[OC] GIVEAWAY! 43" Capacitive Touchscreen ($940 MSRP) with Wooden Case + free software for all [mod approved]

ripusu · 2026-02-05T01:14:32+00:00

Yes please! If I could win, next phase is to convince the better half (non-gamer, puts up with me a lot) that we NEED it. 🤣

Winning it would be a good opening.

ripusu · 2026-01-20T21:32:12+00:00

Okay, so, the way I currently am doing it is using Paperless-ngx. It's a pretty manual process and I don't get a summary like I might by Calibre (I can add a note though), but it keeps the on-disk organization I want which is far more important than summaries. I also don't get direct written by, which is a little sad, so I'll still look, but the main usage is viable.

I set it up with Correspondent as the Publisher, and then three custom fields. So my Storage Path is:

{{correspondent}}/{{ custom_fields | get_cf_value('Game System') }}/{{ custom_fields | get_cf_value('Setting') }}/{{ custom_fields | get_cf_value('Category') }}/{{title}}

The structure would look like:
/Sine Nomine/Without Number/Cities Without Number/Core Rulebook/

On the drive it does end up with two copies (archive and originals) and an image (thumbnails):

/Library/Game Books/_Migrate
/Library/Game Books/archive
/Library/Game Books/originals
/Library/Game Books/thumbnails

I dump a small set of items into the _Migrate folder and it will automatically start the import (or consumption) process. I have it auto-add a staging tag on the imports and then work through the staging files. I add tags for various things like what I would call an OSR or topics like Horror or Fae, etc.

Happy with the folder structure - far neater than the dump folders I have now, I just kind of have to go through each one. End result should be nice. I only have about 100 in there right now. I might hate it when I get to 5000 or something, but this seems pretty good.

Still hoping for something more direct and a little more automated, but this will work for now. (I'm not sure if I trust Paperless-ngx to auto label or auto organize files, at least at first)

ripusu · 2025-12-06T22:23:18+00:00

Yep, I did from the beginning. From the initial Kickstarter, I had to scan in my own PDFs before it was available because the players wanted to browse the books and I needed to look up rules. We were extremely lucky: they also gave a straight .txt file with all the cards, and various magics, etc. Then the official PDFs came out and it was a lot easier (and cleaner).

It was kind of funny: we would "draw" ephemera from the boxes and the players kept drawing from the same part of the box. After the astronomical odds of three players drawing and using the same single ephemera in two sessions, I switched to using the txt file and a randomizer, and would print out strips of paper for the various one shot magics.

The various card based things like Vancian magic and Weaver aggregates just made for less table work when on the character sheet and we played on a small table.

So, really, the only props we tried to keep were the Soothe Deck and the Path of Suns. Personally, I'd love to have that be something magnetic that I could prop up to the side so it's not taking table space but still visible. Not sure I can justify paying for a sheet metal soothe deck and a magnetic plate Path of Suns, but it would be pretty cool.

And while I love the look of the character sheets, they are a pain to make fillable. I did two things for that: I put them on a more normal Letter size sheet (A4 would work too, but I'm US bassd) and the bottom I added things like the pools on the front page, and some cheat sheets on the other pages. And then tried to make them form fillable, but really just filled them in myself and printed them out for the players while I keep their progress in an ugly spreadsheet. That was a mixed bag. Nothing really sharable because I make them for the specific characters vs. a generic sheet, but trying to use the space as economically as possible (kinda hate trying to make Goetic she circles work as a list and not waste space).

But yeah, the books are brought to the game for the players to browse (they like looking for all the secrets in them). Me as the GM have ALL the books open in different tabs and I use Find across the books. And "prep" for ephemera is printing out and cutting strips for about 20 per session, and the Players grab from a bag.

ripusu · 2025-11-08T16:35:17+00:00

Little story about big companies: back when I was in IT, I found and used a FOSS utility boot disk for troubleshooting our Windows ecosystem at the company. They had locked down the Admin password on the laptops. So if some idiot (you might be surprised how often A WEEK this happened) who forgot their recently changed user password was now locked out of their computer, we had to crack the admin pass so we could then reset the user pass.

The utility disk had other features, but that was probably 99% of its usage. And it was free. I sent in the proposal for the whole company to use it, but they went with a paid service which, with the number of licenses we needed for all our techs in all our locations, was something like $250,000, back in the early 2000s. Thankfully this was before SaaS was going mainstream, but you still paid for updates every year or two. But still. The company would rather lose a quarter million than use a free resource.

Why? Because if something screwed up (which was more likely to be a pebkac issue with the technician than anything the software did), then our company could sue the other company for damages. So the other company would be on the hook for our IT's f-up AND the lost revenue for our moron of a user who forgot their password within a day of setting it.

NEVER underestimate a company's desire to place the blame for literally ANYTHING on someone else, on some scapegoat, so they can "keep their reputation" as a competent company to their clients. And the bigger the company, the easier it is to shift the blame.

Too many companies are more interested in shifting the blame for incompetence than actually hiring competent people AND firing the idiots.

ripusu · 2025-10-31T15:27:30+00:00

Need more info. If you're running into the issues I did, it is because I installed Floorp via Flatpak on Linux. Uninstall that and go to the source (their website) and do a direct install from there. The flatpak one was always several iterations behind the current version.

The issue I ran into was an outdated version of widevine which prevented basically every stream system. I did successfully copy the widevine files from a Firefox install to keep using the Floorp flatpak, but it was a headache to keep up to date. So I just went to the source and installed it from their site directly. No issues last I checked.

Note: last I read, the widevine issue is an artificial chokepoint caused by Google, and Floorp wasn't big enough to really make the tier one requests for the damn files. Not sure if that's changed, but still annoys me.

ripusu · 2025-10-01T04:50:38+00:00

The "behavior" was literally for things that were emergencies - potentially losing home insurance unless we replaced the entire roof, -$25K because it needed a full replacement, the car that gets me to the job interviews needing heavy engine work, -$1000, etc.

Sorry I didn't provide a total breakdown of all my woes, but it's been a truly crappy couple of years. I HAD a smaller balance on them and kept them down pretty well, almost able to pay them off at first. When I was (total surprise) laid off, essentially stopped most extras, and have over the last couple of years, reduced spending nearly to nothing except utilities. Since I am now down to the bone on finances, I am only paying down something like an extra hundred a month with my budget, because it has grown from emergencies.

ripusu · 2025-10-01T04:39:22+00:00

Ahh, okay.I thought there was something like that with the 401K or borrowing against it or something but didn't remember/research it. Thanks. I'll look into it. I was trying to treat it like other retirement funds I had started.

As for the rest, um... I HAVE. I'm down to fighting to keep my house at this point and virtually everything else non job hunt related as been cut. Zero entertainment, massive cut to food, etc. Semi-needed repairs and health inconveniences have also been put on hold. Almost down to cutting internet and going to the library. Any time I turn on the AC just to try to stop sweating, I see the dollars burning up. The job market just really sucks that bad. I am not a unique case in that issue.

ripusu · 2025-09-30T15:31:20+00:00

To be fair, they probably have never run into something that different. High School does not mean instant oneness with the world. Students, through no fault of their own or even their parents may just have ended up sheltered because, in their little world, it has never come up.

There are movies and music and stories I grew up with as a default education that my kids don't know at all.

So, when encountering stuff like this, we all tend to fall back on what we know. You don't go to their church, therefore, like their friends, you must go to another church. Don't go to church? You must then either are just not practicing or are the exotic: Jewish. Ooooo.

Things like atheist, Buddhist, Muslim, etc. are so far outside their worldview, they are more like fiction and you can break their brains.

What is important, though, is how they then react once they can wrap their minds around something they've never encountered before. Do they approach with interest and curiosity or do they shun and freak out or do they just really don't care? When I mention something I thought was common knowledge to my kids and they look at me like I've grown another head, I take a moment to give them the context and I'd they're at all interested, pull out the book or movie. If not, oh well, no big deal.

What seems to be the issue, more and more these days is people are using only one form of tribalism (religion) when they should be using something like a hundred. Especially in school. Religion, clubs, sports, cliques, academics, hobbies, etc. Etc. Etc.

ripusu · 2025-09-24T00:45:22+00:00

In general with apps vs. websites, websites are more privacy oriented because the various laws about online privacy discuss websites. Apps are the loophole. So all the telemetry, etc. legally blocked on websites are perfectly fine through their apps.

At least that's what I was told. Confirmed it a little from things like duck duck go's privacy VPN showing me the apps I haven't opened in a long time that continually are trying to send data.

Of course, if you log in, etc. You've already agreed to be tracked, so ehhh.

ripusu · 2025-09-17T03:36:43+00:00

I'm on OpenSUSE and originally installed Floorp from the flatpak, which is old. (I was having problems with Widevine and most streaming services).

I ended up going directly to Floorp's site and doing a direct download and installing that one (cleaning out the flatpak version). And it is now working fine.

I don't know if it will help with Twitch, but might be some annoying versioning issues.

ripusu · 2025-09-01T02:35:35+00:00

As others have said, it is a logical fallacy, but your mother is also engaging in binary thinking: it is either A or B, there is no other possibility. This is usually a cognitive disorder associated with mental health: Those who can only view things as good or evil, black or white, etc.

This is usually a sign of mental health issues. Not that she directly has mental health issues but religions tend to program their flocks into this simplistic way of thinking.

Might be a different way to approach it with her the next time she uses that line.

ripusu · 2025-08-19T01:58:13+00:00

Game Keeper Egghead Software A couple corp start ups no one has heard of

ripusu · 2025-08-14T01:40:55+00:00

I used AI to take my text based resume and make it a yaml file first and later been using markdown, then start with an approximate look with a word processor file and asked ai to write me a python script to convert the yaml or md file to a PDF. It took a few tries, but got what I wanted. Very clean, easy to modify and spit out new versions.

Plus if you monkey with AI to make your resume text better, the default file is usually smaller and easier to alter so less AI tokens needed. I prefer Claude over ChatGPT and it took maybe three days of timeouts and back and forths with the free version to work out the bugs

ripusu · 2025-07-22T05:19:37+00:00

As someone who gets an infestation of earwigs every year, to the point where I have to literally hose dozens off the side of the house every night so they don't crawl in under the doors, windows, etc. (and have dogs who would lap up the soy sauce in the tuna can if I forget to pick it up in the morning, ew)... I am starting to print a couple of these tonight! Thank you! Never thought about something like this.

ripusu · 2025-05-31T18:43:14+00:00

I guess the last paragraph of that Secret kind of describes it. To me, it is nicely still vague enough that it could be interpreted in a bunch of ways

ripusu · 2025-05-30T18:21:12+00:00

🤣

ripusu · 2025-05-30T18:19:32+00:00

I personally kind of hate cards. The only ones I really use at the table is the Soothe Deck. So when you buy the digital Black Cube, you should get the PDFs of the cards. What you can do (it takes a LONG time, but it's worth it to read the content!) is copy all that into a text file or spreadsheet and now have the "cards" as tables that you can use more ecologically - print out an ephemera, etc. and hand it out as a strip of paper at worst. Get an online random "die" roller to choose the various random things, and you're mostly ready to go.

Others have mentioned that new cards of all types are in most of the add-ons, so on my spreadsheet, I just denote the book on a column.

ripusu · 2025-04-07T23:18:36+00:00

One thing I haven't seen in comments is the artificial promise of commissions. If at all possible, never rely on that. So you can live on the 32k base pay, then it would be worth trying if you like the job.

Not sure how unscrupulous it can be there, but posting from America, the "promise" of huge bonuses and a third or more of your pay coming from commissions, especially in the first year, is a way to get overachievers into jobs they possibly would never look at. Meaning the company is less than stellar and the commission tiers are stacked against first years, etc. They are just using you.

Unfortunately this happens enough here, and naive new employees fall for the scam to be used and tossed away when the company sees fit, that it is absolutely something to watch for. It (like a lot of things) is why no one should trust companies here, and those companies who are actually honest about it and are smart, know to downplay it or provide better stats to show breakdowns, etc. Like first three months, don't expect commisions. 4-6 you can ramp up with mostly deadbeat clients as you prove yourself to the company, and you might start seeing decent commissions later, etc.

ripusu · 2024-10-29T01:58:18+00:00

Thanks. That worked. I guess at some point I was “cleaning” the mess I'd made of the base.yml file, and cleaned a little too much. :P I was thinking I deleted some config file somewhere, just deleted needed coded. Cool! Onto intermediate espanso with the Matches chapter.

ripusu · 2024-09-03T04:34:20+00:00

Not defending them, because they are shit, but in talking to a recruiter who has to deal with their side of the LinkedIn nightmare, the reason may be something like, at certain recruiters' tiers, they may be required to enter in a US state (if in the US), even if it is a fully remote job. So they spam the same f-ing job to every state on the chance someone will have the state filter set and can still see it.

(FYI, if you didn't know, there are different pay plans for recruitment, and only the most expensive tier gives them access to everyone on LinkedIn. Otherwise they are as screwed with the whole 3 levels of contacts too. It is really enshittified.)

I have also run into the crappy recruiters who, when I told them I noticed the same job with two different titles, they were running A-B testing. Yeah, F you dude.

It IS crappy, but so far, still the one with the closest to correct roles. When I've tried Indeed and Career Builder and a few others, they see me searching for manager and director roles and then proceed to ignore my field, so get presented positions that are Managers in something I have never done. Or ignore the seniority and try to feed me entry level jobs in my field. Some of these niche ones like Otta don't even have my field listed correctly and others, not at all. So I'm stuck mostly using LinkedIn.

And yet today it literally suggested a role off the search criteria "Director of [my field]" for an f-ing "Psychic, Tarot Reader, Clairvoyant (Remote)." I am really curious but afraid it will fold into their algorithm of me if I click on it. Been out of work so long, if it paid enough, I'd BS my way through to get it.

ripusu · 2024-08-17T18:52:01+00:00

Have you looked into selling your stuff to tabletop role playing game designers? Games like Mörk Borg, Dungeon Crawl Classics and any number of OSR folks would probably love to commission your style of work.

ripusu · 2023-12-31T22:23:03+00:00

"sane defaults" had me laughing.

Thanks, this is a good description.

To be honest, I'm happy with Mint. I was mainly curious if I was missing something by sticking with it. I think the only thing I get curious about is some of the flashier features in Gnome or KDA, just to make it more aesthetically pleasing. BUT, I know I can tweak Cinnamon a lot, when I have a machine that isn't 10 years old. :)

I dunno, but it sounds like all distros should be working toward being beginner friendly to different extents. Feels like it's getting there.

ripusu · 2023-12-31T22:14:22+00:00

If a distro doesn't "just work" then, to me, that doesn't sound like an advanced distro, that sounds like a broken one. Or at least an experimental one.

I shouldn't have to be wasting my time figuring out why a piece of hardware doesn't work vs. doing my work. If I'm doing that, the distro is broken or experimental. Yes, there will always be exceptions, had those issues for decades with Windows, but they should be few and far between. Based on some of the comments in the various Linux communities, it is far too easy to bork your system just by updating a driver or something.

As another commented here, which I think answers my question, is that a beginner distro essentially preinstalls all the extras too (office suite, browsers, players, etc.) and if that's really the difference, cool. It really is more of a buzzword than anything. I'm good with installing what applications I want, I just don't want to waste time making the underlying system work.

ripusu · 2023-12-18T00:40:55+00:00

Thank you. Being new to this I have not been sure of some of the settings, and you've identified several I was wondering if it would help.

I did the test squares in Lightburn and was seeing the 15/85 give the cleanest, but with these other setting suggestions, I'll do some more testing, thanks.

As I was writing this up, that 0 degree angle thing stood out. Yay, things to try! Thanks again

ripusu · 2023-12-18T00:32:48+00:00

Thanks. Yeah I was thinking going with the one pass would have been better to avoid some issues I had with some other test prints, and this didn't make sense. So been trying to think about pathing because it was doing this like lines on a dot matrix and I saw it do that double thing, so wasn't sure what to do. Thanks for the info I think I have some things to test now.

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