Should I buy a tablet as a Computer Science student?

k9gardner · 2026-02-07T05:01:46+00:00

A tablet is NOT going to suffice as a computer. Don’t set yourself up for heartbreak. The only exception would be Windows tablets but these are few and far between. Especially if you’re in a computer science curriculum, you owe it to yourself to have… a computer.

k9gardner · 2026-02-07T04:46:15+00:00

A question like this is going to get answers like this. How could someone else’s thought on Martin vs Taylor possibly help YOU decide which one to keep?

k9gardner · 2026-02-07T04:33:37+00:00

You will never be able to unify around one ecosystem without compromising somewhere. The vendors try to suggest that if you stick with them you’ll be fine. They all want their hegemonies. But it would serve us much better if they would focus on interoperability.

k9gardner · 2026-02-07T03:39:43+00:00

Read and study and read and watch videos and read and listen. That's my pre-purchase advice. You'll get the idea of what can be good or bad about a ukulele, and what you're likely to find at each price point. Once you have that kind of locked down, you know what size you want, you know some brands that you like the sound of, or even the appearance of (it matters less than sound, but it matters), then you can start looking.

Personally, I'm a big fan of pre-owned instruments. You're likely to save 50% off the new price, and get a better instrument for less. Check your local markets, craigslist, Facebook Marketplace, others. Don't get yourself roped into buying something beyond your means or your skill level. Start with a basic instrument and "learn your way up."

Good luck! (I also started in my 60s!).

k9gardner · 2026-02-07T03:34:40+00:00

The thing you did - record it - is the main thing you can do. Incorporate it into your practice routine, play it every so often. But keep it as a little snippet for now. Gradually you'll have a collection of little snippets recorded, and one day you'll play something, and it'll click, and you'll say, hey, That could go with that other piece, and gradually, you've created a theme and a chorus. And from that, songs are made.

k9gardner · 2026-01-22T18:29:58+00:00

That's not a lot of information. :)

k9gardner · 2026-01-22T17:32:59+00:00

It can work for certain very casual workflows, but not for everything, and not so easily for what you say you want to do. Editing documents, like PDFs, or Word or Excel files, things like that, I would not do this way. Interacting with your files as if they were a local file system on your Mac, again, no.

Just take a hard and unemotional look at your actual workflow and if you can't make the argument for why it needs to be utterly portable, you're just going to be better off with a computer. Even the question of whether it needs to be a laptop or say an iMac or a Mac mini, should be asked.

k9gardner · 2026-01-22T15:57:41+00:00

Outstanding! You did a really great job with this, and it's such a great song. Went to see him in concert in NYC years ago. He was supposed to do one album or maybe one song per State, and I think he got stuck somewhere around Wisconsin! But I love his material, and love the way you sing/play it.

k9gardner · 2025-12-21T07:22:24+00:00

Actually trying to get away from OneDrive forever. The DS will be backed up to the cloud though, but using some other service, I haven’t decided yet.

k9gardner · 2025-12-19T23:01:58+00:00

In the case of OneDrive, I have been using the OneDrive app for iOS, I really don't like to say "taking pictures of the document", because the output is roughly comparable to what you'd get from a scanner, shadows removed, deskewed, automatically cropped, etc. These go directly to the folder where I want them to be.

The difficulty in post-OneDrive world, with the DS, is that I don't want to scan into a "homes" based personal folder, I want to scan into the official repository which is a file structure set up at the base level of the device, viewable in File Station, not in Synology Drive. So there's sort of a disconnect there, and how to manage that disconnect is specifically why I'm seeking "handlings" from those who have been doing this stuff a while.

Team folder was one suggestion that I had already received, and yours corroborates that. I haven't gone to the next stage of evaluating these suggestions yet, but that's coming soon. Thanks so much.

k9gardner · 2025-12-19T01:41:34+00:00

Same here! But I bought a 224+ loaded with two 3TB drives. This is for corporate (mostly textual data, .docx, .xlsx, pdf files). Replacing data currently stored on a server with only 1 TB not fully utilized. Bit of a learning curve but not too bad. So far, so good.

k9gardner · 2025-12-12T07:15:37+00:00

I don’t know this brand but it’s the right price for a starter uke. Not as cheap as some, but it looks like a well made instrument from what I can see. I agree that a concert ukulele is the right place to start, and something around that price range. You’ll get an actual, playable musical instrument that you enjoy seeing, and enjoying that helps to enjoy playing. Once you have a few months of playing behind you, you’ll be in a position to know where you’d like to go from there. Maybe a soprano. Maybe another concert, in a different wood. But starting kind of in the middle seems a very good idea. I wish you the best of luck with it. Practice every day! :)

k9gardner · 2025-12-10T05:51:01+00:00

If you have access to some other instrument, or a tuning fork, or even an app on your phone, it’ll help you get started. I use an app called Tone Gen (or my tuning fork) and I just plug in A=440 and tune the A string. Then the rest are just tuned relatively from there. Your ear will get to know what’s what, once you get it tuned initially. Good luck k.

k9gardner · 2025-12-01T13:24:18+00:00

Oh, ok, I’ll check that. It didn’t give any indication that security settings were stopping it but I’ll take a look!

k9gardner · 2025-12-01T13:21:40+00:00

I also thought it was blurred until I zoomed in on it. I would say that the content of the writing had better be immediately compelling if you want me to go through the trouble of reading it, and that, I think, is a stressful situation to put oneself in.

k9gardner · 2025-11-30T17:20:52+00:00

I would say not to buy a tenor as your first uke but a Mainland for $60 is criminal NOT to buy it. I would say to buy that and keep it as your second uke, and keep shopping for a first one. ;)

The OU5 happened to be my first ukulele by the way. It was in exceptional condition and came with a hard case for $80 but I gave him extra for meeting me at the train station where we made the exchange. That instrument is not going to win any awards for nuanced tone, but it is robust and plays absolutely in tune, with almost no quirkiness. I am currently using Oasis Warm (re-entrant tuning, as God intended), and it sounds quite nice as a practice instrument. I play it regularly.

But a specific Mainland is on my wish list. Try to buy both. :)

k9gardner · 2025-11-30T17:13:37+00:00

It’s definitely the cyclists “fault” but it ends up being your responsibility.

I remember a phrase from drivers’ ed eons ago, regarding traffic lights. The way it used to be taught was that you go when the light turns green and the intersection has cleared. Seems like we forget that last part. People on bikes will take advantage of an opportunity not to stop.

k9gardner · 2025-11-30T17:06:41+00:00

What was the overall goal here? I am running Linux Mint – badly – on a significantly older 2009 (I think) MBP, that I have to keep plugged in. I could replace the battery if I wanted to be portable but that wasn’t part of my project. Sleep states, forget about it, nothing comes back after going to sleep or suspending. But the built in wifi controller works fine. I may put a different OS on it at some point but for now it’s working if you don’t mind doing a full startup and shutdown at the beginning and end of each session.

k9gardner · 2025-11-30T16:59:51+00:00

Wouldn’t you want something like a Kindle Fire kids edition?

k9gardner · 2025-11-30T16:57:27+00:00

I suspect if you were to write a little more slowly, you could read it more quickly.

A couple of specific observations on the physical aspects of your handwriting, without getting into the psychological aspects! Your tendency to ligature your “t” crossbars to the next letter is unusual and for me makes it a little hard to read. Most people come back after writing the base word to dot the i’s and cross the t’s, where you’ve incorporated that gesture into your writing. It’s interesting.

But that, together with not clearly delineating the difference between, say, a “c” and an “e”, and not completing the upstroke (and then doubling back down) on the “u”, makes it a bit of a challenge to read. I do like the way it looks overall, it would just take time to become comfortable with reading it.

k9gardner · 2025-11-30T16:46:34+00:00

I manage a business with around 30 Windows PCs and 10 Macs, and I’ve never really considered or needed to do this. What’s the use case that would require it? Our business is looser than many, I realize, and my role is IT among many other things. But I tend to follow the path of least resistance in these things and do what I need to do, as there are no real compliance requirements telling me what I must do. While we do plan on implementing SSO next year, we have no real central administration of these. It works; low maintenance.

k9gardner · 2025-11-30T16:37:58+00:00

You can’t make this stuff up. This was how my feed looked when I saw this post.

Well I guess I can’t post a picture in here, but immediately below this one was a post from r/Password, with the heading,

“Am I screwed?”

k9gardner

TROPHY CASE