Will Thompson

Computational dadfluencer, lapsed amateur musician, somewhere in Greater London.

Formerly @wjt. He/him.

Public Key

npub1qty7zfva8ste9qdh48eaa6pe6njj22sgwx33hnkxjz6nddjfpzjstq6cjn

NIP-05 Address

[email protected]

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsq9j0pykwnc9ujsxm6nu77aquafef99gy8rgcmemrfpdfkkeys3fgpz4mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumt0wd68ytnsw43qvx53ml

Publishing to

relay.mostr.pub

Author Public Key

npub1qty7zfva8ste9qdh48eaa6pe6njj22sgwx33hnkxjz6nddjfpzjstq6cjn

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Last Notes

2024-07-13 16:25:31

We've dug out my wife's iPod Nano, which I plan to fill up with music and give to our 7-year-old. But first, the challenge: how does one transfer music to a 17-year-old iPod on Linux in AD 2024?

2024-07-02 19:38:13

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My specific research questions would be:
1. Is this actually a useful model, to be able to start your project in the simple tool and seamlessly switch to the full feature set when you reach a limitation? (For me it was time signature control in GarageBand.)
2. If it is possible to switch back to the simple mode while preserving the project (and any changes made in complex mode) do people do that? Or is it a one-way street from simple to complex?

2024-07-02 18:12:35

Is there any published, empirical research into how effective (or not) it is for a complex application to have a “simple mode” setting that reduces its functionality to make it more approachable for beginners?
(Conceptually I'm talking about Garage Band and Logic being one application where you can switch between the simple & pro interfaces & feature set.)

2024-06-29 10:57:49

Achievement unlocked: 7-year-old repeated something racist she read in a Roald Dahl book 😬

2024-06-11 16:37:14

Rediscovering Vessels' 2011 album Helioscope today. So many great tracks.
https://vesselsband.bandcamp.com/track/recur
#ThisIsMyJam

2024-06-10 22:58:10

I have a NUC I would like to repurpose as a home server. I would like to use an image-based/immutable/atomic/... Linux distro, with no GUI in the base image.
- Fedora CoreOS seems out because AFAICT you need a separate server hosting your butane/ignition config, and config changes mean a reimage.
- I would be happy with Silverblue Without A GUI but the Fedora IOT (which I think is basically that) failed to install its own bootloader.
What should I use?

2024-05-30 22:08:44

This morning I booted an admittedly slow computer running Windows that I last booted in 2019. 13 hours later it is still downloading & applying OS updates, currently with "2018" in their titles (??)

2024-05-29 22:00:39

I have been keeping a journal on and off as part of managing my mental health following my auditory system damage last summer. Right now I start with the same prompt each time: write 5 things I am grateful for that day. It gets kind of repetitive which puts me off the whole exercise.
People who are better/more practiced at journalling than me: do you always use the same prompt each day or do you vary it? How do you get the prompts?

2024-05-21 17:19:11

One of the things I hate most about Git workflows which involve my patches being rebased when they are landed on the main branch is that `git branch --merged` correctly doesn't consider my local branches to be merged. I know how to write a crappy shell loop with `git cherry` to see if all patches on a given branch are textually identical to some patch on the 'main' branch, but surely someone else must have written this tool before?

2024-05-17 12:28:47

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@npub1lwu…6w4j Neovim 0.10 was released yesterday and did exactly that. https://gpanders.com/blog/whats-new-in-neovim-0.10/#builtin-commenting

2024-05-08 12:22:44

Game devs: how do you manage merge conflicts in your projects? A colleague and I were both independently working on the same Godot project, stored in Git, and so we inevitably had a merge conflict when we each modified the same scene. The scene format is plain text so after a bit of trial & error I resolved the conflict. Are there better tools for this in industry? Or is the tool “don't edit scene X, I'm working on it”?

2024-04-16 22:39:47

Food £200
Data £150
Transport £800
Fairy-related stuff on Etsy to leave out overnight for my kids to find in the morning £3,600
Utility £150
someone who is good at the economy please help me budget this.

2024-03-29 23:10:31

I accept some level of transatlantic spelling and vocabulary differences when I play a game from the New York Times, but, “valuate”? “value” is right there! Just stop after 2 syllables!

2024-03-29 09:16:41

A reverse takeover is when a private company acquires an already-public company and effectively parasitises it, to avoid the lengthy and tedious process of going public from scratch.
I saw Ptyxis has been (correctly!) blocked from being listed on Flathub in the org.gnome.* namespace without going through the necessary process, and got thinking: maybe it could perform a reverse takeover of Terminal or Console which are already in that namespace... https://github.com/flathub/flathub/pull/5036#issuecomment-1998114406

2024-03-15 10:49:45

Today I realised I had ordered 5 bunches of 7 bananas = 35 bananas, rather than 5 bananas.
Please recommend some good banana-related recipes!

2024-01-15 12:21:24

Putting “click here” in your hyperlinks is bad enough, but on https://www.hive.co.uk/ the “Click here to login” text is not even clickable! (Only the “My Account” below it is.)
https://mastodon.me.uk/system/media_attachments/files/111/759/693/431/655/307/original/e524e86baf575ee1.png

2023-12-14 15:29:04

Really stretching the definition of “soon” here, Google.
Photos: 49.9 GB
Drive: 68.1 GB
Free space: 84 GB
someone who is good at rudimentary arithmetic please help me budget this, my storage is nearly full
https://mastodon.me.uk/system/media_attachments/files/111/579/237/866/491/921/original/defd831237adc7b8.png

2023-11-06 10:44:20

A cool thing about the Fediverse is that even I, a cis het white centrist dad, can be mansplained for using a word in its colloquial sense rather than its scientific sense

2023-10-22 16:39:25

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@npub12f7…lkxh Regrettably I was not wearing that t-shirt at the time (but I do own it)
https://mastodon.me.uk/system/media_attachments/files/111/279/176/307/092/181/original/d781e03934795a0c.jpg

2023-10-21 11:07:32

I bumped into my daughters' classmates' grandmother the other day, and she told me: “You look like a teenager!”
I was wearing Converse, jeans, a hoodie, a rucksack, riding a kick scooter, wearing earbuds, so… fair enough I suppose.

2023-07-26 12:36:26

Ah yes, the two genders:
- wears a dress correctly
- wears a dress upside-down
https://mastodon.me.uk/system/media_attachments/files/110/779/937/730/324/792/original/96f3c540f2bcc90f.jpg