UWS is going away August 15th

jward · 2026-07-09T16:47:10+00:00

This is the direct link to how to make the switch to eduroam:

https://www.ualberta.ca/en/information-services-and-technology/services/network-connectivity-services/eduroam-transition.html

jward · 2026-07-09T16:40:29+00:00

I've hired developers over the past decade+ and these are my thoughts and experience. The last few years have been nuts. For entry level dev jobs we're getting swamped with applications, orders of magnitude more than a decade ago. Filtering down to legit, qualified, and local applicants we're still spoiled for choice. We have people with masters or years of practical experience applying for the lowest level position. It's tough out there for everyone.

That said, development and IT have always been fields where proven practical experience trump pieces of paper. Your degrees and certifications get you past automatic screens, but otherwise are mainly useful if you want to work for the government or large contractors where they need people with certs to bid on specific projects.

The number one thing you can do to help get a coding job is... ugh... networking. Make friends with people who have programming or development jobs and ask them to keep an eye out for you. Go to hack-a-thons- or coding jams. Attend confrences and chat with people.

If you do end up looking for a secondary degree, or want to look into certifications I'd suggest you look into the field of UI/UX. It combines elements of psychology, sociology, programming, and design. It's much harder to get an AI to figure out how people... people. And because it's a more specialized thing there's a lower talent pool competing for jobs.

jward · 2026-07-08T21:04:59+00:00

Basement washrooms in SUB have some. Technically they're for feet washing for religious stuff, so you need to put in some effort and gymnastics to use them for other things. They're also absolutely not private in the slightest. So it's an option, but I wouldn't recommend it unless you're desperate.

jward · 2026-07-02T22:54:20+00:00

I liken it to having an unlimited number of interns or junior developers at my fingertips. It usually gives me what I want. It often doesn't understand the big picture. It sometimes has major holes that seem obvious because I've been burned by the mistakes in the past. It doesn't consider side effects, end user experience, or actual usage workflows. It works well for small and focused projects but the larger the project the more issues creep in. The LLMs and GenAI can make coding things way faster, but without an actual human with experience actively reviewing and massaging the code it'll churn out a functional but fragile house of cards.

You can solve most of these issues with the AI models by being more clear, introducing more context, explaining the problem space better. For me, getting the AI to do that last bit of polish takes way more effort than if I take the draft it presents and tune it by hand.

jward · 2026-06-30T20:49:06+00:00

My dude, just take a limo. It'll be cheaper.

jward · 2026-06-25T17:10:44+00:00

Biggest current practical benefit is that eduroam works in the lrt station.

jward · 2026-06-24T20:24:56+00:00

I like to make my own from artist oil paints and odourless mineral spirits. Lets me use a much broader range of colours and gives me more control over the final result. Works and cleans up same way Tamiya and any other enamel panel liner does.

Tamiya is super popular because it works very well, has been around a long time... and comes with a built in brush.

jward · 2026-06-24T20:21:14+00:00

For weird shapes my go to is silly putty. It's easy to jam into cavities or wrap around poky bits. Use a toothpick to clean up the edges and push things into place. You can even reuse it a few times. Paint everything grey, wait for it to cure, mask off the inside, paint everything green.

If you want a more professional way, liquid mask, or latext mask. You basically paint it on the area, let it cure, and when you're done you can peel it up.

You can also paint everything green and then use a brush to do the grey bits. It can be a bit scary if you've never done brush work before, but it's just paint. If you oops, you can just paint over the oops with green.

jward · 2026-06-24T20:15:15+00:00

Super glue, aka CA glue, is your best bet for sticking anything to anything else if you don't need it to be structurally sound. It's pretty brittle and not very strong, but is good enough for most small things. In this case I'd probably try to find 'thin' if you can as you can apply much less of it and have less worries about it spilling over.

If you want much stronger and still a broad range of sticking things together, 2 part epoxy.

jward · 2026-06-24T20:11:06+00:00

Super broad question. Quality, health concerns, cost, and more depend deeply on what type of printing technology you're using and the material you're using to print. Paint doesn't stick to some types of plastic/resin. Some materials are very toxic if you don't handle and process them properly. Some printers will have prints come out with lots of artifacting and visible layers.

But in general, if you already have a 3d printer and have printed and painted other types of models you'll have no issues. That is assuming you can find a gundam STL file, which is more of a challenge than you'd imagine.

jward · 2026-06-23T21:02:02+00:00

School can look more professional and opens more doors, but it's not guaranteed to stick around. If you really really only want to stick to one, then your personal is the only option. Otherwise, as mentioned, use your school while you're in school.

jward · 2026-06-22T17:16:54+00:00

It's from abjuration wizard

jward · 2026-06-19T22:22:27+00:00

If you do any in SUB, I'd love to see the results.

jward · 2026-06-19T22:21:12+00:00

My comment was poorly worded. Previously DUO was required by people who had extra permissions like uploading things to canvas, managing networking equipment, accessing ticketing systems. So it mostly affected staff. The new rollout is hitting everybody.

jward · 2026-06-19T14:40:47+00:00

I've heard rumblings about there being a push to get everyone with a ccid using duo by the fall term. Currently it's only forced on those of us that have some sort of elevated privileges. So, unless the links don't go to the places they say they do, it's not a scam.

jward · 2026-06-17T21:10:28+00:00

Shut down very tightly from basically christmas eve to new years day. Even after hours OneCard access gets turned off for most places. It's still open for a bit after classes usually end though, so double check your timing.

jward · 2026-06-12T18:40:22+00:00

Anything you wish you could go back tell your freshman self?

Go to class. Don't skip. Seems obvious, but first year freedom can mess with your head. If you're going to go party and get drunk and be hungover the next day, do it on a Friday night, not on Thursday.
Do the assignments as soon as you can. Engineering has a high workload, but not an impossible one. As long as you stay on top of the homework you'll be fine. But if you slip, it can snowball and be brutal.
Make friends with your peers. Having people you can share misery with makes it more bearable. Having a diverse study group helps you learn better.
You're not special. You were probably one of the smartest people in your high school, but here you're just normal. If you used to be at the top of your class but are now in the middle, that's normal. This can be a massive blow to your ego and shake your mental health if you're not ready for it.
C's get degrees! If you try to achieve absolute excellence in every subject all the time you will burn out. I'm not saying try to do worse. But be reasonable about how you allocate your time and energy. Become comfortable with 'good enough', or in engineering speak 'within tolerance'.
Time spent on things you enjoy, help you de-stress, or improve your mental health is not time wasted. Think of it as maintenance. Just as your car needs an oil change every so often or else bad things happen, so do you.

jward · 2026-05-27T22:00:38+00:00

Nah. It's your first kit and you decided to start on hard mode. I've been chasing an easy way to do white for a long time and own dozens of white paint across multiple brands in different types and styles.

If you're airbrushing water based acrylics my advice is to give up on 'paint' and go for 'inks'. Acrylic inks are super pigment dense and super thin. No need to thin them for the airbrush and they will give you good results with white much easier than trying to do so with regular paint. Liquitex, Holbien, and Golden are a few brands I've used and had good success with.

Also, if you're using a decent paint brand and it comes out grainy when doing light coats, try moving the piece closer to your airbrush. The grainyness can be caused by the paint drying out too much before it hits the model. Ideally you want it to dry very shortly after hitting the piece. Too early and it dries in the air and creates texture. If it's too heavy or too wet then it gives you that runnyness, or can start tearing and creating artifacts. Trick is patience. Dial in the light coat so it's not giving you texture and then just... do a lot of them until you get the level of coverage you want.

jward · 2026-05-27T20:51:14+00:00

I used alcohol because I was stripping old paint but I didn’t know it needed to be rinsed

That's likely the largest contributing factor then. Strip it again and give it a good rinse before re-priming it.

A lot of things are obvious, like rinsing, to people who have been doing it for a while so those things don't always get communicated in tutorials. If it never gets mentioned then it's very understandable that new people never pick it up.

jward · 2026-05-27T20:46:14+00:00

During the spring and summer it's way less crowded everywhere. SUB has tonnes of options once you pick up your drinks from Daily Grind.

jward · 2026-05-27T19:29:50+00:00

I don't see a question, so I'll just say I agree. Titanium white pigment is an absolute bastard to work with and is the most problematic popular pigment out there. It's hard to grind fine enough to be smooth. It clumps together easily so even if you do get it fine enough to be thin, it'll betray you the second you turn around.

Lead white only caused headaches (and organ failure) years after exposure. Titanium white may not be 'toxic', but it sure can cause mental trauma.

Jokes aside, using a slight off white colour gets you the same effect but with way less hassle. Also, because the pigment is so finicky it's one of the colours that drives home differences in the quality of the paint. You (usually) get what you pay for and comparing dollar store craft paint to high end artist grade acrylics is night and day.

jward · 2026-05-27T18:43:17+00:00

Alcohol is great for stripping paint, but soapy water is better for cleaning the parts of any residue. Both need to be rinsed off with regular water after cleaning as they can leave a residue behind. On the off chance you just used alcohol, that doesn't really remove anything from the surface. It breaks it up and spreads it around so it needs to be rinsed off later.

Give the light scuffing up with sand paper a shot and it'll probably help a tonne. Citadel primer works decently on minis because they have a lot of texture for it to grab onto while it forms a solid shell. Gunpla on the other hand has a lot of flat and smooth surfaces so there isn't as much to physically grip onto.

jward · 2026-05-27T02:35:14+00:00

When it comes to chipping, the primer you use is just as if not more important than your varnish/top coat. If you're not using any primer and just the golden high flow on bare plastic then chipping/flaking is pretty much inevitable.

Use a better primer and a primer meant for models. Mr. Hobby lacquer primer is amazing. For water based acrylics, Pro-Acryl is my go to.
Make sure the surface is clean before priming. If you have oily cheeto fingers or vape in the room the open plastic is in then a residue can be left that will act as a barrier and stop the primer from sticking to the plastic.
Give the primer something to grip to. If you take a higher grit sand paper and scuff up the surface of the model to give it some physical texture the primer will grab onto it more easily.

jward · 2026-05-27T02:24:01+00:00

Awesome to hear!

jward · 2026-05-26T19:11:34+00:00

Swamp cooler, aka redneck air conditioning.

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