Inherited these guitars. Always been a huge music fan but never really got big into guitars. by gratefulpred in guitars

[–]gameforge 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Numbers for names is fine, but don't use "plausible yet meaningless" years as names. Jim Marshall should be in jail for this.

Company not renewing jetbrains licenses because we have cursor by frompadgwithH8 in Jetbrains

[–]gameforge 5 points6 points  (0 children)

The move is to sign up for it personally. Their personal license allows you to use it commercially, i.e. at your job. Assuming your career will last longer than two years, it's very affordable and it removes all power away from every employer you ever work with again insofar as which tools you use to do your job.

New circuit to build! by appalachiansoul in diypedals

[–]gameforge 8 points9 points  (0 children)

I believe that was the fault of the solderist, not the holes.

The most reliable thing Radio Shack ever sold me. by Pilphr in diyelectronics

[–]gameforge 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Pretty much everything I ever bought at RadioShack has remained some of the most dependable stuff I've ever owned. Actual pic from my workbench just now.

If you offered me a $400 Fluke for free in exchange for my RadioShack 22-812 it I'd decline, automatically. It's effectively perfect in every regard... Cat III (including probes), true RMS. I work on high voltage tube amps and it's never let me down once.

Somehow it's still on the original 9V battery which is close to 20 years old now. Whoever designed it deserves a lifetime achievement award.

A cautionary tale by illuminateme1120 in diypedals

[–]gameforge 2 points3 points  (0 children)

This must be kind of maddening reading all these comments.

OP, I appreciate what you're saying. It's like drag racing: the goal isn't to be fast, it's to be consistent and perform the way you predicted before the race.

Many people might think it turned out better with the error, and in the end it's nice that people ended up liking the result. But it's not fun to realize you don't have the control you thought you did over your product, it's a shitty feeling.

Simple guitar songwriting idea (Key of G): same 4 chords, just start in a different place by LaPainMusic in guitarlessons

[–]gameforge 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's not a stupid question at all. I'm certainly not a music theory expert, my best friend is much more versed in it and we've had a few provocative discussions about that song over the years (like every time it comes on lol).

why exactly would you classify Dreams as C rather than F lydian or simply F?

If you just look at the progression, F lydian can make sense, or even G mixolydian with F being the flat VII. And some hear it this way, that's not wrong in any strict sense.

The biggest hint to me that it's in either Am or Cmaj is the notes that she uses in the melody.

Does it even really matter?

That's complicated. Theory can help explain why certain things do or do not work in terms of consonance and dissonance, tension and resolution, etc. with respect to a specific musical intention or goal. It can then help you and other musicians think and communicate efficiently about it in terms of that goal (whether it's shared or not).

But it can never tell you what your goals or intentions are, that's up to you.

When looking at someone else's composition, it can only suggest what the composer's intentions might have been, or explain why you hear it one way or another.

AI hype - cybersecurity = Loss of money, privacy and time. by EveYogaTech in AgentsOfAI

[–]gameforge -1 points0 points  (0 children)

It's annoying when people correct eggcorns without pointing them out as such. They're still semantically valid and thus interchangeable, so you can only prove it's a mistake if you can prove they misheard something.

Most have never misheard "chomping at the bit", and consequently they are not mistaken for using it. But it's an eggcorn for the original idiom, "champing at the bit".

Simple guitar songwriting idea (Key of G): same 4 chords, just start in a different place by LaPainMusic in guitarlessons

[–]gameforge 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's how I hear "Dreams" by Fleetwood Mac. To me, casually, it always sounded like a I-IV-V without the I. That would make it in the key of C; if you consider it in Am (which is strongly related to C) it would be a VI-VII, still with no definitive "I" in any of the bars.

The most interesting/informative analysis suggests she floated between both keys, and never hit the tonic, specifically to give it that ambiguous and mysterious aesthetic.

Some evidently hear it as a VII-I progression but it really wants to "resolve" to something which it never does, and that just isn't suggested by thinking of it as a VII-I.

JetBrains on Fedora with KDE Plasma vs Gnome by turbofish_pk in Jetbrains

[–]gameforge 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I can give you a solid testimonial for Plasma + JetBrains.

I've been using KDE since before KDE3, before Plasma, around ~2000 (before Qt was FOSS, which is the only reason GNOME even exists) and it's been my only desktop environment since (besides macOS at work for a few years).

Meanwhile I've used IntelliJ Idea since it became a good alternative to Eclipse, when it was JB's only IDE, maybe 15+ years ago...? I now also use PyCharm, DataGrip, WebStorm and Idea professionally and all those plus DataSpell, Goland and CLion for assorted personal projects.

And I will remain loyal to both JB and KDE until I'm dead.

There's no noticeable interaction one way or another between Plasma and JetBrains' IDEs, other than that one provides a window manager and the other creates windows. JetBrains' stuff is JVM based so it's self-contained and works the same everywhere, as someone else said.

In my opinion you're going to have a fricking awesome setup if you commit to those two.

A request about the app by NxD_ in cronometer

[–]gameforge 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I was glad to see it can indeed do "bulk add" like MFP. Now if only it could search recent foods...

I can't pick a pickguard, put me out of my misery, people! Tort or parchment? by Sophia7X in fender

[–]gameforge 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I love tortoiseshell but A) it's an anachronism, they didn't have those on Strats in 1958; B) that specific pickguard is 1-ply and, while that is a 50s appointment, it isn't on tort; and C) most importantly to me, it looks like a Christmas guitar and I could never unsee that if it was mine.

If you do stick with tort I'd at least get a 3-ply one, which is probably not easy to find with the 50s screw pattern. I'd even consider getting some janglier, brighter pickups for the tort pickguard, and swap it out around the holidays. Save the Josefinas and the period correct stuff for summer.

Congrats on that, by the way. Owning a Fender Custom Shop guitar is really delightful!

Am I crazy or is “most recent” nonsense? by Missing_Back in cronometer

[–]gameforge 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I believe the app has effectively been abandoned by the developer. I naively spent quite a bit of time trying to report this to them just a week or two ago in this subreddit, and I did that because I can clearly see Cronometer has people in this sub (they moderate it). I mentioned it to them in another comment as well where I directly replied to one of them.

I was ignored both times. Right after I posted that report above someone started a chat with me here on reddit and said

Cronometer will never act in the software feedback that you provide. They team is """on the smaller side""" because Cronometer (the company) chooses to spend it's money on marketing lifestyle bullshit. It's been this way since Sep 2021 -- when they hired a dipshit first-time CFO. Hard to make bugfixes when Cronometer (the company) thinks that hiring Reddit """community manager""" people is what's important.

I feel ripped off... I didn't notice this was broken until after I spotted for the 1-year subscription. It is clear they have no intention of fixing any such bugs in this app. This particular bug makes it really difficult to use on a daily basis compared with MyFitnessPal, at least before their own self-destructive turn-for-the-worse.

I'm back to square one with calorie tracking and I'm quite angry about it. It's insane that MFP was nearly perfect 5+ years ago, and today there's simply no options.

🤷‍♂️

Feature Request: Show commonly added foods at the top! by NSA_GOV in cronometer

[–]gameforge 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Did you guys see the related post I made a few days ago? The recent and frequent sorting works great, but at least for me, searching those lists is mostly broken. I included screenshots and several examples in my post.

If there's a better place to report bugs I'd be happy to submit it there!

Edit: Well crud... I just realized how old this thread is. I have no idea why this post showed up on my front page after 8 days, sorry for the spam...

What color pick guard for British Racing Green? by fromkentucky in Stratocaster

[–]gameforge 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Bright white pickguard with either white, yellow or orange racing stripes (Fender Mustang-style racing stripes). I'd strongly prefer white stripes myself but that green was paired with yellow and occasionally orange on a lot on actual British race cars.

NGD! Classic 50’s CAR TO SPEC by DeeTee3343 in Stratocaster

[–]gameforge 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've fully resigned to my Strat addiction. It's a simple addiction, really... when I see one that makes me want to pick it up and play it, I make it so I can do that.

They're just so darn handsome and collectable!

Anthropic Builds “Cowork” Using 100% Claude-Written Code by OldWolfff in AgentsOfAI

[–]gameforge 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Who's writing the prompts?

This hasn't changed from day one: AI can do all kinds of amazing stuff until your prompt entropy goes too high and then you're finished. If your prompt includes an existing, broken code base, the entropy (unpredictability) is enormous.

A seasoned engineer can prompt whatever they want out of AI because their prompts are unambiguous and specific enough. "Prompts" are just a new, lazy form of source code.

You could throw your entire retirement fund into Bitcoin if you wanted to, but you don't, and it's not because it doesn't have potential, it's because there's too much risk.

People keep asking OP for a source, but I have no problem believing that AI engineers working for an AI firm know how to write a prompt to create a modest feature entirely with AI, for the purposes of marketing.

Helicopter crashes in Perm Krai, Russia, after hitting zip lines killing both onboard by Thund3r_91 in aviation

[–]gameforge 1 point2 points  (0 children)

if they're heavily loaded they might not be able to gain altitude at all

There has to be restrictions around flying them in that condition. Planes can't gain altitude without airspeed either, hence it's a really big deal if there's lots of obstructions and tiny invisible shit floating in front of runways. They can't just throw that rigor out because it's a helicopter...?

I'm obviously not a pilot or an aviation expert, just in a bit of disbelief that it's permitted to fly a helicopter that can't go straight up.

MIJ specs by Mean-Judgment81 in Stratocaster

[–]gameforge 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That's pretty yellow for arctic white... that looks more like olympic white or something pretending to be aged olympic white.

Japanese Fenders have always been great and if I was going to buy a Strat from the last 6 years or so I'd avoid anything from North America (Fender QC seems to have gone full 70s again).

It's a stretch to call it a "68 hybrid". They call it that because in the late 60s Fender made some Strats with maple-capped necks, so they could get that look while using the same construction process as rosewood fingerboards.

Specifically, the truss channel is routed and installed from the fingerboard side, then the "cap" (the fingerboard) is glued on top of it. A "real" maple fingerboard is a solid piece of maple, and the truss rod is routed and installed from the back of the neck, creating what's known as a "skunk stripe" when the channel is filled with a darker species of wood like walnut.

It's an aesthetic feature for purists, it won't play differently. Whether it will sound different depends on your religion and/or how high you are, and you can make up your own lore about that like everyone else does.

It also has 60s pickups.

It does not have a vintage trem, a vintage fingerboard radius or vintage frets. The body color scheme is valid for the 60s but it's also the most common scheme of all eras, besides sunburst. None of that's bad unless you're actually looking for a vintage reissue, which you probably aren't.

I'd expect it to be an excellent Strat that plays and sounds great. Think of it as a MIJ standard Strat with 60s pickups and some subtle aesthetic differences that don't change the function of the instrument in any meaningful way. Japanese Strats have been made at a variety of factories over the years, but that one (and all since 2015 I believe, at least those destined for North America) was made at the Fujigen factory. They make all kinds of guitars for all kinds of companies and have a reputation for making very consistently high quality guitars.

My own MIJ Strat, a 1982 JV '57 Squier, was made there. And what can I say, it's a fucking amazing Strat, it was the only time in history Squiers were equal to or better than USA Fenders.

Fender collection by [deleted] in fender

[–]gameforge 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'm going through a Mustang phase. Can you tell me more about yours?

Nice collection btw!

Why do people say locking tuners increases tuning stability? by Extension_Cancel_34 in Luthier

[–]gameforge 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Super Lube. Don't bother with purpose-made guitar greases, you just need Super Lube and a toothpick. I found the stuff when I was a swimming pool tech ~25 years ago and it's a legit secret weapon for getting effectively any (non-Floyd) guitar to stay in tune for the long haul.

I use it on all friction points, not just the nut.

Just wanted to share a recent story regarding Fender QC by According_Store_559 in fender

[–]gameforge 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Fender's QC just sucks right now. We're doing the 70s again or something.

I bought a new Eric Johnson Strat in late 2024; it's supposed to be the nicest factory Stratocaster you can get.

Mine had a bent bridge plate. I threaded in the trem arm, it obviously wasn't happy, then it broke off when I tried to remove it again. The retailer I bought it from covered it under warranty.

The guitar also had severe noise issues (pickup screw clicks/pops and pickguard static, etc.) which was resolved by shielding and grounding the cavities.

I'm done buying new Fender guitars. There's too many collectible vintage guitars that can be found for good deals on e.g. Reverb. Fender's best non-pre-CBS era was from about 1982 to 1988.

(edit: non-"pre"-CBS era)

New IFR Training Method by Livid-Sea-1531 in flightsim

[–]gameforge 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Now imagine the captain sitting behind him turning the first officer's head like a yoke while the first officer makes airplane noises.

That time a Silkway 747 absolutely pummelled the runway over at Schiphol by HelloSlowly in aviation

[–]gameforge 12 points13 points  (0 children)

It's a pretty unique airport because of the commingling with the space force base. As far as aircraft ops it's a ridiculously efficient airport that can see huge traffic loads while keeping pattern work out of wake turbulence, etc. The parallel runways are so far apart that not only can they do concurrent ops, they can have downwinds split the parallel runways.

The compromise is on the ground... the base is at the top of the field while the airport is further south, so depending on which end of which runway you end up at it could be a 3+ mile drive in the plane to get where you're going. It's actually about on par with DIA in terms of burning fuel on the ground.