@beardicus@hachyderm.io
@beardicus@hachyderm.io avatar

beardicus

@beardicus@hachyderm.io

#TechWriting, #PenPlotter, #robots that draw, #JavaScript noodling, design, #CheeseMaking, and combinations therein.

Technical writer @ DigitalOcean living in the apple orchards outside of #RochesterNY #ROC.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

aardrian, (edited ) to random
@aardrian@toot.cafe avatar

“Digital Ocean” is a…

beardicus,
@beardicus@hachyderm.io avatar

@aardrian i can't wait to report these results to somebody at work in 2 days.

nclslbrn, to opensource
@nclslbrn@mstdn.io avatar

I spent the day drawing glyphs with code and finding rules for assembling accents and other diacritics. I think I'm going to scale back my project, a SVG font with a JS API, otherwise I won't be done by 2025.

You can play with it here:
https://nclslbrn.github.io/plotWriter/

beardicus,
@beardicus@hachyderm.io avatar

@nclslbrn this is very nice. keep at it!

beardicus, to retrocomputing
@beardicus@hachyderm.io avatar

any #PenPlotter #RetroComputing folks near Pittsburgh, PA, USA... just stumbled upon a new in box Apple Color Plotter for $50: https://pittsburgh.craigslist.org/sys/d/avella-vintage-apple-color-plotter/7734811823.html

beardicus, to random
@beardicus@hachyderm.io avatar

sorry for the #PenPlotter gush… but i've really been scrounging lately and have dozens of weird manuals, papers, and brochures to process.

one thing i see pretty frequently: lovely tables of plottable letters, numbers, and symbols.

i've been surprised by how often the letter “O” character has a partial stroke to disambiguate it with the number “0". also in this set it looks like the “D" character has an intentional gap, again to make it distinctly non-“0”.

🏛️ https://archive.org/details/DTIC_ADA235605/page/1-16/mode/2up

beardicus, to random
@beardicus@hachyderm.io avatar

help the @internetarchive scan pallets full of old manuals!

i've dug up dozens of old #PenPlotter manuals on the archive... but i'm sure there are more lurking in those boxes and I want to see them: https://blog.archive.org/2024/04/24/a-happy-ending-for-some-manual-labor-and-a-call-for-support/

beardicus,
@beardicus@hachyderm.io avatar

Look at this wonderful old manual. LOOK AT ITTTTtttTtTT, and then weep for the documentation you are forced to scrounge and grovel for today.

🏛️ https://archive.org/details/manualsplus_02107

inside cover page of the instruction manual for the weston model 1292 bi polar digital panel meter. it’s plain black text on a white bakground.
first page of the manual describing “panel mounting” the instrument, with a slightly-exploded view of the unit with the front cover off.
a page from the manual showing waveforms as lines. some are square waves, others look like sawtooth waves. they are labeled with frequencies or other designation, and the x axis totals 400 milliseconds.

beardicus,
@beardicus@hachyderm.io avatar

Did you know Fluke made a #PenPlotter? I SURE DIDN’T because I was a tiny baby at the time. LOoOOK at IT!!1!

🏛️ https://archive.org/details/manualsplus_03096

sample output from the pen plotter, showing a sine wave and labeled X and Y axis “plot of Y = Sine of X”

beardicus, to random
@beardicus@hachyderm.io avatar

why is there no .library top level domain?

we've got specialized TLDs for venture capitalists, casinos, republicans, ”dealers" (but i repeat myself) …

nothing for our wonderful libraries.

nervous_jessica, to random
@nervous_jessica@mastodon.social avatar

I can’t decide if we should drive to Rochester today for the eclipse. Is a cloudy eclipse worth 4-5 hours of driving each way with a baby and a toddler?

beardicus,
@beardicus@hachyderm.io avatar

@nervous_jessica the forecast is not looking great out here, alas. do you have a place to stay? folks are very worried about mega-traffic today and tomorrow but i’m not sure that’ll materialize.

simon, to random
@simon@simonwillison.net avatar

It’s OK to call it Artificial Intelligence: I wrote about how people really love objecting to the term "AI" to describe LLMs and suchlike because those things aren't actually "intelligent" - but the term AI has been used to describe exactly this kind of research since 1955, and arguing otherwise at this point isn't a helpful contribution to the discussion.

https://simonwillison.net/2024/Jan/7/call-it-ai/

beardicus,
@beardicus@hachyderm.io avatar

@codinghorror @simon big "do you know who i am" energy here. are you ok jeff? this is an oddly aggressive response to an article about words.

beardicus, to random
@beardicus@hachyderm.io avatar

TOOONA? #caturday

anildash, to random
@anildash@me.dm avatar

wait is it censorship if my pull request is closed https://github.com/LemmyNet/activitypub-federation-rust/pull/36

beardicus,
@beardicus@hachyderm.io avatar

@anildash only if joebiden6969 closes it. otherwise it's freeze peach.

adam, to random
@adam@social.lol avatar

#hacktoberfest is just around the corner! I’ll have a repo set up and some fun opportunities to contribute for anyone who wants to participate. Stay tuned!

https://hacktoberfest.com

beardicus,
@beardicus@hachyderm.io avatar

@adam fyi @hacktoberfest is here via hachyderm… have a great hacktoberfest!

beardicus, to random
@beardicus@hachyderm.io avatar

perhaps useful for #PenPlotter folks:

https://phosphoricons.com

this open source (MIT licensed) icon set includes the original (non-outlined) SVG strokes (look for “SVG Raw”) of over 7000 icons.

a cat icon comprised of thin black outlines, labeled ‘cat’

beardicus, to random
@beardicus@hachyderm.io avatar

federated Yo app when?

beardicus, to random
@beardicus@hachyderm.io avatar

but how could i blog without writing my own bespoke static site generator?

beardicus,
@beardicus@hachyderm.io avatar

(i am doing this now and it is quite fun but honestly: who knows if the actual blogging part will ever happen again)

beardicus,
@beardicus@hachyderm.io avatar

@bde I know it’s cliched behavior but I’m really having fun. It’s a nice digestible problem for this hobbyist javascripter.

twilliability, to random
@twilliability@genart.social avatar

deleted_by_author

    •
    beardicus,
    @beardicus@hachyderm.io avatar

    @twilliability yes, you can do this. under the “Sharing" panel in the system settings app on Ubuntu, look for “Screen Sharing”. Here are some older instructions that may give you a start:

    beardicus,
    @beardicus@hachyderm.io avatar

    @twilliability oops, hit "send" too early. anyways: on the mac side the vnc client is built in... in the Finder choose the “Go" menu and then "Connect to Server" and put in “vnc:// …" with your details. there has been some fishiness with encrypted VNC on macOS so that’s what the gsettings set org.gnome.Vino require-encryption false bits of the instruction are talking about.

    beardicus,
    @beardicus@hachyderm.io avatar

    @twilliability VNC can be a little less performant than RDP, yeah. i just poked around a little and it looks like ubuntu 22.04 actually defaults to RDP now. on the mac side i think you'll need to install the microsoft remote desktop client from the app store too:

    https://apps.apple.com/us/app/microsoft-remote-desktop/id1295203466?mt=12

    beardicus,
    @beardicus@hachyderm.io avatar

    @twilliability 👋🏻 i just re-stumbled on this thread after spending a few nights fiddling with installing RDP on Linux (xrdp)… tl;dr it's very worth it to use RDP and avoid VNC in my opinion. over a wired connection RDP is quite snappy, even playing video and scrolling web pages. also: sound works well, you can easily share a local folder with the remote Linux machine, and the Microsoft RDP client does a much better job making normal keyboard shortcuts like cut and paste just work.

    thomasfuchs, to random
    @thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io avatar

    Anyone here using DigitalOcean and have an idea what the difference between the CPU options (regular intel, premium amd, premium intel) for machine type basic is?

    (Please only reply if you have personal experience with this.)

    beardicus,
    @beardicus@hachyderm.io avatar

    @thomasfuchs @janl
    premium also has NVMe SSDs! (i work on the docs at DO)

    simonbs, to random
    @simonbs@mastodon.social avatar

    Just shopped for my next brew. It will be an IPA at 4.9% with Citra/Simcoe hops and Kveik yeast. My two previous IPAs turned out pretty bad so I'm crossing my fingers that third time is the charm 🤞

    beardicus,
    @beardicus@hachyderm.io avatar

    @simonbs that’s a pretty cool self-contained brewing setup. I assume it’s electric since you’re indoors?

    beardicus, to random
    @beardicus@hachyderm.io avatar

    a thread 🧵 highlighting interesting manuals 📘 and ephemera 🏷️ added to the ✨ awesome-plotters ✨ repo:

    beardicus,
    @beardicus@hachyderm.io avatar

    📘 Information Display Vol 5.2 (1968)

    📄 http://archive.informationdisplay.org/id-archive/1968/marapr

    Some interesting plotter ads in the archives of Information Display, the Journal of the Society for Information Display, via @phooky.

    #PenPlotter

    an add for the Complot On-Line Digital Plotter, showing a photo illustration of the DP-1 machine on top of a sturdy office desk within a brushy yellow-green illustrated datacenter environment with large computers and magnetic tape devices. The ad begins: "New off-line plotting system offers convenience, speed, low cost" and then goes on to give a table of specifications and the cost of $3550.
    an ad for K&E (Keuffel & Esser Co.) digital plotting paper. "creative products for the creative engineer" There is an image of a drum-based pen plotter loaded with some pin-feed graph paper. The ad begins: "Now K&E offers digital plotting paper and film any way you want it."
    an ad for CalComp plotter systems. at the top there is a photo of a face, where we can see just the man's two eyes looking out at us. superimposed on this photo is two pen plotted diagrams, one just under each eye. the plots are showing slightly different 3d views of a crystal structure. they are labeled "benzylidenemalononitrile". The ad begins: "3-D Diagrams now produced automatically by computer-plotter" and then goes on to talk about how the diagrams were produced by the Defence Standards Laboratory in Victoria, Australia. The two slightly shifted views of the crystal structure are intended to be viewed through a prismatic 3d viewing system.

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • provamag3
  • kavyap
  • DreamBathrooms
  • osvaldo12
  • magazineikmin
  • InstantRegret
  • everett
  • Youngstown
  • ngwrru68w68
  • slotface
  • rosin
  • GTA5RPClips
  • tester
  • PowerRangers
  • anitta
  • thenastyranch
  • mdbf
  • ethstaker
  • cisconetworking
  • Durango
  • vwfavf
  • normalnudes
  • tacticalgear
  • khanakhh
  • modclub
  • cubers
  • Leos
  • megavids
  • All magazines
    •