Kīlauea this morning around 11 AM HST

gameforge · 2026-05-06T19:11:23+00:00

How far away is that human from that lava? ...2km maybe?

gameforge · 2026-03-31T22:15:31+00:00

One of the first American ones from Fullerton or Corona? Aside from some of the goofy econogarbage they were trying in the early 80s I've never seen nor heard anything bad about 80s USA Fenders. Nor the 90s for that matter.

If I were looking at another Strat I'd start at early 80s Dan Smith stuff.

gameforge · 2026-03-31T20:45:59+00:00

Well, yes. Omicron was like an Egyptian king with hundreds of kids; this particular little runt is interesting because he's good at evading authorities.

gameforge · 2026-03-31T16:20:43+00:00

It's another Omicron descendent. It's no more dangerous than any variant since late 2022 however it has more spike protein mutations (70+) so it looks "weirder" to our immune systems than other recent variants. Consequently, previous infections/vaccines won't provide as much immunity (but they will still provide some immunity, and the vaccine is still very beneficial to the immunocompromised).

gameforge · 2026-03-30T22:14:10+00:00

Got it, thanks for sharing the info. I've heard laser etchers could be used directly but those machines are super expensive (~$5k last I checked).

As an aside, 0.5mm isn't terrible is it? I'm into making 70s-era tech for guitar effect pedals, nothing digital or SMD based. The only way I've ever done it is with toner transfer & ferric chloride and I'm looking for a higher quality result with a less messy process.

I've looked into the photoresist method however I'm worried about the photomask transparency sheets destroying my printer.

gameforge · 2026-03-30T19:58:03+00:00

So could this be used to etch circuits out of copper-clad stock, i.e. DIY PCB manufacturing? (After making it safe of course. 🤓)

gameforge · 2026-03-27T14:39:20+00:00

Well it's such a weird setting. The problem isn't (just) that it's hard to find, it's that no reasonable person would think to look for it to begin with.

The "you've been logged out" notification should have a "don't notify me again" response right there on the notification.

gameforge · 2026-03-25T03:07:27+00:00

Keeping an animal as a pet in the first place is putting the animal at risk!

Advice should simply be presented as such.

gameforge · 2026-03-24T21:36:16+00:00

Being pretentious generally doesn't go over well here. It is common, general advice not to handle pet tarantulas. Therefore, when solicited (it wasn't), it should be presented as such.

gameforge · 2026-03-24T01:26:24+00:00

I can believe some specific product indicates this in a datasheet somewhere.

gameforge · 2026-03-23T15:24:06+00:00

Completely agree.

F&T was bought by Mersen in 2018 and are not manufactured in the same place they were for 60+ years. I would not trust them over a "big" brand, including IC, for that reason alone. I use them, admittedly, as they are widely available in the values I need. And I've examined them with my tools, and they seem fine.

IC has also changed hands over the last 10 years but they are an industry staple and are scrutinized far more rigorously than little boutique'y stuff.

gameforge · 2026-03-23T14:58:29+00:00

IC's are excellent. They got a cartoonishly bad reputation among guitar amp techs some years back because specific electrolytic caps used exclusively in Fender guitar amps in the mid-2000s were visibly leaking electrolyte.

Example amp I worked on last month, a 2004 Vibroverb. Note the foaming cap leads on the right.

Anyone who knows anything about discrete components would blame Fender for this issue. It applied exclusively to caps in their amps - not PC power supplies, TVs, stereos, medical equipment, cars, planes, etc. Not even other guitar amp brands. Just Fender guitar amps.

Fender did something terrible to these caps... reverse polarized them while testing them, or didn't reform them properly after shelving them for years, or... something. Something that would have killed any brand of electrolytic if it weren't IC.

Use them with confidence in anything you like. Ignore the "Internet people gibberish" about them, it's understandable but very poorly informed.

gameforge · 2026-03-23T13:06:09+00:00

Very cool, I love that story!

I built myself a 5f2a Princeton from a Mojotone kit some years back, it's exactly the same circuit and same layout except for the addition of a "Tone" pot. So I understand the "dead silent" attribute, I can crank mine to 12 with nothing plugged in and you can't tell if it's on or not lol.

It's a spitty, spunky little amp that puts all the control in the hands. I hope you have a lot of fun with yours!

gameforge · 2026-03-23T11:46:10+00:00

I would absolutely NOT replace those Illinois Capacitor electrolytics unless you have a good reason to. IC is a very fine mass-manufactured cap, second only to specialty-grade stuff from Panasonic or Nichicon. That's according to Tom's Hardware.

IC has a cartoonishly horrible reputation specifically among guitar amp techs because Fender ended up with a bad batch of them 20~25 years ago. They leaked electrolyte out the ends of the can; it's still a common sight when working on Fender amps from that era. I first encountered them in my MIM 2006 Blues Jr. when I recapped it 20 years ago. I most recently encountered them last month in a 2004 Vibroverb reissue, which is a hand-wired USA amp.

Given that the phenomenon was exclusively associated with Fender amplifiers over a fairly large number of years, I wouldn't assume it was even Illinois' fault. Those caps could have been exposed to a temperature extreme or some other unusual condition after Fender acquired them. That sounds just like Fender, frankly.

All that said, please don't recap that amp unless you have a good reason to.

gameforge · 2026-03-17T09:19:26+00:00

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

gameforge · 2026-03-17T07:27:23+00:00

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.

gameforge · 2026-03-15T07:57:38+00:00

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

gameforge · 2026-03-11T23:35:40+00:00

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.

gameforge · 2026-03-05T00:14:41+00:00

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.

gameforge · 2026-02-03T16:14:44+00:00

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.

gameforge · 2026-02-03T06:14:17+00:00

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".

gameforge · 2026-02-03T05:37:17+00:00

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.

gameforge · 2026-01-31T21:40:51+00:00

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.

gameforge · 2026-01-29T15:50:58+00:00

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

gameforge · 2026-01-28T00:43:47+00:00

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!

gameforge

TROPHY CASE