promethea.incorporated

Apocalypse Lawyer

ilzolende:

vaniver:

Game idea that sprung from a conversation with @brazenautomaton about nonviolent gameplay. Ideally, it’d be Fallout branded, but that’s not necessary

Most RPGs get nonviolent solutions mostly wrong. You click some dialog options, and if you choose the right sequence, people change their minds. This is sort of like how real conversations work, except all the perception and creativity are the author’s. If they have a third solution that you didn’t see, you can take it; if you have a third solution that they didn’t see, or wanted to exclude for some reason, you can’t suggest it.

And it takes real courage for them to actually replace a boss fight with a dialog option. Being able to talk down Legate Lanius is such an example; in Mass Effect, you can, by convincing your opponent they’ve made a colossal mistake, get them to commit suicide–but that means you skip the first stage of a two-stage boss fight.

But there exist games where nonviolent solutions are the primary gameplay mechanism, rather than a shortcut past it. What would it look like to do a similar thing in a Fallout-like setting?

My answer is from David Friedman: viking sagas.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the legal and political institutions of Iceland from the tenth to the thirteenth centuries. They are of interest for two reasons. First, they are relatively well documented; the sagas were written by people who had lived under that set of institutions[3] and provide a detailed inside view of their workings. Legal conflicts were of great interest to the medieval Icelanders: Njal, the eponymous hero of the most famous of the sagas,[4] is not a warrior but a lawyer–“so skilled in law that no one was considered his equal.” In the action of the sagas, law cases play as central a role as battles.

Fallout is divided into ‘civilization’ and ‘raiders,’ where you can shoot any raider without penalty (and, indeed, are actively rewarded for killing them). But the player is, in some deep sense, the ultimate raider, roving, killing, and stealing more than anyone else. Almost every quest involves making a bunch more corpses, and almost all of those corpses are people that no one will miss.

Imagine a world where everyone has concentric loyalties, and thus are all ‘morally grey’ in a universalist sense. Very few people are secure enough that they won’t steal from a stranger if presented with a good opportunity, and no one will choose to let their brother die instead of a stranger. In order to neutralize bad elements without earning the enmity of everyone else, you need to put them on trial, basically. In order to end feuds without mutual extermination, you collect wergild. Incidentally, that’s how the players gets paid–victimization creates property rights, which NPCs can sell to the PC, as well as rewarding them for doing natural things for a rover like delivering mail. (Imagine that, a courier who actually delivers the mail!)

A ‘quest’ doesn’t look like “there’s a bunch of mirelurks in the watering hole, kill them all,” it looks like “tribe A and tribe B are about to come to blows over their disagreement over the watering hole; can you convince them of a peaceful resolution?” And if you can’t come to a successful peaceful resolution, they’ll fight, and a fight may develop into a feud, and a feud may result in a tribe getting wiped out. 

What’s neat about this is that you can procedurally generate these disputes, not just by drawing cards from a “dispute” deck or having them always be the same when the player visits a particular town, but by simulating the game world. People consume food and water and various services; other people provide those services or obtain that food and water. And if you can’t trade, you steal, and if you can’t get along, you fight. Combine with a personality and relationship model, and you have a world where conflicts to settle will arrive as a natural consequence of time moving forward. If there’s not enough water to go around, someone is going to get dehydrated, and they (and their friends and family) are not going to be happy about it.

So anyway, in order for this to work well the conversation model needs to be very well done. My thought is allow the player to basically string together ‘concepts’ according to some rules, trying to make various arguments to sway the opinion of other people around them. (They collect those concepts from people they meet along the way / stories they learn / etc., and can also teach them to others.) Much of the challenge, I suspect, is figuring out what will convince who, especially if there’s a lot of things similar to a jury trial where one’s arguing a case before a council.

I’d play it.

I’d program it.

…the mvp is the conflict resolution model. A simple system of characters, attributes, connections, needs, wants, loyalties, reputations, concepts. Trivial enough to be easy to keep track of, non-trivial enough to show the potential. Easy to expand later. Probably start simple with a single location where everyone is constantly, the minimum number of characters, initially hard-coded conflicts to test the conflict-solving system, then emergent processes to test those, then expanding the world in width and depth…

(via metagorgon)

3 weeks ago · tagged #baby leet · 127 notes · source: vaniver · .permalink

thetransintransgenic:

maddeningscientist:

multiheaded1793:

Yeah, Google, if the fucking youtube app had a paid feature to play things in the background, that would be great. :|

…is this sarcasm…? I cannot tell

This is why I’m poking youtube-dl and stuff until I can just download videos and watch them in VLC. (I’ve successfully gotten youtube-dl to work – but to make it work EASILY…)

Because. Like. BLEEP THAT.

My own server that remotely “watches" youtube videos, downloads them, streams them to my custom app…

And once youtube adds requirements that the desktop browser version must be in focus etc., this setup just pretends to be in focus and acts like a human. And if youtube adds captchas before people can watch it, then I consider it success and the mothafukan corp busted.

(via thetransintransgenic)

3 weeks ago · tagged #baby leet #outside.is_a?(CyberpunkDystopia) = true · 15 notes · source: multiheaded1793 · .permalink

e8u asked: 60 percent keyboards are not good. Those keys are *not* unnecessary, and putting them behind a fn key turns basic shortcuts into the Vulcan nerve pinch. I suspect a ploy to make "hackers" willing to buy keyboards with fewer keyswitches.

thetransintransgenic:

socialjusticemunchkin:

60% keyboards are excellent.

First of all, I don’t need to reach around when I can just press down the fn key on my left pinky (people press capslock by accident sometimes, it’s that convenient of a location) and not move my hands away from their proper positions. The only thing I could complain about is the way I have to choose between having a r-alt and the fn key below my right thumb because that would allow me to use ctrl at the “capslock” location, but that’s a flaw in the language my parents taught me, not 60% keyboards.

Second, I can have my mouse way closer to my right hand when there are no useless keys in the way. It’s more ergonomic that way.

Third, I can actually carry my keyboard around and look only like an obnoxious nerd instead of a 80s cyberpunk character wannabe.

Fourth, they are sm0l and cute and pretty.

FRIGGING    BLASPHEMY

THERE IS ONLY

ONE

TRUE

KEYBOARD

(The later Symbolics keyboards, with the Square, Circle, and Triangle are also acceptable, because they named them (”Blockhead”, “Bubblehead”, and “Pinhead”) which is ADORABLE.)

Above: the keyboard Emacs was made for.

Below: the keyboard Vi was made for:

1 month ago · tagged #the joke is that the blank keys are just as comprehensible #baby leet · 25 notes · source: socialjusticemunchkin · .permalink

ilzolende asked: As someone who will be replacing her computer and can probably talk people into buying her a keyboard soon, I would love to hear your sales pitch for [some pre-customized version of] vim. (Also, I have written all the HTML for a website myself, but I like Jekyll better, because I can update template-y things once and have the *computer* update them everywhere, and write pages in Markdown.)

ilzolende:

socialjusticemunchkin:

ilzolende:

socialjusticemunchkin:

I’m using [spf13-vim](http://vim.spf13.com/) with some customization; it has nice defaults and a lot of awesomeness and is very simple to install with a straight-out-of-the-box configuration that works well unless one has a synesthesia thing where stuff absolutely needs to be differently colored on different languages (a simple but non-trivial editing of the colorscheme is required then).

Basically, the idea is that one doesn’t never ever need to move one’s hands away, because every command is reachable easily from there and touch typing feels so good. Using dvorak as a layout synergizes incredibly well because one’s fingers need to leave the row much less often and the repetition between hands feels very low-effort and “lazy” in an extremely good way.

And the final component of this awesomeness is a 60% keyboard which ditches all the unnecessary keys that one can’t use anyway because one’s hands would need to leave their places, and replaces them with fn-layer keys that can be easily reached while keeping hands “glued” to their positions. They usually cost around $100 (but can be found *a lot* cheaper if one is willing to compromise a bit on quality; still superior to regular rubber-domes though) and are 100% worth it in my opinion. Geeking out over switches and sounds and keycap materials and manufacturers etc. is beyond the scope of this post but I’m way too eager to do it if requested. It’s complicated. It’s interesting. It feels and sounds so good. Your favorite shoes provide valuable evidence. And you can customize them without limits, to make your keyboard 100% perfect for yourself.

Personally, I’m using a KBP V60 with Matias Quiet Tactile switches because I wanted to prioritize softness of noise (mechanical keyboards are louder than regular ones; how much depends on a lot of factors) and a distinct tactile feel for writing. Zero regrets. My favorite shoes are a bit like knee-length combat boots but a lot softer, which is exactly what one would expect with this particular switch. Creepy how accurate that shoe thing is. I wish the keycaps were doubleshot PBT instead of ABS, but the keycap selection for Matias (=Alps) is less broad than it is for Cherry, and I can’t remember the fn key locations if I can’t see the printings (YGM), so I haven’t customized that stuff yet.

As usual, reddit has way too much info on this: https://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKeyboards/

(Note: What follows is a list of all the concerns I can think of. It might sound attacking, but my guess is that a lot of these are addressable, I just want to list them.)

(Note 2: I have the Ulterior Motive of wanting advice about how to replace my mid-2010 Mac. The one most ridiculous constraint here is that unless Inkscape’s improved a lot, I want to be able to use CS5, which I got when I got the computer I’m currently on. Unless I can get Adobe to let me activate an installation on a new Windows machine or there’s some way to run CS5 at nearly full speed in Linux, this means I need to get something that can occasionally run OS X that I can transfer my backups to.)

…if you use a command-line text editor but you also have to hold down a special key every time you need to use arrow keys, that sounds hard? Anyway, I don’t have the synesthesia thing, as long as there’s a list somewhere accessible (and even if there isn’t, tbh) of what the different colors mean in different programming languages Java and some markup languages (I’m still new), I’ll be fine.

I’m fine with learning a new keyboard layout as long as I can find a piece of plastic to put on it with the letters on it. That said, the keyboards you recommend a) cost more than my replacement hard drive did and b) seem a bit too bulky to take to class. Also, do they have cables that are removable at both ends? I have cable-breaking issues and there’s no way I’m going to get something I’ll have to replace as soon as the cable frays.

Edit: Also, I feel like running code gotten over HTTP (not HTTPS) directly from some URL-shortened link is probably not the best idea?

• So, for OS X there’s the option of building a hackintosh if you want a desktop, or using an apple laptop because laptops don’t hackintosh well, or keeping the old mac for CS5 purposes. OS X is Unix and therefore Correct even though it’s Corporate and therefore At Least A Bit Evil; so vim and most of the cool things should work.
  • As it happens, I’m also very very interested in doing recommendations for computers, as long as I get the specs of the budget and intended use etc.

---

• The point of using vim is that you don’t need arrow keys when you can hjkl. Vi style movement keys are supported by almost every single thing in unixland, and they are as close to Objectively Correct™ as is possible in legacy code hell universe
  • (Disclaimer: standard biases and subjectivities apply).
• Even on unmodified dvorak they are reasonably convenient
  • (“c” is down, “v” is up, “j” is left, “p” is right).
• And when one actually needs Arrow Keys instead of just Movement Keys, these 60%ers usually have reasonable defaults; I can press down fn on the capslock location and use wasd for arrows with the remaining three fingers of my left hand in the standard gaming position. Esdf for arrows would be just a little bit better but wasd is acceptable, and on the right-hand side I have another set under pl;’, and pressing fn+return triggers hard arrows from r-shift, r-win
  • (“win” meaning “window manager modifier” to me; I use it for i3),
• r-fn
  • (or “menu” for common layouts; I had to move r-fn to make room for a r-alt key bεçäüsæ ƒiññišĥ üšæš ωæi®δ λetters and I need to be able to write them easily
    • (yes I got all those just by r-alt-ing regular letters
      • (as opposed to alt-r-ing which just replaces every other word with “cuck”))
    • (but Finnish actually only requires me to be able to produce äöåÄÖÅ, and üÜ is useful for German
      • (although I have no idea why Finnish spells the ü sound with y instead; it’s absolutely horrible and then the y sound is written as j and the j sound has nothing)
    • the rest are for those times when I want to use a special symbol enough to have it on my kb but not enough to look up an alternate way of outputting it, which is Often™ since I have them on my kb after all, so might as well use them)),
• and r-ctrl. I use those sometimes.

---

• Dvorak is not “necessary” and most mech-kb fans are not dvorakists, I just like dvorak very very much. The best I can describe it is “fingers glued to keyboard” while qwerty is “fingers hopping around like spider-bunnies”. It might not be that much faster, and the alleged ergonomic benefits might not be that significant, but the feel is very different.

---

• Mechanical keyboards cost quite a bit more than regular ones but are absolutely worth it in my opinion, if one writes a lot. The sound is heavenly, and the finger-feel cannot be described in words.
• But then again I’m an æsthete who spends as much on both their keyboard
  • (because importing stuff to Europe sucks with the taxes and shit)
• and their headphones as they spend on their laptop
  • (because a pre-owned one with a fried sound chip costed in the US only a third of what a new one costs here
    • (fried sound chip not being a problem at all because I’m using an external dac-amp anyway; currently a UCA-202 which gets along fine with my ohm-monster DT990pros but might eventually get modded to a lower output impedance))
• The 60% sized ones aren’t really that bulky; I might consider it worth it to bring mine with me to a variety of places. I definitely like to use it when coding on my laptop.
  • To be specific, I’d say that my keyboard is approximately as bulky as the laptop itself; it’s lighter and shallower, but a lot thicker and just a bit wider
    • Then again, my laptop is basically a fat 10-inch tablet
      • (awesome is another thing it is; the only thing I could complain about is the shitty saturation of purples and magentas on its screen)
• Most mechanical keyboards do feature removable cables, probably all of the ones worth serious consideration. It’s definitely a very important feature and everyone else agrees that ditching a $100 KB because a $5 part broke is not a good idea

---

• And regarding the spf13-vim, yeah that’s correct, so here’s the github page instead with more responsible installation instructions: https://github.com/spf13/spf13-vim and the installation script itself is: https://github.com/spf13/spf13-vim/blob/3.0/bootstrap.sh ; I don’t know why the homepage suggests insecure http.

• I’m not keeping the laptop for CS5 purposes. Its fans run constantly, it makes weird noises when I rotate it as if stuff is rattling around inside, it falls asleep if I put my phone too close to part of it (something about magnets?), and sometimes it randomly just freezes for up to 30 seconds. CS5 is resource-intensive. I miiight keep this thing as an offline signing machine, but also I could just get another Pi if I ever needed an offline signing machine. Keeping the costs of doing art somewhat low is #important, because otherwise art will never happen. (Which might mean I end up using Inkscape for non-final things, because Illustrator can import SVGs and Illustrator probably just has more special effects and so on than Inkscape does.)
• My parents said they would get me “a new computer” as a graduation present. I am guessing I can get ~$1200-1500 of computer out of this, that’s about the amount of computer I got the last time I got a computer for a major life event (Bat Mitzvah).
• Dual-booting OSX and Linux for New People on a laptop was my original plan. I’m fine with carrying around somewhat heavy things, as long as I’m not causing myself long-term harm by doing so. I would like to:
  • type notes in class as much as possible, it’s great.
  • Read, write, and run Java and some other languages (IDK which ones)
  • Have ~20 tabs open in Firefox at once
  • Continue using SpiderOak. This will be easier if I’m not constantly tempted to quit the program so my computer will be quiet, damnit!
  • Use disk encryption as much as possible while ideally not having rebooting take forever
  • Put a sticky note over the webcam, if I must have a webcam, and almost never take it off
  • Record audio in Audaciy, ideally without lots of fan noises in the background
  • Use Markdown -> Pandoc -> [something] for as much writing stuff as I can get away with
  • Use Bluetooth headphones and occasionally a Wacom tablet, transfer files to/from an Android phone
• ¥éß, Î çåñ get weird letters just by adding an alt key as well.
• How long did it take you to learn Dvorak? Right now I type at ~70 WPM and it’s pretty nice for me, although ~concerns about long-term side effects~

• Okay, so in that case I guess getting a laptop that hackintoshes decently enough to run CS5 when needed would probably be the best option. I’m not really familiar with laptops, but the Asus Zenbook ux30* series has a reputation for hackintoshing well.
  • ux305CA; A lower-end Core M variant of the 305 is totally fanless and still should beat least adequate for all those tasks.
  • Then there’s a model with a Core i series; ux305UA with higher performance and more battery life at the cost of having a fan. It’s still a lot less noisy than eg. a Macbook Air, but not silent.
  • ux305FA is a previous generation model, comparable to the CA, and can be obtained for cheaper, and is considered to be a very good hackintosh candidate; but it’s not Skylake and Skylake is a reasonable upgrade in fanless designs thanks to its better efficiency
    • (As far as I’m concerned, there are two ways of dealing with fans: go big, or go home. My desktop doesn’t have a case, it has a low-speed wind tunnel fed by two 180mm fans blowing air straight through the vertically suspended components; the CPU cooler alone weighs more than my entire laptop and has “only” a 120mm and 140mm fan; the GPU cooler is comparatively wimpy with two 92mm fans, but a 120mm exhaust fan pulls heated air away and helps it. As a result, I can tune my fans so low that I basically can’t perceive the computer in operation as long as I don’t push the GPU to the limit; or I can overclock everything to get 30% more performance out of both, but at the cost of actually hearing my computer when it’s working hard.)
  • Neither of the above should break the bank with the budget you mentioned; in additon, they are extremely pretty and sm0l and are way cheaper than actual macs of comparable performance.
• The Zenbooks would basically be “hacker macs”, with the ~style~ and stuff. The other alternative I’d consider is a Thinkpad, ~The Official Hacker Laptop~. They have a reputation for being absolutely awesome, lasting forever and being very maintainable and hacker-y.
  • You might be familiar with the thing where in cyberpunk settings the corps always have the best toys; Thinkpads are what it looks like in real life. They are commercial grade stuff, not weak-ass consumer shite. The people who write your cryptography software use thinkpads. What else do you need?
    • (Also, the next computer I personally buy will be a Thinkpad. And I don’t mean to disparage weak-ass consumer shite too much; I’m a happy user of a sm0l and pretty weak-ass consumer shite of an Asus laptop.)
  • Buying a Thinkpad isn’t quite obvious so I’m not sure if I can give you exact model numbers to get the correct configuration, but the basic idea is that it should have if buying new:
    • the cheapest 5th or 6th generation Intel (=Broadwell or Skylake; model numbers *50 or *60) i5 series processor (i3 is slow, i7 is unnecessarily expensive)
    • 8GB RAM
    • SSD (very important)
    • no external GPU; just using Intel HD Graphics 5…
    • Full HD IPS display; this is absolutely non-negotiable and you should be willing to sacrifice the other things first.
    • The general order of importance would imo be:
      1. Display first.
      2. 8 GB RAM for photoshop etc. and SSD so the machine is fast
      3. anything else: more RAM, more SSD space, a newer processor; Skylake has some advantages but it’s not necessarily worth a significant price bump over a previous-generation model
  • X series is light and designed to be portable
  • T series is medium-sized, T4*0 is slightly smaller and T5*0 has a numpad
  • N*50 or N*60 means that it’s a Broadwell or Skylake, respectively
  • suffixes that are not “p” are bad and confusing and basically a trap; “p” means it’s more powerful and might have a better screen etc. but is also more expensive
  • so basically get an X250, X260, T450, T460, T550 or T560 and double-check the specs
    • or alternatively a used X240, T440(p), T540(p) or previous generation X1 if you can find one with nice specs and the right kind of screen

• Are you confused yet? Because I am; I’ve spent the last 6 hours researching laptops, and my head is full of laptop. So here’s a nice TL;DR:
  • Zenbooks are sm0l and pretty and they can be bought in a dark grey with just a hint of purple, which is an extremely good color.
  • Isis Agora Lovecruft uses thinkpads and if there’s one thing we learned from HPMoR, it’s that when Isis Agora Lovecruft uses a certain kind of computer, we don’t need to know the exact reasons to nonetheless find that kind of computer worth considering.
  • The boring option is to buy a used macbook pro, because hackintoshing is pain and hackintoshing a laptop is even more pain.

• Dvorak was initially hard and a cheatsheet saw a lot of use, but I got capable of using it painlessly in a couple of weeks and surpassed my qwerty skills in a few months. Nowadays I remember keys with muscle memory; I find it hard to point out the respective locations of the keys on a qwerty-labeled keyboard but my fingers feel the right locations and find them that way.
• And if you’re worried about side effects, I’d say that mechanical keyboards can be more ergonomic than regular ones. Not sure if it’s that true, but it’s certainly an argument worth considering if you want one.
  • (With a budget of possibly $1500, I’d personally include the $100 of a nice mech in it because these things feel very good. Matias Quiet switches might even be non-noisy enough to bring to places where other people are around and not need to feel utterly ashamed of oneself, especially if one learns less noisy ways of typing
    • (how one presses down on the keys is very significant in affecting the resulting noise))

1 month ago · tagged #baby leet · 19 notes · source: socialjusticemunchkin · .permalink

veronicastraszh:

socialjusticemunchkin:

socialjusticemunchkin:

• Things I learned this week:
• • Things that go viral with relatively low effort:
  • • Hilarious trolling of people everyone hates
  • • Surveys
  • (if I’m going to continue tumblring in Lisp, I should do it this way
  • • (at least I think this is easier to follow))

metagorgon said: didn’t you already learn surveys go viral when you grouped everything into left/right, female/male, etc and it was used as a personality test?

Yes, and I replicated the study and tested the method myself. Thus, if I ever need to draw attention to things, I should try to formulate them into a survey somehow so people will spread it. This is vital for memetic engineering purposes.

Oh and you should do all things in Lisp. Except Haskell, which you should do in Haskell.

• Okay, now you really should explain what is the amazing thing about Haskell and why I should learn that one as well
  • (right now the list is:
    • ruby
    • julia
    • lisp
    • coffeescript
    • html
    • css)
  • (or, to be more specific, it’s not an imperative “should” but rather a functional “should” meaning that to get the output of promethea doing things in Haskell one needs to input the arguments)

1 month ago · tagged #baby leet #tumbling in lisp · 33 notes · source: socialjusticemunchkin · .permalink

ilzolende asked: As someone who will be replacing her computer and can probably talk people into buying her a keyboard soon, I would love to hear your sales pitch for [some pre-customized version of] vim. (Also, I have written all the HTML for a website myself, but I like Jekyll better, because I can update template-y things once and have the *computer* update them everywhere, and write pages in Markdown.)

ilzolende:

socialjusticemunchkin:

I’m using [spf13-vim](http://vim.spf13.com/) with some customization; it has nice defaults and a lot of awesomeness and is very simple to install with a straight-out-of-the-box configuration that works well unless one has a synesthesia thing where stuff absolutely needs to be differently colored on different languages (a simple but non-trivial editing of the colorscheme is required then).

Basically, the idea is that one doesn’t never ever need to move one’s hands away, because every command is reachable easily from there and touch typing feels so good. Using dvorak as a layout synergizes incredibly well because one’s fingers need to leave the row much less often and the repetition between hands feels very low-effort and “lazy” in an extremely good way.

And the final component of this awesomeness is a 60% keyboard which ditches all the unnecessary keys that one can’t use anyway because one’s hands would need to leave their places, and replaces them with fn-layer keys that can be easily reached while keeping hands “glued” to their positions. They usually cost around $100 (but can be found *a lot* cheaper if one is willing to compromise a bit on quality; still superior to regular rubber-domes though) and are 100% worth it in my opinion. Geeking out over switches and sounds and keycap materials and manufacturers etc. is beyond the scope of this post but I’m way too eager to do it if requested. It’s complicated. It’s interesting. It feels and sounds so good. Your favorite shoes provide valuable evidence. And you can customize them without limits, to make your keyboard 100% perfect for yourself.

Personally, I’m using a KBP V60 with Matias Quiet Tactile switches because I wanted to prioritize softness of noise (mechanical keyboards are louder than regular ones; how much depends on a lot of factors) and a distinct tactile feel for writing. Zero regrets. My favorite shoes are a bit like knee-length combat boots but a lot softer, which is exactly what one would expect with this particular switch. Creepy how accurate that shoe thing is. I wish the keycaps were doubleshot PBT instead of ABS, but the keycap selection for Matias (=Alps) is less broad than it is for Cherry, and I can’t remember the fn key locations if I can’t see the printings (YGM), so I haven’t customized that stuff yet.

As usual, reddit has way too much info on this: https://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKeyboards/

(Note: What follows is a list of all the concerns I can think of. It might sound attacking, but my guess is that a lot of these are addressable, I just want to list them.)

(Note 2: I have the Ulterior Motive of wanting advice about how to replace my mid-2010 Mac. The one most ridiculous constraint here is that unless Inkscape’s improved a lot, I want to be able to use CS5, which I got when I got the computer I’m currently on. Unless I can get Adobe to let me activate an installation on a new Windows machine or there’s some way to run CS5 at nearly full speed in Linux, this means I need to get something that can occasionally run OS X that I can transfer my backups to.)

…if you use a command-line text editor but you also have to hold down a special key every time you need to use arrow keys, that sounds hard? Anyway, I don’t have the synesthesia thing, as long as there’s a list somewhere accessible (and even if there isn’t, tbh) of what the different colors mean in different programming languages Java and some markup languages (I’m still new), I’ll be fine.

I’m fine with learning a new keyboard layout as long as I can find a piece of plastic to put on it with the letters on it. That said, the keyboards you recommend a) cost more than my replacement hard drive did and b) seem a bit too bulky to take to class. Also, do they have cables that are removable at both ends? I have cable-breaking issues and there’s no way I’m going to get something I’ll have to replace as soon as the cable frays.

Edit: Also, I feel like running code gotten over HTTP (not HTTPS) directly from some URL-shortened link is probably not the best idea?

• So, for OS X there’s the option of building a hackintosh if you want a desktop, or using an apple laptop because laptops don’t hackintosh well, or keeping the old mac for CS5 purposes. OS X is Unix and therefore Correct even though it’s Corporate and therefore At Least A Bit Evil; so vim and most of the cool things should work.
  • As it happens, I’m also very very interested in doing recommendations for computers, as long as I get the specs of the budget and intended use etc.

• The point of using vim is that you don’t need arrow keys when you can hjkl. Vi style movement keys are supported by almost every single thing in unixland, and they are as close to Objectively Correct™ as is possible in legacy code hell universe
  • (Disclaimer: standard biases and subjectivities apply).
• Even on unmodified dvorak they are reasonably convenient
  • (“c” is down, “v” is up, “j” is left, “p” is right).
• And when one actually needs Arrow Keys instead of just Movement Keys, these 60%ers usually have reasonable defaults; I can press down fn on the capslock location and use wasd for arrows with the remaining three fingers of my left hand in the standard gaming position. Esdf for arrows would be just a little bit better but wasd is acceptable, and on the right-hand side I have another set under pl;’, and pressing fn+return triggers hard arrows from r-shift, r-win
  • (“win” meaning “window manager modifier” to me; I use it for i3),
• r-fn
  • (or “menu” for common layouts; I had to move r-fn to make room for a r-alt key bεçäüsæ ƒiññišĥ üšæš ωæi®δ λetters and I need to be able to write them easily
    • (yes I got all those just by r-alt-ing regular letters
      • (as opposed to alt-r-ing which just replaces every other word with “cuck”))
    • (but Finnish actually only requires me to be able to produce äöåÄÖÅ, and üÜ is useful for German
      • (although I have no idea why Finnish spells the ü sound with y instead; it’s absolutely horrible and then the y sound is written as j and the j sound has nothing)
    • the rest are for those times when I want to use a special symbol enough to have it on my kb but not enough to look up an alternate way of outputting it, which is Often™ since I have them on my kb after all, so might as well use them)),
• and r-ctrl. I use those sometimes.

• Dvorak is not “necessary” and most mech-kb fans are not dvorakists, I just like dvorak very very much. The best I can describe it is “fingers glued to keyboard” while qwerty is “fingers hopping around like spider-bunnies”. It might not be that much faster, and the alleged ergonomic benefits might not be that significant, but the feel is very different.

• Mechanical keyboards cost quite a bit more than regular ones but are absolutely worth it in my opinion, if one writes a lot. The sound is heavenly, and the finger-feel cannot be described in words.
• But then again I’m an æsthete who spends as much on both their keyboard
  • (because importing stuff to Europe sucks with the taxes and shit)
• and their headphones as they spend on their laptop
  • (because a pre-owned one with a fried sound chip costed in the US only a third of what a new one costs here
    • (fried sound chip not being a problem at all because I’m using an external dac-amp anyway; currently a UCA-202 which gets along fine with my ohm-monster DT990pros but might eventually get modded to a lower output impedance))
• The 60% sized ones aren’t really that bulky; I might consider it worth it to bring mine with me to a variety of places. I definitely like to use it when coding on my laptop.
  • To be specific, I’d say that my keyboard is approximately as bulky as the laptop itself; it’s lighter and shallower, but a lot thicker and just a bit wider
    • Then again, my laptop is basically a fat 10-inch tablet
      • (awesome is another thing it is; the only thing I could complain about is the shitty saturation of purples and magentas on its screen)
• Most mechanical keyboards do feature removable cables, probably all of the ones worth serious consideration. It’s definitely a very important feature and everyone else agrees that ditching a $100 KB because a $5 part broke is not a good idea

• And regarding the spf13-vim, yeah that’s correct, so here’s the github page instead with more responsible installation instructions: https://github.com/spf13/spf13-vim and the installation script itself is: https://github.com/spf13/spf13-vim/blob/3.0/bootstrap.sh ; I don’t know why the homepage suggests insecure http.

1 month ago · tagged #baby leet #tumbling in lisp · 19 notes · source: socialjusticemunchkin · .permalink