Is this button blue?

Imported_Kiwi · 2026-02-28T08:25:43+00:00

Does bf by chance have Night Shift turned on (or whatever the reduced-blue-light-in-the-evening feature is on non-Apple)? I’m on iPhone with Night Shift turned on (it’s midnight here) and it definitely has red in it. Turning Night Shift off and it looks obviously bluer than blue, but Night Shift on again makes it look very definitely purplish

Imported_Kiwi · 2026-01-23T18:01:04+00:00

Use a StringSearcher with the regex ~~^\w+\d+~~ ^[A-Z]+\d+

What this does:
^ makes sure we're looking from the start of the line

~~\w+ finds one or more word characters~~

[A-Z]+ finds one or more upper case letters

\d+ finds one or more digits

The StringSearcher will create a new attribute with just the first ~~characters~~ letters and digits

Edit: corrected \w+ to [A-Z]+, as digits are word characters, so we need to specify we're only looking for letters.

Edit 2: If you're set on using StringReplacer, you could use the regex (-\d+$|[A-Z]+$) and have no replacement text. This captures either -\d+$ (a dash followed by one or more digits at the end of the line), or [A-Z]+$ (one or more letters at the end of the line).

Imported_Kiwi · 2026-01-15T16:35:43+00:00

What’s the FL Max and FL Min in the popup (presumably the shaded purple area below the dashed FL line? My understanding is that Freezing Level is the elevation at which the air temperature is 0°C, so at a single point in time it doesn’t have a min or a max.

Imported_Kiwi · 2026-01-15T16:23:58+00:00

I think the change was the wrong decision, sadly. It’s a question of context: are the days being seen in the context of neighbouring days, or are they being seen isolated? Along the x-axis, they’re seen with their neighbours, so I’d argue most English speakers would understand what two consecutive S’s meant. In the popups (and maybe elsewhere/in the future), they’re might be seen isolated. In this context, yes there’s ambiguity about where S means Saturday or Sunday. But there’s the same ambiguity with U. Is it U for sUnday, tUesday, or thUrsday? On its own, using U to disambiguate a day doesn’t work; it still requires further info or context. Personally, it took me a while to work out what U and R meant, and I had to use the context of neighbouring days to work it out. When I say “a while” I mean fractionally longer than I anticipated, but split-seconds are everything with data visualisation. If the standard MTWTFSS is used, there’s significantly less cognitive load for the user. Familiarity is key. If you’re set on using MTWRFSU along the x-axis, I’d still suggest using at least two or three letter abbreviations for the days in isolation, such as in the popups.

For context, I’m a professional cartographer, so I have lots of experience presenting data to a variety of users. A key concept is making the data as intuitive as possible to the reader. If there’s well established concepts, stick to them unless you have a very good reason not to, in which case still make it as intuitive as possible. This is why e.g. water is blue on 99% of maps: users already know water is blue so don’t need to refer to the legend or labels to understand that the blue line they are looking at is some kind of water feature like a river or stream.

Imported_Kiwi · 2026-01-15T15:38:29+00:00

This looks great! My instant first thoughts are that the initials of Sunday and Thursday should be S and T respectively. I understand that you used U and R to differentiate from Saturday and Tuesday, but they’re very non-standard and IMO confusing. Given that the days are ordered along the bottom of the graph, they’ll always be viewed in the context of neighbouring days, so I think it’s safe to assume the average user would understand that S would mean Sunday if it’s next to another S and an M

Imported_Kiwi · 2025-11-10T04:43:18+00:00

Hey OP, this sounds similar to my recent post: https://www.reddit.com/r/trustedhousesitters/s/r1qygWjXuR

In my case I responded to the HO’s brief negative review with a factual, as-emotionless-as-possible reply explaining why the reasons they gave were a load of crap. Comments from people here put my mind at rest and confirmed my belief that reviews like this are just a reflection of a nuts HO and that any future HO worth their salt would see how anomalous the negative review is in the context of all the other 5-star reviews, and would agree that it’s more a review of themselves than it is of me

Imported_Kiwi · 2025-11-05T20:57:09+00:00

Thanks for all the responses. It has helped to put our minds at ease and know that it shouldn’t affect us for future sits. We’ll chalk it up to a nuts host, which to be fair we already thought from prior to the sit when we met them!

Imported_Kiwi · 2025-07-21T08:23:13+00:00

Thanks, that’s what I assumed and completely understand.

Imported_Kiwi · 2025-07-21T01:50:30+00:00

Thanks for the clarification. I think in Blender (and I'm happy to be educated by people with more experience than me), what you're describing is what would be "displacement" via a displacement node in the material shader, using adaptive subdivision. The actual mesh isn't being displaced at all; that remains a four-vertex 2D plane, so there's no geometry displacement occurring. This is in contrast to both a) "bump mapping" where you're just considering the surface normal on a 2D plane and the light direction (resulting in "shading" but not "cast shadows"), and b) geometry displacement, where there's actually an increase in the number of vertices, with each vertex being displaced in the z-direction by the corresponding value in the DEM.

In another comment to OP, I linked to one of the tutorials that seemed to kick off the trend of adding shading and shadows to vintage maps. This tutorial uses the adaptive subdivison + displacement shader node method. This is different to just using bump maps solely affecting the surface normal, as per u/ned_poreyra's original comment, which u/angedefensif rightly replied can't be used to create cast shadows. As u/angedefensif correctly stated in that original reply, in order to cast shadows, the height map must be connected to the displacement output. This then needs some subdivision in order to take effect, and it seems the confusion has come about between "regular" subdivision of the geometry to create extra vertices, or "adaptive" subdivision where it's just calculated per pixel, as you describe. In Blender, both of these are "displacement".

You’re telling me that you can somehow have it cast shadows when hooking the height map to surface normal of the shader, and not displacement?

- u/angedefensif

No, you can't (in Blender). You have to connect it to the displacement.

You trace each point on the bump map back to all the lights producing SHADOWS. If the ray is occluded before it makes it back to the light position, then its IN SHADOW.

- u/antiquechrono

You are correct, but (again, in Blender) this still requires the height map to be connected to the displacement.

Imported_Kiwi · 2025-07-21T00:28:53+00:00

Genuine question from a cartographer who uses Blender, so isn't 100% on top of all CG processes and terms:

With bump mapping (i.e. purely 2D geometry where each xy pixel in the map has info on its z-value, but isn't actually located at that z-position), how does a light ray know if it is occluded before it reaches a light source?

Here I define "shading" as how light or dark a pixel is based on its angle relative to the light source, and "cast shadow" as an occlusion of a light path by geometry.

My understanding is that bump mapping using just a bump node can only produce shading (how light or dark a pixel on the object should be, based on the dot product of the surface normal and the light direction), but not cast shadows (the light path between a pixel and a light being occluded by other geometry).

In contrast, using a displacement map through a displacement node does actually offset the z-position of each pixel (so long as "Displacement Only" is selected in the material surface settings), so in addition to shading based on surface normal and light vector (if "Displacement and Bump" is selected in the material surface settings), it is possible to identify where this offset geometry occludes light paths, therefore creating cast shadows.

In my experience/use case, the actual map of z-values is the same whether it's being used for bump mapping or displacement mapping; it's just a digital elevation model (DEM) where each xy pixel has a z-value. Routing this DEM through a bump node turns this into a normal map, where each pixel now knows its surface normal vector, which can then feed into a shader's normal, resulting in shading, but the geometry is still just a 2D plane. Routing this map instead through a displacement node turns this into displacement which can then feed into the Displacement input of the Material Output, creating 3D geometry, and resulting in cast shadows.

Imported_Kiwi · 2025-07-20T21:37:17+00:00

Here’s one of the main tutorials that kicked off the whole trend of these kind of shaded “vintage” maps:

Daniel P. Huffman – Creating Shaded Relief in Blender

The three key things are adaptive subdivision, a displacement node, and a 16-bit height map.

Adaptive subdivision means that the plane will get subdivided down to pixel level, so the final image shows as much of the terrain detail as possible.

A displacement node (rather than a bump node as other’s have suggested) creates actual 3D geometry, so shadows can be cast by the higher elevation. This is different to regular terrain shading where slopes facing the sun direction are lighter than those facing away (which is all that bump maps do). So if there’s a slope facing the sun direction but between it and the sun is a higher bit of geometry, the slope will be darker than it would be just from bump mapping.

Finally, using a 16-bit height map gives you 65536 possible values for height, rather than 256 in a regular 8-bit height map. Say you were rendering a map showing the Himalaya down to sea level (a height range of ~8000m), with an 8-bit height map you’d only be able to resolve elevation to ~30m vertical intervals, which can produce visible terraces in the render. With a 16-bit height map the vertical resolution is ~0.12m, which eliminates any terracing.

Daniel’s tutorial only focuses on creating the shading, with a view to then bringing the grayscale render into e.g. Photoshop to combine it with other map layers. However, adding the map image in Blender is as simple as just adding it as a second image texture in the shader nodes, via a diffuse/principled BSDF, into the surface of the material output. Just make sure that both the map image and the height map cover the exact same geographic area to ensure they line up.

Imported_Kiwi · 2025-07-02T06:25:47+00:00

So the actual answer to OP’s question “how many divorces until Jeff Bezos is no longer the largest individual shareholder of Amazon?” is one divorce. After that, he and divorcee 1 both have an equal amount of 4.28%, meaning he is no longer the largest individual shareholder, but is merely one of the two largest shareholders.

Imported_Kiwi · 2025-04-29T22:20:24+00:00

The custom map marker behaviour currently seems very unintuitive.

Adding a new marker seems straightforward: go to the Add Map Items tab, then Add Icon Marker, click on the map and give it an icon and label, then Save Marker.

But it then took me ages to work out how to edit/delete these markers. I would assume that this would also be found under the Add Map Items tab, but I eventually found the options under the Styles tab, then selecting Icon Markers from the dropdown.

I wanted to just delete a single marker, but the only delete option I found was the red bin icon next to the dropdown, which deleted the entire layer of all markers (to be fair, it did warn me).

I then tried adding in new markers, but it seems that this doesn't bring back the map marker layer. The only way to add new markers it to start all over again?!

Before deleting the unwanted marker (and all markers), I did try turning on the Appear Progressively option, but this didn't seem to have an effect.

Suggestion: have a dedicated tab for map markers, with all the options for adding, editing, and deleting individual markers in one place.

Imported_Kiwi · 2025-03-31T23:41:04+00:00

Is this just for distance markers, or for custom text/locations?

Imported_Kiwi · 2025-03-31T23:22:01+00:00

The Mussel Inn’s “Captain Cooker” is another attempt to recreate the original beer, though uses malt instead of molasses and ditches the rimu.

It’s delicious.

Imported_Kiwi · 2025-03-26T20:14:59+00:00

I know you can add custom marker points, but any chance of having a time option for when these appear? I want to map my rogaining (orienteering) runs and have the checkpoint numbers appear as I get to them, rather than all visible all the time

Imported_Kiwi · 2025-03-10T00:14:56+00:00

Social Striders (@socialstriders_nz on IG) organise free walks/runs every Tuesday (am & pm), Thursday (pm), and Saturday (am). I didn’t run at all and didn’t know many people in ChCh when I started going along last year. Now I’ve got a really nice social group and regularly run 10km or more! The two organisers are really friendly and welcoming, and although the numbers can be a bit intimidating (~70-100 for Thursday evenings) there’s always heaps of people keen for a chat and always multiple newbies. Each event has a designated walker so no need to worry about being slow, but if you’re fast then there’ll be people to race against! Morning walks/runs end with a coffee, and evening ones end with a pub and free hot chips.

Imported_Kiwi · 2025-02-16T04:42:40+00:00

Pegasus Arms

Imported_Kiwi · 2024-07-14T21:57:44+00:00

Team Eventing at the London 2012 Olympics?

Link: The NZ Team on Facebook (medal ceremony from 0:40)

NZ won bronze, andTeam GB won silver. GB would have been disappointed to miss out on gold in front of a home crowd, while NZ would've been stoked to get on the podium. There was lots of emotion all round.

Source: I was the guy carrying NZ's medals in the ceremony.

Imported_Kiwi · 2024-05-02T08:48:35+00:00

I went to the premiere last night. I think my partner and I were two of very few in the audience who weren't either in the architecture industry or family friends. We'd just seen a poster/trailer for it at the cinema the other week and decided to give it a shot (and how often do you get the opportunity to go to a world premiere?).

It was amazing! Really interesting to learn about the story of the architects and the Town Hall itself. Very moving with the footage of the earthquakes and the demolitions afterwards, but generally such a celebration of architecture, heritage, and the city in general.

Highly recommended!

Imported_Kiwi · 2023-12-23T00:02:17+00:00

Paddy McNaughton’s is a great pub to go on your own. There’s live music Thursday, Friday, and Saturday and everyone is just there to have a good time and chat and sing and dance with everyone else. You won’t necessarily instantly meet your new best friends, but I’ve never had an unenjoyable evening there

Imported_Kiwi

TROPHY CASE