ajroach42

ajroach42, 3 days ago to random

Thinking about movie theaters again.

Going to the movies should be cheaper. Movie snacks should be cheaper.

Going to the movies, getting drinks and snacks and popcorn, should be like $25 for two people, tops.

I should really start that movie theater I can't afford and don't have space for.

ajroach42, 4 days ago to random

I've recently become mildly fascinated with NFC.

I can't think of anything worthwhile to do with the technology, but it's neat.

ajroach42, 4 days ago to random

God it's been a weird year.

ajroach42, 4 days ago to random

I've been thinking a lot about centralization and decentralization over the last few days (well, decades, but this particular train of thought has been running for a few days.)

The thing about centralized platforms (for anything! social media, electricity generation, food distribution, government, business, etc.) is they can work really well.

You get a lot of benefits from centralization, a lot of deduplication of effort. Sometimes, in the case of things like power grids, centralization is so much more efficient than decentralization that considering the latter starts to feel ridiculous.

When built correctly, centralized platforms work very well.

But, they fail horribly. Really horribly, and on a scale and in ways that are only possible for centralized platforms.

ajroach42, 5 days ago to random

It would be so cool if someone would start a subscription service that'd just have a huge library of like DVDs and Blu-ray discs and would let you check them out and mail them back and forth.

ajroach42, 6 days ago to random

Please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong here, I don't know a lot about the great depression.

But I've been thinking about the great depression lately, for reasons that I assume are fairly self evident, and I'm thinking about the mechanisms that enabled it, and I'm drawing conclusions and modern parallels.

I don't know if these conclusions are right, or if these modern parallels are sensible. I don't know the inner secrets of the universe. These are just some things I'm thinking about.

ajroach42, 8 days ago to random

I wrote a thing about computers: https://ajroach42.com/community-software-building-the-future-inside-the-rotting-husk-of-the-past/

I do that sometimes.

ajroach42, 8 days ago to random

I hate the bullshit I have to do to make email deliver-ability work in 2024, and it's entirely capitalism's fault.

ajroach42, 9 days ago to random

I was recently reminded of Shouting Into The Void ( https://vod.newellijay.tv/w/p/iyvrwKhgqDQSTsPFMEyof8 )

This was one of the first sitcoms we planned for NETV. The first episode was completed, and it's honestly better than I remembered it being. It's clumsy, and it has some rough points in it that speak to our inexperience we we produced it, but it has a couple of solid bits, and holds up reasonably well as a short film.

The trailer is a lot closer to what we had planned originally than what came out in the edit, but ... well, I think it's pretty good and I wanted to share it again.

ajroach42, 9 days ago to random

Towel Day was this past weekend.

This is a thing I wrote just before Towel Day 2019.

It opens with this disclaimer:

[It's sad, and deeply personal, and not at all about computers. Content Warnings for 9/11, cancer, death, eating disorders, economic strife, and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.]

https://ajroach42.com/towel-day/

ajroach42, 9 days ago to random

Hey! Did you know I sell VHS tapes?

That means I also buy VHS tapes.

Vintage tape sales have been steady, but I haven't had a chance to restock much lately because of all the things (see https://ajroach42.com/some-surprise-expenses/ )

So, I'm doing something a little unusual. I'm asking the fediverse for VHS tapes. See next post for details.

ajroach42, 11 days ago to random

Did a job application a while ago that asked me how I performed compared to the other students in my Highschool in multiple subjects.

Not how I performed, but specifically, how I performed in comparison to other students.

I went to high school two decades ago, and I've been working in the industry since then. What possible bearing could my relative performance in my English class two decades ago have on my current job performance?

ajroach42, 11 days ago to random

I wrote about this fun 80s throwback movie Galaxy Warriors for the Hemlock Bazaar blog.

https://www.hemlockbazaar.com/2024/05/28/cowabunga-video-product-spotlight-galaxy-warriors/

ajroach42, 12 days ago to random

I just got my first email from star labs about starlite shipping.

The first one that wasn't a response to a question I asked them since I got my initial order confirmation in ... September, I think, of 23.

It says that my product will ship on Friday May 31st, probably, unless something goes wrong.

That's welcome news!

But it's also in blatant contradiction to the last update on their status page, which indicated that all the orders would ship in by May 12th.

and, again, this is the first communication they've initiated with me since my order confirmation.

ajroach42, 12 days ago to random

The fact that AI and Al are visually identical is a travesty.

ajroach42, 12 days ago to random

We use a plugin on https://hemlockbazaar.com to list our products in the google product search thing.

I hate it, but it does result in a few extra sales a month and it's not much effort for us to manage, so I deal.

Today I noticed that they'd taken issue with 53 of our products (out of many thousand) so I popped over to figure out what was up and...

Well, I'm at a loss.

Google has flagged 53 of our products as Sexual, let me show you some of the flagged products.

ajroach42, 13 days ago to random

This weekend at the shop has, for the most part, felt like a normal weekend.

Year over year, we're doing about 3/4 the volume of sales and about half the dollar amount that we did over memorial day weekend last year, but it has been about average for a normal weekend last year.

That's ... I mean, still really worrying, but better than I feared.

ajroach42, 13 days ago to random

Ernie Hudson is in the episode of the a-team.

I don't think I've ever seen him in anything other than Ghostbusters.

ajroach42, 15 days ago to random

Hey! Do you play music? Are you within driving distance of the north GA mountains? You wanna play a set at our bookstore for a local arts festival on July 13?

ajroach42, 16 days ago to random

It's amazing to me how we're watching the tech world fall apart at the feet of monetization and AI and whatever other bullshit of the week, and it's all exactly the consequences that the Free Software folks have been warning about and talking about for decades.

But the free software folks are, often, aggressive ideological purists or incredibly gatekeep-y, and free software as a movement has been seriously hampered by both of those things, and also by the same monetization push that is eating everything else.

We built our entire world on computers. We embedded them in every facet of our lives. I've spent my entire life With The Machine.

And yet...

ajroach42, 15 days ago to random

Suppose you wanted to get in to Jazz, but you didn't know where to start.

You might benefit from this blog post I just wrote about how I introduce people to Jazz.

https://www.hemlockbazaar.com/2024/05/24/product-spotlight-may-23-2024-jazz/

ajroach42, 16 days ago to random

"Atari acquires Intellivision brand"

https://www.gematsu.com/2024/05/atari-acquires-intellivision-brand

We're living in a weird future, populated by zombied husks of the now distant past.

ajroach42, 17 days ago to random

Jesus christ, someone just drove a garbage truck in to the corner of the antique store.

ajroach42, 17 days ago to random

First newsletter of 2024 is out: https://buttondown.email/ajroach42/archive/status-update-may-2024-andrew-writing/

ajroach42, 18 days ago to random

Field testing my GameDad.

#gamedad