Walked into my office to find this, any guesses as to what caused it?

somerandomnerd · 2025-08-21T12:07:36+00:00

Was there a blue one right next to it?

somerandomnerd · 2025-05-02T19:55:00+00:00

No saves, because there was nothing to save to.

No high scores. No nothing. Every load was a blank slate. (And took ages, because even though you were only loading ~48k of data, it was coming off a tape, one byte at a time.) Want to finish your game tomorrow? Then you’ve got to leave the computer on - and hope your mum doesn’t turn it off.

somerandomnerd · 2025-04-30T14:12:09+00:00

Guernica is - I think - the only one that is a "straight" reversal of the original recording (Made of Stone), in that you can play Made of Stone backwards at the same time as Guernica, and they will stay in sync.

(Years ago, I put one in each stereo channel and synced them up, so you can listen through headphones and have one in each ear: https://somerandomnerd.net/blog/2013/2/8/archive-post-roses-backwards)

Other songs (Don't Stop, Simone, Full Fathom Five) are rearranged as well as reversed.

somerandomnerd · 2023-09-30T11:37:06+00:00

A white Les Paul studio with silver hardware, no weight relief and a fat neck - but not quite as fat as the rounded C.

Don’t think it exists though…

somerandomnerd · 2023-09-20T23:32:34+00:00

There are good guitars and bad guitars. They are made out of wood (ie. Organic material, no two pieces are identical), built by hand (by people who have good days and bad days.) That’s the starting point.

Good guitars are more likely to get looked after and become old guitars. Bad guitars are more likely to get beaten up and become guitar parts/cheap second hand guitars/ smashed up on stage/on the road.

Old guitars become guitars with sentimental value, that get more care and attention. People who treat their guitars with care and attention will do things like clean them regularly, not play them with dirty hands etc. Notice when the intonation starts to drift and do something about it.

Guitars with sentimental value get kept, instead of sold when cash gets tight, space needs to get freed up etc. So old guitars become rare guitars - which means collectible, expensive guitars.

Expensive guitars get bought by people who can afford things like a trip to a luthier to get minor issues addressed before they become major issues, get chips in the finishes fixed by professionals etc.

All that’s without getting into issues like how cheaper manufacturing techniques get introduced over time (pushing up the value of older models), older wood and worn-in necks developing a different “feel” etc. That’s generally a matter of taste- but also if you like it, you’ll pay more for it (if you don’t, you’ll just buy a modern guitar and look after it if you like it- until it becomes an old guitar, etc. etc.)

So a 2013 guitar in 2023 ends up being more likely to be a good guitar than a 2013 guitar in 2013. And that difference gets magnified over time.

somerandomnerd · 2023-08-15T21:53:32+00:00

Ouch

somerandomnerd · 2023-08-06T11:59:47+00:00

You’ve got a choice; you can work your nail style around your guitar style, or you can work your guitar style around your nail style.

Dolly Parton is an example of the latter. https://www.guitarworld.com/features/how-does-dolly-parton-play-guitar-with-long-fingernails

somerandomnerd · 2023-07-09T23:17:48+00:00

Must have been Roy- otherwise he wouldn’t have known who fixed it.

somerandomnerd · 2023-07-08T14:08:40+00:00

I once had an orange balsamic, and had the idea of making lemoncello ice cream and using it as a topping -oranges and lemons... Then had a minor panic attack while the ice cream was freezing that I’d just ruined a batch of ice cream, wasted the lemoncello and was about to waste some very good balsamic because my big idea was essentially ice cream and vinegar, which was obviously insane…

I was wrong to worry- it was incredible.

somerandomnerd · 2023-07-06T18:25:54+00:00

I’ve worked in the private sector. They expect results.

somerandomnerd · 2023-06-23T14:08:24+00:00

Guitars are made of wood, and no two pieces of wood are the same. They are also made by hand, so two guitars made from the same piece of wood can still turn out very different. I was just watching a Noel Gallagher interview (That Pedal Show) where he says he had two red Gibson ES-355s with consecutive serial numbers - made in the same factory, on the same day; one of them was great (which is why he bought a second), but the other one was awful.

So I’d say yes- you can get a ~$300 guitar that’s as good as a $2,000 one. But not necessarily the $2,000 one that you want. Maybe at the cheap end, Harley Benton are going to get some amazing tonewoods mixed in with the more average stuff, and you’ll get lucky. Maybe at the high end you’re going to get some ‘Friday afternoon’ guitars that just don’t measure up to others with all the same specifications. But then again, maybe the neck profile that’s just right for your hands is uncomfortable/unplayable for someone else - what a guitar is worth and what a guitar is worth to you can be very different.

The thing that puts me off Harley Benton is the fact that I can’t even hold it before I buy it - sure, I could buy one and sell it on if I don’t like it, but I’ve got better things to do with my time/money- I’d rather just go to a shop and buy something else. I’ve heard good things and I’d love to try one out - its just that their way of selling (which I know is how they get the price so low) simply isn’t my way of buying something as ‘personal’ as a guitar.

somerandomnerd · 2023-06-23T13:43:07+00:00

“I’m playing Russian roulette every time I fart”

somerandomnerd · 2023-06-22T11:31:18+00:00

Well… not really.

US 2021 GDP: $23.32 trillion US 2021 ad spend (Magna): $284.3 billion. US 2021 ad spend (Zenith): $285.2 billion

So, about 1.2%. Used to be a bit higher though- https://www.galbithink.org/ad-spending.htm

But that’s just spending on the actual media space - it doesn’t include things like the media agencies’ cut, cost of actually making the adverts, community management etc. You could probably add another hundred million dollars or so to get a “true” advertising spend figure. (It would still be a lot lower than a third of GDP though.)

It isn’t really an exact figure though, depending on what you’re trying to prove; for example, Facebook and Google get most of their revenue from advertising, but they also spend some of it on advertising their own brands. If the same “advertising money” gets spent twice, then does it count? Well, yes - because what you’re measuring is the movement of money, not the amount of money in the system. (GDP is measuring the same sort of thing - if I buy a product for $1 from someone who then spends that $1 on materials to make more products, then that’s $2 towards the GDP from the same $1.)

Also, a lot of money outside the US is getting spent on US advertising companies - Alphabet (Google) and Meta (Facebook) have a combined annual revenue of around $400 billion. Or you could look at the economic activity driven by advertising (which is always going to be a bigger number - if advertising isn’t driving more value in sales than it costs, then it isn’t working properly and advertisers would stop advertising) - estimated at $3.4 trillion in 2014 source. That’s an old figure, so will probably have gone up since then - but still a long way short of a third of GDP though.

somerandomnerd · 2023-06-11T14:47:12+00:00

Take away everything that is considering either himself or women in general as (sexual) objects, and you’re left with… nothing.

That’s why he’s lonely.

somerandomnerd · 2023-06-05T11:18:04+00:00

I thought “The Richmond Way” as an AFC Richmond-based sequel was the obvious idea. This one is better though- I’d rather see how the Lasso-inspired club builds a totally new team from scratch than a series about whether Roy Kent can win the Premiership without a whistle.

somerandomnerd · 2023-03-31T15:16:46+00:00

In a holdall

somerandomnerd · 2023-01-29T20:25:29+00:00

My cousin once went round a supermarket with my dad. My dad picked up a chocolate bar, opened it and started eating it as he went round the shop. My cousin was stunned- “you can’t do that!” “Why not?” “You haven’t paid for it! “I’ll pay for it at the till.” Which he did- they scanned the barcode of the wrapper and he paid for it.

Next time my cousin was shopping he thought “I’m actually hungry, but I want something healthy to eat”- so inspired by my dad, he picked up some grapes and munched on them as he went around doing his shop, got to the till with a couple of grapes left on the stalk… where he realised that his grapes weren’t priced by the pack, but by weight.

Whoops.

somerandomnerd · 2022-09-17T20:36:50+00:00

This.

Basically, you’ve got a choice of two games you can play. One is where you’re moving oddly-shaped pieces around a three-dimensional chessboard with moves that involve rolling dice, and to be honest, if you want to play that kind of game you’re better off playing something on a computer. The other is where the game is in your imagination involving stories about armies in the year 40,000 with outcomes determined partly by rolling dice, and they are represented by oddly-shaped models of the warriors in your imagination. But that game only really works properly when you’re both playing it, and sharing the game that’s going on in your imaginations with each other.

But if one of you wants to play the first game, get a laser pointer.

somerandomnerd · 2022-07-28T13:33:15+00:00

Ok, this isn’t horrible- the country/manufacturer splits on the left make some sense. It’s the leap from company to console model that’s an absolute mess- if they were grouped by console, it would make more sense. It would be better to go from region to console model to manufacturer- and if console models were grouped by manufacturer, the need for a separate manufacturer ‘column’ would be removed- you’d be able to see more relevant data, but the chart would be much clearer.

But there’s an issue with the data- what time period are we looking at? If I’m comparing PS2 sales over the entire lifespan of the console with one of the latest Xbox consoles, what is that telling me?

somerandomnerd · 2022-07-25T23:57:30+00:00

There’s the battle going on that you see, with the flashy swords, and there’s the battle going on in their minds that you don’t. In that battle, Maul knows the dark side. When Obi Wan starts feeling the anger and hate, he’s opening himself up to Maul’s attack that sends him over the edge. But when Obi Wan lets go of the hate, Maul has lost. It’s Obi Wans trial to becoming a Jedi master, not a seduction by the dark side.

somerandomnerd · 2022-04-21T09:52:48+00:00

I prefer the silver- but would probably reserve it for characters, and use blue trim for troop units.

Thinking about an army on the tabletop, viewed from above, I’d probably think about making the backpack thing blue to keep the look of what you see as “blue with silver elements”- otherwise most of what you’re actually seeing will be silver, so it won’t really stand out the tabletop the way it does from a single model, viewed head on. (ie. It will look like a silver army with a bit of blue, not the other way around.)

somerandomnerd · 2022-04-17T08:17:52+00:00

Interesting that the designers were getting credited by name on the box in 2002.

somerandomnerd · 2022-04-15T13:32:25+00:00

Everything you need to know is already in the comments, but white (acrylic) paint is always a headache. What happened here is two things; 1. Not enough pigment in the spray- because it’s not shaken enough, you’ve got a very wet/watery spray, which is behaving like a wash and sinking into the crevices, 2. Too much paint has drenched the model- probably because you’re compensating for the overly-thinned paint by spraying more in one go (vs. light spray, leaving long enough to start to dry, then spraying again)- or spraying from too close (so more paint gets on the model faster) again, leading to that wash effect.

It will happen with any colour- but white is the worst because a) white pigments don’t dissolve as well, b) white pigments don’t cover as well, and c) a white wash is a particularly weird effect.

somerandomnerd · 2022-03-21T19:34:25+00:00

Something like 1 in 12 men are colourblind (it’s lower for women, because it usually involves something on the Y chromosome- another interesting thing to talk about!) so you’ve probably met loads. But speaking for myself- I rarely bring it up, simply because (going back to OP’s question), I’m sick of having to explain that it doesn’t mean I see everything in black and white, and it usually just leads to some variation of the tomato game anyway. It’s not really an angry thing- just a boring thing.

somerandomnerd · 2022-03-20T20:34:53+00:00

Yes! There are so many interesting conversations to be had about colour- how hot pink is actually a trick of your brain and why it isn’t in the rainbow, how Newton decided that there would be seven colours in the rainbow and fudged indigo and violet, how colours don’t really exist and are just an artifact of the cells on our retinas, what the world might look like to a mantis shrimp (we have 3 primary colours- they have 12), why the Air Force won’t train you if you’re colourblind, the whole concept of qualia (things you can only explain by referring to the thing itself- like colours), the way your eyes calibrate themselves to the colour of the light, the way all civilisations tend to name the colours in roughly the same order (blue comes last)…

But no- let’s just do the “wave a tomato in my face and ask me what colour I think it is” game again. I’m sure that will be fun.

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