alan

@alan@mindly.social

Canadian, occupying land resulting from bad faith deals with indigenous peoples, between Toronto and Ottawa. @ 314.8 PPM CO² . Privilege is transparent to the privileged.

Tags: #3dprinting #AI #art #artist #CAD #cnc #climate #FOSS #FreeCAD #fusedGlass #glass #glassArt #Neurodivergent #php #photography #science #software #woodworking #writer #writing
#fedi22

Writer working on my first SF/cyberpunk novel.

I'm aphantasic. Instead I process abstractions. Abstract algebra is intuitive to me.

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alan, to random

Winter blood is coming. In October +10C weather had me reaching for a heavy jacket. Today I was out in the yard in a long sleeve pullover at -5C. Come March, -10C will be t-shirt weather.

This short term adaptation never ceases to amaze me.

GottaLaff, to Georgia
@GottaLaff@mastodon.social avatar

#WompWomp

Via Darren Samuelsohn:

BREAKING: #Trump #Georgia Co-Defendant’s Lawyers File Notice to Withdraw from RICO Case

Defense lawyers for Trevian Kutti, the former publicist for the rapper known as Kanye West, on Monday night filed notice they want to drop their client in the #Fulton County case #legal #TrumpIndictment 1/…

alan,

@GottaLaff My money is on all of those things not happening.

Kayla, to random
@Kayla@geekstodon.com avatar

Do you ever need to provide your phone number to someone or some company when you’d really rather not? Why not put the number for the automated daily San Diego surf report?

My online pharmacy keeps calling me at work with a bot like “Hi! We wanted to tell you about the great ways to save you money!” I can’t remove my phone number, but I can change it in their system. To the San Diego daily surf report.

alan,

@Kayla Fore years there was a local number for "dial-a-prayer". I used it a lot. If they want my real number they'll need some sort of divine intervention.

tehstu, to random
@tehstu@hachyderm.io avatar

As you are literally shopping on Amazon UK, if you click reject all cookies in the popup it actually signs you out. Presumably as a sort of petty fuck you. Every other site who presented a reject all simply rejected the optional cookies that do all the tracking and analytics stuff, not the functional cookie to keep you authenticated.

Sigh.

alan,

@tehstu Technically, all those other sites are not honouring your request to remove all cookies (save for the one that records your cookie preferences).

alan, to random

My wife is mucking with a scam caller now, saying her name is "Betty Lou Who, but my friends call me Boo" 😂

alan, to random

My best fax spam ploy... way back in the days before digital fax machines, was to verify the fax number of one of the midnight spammers, then create a loop of paper with a thick black line weaving it's way across several pages, tape them together and feed them into the machine, then taping the first page to the last. It ran for a good 30 minutes before the other end ran out of paper.

alan, to random

A good number of those calls we get where there's nobody on the line after you say hello, followed by a hangup a few seconds later are the scam centres, looking to identify a human on the other end of the line.

I've taken to answering these by repeating the phrase "We're sorry, the number you have dialed is in service. Please hang up and do not try your call again," until the line disconnects.

It's too early to know if this is effective or not, but it's still fun to f*ck with them.

alan,

@admin In my jurisdiction, that would be "Impersonating an Officer of the Law", a Criminal Code offence. I have considered saying something very similar but on the right side of said legislation, but have not yet done so.

alan,

@admin First, I am, but some people are humourless.
Second, I haven't done any research, preferring my lazier approach.
Third, in the unfortunate yet admittedly remote case where the unknown caller is a cop with a carrot up his ass, I don't want the grief.

alan,

@Dianora For some reason I find that extremely difficult to do. The "must say something after picking up the line" reflex is strong.

alan,

@Dianora Many voices at a switchboard is a tell for a charity fundraiser. Their call centres make the hellscape of a commercial call centre look like Nirvana. The humming/clicking noise has to be a connection artifact; no dialler I know of would do that.

Full confession: I have built legit call centres, written software that does this stuff, built apps that connect to diallers, and met some of the most notorious (Canadian) buggers in the field, only one of which has done actual jail time.

alan,

@Dianora The worst of the Canadians I met by leaving a message when it started to record that identified the hardware he was using. He invited me to come over to see his operation. His actions alone resulted in much of the autodialler legislation, whereupon he simply moved his hardware offshore. He is possibly the most ethically bankrupt person I have ever met. He's a Trump-grade narcissist.

alan,

@admin The common thread in our approaches is the humorous subtext. On the rare occasion where there's a human on the other line, they tend to be amused.

alan,

@Dianora Not sure what he's up to now but it certainly isn't good. He got his start in fax spam, moved to autodaillers, then to voicemail stuffing. I also met the Cckscker responsible for the "Domain Registry of Canada". I almost wish I'd killed him on the spot and done the time for it — as a public service.

alan,

@Dianora Hmm... broadly speaking, what area of work was the shady outfit in?

alan,

@Dianora Not one of the candidates I was thinking of. I just figured the odds of our paths crossing are pretty high. 😂

alan, to random

I just saw two "news" articles, one reporting that a virus was resistant to all known antibiotics and another warning of an "Anthrax virus". Maybe these folks could get together and try antibiotics on the Anthrax BACTERIA and the antivirals on the virus. FFS!

catchingshadows, to writing
@catchingshadows@mastodon.social avatar

TFW you aren't quite sure how repaired someone broken leg is going to be by the time protagonist A gets to where he needs to be. I may have to go back and edit the timeline. I hate math. So. Much. Why is there math in my writing? A curse upon needing to keep track of the sequential passage of time.

alan,

@catchingshadows I'm sorry but without a rigorous mathematical proof, I can't accept that explanation. 😜

alan,

@catchingshadows In fairness, time calculations are a pain in the butt even if you're fully up on your arithmetic.

alan, to ADHD

The #ADD #ADHD #neurodivergent habit I am working on is to put a project away before it's done!

This is instead of leaving the project out "until I get back to it", which leads to an archaeological dig with the most recent project overflowing onto the previous project, which is overflowing onto the project before that, which... this results in a huge, oppressive, unmanageable, crushing mess.

The time/effort of putting it away and bringing it back out is far less than dealing with the mess.

alan,

@macberg I have lost count of the number of perfectly good systems that I've tried or invented over the years. I was unable to maintain any of them for long enough to make them a habit. Now all I need is to remember which room something might be in, go there and look. Even if I have neglected to put a label on, I can find it. Worst case, I have to check the next most likely room.

It is as close to "no system at all" as I can get, with few/no new habits to form. That's why it works for me.

alan,

@macberg Yeah. My hard drives are the opposite. They have been highly organized since day 0. Anyone looking at them would think I'm OCD. My main working drive has 356K folders and 3.2M files, all organized in a highly specific structure. It is not uncommon for me to be working five or six levels down in a tree of folders, and it's a very rare case where I can't find something I need.

alan,

@macberg It's just a matter of taxonomy, so for example my current accounting records are in /business_name/admin/accounting/fye/2023 (fye being short for "fiscal year end"), and under that folders for assets, bank statements, expenses, etc. I try to maintain a limited number of folders at each level, and when something gets unwieldy, I'll break it down into sub-folders, which I now realize is much like the system I use for smaller, more specific storage boxes! /2

alan,

@macberg So at any point I'm looking at maybe 10 folders and a group of files that are generalized to that point in the tree, often no files at all. Then it's relatively easy to go "okay, what I'm looking for should be in that subfolder", and repeat until I get to the file(s) I wanted.

alan,

@macberg I should probably mention that I use the cross-platform CherryTree application to keep track of projects, to-do lists, ideas, pretty much anything. This makes for a pretty small, searchable database and it's easy to move nodes around so I have nodes at the top (__TODAY!! and _This Week) where I put the stuff that's "hot", then move them back or delete them when they're done). Also a search folder in Thunderbird that collates mail tagged as "to do" across a dozen email accounts into one.

alan,

@macberg "sounds like" is the operative phrase! It's more accurate to say that I am making some headway in the ongoing battle...

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