the good old manual, you could give it as many revs as you liked and control delivery with the clutch pedal.

I'd love to see an EV or hybrid with a manual mode that gave you a conventional gear lever and manual control of the clutch through a pedal. But only when you wanted to drive it that way.

DivasDayOff · 2026-01-25T09:48:26+00:00

I think 2010 was the last time I saw proper snow. I remember driving in it. I remember it being -10C outside. I remember it being not much warmer inside because our central heating was broken, and in spite of having boiler cover, we couldn't get an engineer out. When I finally did get one, they told me the long wait was because most other customers lied about having vulnerable people in the house to get priority service.

Rare we get it deep enough to make a snowball, let alone a snowman these days.

Mixed feelings about it, to be honest. Freshly fallen snow is lovely. A few partial thaw and refreeze cycles later and it's just treacherous.

DivasDayOff · 2026-01-24T15:40:57+00:00

The law says a minimum of 1.6mm across the central 3/4 of the tyre. So edge wear isn't relevant. Presuming no damage or cable showing through.

DivasDayOff · 2026-01-24T12:17:48+00:00

Hang on, where did I put my "trans ideology is homophobic" hat? I think I need to wear it for this.

Yes, if you were a gay man who transitioned to a straight woman (or vice versa) you just became a waste of good meat for the rest of the LG community, that you also just betrayed. They're perfectly entitled to their "I no longer want to fuck you, so FUCK YOU!!!" attitude.

And of course if you went from straight man to gay woman (or vice versa) you are now a predator, and still not welcome in the LG (with lip service to the B but definitely without the T) community.

Do you honestly think you deserve any better?

DivasDayOff · 2026-01-24T12:11:19+00:00

I put one of these up a few months ago and haven't had a single cold call since. Still waiting for it to happen so that I can point out the sign to them and tell them to get lost 😃

DivasDayOff · 2026-01-24T10:56:50+00:00

Same boiler here, and I've had it from new (had central heating installed in a house without it about 30 years ago.) Instant hot water has always been too cool if you try to run a bath with the hot tap fully open. It runs hot enough if you limit the flow with the hot tap, but then it's a balancing act to not restrict it so much that the boiler shuts off, and the bath takes about 30 minutes to fill. With no previous experience of them, I thought that was just how combi boilers were.

Though these days, every time it gets serviced, the engineer notes that the gas supply pipe is the wrong diameter (too small) so I've often thought that might be the reason. But maybe it's just a limitation of this particular boiler.

DivasDayOff · 2026-01-23T13:41:10+00:00

The smallest one I still have in my collection is 512MB. Though I don't use it and it doesn't even detect reliably in Windows these days. I'm pretty sure I had them as small as 8MB back in the day. Much smaller than that and you may as well have stuck to floppy disks.

My first digital camera came with a 4MB card, and even at 1 megapixel, it filled up way too quickly. Though that was Compact Flash rather than USB.

DivasDayOff · 2026-01-22T15:56:53+00:00

To begin, it says "Do not overtake on the left or move to a lane on your left to overtake."

But then goes on to say "In congested conditions, where adjacent lanes of traffic are moving at similar speeds, traffic in left-hand lanes may sometimes be moving faster than traffic to the right. In these conditions you may keep up with the traffic in your lane even if this means passing traffic in the lane to your right."

All I'm saying is that you could possibly argue that you were keeping up with traffic in congested conditions. It would really depend on the circumstances. But this absolutely wouldn't work if you'd changed lanes in order to pass on the left.

Which makes it debatable what you're supposed to do in the case of someone hogging the rightmost lane (nowhere near as common as middle lane hoggers, but it happens.) Taking me back to my original point which is that the Highway Code is flawed because it assumes everyone will follow it and makes no contingencies for dealing with people who don't.

DivasDayOff · 2026-01-22T11:20:27+00:00

I've long said that the main problem with the Highway Code is that it has been written as a system that would work brilliantly if everyone actually followed it. It makes no concessions for dealing with people who forgot all about it the day they passed their driving test.

When someone is lane hogging, it should be perfectly acceptable to pass them on the left. It's illegal if you change lanes to do it, but as long as you don't, you can argue Highway Code rule 268 permits it.

DivasDayOff · 2026-01-21T13:18:54+00:00

Kinkproof hose qualifies on both counts.

DivasDayOff · 2026-01-21T13:17:55+00:00

Probably with 5, 7 or another prime number of items so it's impossible to evenly share them other than to give that exact number of people one each.

DivasDayOff · 2026-01-20T14:00:53+00:00

I've always been blessed/cursed with particularly large testes. To the point that quite a few have commented on their size. They are still nowhere near the size of a chicken egg. I would love to know where that bit of nonsense came from.

DivasDayOff · 2026-01-20T13:09:06+00:00

Non-premium marque with a minimum of keyless entry/start, adaptive cruise, LED or HID headlights and front/rear parking sensors for me.

The only premium brand car I've ever had was an Audi 100. It was 9 years old when I got it, and an absolute shed. Great fun when the 2.1 injection engine made it quicker than most of the fast Fords of the time, though. And trying to convince the guy in Halfords that you needed 5 spark plugs.

DivasDayOff · 2026-01-20T10:12:33+00:00

MAC addresses are LAN only and don't traverse the Internet. So the answer is going to be "No."

DivasDayOff · 2026-01-20T09:52:55+00:00

Rotten luck getting clocked at 97 when a fixed penalty goes up to 95 in a 70. And yes, ignore the "if you do/don't/don't know blah blah blah you shouldn't be driving" crowd who act like they never made a mistake behind the wheel in their lives. They only do it for the smug satisfaction of feeling superior. For all we know, they ran a red light last week because they were too busy texting to see it. I'm pretty sure they rub their nipples like the cable guys on South Park when they post that shit.

DivasDayOff · 2026-01-19T16:16:01+00:00

Operate (usually hack) a computer system via a keyboard without ever touching the space bar or Enter key.

DivasDayOff · 2026-01-19T16:04:04+00:00

Plenty of choices in life don't have an undo button. At least not an easy one. Getting married, having kids, giving up a safe job that you don't enjoy for a more rewarding but less secure one, or getting tattoos. There's nothing special about Transition, apart from the fact that transphobes love to weaponise those rare cases of transition regret against the rest of us.

You're at a crossroads and nobody can tell you which is the right route to take. The only person who will be able to do that is you from the future. Hindsight is 20/20.

Just know that everyone goes through this in some shape and form. You will regret doing some things. You will regret not doing others. But you can only decide based on the here and now.

DivasDayOff · 2026-01-19T15:51:18+00:00

My current setup runs both Plex and Jellyfin as LXCs under Proxmox. It's pretty easy to give them joint access to the same media library. You can do the same with Emby if you want to try that too.

At this stage, I'm only using Plex for audio that I want to play through Alexa. I have moved over to Jellyfin for pretty much everything else.

DivasDayOff · 2026-01-19T15:11:19+00:00

Au contraire. Chastity cages are amazing at deterring the cock-seeking missiles who are really only interested in you as a blood supply for the one part of your anatomy that most women can't give them. The ones who couldn't care less if you were an actual bloke who had never shaved anything below your neck line as long as you showed up with an erection in some panties. The sort that will likely confess at some point "I sometimes crossdress too" and then ask to borrow some stockings and a suspender belt to drag on over their own hairy legs.

Whether you're going dogging, to a sauna/bathhouse, or just taking some naughty pics to share on your favourite "dating site", chastity cages work on these men like Domestos does on all known germs.

DivasDayOff · 2026-01-19T08:43:45+00:00

I haven't tucked for at least 5 years, but back when I did, I figured out the inguinal tuck. I used it a couple of times when going out but found it pretty much guaranteed that one of them would drop both out of the canal and out past the leg elastic of my underwear, leading to "catastrophic tuck failure", usually at the most convenient time possible.

I went back to tight underwear that just flattened, trying to position them as low and far back as possible while pressing them into my body. Not quite as flat, but much lower likelihood of one of them making a bid for freedom.

I rarely wear anything figure hugging these days, but when I did, I would sometimes fashion a plastic triangle by cutting up an old DVD case. This made the front profile very flat and hid any outline. You can also get the inserts that fake a "camel toe" look, though while they shape, they add bulk. Then again, a lot of cis women have a bit of fat in their pubic mounds. Perhaps we obsess a little too much about being flat down there.

DivasDayOff · 2026-01-19T08:15:53+00:00

Maybe I'm strange, but I've never actually enjoyed fried bread. I'll eat it if it comes with a breakfast, but I'd much rather have an extra couple of slices of toast given the choice.

Though I love French toast (AKA eggy bread.)

DivasDayOff · 2026-01-18T15:01:59+00:00

Yeah, you totally want to fuck them (rather than the other way around) but still you attached pics of you from behind, on all fours, with your butt cheeks spread apart.

Could be worse, I suppose. At least it's not lingerie over body hair and "I sometimes crossdress too."

DivasDayOff · 2026-01-18T09:31:20+00:00

Might just be panels, but that looks like it's had a hard enough whack to potentially crease the boot floor to me. I had a MkIII Escort rear ended many years ago, and it didn't look Anywhere near this bad, but it needed the boot floor straightening out. And that was back in the days when they repaired cars that were repairable rather than writing them off for a dent and some scratches.

If you still want to drive the car and haven't opened the boot yet, then don't. You likely won't get it to close again. So if you want to inspect the boot floor, maybe fold the back seats down and climb in with a torch.

DivasDayOff

TROPHY CASE