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  1. Mercutio

    Here is a thread to talk about gaming

    If you have phone with enough testicular fortitude, you can now run Steam directly on it. You need a Snapdragon 8 gen something with Adreno graphics, which we can more or less shorten to "Samsung Ssomething from this decade" but yes it works. I don't mean for buying games or chatting. I mean...
  2. Mercutio

    Oldest?

    Yes. Several. None in more than occasional use, but I have an old-ass Pentium 4 set up for Windows 98 stuff and I believe every Thinkpad I've ever bought can still be powered on and used.
  3. Mercutio

    Something Random

    My last Intel X25M didn't survive the most recent power whoopsie. My power blinked off for maybe 15 minutes and the boot drive in one of my systems stopped being. Lame.
  4. Mercutio

    Oldest?

    I'll be 51 in a couple months. I think dd is ~46? jtr is in his 60s someplace. Tannin's probably... right there with you someplace. He's still posting photos on his personal web site as of a couple weeks ago.
  5. Mercutio

    Merc's Useful Tools of the day

    Actually I messed with Lightcraft and Filmcraft for a bit. 1. They are both VERY, CRAZY fast. 2. They both seem to have file format limitations; Lightcraft for example can handle a DNG just fine but doesn't like my Sony or Canon RAW file types, although it will interact with the embedded JPG if...
  6. Mercutio

    Merc's Useful Tools of the day

    https://getartcraft.com/apps Some people have developed an effective suite of Adobe Creative Suite replacement tools. I've only messed with Lightcraft, but it seems to be fairly feature complete and it works on Linux as well as Windows and Macs.
  7. Mercutio

    Something Random

    I am not absolutely certain of it because I never messed with it on a "gaming" system, but I remember S3 Virge hardware as famously slower for rendering than decent systems could manage by brute forcing everything in software.
  8. Mercutio

    Windows 11

    Why such an old release? 20.04 has been out of support for what, a year? Since KDE is purportedly dropping support for Xorg in version 6.8, and GNOME is working on that as well and I'm absolutely convinced that Wayland has never done a single thing right in all of history, I spent last night...
  9. Mercutio

    I do want to buy a used car

    I wasn't looking at what cars have little cubby holes around the interior when I went out and looked at cars before. The CRV has a slightly more agreeable setup, but it's also a more expensive car if someone wants a hybrid drive train. Most new cars put some kind of lump between the driver and...
  10. Mercutio

    Windows 11

    I'm still waiting for Microsoft's fix for Windows losing track of tunneled RDP sessions. I haven't seen anything, bug-wise, but in general, I wouldn't want to be first to take up the new version on my primary PC, either.
  11. Mercutio

    I do want to buy a used car

    RAV4 might be going back. I absolutely can't stand the interior. There's no place to put things. No recessed places for change, let along keep pens, lip balm or small tools. I can't keep a tablet anywhere that it doesn't fall off or block the windshield. So far I've put around a car payment in...
  12. Mercutio

    Windows 11

    There's some security nice to haves. Better biometric options. You can move the taskbar and there's some options to customize the start menu. Nothing you'd care about in terms of features unless you're excited about other than that. I installed it on my laptop and had to go look at what changed.
  13. Mercutio

    Selfhosting fun

    I'm currently in the process of moving my ebook library over to Stump, because it respects my existing organization structures better than alternatives and works well for ebooks and comics. I'm using BookOrbit now for metadata handling. Jellyfin has had a pretty major update. Among other...
  14. Mercutio

    Something Random

    The T20 is an absolute god among laptops of its era. I found myself standing on the monitor side lid of one, purely by accident, once upon a time. Other than my shoeprint, it was unharmed. Which is good, because at the time that particular configuration was probably $3k in 1999 dollars. Also...
  15. Mercutio

    I do want to buy a used car

    Car happened. It's fine, I guess. I am going to miss my old one. The newer car doesn't have in-dash maps, so the first thing I wound up doing was to get a tablet to do Android Auto. I didn't realize how used to it I've become. Putting a tablet in to handle it only costs about $100, which seems...
  16. Mercutio

    I do want to buy a used car

    I have a cousin who is on his third Tesla,. He was an early adopter and I remember that he always had a bunch of Tesla merch to give away because that was something Tesla just offered to people who bought their cars. Anyway, right after he got his first one, his employer transferred him to Erie...
  17. Mercutio

    I do want to buy a used car

    I spent $60 filling the tank on my Element yesterday and then it did another Engine whoopsie on the way home, which REALLY clarified my mind about the whole buying a car ASAP. The fix isn't horrifically expensive, but that's the third time it's happened in two months. I actually thought about...
  18. Mercutio

    I do want to buy a used car

    Finally bought something, a 2018 RAV 4 Hybrid with 80k miles on it. It's being shipped from Arizona, which I hope means it spent its life in the southwest, and I won't get it for a week or so. I did wind up dealing with CarMax, which means I can finally block all the numbers car salesmen have...
  19. Mercutio

    Something Random

    Given how much of a PITA my car has been, everything I just got is getting dumped immediately on someone who can actually use that rig. Even if I gave somebody a $2500 bargain deal, that's still a sizeable chunk of extra cash I can put in to my purchase. Also, I'm finding that car salesmen LOVE...
  20. Mercutio

    Selfhosting fun

    I like the convenience of having a desktop session in a tab an awful lot, especially for VMs I don't need to use for very much. Actually the first use I had was for direct sharing of :0 on my CachyOS game clients, since I'm always having to mess with Steam Rom Manager, something that I can't do...
  21. Mercutio

    Selfhosting fun

    Apache Guacamole is a session manager for remote desktops that runs in a browser tab At least, remote desktops you can look at via RDP or VNC. It's not perfect, but it's handy as a tool to access desktop VMs in one place. I'd never encountered it, but I think it's something I'll keep using.
  22. Mercutio

    Something Random

    Guys, it was just a regular Ryzen 9800X not an X3D, and she decided to keep her giant monitor. Shucks. AI Bullshit updates: nVidia and Perplexity.ai released a new tool over the weekend for on-device AI via RTX GPUs. It's supposed to offer Agentic tools. I have access to Perplexity Pro; I...
  23. Mercutio

    Selfhosting fun

    I forgot that I never updated this so: Caddy, for signing SSL certs, was absurdly easy to set up. Install it, set up hostname overrides in your DNS server and write what you want to happen to its config file. You have to add its security certificate to your OS and/or Firefox installation if...
  24. Mercutio

    Something Random

    The biggest gamer I know is a 70-something year old divorced woman. She's been getting her hair cut based on her headset needs for about the last 15 years. She told me last night that she's been advised to stop gaming because of ongoing joint pain in her hands and neck, so she's asked if I want...
  25. Mercutio

    Nvidia 50xx

    As I'm writing this the 5060Ti 16GB currently costs more than a 9070XT, a card that's something like 75% faster. To be clear, they're both overpriced right now, but at time of writing this post, we're talking about a $800 (basically double MSRP) 5060Ti and a (20%-ish above MSRP) $750 Radeon. I...
  26. Mercutio

    Something Random

    My favorite part of that picture is the way Bill's mouth is just a little bit open in the most simian way. I'll change it some day when somebody pies Elon Musk. I don't think he'll take it as well as Mr. Gates.
  27. Mercutio

    Something Random

    Through some unique confluence of events, I've gotten packages from just about everyplace I order things today: 3 Amazon deliveries (so far; I'm supposed to get another one "before 9PM"), FedEx, UPS, US Mail (Aliexpress), Shein, Instacart and Walmart have all been by my place today. This was not...
  28. Mercutio

    I do want to buy a used car

    That's been a rumor every year since the Element was discontinued. They're absurdly practical cars, but Honda only sold ~50,000 of them in the US over their whole production run. Somebody shows up with a mock-up design and I get my hopes up. I'm pretty sure a new Element will be north of $40k...
  29. Mercutio

    I do want to buy a used car

    I'm actively campaigning to buy my father's Element. Low mileage, no rust and pampered for its entire life. It's 20 now but I can probably get 10 years out of it. I set a ceiling of $25k for a new-to-me car, ideally a hybrid crossover-something. What I'm seeing is that to stick to that number...
  30. Mercutio

    Something Random

    I just found this fun youtube channel, which is devoted to testing PC case fan designs. The guy gets designed by his viewers, which he 3D prints and attaches to a Noctua frame/motor. It's oddly satisfying.
  31. Mercutio

    Something Random

    Ok now I have power. Huzzah! I bet it scared the shit out of my cats though.
  32. Mercutio

    Something Random

    It's day 15 now.
  33. Mercutio

    I do want to buy a used car

    New Corvettes definitely look like Italian sports cars, but they're also very common where I live. A cherry red paint job on a low-to-the-ground sports car might be a Ferrari or a Lamborghini. My area does get those, because there's a lot of money in the vacation homes along the Lake shore. But...
  34. Mercutio

    I do want to buy a used car

    Any car I own is going to get filled with things most people would never guess is valuable, and it will full time look trashed. Photo stands and lights, tons of random cables and plain cardboard boxes with random PC hardware. There won't be visible tools. My T420 is in there someplace, sure, but...
  35. Mercutio

    Something Random

    I mean that's probably a different state's troops... But really, state government actively wants Gary to go away, even though it loves the taxes from all the industrial output here. We're not getting shit from the republican supermajority in Indianapolis. We never have. I have also heard that...
  36. Mercutio

    I do want to buy a used car

    Option 1 is highly dependent on my dad being willing to sell. In the past he's said he wants to keep it for the same practical reason I have one: They're great to just pile crap in, which is awesome when you're bringing home a load of whatever from Home Depot. His "main" car is a '25 Grand...
  37. Mercutio

    I do want to buy a used car

    Random aside while I'm sitting in the dark and contemplating my car options: When the hell did Corvettes hit Ferrari pricing? $250k for a ZR1? Corvettes? The car that divorced boomers who never wear anything but khaki shorts and polo shirts, drive? Where is Clocker? I have so many questions...
  38. Mercutio

    I do want to buy a used car

    I have a dream of getting an actually fuel efficient vehicle. To double my fuel economy would be quite the blessing. I probably put $200 worth of gas in my car every month at current prices. Which is kind of gross, now that I think about it. Part of my desire for a physically smaller car stems...
  39. Mercutio

    I do want to buy a used car

    I love my Element. Truly. Irrationally. It's not comfortable but it's practical. The cargo capacity to overall size of the vehicle is insane. And there's nothing else like it. But now I do have to think about something newer. It's time. Option 1: My dad's Element. It's 20 years old, but it has...
  40. Mercutio

    Something Random

    Gary is in national news now because of our situation. The current goal is for near-complete restoration of service by the 25th, a full two weeks after the storm. The reason this is so controversial is that our local Power Company, NIPSCO, initially left Gary off its announced schedule of...
  41. Mercutio

    Selfhosting fun

    Here's a hilarious project I should not have to have: Firefox recently made some security changes such that sites accessed via HTTP are disallowed from storing certain kinds of local data. Plex Web normally uses HTTP and expects to store things in exactly the way Firefox won't accept any more...
  42. Mercutio

    Something Random

    One of the funny things about my current situation is that I'm using a laptop with the hot spot on my phone until the battery on the laptop gives out, then switching to another laptop. I brought six laptops with me to charge at my office. My favorite old guy is a Thinkpad T470s which apparently...
  43. Mercutio

    Something Random

    It's a Solix S2000 that was in a package deal with 200W of random solar panels. I live on the beach. If I have to go babysit everything just to get it all charged, I will. The deal for on offer looked great to me. I've already brought it up to full charge once off the wall at my office. The...
  44. Mercutio

    Something Random

    Being used to no climate control is normal for me at least. My office did get power back, so I've at least been able to get somewhere with decent internet and lights that are on. I bought a couple of these guys as well as my power station and honestly, no notes. $30 for a huge battery that can...
  45. Mercutio

    Something Random

    My part of the world has just had terrible storms. Sustained 90mph winds. There are a million people in Northwest Indiana and Chicago's with suburbs without power. I don't expect to get power back for a couple weeks. They aren't running TRAINS here because of all the crap on the tracks. This...
  46. Mercutio

    Something Random

    I don't exactly jump at the chance to go to baseball games, but the place where White Sox play is uniquely awful. Wrigley field has a Red Line stop directly next to it and it's a very old place full of character. The Sox place is like bench seating at a McDonald's. I wind up at a baseball game...
  47. Mercutio

    Something Random

    I've been using bifocals since I was six. I can't get contacts in my eyes, either. Other people can't get contacts in my eyes. My vision can't be corrected to 20/20 with glasses, so I've chosen to favor my mid- and near vision
  48. Mercutio

    Selfhosting fun

    I bought an $80 thing off Amazon with one of those Realtek chips on it. It's plugged in to a 10Gbit USB 3.2v1 port. It works-ish at faster-but-variable 5Gb+ speeds. I think performance depends on how hot it is. It's the only 10GbaseT device I own, and I have it sitting on an AMD Wraith Spire to...
  49. Mercutio

    SSDs - State of the Product?

    I didn't even mention the m.2 adapter on the table because the Beelink would have no internal space for the port unless you want to start playing with a Dremel. For what it's worth, I've had good luck with these inexpensive 10Gb Switches at customer sites. They aren't all snooty about which...
  50. Mercutio

    Something Random

    A lot of my family lives around the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Were we in a relative-visiting time of year, it would actually be the easiest of those to go to. The Virginia is a full-on movie Palace, massively renovated through the patronage of film critic Roger Ebert. It has...
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