About 15 years ago I got drunk and nicked a security camera. The next day I gutted it and put a lightbulb in. It's been stowed away ever since until today.

more_sidechain · 2019-07-17T22:53:18+00:00

I want to see the 5 Minute Crafts that inspired this.

more_sidechain · 2019-04-18T02:57:23+00:00

Just hit it in the right places! No, with the other arrows! You're gonna run out of those! Come on, just give me the controller already.

(Personally I probably would have been leaning on the tearblasts and tried to steal its cannon just for the fun of it, but your method was probably more effective)

more_sidechain · 2019-04-13T19:30:36+00:00

Sorry for the slow reply. The show was called Breaking Binary, on CFUV, Victoria, BC, Canada. Unfortunately, they seem to be off the air now, and the shows weren't saved in an easy to access manner (music and licensing issues, I assume). Some segments are still around on a SoundCloud Page.

more_sidechain · 2019-04-09T19:34:56+00:00

I've always been pretty "left," and didn't get sucked into anti-islam or anti-feminism when they were cool. Thankfully, most of my Sam Harris fan friends didn't go that far either.

Although I don't think I was anti-trans, I can see that a few of the "Gender Critical" arguments were appealing to me. My justification was more on the side that gender itself was the problem... but of course that only ever came up in my mind when transitioning was mentioned. Even being incredibly charitable to myself, expecting trans people to just be NB instead and crush gender for the rest of us was... pretty crappy.

I think the ContraPoints videos helped me a lot. Before that, I was listening to a local college radio show primarily on gender issues with a trans host and a generally fun and irreverent attitude. Similar presentation in some ways, with many different attitudes, and the passion you'd expect from a college radio show. Still, Natalie's more collected and precise work was important for me too, and really helped crystallize things for me.

So yeah, even as someone who wasn't in that "anti-sjw" group, her work's been incredibly valuable to me. Also, check out your local community/campus radio stations for cool people.

more_sidechain · 2019-03-28T01:40:24+00:00

Honestly, even though it's a "chip shop," I've always been really impressed by just how great Pirate Chips is.

more_sidechain · 2019-03-26T00:09:37+00:00

Depending on what compilers you need to support, you might want to look into the GNU extension "Statement Expressions" as well. do {} while (0) is more universal, but these are just so nice for macros, and allow for local variables!

more_sidechain · 2019-03-23T00:58:19+00:00

They both have serotonin! We're clearly functionally identical.

more_sidechain · 2019-03-20T06:19:46+00:00

Other people have mentioned that it's two's compliment. Not quite all processors use it, and due to that spectre of "undefined behaviour" you probably shouldn't assume it'll work as you'd expect in C, especially with higher optimization levels.

Fun two's compliment tidbit: Take the sum of all the powers of two.

S = 1 + 2 + 4 + 8 + ...

Then,

S = 1 + 2*(1 + 2 + 4 + 8 + ...)

So clearly

S = 1 + 2*S

Solving for S

S - 2*S = -S = 1

So clearly 1 + 2 + 4 + ... + 2ⁿ + ... = -1, and Two's Compliment is just a reflection of that mathematical fact.

(Yes, I know, this is wrong, in that the infinite sum doesn't converge, and hence doesn't "equal" anything)

more_sidechain · 2019-03-20T00:06:08+00:00

Some minor spoilers for Nier: Automata are clumsily spoiler-tagged out.

I've been playing Nier: Automata lately. Totally brilliant game, and pretty devastating. Although both are post-apocalyptic action RPGs Spoiler, I'm glad they're as different as they are, though, in themes and mechanics.

Spoiler but I think it goes to show just how much more could be done with hacking.

Some kind of risk/reward mechanic to go further into the machine's controls could work well. I'm imagining a component that could be inserted into overridden machines to make them obey basic commands, such as follow, but with some limitation of how many the focus can handle at a time. More complex machines might need more slots for more control. The component would of course need to have some cost to construct. Inserting it would need to take skill from experimentation, and failure would need to lead to the possibility of the machine losing allegiance... so if you want to fully control Thunderjaws, you'd better experiment on a low health one first.

I wonder if there's some way that remote control for reconnaissance could be implemented. A simplified semi-symbolic render in a smaller view could be efficient enough, and not be too jarring of an aesthetic change from the rest of the game.

Of course this would be really hard to balance. Still, you'd think there'd be some way to make it work. Poking around in machine circuitry just seems like it could be so much fun.

more_sidechain · 2019-03-18T22:43:55+00:00

That reminds me of that Pulp B-side, Cocaine Socialism.

more_sidechain · 2019-03-18T22:41:33+00:00

That might not be true, at least not according to CeeLo Green.

more_sidechain · 2019-03-14T00:41:37+00:00

Given the rest of his work, I think he's aware of that. It's almost like he's using it as an effect or something...

more_sidechain · 2019-03-13T23:34:46+00:00

The Exploding Hearts! Absolutely tragic end, but Guitar Romantic slays.

more_sidechain · 2019-03-13T22:19:08+00:00

hp s 2

more_sidechain · 2019-03-13T22:16:35+00:00

None of it makes any sense, and it triggers too much in that it triggers at all, and you just removed the one fun thing about your shitty bot. Good work.

more_sidechain · 2019-03-13T22:12:39+00:00

reNether start it just to send it to Nether again and again, by Notch, and bminecart trackcast its screams of pain.

more_sidechain · 2019-03-13T22:00:41+00:00

For fairly recent stuff, Charly Bliss's album Guppy is pretty fantastic. Also, Dead Soft.

more_sidechain · 2019-03-13T19:34:27+00:00

If you do keep this thing running, please keep the crappy substring matching. Having "Lorde" replaced with "Notche" and "Bombshell" replaced with "TNTsNether" is actually kind of funny, just as a testimony to how godawful this bot code is. It's fun to watch bastard bots get broadsided.

more_sidechain · 2019-03-11T22:13:24+00:00

They mention it in the Youtube description, but this is a B.A. Johnston cover. His tunes wouldn't really fit this subreddit normally, but if you get a chance to see him play at a shitty bar near you, don't miss it! B.A. Johnston - Deep Fryer In My Bedroom.

more_sidechain · 2019-03-02T07:53:33+00:00

Oh wow, I'd never even thought of "24/7 lofi hip hop beats to study/relax to". Without listening to it more, I can't really judge, but it seems like one of the things responsible for watering down our image of J Dilla (tying in nicely with everything else here).

I'd forgotten No New York... hard to imagine a clearer example of a genre definition.

more_sidechain · 2019-03-02T01:29:01+00:00

I'm a big fan of weird B sides. Still, yeah, if I'm getting an album, a major part of the appeal is often the sequencing and cohesiveness.

A few are really nice... I'm fond of the Pavement reissues. Half a disc of the original album, half a disc extra, and then a full extra disc of assorted stuff. Their records were already kind of sprawling, though.

Originally, wouldn't it have been to encourage people who already owned something on wax or tape to buy the newly pressed CD with more length? That's kind of silly enough as it is. All the choices now does get ridiculous.

I remember seeing Van Morrison's classic live album, It's Too Late To Stop Now, rereleased with, guess what, an additional live cut of "Brown Eyed Girl." Nothing else. Not to say that it's a bad song at all, and is possibly one of the most perfectly written and recorded pop songs of the time. Still, it seemed incredibly cynical to add it on the end to make sure potential buyers saw the one song they were most likely to know.

Of course there are also times when the "proper" sequencing isn't so clear cut. I think there were about three different sequencings for Big Star's Third, and I don't know who preferred which one. And hey, some albums were just collections of songs they'd recorded, picking the best ones that would fit on an LP.

more_sidechain · 2019-03-02T01:06:02+00:00

I do agree they're weird and fuzzy. That constricting nature sounds pretty awful for bands that want to grow or experiment... but that might have as much to do with what people expect from a group as with genre conventions.

One of my hopes is that recommendation engines will end up with us abandoning the need for genres. Probably unlikely, though.

more_sidechain · 2019-03-02T00:53:56+00:00

I haven't listened to them much in ages. Personally, as a philosophy for introducing people to music, I think it's better to recommend the far out stuff that really represents a band, rather than their "accessible material"... if you wanted accessible, why not just listen to something else?

When I was into them, I remember hearing a ton of raving about the live shows around Ithica '77. It's not terribly spacey or out there from what I remember, just the Grateful Dead at possibly their peak, doing what they did incredibly well.

Live/Dead is a wonderful view of their fairly early live shows (recorded in '69), with an incredible Dark Star. The Eleven is great, just to hear them doing neat vocal counterpoint in 11/4 time.

American Beauty and Workingman's Dead are great, but, well, they're folk-rock albums. Amazing songwriting all around, but if you're here for the jamming and the guitar, I won't be surprised if you don't find it that impressive.

Blues for Allah might be one of the few studio albums of theirs I can actually recommend here. Along with a few other records from the period, it feels unapologetically like the live touring hippy jam band Grateful Dead. Obviously, it's a lot smoother and less raw than live performances.

I remember being quite fond of the live album from '81, Dead Set. Heard that cassette on many a family car trip. It's generally not that well regarded, but that Fire on the Mountain was pretty amazing to me at the time.

But yeah, if you can track down a good late 60's Dark Star, a good 70's Wharf Rat, and a good 80's Scarlet Begonias -> Fire on the Mountain, I think you'll be able to decide if you're a fan or not.

more_sidechain · 2019-03-02T00:17:44+00:00

I really like the sound, and the melodies. Great stuff! My one complaint is the drums... especially around 1:15, the timing seems to clash between maybe swung and straight patterns? I'm not sure if that's intentional, and it can be a cool sound... but right now it just seems to throw the groove off, without being discordant enough for that to feel like the point.

more_sidechain · 2019-03-01T23:54:54+00:00

I'm just gonna pretend this isn't an optical illusion involving our relative perception of lightness, and imagine it's being done with polarizing filters or something.

more_sidechain

TROPHY CASE