It was better than Crystal Skull because it didn’t quite so explicitly sci-fi the magic, the set pieces were a little better, and Helena was less annoying than Mutt, but both movies are sort of equally useless, and openly depressed Indy was VERY depressing. The character always had some undiagnosed mental health issues pushing him towards unhealthy risk-taking, but Mangold’s Indy just made me sad.

I’m kinda sad to see it enshittify, for gamers and for those who find it fits their actual collaboration use case, but I also really hate the number forum-format communities that Discord has displaced or prevented from coalescing. Discoverability on Discord is terrible, as is having help available long term, as well as older advice and other content that helps newbies get the culture of a community. Even where the functionality exists, the general “real time” transitory feel of it reduces the quality of content and encourages people to be dicks, since it will all scroll by or be forgotten (if streaming) in a few moments anyway.

Horses for courses, and my old-ass X-ennial self thinks Discord has been pressed into service on a lot of courses where it’s terrible.

Ha! I used it TWICE!

Also, to OP, that definitely wouldn’t have come OEM on a PC that shipped with Win 98.

This all feels a lot like any low- or mid-range CAD suite that gets acquired by Autodesk, Siemens, or PTC. Promise enough to avoid a revolt, but start eroding with the next release.

The educational licensing for lock-in is also par for the course. It can be done well (Rhino 3D is legendary for letting small-shop designers use their cheap edu license forever, even commercially), but generally it’s just there to maintain the supply of baby drafters and get subscriptions from employers.

And for the final thing I’ll definetly wanna fix with no clue how, is that the Monitor is oddly Zoomed out. The text is all further back then it should be making for a weird look. Old Burn-in from when this thing was actively used also assures me of that. No clue how one can fix that, any suggestions?

Most CRT displays have potentiometers, adjustable by screw or knob, to control horizontal and vertical size. As always, be careful with flyback transformers, etc., so as not to die.

Burn in is a real and AFAIK permanent thing.

The Marvels is not bad at all. Better than Iron Man 2 or 3, Thor 2 or 4, Ant-Man 3, Black Panther 2, the Ultron movie, or any standalone Hulk movie (not entirely fair, I know), and equivalent to the “good” Ant-Man movies or GotG 2. It’s also better than Captain Marvel, and Brie Larson is finally making the character her own. Good chemistry among the leads, the switching dynamic is visually interesting, and the entire cast brought in from Ms. Marvel remains endlessly enjoyable. The “need” to have watched everything is there but dramatically overstated in complaints I’ve seen.

Now, to be fair, the plot is too episodic and disjointed, and the villain is once again an underdeveloped cipher with tantalizingly nuanced motives that aren’t explored, and the movie certainly is more cohesive if you’ve kept up with your homework. Honestly, though, if you watched Captain Marvel and caught the trailer for Ms. Marvel you’d be fine, though again, you’d be missing one of the more delightful (if still a bit uneven) recent Marvel projects.

Those arrow keys are confusing, but I can see why the first thought was to place them like that

I’ve seen worse. The Commodore 64 used two arrow keys and Shift. Many 8-bit computers split them onto completely different sides of the keyboard, and nobody agreed on what the layout should be, even if the group was similar. Finally, DEC and then IBM standardized the inverted T, and all was right with the world.

almost every one of these is sort of set dressing and skin deep, and changed drastically in some fundamental way.

I think we’re on the same team here, but it would be silly not to view Dune as one inspiration among many. I think Herbert was a being a needlessly salty MFer though. For the second point, I was thinking more the Bene Gesserit than the Fremen, and while “warriors” is maybe stretching things a bit, you wouldn’t want to get on the bad side of a reverend mother.

It’s only a throwaway reference in the original movie, but ultimately, as is the way with Star Wars, the lore was expanded and it was declared to be a sort of general purpose narcotic, possibly mildly involving telepathy, suitable mostly for inspiring organized crime plotlines. It’s pretty different from Herbert’s spice.

• Galaxy spanning empire with unseen emperor.
• Spice as a valuable commodity
• Desert planet to include skeleton of wormlike creature and suited inhabitants
• Secretive sect of religious warriors with magical powers
• Chosen one narrative with a dead dad

Now that said, almost every one of these is sort of set dressing and skin deep, and changed drastically in some fundamental way. Lucas was also not exploring remotely the same thematic ground as Herbert. He owes some of the world building to ideas lifted from Dune, without a doubt, but also to Lensman and Flash Gordon and John Carter of Mars. He owes plot and structure to Kurosawa ad Sergio Leone, and themes to Joseph Campbell and three thousand years of adventure tales, fairy tales, and coming of age stories. the only thing “original” about Star Wars is the integration of so many disparate influences into a coherent whole. You could argue that Dune was exploring more sophisticated themes and had a more actionable morality, but Herbert was flattering himself that Star Wars was a “ripoff.” The influences were obvious, but they were just one hopper of grist for the Lucas mill.

Well shoot, now I need to make a COWABUNGA novelty keycap.

I thought a tombstone or a boogieboard. 🤣

More seriously, things get weird when you want to go no-stabilizers but don’t want to buy a custom set of blank keycaps. This one only uses the 1.25u to 1.75u keys from a standard TKL or full size.

I am currently typing on my one and only red-switch board, and I am mis-hitting keys like a mofo, and bottoming out even harder than normal. I don’t type anywhere near correctly, but I make up for it by typing enthusiastically, and whatever the category, my favorites are always heavy.

From my keebtalk post, which also has more pics:

It’s early obviously, but I’m optimistic about this one. It feels pretty nice, and the Jades are almost as nice as the Navies, just missing that slight “kerchunk!” that the Navies have. The Jades are a bit snappier, and I agree that they may be ever so slightly louder, but I don’t think they dethrone my dark blue fingerbreakers.

After my last set of keycaps came out with some fairly obvious alignment issues, I rethought my jig and made a new one that could support 26 1u keys, plus one of arbitrary width. I also went with corner legends instead of centered, as that punishes a lack of accuracy much less, if you can at least get your setup repeatable. Then, I did clusters together in batches (i.e. all alphas in one run, all F keys together, etc.). The result is a much less jarring alignment situation. It would be ideal, if the plastic itself had cooperated. This PBT recipe didn’t like the infusible ink nearly as much as the DSA keycaps on my other no-stabs build. Legends are not as crisp as I’d like, and the colors are pretty muted, but the improved alignment makes this a modest victory.

Overall, I like (though not quite love) the way they came out, and the overall effect for the board, between the layout, case, and font, is a bit “Apple meets Logitech,” which may or may not be a good thing, but it’s always satisfying to wrap one of these up.

“You don’t face your fears, you ride them.”

Sorry, y’all, but if you’re already into tornado chasing, then something that scares you enough to stay home is probably simple prudence, not an emotional block. Either this guy is our protagonist and shouldn’t be, or he’s an antagonist and his Faustian temptation is unconvincing.

I dunno, maybe the CGI will look cool.

The local cryptid in my home town was the “Humanzee” reported to have been created at the “secret lab” of a Yale psychologist/primatologist/eugenicist.

Ergonomics are great, very gentle. Feedback and performance slightly lacking. 🤣

My first two DIY builds were orthos, but it sort of didn’t take. I did realize that while I don’t type properly or even all that well, I still don’t particularly need a full size spacebar as I almost always land in the same spot with my right thumb or (forgive me) index finger. I use KMK for my boards, and the debounce is good enough that if I happen to double tap the two spacebars, it won’t register two taps. The rest of the longer keys don’t REALLY need to be that long, and everybody hates lubing and tuning stabs (or they damn well should) anyway.

Enter is going to be the biggest keycap at 1.75u. You get a little wobble (box/dustproof switches can help some), but nothing structurally problematic. Most boards only start with stabs at 2u.

I’m currently using this one’s FRL ancestor, and the only real issue I have is that it uses a 1U LShift with another 1u between it and the ‘Z’ key (kinda ISO-ish), and I just can’t quite get 100% used to it, hence the “tombstone” layout on the new build.

If we’re just trying to keep it simple with a single, reputable vendor:

Keychron v3 barebones TKL
White on Black “OSA” keycaps, which look “swoopy” and modernly retro, but mostly feel like regular OEM on your SteelSeries
Gateron Black switches.

EDIT: Nordic makes it a little more expensive at Keychron and with fewer options, but it’s still doable. If you get one that’s QMK compatible, any ISO can be Nordic, and you just need to source keycaps, which they do have though I don’t see them in white on black.