jaybird110127

@jaybird110127@dragonscave.space

Blind computer geek from Louisville, Kentucky, USA.

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textfiles, to random
@textfiles@digipres.club avatar

I now realized we passed the tenth anniversary of the FILE FORMATS WIKI without a whisper in 2022. Previously "Just Solve the Problem", the File Formats Problem (not enough documentation and links to tools) was important and big enough that it's still going!

http://fileformats.archiveteam.org/wiki/Main_Page

jaybird110127,

@textfiles Did the whole "Just Solve the XXX Problem" where XXX changes every year idea sort of die off?

simon, to random

#AudioMo: Years ago, I got a GE microcassette answering machine just for fun. More recently, I got an AT&T digital answering machine and discovered it had some unusual but cool features, including a built-in talking caller ID. Inspired by a long thread about old phones and phone equipment, I recorded a demo of both answering machines, including leaving myself a message on the tape and playing back the famous "Answering Machine Song".

jaybird110127,

@simon Okay, so now what someone needs to do is record a call into the answering machine to leave a message, in which it plays the entire song at least once, from the perspective of the line receiving the incoming call. Recording over a VoIP connection would most likely squish everything down to 8K, whereas if you could get a high quality recording directly from the line where the answering machine is connected, you'd capture whatever the machine sent out over the line before any other phone equipment got to it.

jaybird110127,

@simon Radio Shack used to sell a device, I think it was called the Phone Recording Control. It was a box with two cords coming from it. One plugged into a phone jack, and the other plugged into a recorder, and also had a submini plug to be connected to a recorder's remote control jack. The idea is that the box can turn the recorder on and off as needed when the phone is or isn't being used. It had circuitry in place to ensure that the 90 volt ringing current didn't make it to the recorder's input jack. I'm sure there are plenty of similar phone patch devices on the market still, though I don't have experience with any of them.

jaybird110127, to random

Silly observation. The Table Flipper can't currently run under NVGT. And why not? Because one of the includes uses tone_synth, which isn't implemented yet.

jaybird110127,

@FluidEscence That…only made things worse. Now, instead of getting just one error about tone_synth not being defined, I get a whole mess of errors in the main script. And I don't know enough about how that game works to fix them unfortunately. Yes, I am including bgt_compat.nvgt.

jaybird110127,

@FluidEscence Also slight bug that might be a feature rather than a bug. The original code includes several custom scripts in its own includes directory. At first the script called them this.bgt, that.bgt, the_other.bgt, etc. However, apparently even though it gave the .bgt extension, NVGT still wouldn't include them until I renamed the files and changed the references to have the .nvgt extension.

jaybird110127,

@FluidEscence Okay I understand that in theory. But I would think if I actually specified a specific file with its extension, it would include that particular file. For example, I just tested the following program in Visual C 6:

#include "c:\windows\explorer.exe"
void main() {
printf("Yoink!\n");
}

And when compiling, it processed the #include line, included that particular file, and gave compiling it the good old college try…not that it amounted to much, as before long the error count exceeded 100.

MariahL, to random

#AudioMo day 3: Slots! Lots of slots. During my move to California in 2019 my parents and I stopped at different cascinos to try our luck which was great for me because all the sounds. Have a compilation of said slot machine noises. I think I even win 60 bucks at some point in this recording :)

jaybird110127,

@jdking92 @MariahL What I wish I had was an IGT (International Gaming Technology) S+ slot machine from the probably early to mid 90's. That's what they had just about everywhere in Las Vegas in the 90's and early 2000's. Then everything went coinless, and casinos became much less fun, at least in my opinion.

jaybird110127,

@jdking92 @MariahL Yeah I did, I actually had two of them at one point. Gave both of them away, as I stopped playing with them.

jaybird110127, to random

I've played a bit with NVGT (https://nvgt.gg) which is a brand new audio game development system. A primary objective of NVGT is to be able to revive old BGT projects in a new environment. To that end, with almost no effort, I got my implementation of the Memory Train game from the BGT manual going in NVGT. Here's an audio demo.

jaybird110127,

@jscholes A combination of a few things @BorrisInABox did, mixed together by me. It's a sped up version of an Ensoniq TS-12 arrangement of one musical setting of Heidenröslein. Then I mixed in a version of the same thing but with a sped up DECtalk trying to sing the words.

evilcookies98, to random
@evilcookies98@dragonscave.space avatar

Why on Earth does typing with a bandaid on your finger have to be such a royal pain in the patootie?

jaybird110127,

@evilcookies98 Trust me, I found that out while I was in the hospital a few months ago. I could neither type comfortably, nor use the MBraille app on my iPhone. Except for me, it was one of those hospital type pulse oximeters that goes on a finger.

jscholes, to mastodon
@jscholes@dragonscave.space avatar

How do people meaningfully search and/or export their #Mastodon favourites? I've been favouriting (not bookmarking) a bunch of useful and/or interesting stuff since I came here, but the data seems difficult to access in a useful way.

When I use my instance's website, there's no search facility on the Favourites page. It only loads a subset of favourites upfront, so without pressing the "load more" button hundreds of times, I can't use my screen reader's find feature either.

When I try the favourites timeline of Semaphore, it also only loads a subset of my favourites, but apparently without a means of loading more of them.

In Mona on iOS, I would likewise have to keep finding, and then pressing, "load more posts".

When I try to find information on the internet about possible qualifiers for searching my own favourites, I get results about API calls and installing Elasticsearch as an instance owner.

In the "import/export" section of my account preferences, it doesn't say anything about favourites, and doesn't make it clear whether my posts archive would include them.

jaybird110127,

@jscholes @admin How'd you archive your statuses and favorites? How about bookmarks?

bryansmart, to random

I’ve known a few hated blind people, who surreptitiously record gatherings, without permission, using digital audio recorders. Going through the last of my uncle’s old tapes, I’m realizing this is nothing new. My aunt secretly recorded gatherings, dinner parties, etc. She also recorded lots of her phone calls. On the one hand, these are an interesting ear in to 50 years ago, and voices of relatives dead before I was born. On the other, fuck, was she a creepy woman to do this without asking.

jaybird110127,

@bryansmart @Derek Okay I just have to ask. Did she record call setup, or just the content of the calls? E.G. do you get to hear anything of whatever central office equipment was in place at the time, or is it just talking? I have some of the same feelings as you about this, it's interesting from a historical preservation perspective, but recording people without them at the very least knowing about it is wrong.

jaybird110127,

@bryansmart @Derek Almost sounds to me like Crossbar 5, but can't tell for sure. I don't think it makes the signature clicks Crossbar 5 makes when you finish dialing a number, but the recording is low enough quality that I can't entirely be sure.

jaybird110127,

@bryansmart @cublanco @stirlock There's another thing too. Tapes and tape recorders, due to their analog nature, lend themselves to abuse of various kinds, which can sometimes lead to interesting noises or results. For example, as a kid, I figured out the old trick of recording something on a stereo recorder on the A side of a tape, turning the tape over, then playing the B side in a Library of Congress talking book player with the track selector switch set to track three. This caused the just recorded material to play backwards. At the time I didn't understand exactly why this happened, but it didn't matter. I had found a consistently repeatable procedure for recording things, then playing them backwards. This lead to all sorts of adventures learning how to say things backwards.

evilcookies98, to random
@evilcookies98@dragonscave.space avatar

Safe guesses for what the carrier set voicemail pin could be? I’m trying to set up my voicemail box and it’s asking me for a pin I wasn’t given.

jaybird110127,

@evilcookies98 Last four digits of your phone number? Entire phone number? 1234? 1111? 12345?

FluidEscence, to random

Wellp, perfect timing, Keychron, thanks for releasing keyboards on the day I decided I needed a new keyboard. Pretty fucking cheap too. Grabbed their new numpad one, the B6 Pro Ultra-Slim Wireless Keyboard. Am excited. It has everything I want in a keyboard, USBC, 2.4 ghz wireless and bluetooth. Boom! Job done.

jaybird110127,

@FluidEscence Where'd you get this? Can't find it on Amazon.

jaybird110127,

@FluidEscence This looks interesting. I'll be interested to know when you get yours. The page and manual don't describe the exact keyboard layout, at least not in a way we can detect it. Do you know if it actually has every key that appears on a standard keyboard? One I'm really interested in is the Applications/Context menu key.

jaybird110127,

@jpellis2008 @FluidEscence I think it's three.

glyph, to random
@glyph@mastodon.social avatar

It suddenly occurs to me that tremendous amounts of programmer culture are just various, mostly-failed attempts at managing the work associated with keeping pace with a changing world. Specifically: SemVer, LTSes, “commercial support” funding models for OSS, Win32’s “Old New Thing”-style compatibility, SaaS interface versioning, and, arguably, the popularity of the x86/amd64 architectures themselves are all aspects of a fantasy world where you build something once and have it work forever.

jaybird110127,

@matt @datajake1999 Yeah at first when I was trying FreedomBox, I thought to myself, "Oh wow, it uses DECtalk, this should be great!" The version it used sounded a lot like the second one, which was much less than what I'd hoped for. Then at some point I do remember there being an update, and the version included then sounded better. IIRC still not like 4.2/4.3, but better than the first piece of junk.

jaybird110127,

@matt @datajake1999 So now that we have what we have and know what we know, I wonder why Force/Fonix were so reluctant to build good versions of DECtalk? I know the story that was going around is that source code for the older versions had been lost. Maybe what that means is that there were no official copies of the old source code that they could legally use? As we all now know, the source code wasn't truly lost.

jaybird110127,

@datajake1999 @bryansmart @matt For some reason I tend to prefer the sound of the fixed point model. Not exactly sure why. Probably just that it's what I grew up with.

JEkis, to random

I've been favoriting everything I bookmark, to let the poster know that I appreciated them posting the link. I just realized, I have no idea whether bookmarks generate notifications too. I sure hope I haven't been spamming people with double notifications.

jaybird110127,

@JEkis As I understand it, favorites notify the author, while bookmarks are for your own reference only, so don't generate notifications.

JamminJerry, to random
@JamminJerry@mastodon.stickbear.me avatar

well this sucks! I can't play shooter! I press enter on the exe file, and it just sits there looking at me like I am stupid. now how fair is that? @FluidEscence you need to fix this! my day is ruened if I can't play my game! just kidding. lol. it is version 0.70 I am having issues with if that matters. I played it earlier today, but now it won't load, and I can't reboot the computer, or I will disterb the boys shows on there tv's.

jaybird110127,

@FluidEscence @seedy @JamminJerry @jpellis2008 @nycki96 Another question I've always wondered, as I can't really understand it. What is the person saying in the Crime Hunter death scene, when you die and have no lives left? The first part of it sounds kind of like, "Cat to broom."

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