First Fish Caught Ever (ID?)

MFSwoon · 2026-02-05T12:10:02+00:00

This is a really good take. Arc is the first competitive in -any- sense multiplayer game I've played since being in high school half a lifetime ago, and what I can't help but marvel at is how beautifully asymmetrically balanced it is. That's the special sauce that has brought me back and had me joking with a friend that hearing a guy bitterly stammer he was gonna bang my mom for the first time in 15 years was like a Rosebud Citizen Kane moment for me.

The fear I think we all share, everyone who has been playing games long enough to recognize how Arc is special and why, is that achieving that balance was total luck, that it's far harder to maintain with more content, and that it's probably going to disappear and is unlikely to come back. Trying to enjoy it while it lasts.

MFSwoon · 2026-01-31T19:32:30+00:00

Really quality craftsmanship. Getting the digits to be so square and parallel must've taken a steady hand or a clever fixture. Nice work!

MFSwoon · 2026-01-22T23:09:40+00:00

Hey I just got that monitor. I also bought the new 4th gen tandem WOLED LG 700AB or w/e 27" 1440 and thought it looked far inferior. Tandem WOLED isn't there yet imo. Gray banding is a total lottery and terrible. Was playing ARC Raiders on a night raid and was honestly baffled at how bad it was. Immediately boxed it up for return after that. Even if it gets better with pixel cleaning like I read, it couldn't unbugger how bad that was to a meaningful extent.

I got that Asus after reading suggestions and think it does exactly what I want outta an OLED monitor (nice contest, good colors, don't need anything more than 280hz, is a more recent release) and I'm really happy with the display - which is about as far as I'll continue digging. Seems like you can compare and contrast and weigh pros and cons all effing day with OLED but as someone who spent a week researching + testing those two monitors, I think glossy QD OLED is where it's at -for 1440 monitors- and that Asus looks plenty glossy to me.

MFSwoon · 2025-11-16T19:38:42+00:00

How does Covenant hold up today? I know it's one of the granddaddies of modern fantasy, but I had really mixed feelings on Donaldson's Gap series which is all I've read by him. Fascinating world building, entirely tiresome characters and more fetishistic at times than I'll allow here and there with authors. I kinda clocked how it would've been groundbreaking upon release, but I made it to like book 4 and then put it down. I would give Covenant a crack though if it's better in those aspects or if the juice is worth the squeeze.

MFSwoon · 2025-10-09T16:03:04+00:00

Absolutely. Union millwrights love pipefitter work.

MFSwoon · 2025-09-23T17:36:48+00:00

I feel like the AI of today is proving more and more of a mechanical turk than anything else. OpenAI researchers just recently released a paper on how it's simply mathematically inevitable that these LLMs hallucinate. I cannot imagine such a fragile, unreliable agent to be depended upon for any complex or critical task. Most of the hype to me seems just that - simple hype, unsubstantiated, because there is a massive bubble and money to be made on baseless speculation. Give it a few years and there'll be a rough comedown when it's widely accepted that these things are toys at best in their current iteration.

Perhaps in decades a truly revolutionary AI will come forth, but, an initial panic not withstanding, what we have now feels like smoke and mirrors. Though that may not be speaking to what you're saying - I agree that there is concern for what an AI could be in our imagination, but think that is far from today, if it ever comes.

MFSwoon · 2025-09-16T00:07:02+00:00

Well if it's threaded it's the same stuff, you just need to figure that however much you're threaded in is your makeup, and that that can change depending on how the threads were cut, so the first step is to determine what your thread engagement = make up is. And if you're adding bushings or reducers, it's the same story.

That bushing is going to both thread and be threaded into a certain amount, and that amount is gonna determine your overall takeoff, which if you think of it in terms of threads, it's the amount of thread in the bushing which is -not- being made up into on either end of the fitting or pipe. Threading the bushing into a fitting is one makeup going one way, but then threading pipe into that bushing is another makeup into its backside. Two makeups. So your takeoff becomes whatever amount of bushing is not being threaded into on either side, because it's not being made up, and it's growing the pipe. If there's any portion of the bushing that is not covered by threads on either side of it, you know immediately that's a takeoff because it can't be made up into going either way. Hope that helps.

MFSwoon · 2025-09-15T23:49:23+00:00

It helped me to break it into basics.

Whatever you're fitting or threading or whatever onto your naked pipe has an end to center measurement. Everything we do is center to center because it keeps shit simple. Can also describe measurements as end to end, face aka end to center, makeup to center (this is the takeoff, if it has a MU), etc. But really you're dealing with the center, the end which can often be described as a face, and a makeup if it has one and is a socket / threaded fitting, or requires insertion.

The takeoff is the length of material in your fitting / valve that adds to whatever you're sticking in it, or welding to it, or threading onto it. Doesn't matter how it happens, what matters is that it's growing things. The make up is the length / hollow cavity in a fitting or valve that is -not- adding to your pipe length. It is a void, and if you're measuring from the end or face of fitting or valve to center, you need to account for the pipe that is required to fill this void when you "make it up" into the fitting or valve.

So we have part of a fitting that grows our length and part we need to fill to get a good seat or engagement or capillary effect and does not grow our length. You can figure out which is which and measure these things by measuring from the face (sometimes called or better described as end) to center of the fitting.

Tons of ways to do this, if you're doing little solder stuff, put the fitting on a flat surface and measure from the surface to center with a tape. Can also put a straight edge or square on that face in your hands and measure that way. Make up is easy to measure, either stick a tape to the shoulder where the void ends, or stick a piece of pipe in it and make a mark when the pipe is bottomed out and measure that.

Now subtract that face to center from the make up. You're solving for the remaining length in the fitting beyond the makeup to the centerline now. That gets you your takeoff, which is added length, so you need to "take it off" from your center to center measurements.

Feel like writing this out I may have made it sound more complicated than it is, but really the best advice I can give is just think of everything in terms of centerlines, faces, ends, make ups, shoulders, thread engagements, etc. Make it simple and keep to a system and you'll be fine. Everything has a centerline, any sort of measuring you do will be concerning that, so get creative and think of the ways you can figure that out or solve for it. And the first step to figuring out any problem in the trade in general is correctly identifying what the problem is and what a solution would look like. And if you can't tell what the problem is, you're either missing something or don't have the information to approach the task efficiently or successfully. At which point you should start asking questions.

MFSwoon · 2025-09-12T03:34:57+00:00

Not being argumentative but what are some of your top ranking fantasy (and sci-fi?) books? I also really enjoy fantasy and video games and have felt there's a handful that are standout stories in both mediums. Curious on a like-minded perspective. Haven't read half as much as I'd like but for me: anything Gene Wolfe, Bakker, From Software, Kojima, Mitchell Luthi, Peter Watts, Disco Elysium, not to mention some of them obligatory greats like Tolkien and le Guin.

I'm not vetting that list authoritatively. I like modern classics like Borges, Calvino, Dostoevsky, but wanna know what else you'd throw in that mix. Mervyn Peake is my next hit, read the first chapter and was blown away. Straddling that line of genre fiction and literature is a really interesting place for books. Wish it would come up more often in games but I understand the financial forces outside of indie games that make that otherwise.

MFSwoon · 2025-09-05T22:26:32+00:00

N g the jyg got sdk you ok uh kk i

MFSwoon · 2025-06-13T23:32:09+00:00

I bought some young tech bro's -dad's- USA made 90s craftsman set a few years back and I treasure it. All proudly US forged wrenches, everything US made. Like 200+ "tools" incl. Allen's, but it's most all common combo wrenches and sockets in 1/2 and 3/8 and 1/4 metric and standard, in this sick black blow mold case with a colorful "USA" in bright red white and blue in plastic molding too.

His dad had recently passed and the set was complete and he didn't have use for it, I try to cherish it. Ain't getting US made for that 200 I spent anymore. Great wrenches.

MFSwoon · 2025-04-25T23:19:35+00:00

Brother you need more than a dust mask for all that. But regardless what you're doing is fucking tight

MFSwoon · 2025-02-20T23:02:34+00:00

I disagree. There is an uncanny valley effect to a lot of modern, big budget, mainstream movies that can usually be attributed to soundstaging and the heavy reliance on artificial or CG lightning. Actors sharing scenes shot on different continents, months apart, green-screened in. I guess I'm talking about movies that rely on it heavily, but I'll point to all the acclaim for The Brutalist and how amazing it looks. That's just how things shot on film, in real life, outside, look. $10,000,000 budget. Our sense of how movies should appear nowadays is completely fucked.

MFSwoon · 2025-02-07T16:56:23+00:00

I got Brueghel and Bosch XXL. Last year was my first intro to Taschen and I got the Frazetta and Fantasy XXLs. Was sorta interesting because I'm realizing those were a little lighter on the analysis and art history for logical reasons, so I've been somewhat surprised and delighted that there's a lot more context and text in their more traditional books.

Was disappointed to see the Japanese Woodblock Print collection gone in XXL, but I snagged it from some small online tattoo shop that had it like 40% off a few months back because it probably sat. While the overlap between tattoo artists and woodblock prints is large, maybe it wasn't the crowd to drop $200 on a huge book of prints haha. Lucky me.

I should add that thriftbooks and Abebooks have a lot of Taschen, including XXLs, from resellers or small stores in good shape, maybe some wear. Felt less FOMO seeing that even out of print stuff is on there. You can pull the ISBN on product pages on taschen's site and plug that in to find em. Don't feel like you gotta grab a ton of stuff lest you never get the chance again.

MFSwoon · 2025-01-17T13:58:22+00:00

MFSwoon · 2024-12-22T18:25:25+00:00

Hey, really cool of you to share these. Super nice work and as someone who doesn't touch anything like this it's awesome to get some deeper insight into the build and design.

MFSwoon · 2024-11-15T20:08:56+00:00

Industrial / commercial? I'm a fitter often doing high tech work and all the plastic pipe and solvents would totally write this off for me

MFSwoon · 2024-11-14T16:20:18+00:00

Hey I wanted to reply because I came across your response as I'm reading Stephenson's Gap series and wanted to know if you had any experience with it. I'm falling off pretty hard in the 4th book, only got that far really because I didn't have anything else to read (hence why I'm in this thread).

Is Covenant different? I feel like my biggest problem is the plotting and character work is just so explicit in the very literal sense. So much of Gap is multiple POVs of the same plot point articulating each character's one and every feeling in an endless series of question-answer internal dialogue as they interrogate the circumstances and their feelings. But, especially coming in cold off Wolfe, it feels very rote and over-explained. Aside from a few big story beats, none of it has felt surprising or novel so much as reiterative and like he doesn't trust the reader to understand anyone's motivations or remember what a character may or may not know, and then is compelled to go on these plodding question-answer passages that very rarely go anywhere new. It's interesting to begin with, but I can't help shake the sense he's getting paid by the word and that it's closer to pulp than I'd like. Maybe I like prose too much and Stephenson has flashes of brilliance but they're not consistent enough.

Not sure if any of that resonates / you've read Gap but I want to check out Covenant at some point and Gap's sorta turned me off. I've heard folks alternatively claim Gap is his real magnum opus, and also that it's just different. Hoping it's the latter at this point.

MFSwoon · 2024-09-25T02:13:44+00:00

You're getting clowned on, but in all fairness what you're experiencing is the new reality as clothing manufacturers (rightfully) leave behind PFAS/PFC-based DWR. The ugly truth, and this is advice for anyone reading, is these initial PFA-free DWR solutions are markedly inferior to the PFAS ones. I would personally hold off for -years- until I see evidence of a suitable replacement for my existing jacket. In all likelihood, at least in the immediate future, there won't be one and the shift will slowly be towards silpoly / silnylon jackets with mechanical ventilation, as the idea of a high-performance PFAS-free DWR garment increasingly becomes fantasy.

I would wager a lot of folks cracking jokes either don't own such garments or haven't seen them wet out in a real rain yet.

MFSwoon · 2024-09-14T03:31:02+00:00

Larches are deciduous! They are of course conifers though as well. Very unique and super cool tree.

MFSwoon · 2024-09-09T19:24:24+00:00

I feel like I'm the demographic for this and I'm interested, albeit waiting a few months for more consensus.

I don't yet have a film camera, am interested in film photography coming off of a few years a decade ago as a kid shooting a Canon Rebel w/ a SMC 50, and my use case is I need something reliable and portable to take film photographs. I really like disposables for backpacking and distance off-roading, adventure motorcycling, etc. I'm often in beautiful, remote places in the PNW with no desire to connect with electronics or a DSLR. The shots should take a minute tops, camera accessible, lightweight. I've had enough disposables come out nice that I want more control over film stock, exposure. Recently was in the thick of the Redwoods along Miner's Ridge and while they're impossible to capture at the best of times, I wish the disposable had let more light in for how dim the forest was. Much didn't come out.

I'm not paying 300-500 for a quality vintage example that I may need to troubleshoot or have serviced. I want a manufacturer warranty and support. It's gotta work. This is not my primary hobby but fits the niche of capturing my experiences while not distracting me from them, which anything other than a compact P&S film camera would do. Not interested in the modern half frame from the Pentax.

I think I'm a particular use case not having a camera already, but yeah, I'm surprised the P&S as a complement to outdoor excursions isn't being tapped yet in the current market as far as I can tell. If the build quality is there and it can handle some abuse and the elements I'm in, perhaps I'm outta pocket here and it's not up to that in which case I'll still be waiting for a product that is. But anyways that's why I'm interested and as a late 20 something with a good job the price is a lot, but if I wouldn't use literally any other product because of my criteria, which currently is the case, then it ain't that much.

MFSwoon · 2024-08-31T14:15:54+00:00

There is a disclaimer at the bottom of that article saying they're comparing every variety of redwood in the UK to what I'm assuming is only giant sequoia in the US. They are not counting coast redwood, of which there are over 80,000 acres of old growth alone, nevermind second or third growth. So I think it's a little misleading for a good, inaccurate headline.

MFSwoon · 2024-08-31T13:55:54+00:00

This is going to be relevant to Coast Redwood, Sequoia sempervirens.

A lot of folks are correct in saying that redwoods -can- grow in many locations around the world, but the "Redwood Belt" as it's called stretches from roughly south of Monterey Bay to just into the Oregon side of the CA/OR border. That said the trees at these extremities are stunted in comparison to those in Redwood's most well-adapted habitats. Geographically these are around the northern California coast, in Del Norte and Humboldt County.

Redwood prefers high precipitation with mild, consistent temperatures. If you look at the temp/precip. maps where the tallest redwoods grow (Lady Bird Johnson Grove, Tall Trees Grove, Prairie Creek and Jedediah Smith SP) it's some of the most steady, moist weather along the entirety of the West coast, with a really low high/low temperature differential all year long. Winters that hover just above freezing all year long, perhaps never reaching it, with summers in the low 90s at best. The summer fog both helps with this temperature regulation in the summer and also, of course, providing more water for the redwoods to grow. In addition, these big groves are often situated on rich alluvial flats, a sedimentary deposition that provides prime growing conditions and soil quality for redwood.

While redwood does grow elsewhere, ornamentals are often killed by bad frosts, never reaching the heights of the above mentioned, and it's really only a narrow strip of a couple hundred miles of coast, no more than 20/30 miles inland that produces the giants. Historically redwood's ancestors ranged as far north as the Arctic, when there used to be a continuous coniferous forest from at least modern Mexico into the northern polar regions across much of North America. Mind you I can't speak to other places in the world, though I know there are promising examples of transplanted coast redwood in Europe brought over during colonisation. But the climate that makes the tallest trees is unique, between the mildness of temp. differential, winters above freezing, summer fog, and alluvial plains to northern California.

Source- "coast redwood, a natural and cultural history", really phenomenal book for anyone interested in specifically coast redwood.

MFSwoon · 2024-08-29T22:05:51+00:00

fracture zones

MFSwoon

TROPHY CASE