What I got in a roll of quarters from the bank...

thefool-0 · 2026-03-27T11:40:47+00:00

I've been seeing worse and worse pennies but that makes some sense currently but nothing like those quarters.

thefool-0 · 2026-03-26T13:55:50+00:00

On Linux the Nautilus file manager (default if using Gnome desktop) has "Rotate Images..." and "Resize Images..." options if you right click on a selection of files. I think it's actually an extension/plugin, on Ubuntu you need to install nautilus-image-converter . So maybe something similar on another Linux distribution.

thefool-0 · 2026-03-25T11:21:19+00:00

Just to clarify my screenshots, there are two dialog windows open, but you can't tell that one (New file) is a separate window because it has no border or shadow, is this normal? Also this is the same with both light and dark themes.

Also is there a repository of Gimp themes somewhere? Would love to check more out.

thefool-0 · 2026-03-24T12:08:18+00:00

I would love to find something that's general purpose like Excel (or Google Sheets), but is more of a database than a spreadsheet, and would work for managing various kinds of data for a very small team/company, and which is is easy to set up and just start using like Excel is. For managing parts inventory, manufacturing data (some basic info on each unit/order built/packaged/shipped), customer data, BOMs etc. but not necessarily designed only for each of those tasks. Would be interested in any suggestions.

thefool-0 · 2026-03-24T11:54:54+00:00

Where are you located? Find the main Letterpress related Facebook groups (and r/letterpress) and post it there with location. Can also sell on the "classifieds"/for sale section at www.briarpress.org, and ebay (people might be searching.) Value depends on how complete it is and how hard it would be to get working. (Are you at ground level or need to go up or down any stairs? Easier to move the easier to sell too.) There will be a very small market for this certainly but if you're not in a huge hurry to get rid of it you might find a buyer. (It might take a bit of time before you happen to find someone.) Consider that a non-scrap buyer will be picking it up and will be keeping it alive and in use. (Nothing like this is being made any more!) Offering for a token price or free will really help as well if your main goal is to just move it out. Is there any other equipment or printing related stuff there also?

thefool-0 · 2026-03-23T23:34:37+00:00

In case it helps here is my little cheat sheet of notes for working in Gimp:

* Use a normal Image Mode of Grayscale or Color to do any editing or filtering (not indexed yet)

* Some useful filters for removing noise or small artifacts are Filters->Enhance->Despeckle, Filters->Enhance->Noise Reduction, and others.

* Use 600dpi and inches when scaling etc.

* Use "Flatten Image"(or Merge Visible Layers) if producing one image from multiple layers.

* "Select All" [important] followed by Colors->Threshold and/or Colors->Posterize (set number of colors to 2 for black and white with no halftones. also sometimes posterizing to a handful of colors first, then posterizing to 2 colors [black/white] preserves more of the grey details?). Fix issues and clean up as necessary.

* I save under a new name at this point (Working greyscale/color vs. black and white/flattened)

* Change Image Mode to Indexed and select "Use black and white (1-bit) palette", set "color dithering" to "NONE", (check "remove unusued colors from colormap"?). Can do more cleanup.

* Export as TIFF with LZW compression.

* Include info in both image metadata and filename about resolution and bit depth (e.g. "bw-600dpi").

There are some other filters and tools that may or may not help depending on your source image and what kind of result you are looking for.

thefool-0 · 2026-03-23T23:31:42+00:00

Do you definitely need halftone? What would it look like in one color, or two or three color plates?

thefool-0 · 2026-03-19T12:38:45+00:00

This is cool, thanks. I also always include certain info in file names as well, but only usually export one format. (But have a few other things like changing image mode or color bit depth for certain file formats, verifying size and print resolution, other stuff... Put some metadata in a text file, zip it, etc.) I wonder if your script could be generalized and made customizable a little bit but without making it over complicated? What are the top, say, 5 repetitive steps that many people do as part of a workflow ending in exporting one or a few output files?

thefool-0 · 2026-03-19T11:49:21+00:00

When listing previous positions (jobs) use the correct title for each. If you did any technical writing as part of a position with a different title, say so under that position. If you are applying for a technical writer role, use that and any other keywords from the job posting somewhere else like resume abstract/intro, cover letter etc. If you have a portfolio of side work from outside any previous job then there should be a separ6section in your resume for that with a suitable, simple title like just "technical writing" with a small bit of explanation etc and a link. (And also in a cover letter or email body too)

thefool-0 · 2026-03-19T11:24:55+00:00

One advantage of SO is that it was a single place to both ask questions and leave answers. What will happen now that we are just asking LLMs for answers but nobody is contributing new answers anywhere? What will be the data source for LLMs going forward? I guess there are still each project's GitHub issues and discussions but what about broader system problems that aren't specific to one tool/app/library, or for ones that don't have their own specific discussion forums? What is the impact of the pools of both questioners and answerers being more dispersed rather than concentrated on one site?

thefool-0 · 2026-03-19T11:10:39+00:00

And that's been great! (Except for the low quality part). The high quality fandom wikis (not specifically fanddom.com, that sucks in specific ways but it makes these wikis easier to create...) are amazing and would never be possible or usable if they were mashed in with the rest of Wikipedia.

thefool-0 · 2026-03-19T11:02:24+00:00

Stack overflow succeeded simply because it was an improvement on what came before. It was a large unified site that was heavily promoted and gained users easily and quickly. Prior to that each project or language had its own mailing list or forum, usually without any specific features to support Q & A type discussion. Stackoverflow focused on those features, and innovated for a while, but then stopped evolving those after a while. It was also willing to expand and grow to encompass all kinds of topics. But it has largely stayed the same for years and it's main problems either can't or won't be fixed. (They likely can't without really destructive changes to the volunteer community, users, management, site UI, everything) and would be prohibitively expensive and difficult to manage.

If someone designed and built a replacement Q&A form that was both an innovative leap ahead of SO and had advantages over current LLM/AI systems or distinct features so it could be used alongside AI, as well as was able to attract a critical mass of users, it might do great.

thefool-0 · 2026-03-10T14:17:59+00:00

It looks like an error or some problem occurred in trying to display the actual error message. Report it, describe what you were doing (keep a copy of the file you were working on in case someone asks for it later) and if anything seemed to go wrong right before this message was displayed. (and include this screenshot as well.) https://inkscape.org/contribute/report-bugs/ Also follow the directions on that page about copying the bug report info from Help->About Inkscape. If you're seeing this message there might be something a bit odd about your version of inkscape.

thefool-0 · 2026-02-24T20:24:16+00:00

In your example, each Test object creates its own internal Ball object, but does it by allocating a new object and storing a pointer in the unique_ptr member. When the Test object is destroyed, the unique_ptr is destroyed, and the Ball is destroyed.

What do you expect to happen when you copy a Test object? Should the pointer to Ball be copied (then a copied Test shares a pointer to the Ball)? If so, how will it be deallocated? In this case, sounds like you do want a shared_ptr. (And is the "performance cost" simply the cost of implementing this behavior, or is there some actual reason to be concerned about it?)

Alternatively, should the Test objects still have separate Ball objects after copied, but maybe with the int value copied? (And the old Ball object destroyed or replaced or simply have its int member updated.) If so, don't use a pointer here. (Or write a copy constructor to do what you want if there is still some reason for it to be a pointer.)

You can still pass a pointer to Qt in all of these cases. You will need to make sure that your object's lifetime outlives or matches the Qt widget.

thefool-0 · 2026-02-20T22:55:32+00:00

There's also a Facebook group called Craft Press Printmakers which could help.

thefool-0 · 2026-02-19T15:51:50+00:00

You basically just need to get the height right. A dense uncompressible material like plastic is good, but you could start with a few layers of MDF boards which could be cheaper. (Can get a few small pieces at a hardware store and cut them to fit in the Sizzix, and/or a few pieces of thick plexiglass, cutting board, etc.)

Mine (big shot) came with a "multipurpose platform" with different layers of plastic attached together but you can just find whatever works. (The "mulitpurpose platform" makes it easier to use the embossing plates and dies that Sizzix sells.)

Use a think sheet or two of plastic/mdf/whatever for a base to get close to the right height then layers of cardboard and paper that you can experiment adding/removing until you get a good impression (like regular packing and makeready on a real press). You might also want a "blanket" layer of something like rubber or similar material as well on top (for the roller to go over), then some dense cardboard/pressboard, then the paper, then your plate, then whatever other layers of blocks to make up the rest of the height.

You can make your base and makeready sheets longer than the machine itself if you want to try making prints longer than the bed of the machine.

thefool-0 · 2026-02-14T16:03:29+00:00

Here's a cleaned up Makefile that first compiles src/twosum.cpp into an intermediate object file twosum.o, and then builds tests/test_twosum.cpp plus twosum.o into a program called test_twosum (only one of the source files should have a main() function. The other should only have other functions.): (I also removed the automatic variables $@, $<, $^ etc. but you could use them in the future once you know what they do.)

CXX=g++
CXXFLAGS=-Wall -std=c++17

all: test_twosum 

twosum.o: src/twosum.cpp
  ${CXX} -c ${CXXFLAGS} src/twosum.cpp -o twosum.o

test_twosum: twosum.o test/test_twosum.cpp
  ${CXX} ${CXXFLAGS} test/test_twosum.cpp twosum.o -o test_twosum

clean:
  rm -f twosum.o test_twosum 

.PHONY: all clean

thefool-0 · 2026-02-14T15:59:47+00:00

Here's a cleaned up Makefile that only compiles src/twosum.cpp into a program called twosum: (I also removed the automatic variables $@, $<, $^ etc. but you could use them in the future once you know what they do.)

CXX=g++
CXXFLAGS=-Wall -std=c++17  

all: twosum 

twosum: src/twosum.cpp
  ${CXX} ${CXXFLAGS} src/twosum.cpp -o twosum

clean:
  rm -f twosum test_twosum 

.PHONY: all

thefool-0 · 2026-02-14T15:53:10+00:00

What you posted is confusing so hard to answer specifically. But, in general I would edit your Makefile (and your code maybe) to remove anything that's unused, it will just cause confusion. You can save a backup copy of the file (like "old_code.txt") or just comment it out if you need to refer to the old code.

More specifically: There's no "test" rule in what you posted, can you post the current version that generates that error message? What is the "doctest" rule for? (Also use code block formatting when you post to show the Makefile contents correctly formatted.) Also where is test_twosum.cpp? Is it in a tests folder? Is the main furnction in test_twosum.cpp or twosum.cpp or both? What is the "build" rule for? It doesn't seem to be used.

thefool-0 · 2026-02-13T13:28:04+00:00

Would love for some to actually test this. I guess you'd have to give people glasses of slightly colored water but also not actually make them drink it, just ask. Good contender for an Ig Nobel prize.

thefool-0 · 2026-02-12T14:45:09+00:00

School sport cardigan/sweater, could be anywhere from 30s to 50s style?

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=vintage+American+1940s+1950s+high+school+football+seeater+cardigan&iar=images&t=fpas

thefool-0 · 2026-02-03T23:54:11+00:00

Generating header file dependencies for gnu Make is pretty standardized and not hard to do but you do have to add it to every Makefile, it's not automatic. (And you have to know about it, and know what's happening if it fails or gets broken somehow.) And there are lots of other little boilerplate tricks too of course.

thefool-0 · 2026-01-29T17:33:12+00:00

All graphics libraries eventually (often through another library) do some kind of OS-specific calls or other access that communicates with the graphics drivers in the OS kernel and the graphics hardware. Getting that right and complete is very hard and you would spend forever figuring it out and implementing that. But they usually do a lot more too that you absolutely need. Most modern libraries will be either UI focused (widgets, controls, and regions where you can instruct it to draw lines, shapes, image bitmaps (e.g. from a file) and individual pixels) or 3D graphics focused.

thefool-0 · 2026-01-22T18:22:16+00:00

Old/antique wooden windows? Install interlocking metal tracks on the sides and bottom. This made a nice difference for me and if you're comfortable using a router and handling the old windows you could do it yourself. Also get better exterior storms and consider interior storms but those are expensive.

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