lorddimwit

lorddimwit, 7 months ago (edited 7 months ago) to languagelearning

Does anyone have a recommendation on a comprehensive intermediate #French program? Something that would take you from A2/B1 to C1? Everything I’ve seen is either way too easy or just…disorganized. University classes are, in my experience, both too easy and too focused on formalities.

I need something that is very precisely formulated, with a specific schedule and syllabus, so that “motivation to figure out what to do next” doesn’t come into play. I’m willing to pay for it.

#LanguageLearning

lorddimwit, 6 months ago to programming

Every time you write ‘0’ in the #C programming language, you’re writing an octal literal.

You’ve probably written more octal literals in C than literals in any other base.

Do what you will with this information.

#programming

lorddimwit, 8 months ago to london

#London is a city but it is not the City of London, which is a city called London in London. There’s also the City of Westminster which is also a city in London but it isn’t in the City of London.

lorddimwit, 11 months ago to random

11yo is working on the little example #TextAdventure I wrote to show him how these sorts of things work.

He figured out that he could create a room and add an exit to it…and have the exit point to the room itself. He called it a trap room.

I couldn’t be more proud.

lorddimwit, 5 months ago to windows

I made this after a conversation with some friends.

#Windows #Retrocomputing #meme

lorddimwit, 5 months ago to retrocomputing

Back in the late XXth Century there was a company called the Mark Williams Company. They made a not-Unix called Coherent.

They also made a fascinating product called COHERENT/rdb that was a relational database implemented as a series of little standalone utilities, much like MH for mail. I don’t know that rdb ever got much use, but it’s such an interesting little oddity.

The documentation is here (PDF warning): http://www.nesssoftware.com/home/mwc/doc/rdb/pdf/rdb.pdf

#unix #databases #retrocomputing

lorddimwit, 12 days ago to languagelearning

My father is staying with us, I’m taking care of him until Wednesday.

Work is busy, I’ve got a ton to do.

The kids just started summer break, I’m trying to spend as much time with them as I can.

I’m cooking, cleaning, fixing things.

Me: I should study some #Italian

lorddimwit, 8 months ago to random

I am curious if my subconscious picked “Kuhn Universal Hotel” for any particular reason.

lorddimwit, 8 months ago to random

Making spicy corn flake battered #FriedChicken.

12yo is manning the dredging station.

lorddimwit, 8 months ago to random

I don’t mean to pry, but is there something to the trend of talking into the edge of your phone and having it on speaker while in public? I’m seeing that more often recently and I don’t understand the purpose. Is it a microphones suck kinda thing?

lorddimwit, 9 months ago to random

8yo and I have a long-running story that we’ve been making up episodes of for years. Tonight we broke the fourth wall: one character forgot their script, another was upset that the food wasn’t good enough at craft services, one character complained about professionalism. We were cracking up. Oh and the Temporal Lord is played by a guy named Jeff, apparently.

lorddimwit, 23 days ago to random

Back from the arcade.

Me: I’m gonna go change into sweatpants.

12yo: You and your dang sweatpants.

Me: I did not work this long and this hard to wear street pants in my own damn house, son.

lorddimwit, 10 months ago to random

#plan9 punched so far above its weight in terms of impact on the computing world.

UTF-8
The /proc filesystem
9P for qemu, WSL, etc
The Plan 9 C compiler’s influence on Go (not to mention Alef and the thread library)
rio was cited as the inspiration for the X Render Extension

And rc is beautiful.

lorddimwit, 6 months ago to random

I was up late last night cooking and cleaning the house to prepare for today. This morning I did the easiest thing for breakfast I could think of. I give you cafe con telera.

The coffee heats the bread, saving a step, and keeps the coffee warm. I like my meals to have high thermodynamic efficiency. Plus it looks kinda like Toad from Super Mario Bros.

lorddimwit, 5 months ago to history

My kids watched a History Matters video talking about the Schleswig-Holstein Question and now I have to figure out what the hell that was all about.

It doesn’t help that apparently at the time it was apparently used as an example of an insanely complex problem.

#history

lorddimwit, 5 months ago to random

What’s the easiest relatively standards complaint (C89 at least) C compiler to port to another platform (as both host and target), and not necessarily a POSIX-y one? I’m thinking maybe tcc or ACK but I honestly don’t know what the cool kids are doing these days.

lorddimwit, 2 months ago to random

STOP PUTTING MENUS ON APPS

MENUS WERE NOT MEANT TO BE ON YOUR PHONE

Years of QR codes at tables but no real world use found.

Wanted to know what was available at a restaurant to order? We had a word for that: Menus

“Yes please, let me not order if cell service is bad. Let me not order if my phone battery is dead.” - statements dreamed up by the utterly deranged.

lorddimwit, 7 months ago to random

The phlebotomist said I have the best veins she’s ever seen, so I guess you can say things are getting pretty serious.

lorddimwit, 24 days ago to programming

Who called it linear typing and not “once in a lifetime”

Who called it const and not “same as it ever was”

Who called it a stack trace and not “well, how did I get here?”

#programming #music #TalkingHeads

lorddimwit, 8 months ago to random

I’ve always wondered this. I’ve researched it briefly off and on, but never found a good answer. I’m sure it’s answered on marc.info somewhere, but:

Why is luit, the tool used by #xterm et al to convert legacy encodings to #UTF8 on the fly, called luit?

In French, “luit” means “glowing” but I don’t know if that’s what was intended (and if so, I’ve always mispronounced the name of the program).

@cross this seems like something you’d know or at least be able to lie convincingly about.

#unix

lorddimwit, 4 months ago to InitialD

Okay collective Fediverse Hive Mind, I need your help with a trivial bit of knowledge.

There was a shoot ‘em up from the 80’s or 90’s that had the whole “Japanese shoot ‘em up of the 80’s and 90’s biomechanical” aesthetic.

One of bosses was a classic shmup wall boss. It had a woman’s face in matte metal, until you deal enough damage at which point the mask breaks off and you see the body horror alien thing underneath.

Was it R-Type? Some other shmup? It’s driving me crazy.

#arcade #shmup

lorddimwit, 7 months ago to random Chinese

我的第一个普通话笑话

lorddimwit, 5 months ago to random

Me: Did you put your trombone away in your room like I asked?

12yo: Yeah.

The trombone:

#parenthood

lorddimwit, 1 year ago to random

This evening, out of the blue, my 11yo asked how his mom and I would “handle it” if he were gay.

I told him, obviously, that it wouldn’t matter and we love him with all our hearts no matter what.

I don’t know if he’s gay (he’s 11 and never given any indication of romantic attraction to anyone), but I’m vaguely concerned about his choice of language for “handle it” like it would be a burden or something.

I don’t want to make a big deal of it but we’ll talk more tomorrow.

lorddimwit, 11 months ago to random

@foone

Is this a “I still remember regions” question?

https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=I_Still_Remember_Regions.txt