The Toybox

the things i have seen and done and moved to

seperis — Thu, 09 Sep 2021 06:07:56 GMT

Okay so yes it's been five months since I posted, but in my defense:

1.) Spring Semester got intense (4.0 for two classes!)
2.) Summer Semester was an eight week hellscape (3.5 for two classes, almost learned to hate databases)
3.) Fall Semester is my first semester of three classes (nine hours) and there's been some adjustment.
4.) ...I moved.

Wait, what?

The last time I posted in April, I was really only thinking seriously about it but without commitment. then Child got a tech support job, and he really wanted to move pretty much anywhere else, which--this being Austin--is not cheap; worse, the areas he wanted to move to were really not cheap and stuffed full of new, shiny, very trendy new complexes which were really really not cheap...none of which either of us could possibly afford on our own, which is when he said we'd split the rent down the middle.

That made it surprisingly doable. For those who know Austin, our final area choices (that at least were vaguely possible, was the North Lamar area south of 290 where a lot of new complexes had and still are popping up and south of the River (South Austin). Downtown was not doable without selling some key organs that don't have backups and cant' be replaced. We also checked a few other areas, but North Lamar was our first choice for a.) the center of everything, b.) buses everywhere and access to the train, and c.) it's just super cool, okay?

The total rent we could afford was $2200: go.

Apartment Hunting

I'll spare you the horrifying details but note: not as easy as one might think and not just for budget reasons.

Out of the four I toured (and one Child toured), oddly enough, we liked three, which fulfilled the criteria of a.) we could probably afford it, b.) near bus lines/North Lamar, and c.) allowed German Shepherds, and you'd be surprised to know how many places sort of forgot to put that on their website or used the cryptic 'breed restrictions' so I had to call and be annoyed.

Third choice was in the middle of remodeling, so there wasn't a lot of certainty when a two bedroom would pop up (best guess: January), so we made appointments to tour other complexes while waiting for First and Second Choice to post openings on the off chance that those two didn't work out and me really hating the words 'breed restrictions' like so very fucking much (just SAY WHICH BREEDS ON THE SITE HOLY SHIT).

Fortunately, we were spared more tours (and more phone calls).

The Two Contenders

From the outside and as far as amenities go, first and second choice were really alike, and so was the architecture, which is a semi-generic Austin Hip that makes me feel very trendy and cool and I'm not ashamed to admit it. They also had a lot of overlap in both complex layout and in available floorplans. Both were comprised of two very large connecting (or semi-connecting) four story buildings; in First Choice, one building surrounded a zen garden (Second choice: bocce court/sitting area) and the other building surrounded a pool.

Both had: a very nice clubhouse/gathering place (full kitchen, billiards, etc), computer room (called Library at Second Choice). First Choice also had a dramatic stair entrance to it, since the leasing office was first floor on street side but built on a hill so most of the complex was a about a floor below that. Second Choice, however, had a Theatre Room, and it really is a miniature theatre with a 100+ inch movie screen, two rows of movie-quality recliners with lights, and a long bar with stools that you can reserve and watch Netflix (complex's account apparently), a variety of movies they own, or bring your own.

All apartments had internal entrances, which is very new to me (most apartment complexes I was familiar with were external entrance and external stairs). Some--the work/live apartments, a couple of the lofts, and a very few of the first floor apartments that faced a street--could also be entered from the street by their porch doors.

(This felt super-fancy to me, btw.)

Both offered storage rooms (that you paid for monthly).

Both offered mandatory amenities packages you paid for in addition to rent that included trash pickup three times weekly, which I never knew I wanted more than anything in the world. Second choice's package also included cable and internet, while First Choice left you on your own for those. Utilities were not included in either, and you were billed for water by the complex.

Location

First choice was about a mile and change farther south than second choice and in a quiet neighborhood and on a bus line, right down the road from a bookstore sand Kentucky Fried Chicken (yes, that was an inducement), but it was also farther east from Lamar; second choice was only one block off Lamar, had several buses stopping literally right outside the door, and nearer some other popular Austin complexes where Child could have play dates with kids his own age.

(...yes, he's twenty-four, but I don't see how that's relevant.)

Floorplans

First choice had more variety: studio, one, two, and three bedrooms, one bedroom + loft, two bedroom + loft, three bedroom + loft, and live/work; all had multiple variations in floorplans (total: 40 floorplans); square footage was ~500 to ~1400. Using historical prices, one of the one bedroom + loft (some of which had a second bathroom), two bedroom, two bedroom plus loft, and three bedroom (no loft) were all potentially doable, and square footage would be from ~800 square feet to around ~1000.

Second choice had studio, one, and two bedrooms with about two variations for studio, about three to five variations for one bedroom, and only two variations for two bedroom/two bath. Of the two bedrooms, one around 850 square feet, one 1235 square feet. I was betting on the smaller one; the larger one, I assumed, would be way outside my budget according to what I read.

As my last was in the upper 700s square feet, all of them were going to be an upgrade, and also, I cannot say this enough, valet trash. That shit is fancy.

Cost

First choice skewed slightly more expensive than second choice--it is very much a place people move into and don't leave until they're ready to buy a house--but during the tour when I told them my wants and budget (two bedroom minimum, $2200 max), they assured me that was doable. Second choice said the same.

First choice...either didn't know that the company would raise rents surprisingly or thought I was so infatuated I'd pay well over $2200, which admittedly as I loved the place, I might have been tempted and learned to subsist on two meals a day, one of Ramen. After listing three floorplans that were supposed to be in my budget but weren't by an order of one meal a day of dry Ramen.

(For context, I got worried when several one bedrooms went up and half were over my budget and really lacking in square footage. It was--stressing.)

Second choice called me around seven one night and said that the largest two bedroom floorplan was available and for $200 below budget and I should go fill out the leasing application right now.

I stared at First Choice's website, then applied at Second Choice on a Thursday. I was approved on Monday morning.

You Would Not Believe How Relieved I Am For This Turn of Events

For reasons, we're going to skip why while my official move-in date was 8/23, I didn't actually physically sleep here until 8/25 and we weren't finished moving until 8/31 (technically, five in the morning on 9/1). I started class on the 23rd as well, so you might say my stress levels were--unpleasant and also, we're just going to forget those nine days even happened.

Moving on.

So being infatuated with First Choice, though I did like Second Choice enough to have it second, I also missed some incredibly persuasive reasons My Complex (was: Second Choice) should have been First Choice all along.

The Complex

My Complex (was: Second Choice) is newer than Other Choice (was: First Choice); my building (Building 2) is really new (I think less than 5 years and maybe less than three) and a hilarious example of real estate prices and people just dead refusing to move. Building 1 and Building 2 are diagonal to each other in the same block (northeast and southwest corners); the northwest side of the block is a pre-existing (and expensive) two story condominium complex; the southeast side of the block is, in this order from north to south from Building 1: a private two story home with a separate and inhabited and very, very shiny airstream with porch in the backyard beneath the trees; a tiny two story single building apartment complex; a small and probably hideously expensive empty lot, and another house (or lot, I can't remember). From building two going east: a set of about five town houses and the aforementioned another house/empty lot on the corner.

The two buildings are roughly twenty feet apart (or less) at their closet point, and it's basically taken up by the walkway in front of the porches on building two and a wheelchair ramp. For Building 2, there's a second very long, very gradual wheelchair ramp on the east side of the building that leads to the underground parking (two levels) that has a gate that only opens when you frantically press your key fob like twenty times when you're in range but hopefully not too close, as they didn't bother to paint a line on where you should stop so the gate won't gently nudge your car and make you have to back up to get inside (it won't even scratch your paint when it nudges you but it's super disconcerting).

(Also: of all the complexes I visited personally, this was the only one where they talked about--unprompted, as part of their speech--about disability accommodations through the complex, which apartments were accessible, and encouraged us to ask if we'd like more information. I'm not disabled and neither is my mother, so I really appreciated a.) it seemed to be standard in their tour and b.) they didn't think they disability could be decided just by looking at us. Their website used to have a more information as well but it was just redesigned and they're still adding back in missing content so I assume they'll bring that back.)

As I said earlier, each building surrounds a courtyard: Building 1 only has three sides (C shape) with the fourth side a partial brick wall that symbolically separates Building 1 from Building 2; the courtyard is a variety of outdoor tables and chairs, outdoor sections, barbecue pits, a firepit, and sitting areas, which must be awesome when there are complex-wide gatherings. All three sides have courtyard-facing apartments and street-facing apartments on all four floors.

Building 2 has four sides and surrounds a pool, a set of single person pyramid like structures you can sit in (I guess?) a grill/barbecue area and firepit, and a lot lot lot of lounging areas. There are pool-facing apartments on all four sides; on the outside, Partial Brick Wall Separating Us From Building 1 Facing Apartments (with nice patios on the first floor) to the north; apartments facing the private home/empty lot/etc to the west (first floor has patios; 2-4 have balconies); to the east, there are no first floor apartments (outside is the Dog Park 2; inside is garbage and maintenance rooms); and to the south facing the driveway (that goes down to parking), there are no apartments on the first and second floor but several with surprisingly long or large balconies on the third and fourth.

Both buildings have at least two doors (Building 1, since it has the leasing office and mail room, has about four or five) that open to the street (or driveway to underground parking), and one to two that open into the complex; each dog park (2!) has at least one door that opens directly into it as well as an external gate with a code lock. Both buildings have two elevators that go from Underground Parking Level 2 to the fourth floor, and at least three sets of stairs, two of which also go down to both parking levels. My building has five sets of stairs but for reasons, I'm not sure exactly where two of them are (I still get--off course coming and going). Each floor has room where there are two trash chutes (recycle and not) where you can also leave your broken down boxes, thank God.

(I really need my complex map; I'll find it and correct later, I just moved in so it's still kind of a blur on where everything is.)

Location

1.) Being only one block off Lamar is incredibly convenient; it's very walkable to get anywhere and buses stop literally at the door of Building 1.

2.) There's a small park only a block away but to get to it, you have to circle that entire block.

3.) There is one local coffee shop and a vape store half a block toward Lamar.

4.) There is an awesome shopping center with a bakery and Asian grocery store and dollar store on the other side of the fence that separates it from Building 2. You just walk through the open gate in the fence. I can literally spend my entire check on baked goods, random groceries, and about a dozen restaurants and dollar items. God bless.

Amenities

The combined cable/internet cost in the mandatory amenities package is half the price I paid for internet at my old apartment, and I forgot that on cable, Law and Order is always on somewhere. So I am happy and did anyone know Eliot was coming back?????

My Apartment

I'm going to gush, you can skip, but I am so. In. Love.

My apartment is their largest floor plan at 1226 square feet; there are only sixteen of them, all pool-facing, set at the four corners of Building 2, with ten foot ceilings (at least) with either huge patios or balconies. This balcony is bigger than my bedroom at my old apartment and is shaped in a vague diamond; honestly, it may be the biggest room in this apartment.

The kitchen/dining/living room are open to each other with a large and gorgeous island in the kitchen; the bedrooms are on either side; Child's bedroom is at the end of a very short (five-six feet long) hall that serves the bathroom and water heater room and for some reason,has it's own door. My hall is open with a door to the small room for the washer and dryer and my bedroom, and my bathroom is reached through my room.

The closets are enormous, like, I don't have enough clothes and with rails and shelves, so many many shelves. There are only two windows that look out on the balcony but we actually get more sun now than at the other apartment. I can get plants that aren't only ones that do well with very little indirect sunlight. Unfortunately the bedrooms have carpet, but it's nice carpet, and both are big enough for a queen size bed, dresser, a tv on a buffet cabinet, a chest, and if desired, maybe a lovseat. I love my room is what I'm saying, and the ceiling is high enough I can put up the posts and railing between them and not worry about the ceiling fan.

For those who remember my fixation on light (and the lack in the old apartment like whoa) the kitchen has three medium sunken lights plus the light over the front door entrance and the one in the presumed dining area along with two pendants directly over the island; lots of light. Bathrooms are great; both bedrooms and the living room have overhead lights as well as ceiling fans. And as there's now room--like room for more than just a couch and a coffee table squeezed together--I can stop rewiring pendant lights (and doing sketchy shit with plugs and electricity) and just get lamps and floor lamps like a normal person for areas that I want bright. Also, the walls are a much lighter and more reflective beige-ish so yeah, much better.

The kitchen is massive and has more cabinets and drawers than I knew could exist, plus a built in desk with more cabinets and drawers and just. So. Many. Places. To. Put. Things.

I will cut myself off now with an effort but I suspect another post like this one will show up eventually so I can sing the praises of the stove or something I LOVE MY APARTMENT.

I still live in a Box Jungle but I'm sitting on my porch doing homework at night overlooking the pool right now. I've been imagining being here and doing this for months and honestly? It's even better than I thought. Posted at Dreamwidth: https://seperis.dreamwidth.org/1087628.html. | You can reply here or there. | comments

this has been a week

seperis — Wed, 14 Apr 2021 06:08:23 GMT

Home Assistant

WHEE! My Home Assistant Blue arrived! I did the migration a couple of days ago, and so far, I'm impressed.

1.) I did not realize the case was metal. Sweet.
2.) It seems to run more smoothly than Home Assistant ran on the Pi, which I'd expect since the Blue was purpose-designed to run Home Assistant.
3.) The resource usage is much better; process temperature is 25% lower and there's a minor but definite increase in speed. And this despite the fact that my Pi ha 8G of RAM and Blue has only 4.

DIY NAS - A New Thing to Do With a Pi

This means that my Pi is now free. Or was, because since it was available, I decided to experiment with diy NAS (network attached storage). Basically, download OpenMediaVault to the Pi, connect my external four-bay enclosure that holds my media to it, and go to town.

I'm still learning OpenMediaVault, so while I did get it working smoothly (with some early annoying hiccups), I want to do some more experimenting before doing a write-up. I'm not married to it, so I am considering trying a few other OSs.

GUI
The GUI is nothing to write home about, and while it's very organized, the design choices are sometimes redundant so it feels more cluttered than it actually is.

I admit I'm spoiled: Home Assistant has a gorgeous user interface and that's just the default; most of what you do in Home Assistant is make it even better and more responsive and more customized. If you have an imagination and a vague grasp of any programming or web design, you can do anything.

OpenMediaVault's UI, like DD-WRT's UI (if you're playing the home game, DD-WRT is the open source software you can use for routers), is--not any of that. It's functional and I will say you can tell no one there made the mistake of trying to break barriers or disrupt the system or rebel against convention and do weird shit with javascript and too much time on your hands, and that's something.

It's utilitarian, and like I said, the design is both clear and redundant. On the left is the sidebar, which is divided into sections, and each section name can expand or collapse all items within. On the right is the main screen, and in a narrow header above it, it has an icon of a house (Home). All items in each section are clickable, taking you to their individual pages. Fine so far.

If you click on Home, the main page shows all the sections in rows, and beneath each section name are all the items in that section and their icons. Everything is clickable: section name on the Home Page takes you to the section page, where all the items are listed; item icon on the Home Page takes you to the item page. A bit redundant, but okay; maybe someone fears sidebars and you can minimize it.

Back to the sidebar; same thing. The section name isn't just a name; it's also a link to the section page with all the items, all clickable to their own pages.

On the header just above this, it shows Home in a button, then the Section Name in a second button. If you click an item--either on the sidebar or on the section page--that appear as a third button. Those buttons are also clickable so you can move forward and back, though you never--so far--get more than three deep and if you have the sidebar open, it doesn't matter, but okay.

It's not easy to explain why I find this weird, except I can't work out why you need three (four?) ways on the same screen at the same time to go to the same place. Basically, this design means you are always at most one click deep anywhere, which would be good but you are only one click deep in three separate ways. It's confusing if you don't expect so much redundancy but it's pretty much impossible to get lost.

I can't tell who it was designed for; DD-WRT was made for intermediate to advanced network and programming people (and it shows in the documentation like whoa), while OpenMediaVault seems to be for everyone and anyone, at least as far as GUI You Will Never Get Lost In Really (so far, there's nothing hidden in nooks or crannies or only appears if you know the right places to check on another random page or tucked somewhere random because fucking with users' heads is fun).

But there's some things I'm not sure an average user is going to know to do or know why using the documentation and quickstart, and if their drives already have media on them--aka not blank or brand new--there are some things are going to be baffling as shit--though super easy to fix--but I'll save that for my write-up.

Verification/Validation

It's an Okay/Apply system. You do an action, click OK, then you have to hit Apply before you do anything else. And almost everything requires it. The first registers the change; the second applies it to the system.

I am not fond of these, but I get why they exist. Most other systems that make me do an OK and Apply is to save time and resources; you can make several changes and click OK for each to store then, and then hit Apply so the system will do all of them at once. On my DD-WRT routers, it was a time saver since each action would take a while individually but massed together much less.

Which I thought this was at first because there's a variable pause between OK and Apply. Long enough for me to want to leave the page and it won't let me and a banner appears at top with Apply. Like, the pause is just long enough that you're ready to go and then BANNER APPLY. Argh.

Then--new and frustrating--after Apply, there's a third check "Do you really want to..." and seriously????? I can get a legal gun* in Texas with less hassle than wanting to have SMART notifications sent to me.

* That is hyperbole, but honestly, not very much. And the fact I have to say its hyperbole demonstrates that.

In Closing

I got it up and running, scrubbed Plex and added all my media from new home NAS, and gotta give credit, Plex plays smoother, faster, with a lot less hiccups than playing from my external attached as a share on my router. This is not a bad alternative to buying a NAS; I'll do a price breakdown when I do the write-up, but not including hard drives, I'd say around $250 or less.

School

We're a little over two thirds through the semester; in Intro to Computing, provided I finish at least three more of the four assignments and get full credit on each, I should have an A (if I do all of them and get full credit, I also get an A along with a glow of accomplishment).

Programming Fundamentals is chancier; I have an A right now, but that only includes my first four projects and my first exam; there are two projects ungraded, one I'm doing now, four more projects in the future, and two more exams. My first exam was an 83.75, which was upsetting (I studied for that one), but provided I get a perfect score on all my projects, I can afford a minimum of 67 on each of the other two exams. Which, hopefully, it won't come to that, but I seriously studied for that test (I took notes and reviewed them, even) and as he hasn't yet released the test for us to review what we missed, I still don't know what all I got wrong and that's haunting me. And not making it easy to prepare for the second exam, either.

Finished registering for the summer semester for six hours and fighting myself not to try for nine hours until fall. I mapped out my degree assuming nine hours a semester spring and fall with six in summer, but I want to try and go to 12 per semester within the next eighteen months.

It's not the workload that worries me, actually; I can do it and pass (very probably), but this time, I want to do it with As, and not just an A, but a dramatic A, like a 96-100 in each class across the board.

Educationally Speaking

When I was in high school and college the first (and second) time around, I was never sure that I could do it and was constantly surprised when I did, and not surprised at all when I got a B or even a C; I didn't like it, but the ways of the grades and my brain were mysterious and I had no idea why I couldn't just sit and study and have that actually work and instead have to depend on my ability to learn fast in gulps and short bursts of short term memorization. Back then, I couldn't even take good notes: I either reproduced the book or lecture (until I literally couldn't concentrate a second longer, which was often) or all the wrong things; I could not work out the alchemy of how you decided what mattered and for that matter, how the fuck anyone could stare at that Wall of Text Textbook and learn anything.

Truthfully, until now, I really genuinely did not realize the extent of a.) my ADHD and b.) the effects of medication. Back in 2007 when I went back for a semester, I noticed a difference--this was right after I was medicated--but I got an incredible promotion after one semester and learning that job took all my attention for a while.

When I started this semester, it was pretty much how I started every semester; hopeful but resigned to a best 'better than last time maybe?' I downloaded a program for notetaking (and eventually started using it, but that's skipping ahead), and as these classes are pure online without online or RL class times, read my syllabus carefully, got my online text books (I love love love online textbooks now), and settled in to read productively or die trying. Honestly, I half-expected the latter to become a real possibility, because sometimes, textbooks are really fucking boring.

Now, an ADHD Sidebar

For those with ADHD, 'boredom' is not just about a lack of interest or entertainment in what we're doing/watching/reading/etc. It's almost impossible to explain because truthfully, we have no context for the idea of 'boredom' as just 'a feeling you feel'; it's more like a state we're thrust into and have to work to get out of and sometimes has no basis in 'feeling'.

It wasn't until I was medicated for several years that I found out the feeling and the state were two separate things.

When people tell us to keep going when we say we're bored, they're assuming 'boredom' means 'not entertaining enough', a personal feeling that we can power through and we're just being lazy. Most of the time, though, 'boredom' is both a feeling and a brain state; when my brain gets bored with something, it just stops taking input from it. I can stare at that book and painfully read every word but I won't remember it afterward, and I don't mean 'the next day' or 'an hour later' but 'the next sentence in this paragraph'. It does not go into short term memory; it will not be stored in long term; I will remember nothing but being bored and hating everything no matter how much I try. I have tested this extensively.

Yes, it's possible to power through that...sometimes; high urgency and panic gives us adrenaline dumps which is also why a lot of us test incredibly well on exam days after a sleepless night but fuck up our homework or projects. Unless you happen to have a supply of adrenaline to shoot up, you cannot induce that kind of panic that gets high (short term) recall on a daily basis and honestly, you really shouldn't; a few years of that and your heart will not be happy.

Also, a lifetime doing that means the law of diminishing results is a thing; when you have to get into a high stress state regularly to do things like 'finish homework' or 'do your job' or 'a surprising number of life things' then not surprisingly, your body starts to adapt.

And for kicks, sometimes, we don't 'feel' bored; in fact, we're doing something/reading something/watching something we love. We can still get a brain nope out; our brains treat 'reading this book I've been waiting for months for/episode 3 of Falcon and the Winter Soldier/building a robot dog' as 'watching paint dry' and boom, no crying Bucky for you, bitch. It happens a lot less with medication, but it still does happen, which is why I haven't seen 3 and 4 and I'm kinda pissed about that.

For me, while medicated, boredom as feeling and boredom as brain state are separate things--and even now, I cannot tell you how bizarre it still is to me that boredom can exist as only a feeling without an immediate termination of engagement--but they can still happen, both separately and together. Just not nearly as often: as in, I can now tell the difference between living regular life and being bored and not assume they're usually synonymous, which is still something of a revelation.

Even medicated, there are still limits, all of the above can and will happen, but one of the many (so many) benefits is that most of the time, we can now anticipate when it's going to happen and prepare. And we can strategize.

Back to School

Yes, reading textbooks is still sometimes boring--not always, but yeah--but it's not a showstopper now; my brain doesn't disengage suddenly and refuse to re-engage for a variable length of time or a state of panic (and to make this clear, that is really fucking new). I know there are limits, so I plan for them ahead of time (something that before meds, I also had no idea how to do because ADHD's executive function disorder assures nothing is ever easy).

I plan for my brain's response, which I know far far too well; I can't just read, I need to 'do'. So first, I do a read-through of the chapter (or even section depending on length) that isn't a read at all but a very very very fast skim. That's to get a.) section breaks b.) chapter breaks, c.) if there are tables, code examples, etc, and d.) do a fast and dirty mental split of Total To Read to get Total To Read Now. And also to see how the chapter is organized with headers and sections because I need that for my notes.

Then I open my notetaking program. I selected for 'bells and whistles, all of them'.

Notion is all bells and whistles; it's chock full of cool shit like 'formatting' and 'page breaks' and 'insert table' and 'insert code' and 'header 1, 2, 3' and 'all the colors and text sizes and fonts'. It has templates, specifically templates for notes for classes.

And while I read, I take notes with different font decorations, different colors, different headers, reproduce a bit of code; the text may be boring, but formatting is incredibly fun and looks neat, and that shit can put off brain nope out no matter how dry the text or how repetitive. Now granted, my programming class was less of a problem that I'd feel bored reading--it's programming, I wanted to read every word--but Intro to computing...yeah.

And I stop at the end of every marked section (Chapter 6.1, 6.2) and unless I'm super engaged (programming), I get up, get something to drink, and start the next section.

For videos, I make sure closed captioning or text is on so I can read while listening; for reasons I don't quite get, I don't respond well to video/audio only; it doesn't stick unless it's instructional (I'm doing something like building a server or rewiring something dangerous; it sticks then. Mostly).

Note: except memorizing lyrics in music, but that a.) isn't a conscious process and b.) I can't consciously recall them without the song triggering recall and even then, it's--weird. Which is why I can sing (badly) in (what really isn't actual) Korean due to K-Pop and have no idea a.) what I'm singing or b.) that I'm singing, and no, I won't be singing anything vaguely relate to the Korean language because my brain didn't memorize 'words' so much as 'discrete groups of sounds'. I can assure you no one including those who speak Korean will understand a word I'm saying.)

However, combine audio/video with captioning or text (my grandmother in my teens needed closed captioning on all the time; it wasn't until my mid-twenties I realized there was a reason other than habit I always turned it on and also why I preferred subs to dubs like a lot).

Even studying my notes is easier: not only does all the formatting draw my attention, but I highlight while I read, or fix my personal notes style for consistency by bolding all the functions or putting asides in italics or basically, any 'do' that can be combined with 'read'.

So yeah, this time, I want A's; I want to turn in projects that exceed not just minimum but maximum requirements and involve many bells and whistles; I want to perpetually have read a chapter or two ahead before class and be overprepared for any assignment; I don't just want to get through class but learn and I mean learn everything.

I mean, I always wanted those things, but now, I think I can actually do them. I live in hope, anyway, and that's new, too. Posted at Dreamwidth: https://seperis.dreamwidth.org/1087272.html. | You can reply here or there. | comments

home assistant and school, respectively

seperis — Sat, 27 Mar 2021 13:09:10 GMT

Home Assistant Blue

My Home Assistant Blue shipped and will arrive by April, and I'm trying to work out when I'll have time to transfer Home Assistant from the Pi to it.

Taking a backup of HA on the Pi and moving it to the new device is the easiest method--with Home Assistant, you can genuinely just do that and not lose data or crash--but years of computer and tablet upgrades (and regular nuke-and-scrub of my Ubuntu Server) have taught me the value of starting with a clean slate when it's feasible. There's always extra customization I no longer need or code I refactored but commented out the original or updates to the base code that mean some code no longer works.

See, the thing is, until I finalize, I almost never, ever delete code.

If it's inconvenient or makes a script nightmare long or confusing, I'll move the original to backup, just in case. If it's a minor update, I comment out the old code for at least a few runs or until I forget why the hell I'm keeping it. If it's new code or a minor refactoring, I create a backup first. If it's a full refactoring, I usually create a copy of the original, give it a name like codeName_Refactor or something, and keep the original clean and working until I'm done testing, then rename the original to codeName_old or codeName_orig, rename codeName_Refactor to codeName, and move the old code into a folder. And in some cases, I'll just move all the old code or experimental code that won't quite work to the bottom of the script and just comment it out because there's a chance I'll need it back and it's really annoying to paste code between multiple nano terminal windows.

(In VBA in Excel or Word, I move it all to a module named OldModule and add an 'x' to every sub or function name. In Googledocs, I do the same with Javascript. There is code in both older than two thirds of my nieces and nephews. It's like the code version of hoarding or something IDK.)

A clean slate is maybe the one time I can do housekeeping. After doing all the necessary basic configuration and adding in all my integrations, add-ons, etc into the new device, I can move code over either in entire pages or a piece at a time and reload to make sure it does what I think it does (or work out what the fuck I wrote it for).

Fortunately, Home Assistant makes that incredibly easy; the last time when I got a second Pi to run Home Assistant on, after I finished configuration of the second Pi and it was ready to run, I disabled the integrations that couldn't be run on two HA instances at the same time on the old Pi, then just left them both running while I went through all my custom yaml and python and moved it over sometimes a single function or script at a time.

This, by the way, is my idea of the Best Friday Night Ever.

Depending on time, I'm going to try to write up a detailed step by step tutorial on how to set up Home Assistant on the HA Blue. One of the biggest advantages of buying it--other than supporting open source development and the cool blue case--is that Home Assistant ships on the HA Blue already installed, so it's very much plug and play; you literally plug it in, add ethernet cable, then go to your computer, open a browser, and go to homeassistant.local:8123. That's it. The only things you need to do is if you need z-wave or zigbee functionality is buy either usb sticks or a compatible hub, but if everything in your house is wifi, that's pretty much it for hardware. Now its just onboarding, adding your integrations, and trying out all the different theme colors on your dash.

School

Intro to Computing

We're now in Week 5 of School. I'm currently about a week behind in the Intro to Computing self-paced course but while that was mostly due to work + winter storm + other things, honestly it was also because it was the class I could fall behind without penalty. The class is a basic catch up to current technology and the internet and how to use Office; it's shockingly useful for someone who may be coming back to the workforce or needs an non-terrifying intro into current tech and current internet.

Also, it's the one that is ironically both the most work and also the one that's probably easiest to pass without a super amount of effort, which follows the course's purpose. All you really have to do is do all the activities and also create for yourself an Excel spreadsheet to keep a running calculation on the lowest grade you can afford in each activity and still get an A (or B).

But it is a lot of work. For the first six weeks, each week is
1.) one (1) or two (2) book chapter on something about technology (there are six total chapters)
2.) one (1) graded skills test for each chapter
3.) one (1) graded practice exam for each chapter
4.) one (1) or two (2) of three modules on how to use a Microsoft Office Product (Word, Powerpoint, Excel, Access). (There are three to five modules per office product in the course.)
5.) one (1) graded project for each module

On top of that:
1.) One (1) Capstone Project for each Office Product: total of 4
2.) One (1) Exam for every two chapters: total of 3\

Except for the practice exams and two-chapter exams, to get an A you really just need to follow the instructions to do the projects like "Create a Flyer" or "Create a Powerpoint Presentation" or "Create a Business Letter". It's auto-graded so you know immediately your grade, you get a report on EXACTLY WHAT IS WRONG AND HOW TO FIX IT, and you get to submit three times and it takes your highest grade. The graded skill test is a graded review; I'm not sure it's possible not to get a perfect score.

The exams are--not so simple. They aren't exams; they're thirty five to a hundred questions, shown one at a time, you cannot stop until you're done and you cannot change your answer once you go to the next question. No, I'm not kidding; I've never been this stressed by testing in my life.

Now, because of the number of activities and the weighting: you can, actually, get a zero on every single exam and as long as you get a perfect grade on all the projects, capstones, and skills test, you can get a D. With the Skills test, perfect scores are built in; with the projects, you get three attempts; my lowest grade on a project is a 97/100 with one attempt left (that I can still do until the end of the semester) but just didn't feel like fighting footnotes for those last three points. THe lowest grade I got on an attempt was an 88 before I fixed the problems; this is not undoable at all.

Right now, for me to get a B, as long as I nail every project and capstone, I can fail every remaining exam (I have two two-chapter exams and three one chapter exams left) with a 52 out of 100 or 14 out of 25 (52%) with an extra two points to spare.

For an A, however, I have to average an 80 on each exam and get a perfect grade on every single project and Capstone that remains, though I have an eight point buffer. The lowest I've gotten on an exam is an 84 out of 100; I shouldn't be worried. I read the chapters; I take notes; I study. It autogrades when you're done and you get a full report with every question and your answer and whether its' right or wrong; you can take the exam up to twice.

But. When you start an exam, you cannot stop; each page has only one question and when you answer it, it goes to the next page and question and you cannot change it; there are many questions, which is good for grade weight but very bad for what is already low-grade paranoia. And I say this as someone who tests insanely fucking well; I have answered questions in ways that baffle even me on wtf I was thinking. I have to pause and think about obvious questions like 'what is a CPU'. It's--something.

I had to stop short in horror because I was asked the question "Which of these represents a billion bytes?" and for the life of me could not work out if it was megabytes, gigabytes or terabytes even though a.) I literally do know this, I spend a lot of my free time doing video editing and ratioing sizes, and b.) If I didn't, all had to do was fucking divide by a 1000 to get kilo, divide again to get mega, divide again and if the answer was greater than 999, tera, otherwise, giga. I can literally do that in my head instantly.

I spent three minutes staring at that question without any idea how to math.

I am not in love with those exams.

Programming Fundamentals

Incredibly fun. Well, for me: for my professor, maybe not.

There are ten projects and three exams, one project for each chapter, each project one to five or so scripts to write to do a thing; we just finished chapter four this week, and as it's an online class without class meetings but with hard deadlines, its' one I can't put off.

But also, it's not one that I really have any ability to put off; this is like falling into a few fandom and reading all the fic. The only reason I'm not reading ahead is spoilers; so far, the only way to keep me on pace is taking notes. Most of it is stuff I know already from writing python, but there's a lot of very basic stuff I skipped that I'm learning now and lots of generalized concepts, so it's great.

Then there's the projects.

The project exercises start with me following the instructions to the letter; that part is fine. But that takes me maybe an hour or two. Projects are assigned on Monday; I'm done reading by Tuesday and have my project done by Wednesday at teh latest. Due date is the next Monday; I have free time.

This time is spent methodically going through my scripts and adding bells and whistles. I challenge myself by trying each time to use every single element in every single chapter and preceding chapter in every script and where there's a will there's a way. Then I start adding bells and whistles. Chapter Three was If/Else, and conditionals are my jam, but at least I couldn't trap you in a script forever; it would, eventually end.

Chapter Four was Loops.

Which make my feelings for conditionals look like vague liking; I adore loops. My C++ class I'd trap people in elaborate loops in that horrifying tic-tac-toe game where the only way out was to work out what character I secretly designated for the only escape. I nest loops like Russian dolls and left to my own devices it would never end.

To be fair, I (mostly) restrained myself in the first two exercises; they're optional repeaters but not horrifying. But my resistance crumbled when it came to the third.

I got to ask the user for input three times. That is Christmas.

Short story: it's now four times longer than the first working draft, lets the user correct their answers as many times as desired, run the program indefinitely, and when they're done output their statistics on how many times they ran the program, how many times they corrected their data during all iterations, and how many times they corrected their data during this iteration before saying goodbye. I spreadsheeted test data to validate all conditions and possibilities. The only reason you can escape is we haven't reached error control yet and I can't use it until we do or that's cheating; right now, they can escape by just entering a string instead of a number and killing the program if they get desperate.

The exercises for Project 3 were all overkill, sure, but they're nothing to Project 4 Exercise 3.

And I can tell you now, it will only get worse from here. I mean, for other people: this is how I have fun on Saturday nights. Posted at Dreamwidth: https://seperis.dreamwidth.org/1087124.html. | You can reply here or there. | comments

a tale of three weirdness

seperis — Sat, 20 Mar 2021 23:37:05 GMT

Question for anyone who knows video compression/encoding:

Assume the following:
1.) In MakeMKV, I'm using a cleanly ripped movie with all English audio and subtitle tracks. All the same settings are used as literally hundreds of other movies.
2.) In Handbrake, I'm using the same well tested profile to create a 2160p version of a 4K movie that I make with extra AAC streams for each DTS audio stream.

Under what circumstances would the 2160p increase the size of the video stream?

I verified it's the video stream offending, and we're talking a 3-6 GiB to around 20 GiB increase in video stream size (and therefore file size).

This has only happened with these movies (in order of size increase of video stream):
Groundhog Day (2018 release) - less than 2 GiB
Ghostbusters 2 (2016 release) - less than 2 GiB
Pet Sematary 1989 (2019 release) - 6-8 GiB (estimate)
Ghostbusters 1984 (2016 release) - 30 GiB
Scarface Gold Edition (2019 release) - 15 GiB - 30 GiB (estimate)

The second weirdness the 4K of some of these movies is grainy.

Example: Groundhog Day, Ghostbusters 1984. I changed the 2160p profile's Constant Quality from RF-18 to RF-20 for Groundhog Day and RF-22 for Ghostbusters; the 4K lost a lot (most to my eye) of the graininess.

The third weirdness is that Plex does not like these rips very much, especially Ghostbusters 1984; it would nope out at 37 minutes. I watched it end to end on my laptop using VLC; it was fine, there was no flaw. It's possible there's one VLC won't pick up, but Plex is almost as good as X-Box at playing anything provided the codec is supported and it was. Noping out generally means there's a real problem but none.

With the re-encoded 2160p version, it doesn't nope out.

I feel like I'm either missing something, or there's off about that video stream. I get this is an upscale, but in general, compression shouldn't improve video quality. Posted at Dreamwidth: https://seperis.dreamwidth.org/1086796.html. | You can reply here or there. | comments

flashing drives and ripping things

seperis — Thu, 25 Feb 2021 13:18:50 GMT

So among my accomplishments this year, I have successfully flashed my new bluray drive back to older firmware to gain unlimited read/write speed and also to rip 4Ks. My old drive is starting to be quirky, and as my pandemic sanity project is ripping and encoding movies, I went ahead and did some budget magic to upgrade it. Now I did not--at the time--realize that the winter storm had quite literally killed all my refrigerated/freezer food, granted, but I can't say that would have actually mattered; in fact, it getting here for me to play with is kind of helping me deal with replacing everything.

(Note: I still haven't cleaned out the fridge and refrigerator, but that's because until yesterday afternoon, all the dumpsters in my complex were overflowing as no one had done pickup in a week and change and I will not, not, not make the horror worse by putting two trash bags of dairy, meat, and assorted to the nightmare when temperatures are normalizing into the sixties--a week ago single digits, that really happened--and make everyone live with that kind of hellscape. I don't blame people who did--their power was completely out and stayed out longer than mine--but I would have been a lot less prissy if I had to deal with that smell in my apartment, too.)

MakeMKV added speed control to their software, but it has to be set in the settings, not GUI. This drive isn't quite getting the same speeds, but a.) it's a new drive, b.) I just flashed it so I may need to do some finagling, and c.) every disc is different, even accounting for DVD/Blu-Ray/4K Blu-Ray. I tested Ant-Man and the Wasp 4K yesterday and got the rip up to 6.2X, but today with The Stand 1994 bluray (not 4K) it only went up to 5X (at best). And yes, there is a difference in speed reading toward the edge (faster) and the interior (slower).

Notes on Movies

It occurs to me that I haven't actively watched a disc in over a year, but that's only an escalation. Before that, a disc was removed virgin from the case and ripped first; only then did Child or I put it in the X-Box for watching. This is because discs are goddamn fragile and I've had to replace them way too many times (hi, Iron Man II and III and X-Men Apocalypse and Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, you fuckers).

And not just fragile as in "looked at it too hard'; I mean, invisible errors that are there when I get them out of the box. Catching one of those in rip means a 75% chance it's going to be a problem watching and a 25% chance of an unplayable disc, as in, it will not play movie at all. If the rip starts debugging weirdly, it's a warning--not necessarily 'here be dragons', but something I need to watch for in the main movie. If the rip stops dead--and to make sure, I have retry set to 51 times when MakeMKV is running, so it will keep trying past sanity--it's either Error That I Will See When Watching Disc or Unplayable. Sometimes--sometimes--it's in the extras, but not often.

Yes, I know that some ripping software can be caught on errors that don't show when playing, but I've used MakeMKV for roughly a decade--and paid for it this year when I realized that while yes, they provide it for free, this is literally the best ripping software in the world--and I made it as sensitive as possible to errors for that reason. If MakeMKV can't read it (and usually correct it) we're talking losing five/ten minutes of a movie to unplayable. If it can't even image it, it's a return; that's a manufacturing error.

Say what you want about VHS, short of throwing it in an acid bath, they were very hard to entirely kill. The ribbon might get messed up--you just skip through it. Ribbon torn? Tape. If you got desperate to save the X-Files episode "Never Again", you could find a way. Even if the tape got twisted and it looked messed up, you could usually fix even that; a few (careful) fast forwards and rewinds to use the weight of the rest of the tape would flatten the tape and smooth it.

Discs? There are workarounds, yeah. If you know someone who has the thing that can resurface? Yes. Toothpaste when you're really desperate? Yes. I do know many (some horrifying) methods, but there are stop points where nothing can be done, and then there's invisible errors that make you want to die that kill an entire disk. A tiny fuckup on the edge can kill an entire disc. Not 5:10 to 5:20 but the entire goddamn movie. In theory you can image it and use a program to fix the image, and I did get that to work a few times, but a.) depending on the software it was incredibly difficult, b.) there was no guarantees even if you did fix it (you think?) it would work, c.) and that's only when it would image, which with invisible flaws it would not, and d.) I say this as someone who enjoys that kind of thing: it was not worth it. I sat on the floor with scissors and tape hand-piecing VHS tape together for $10 X-Files episodes; I do not say 'not worth it' lightly. It was first season with the tapeworm guy; I loved that episode.

VHS? Acid bath or (maybe?????) a nuke. I was sitting here trying to think if I ever had an unrecoverable, and no. There were a few I threw away back in the day and replaced but usually Wal-Mart had a sale and it was like, $5. They were still watchable if you ff'd through that bit at 5:13 that was messed up.

For Your Ripping Needs: MakeMKV

This is my semi-annual shill for MakeMKV, which is as of 2021 still the single best ripping software I've ever used. If it is possible for the disc to be read, it can read it; if it can be ripped, it can rip it;if it can be imaged, it can image it. It works on Windows, Macs, and Linux (I primarily use it on Ubuntu but I keep a copy on my laptop now for testing). It's incredibly simple to use, the settings are straightforward.

Settings:
1.) You can set it to only show files depending on how long they are timewise to get the extras but skip the other stuff. I set mine to exclude files shorter than five minutes.
2.) In each file it automatically selects everything--all audio streams, all video, all subtitles. You can manually uncheck the streams you don't want, or in settings under Language you can set 'all English streams' or 'all [your language] streams'. It will then automatically only select English language audio and subtitle streams and deselect French, Greek, Hungarian, etc.
3.) You can set retry count when it runs into problems.

What It Can Do

MakeMKV is ripping and imaging software only; that's all it does, but it's flawless doing it, and generally, I recommend avoiding all-in-one-software because from experience, putting all your eggs in one basket rarely ends well. When I want to encode, I use Handbrake; if I want to cut and paste and manipulate and merge streams, mkvtools; when I want to rip, MakeMKV.

It has both GUI and command line options; the command line has a lot of useful functionality that doesn't appear in the GUI but you really don't need unless you have some very specific needs, you want to batch, or if you want to do disc imaging. There's also certain settings that aren't in the GUI that you can set in the registry (Windows) or in settings.conf (Mac and Linux) for certain functions; one of those is the ability to set your read/write speed with compatible bluray drives.

Yes. With certain drives, you can set the read/write speed. Yes, even with 4K dics. Because yes, MKV can rip 4K gloriously. But we'll come back to that.

Among the advantages of this is that if you have more than one optical drive you can set MakeMKV to batch mode from command line and leave it to rip on its own.

MakeMKV can read through most cosmetic and even mild scratching and problem discs, especially if the damage isn't near the edge. It can even recover some damaged discs, even unplayable ones. It can do it while ripping with the GUI--see three under Settings about setting the retry count. In command line, there are even more options for ripping as well as an option to simply get an image of a disc.

The retry count option is really useful with damaged or scratched disks that are still readable; the default retry count is 5, but I set mine to 51 and that can and does work to get through problem areas and even result in watchable media.

If the damage is too bad, it won't work at all; this is a plus, btw, that tells me immediately either the disc is unplayable or there are serious unwatchable spots and generally, we're talking ten seconds to minutes. If it does work--but requires a lot of debugging--there's about a 75% to 80% it's perfectly watchable and if there are errors, you won't notice them unless you're watching for them or they'll be under three seconds.

(Note: all the above occurred while playing in X-Box. This is because from experience, X-Box can and does play almost anything. I've had cheap and ridiculously expensive bluray players of several brands that did better at many things (audio, video, etc) but X-Box is where you go when you just want to play the fucking thing. If it's playable by any definition, it will do it. This is why since I learned to rip movies, I haven't bought a stand-alone blu-ray player. Like, maybe at a certain (high) price point I can get both all the bells and whistles along with X-Box's raw 'will play this shit come hell or high water' but I'd want a gold-plated rec before I'm willing to invest again and it better be able to do everything Plex can (like skip the bullshit) and also be compatible with everything and even then I'd need someone to explain how it is in any way superior to streaming from Plex.

Bluray players are also fragile as hell and get cranky easily, which also does not endear them to me.)

Then there's X-Men Apocalypse: the disc that taught me hate.

The only time I had a serious problem with a completed rip of a brand new disc was this goddamn movie, part of one of the boxed sets. It was removed untouched from the case and slid tenderly into the X-Box by clean hands that are kind of paranoid (very paranoid). Two thirds through, there was a massive ten to twenty minutes that went horribly wrong (not incuding about three minutes on either side weirdness), both audio and video, and you couldn't even fast forward through it while playing (it would freeze up) but it might--might--eventually get past it on its own (though multiple tries confirms not always).

MakeMKV finally did rip that--I think this is when I changed the default retry to 51--and while it couldn't correct most of the problems--though it did try--it was (slightly) smaller, the audio was (a little) better, but you there was still at least a five to eight minutes that was a hard nope nope nope. However, you could easily skip through it and watch the rest of the movie. I'm actually planning to do a rerip and make sure the logs are verbose so I can watch what happens and keep the dump and error logs for the future.

Now, finally; Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, the disc that refused to work.

It was part of a bluray set of Lord of the Rings, removed pristine from case and gently inserted into the X-Box. At some point--I don't remember where but I think near a visual of a tower--it got weird and noped out while playing. Worse, you got to that point and it just stopped playing and froze the X-Box and people, it is not easy to do that to an X-Box. After multiple tries ripping it and endless rage, just to see what happened, I set retry to like 100 or something; eighteen hours, MakeMKV could not get past that point in the disc. I couldn't even image the damn thing.

Which is why now I rip first; if you can bring MakeMKV to a halt with that many retries, that's a refund that disc, it cannot be played.

What It Can't Do

MakeMKV is a ripper; that's what it does and it's very, very good at it. It cannot differentiate which file is the right one when Disney feels frisky about people ripping their discs and gives you five thousand files and only one is correct. There are some problems it cannot fix. Among the things it does automatically is sync audio to video when it sees a problem but there are also some problems it can't see.

It cannot tell you if the audio streams themselves were synced wrong on the disc itself. For example, in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies in the 1080p bluray version, the second audio stream (5.1) is about fifteen to twenty seconds ahead both on the disc and in the rip. The 7.1 was fine, the others were fine, but at the time, my TV couldn't handle the 7.1 stream so I needed the 5.1. Even weirder, the audio was also offsync to captioning, which I always use. The captioning was perfectly synced to video, by the way; that's how I caught it right when it started happening. It was surreal.

This was upsetting as MakeMKV never failed me, so I went to Handbrake and did some fast and dirty comparisons and I think--THINK being the operative word--that I know why, and it's basically the equivalent of an audio stream unrecoverable. I'm going to try to explain what I saw, but maybe a vidder could tell me if I'm saying this right.

MakeMKV can see a sync problem using the timecodes of the audio and video; they should match, but for reasons, they don't on the disc, so it fixes that automatically by shifting the audio (or video) so they come together. This is fairly common, actually; when watching the debug log sometimes (I make my own fun), I've seen a one second, three second, even a five to eight second shift. I never noticed while watching anything off.

This was dramatically noticeable.

With this disc, from what I saw in Handbrake--and the operative words here are "I think", the timecodes were a perfect match between that specific audio stream and video; the only way I could fix it was to use another program, the mkv tool, to--I think--pull out that one audio stream, manually add in a delay of exactly the time that was off right before the movie starts, cut that same amount of time from the end so the audio stream time matches the other streams, then remerge it all, which--I might one day experiment with that, actually, but just thinking about taking apart a movie by stream, adding a delay, cutting the end, rematching the timecodes, then merging all those streams back together....that day is not today.

More on MakeMKV

It's free in beta--you can get the new code every two months from the forum where Mike posts it and add it to settings--but the price is $50 (+tax) if you want to support it and I very much encourage anyone who likes it to do so. I'm purchased one license that I use on my Ubuntu machine, and while I could in theory use it on my Windows laptop, when I emailed Mike for clarification if it was a single copy license or general license, he said single copy (but couldn't stop me because that's not a check the software was doing), I'm using my license only on my Ubuntu copy and getting one for Windows because seriously, this is incredibly good software with actual, literal, does fix shit tech support.

If your new disc can't be read due to security (you'll know by the error in the window doing lots of BD dumps or just put the error in google and it'll tell you), you email Mike with your dump attached (it's created automatically in a folder); twenty-four to forty-eight hours later, he'll email you to try again, you open the program, and the fix is automatically downloaded from the repository (to everyone who has MakeMKV, btw), and you get your rip. I know this is not just theoretical because I emailed Mike and got a response the next day. And then I bought the program

If you have a new disc that has five billion versions of the movie (hi Disney!) and you can't figure out which one? Google Makemkv 'moviename' and someone in the forums can tell you which one in which version of the disc. You got the bluray made in Quebec (you'll know by the fact all the secondary audio is French, all French, even the lossless is in French)? Someone knows. Hong Kong? Someone knows. The one made in 2020 and not 2015? Someone knows.

Note: this is not someone watching all five billion copies, btw, though I wouldn't be surprised. There was a superlong thread when I was hunting down The Hunger Games: Catching Fire where they talked about methods, and one is using AnyDVD, but I never really followed up too far because a.) someone had the right version for my Quebecois-made version and b.) the instructions I could find weren't very clear. I do plan to follow up on that, though; I'm curious how it's done.

If you read the above, now I explain.

Okay But What About that Thing You Said About Bluray Drives and Unlimited Speed

To rip a movie, you need an optical drive that can do that. This is not as easy as it used to be--assuming it was ever easy--and we're at a place where it requires active effort.

First: I never recommend what I haven't done myself when it comes to sketchy shit like flashing your drives. SO I would not be posting this at all if this wasn't both successful and almost anticlimactically easy to the point I was almost disappointed.

I did it yesterday, it was both anticlimactic and easy to the point of almost disappointed.

Until this week, this wasn't a problem for me; the bluray drive I used was the LG WH14NS40, and when I bought it in 2017, it was still running the 1.02 firmware (I got in under the wire), which allows MakeMKV (and other programs) to rip 4K movies. It's actually the second time I got that drive; by sheer chance, back in 2010ish when I first got my server, that's the drive I chose and it turned out it was the best for sketchy ripping things. Even better, LibreDrive--which MakeMKV uses--finally unlocked unlimited read/write speeds and as my firmware was 1.02 (the old firmware), I got that and lets just say whoooaaaa.

However, all good things become slow and quirky, and my LG WH14NS40 was getting to that. So I needed to get a new drive, and as one does, I went to MakeMKV forums to get the list of drives that are compatible with ripping 4K/UHD movies and decide which to buy.

Ultimate UHD Drives Flashing Guide Updated 2021

When you read that, it looks terrifying. It's not--I'm going to break it down in this entry.

It's now 2021, not 2017, and manufacturers patched their firmware on all drives now being sold to stop people ripping their own movies from their own discs because that's--bad? So this was now a two-step process: I needed to pick a drive and then flash it to downgrade the firmware to the latest unpatched--and also, unencrypted, thanks for that shit--firmware. And while yes, I am comfortable flashing my routers (perhaps too much so) to DD-WRT and back again, the routers I flashed were either old ones I don't use or ones I bought used on Amazon for under $20 and also for fun. This I'd be investing a minimum of $60ish plus external USB enclosure to hold them because my new server case doesn't have space for an optical drive (I knew that when I bought it, so that's on me).

Being me, I decided instead of getting the LG WH14NS40 again, since I'd be flashing anyway, I'd try something new. The slim drives were tempting, but their max speed would always be slower than a 5.25 drive; after reading the forums, the ASUS BW-16D1HT was actually in my cart when I stumbled over the fact that you could get the LG WH14NS60 up to 16X read/write on blurays and sure, it was twice the price of the Asus, but potential 16X read speed.

From the list of enclosures, I picked the OWC Mercury Pro 5.25 case. My LG WH14NS40 is actually using the Vantec NST-536S3-BK 5.25 case, but it was a pain fitting everything correctly and fought me; the OWC Mercury was effortless.

I got it yesterday, put it gently into the enclosure, connected it to Windows, opened MakeMKV, and checked the settings to assure the drive hit all the criteria, carefully read the requirements, downloaded the zip file with all the firmware and unzipped it, then opened youtube and watched the video how to flash it. Twice.

Note: the youtube video is incredibly reassuring. What you see there is literally exactly what happens, especially since it was done with a LG WH14NS60, which was also somewhat influential in me choosing that drive. It also walks you through double checking that your drive meets requirements.

The actual process of flashing took about three minutes. To wit:

1.) Open Windows Powershell in Admin Mode (Start Menu, Windows Powershell folder, right click on Windows Powershell, under Tasks click Run as Adminstrator)
2.) Enter C: and hit enter to make sure you're in C
3.) Enter cd.. and hit enter, then repeat to get to root of C as needed.
4.) Enter cd "C:\Program Files (x86)\MakeMKV" to get to the MakeMKV program folder (if you're in a 64 bit system, otherwise you can leave off the (x86))
5.) Paste .\makemkvcon64.exe f --all-yes -d [Drive Letter of Bluray Drive]: rawflash enc -i "[Drive Letter]:\[Path To Firmware]\HL-DT-ST-BD-RE_WH16NS60-1.02-NM00100-211810291936.bin" and hit enter.
6.) Watch the entire less than thirty second process.

Yeah, it was pretty low-drama.

7.) Opened MakeMKV and verified settings. Everything was fine.

Now, about flashing a drive and that terrifying page.

That Page Is A HellPage of Information and Terror

...yes, it's a lot of information and very quickly goes from 'overwhelming' to 'terrifying'. Here's why.

This is a MasterPage of All UHD Drive Things

First: don't think of this as Huge Ass Page of Terrifying Stuff. Think of it as very, very thorough documentation that covers everything that might happen.

The page is a master page; by design, it's one stop shopping for all your UHD drive needs so the information isn't fractured through multiple threads leading to confusion and getting things wrong or missing updates to the information. It's putting everything here so updates can be done once and immediately. You may not need all of it; you probably need only 10% of it, but there's no way to know what 10% you need. What you definitely need is the very latest information--what new firmware has appeared on drives, if it's encrypted, if x was working but isn't now so switch to y--and it doesn't fuck around with making sure everything is there so you don't fuck up your drive.

Now, let's break this down section by section.

The Drive List aka Recommended UHD Drives to get

You'll notice it's very short.

Different drives have different requirements; the list of drives you see is drives that people in the forum--multiple people--have used and done all this with and therefore these drive are all known to definitely work. These are not 'maybes' or 'happened once at my brother's'; results have been reproduced multiple times--and probably documented in this thread's pages--and part of what you see are the workarounds after failures.

There's forty+ pages in the forum thread with multiple verifications and breakdowns of the failures and the workarounds and validation No This Really Works; to get on this list, the flash to that drive has not only been done multiple times and is therefore reproducable, there are clear instructions on how to do it and the firmware (or firmwares) is available for download on this page. And those instructions are updated when something changes.

Terrifying can sometimes be called 'thorough', is what I'm saying.

You Can Also Buy It Flashed For you aka Recommended Pre-Flashed Drive Sellers

Want to skip the rest? Click on the link by each and read the comments of satisfied consumers. There's also the option of remote assistance; you get your drive and get online and someone checks your drive and walks you through it/does it for you at what I assume are reasonable prices.

Firmware List? aka Recommended Firmware to flash for MakeMKV

This is just informational; it's telling you the recommended firmware for each drive as of this day. You can nod and read on.

Other Things To Buy aka Enclosures/SATA

AKA USB enclosures/sata adapters that work with optical drives and flashing and USB enclosures/sata adapters that work with optical drives but don't support flashing

If this is going to be an external usb, stick with the list and make your life easier. I really love the Mercury; incredibly easy but yes, does have screws. Worth it.

What the Fuck aka Sleep Bug/Sleep Bug Fix

This is just informational; it's telling you about a known issue with some drives. You can nod and read on.

The Requirements List aka IMPORTANT Before you flash in VERY BRIGHT RED aka Oh God What

There's also the list of requirements for the drive you must check even if you get one of those listed models, just to be sure before you start the flash. This is checkable by opening MakeMKV and looking at the drive info in the GUI: super easy. Do not flash--DO NOT FLASH--before checking this.

This is important; read it. But breathe, because it's really not a big deal.

1.) It's actually not that common that you get the right drive from that list and it doesn't match those requirements (trust me, I read), but--as I learned with routers--when manufacturers release the same model multiple times, sometimes there's something slightly different in a certain batch. Most of the time--so far, every time, again, learned this with routers--it shows up in comments on Amazon, New Egg, etc. The people buying these models for ripping will almost always leave a comment if it seems to match and doesn't and they'll use all-caps to make sure you see it. Sometimes, a dozen people or more, even.

I can't prove that most people who buy these models are alwasy rippers, but they show up disproportionately in comments, so if you pick a model and skim down and don't see an issue, I wouldn't bother wasting time worrying. But I can say it really doesn't happen often; I barely skimmed comments before buying and that was just habit. You can easily double check this by googling Makemkv and the drive name (example: ASUS BW-16D1HT) and see what comes up as a warning; if it happened recently to someone--and odds are, it happened on Amazon or Newegg--they will be yelling about it for all to hear.

2.) The worst that will happen if you get the right model but it has the wrong platform--again, the requirements are very clear and tell you exactly where to look--you just pack it up and return it and try a different model or a different page with the model you want.

Don't overthink this, seriously.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! aka Crossflashing and Crossflashing Warnings

Yeah, fair. But--and just know this part--very avoidable. Just don't pick a drive that needs that.

Being on that list does not mean the drive is easy, quick, or takes the least work to flash; it means if you follow the steps for that drive exactly, it will work. This list is to give you all the options, because truthfully there aren't many options out there. Some of the drives require crossflashing; you flash it to firmware of a different drive first, then flash it to the one you want. If you have a drive preference (you like slim, or Asus, or etc), it's worth the extra work.

It's not necessarily hard, but if you're already sketchy on a single flash to downgrade your firmware, flashing twice--and to the firmware of some random other drive for Reasons Unclear But Important first--might hit your nope and I get that. Just pick a drive that doesn't require crossflashing, and next section, I"m going to tell you exactly how to do that.

That was another reason I picked the LG WH14NS60; it required nothing but a single flash. Even better, on Page 44, February 11th of this year, someone had literally just done it with that drive, so I didn't need to worry too much. The steps I outlined above are literally all I needed to do. But--it wasn't my primary reason for choosing it; that 16X was. So if it turned out I needed to do more steps to get it working, that wouldn't have been a dealbreaker for me.

Encrypted????? aka Newer OEM Firmwares and encrypted

You will need to read this carefully. Starting from the top:

This is a list of drives that ship with encrypted firmware and the firmware number. So once we have chosen our drive from the list, we need to check and see if our drive is on there, then check what the firmware number is. So when you get here, paste the full name of your chosen drive--from the list of drives in the first section--in a sticky or textpad or something so you can look at it.

We're going to use my drive as our example.

My Drive: LG WH16NS60, UHD Official Internal 5.25 <--exactly as it appears in the drive list in the first section.

Looking at the list in the textbox, we see only one entry that mentions WH16NS60.

HL-DT-ST-BD-RE_WH16NS60-1.03-N000600-212005081010.bin

Let's break down that line.

Drive: HL-DT-ST-BD-RE_WH16NS60
Firmware: 1.03
Other Stuff: N000600-212005081010.bin (not relevant for the purposes of this breakdown)

I now know the firmware that comes standard on my drive is encrypted. This applies to me. Keep reading.

Now we go to the worrying text just below the textbox list.

Text: LG 1.04+ / BU40N 1.03 / Asus 3.10+ and similar

So this applies to LG drives, BU40N drives, and Asus drives; lets start with that. When I picked this drive from the list in the first section, the HL-DT-ST-BD-RE_WH16NS60 did have the letters 'LG' in front of it.

This is an LG drive. This applies to me.

Wait, we're still reading that line of text.

The next part after "LG" is 1.04+. That indicates the firmware version that is shipped on the drive that all this worrying text applies to. Looking at the firmware number, I see my drive is shipped with 1.03, not 1.04 or anything greater.

This does not apply to me. This section is now informational for people not me. Nod and read on.

If your answer is 'this does apply to you', we have now entered Crossflashing Territory. Read it, nod, and decide if you want to do the crossflash. It will give you very exact instructions on what to do if you want to flash this particular drive. If you aren't in, go back to the list and pick a different drive.

Paydirt aka Unlocked Flashers, Downgrade Enabled Firmware and MK Firmware

First link: a zip containing every firmware for every goddamn drive. Download it.

Your ideal firmware is in there. That's it.

As I said; this is a MasterPost of All UHD Things. The informational parts above weren't irrelevant; they tell you the current status and history of your drive and what to check, so yes, read them so you understand what's going on. They tell you what is current--the firmware right now recommended--and why. They tell you some models can be dicks and double check that your drive also checks these requirement boxes. They tell you if your drive comes with encrypted firmware; they tell you if this firmware requires you to need flash twice, once with one firmware, then with the firmware you really need.

Again, this is documentation, good documentation, they're showing you their work and why you can trust what they say. When you download that folder, you know what's in there is the best available because it's been tested like a lot and they know.

When you unzip that folder, you should see the firmware recommended for your drive in there, ready and waiting. If you need to crossflash first, that firmware is there, too. Feel reassured: those informational bits did not lie, there it is.

Here you also see the tools people have created--including one with a GUI!--to get this done. Click and read the threads and find out if it's right for you. No, this does not have to be command line, I'm just weird like that. We can point and click this shit.

How To Flash Videos and commands

Watch the video right now and relax; it really is that easy.

The rest is a breakdown of the steps I gave earlier. These are pretty much identical whether you need to flash once or twice.

RECOVER WHAT??? aka NS40 Recovery Image

Don't do that and you won't need this. If you did do that, here's how to fix it. Trust me, if you followed the instructions, you'll be fine.

Useful Links:

Some stuff you may or may not need. Probably not if you're online and have MakeMKV downloaded.

I hope for those who were interested this demystified the process for you. I've ripped one 4K and one bluray with the new drive and no complaints at all. Posted at Dreamwidth: https://seperis.dreamwidth.org/1086425.html. | You can reply here or there. | comments

monday of the week after

seperis — Mon, 22 Feb 2021 09:55:46 GMT

Back at my apartment, and most of my (very large) complex is up and running, though some buildings are still having problems with power and/or water. Austin is under a boil notice, so our complex has an empty apartment where you can pick up water, but fortunately my mom sent over bottled water for me and Child so I don't have to take away from those really in need.

(Personally I think those without power and/or water entirely should be sent giant care baskets complete with whiskey as needed because holy shit.)

School

School was canceled all last week and up to Wednesday, so first week assignments aren't due until next Monday (March 1st). Last Tuesday, before they made the announcement killing first week, I desperately did and turned in both first week assignments and started second week for Intro to Computing as quickly as possible. However, of the two distance learning classes, it's the most self-paced so it probably isn't affected which is a shame; it's kind of sometimes--boring.

Intro to Computing - the Drama
Okay, so here's the problem: it's a required class for the AAS or BAS, and it's important in that it hits that vast array of knowledge of computing in the 21st Century just in case you don't know some of it. I get this is important and is going to go into details I don't know, and I need it.

But.

I have the privilege of having been inducted into fandom in 1998, and for those of you in fandom in 1998, everyone wasn't just computer literate; it was like eeevverryyone but me had PhD's in Computer Shit and the Internet Thing. So to do what I really wanted--write porn about Tom Paris and B'Elanna Torres like anyone sane--I had to learn things like 'webpages' and 'mailing lists' and how to post to usenet and 'search engines'. And as fandom is always two steps ahead of the general population, I had to learn backward as well as forward at the same time. So a lot of the class so far is very much like a technical re-reading of my literal internet history, so much so that I keep glazing over when reading and missing the technical terms I actually don't know and need to that are basically defined by 'your life circa 1998 to 2003 as we talk about the Early Web'.

The thing is, I was twenty-one when I got online; I don't actually remember how things worked before I had the universe at the click of a keyboard. I mean, if you had a gun to my head and told me to relive my childhood RIGHT NOW I remember 'pen pals' and 'encyclopedias' and 'microfiche searches of multiple libraries to find this book I really wanted when I was in my teens'. I remember it as a thing that happened, but I don't remember entirely what it was like to live in. Now I think of it in horror--the frustration! the annoyance! the hellscape! the SLOWNESS!--but in my teens I didn't have any other context so best guess it was those things but like, in the context of 'normal life' not 'how did I survive?' My digital citizenship may not be from birth, but my entire adult life has been here; I've gone native.

The Office modules are an entirely different story. They're all about the basics of Excel, Word, Powerpoint, and Access and how to use them effectively.

I use Office very much--I have folder named Spreadsheets that is stuffed with the beauty of Things I Like to Turn Into Spreadsheets; I write my own VBA for Excel and Word. I have personalized settings saved into Normal.dotm to set my Normal style and in it are modules with an array of functions and subs I use commonly so they're available to any document I open and assure all my documents are saved in the exact same template. In Word and Excel, when I upgrade computers here or at work, I have a list of settings I immediately change in Options, on the ribbon, in the Quick Access Toolbar, registry edits I make, changes I make in accessibility...I barely even think about it.

However, I also skipped over Vast Tracts of Basic Shit I Never Cared About Because I Didn't Ever Use That. Which has more than once been a problem but not enough for me to learn more than just enough to make a note to "Do this thing whatever it is when that happens, no idea". There are quite a few of those, by the way. For a surprising number of what most people would call basic tasks, I know nothing.

Not anymore.

The Create a Flyer Project was a trip; I found things like Borders and Glow and on the ribbon there's a single button that changes everything to All Caps or All Lower or All Something Else, did y'all know about that? So the Office Modules are incredibly exciting because they're--for me--Brand New Information as taught to probably first graders these days. There's Themes and Colors and basically I'm having a super good time; for the first Word Module I did all the optional exercises just to see what else you could do to a flyer (beveling pictures with round edges and shadows at Blue Accent 2 25% Darker!!!!); it was great. Next Word Module is How to Make a Research Paper and the third is Enhancing Documents (?!?!!?!): I am at the edge of my seat. The three spreadsheet modules I'm almost slavering for; what magic will I learn there??????

And while Access I sort of have used (years ago), it and Powerpoint are effectively Here Be Dragons on my mental map of Office and just--can't wait. At all.

It's the non-Office stuff that's getting to me.

I am learning technical terms and concepts and also there is stuff I don't think I knew, and I missed two questions--TWO--on my first test and got a 23/25 instead of a perfect score so obviously I need to study much harder (when I wanted to retake it--you get at least one retake, highest score is selected--Child told I had lost my mind, but I am not entirely reconciled to this stain on my grade).

Just. Brain-glaze. Ugh.

Fundamentals of Programming - Less Drama

This class is actually on a regular weekly schedule, which means I can't jump ahead (Project 2 hasn't been posted), which means I am going out of my mind. I want to do everything and reading ahead just doesn't cut it or doing the practice exercises to entertain myself until the next project comes out, and if you're baffled on why, I'll tell you.

Coding is probably the highest form of entertainment to me, second only to writing and not by much. This can be a problem.

I already write in Python, and probably I could read straight through doing exercises and learning it without need for Projects to guide me (I just go back and complete the projects as assigned). But: I need to learn it right.

The same problem I have in Office above comes up for me in computer languages; at least in coding, my pattern recognition works extremely fast. Variables, functions, structure: once I've identified each, I start editing immediately, and once I hit a certain edit point (when I rewrite an entire script into something else entirely and realize hey) I start writing from scratch. I learn the advanced level coding--to do something new, you kind of have to--but there vast, vast tracts of basic stuff that if I use it, I just copy paste or memorize without actually understanding it; if I don't use it, I don't know it exists. Which means I am far too often surprised by behavior I didn't predict because I have no idea of a basic principle. And much like Word, I google, correct it, add a paragraph comment explaining it and where I found it, and go on.

My best example of this phenomenon is regex and related concepts.

It's ridiculous, but I have to google the base principles every time and actually have at this point a copy/paste library. And I have, actually, used it enough (dear God enough) to have at least by accident learned it, but my brain, for reasons unclear, does not consider it coding but a really annoying convenience.


#!/bin/bash
# Get list of movies
# updated 2/20/2021

# Paths
mPath=/media/movies
mPath2=/media/movies2
mPath3=/media/movies3
dPath=/home/jennifer/moviedata

# Files
dFileName="moviesListA.txt"
dFileName2="moviesAllA.txt"
mName="*"

# Text
text="Last Update: "
text2="Count: "

# Other
date=$(date +%m/%d/%Y::%T);
a="/"
t="."
u=" "
f=","

# do not
lostDir="lost+found"
moveDir="1.movies.move"

# directory
mDir=$mPath$a$mName
mDir2=$mPath2$a$mName
mDir3=$mPath3$a$mName

# file names
movieFile=$dPath$a$dFileName
movieFile2=$dPath$a$dFileName2

# erase existing info
cp /dev/null $movieFile
cp /dev/null $movieFile2
echo "Files erased."

# add to movieFile
echo $text $date 1>$movieFile

# get data
for movieDir in $mDir $mDir2 $mDir3; do
	# get directory path without *
	# remove everything after the last /
	aPath=${movieDir%/*}

	# get root folder
	# remove everything before the first  /
	mRoot=${aPath#*/}
	# remove everything before the first / in mRoot (media)
	movieRoot=${mRoot#*/}

	for dir in $movieDir; do
		# do not check these directories
		fullLostDir=$aPath$a$lostDir
		moveDir=$aPath$a$moveDir
		if [ $dir != "$moveDir" ] && [ $dir != $fullLostDir ] && [ -d $dir ] && [ "$(ls -A $dir)" ]; then
			# get file subdirectory
			subMovieDir=$dir$a$mName

			echo
			echo "Subdirectory found."
			# FORMAT SUBDIR NAME
			# remove everything before the last /
			xdir=${dir##*/}
			# remove extra dots and spaces
			locDir=${xdir//$t/$u}

			for file in $subMovieDir; do
				if [ ! -d $file ]; then
					# GET FILE NAME WITH EXTENSION
					# remove everything before the last /
					xfile=${file##*/}
					fileName=$xfile

					# GET FILE EXTENSION ONLY
					# remove everything before the last .
					fileExt=${xfile##*.}

					# check for non-movie files
					array=("nfo" "jpg" "gif" "txt" "srt" "json" "xml")
					arrSize=7
					ai=0
					for ix in ${array[@]}; do
						if [ "$fileExt" == $ix ]; then
							continue;
						else
							let ai=ai+1
						fi

						if [ $ai -eq $arrSize ]; then
							# GET FILE NAME ONLY
							# remove file extension
							# remove everything after the last .
							afile=${xfile%.*}

							# EXCEPTION CHECK - movie names with hyphens
							# remove everything after the first dash
							exType=${afile%%-*}
							if [ "$exType" == "spider" ] || [ "$exType" == "et.the.extra" ] || [ "$exType" == "ant" ]; then
								movEx="y"
							else
								movEx="n"
							fi

							# GET MOVIE RESOLUTION ONLY
							# remove movie name
							# remove everything before the first dash
							xtype=${afile#*-}

							# if movie name has hyphens
							if [ "$movEx" == "y" ]; then
								# remove everything before the first dash in xtype
								atype=${xtype#*-}
							else
								# set to common variable
								atype=$xtype
							fi

							# remove extraneous data after resolution 
							# remove everything after the first dash
							btype=${atype%%-*}
							
							# check for 4K movies
							# remove everything after the K
							ctype=${btype%%K*}
							if [ "$ctype" == 4 ]; then
								# 4K movie
								# add K back in
								movieType="${ctype}K"
							else
								# not 4K movie
								# remove everything after the p
								dtype=${btype%%p*}
								# For 2160p, 1080p, 720p, 480p
								# add the p back in
								if [ "$dtype" == 2160 ] || [ "$dtype" == 1080 ] || [ "$dtype" == 720 ] || [ "$dtype" == "480" ]; then
									# add p back in
									movieType="${dtype}p"
								else
									movieType=$ctype
								fi
							fi

							# GET MOVIE NAME ONLY
							# remove movie resolution
							# if movie name with hyphens
							if [ "$movEx" == "y" ]; then
								# remove extra data after resolution
								# remove everything after the last dash
								xname=${afile%-*}

								# for spiderman into the spiderverse
								if [ "$exType" == "spider" ]; then
									# remove everything after the last dash in x2name
									aname=${xname%-*}
								else
									# set to common variable
									aname=$xname
								fi
							else
								# remove everything after the first dash
								aname=${afile%%-*}
							fi

							# GET YEAR ONLY
							# get year from movie name
							# remove everything before the last period
							movieYear=${aname##*.}
							# format year
							formYear=" ($movieYear)"

							# FORMAT MOVIE NAME
							# remove year from movie name
							bname=${aname%.*}
							# remove extra dots and spaces
							formName=${bname//$t/$u}
							# join name and year
							movieName=$formName$formYear

							# GET DATE AND SIZE
							# get date
							xdate=$(stat -c %y "$file")
							# remove everything after the last space
							movieDate=${xdate%% *}
							# get file size
							movieSize=$(stat -c %s "$file")

							# output to files
							printf "%-60s %-20s %-15s %-15s %-60s %-10s\n" "$movieName" "$movieSize" "$movieDate" "$movieRoot" "$locDir" "$movieYear" 1>>$movieFile
							printf "%s\n" $movieName$f$movieSize$f$movieType$f$fileExt$f$movieDate$f$movieRoot$f$locDir$f$fileName | paste -sd ' ' 1>>$movieFile2
						fi
					done
				fi
			done
		fi
	done
done
echo
echo "Done"
exit 0

Explanation
So this script searches my media directories for all movie files, removes the path, then takes apart the file name. My name template is [movie name].[movie year]-[resolution].[extra information].extension.

Example:
spider-man.into.the.spiderverse.2018-4K.extended.edition.mkv

It's a variation of the standard naming scheme for Plex, but I use periods in the place of spaces in movie name and extra information and to separate the movie name from the year (instead of using () around the year) This is because I generally only access my media files using command line and didn't want to mess with strings so simplified into something I could type without hitting shift or remember to use " ". Plex recognizes it for sorting and metadata retrieval, so I'm keeping it.

The code breaks down the file name for a text file and a csv file into Movie Name, Movie Year, Resolution, Extra Information (that I don't need in the spreadsheet so gets deleted), extension (that gives me the specific container), and then some extra code at the end to get date added and file size. The csv file I import into excel, where it's sorted into a master list of all movie files.

(One movie can have up to I think six files for multiple resolutions and added AAC versions. If 4K, a 2160 file that's a sane size if I really want to stream it remotely and also includes AAC versions of all non-Dolby audio streams if it's DTS; a 1080 bluray also needs an AAC compliant version because a lot are DTS only, etc.)

If you're wondering what the problem is, scroll down to first do statement and note all the #comments. Specifically the text of them. Specifically, how many are explanations of what a single small piece of code assigned to a variable does. The same piece of code, in multiple variations.

Example:


# remove everything before the last period
fileExt=${xfile##*.}

There's only four variations of this. Before first, before last, after first, after last. The only things that change between these functions are which of these (#, %), how many (1 or 2), and the location of the * (before or after the dividing character).

Again: there are only four variations of this. Four.

Variations:


# remove everything before the first /
mRoot=${aPath#*/}

# remove everything before the last period
fileExt=${xfile##*.}

# remove everything after the first dash
aname=${afile%%-*}

# remove everything after the last period
afile=${xfile%.*}

I cannot remember them for love or money. That's why every single one not only says 'what specifically I'm removing' but also 'exactly what this tiny piece of is doing to make that happen'. I just checked and some of my comments are wrong (again) because I cannot identify which is which just by looking and have to read the definitions (again) to remember.

This is an example of something I first memorized because it was basic, I only needed it for this one thing once, and now cannot make pattern recognition add it to knowledge base. I can see the goddamn pattern--this is not rocket science--but I can't internalize it enough to recognize one of those four in isolation (or which is which of those four when seen together without notes). Except the *, which is because it matches before (it's before the split character if splitting before, after if splitting after) but I have to think about it to make it happen and keep double checking. It's not that I can't see how it relates to each other; my brain simply will not do it. I can memorize it, and that will work for the discrete session I am writing or editing the script; it will be gone the next day or after I sleep.

I will learn it--eventually--but for reasons unclear to me, frequent usage won't help (this script has been refactored and updated multiple times over two to three years and items moved around quite a bit). One day, for no reason, I'll open this one and suddenly have no problem reading those pieces of code the same way I read the rest, or read a book; that day, however, is not today.

That first printf statement? I know what it does--it's printing to file in columns of x spaces--but I can't take it apart without referring to my notes. If I want to do this with other data, I'd copy paste and very carefully change the numbers. It simply doesn't stick.

This problem happens a lot.

Yeah, that was long.

Anyway, with this Python class, I have an opportunity to be force-paced by the instructor and the lessons to learn first principles instead of jumping ahead to 'Thing I Want to Design' and cheerfully write sixteen nested loops with random if/elif/else or switches. So I'm carefully reading every word of every lesson and examining the examples and using the class structure to avoid jumping ahead and indicating to my brain to discard something as 'unimportant details'. It is interesting, this works for my brain; if i jump ahead too much, however, my brain can and will start deciding what is 'just details' and I am screwed again.

Will this way work? It should: that's how I learned C++. Granted, that was an entirely new language to me at the time, but I'd been writing Javascript enough that it was less unfamiliar territory than a new dialect with a compiling chaser. I can still read all my C++ programs perfectly; all I need to refresh myself is checking my notes, and back then, my notes weren't exactly illustrative.

Other News

Nothing really. Work today should have most of us back, so we'll find out the damage to this sprint. I can't even judge what the decision will be or if they even have one yet; last week was--would have been--Week Two of a four week sprint for a March release. They might decide to scrap it and start everything over at Week One starting this week; they may scrap some items and leave other that didn't require a lot of code changes or already had the code changes done in Week One; they may scrap nothing and just do four weeks of work in a badly interrupted three weeks for everyone. I don't even know if all our data centers are up, if they stayed up, if they went down and came up and error checking found them fine, if they're still error checking....

For that matter, production will take precedence; it's possible they'll scrap the sprint and send us all back to All Regression Testing All the Time to make sure everything in production works which is like if boredom was an Olympic Event.

Oh yeah, can't wait for that. Posted at Dreamwidth: https://seperis.dreamwidth.org/1086189.html. | You can reply here or there. | comments

the week of deep winter

seperis — Fri, 19 Feb 2021 19:46:16 GMT

So we're now (hopefully) in the tail end of the winter storm that brought down--literally--the state of Texas. Which means I can (hopefully please) go home today.

The Setting

So because of the probability my apartment would lose power and water fairly quickly in a winter storm, Child, the bunnies, the puppy, and I went to my Mom's house to stay what I thought would be to Monday and what Child worried might be Wednesday so as not to freeze to death and also be hydrated.

(As it's Friday now, we were both very wrong about the timeframe. And also how bad it would get because holy shit.)

My apartment lost power I think at some point Sunday; my middle sister's apartment was the same. So as of Sunday night, my mom's house contained:
1.) three daughters
2.) one BIL
3.) four of six grandchildren (Child was staying with a friend he was helping move)
4.) three dogs (one mom's, one youngest sister's, one mine)
5.) six rabbits
6.) two cats.
Total:
Humans: 8
Pets: 11

Monday night, above with addition of:
1.) two (2) grandchildren, as the power went out at Child's friend's apartment so they went to their respective parents/grandparents, and my eldest niece, who lives with her dad, lost water and power.
2.) one (1) cats who does not belong here but stalks the house until a door opens and we gave up.
Total:
Humans: 10
Pets: 12

Tuesday night, above with addition of:
1.) two (2) neighborhood friends of my middle nephew (age 12)
Humans: 12
Pets: 12

Utilities Sometimes Optional

Fortunately, we didn't lose power except for about four hours on Tuesday morning (I think?) but we lost internet on Sunday and water Wednesday night. Internet came back veerrrrry early Thursday morning. Water is still pending.

My sister's apartment got both back sometime Wednesday afternoon, so she, BIL, and two of four grandkids went home that night. My apartment came back up yesterday but is going down again today for repairs at an unknown time for an unknown period of time and I don't even know. I just want to go home so much.

So That Happened

So I've visited Chicago in winter (I was prepped by Madelyn beforehand) and in my late teens I was an exchange student to Finland August to January, so I am distantly conversant with temperatures below 30F. Vaguely. As in I remember it happened.

But I cannot say enough that it happening here was utterly insane.

On Saturday night, there was a light sprinkling of snow on the ground that continued through Sunday; Sunday night, it apparently started snowing more. At 2:19 AM Monday morning, my sister told me to look outside and after a glance outside, I woke up in the house to come look. There was a blanket of snow on the ground. On a metal folding chair in the backyard, snow had piled, it was roughly five inches.

Austin had the third highest snowfall in its history at five (six?) inches; on my phone, the temperature went down to 6F on Monday and 4F on Tuesday. The official low was apparently 9F, which seriously is still insane.

The entire state is still reeling. There are still people without power; there are even more without water. We're on a boil notice in Austin and doubtless in other parts of Texas (excluding El Paso and the panhandle, who are part of the national grid and therefore were actually functional.

People froze to death. Others died of carbon monoxide poisoning in their vehicles trying to stay out of the cold. There's a not zero chance we'll find people who starved to death before this is over. The grocery stores--if you can get to one--are stripped bare and the state of delivery trucks seems to be 'pending'.

Pipes have burst, causing flooding in apartments and houses and the street. There are tree branches falling, in the process of falling, or are going to fall literally everywhere, which is a problem if a car or house are beneath them. Repeat that but with whole trees, which aren't as many but in relation to a car or house are even worse.

We actually don't know the extent of the aftermath yet; some people are still dumping snow in the toilet for flushing purposes; if you have electricity, you may or may not be boiling it first. Because I couldn't stop myself, I went to check the news and also noted the disaster continues for agriculture, livestock...well, everything.

Notes

I am unbelievably lucky that I could go to my mom's house, because my apartment, like most places in Texas, isn't made for these kinds of temperatures, especially without power, especially without power for roughly four and a half days. We were astronomically lucky that my Mom's house never lost power, which is actually weird.

So her house and some unknown number in this neighborhood are part of the grid that apparently couldn't be taken down during the failed attempt at rolling blackouts because, unlike most parts of Austin, they couldn't bring the power back up after. So far as we can work out, it's something to do with how old this neighborhood is; it's at minimum fifty years old and probably north of sixty; only a few streets away is the house we lived in when I was five years old before we moved into the country: that was forty years ago and it wasn't new then.

Which means that if our power and the neighborhood's power had gone out, that would (possibly?) mean that the electric grid was entirely FUBAR'ed instead of only mostly--like now--which I am very glad I didn't know.

The temperature outside right now is 34F. The snow is melting, and it doesn't feel real. Living it didn't feel real either, though, so no surprise there.

Texas Tribune: Texas was "seconds and minutes" away from catastrophic months long blackouts, officials say Posted at Dreamwidth: https://seperis.dreamwidth.org/1085806.html. | You can reply here or there. | comments

this week of all weeks

seperis — Tue, 09 Feb 2021 00:24:12 GMT

When I posted on January 9th, and said I was stressed and had updates, I--never got back to that. So her we go.

Back in December, a few things happened. The first is my grandmother, my mom's mom, died. IT wasn't expected, but it wasn't entirely a surprise. Right on top of that--and probably related--Child went and got a puppy. And six days after we got him, the Saturday before Christmas, he was diagnosed with parvo.

So with a kit from Austin Pet's Alive, we treated Parsnip (yes, like the vegetable; no, I really don't know why Child picked that name) at home with an IV in the back of the shoulder/neck and three shots daily. It was very dramatic; it also ended with us still having a very living, very into inappropriate pooping puppy, so that ended well. Then a week and change later--six days before I posted in January--I was six days into home quarantine for COVID exposure and not taking it well.

Yeah, up until inauguration, I was really doubting like--everything.

Now to update to today:
1.) I start college again next Monday. This is going to be interesting.
2.) Me and my mom got vaccinated with the first dose of the Moderna vaccine on Saturday.

I posted a thread on twitter, but I'm going to reproduce it here for those who are worried about the vaccine or want some reassurance on how it went, etc.

Spoiler: for what I think we can consider a pretty fucking epic personal event--Vaccination in a Time of Pandemic COVID: An Autobiography--it was about as exciting as changing socks. Not even wet socks for dry or plain for fancy: just standard sock change.

In other words: awesomely, wonderfully, gorgeously mundane and unexceptional.

Twitter: thread

So I wasn't going to post about this, but as there's fairly constant vaccine misinformation going around, I figured I'd add to the public record: on Saturday, me and my mother received the first dose of the Moderna vaccine.

Side Effects

Not particularly notable, tbh.

Saturday
a.) I didn't feel the shot at all--and seriously doubted it had happened even though I could see the injection site.
b.) Faint--very very faint--soreness about three hour later.
c.) Took a nap but it was a Saturday so that's pretty much normal.

Sunday
a.) About 4 AM Sunday night, I woke up hot and turned my AC down to 50 (with my phone, bless Nest so hard) and only when I woke again around 5ish in a sweat and chilled did I realize I might have had a fever, then went back to sleep.
b.) Sore at the injection site but not unless I held up my left arm perpendicular to my body with my forearm hanging down. Yes, I had to experiment to find the soreness.**
c.) Slightly firm and raised at a half inch radius around injection site

** I'm being literal, it took me some time to work out how to find the soreness.

Monday
a.) My arm is only sore when I make a concerted effort to find a way to make it happen
b.) The firm raised area is not as raised.
c.) There may be something going on with lymph nodes under my arm but I did a lot of weird ass arm movements to fine the soreness.

Conclusion
I may be more tired, but I am a weekend napper. Maybe it was slightly easier to nap??? Today I haven't noticed anything unusual.

Medications
I take Advair inhaler twice a day, levothyroxide 0.15 MG and Ritalin 20 MG tablets. I forgot to worry about taking those until late yesterday so I'm guessing not a problem.

So involving NSAIDS like aspirin, ibuprofen, etc: I googled then called my insurance's patient advisory nurse since I use baby aspirin when I have headaches. She said--and I quote--maybe stay away from aspirin for now but Tylenol is fine but really not to worry. You may get different advice, so please don't take that last part as anything but anecdata; she wasn't sure either and was clear it was more 'well, if you have tylenol, maybe stick with that rn'.

The Vaccination Process

It was goddamn ideal; they used a kids activity center/gym, and it was so well organized, it was a dream from driving into the parking lot to when you left.

Arrival

When we drove in the parking lot, you drove straight to the first volunteer, who asked your time, then directed us to the indicated parking area (distinct from the one for the elderly/disabled) and told what time to get in line.

Outside was a sheltered area with wheelchairs--a lot of wheelchairs--for those who may need them as well as drop off areas for those who needed it.

Standing in Line

It started outside, where the sidewalk was pre-marked with standing points six feet apart. When you got in line, there was very little standing still though; we maybe stood in one area for thirty seconds at most. We got in line at 11:45. By 11:49 we reached the area near the wheelchair area where a volunteer scanned our phones for the code that came with our appointment email or got our names and looked us up (me and mom had the email).

We got a clipboard with one two-sided sheet to fill out with pretty much only necessary info and teh moderna fact sheet. We made our way through the very carefully delineated line by about 12:01; they kept everyone moving very well.

In the Gym

When we go to the gym area--which was around 11:55--there were several sections:
1.) the major area (about half) was about nine to sixteen tables each with one to two nurses doing vaccinations
2.) one quarter was chairs six feet apart.
3.) about a quarter was for those in wheelchairs. Two and three were for the fifteen minute waiting period after the vaccine was given for potential allergic reactions.

I noticed when I first got in that up in the bleachers were a ton of boxes covering eight to twelve rows; when we got closer, they were a lot lot lot of empty boxes for new wheelchairs, I'm assuming the ones they had outside and inside

Vaccination

At 12:05, my mom and I were called to the middle table, since they group family members. Mom sat down, the nurse asked some questions, gave her the shot, then filled out the card. She went to the sitting area. Repeat 1 with me.

After Vaccination

We waited for about fifteen minutes and talked, then left about 12:30. End to end, it was forty-five minutes from when we got out of the car, and honestly, it felt like maybe ten. The longest was the sitting part.

Notes

This was very well organized; honestly, this is the ideal of how you run a mass vaccination program in the middle of a pandemic.

I want to add this: the volunteers were very professional and managed--I literally have no idea--to make a once in a lifetime if we're lucky event to stop a deadly pandemic feel...not terrifying. They were cheerful, brisk, matter of fact, answered questions but made every effort to make this feel perfectly normal, and that shit is a skill I'd like to have. My vaccination was done at the Delco Activity Center by Austin Public Health. Posted at Dreamwidth: https://seperis.dreamwidth.org/1085581.html. | You can reply here or there. | comments

universal remote

seperis — Sun, 17 Jan 2021 15:14:55 GMT

So I am always in search of working universal remotes for my mom and myself because it's guaranteed you will lose or break it and a lot of TVs now don't come with any physical buttons or a limited selection.

I've been using the Logitech elite; hideously expensive, but it worked with literally all my media. I love it, it was definitely worth the money. But I wanted one for my TV in my room specifically and also get one for my mom, since the grandkids (and uh her kids) lose teh remotes like a lot.

I found this: BroadLink RM4 pro IR RF Hub - $47.99

It's not a remote per se: it's a wifi hub you put by your TV that translates your phone commands in the app to IR/RF for your devices.

What you do is plug it in, get it on your wifi network, download the app, then in the app, say add a device. Then you use your existing remote and the pre-installed codes to basically recreate your remote in the app. It then creates a neat little interface for each device, some more elaborate than others. So far, it works on my Samsung TV--though that's a gimme--and my Polk Command Bar. If the preinstalled codes don't work or don't have the functionality you need, you use your existing remote to show the command for the hub to learn and replicate. For my Polk Command Bar, I added HDMI switching since it has two HDMI ports, and lowered my stress considerably since I hate having only one remote for that.

Going through the device list, however, this isn't limited to TVs/entertainment. It apparently can do this with anything that has a remote, either RF or IR. I haven't tested that yet but I'm hunting up my old remotes now just to see.

It interfaces directly with Alexa and Google Assistant, and Home Assistant, among others.

On Broadlink's Website:
Device and Specs

Note:

1.) wifi controlled devices work; bluetooth-only, not so much. There are workarounds for that (a lot, actually), but it's something to consider. My NVIDIA Shield TV is going to take some work, in other words and I'll post when I get it working. However, it looks like all the most common devices and brands are represented, and for my Polk soundbar, there was community support as well ('unofficial' community created codes are also in the app).

2.) there is a distance factor like with any remote or wifi. Generally you probably need to be in the same room whenever possible to use it.

There are actually several versions of Broadlink's universal remote; I picked this one because it had the widest range so I could check if it would be a good fit for my mom and also be able to control my Polk Soundbar if I lost the remote (it is also an Alexa device, but I consider voice control of my soundbar a secondary way to control, not primary).

I'm mostly reccing this because of ratings, universality, and price. Posted at Dreamwidth: https://seperis.dreamwidth.org/1085326.html. | You can reply here or there. | comments

BREAKING WEATHER NEWS IN AUSTIN

seperis — Sun, 10 Jan 2021 17:12:17 GMT

IT IS SNOWING! WITH SNOWFLAKES! Posted at Dreamwidth: https://seperis.dreamwidth.org/1084968.html. | You can reply here or there. | comments

home assistant has released its own open source hub

seperis — Sat, 09 Jan 2021 17:59:56 GMT

Due to so much current stress I've been skipping out on my posting here. I really am not feeling doing an update on life at this time, but I want to spread this far and wide.

I talked about starting to use open source Home Assistant for my home automation needs with a Raspberry Pi. since then I updated to an 8 GB Pi and added booting from an SSD.

Now there's something a thousand times better: Home Assistant Blue - $150

This is Home Assistant's own Automation Hub built by them. You do not need to build anything, like a Pi; it's a single board computer with 4 USB hubs, 1 ethernet, 1 HDMI, with a 128 eMMC hard drive and 4G RAM with Home Assistant pre-installed and a very cool blue case.

It's plug and play. Literally, you plug it in and turn it on; that's it.

Below the cut is a copy of my tumblr post on a reblog about open source that breaks down everything you need to know

If you want to try but are still intimidated by the work to put together/work with a Pi, Home Assistant has your back, and I’m so excited to tell people about this.

Home Assistant Blue - $140.00

This is your all-in-one solution to open source home automation, built by open source developers, and buying it supports open source!!

This is what you get:
- the single board computer with 4 USB ports, one ethernet port, case, drive, and Home Assistant installed and ready to go.

- This is plug and play; all you gotta do is plug it in and then go to local address on your own computer to set up. That’s it; there is no other work required but buying shit for it to control.

A Pi kit with all the pieces you need is roughly $80 - $100; an SSD runs around $30 to whatever; the SSD case you need so you can attach it to the Pi can run from $8 to whatever.

This price is roughly $10-$25 higher (maybe) than buying a pi kit plus SSD hard drive and hard drive case, but not when you factor in the lack of work involved.

a.) You do not need to put the Pi together by hand. It’s easy and actually almost foolproof, but it can be intimidating if you’ve never done anything like that.
b.) You don’t need to flash an SD card or SSD with the latest version of HA; Home Assistant is already installed and ready to go.
c.) Home Assistant Blue, unlike a Pi, doesn’t run off an SD card: it comes with a hard drive installed. The only way to make a Pi run off a hard drive is to do a fairly basic firmware update but still, extra work. You don’t have to do it.
d.) This was literally designed for Home Assistant by the people who developed Home Assistant.
e.) Also, you get a kick ass official Home Assistant case in blue.

This is, I cannot emphasize enough, a really fucking good deal.

Here is what doesn’t come with it:
- No wifi module, but for Home Assistant, it should have it on ethernet anyway. You don’t need it.
- No bluetooth module - you can buy one for under $20, but honestly, I have yet to have anything use mine but to tell me the MAC of my headphones. With the exception of something that only runs bluetooth that you want to control, you don’t need it.
- No z-wave module - you can buy a usb dongle for under $40 or use an existing z-wave hub (example: SmartThings Hub). You probably need this if you use SmartThings,
- No zigbee module - you can buy a usb dongle for under $40 or use an existing zigbee or z-wave/zigbee hub (example: SmartThings Hub)

Pi kits don’t come with the last two either, so again, we’re talking a $15 difference for less work, less stress, and something designed and built to run Home Assistant.

Now, real talk on zigbee and z-wave:

Get a consumer grade hub and don’t start with open source when it comes to controlling z-wave and zigbee if you’re not ready to sit down and work out the pieces. It’s not hard, it’s super learnable, there are tutorials everywhere, but if you’re just starting out and aren’t used to diy, make it easy on yourself.

Your goal is to get total open source, but you can and should do it in steps as small and easy as you need; don’t over think it. This should be functional and fun, and I promise you, this is so much fun if you don’t assume you should know everything all at once. You can and will learn everything–I promise you, it’s great–but do it at a sane pace and not one where you throw anything against the wall like some people I maybe heard about but never did that myself even like, once.

I do this as my major hobby on weekends–I’m downloading info on how to build my own humidity and temperature sensors from parts–but I’m still using my SmartThings Hub until I get a weekend free of anxiety attacks and stress to learn how to pair z-wave and zigbee from first principles.

Consumer grade hubs mean it’s plug and play; you make sure the devices you have are compatible–or buy your hub and then your devices that are compatible–then set up. It’s easy.

Personal example: SmartThings Hub.

You can get a SmartThings Hub that controls zigbee and z-wave for about $40 - $60, but you’ll need to pay $5 a month for remote access to use it. But that $5 also covers remote access to Home Assistant when you’re not home, too, so you probably want to add that to your budget anyway.

Setup for a SmartThings Hub is like an hour or less. Pretty much two thirds of the existing home automation shit is compatible with SmartThings, but there’s Wink, Vera, and several others, so sit down and google a bit.

You can feel free to email, DM, ask, or whatever me if you’re jumping in and want some advice, help, or just someone you can say “WTF” to or “Can I make this purple????” (You probably can.) or just want a learning buddy. I’m not a developer, I don’t even have a college degree, everything I know I learned by fucking up in many creative ways, this is just my hobby, but I’m a QC analyst and work in User Acceptance Testing and lead testing for the mobile app for my state because when you’ve crashed your own system sixteen times in a month because you wanted to see what those batch jobs and config files did, you get surprisingly good at analyzing for problems or finding them by accident.

You cannot surprise me with weird problems; I’ve reviewed miles of javacript code at work that calling spaghetti would be very kind to find the reason for an error that turned out to be even weirder than the problem and this was written by professionals making six figures. Again, I crashed my home server sixteen times in a month fucking with config files I didn’t understand because why the fuck not. You gotta feel at least ten times more competent just reading that sentence and realizing that actually happened. I think I wrote about it in my DW under the tags “my relationship with electronics” or “coding”. It’s honestly alarming when you sit and think about it too long.

(And now I get paid to do that: they call it stress testing, and gave me database and batch permissions so I can do it in new and scary ways. I love my job, God.)

This is incredible fun, and my goal in life is to show everyone how much fun and accessible this can be to anyone.

More importantly, however, automation can be a gamechanger for people with physical disabilities/differences, the neuroatypical, the elderly, and the more people who jump aboard, the more we can make open source and non-corporate options mainstream. The more we do now, the easier it gets for those who come after us.

Home Assistant also has addons for running your own DNS server, DHCP server, database, Samba, HDMI CEC scanner, SSH, code editors, ABD server, Tor, encryptors, Plex, and I think the equivalent of pi hole (either official or community) and that's just to start. It can do kind of everything.

Official Stuff
Official Integrations
Official Add-Ons

Community Supported (non-official):
HACS

The number of community integrations you can get in HACS are an order of magnitude more than the official and then there's the UI stuff. And then there's the ones not even in HACS yet which you can find if you just google "Home assistant" and "Your Thing" which are like--well, a lot lot lot.

If I can get enough people interested in trying, I want to start a DW comm where people can ask questions, post tutorials, code, or just get support and help. It can be intimidating to start something like this, but help and support make everything easier and fun, and I'd love love love to work with/help/talk/support and/or be main venting person to anyone who jumps in. Posted at Dreamwidth: https://seperis.dreamwidth.org/1084891.html. | You can reply here or there. | comments

meet medea, our lady of flaming chariots and not fucking around when it comes to revenge

seperis — Thu, 10 Dec 2020 23:20:27 GMT

New laptop arrived! Her name is Medea.

Configuration:
Model: XPS 17 9700
OS: Windows 10 Home
CPU: 10th Generation Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-10885H (16MB Cache, up to 5.3 GHz, 8 cores)
RAM: 32GB DDR4-2933MHz, 2x16G
Drives:
Form: M.2
- Drive 0: Samsung 980 PRO SSD 500GB PCIe 4.0 NVMe
- Drive 1: Samsung 970 EVO Plus SSD 500GB PCIe 3.0 NVMe
Video Card: NVIDIA(R) GeForce RTX(TM) 2060 6GB GDDR6 with Max-Q
Wifi/Bluetooth: Killer(TM) Wi-Fi 6 AX500-DBS ( 2x2) and Bluetooth 5
Screen: InfinityEdge Touch Anti-Reflective 500-Nit Display
- Size: 17 inches
- Type: UHD+ (3840 x 2400) (4K)
Ports: Thunderbolt 3 USB Type C (4)
Card Reader: Yes

Yes, she is very pretty and very, very fast.

Transferring Data from Manhattan to Medea
On my Windows laptop, I separate my OS and programs from my data (spreadsheets, fic, books, music, video, etc). When I have only one drive, I do it with partitions: C is the OS and D is Data. However, Medea joyfully came with two drive bays, so I got to put them on separate drives entirely.

Though Medea came with one 512GB drive, I'd already planned to replace it with a faster Samsung Pro 980 and buy a second drive for the other bay, the Samsung Evo 970. For more than one reason: a.) the Pro was much faster and b.) if anything ever went catastrophically wrong, my original Dell hard drive would be safe and pristine and I could restore from that or use it while waiting to get a new drive.

(After losing a hard drive (and having to get a new laptop) entirely during my computer science finals years ago, I got super into never ever letting that happen again.)

I transferred all of my Data partition from Manhattan (along with the backup folder I'd created with everything I needed from Manhattan's OS partition) onto the Evo drive, which was destined for Medea's second drive. Manhattan uses Thunderbolt 2 and Medea Thunderbolt 3; total time for about 200 GB of data was under thirty minutes. God that's still unreal.

Cloning a bootable drive
For anyone who wonders how to do it, get the easeus disk copy software; it does the job perfectly with no stress. If you have two drive bays to do it as I did, that's ideal.

In general, I always feel better opening a new computer as soon as possible after I get it, before a.) I get paranoid or b.) something goes wrong and I'm tense. In this case that was doubly important; not only were the screws tiny, getting it open is a slow process of running either a credit card or something very thin between the back panel and body of the laptop very slowly and carefully from front to back on either side and then across the front. I used my fingernail for parts and also cut my finger on something so Medea has had a blood offering, which is always a good idea to get out of the way early during a new relationship.

So after configuring Medea, I shut her down, opened her up, and put the new drive in the second drive bay and closed her. I restarted, opened easeus copy disk, and followed the incredibly easy instructions to clone. Once it was done, I checked by restarting and booting from the second drive. The entire cloning process took about twenty minutes--dear God I love pcie drives--but that does not include de-assembly and re-assembly time of the laptop (longer. Including time to get a bandaid for my bleeding finger).

After I checked, I shut down again, opened her, moved the original disk into the usb-c hard drive enclosure I'd used to hold the Evo while I transferred data from Manhattan, put the Pro where it had been, and the Evo in the second drive. Booted up and it was perfect, but now with two drives!\

Basically, I finished almost everything Friday night when I was expecting to need the weekend. So that was fun.

I Seriously Missed 17 Inch Screens

I mean, I get that some people want smaller, easier to travel with laptops, but I am not one of them; I need screen real estate. Smaller is fine for tablets (though granted, I got a 10.1 because the eight inch drove me insane), but my tablet and phone are watch things, call people, text things, play things; my laptop, I do things and two years at 15.4 inches after almost three years at 17 inches taught me I want Bigger Please God.

The universe is right again is what I'm saying.

Manhattan entered my mother's custody on Sunday. I understand they're doing very well together. Posted at Dreamwidth: https://seperis.dreamwidth.org/1084517.html. | You can reply here or there. | comments

thanksgiving planning

seperis — Sun, 22 Nov 2020 13:17:21 GMT

So the Thanksgiving Menu is complete and I'd like to take this opportunity to plug Paprika 3 app if you were a fan of Pepperplate. It has a recipe browser powered by google and so far can download almost any recipe anywhere.

So, the planned menu for Child and I (subject to change by ingredient missing, laziness):
Brined Whole Turkey
Baked Spiral Cut Ham
Apricot Glaze with Herb Butter
Green Bean Casserole with Bacon and Gruyere
Roasted Brussels Sprouts
Sweet Potato Casserole
Baked Parmesan Cream Corn
Pea Salad
World's Best Key Lime Pie
Cranberry-Orange Sauce

Yeah, at least two of the side dishes won't make it, but I can make them this weekend to go with the leftover turkey. That's part of the fun of Thanksgiving; the leftovers and the cooking of other dishes to go with the leftovers.

The only one that's really new to me is the Baked Parmesan Cream Corn; the turkey and glaze are my standard favorites to make, the pie I used to make a lot, pea salad is standard in my family, the ham just need to be warmed, and the rest are fancy variations on common dishes I've made or helped make. The biggest problem has been hunting down some of the ingredients, the last delivery of which is coming this morning along with both cooking milk and drinking milk and eating butter (as opposed to cooking butter). We do no blur lines during Thanksgiving.

Though I am kind of sulky that Mill King milk is not available right now. Mill King is state-local (though yeah Texas is a big state) and is pasteurized but is not homogenized so it's overall slightly heavier than standard milk and cream floats in it and tends to gather on the sides and on top. The first time I got it, Child was horrified--it looked bad! Floating bits!--but hands-down it makes the best hot chocolate and chocolate milk you can imagine. Just rich enough but not too heavy and doesn't throw the balance off like cream or half-and-half do if you add them (unless you're one of those people who's really good at mixing them).

Last grocery order should be delivered soon. I should probably get ready for that. Posted at Dreamwidth: https://seperis.dreamwidth.org/1084247.html. | You can reply here or there. | comments

the time has come for a new laptop

seperis — Fri, 20 Nov 2020 14:11:55 GMT

So I ordered a new laptop and am starting prep to refurbish this one for my mom.

The new laptop (name pending) is a Dell XPS 17 9700, upgraded to 32 GB RAM and a 4K touchscreen. I left the drive alone since I'm upgrading it myself to a much faster Samsung Pro 980, but happily, unlike Manhattan, this laptop has two M.2 drives and I seriously, seriously missed having that option.

Manhattan, my current laptop, is a Dell XPS 15 9575 Two-In-One with a 4K touchscreen; the screen folds backward 360 degrees into a very weirdly shaped tablet and you can write/draw on it with a pen. This is a lot of fun, but among my acquaintance, all the artistic types had a blast playing with it. And drew me pictures, some of which can be viewed by non-me company.

This option is not available for the XPS 17s, depressingly. I will miss it.

Why 2 in 1's Are Awesome (It's Not What You Think!)

I recommend this style for every laptop on earth, but not necessarily for the tablet option.

The tablet functionality wasn't bad and in fact could be useful if you like to make handwritten notes or basically any reason you like to use a tablet. The tricky part is the size; this is a widescreen laptop; 3840 by 2160 or 16:9. In the vertical, it's unwieldy as fuck and I don't mean weight (though yeah, that too); it's just not the right proportions for a tablet when you shift to the vertical. However, some may be fine with that, and anyway, that's not why I think this is brilliant innovation.

It was being able to open the laptop screen as wide as I wanted.

Most laptops open to just over or under 135 degrees then stop. As it turns out, my most functional working angle is closer to 145-150 degrees.

I've opened it to a full one-eighty when I was working and I needed to sit very straight; I had to lift my hands a little for keyboard but not as much as if it were just barely passed the 90 degrees most laptop screens allow. With one of my laptop stands, I generally have the screen at 145 degrees from the keyboard; it's much easier to sit straight (or straight-ish) if I can have the screen at near eye-level and the keyboard at nearer-hand level.

Which really just begs the question: why for the love of God are laptops still limiting opening angle to roughly 135 degrees or less? Even if you don't need a full 360 degree bend (which make it look like your screen is on top and your keyboard is on bottom), a 180 degree is super useful (see above).

When I took my laptop apart after I got it (to upgrade the hard drive also because I always take my laptops apart when I get them before anything goes wrong so the first time isn't when I'm stressed), I paid attention to how the cables thread from the body to the monitor to make a 360 degree bend work; suffice to say, it's not particularly dramatic or lifechanging; you use hollow hinges to thread the wires through. It's not easy to do it--yes, I did test that, I always take apart my laptops to the base so I know where everything is and how it connects--but it's not hard, just delicate. t didn't take special equipment or magic; like, in a pinch, you might get some tweezers to help move or two, but that's also because I have an intermittent tremble in my right hand.

This is a huge improvement on the way non-2 in 1 laptops work in that the cables are far better protected threading through the hollow hinge itself; no danger a cord that wasn't affixed right will eventually slip due to normal daily activity and get caught on the hinge when opening or closing and be cut (and yes, that happens even if you never opened your case and moved things around). I can definitely see room for improvement, but from a internal cable management perspective, this shit is the boobs. This also allows thicker, more resilient cabling if they'd consider that; the hair-thin ones that are so fragile breathing on them is worrisome should be a thing of the past.

(I have been watching the Big Foot ep of Psych and now I really want to use that in public. Everything cool for the foreseeable future shall be 'the boobs'.)

Preparation Is Key

So far, the only thing on Manhattan needs cosmetically is a new keyboard, but honestly, I think replacing the keyboard and touchpad (basically the entire front panel) is going to be the best option because if there are problems with either, at this point, I wouldn't notice as I've been using it so long it would be a forgotten quirk my hands know.

I am really, desperately going to miss opening my laptop to whatever angle I want, but I take consolation that my mom is going to love this laptop more than possibly her children.

Mom and Relative Value

My mom has excellent taste in tablets and phones; she gets high quality premium ones understanding that you're not just paying for quality but also the warranty to have it replaced. Like me, in prep for a purchase like this, she budgets carefully so she doesn't have to skimp. She'll happily pay ~$600-$700 for her tablet because she'll be using it constantly--and I do mean constantly--for two to three years. But a laptop that costs more than that seems Very Indulgent and Expensive Why Not Something Reasonable?

And it makes perfect sense: let me explain. Mom's first experience in buying consumer grade tech herself was a Samsung Galaxy Tab Pro 12.2 roughly 8 to 10 years ago (the year it came out, literally).

At the time, it was the best Android tablet ever to hit the market; I bought one with an unexpected and exciting windfall after a couple of tablet experiments and it was unreal. My mom saw and my mom coveted; despite the (to her) horrifing price, she bought it and was hooked for life.

She'd never, however, bought her own computer. She'd never needed to.

It's not that she doesn't get computers or is just ignorant; she works in IT and was using the internet, programming in Kobol, and doing shit in DOS probably since before I was born (or when the internet first started). She helped design the backbone of several programs that changed how we do food stamps, TANF, Medicaid et al not just in our state, but this program is being implemented in other states. Programs she knows to the ground: she taught me excel about about VBA, she actually likes Powerpoint and could likely kill you with it in single combat, Office holds no terrors for her. I was the first in my family to buy my own PC (1998), but she was the one that taught me how to use it.

You see, most of her life, computers were only at work; she knew software, but had no reason--and frankly, no real way--to learn anything about hardware. She's always worked on state-provided machines. Some worked well, some didn't, computers, man. By the time personal computers became popular, I was buying them and then my sister did, and as we both lived at home, she never need to bother.

So she really doesn't have a concrete idea of how much computers cost, or rather, what they should cost.

(This became super clear when COVID hit, actually, and the state bulk purchased laptops for working at home. Apparently, they took the easy approach; everyone--and I do mean everyone IT or not, who worked for the state--got a Dell Precision Workstation dev-configured laptop.

The Precision workstations are pretty much the best shit you can get for business, and ours were configured mid-range. I stared at mine for a while (because seriously????) then from morbid curiosity went to Dell's website to get an approximate price just in case by some miracle I could suddenly jump income brackets to afford one.

Nope. Oh God nope. Even factoring in a bulk discount the state got from its contract with Dell, nope.

Mom did not believe me when I told her the price and barely believed it when I sent the link. It horrified her.)

Again, the only tech she's ever bought herself was when I got her into tablets and yes, she knows how to shop for those very well, what she wants, what to look for, etc. But she never needed to with PCs, ever; from the mid-nineties when PC sales really took off for consumers, I lived with her, my sister lived with her, I bought them, she bought them, and when I upgraded, the old one just moved out into the living room (sometimes we'd have two or three there at a time).

So her mental value of a good laptop is unconsciously equal to that of a good tablet; roughly, $600 to $800.

...yeah.

If you shop carefully and know what you're doing, you can get a PC or a solid laptop for that, but that assumes you know what you're doing and I don't mean just knowing how to read processor/RAM/hard drive and how those relate to each other. What are you using this pc/laptop for? Are you surfing the net, running Microsoft Office, working with Adobe Everything to edit video and images, or controlling an Oracle database? What's the warranty and replacement like? Can you upgrade the pc/laptop post-production or is everything soldered on?

This is not something she ever needed to think about or knew she even needed to; I was standing right there and doing the purchasing.

PCs have a much, much bigger margin of error than a laptop, granted, but you still have to know what you're doing. I do not insult my mother saying she doesn't; I barely grasp this and I build computers for fun. With my laptops--which I can't build myself (yet)--my budget is 'how much I can save between upgrades and get the best humanly possible (that is available from Dell*)'.

Caveat

No, Dell does not make best computers in the world when it comes to consumer grade (business machines and the Precision workstations, otoh, still set the standard but that's a start value of higher income bracket than me). However: a.) I like buying local, and b.) throw a stone in Austin and hit a former Dell employee now working to fix Dell PCs and laptop better than Dell can, they're less than five miles away, and can get it done in under two days. And are also creative as fuck solving expensive problems (like blowing out your motherboard) at an excellent price.

Back to Mom and Computers

So mom's computer buying adventures have been--not great and sometimes depressing. Better idea; continue the passing computer tradition even if I don't live at home anymore. When I upgrade, I give her mine (or to whoever in the family needs a computer if she doesn't).

My two-three year upgrade time limit does include Shiny but is also practical.
a.) before work from home was mandatory, if I wanted to work from home, my personal laptop had to be able to support it.
b.) I do a lot of dev work for fun and run a headless server with it.
c.) a lot of my programs are processor intensive
d.) in general, the two-three year window means the laptop I pass down has at least five years or more of normal (non-me) use left. When I still primarily used PCs, they were good for over ten years for general use, and if I had time or a little extra money, I could upgrade the board or RAM if needed.

With laptops, there's less a margin to work with. I generally get the top of its type when I buy it so it's got a decent lifespan left, and when I pass it down, it been cleaned and upgraded within the last six months to a year with a new hard drive, RAM or both. As I do my own upgrades and repairs, if there are problems later, I can deal with them. If I can't, see nice former Dell computer repair people.

The last three family PCs were my personal PCs first; two migrated to relatives somewhere no idea, and the last one was ten plus years old when it died a couple of years ago. So yeah, this system works better than my mother/sister/etc showing me a horribly configured laptop with minimal RAM soldered on that's overheating constantly and throttling the CPU asking me why it's slow. The nightmare continues as I open it and stare, unable to explain why I could drown that thing in thermal paste and line it with thermal pads but nothing would fix a heatsink too small to do shit in a case so badly designed there's literally no room for anything bigger even if it wasn't soldered on; short of running it on a desk of ice (maybe), its going to overheat and even that won't help the limited RAM or the fact there's inadequate venting.

(Again, not a matter of being stupid; the only reason I recognized the problems--and only after opening the case--at all was because I build computers as a hobby so read a lot when I'm designing one and also I want to experiment with water cooling so I studied methods of cooling. The average consumer should not have to deal with this bullshit just to get a working computer.)

This upgrade, though, my mom is super-enthused on multiple levels; see, she got to play with Manhattan laptop soon after I bought it and apparently, the memory reallllly stuck. When I told her I'd ordered the new one and Manhattan would soon be hers, the following convo occurred.

Mom: When will you drop off my laptop?
Me: I just ordered the new one like, ten minutes ago. Ship date is December.
Mom: So...not tomorrow?

Upgrades and Repairs

So I'm prepping now for the upgrade as well as the handoff.

In general, I pick the easiest method;

1.) Buy (or use an existing) portable drive and copy the OS partition and move the Data partition.

The OS partition will be factory reset so it doesn't matter what I leave there, but Data partition is my private data and my brain gets weird about that. I cannot make myself reformat the Data partition while I can see data on it, even after copying it to the portable drive and seeing it there. But if I move the data from the Data partition to the portable hard drive, it's fine; the Data partition is now empty and I can format it.

2.) Copy relevant data to new laptop from portable drive

3.) Move all data from portable drive to the backup partition on Watson Server under computer name (Manhattan) and date of transfer then forget it exists unless something goes wrong.

The Stress of Data Backups and Transfers

Years ago (like, almost twenty), I started using a universal system for my computers; separate OS and Data on two separate drives, or in the case of having only one hard drive, separate partitions. The OS drive holds the OS and all my programs; Data holds all my files, media, dev work, and backups of settings from the OS drive.

This had multiple uses:
1.) repair/reinstall the OS without worrying about my private data.
2.) the drive with the OS is more likely to fail first due to the sheer amount of read-write-access activity so my data stays safe.
3.) it's super easy to upgrade to a new laptop or do a fast, easy manual backup or emergency backup; I just copy all of Data to the backup and be done with it.
4.) the only things I ever risk losing in an emergency are specific browser/program settings and the downloads folder that a.) I couldn't make them map to the Data drive or b.) had to stay on OS due to a performance hit or excessive read-write. I do try to remember to keep backups of everything I want to keep from OS on the Data drive, but...yeah

All of these have happened at least once to me; this system worked perfectly for them all. But number three actually turned out to be ridiculously useful in another way; I started regularly backing up, and once I built Watson Server, I did it a lot

Before, Doing a Backup was always such a goddamn production and stressful as hell, especially the automatic kind. They'd make me specify every single folder and file to the point I'd say "everything" in an excess of anxiety because suddenly, I wasn't sure anymore; did I forget and store my soul in C:\Users\Default\AppData\Roaming and just forgot? Who is Default; am I using that now? Is that my real name? Who am I?

You can imagine how long that kind of backup took. And how big it was, even imaged or zipped. So yeah, not often.

Switching to drive/partition meant a.) no more terrifying backup programs asking me questions about Default Roaming and Local, b.) learning to partition and map drives also taught me where everything was and more importantly, how to search when I didn't know where something was, and c.) Stopped making me terrified of doing something wrong or losing something.

The only thing that are a problem is the Office-related add-ins I coded, my macro workbooks, the default templates for Word and Excel, and current Outlook osts/psts and settings that for some reason have to stay on the OS drive; saved email and file structure are the only thing I can safely map to the Data drive.

Doing a Backup Now:
1.) copy all of Data to the backup folder on Watson Server, which is a mapped drive in My PC on Windows. Or...
2.) Login to Watson Server with mRemoteNG, navigate to attached drives, where I mapped my Windows Data drive, and copy everything to Watson Servers backup folder.

It still takes time (variable) and slows down the machine doing the heavy lifting, so I have two options; if I want to keep working on my laptop, start the backup from Watson; if I want to work in the server, start the backup from my laptop. There's still going to be a performance hit no matter what, but way, way less of one on the machine not actually performing the backup.

Watson now has roughly ten to fifteen years of old backups from most if not all my computers (some have been consolidated, some discarded because sometimes, I can make myself do that, though not often). That only sounds like a lot until you realize the scale difference; it's only in the last two-three years we think in terms of terabytes not gigabytes. Even now, excluding media, my private data (files, documents, books, spreadsheets, stories, pdfs etc) is under 200 GB; ten years ago, my private non-media data was under 25 GB.

The backup partition on Watson isn't actually very big despite it also holding ten years worth of Watson Server backups. That's because it no media saved on it whatsoever but in some folders, images and pictures that I haven't had a chance to verify and consolidate. When I download/buy/transfer any media to my laptop, it all goes into either Video or Pictures on the Data drive and I generally copy it to Watson immediately. I also do regular audits of both media folders to assure Watson has a copy.

Most important of all, when I do a new backup, as soon as it's done, I go into Watson and delete all media folders right then, do not wait or think or like, breathe.

I Hate To Delete

Here's why: during a organization/drive cleanup on Watson circa 2016-2017ish, I did my normal drive reorganization on Watson and noticed the backup drive was getting full, so decided to go look around and maybe maybe (shudder) delete a backup older than four of my nieces and nephews because seriously I probably don't need that anymore.

That's when I realized--and this surprised me, believe it or not, as apparently I don't understand what Backup The Whole Drive means--I'd saved a backup of all my music--between five and fifteen thousand files depending on the backup--about ten to thirty separate times. Sometimes, the same backup date had a couple of these; why, I don't know. This pattern continued for pictures from various phones, everything involving my time in Smallville and learning about graphics, a great eal of home video from camcorders, phones, and video recorders, and every single vid I ever downloaded or ripped. Dating back to 1999.

Oh, I said: well, I'll just check and see if it's on Watson already, copy it if not, and delete the extra copies. It's super cute I thought that.

To streamline this, I created a special folder (backup/all_media) and moved (not copied, I did manage that much) every single media folder into it (renaming each media folder with dates and computer as needed). That doesn't sound streamlined, you say? Why not just mass copy all the media files into the root of the folder instead of fucking around with subfolders and if it says that file is already there, just delete it! Much faster.

Yeah, I can't do that. What if the computer is wrong???? I'll lose it forever!

So I walked through every backup folder, moving each media folder I found into a separate folder into all_media, then comparing the contents of each and every folder to Watson's media folders, and--God I hate this--deleting everything that had a match. To be clear: the process of moving all the media folders in the backups to the all_media folder took like a few hours including time spent carefully renaming Video to Video_SherlockOS_04302009. Let's round it to the equivalent of a weekend at most (maybe).

The rest took months or actually closer to a year and change (lots of change). The majority of it was not spent comparing files; that took seconds. It was spent angsting and triple verifying visually every single match that yes I have that picture saved thirty times, you can delete the twenty-nine extra copies, it's okay. I compared names, sizes, extensions, dates; any discrepancy meant visual check and guess what; the same file in a 2009 backup and a 2016 backup will have different dates. They're still both Undone(2002)_Smallville_ClarkLex_800X600.avi. Or fifteen fucking thousand music files.

Which is why now, I regularly audit my laptop's media to match Watson's media, do another audit before starting the backup, and the second the backup is done, shit gets real.

I do not open Watson's GUI; that way lies madness. This demands command line.

I open putty, ssh into Watson, navigate to /backup/winbackup/full.backup/manhattan_os/backup.00902020 and delete every media and image folder,

That's sudo rm -R /backup/winbackup/full.backup/manhattan_os/backup.09022020/Video, no takebacks, this shit is done.

Why? Because I can't risk seeing the files in the GUI.

Deleting them in the GUI is hard enough, but worse, if it says 'this file is too big for the recycle bin do you want to delete?' I'll say no even though that's the entire point. If it does go into the recycle bin, I'll choke when trying to empty it. If I try and just leave it for nature to take it's course (the recycle bin's thirty day hold), that's thirty days to panic and there's a fifty percent chance I won't make it to day fifteen, much less thirty.

This has been an infodump of my brain today. Carry on as you will. Posted at Dreamwidth: https://seperis.dreamwidth.org/1083948.html. | You can reply here or there. | comments

psych - a monologue on one of my favorite episodes

seperis — Wed, 18 Nov 2020 14:04:57 GMT

I actually love Psych more than I'm comfortable with sometimes. It has some yikes parts (the 00's have a lot of that), but it also had a main character that the show had no problem making fun of for being ridiculous even when he was right and a main female character/love interest that about a season in they realize hey, we should develop her into a person which is depressingly rare. It also has Gus, which no other show has and really should.

It has some of the most ridiculous plotlines that shouldn't work in any sane world but do, because their main characters are Shawn and Gus and they're crazy.

(Seriously, the vampire ep alone is one no other non-supernatural show could hope to pull off with other than 'really bad why are you doing this?', but you add in Shawn and Gus? Of course they believe that woman is a vampire; have you met them?)

I will argue to the end of the world that Psyche's 4.16 "Mr Yin Presents" is one of the most beautifully done episodes of Psyche (maybe the best, tbh), a strong contender for among excellent TV in general, and one of the most interesting and well done in the very often boring/stupid/sometimes traumatizing "serial killers are among us" genre. I've actually gone back several times to just rewatch it; it's just really, really well put-together on the plot level and the emotional fallout level, and that's rare.

I say this as someone who enjoys the serial killer genre; they are almost all boring as hell, overelaborate to the point of stupid, full of ridiculously dumb plotholes, and end up stupid, or in some cases, all of that and traumatic and gross. This would maybe work if the serial killer was supposed to be dumb, but no; this bullshit is always supposed to be unparalleled genius. And everyone eats the stupid cookies before it starts.

This is because shows generally misjudge what the audience wants to see; we are not, in general, here for the gross and horrifying murder of innocent people--that's what horror movies and Criminal Minds are for (though CM used to be less that); we're here for the weird-ass elaborate plotlines, weird motivations, and time limits with astronomical stakes and smart people versus smart people running down the clock.

"Mr. Yin Presents" is the second in the Yin/Yang trilogy. The first is interesting and fun and fantastic set up; the third is the stupidest thing on TV possibly ever and you lose nothing in the show if you just skip it forever and pretend there are only two. I promise, you'll be happier that way.

Here we go:

1.) For once, the serial killer combines being crazy elaborate with smart aka removing all the obvious plot holes that a five year old could spot. He's smart; not perfect (I loathe that) but smart. From an episode standpoint, it's also incredibly well done. It's not perfect, but someone actually thought about making a plotline, not just a series of vaguely interconnected actions that are supposed to be proof of serial killer genius or something.

Yin did a Hitchcock filmography pastiche--which why has no one done this? This is a really good idea--and used the limitations and advantages of Hitchcock's themes and plots against everyone. Specifically, this worked because the audience knows--even if not in specific, in general--something Hitchcockian. In episode, all the characters know their Hitchcock--Gus and Shawn start the show at a Hitchcock film festival--and this being a show of detectives, private detectives, and the importance of pop culture, it would be way less believable if they didn't know the entire back catalogue.

Or to put it another way: I've never actually watched a single Hitchcock movie, but I recognized every movie or theme off the bat. It's cultural; on this show, though, I would almost expect every character could cosplay at will any Hitchcock character and quote dialogue. This is a show where a serial killer with a popular culture theme works; the characters should know. It would be out of character if they didn't.

(It would be like if someone tried to convince me that Shawn and Gus did not memorize every episode of the original He-Man and She-Ra in the eighties; yes they did, and Gus totally identified with Sea Hawk and Shawn with Bo (maybe the other way, I'll take arguments). Fight me.)

2.) Even the times someone did snack on some stupid cookies, they never wanted to and knew it.

a.) The misdirections were only obvious after the fact; this was especially cool when Shawn jumped to Mary as a suspect with Yin's very effective help. Yin knew not only Shawn's abilities, he knew the conventions of the genre and how preconceptions play out. And he also knew Mary was fucking weird to everyone.

On paper, it looks dumb, but it's not. In the mystery and serial killer genres of course Mary would be, and the first half of the ep, you bought it. He was the expert in the first Yin/Yang ep; he's incredibly weird (I love Mary like I love few quirky characters for being so obliviously and unapologetically weird); his presence and weird-ass warning came before the first murder; he seems to know too much. The first episode set this up for viewer; once Shawn said it, it wasn't a leap. The weirdness became suspicious; only after his murder do you realize nothing he was doing/did actually indicated this or was more than his baseline weirdness (which was pretty high).

Does the evidence hold up when you think about it? Kind of, but it didn't matter if it didn't; it only needed to hold up until the first scenario played out.

b.) The show tricked you using genre but also the low-grade but rising paranoia of the other characters based on the events of the last Yin/Yang ep; specifically, Shawn's trauma from his mother being Yang's almost-victim specifically because Shawn refused to play Yang's game.

c.) And this goes for all the characters; they're all playing by Yin's rules not because they don't have a better idea or don't see the problem or they're that dumb. It's because Yang taught them what happens when you fuck around; she broke the game entirely and escalated. They didn't outsmart Yang, btw; it worked. She won. The only reason they were even in that drive-in movie was because she let them get there specifically because she wanted to talk to Shawn.

During that ep, I was a little annoyed at the cop out (she surrenders to Shawn for no reason and want to write a book???) but the second ep--for once--actually explained that with a satisfactory amount of chilling. She did write a book; from context, she finished writing it apparently before this last spree; this spree was likely advertising.

Why? She has a partner, Yin; if the goal was to get Shawn's attention when Yin appeared and have him visit her, and to give Yin the opportunity to fuck around with Shawn, yeah, she had a really good reason for letting Shawn's mother live. We know from the first Yin/Yang ep that Yang caused officers to quit and apparently go into therapy--Shawn's mother told us about it, she treated some of them--so yeah, permanently damaging Shawn before the game is over was probably a bad idea.

d.) This more relates to first ep: Yang is a female serial killer. A female serial killer who is not motivated by sex crimes against herself or others or anything man-influenced or related. This is the reason I enjoyed the first Yin/Yang ep more than it probably deserved but that alone was interesting and unique enough I was impressed.

Yang was not presented as sexy (which was an effort considering who the actress was); she wasn't femme fatale or seductive. She was kind of frumpy and deeply, deeply weird and not at all loathe to be deeply weird and creepy. Her fixation on Shawn isn't sexy or sexual; she does not try to make it sexy; it's a deeply creepy fixation. She's not trying to seduce him, there was no inappropriate touching or sexual tension, and I'm not even sure she was deliberately fucking with him; she's that weird and creepy and off. It makes your skin crawl; I love it. Give me more female serial killers who are frumpy, not sexy, very crazy, very smart, and dangerous as fuck without being motivated by sex or sex crimes, thanks.

In other words, you could redo this entire ep with a male serial killer scene by scene and nothing would change in any way but pronoun use in the last ten minutes.

Second Yin/Yang ep, Yang hits on Shawn (using a very loose definition) but also has a huge crush on her female guard; again, negative sexual anything but when anything vaguely resembling sexual feelings are invoked, it's at the guard (and again, using some very loose definitions here). It's so goddamn refreshing.

3.) The Juliet/Abigail in distress dichotomy was yes, woman in peril, I know; it's ridiculously overused, I know; but at least a.) they had a very, very good explanation that also worked to be creepy, and b.) it combined being incredibly meta with a very chilling reason for being so.

The first ep with Yang is when Shawn started dating Abigail and also said no to Juliet (due to trying to be a better person and not just dumping Abigail again because Shawn's persona growth comes in weird starts). So the Yang ep's ending is Shawn choosing Abigail over Juliet, very likely in reaction to the fact that a decade ago, Shawn didn't show up for a date with Abigail on the pier and he wants to do better.

(Remember the pier, btw.)

When you watch the ep again, you realize end game for Yin the entire time was specifically recreating Shawn's choice between Abigail and Juliet (did Yin think he chose wrong? I seriously wonder about that). Yin went about this incredibly well; he used the events first Yin/Yang episode to make sure everyone played this time. More importantly, that they played within the rules.

- The first murder was the waitress at the diner: that was an announcement of intent and that shit was about to start; no scenario involved.

Specifically, this was a mirror of Yang's opening salvo with Shawn; Yin kidnapped the waitress that served him (pie, in this instance; last time, breakfast for lunch). In the Yang's ep, the waitress survived because when Shawn refused to play, Yin replaced the waitress with Shawn's mother. In this ep, Yin killed her outright, both to ostentatiously correct that error and use the obvious parallels to teach Shawn how it would go this time.

Message: this time, if you don't play, they'll die, and you won't get the opportunity to save them. This is your fault, Shawn, for not playing with Yang.

(Note: this was not the same waitress in both eps)

- The first Hitchcock scenario and second murder was Mary while Shawn and Gus watched. Due to thinking Mary was Yin, he didn't realize what he was watching until it was too late; if he hadn't been suspicious of Mary, there was time to save him. Shawn knew what movie was being enacted; he was just too stuck on Mary being Yin to realize what was going on. This also removed the guy who was an expert on Yang and might have worked out what was going on faster and was also going to eventually be the only one not emotionally compromised and therefore thinking clearly.

Message: if you play and you don't act fast enough/think fast enough to save them, they'll die. That's your fault, Shawn, for your own preconceptions and mistakes.

So Shawn (and the SBPD) has been told clearly exactly how this will go down; quite literally, if you don't play, I'll just kill them out of hand and be done with it.

- The second Hitchcock scenario but no murder: kidnapping Juliet. Despite the fact that they all knew this was a setup, they had to obey it to the letter; Yin already killed two people to make it very clear deviation would end very, very badly.

This was actually where the stupid cookies are the only logical reaction and work; they all had to play their part to the letter, no matter how bad an idea it was, because a.) they know that Yin, like Yang, will break scenario but Yin will just kill them outright, b.) they don't know this isn't primarily a murder scenario but just a kidnapping to set up scenario three, c.) even if they'd known b, it doesn't matter; Yin already made clear just killing will be fine if you don't play.

- Abigail's kidnapping had no scenario but was set up by scenario 2; Yin found her because the SBPD sent someone to pick her up from the airport because they figured all roads lead to Shawn. This made it incredibly easy for Yin to get her and even have a convenient police car to use to imprison her.

Did he probably already know about her return that day/flight/etc? Yeah. However, Yin was on a time limit to get her; unlike a police officer from SBPD, he couldn't just walk up and lead her to his car without question in a crowded airport. In other words, he probably could have pulled it off without SBPD's assistance, but in that case, again, Yin already made clear if the scenario approach fails, he'll just kills his victim. So, horrible bad luck or good luck to send an office for her? No idea.

- The fourth scenario was the Juliet-Abigail dilemma, with teeth. And it wasn't just to fuck with Shawn, though yeah that was the primary; the secondary effect was that everyone involved was now emotionally compromised and in multiple directions.

Shawn had Juliet and Abigail; his dad had Shawn but also Abigail and Juliet to a lesser extent; Carlton had Juliet and fuck everything else; the chief had Juliet but also her responsibility for a civilian in direct opposition (Abigail); Gus had Shawn and also Abigail and Juliet. When Yin called with clues on Juliet's location and to say he had Abigail, he framed it as Shawn's Sophie's Choice, but the choice of victims made it pretty much everyone's. They knew where Juliet was; they could save her, but then what about the search for Abigail? Police officer in danger versus prioritizing a civilian. Saving Juliet might kill Abigail outright before they even knew where she was; there is no good answer here.

Juliet was on the clocktower: Abigail was under the fucking pier where Shawn didn't show up for their date a decade ago. Shawn doesn't actually know where Abigail is yet when Yin says 'pick which one you'll save'.

Carlton chose: save Juliet.

The Chief chose: find Abigail, civilians take priority.

Shawn chose: save Juliet, we don't know where Abigail is. He'll search for Abigail but Gus will go with Carlton for Juliet.

Gus chose: Shawn's answer; help Carlton save Juliet, let Shawn and his dad find Abigail.

Shawn's dad chose: Shawn and what he needed and wanted, not what he thought Shawn should need and want. For maybe the first fucking time in Shawn's life. Genuine surprise.

4.) The ending was surprisingly poignant. Abigail breaks up with Shawn (being kidnapped and almost murdered by a serial killer in Shawn's honor seemed like a reason to cut ties). Juliet's stoic composure cracks when she's trying to tell Carlton she's fine, which ends up being maybe the most powerful scene in the show (and such a good Juliet and Carlton moment, holy shit). Shawn's dad quits his consultant job with SBPD. Yang sits in her cell looking creepy.

5.) Shawn sits alone on the bench after Abigail breaks up with him, coming to terms with the fact that no matter how much he cared about Abigail, when he gave his answer to Sophie's choice, the first thing he said was 'save Juliet' and sent Gus to help Carlton. It was Shawn's responsibility to save Abigail; this happened to her because of him. But Gus is his soulmate and his other half (I mean even if you don't ship them, that much is pretty goddamn obvious); his soul was with Juliet.

Note on that: that was actually a huge deal when Shawn and Gus split up to work, which is why it shows what Shawn's choice was. It's not that they haven't or don't sometimes; it's that they generally don't want to and don't like it. Shawn is about a thousand times more effective and more focused when working with Gus; Gus is much more logically intuitive and quicker to work out what's going on. That sounds like an oxymoron, but Gus sometimes gets too bogged down in the concrete to make leaps; he's incredibly good at it when he trusts himself, and being around Shawn makes him probably feel literally anything is sane compared to what Shawn comes up with. And it's true.

Under any kind of stress, Shawn gravitates closer to Gus just like Gus generally does with him (even when they're fighting, they turn toward each other with body language to draw the other person closer; it's kind of adorable). Gus is the logical, rational, reasonable part of Shawn; Shawn is the intuitive, dream-logic, insane part of Gus. Under stress, Shawn needed Gus desperately, but Juliet also needed them; Shawn picked Juliet over himself.

Note: the third ep makes everything dumber and then makes no sense whatsoever combined with speechifying villain who is breathtakingly dumb but presented to be smart (??????). Worse, it manages make the first two Yin/Yang eps make no sense and wrecks the best parts of why the eps worked and then burned everything down the rest. It's just so dumb. So very, very, very dumb. Posted at Dreamwidth: https://seperis.dreamwidth.org/1083707.html. | You can reply here or there. | comments

chuck: i have seen all of it now

seperis — Wed, 28 Oct 2020 23:08:39 GMT

In continuing stay-at-home avoidance of watching anything new, I went to watch Chuck.

Full disclosure: I didn't get much past season one the first time around: I think early season two. So as it turns out, that's why all my memories were so positive and pleasant.

If you haven't watched, this may encompass the experience: I finally understand what it means to hatewatch.

I thought it was a voluntary process, like, you can stop if you don't like it. No, it's not; you can't stop, how quaint of anyone to think so. There's just some grim form of geas or some shit--I don't know, do I look like an evil witch who does this to people?--that drives you onward and downward into the bowels of hell.

The worst thing is: this was insane enough that it could have been my favorite show.

1.) The Intersect V2 As Inner Matrix.

The Intersect V2 now comes with downloadable physical abilities. Yeah.

That was such bullshit I wanted to scream. That the side effect was Chuck the Super Spy was just salt in the open, bleeding wound. I could have actually dealt with the inner Matrix bullshit (not well, but I could) if it hadn't resulted in the second.

2.) Chuck the Super Spy

Everything that made Chuck so interesting was just stripped away. He became very special in every way and therefore became very boring. And they hit every bad cliche in the making, including the "Will Never Kill Even Though You Sort of Fucking Should" bullshit (Casey did it for him????)

It would actually have been goddamn hilarious if Chuck couldn't actually use any of the physical skills or used them badly and inaccurately or weirdly most of the time because he wasn't a trained spy and continued grimly not to really want to be. No, he does want to, just not the parts that make him uncomfy.

3.) The Intersect Is Suddenly Everywhere

It went from cool and mysterious to stupid and mysterious to dumb and ridiculous when there were Intersects, Bad Intersects, Matrix Intersects, and Enemy Group Intersects like every fucking where. Everyone was doing it. Suddenly the way it worked changed with the needs of the plot and then it didn't make sense.

4.) Oop, Chuck Isn't Actually a Regular Smart Guy

Nope: his missing parents are Super Genius Dad Who Invented the Intersect (really) and Super Double Agent Spy Mom (sort of).

Also, everything's connected. Everything. Even though in a just world, this wouldn't happen, but no, this is part of a Plan. All of it.

5.) The Series Finale

I can't even deal with how much I hated, hated, hated it. Sarah loses her memory due to Bad Intersect upload (yeah, that's a thing), goes after Chuck because she believes teh random villain when he says Chuck is just a mission (WHY? YOU'RE A CIA AGENT SURELY YOU'RE MORE PARANOID THAN THIS), then has a second of almost memory so doens't kill Chuck, then can get it back with the last pair of intersect glasses? (they have been throwing around these glasses with upload capabilities but apparently they just--don't make them anymore for some reason?) uploaded with her memory????? (something?) but Chuck has to use them to save people again, so she can't remember any of her friends and family and in the end he's telling her about their lives together.

Five. Fucking. Years. Of Sarah development? GONE. All her relationships with people not Chuck? Gone. And there was so fucking much. Gone.

6.) And Here's Why I Hate Watched

There were so many ridiculous, outlandish, incredibly fun plots, and I would have adored all of them (except the series finale) except Chuck is a boring goddamn superspy and not fun. The entire charm was that Chuck was fairly ordinary, just super smart; first the Super Genius Intersect Creating Dad broke that down and superspy finished it (Superspy Mom was annoying as fuck but anticlimactic).

But some of the plots were ridic and fantastic and that just made it all so much worse.

This has been a vent. Posted at Dreamwidth: https://seperis.dreamwidth.org/1083513.html. | You can reply here or there. | comments

Dune 2021 - I am really liking this.

seperis — Fri, 23 Oct 2020 03:11:56 GMT

So full disclosure: I saw Dune 1984 when I was eleven, read the books when I was twelve, understood them much later.

Excluding Children of Dune miniseries from this comparison.

Dune 1984 is my standard and yes it's--yeah insert quite a bit here--but it's gorgeous and it looks and feels like epic scifi in the very epic future. Whatever the fuck was going on with the script (cocaine probably?) David Lynch created a visual spectacle that pretty much makes you not care wtf was going on. Gurney, Stilgar, the Emperor, and Beast Rabban were incredibly good casting and Baron Harkonnen is fucking legendary and memorable.

The miniseries, though way more accurate, suffered from both some very weird choices of color (I always remember it as orange even though it wasn't actually all orange), some very weird acting choices, and some very questionable choices of actors: Chani was maybe the only flawless choice and outdid Dune 1984 by a mile.

That said: I cannot deny that Kyle McLachlan as Paul Atreides worked very well--about ten times better than the miniseries--but also has the same problem: both actors were old to play Paul and I don't mean chronological age; both visually and how they're performed, they acted like full adults and Paul--well, wasn't.

Feel free to disagree with any of this; there are a lot of perspectives on what Dune was doing and why.

If you've read Dune, that's kind of part of the point: Paul is modeled Young Male White Savior archetype come to Save the Downtrodden (Probably Brown) People as well as the Magical Boy Savior. As is the White Savior Way, he joins the Downtrodden like one of them but keeps his Essential Savior Self.

The last part both happened and--not like it was supposed to with the archetype. Paul resocialized to Fremen pretty much entirely, which happened very much because of how young he was, which you see in Dune but really shows in Dune Messiah when he's Emperor.. By the rules of the archetype he should now hover gracefully between two worlds but obviously more of the Better Whiter World that is his birthright. Instead, he's Stranger in a Strange Land pretty much constantly and worse, literally no one actually seems aware of this (but maybe Chani). Paul pretty much has two major desires in Dune Messiah: a.) escape his visions that are driving him crazy and also maybe creating unbreakable predestination for the universe, and b.) go home to the desert where it's normal and sane. And he'd probably settle for the latter if he could work out how.

(If you've read the books, you know this formula goes sideways very fast on all the other points as well and keeps going, and it's not exactly easy to do when the characters win. Herbert made some missteps (a lot) and got some sketchy bits (...yeah), but he went all-in making the point This Archetype Is a Terrible Idea Okay This Will Not End Well (And Leads to Emperor Worm HAHAHA).)

(Note: I do forgive a lot for the creation of the Bene Gesserit. Yes, I know the problems with it at inception and in the first books--though I still love them because holy shit they basically rule the universe secretly--but if you manage to get to Heretics of Dune, it fixes most of the problems and gives a very interesting perspective on earlier events. And I understand a lot better why they probably roll their eyes whenever someone brings up Jessica. Also the Bene Gesserit taught me you do not need to be born with superpowers; all that's needed is intensive training and you can develop them on your own. God I want to be Bene Gesserit.)

When I found out Timothée Chalamet was playing Paul, I got super interested, since he also played King Henry V in The King, which is about another boy king. And watching the trailer--yeah, that's Paul. He looks like a too-serious kid being raised to reign over a powerful duchy but still unclear about what it means to rule (then again, Leto Atreides never learned that either).

Other Casting:

Jason Mamoa as Duncan Idaho just--oh hell yes please. He's going to define Duncan Idaho in film forever, that's just fact; literally can't think of another actor who could come close. This also means if they make more Dune movies, please God, we get him back forever because Duncan Idaho is a perpetual argument on the drawbacks of reincarnation and how that, too, can go so very wrong.

Rabban looks epic, and Oscar Isaac is going to define Leto Atreides after this.

Now my favorite part.

I am incredibly into the casting of Liet-Kynes (Sharon Duncan_Brewster). The actress is incredibly striking, for one, but the genderswitch in itself fascinates me because a.) it literally changes nothing whatsoever as far as plot goes (there is no penis requirement whatsoever in anything Liet-Kynes does) and b.) it adds a huge amount in background and history and makes it much, much richer.

For one, the job of Imperial Planetologist is a hereditary position but also a job which requires study and work; Liet-Kynes is the child of Pardot Kynes the Imperial Planetologist, and a Fremen woman. It's fairly rare--though slowly becoming less so--that media has a woman explicitly follow in her father's footsteps as far as job goes; that's almost always the son doing it, or someone son-adjacent. If it is done, it's a Thing That Must Be Explored Because Strange (girl doing traditionally male work).

For another, in the context of Dune, Pardot Kynes' marriage to a Fremen is pretty much considered mixed-race (and very, very, very mixed-culture; lets remember the history of the Fremen is being driven out of and chased from world to world for like centuries, maybe millennia, before they got to Dune). Historically, while boys from a mixed-race marriage (when the father is from the dominant race/culture) can--sometimes--be treated as if they are of the dominant race/culture (with limits), girls almost never are. Boys are also way more likely to be fully accepted by the non-dominant race/culture (like, most of the time); for girls, it's a crapshoot.

Liet-Kynes is Fremen: she was born and raised Fremen, married a Fremen, had a daughter with a Fremen (Stilgar is Chani's uncle, so I assume his brother) so is also a mother, and is a full member of a Fremen tribe. She was also educated by the Empire, became Imperial Planetologist by the Emperor's order after her father's death, and was appointed Judge of the Change by the Emperor when the Atreides take over Dune.

So Liet-Kynes being a woman combines at least three things we don't see much of at the best of times and I'm not sure have ever actually ever existed together in one character, plus at least a couple of things I'm not sure have ever been on-screen, and that's just the bits I can unpack clearly. Like, that's goddamn awesome in itself, but it adds a lot more layers to Chani as well.

I am way more interested in Liet-Kynes than I have ever been before and am really looking forward to what the actress is going to do with the character. Posted at Dreamwidth: https://seperis.dreamwidth.org/1083286.html. | You can reply here or there. | comments

it's already thursday?

seperis — Fri, 23 Oct 2020 00:03:26 GMT

So news:

1.) I let Child get a snake. Yeah.

He was sort of owed it, tbh. After I hurt my back and up to today, he's taken over most of the housework and cooking. It's not that I can't now, but that I have to be very moderate in how often I bend over or carry anything since part of the problem is my posture is still in progress. So yes: snake.

It's a tiny ball python he named Belt, a thematic companion to his tiny lizard Boots and the psycho iguana who lives in my room that I can't remember the name of. This is my life: there is a snake in the apartment.

2.) For comfort, I'm rewatching select Spartacus scenes (aka anything Agron and Nasir and/or men fighting with swords). I recommend this form of therapy very heartily. Can't lie, I can happily watch Agron (or like, the entire cast) walk around in loincloths or naked or sweat through battle.

Say what you like about modern warfare improvements, the clothing sucks, as in, people wear way too much. I see no reason bazookas are incompatible with a Roman kilt or comfortable loincloth, maybe some strategically applied oil.

I have to admit, however, how often the actors were allowed to eat. I'm guessing on alternate days?

Agron and Nasir playlist for anyone who needs that kind of thing in their lives (everyone?).

Adding my favorite vid: Leave Me Blind by Mary Bell - warning for fast, fast cutting like a lot, so if you're sensitive to that, be aware now. Not super explicitly violent, but putting out a whee for inclusion of Nasir's grief-driven fight scene.

Beautiful choice of clips, fantastic narrative, and I love the building up of tension to the climax. But again, this is all fast cuts.

Adding because I'm watching it in repeat: 1:43 to 2:04 is impressive as hell. The clipping leading to it from 1:31 is good and hits paydirt at 1:43 like no one's business. Posted at Dreamwidth: https://seperis.dreamwidth.org/1082885.html. | You can reply here or there. | comments

pride and prejudice and zombies: living the dream

seperis — Sat, 17 Oct 2020 08:25:54 GMT

No period romance watching is ever complete until you watch Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Is it a masterpiece of cinema? Groundbreaking in reinterpreting the role of women in nineteenth century Britain? A fascinating dip into the culture and psychology of Regency-era zombies? Perhaps the greatest piece of media ever created on earth?

My opinion is yes; if you think otherwise, you're wrong. You're very wrong and must be put right one way or another by God.

If you're on the fence, though why I have no idea, but here's why you need to watch:

1.) Zombie/Bennet Sisters throwdown at a local dance. Bennet Sisters win.
2.) Darcy wanders around in a leather trenchcoat because God loves me.
3.) Wickham is actually hot for once. Evil, sure, and wearing suede, but still.
4.) Bingley is ungodly hot. Like, unreal hot. He combines that with still being goofy and finding Elizabeth hilarious.

Okay, lets talk about Bingley.

I can't believe I'm saying this: he's probably the best Bingley we've had. Much like Jane, Bingley is always cast as less hot than Darcy when canonically, not so much. Also, in general, Bingley and Charlotte get their screentime butchered in movies. This is about the same amount of Bingley in two hours than we got in five and change hours of Pride and Prejudice 1995. Sometimes, he's also mussed and dirty in the zombie battle fields.

(I seriously can't get over how almost terrifyingly attractive the actor is. Note: make him Edmund Bertram, and yeah, you get why Mary Crawford put up with his judginess and consider it a small price to pay. I'd overlook a growing collection of fresh bodies in the basement and an altar to Cthulhu in the living room. He gets dirty, I wouldn't question why our neighbors are disappearing in such alarming numbers.)

Bingley is hilarious. He's still goofy and overawed by Darcy In A Leather Trenchcoat Bless Whoever Decided That, but he's not above watching someone fuck with him on a professional level. And while I think he would have fallen in love with Jane no matter what, the process was probably sped up by the realization that if he married Jane, Elizabeth would probably come with her and he'd start living his best fucking life. Like someone else wrote (I cannot find where), he's super into a future where he marries the love of his life and gets twenty-four seven front-row viewing of Elizabeth mock the fuck out of Darcy, his sisters, his brother in law, and anyone who gets on her nerves. This is a man who didn't even have to understand Chinese to know a burn when he heard one and knows it was good.

5.) Zombie-fighting power couples Jane/Bingley and Elizabeth/Darcy on the field of battle.
6.) Darcy dramatically goes swimming in (random?) lake due to post-Elizabeth angst because that's canon now I guess?
7.) Darcy practices swordfighting alone, in the rain, at night, because he's on a mission to out-drama Darcy 1995 when it comes to Elizabeth angst. And yeah, he wins.
8.) Lady Catherine de Borough causes us all to question our sexuality and also realize how ungodly hot eyepatches are. Also, that outfit with all the buttons, holy shit.
9.) Realizing you really can combine your love of fancy dress and armed combat with visual instruction on exactly where to put your weapons.
10.) Bingley and Jane's reunion when she saves him as zombies explode behind them is like Disney but after a healthy dose of PCP was given to the writers.
11.) EPIC WICKHAM DARCY SWORDFIGHT.

I rest my case. Posted at Dreamwidth: https://seperis.dreamwidth.org/1082695.html. | You can reply here or there. | comments

austen viewing

seperis — Fri, 16 Oct 2020 05:05:31 GMT

I still contend the best Pride and Prejudice is the 1995 version, and current watching only confirms this, but--it's actually not all Colin Firth. It' not even mostly Colin Firth, though IMHO no Darcy has matched him.

It's Jennifer Ehle as Elizabeth, who is absolutely my favorite Elizabeth. Specifically, because of how incredibly expressive her face is.

Elizabeth Bennet is kind, generous, affectionate, and sarcastic as fuck, which she inherited from her creator, as Austen spends two thirds of every novel deadpanning like its going out of style both textually and metatextually.

Sadly, most Austen movies tend to err on the side of earnestness (and depressingly, readers do too, which is how we get the insane Knightly Is a Pedophile), but Ehle spends a lot of time offsetting it with weaponized expressiveness.

(This may or may not be a paean to Ehle's eyebrow action when talking to Darby, Lady Catherine, Mr. Collins, the way her mouth twitches when someone is being ridiculous, the half-beat she pauses when before answering when someone is being a dick, and her gleeful weaponizing of the rules of civility. I don't think anyone ever has ever conveyed 'fuck you so very much' with an eyebrow.)

I also vote for this being the best Lydia; the actress looks and acts like a ditzy, spoiled sixteen year old gloriously.

However: there's the problem of Jane Bennet.

The thing is, I don't think it's the actress herself so much as the problem of Jane Bennet's entire character being the ideal Regency gentlewoman: quiet, sedate, well-bred, kind, earnest as fuck. She actually does follow the book Jane, and that characterization works fine in text, but when you take it to the visual medium, you're sharing the screen with Elizabeth and Mr. Bennet's sarcasm and mockery, Mrs. Bennet's pseudodrama, Lydia Bennet's melodrama, Darcy's mandrama, Bingley's overwhelming perkiness, and Mr. Collins mortifyingly earnest smugness (and that's just the people who share a screen with her; Catherine de Borough eats scenery almost as well as Mrs. Bennet).

To put it succinctly: Jane Bennet is boring. And the thing is, she's pretty much supposed to be.

Most of more engaging Jane Bennets had actresses who made her much more animated, which yes is more interesting to watch, but is also just not Jane Bennet. Jane is quiet, sedate, not one to show her feelings, reserved: when Darcy the Repressed is commenting on someone being Too Reserved, that's like, wow. And Elizabeth acknowledges that as true (as does Charlotte early on). That's a fairly important characteristic, since that sets up a major plot point.

The 1995 version also benefits from being five hours long, granted. Like, a lot. And not just to capture all the major and minor plotlines; if you're an Austen fan, you're aware how a two hour Austen movie butchers Austen's humor and slaughters every joke before it gets a chance to gasp the punchline.

Note: I'm about to engage in a Mansfield Park re-reading and once again be baffled how different it is from literally everything else Austen wrote. I mean, I would take the argument that it shares some characteristics with Sense and Sensibility, but only very superficially. There is no goddamn way it exists in the same Regency universe as Pride and Prejudice or Emma or Persuasion (and oh God not Northanger Abbey).

And I say this as someone who loves the book and has at one time or another loved and hated every character in it by turn depending on my mood during re-reading (I can write a condemnation and defense of every single character except Mrs. Norris who I always hate). Honestly, it's the one I re-read the most because there's so much in it, which makes no sense since there's actually only one real major plot (yes, there are a lot of subplots, but they all literally are offshoots of the major plot).

(Last read, I was eighty percent sure the ending was supposed to convey the good luck of the Crawfords in escaping matrimony with anyone in that family. I continue not to get how anyone, anywhere, ever, would be attracted to Edmund Bertram. He has no sense of humor. Sure, neither did Fanny, but as he was her primary influence growing up, she never really had a chance. With Crawford, I don't say she expressed the possibility of having one, but the potential was definitely there.) Posted at Dreamwidth: https://seperis.dreamwidth.org/1082600.html. | You can reply here or there. | comments

alexa toothbrush brushes smarter

seperis — Wed, 14 Oct 2020 01:55:27 GMT

As many of you know, it's Amazon Prime Day (1), and I felt it my duty to bring unto you the latest Alexa-enabled objects.

Oral-B Guide, Alexa Built-In, Amazon Dash Replenishment Enabled, Electric Toothbrush, White, Smart Brushing System

Yes, that's an Alexa-enabled toothbrush.

From the website, because when I try to summarize this I begin to scream (no idea why):

- You will receive 1 Oral-B electric toothbrush, 1 Amazon Alexa enabled smart charger base, 1 Oral-B brush head and a quick start guide to get set-up

- The smart charger has an LED quad pacer to help guide your brushing, the white light represents 30 seconds in each quadrant, red for over-pressure and green when you complete 2 minutes of brushing

- The smart charger is a WiFi enabled base that works like a fitness tracker, it captures information about your brushing sessions, which you can access via the Oral-B Connect App or optional email summaries. Improve your habits and track progress over time

- Handle includes 6 cleaning modes: Daily clean, gum care, sensitive, whitening, tongue cleaning and pro clean. The round oscillating and rotating brush head removes 100% more plaque vs. manual brushing

- Use Amazon Alexa during your daily routine to play music, answer questions, read the news, control your smart home, check the weather, set alarms, and more. And, its designed to be water resistant with 360 degree high quality sound

- Never run out of brush heads with Amazon Dash replenishment service, get genuine Oral-B quality refills delivered to your door

- Oral-B guide sets up in minutes, simply download the Oral-B connect app, pair your brush to the base and create an account. You're ready to brush smarter.

Yep. You're ready to brush smarter.

So I'm like, eighty-six point three percent sure we're currently under AI rule already, so I think we can safely say Terminator and The Matrix gave us really unrealistic expectations regarding the intentions of our robot overlords (to tempt us with voice controlled everything), and also our own collective resistance against them (didn't). Truthfully, I have no idea how I feel about this. Posted at Dreamwidth: https://seperis.dreamwidth.org/1082341.html. | You can reply here or there. | comments

temeraire - re-reading worries

seperis — Sun, 11 Oct 2020 03:21:57 GMT

Re-reading Temeraire, as I anticipate hitting all my favorite parts--impression, Laurence and Temeraire Torn Apart by Lying Airpeople, every instance of Temeraire's or Laurence's jealousy, meet-cute with Tharkay, Treason Drama, the Incan Empress, etc, I have to admit I most anticipate hitting Dragons Learn About Finance.

That's probably my top re-read portion. On occasion I skim entire books (or skip entirely, which always feels dishonest so I never do either anymore) to get to it. Why?

I just don't know.

I have a theory it has to do with Temeraire's reaction to interest mirrors mine when I first a.) learned about the stock market (something I'd assumed all my life was rather mythical, like Avalon, Atlantis, and the Free World) and b.) got my very first dividend. It was like, twelve cents. Still blew my mind.

But it's not just that. It's very soothing. The entire thing from Nice Bank Guy Basking Under Dragon Attention to Dragon Investing in the 'Change (I assume?) is just so wholesome. I'm just starting Black Powder War so I won't get to Banking With Dragons until probably tomorrow night or Monday morning, but already I feel excited.

Note: if anyone can rec semi-canonical or author-approved illustration of all dragons with an emphasis on relative size I'd be grateful.

I've seen separate bits in the books and online but that confuses me badly so I need them all in reference to each other. This is especially a problem when the issue of Temeraire's mating with Iskierka comes up and my entire brain shuts down on how...that worked. Relative size and for that matter shape seem to fail me badly even in drawings (sometimes, that just makes it worse). I'm hoping if I have working references I won't spend an inordinate amount of time combining bafflement with doubt about my understanding of physics as well as horrified curiosity how Temeraire escaped without some third degree burns on places one should not ever be burned. Water burns really, really hurt. Then I want to cry. It happens.

(Yes, I could email the author and I would if it were a question about literally anything not related to her books, but in this context, it's like like emailing Stephen King about a map of Salem's Lot or asking about the route to Boulder they took in The Stand. Even if there might be an answer I'm horrified at the idea of asking.) Posted at Dreamwidth: https://seperis.dreamwidth.org/1082109.html. | You can reply here or there. | comments

updates on life

seperis — Sun, 04 Oct 2020 07:40:27 GMT

So super-cool PT appointment in which I had my first dry needle treatment, which I've been looking forward to trying. As she did it, she explained the different types, then what it does, which everyone who's done it already knows but I didn't. She also did manipulation of the muscles around the spine, and we talked about the possibility of scheduling a therapeutic massage. Apparently, we do have them at the downtown and Round Rock clinic and at $65 an hour, that's pretty reasonable, and my insurance and its clinics are very strict on COVID-19 restrictions, so it's very safe.

(At least two or three people in my Flist or DW Circle trained for therapeutic massage and yeah, I expect to pay for the skill and education it takes to do that job and would not feel reassured if it was any lower. Frankly, I would have expected higher and assume part of that is offset by my insurance. I just need to check if my health savings account covers that. If it does, and my first appointment goes well, I need to change my witholdings next year to cover one a few times a year.

I think this is going well. The process is going to be slow and I have to remind myself I'm not going to notice progress much except by absence.

In other news, we're at two episodes of GBBO, and I was going to restrain myself but that so isn't happening I think. Posted at Dreamwidth: https://seperis.dreamwidth.org/1081604.html. | You can reply here or there. | comments

eureka - because I'm watching this part now and it bothers me.

seperis — Thu, 01 Oct 2020 01:48:29 GMT

So first, I'm going to tell you about one of my personal things: the Balsam Wood Test.

In SGA fandom, there's a fanfic--I cannot remember which--where in a throwaway scene, Rodney and co are testing an unknown Thingie for reactions to common substances. It reacts to nothing at all, great. Then someone throws in a piece of balsam wood, and as it turns out, Thingie reacts badly to it.

To balsam wood.

Anyway, that stuck in my head--I love that kind of thing--and eventually, the idea turned into a concept of how to reliably test reality when all you have is your subjective self to work it out. The Balsam Wood Test.

Now, Eureka's Matrix: I love it. I love it for so many reasons, but all of them are relationship and people based. I love the characters dealing with it. I love the drama around it.

I hate the fact that anyone, anywhere, would think the Matrix could, even by accident, forward the study of science as it pertains to anything but the study of artificial reality and maybe the limits of computer programming. That's not just insane, it's--I need a word here, just go with 'are you high and have been since the Enlightenment?'

It can't be done, full stop. Even if it was run by an AI, it couldn't; if the AI actually could do that, you wouldn't need a Matrix because you wouldn't need people to discover anything; the AI could do it all. A computer could not, ever, reliably reproduce science as we know it--much less Eureka-level science--well enough to fool actual scientists for more than five seconds and maybe not even then.

(I'm not entirely sure it's really possible to create a Matrix reality indistinguishable from reality-reality, but that's another story.)

You see, there's no such thing as random numbers in programming. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

We have no idea what objective reality is; it's all subjective to varying degrees. Physics tries very hard, but even things we designate laws are very much 'well, nothing has contravened this yet so here we are'; anything lighter is 'current best explanation we have but we're open to suggestions' at best. Entire swathes of science exist based on math with the understanding we also haven't discovered all the math. To be generous, we're not even aware of about 99.999999999999999999% of physics. Of the part we're aware of, we maybe are sure of none and best guess a very tiny amount of that. And i won't even begin to describe where we are in pure math; maybe a little better? But probably not.

Like, this is true of all science, but I'm focusing on physics because the Matrix kind of requires it; that's the baseline on pretty much everything.

The Balsam Wood Test: in the Matrix, if Rodney had thrown a piece of balsam wood into that machine, there would have been no reaction because even best guess anywhere in history would not have prepared anyone for the idea that combining Thingie and balsam wood would go bad. That's not even a maybe; no sane programmer would throw that into a probability table because it wouldn't occur to them. So if that had happened in Matrix Eureka and they used the machine in the real world and someone was wearing a balsam wood necklace and it fell in the Thingie, boom: so much would have gone wrong it's ridiculous.

It's absurd; it's ridiculous; it's insane. Balsam wood: who would have called that as the nemesis of Thingie? Who would have called injecting the pus out of a smallpox blister into someone as an early form of inoculation would actually (kind of) work? Inoculation wasn't even a thing that existed when someone tried that.

(No, seriously.)

Balsam Wood Test: reality is absurd.

Science is the discovery of all the ways its absurd and try to work out why (sometimes, it doesn't fail completely). You cannot create something new within a structure where nothing is new or can ever be. Unlike computers, reality has no constants, just variables. Some of those variables are persistent as fuck, but as I said: nothing has change them yet. Binary is yes or no; there's no such thing as maybe. The only questions in the Matrix already have answers; you cannot answer a new question and you cannot change the answer of an existing question. And that is the opposite of science.

Exception: the study of programming. Then fuck yeah, you can find out all kinds of new things...as they relate to code. Probably a fuckload on engineering virtual machines for gaming, modeling, maybe--no promises--some advances in pure math and definitely some revolutions in graph theory, but not the fundamentals of the universe and reality as we know it. And nothing in math that would radically change our understanding of math either; that's because there's no such thing as random numbers when it comes to computers.

I'll come back to that, promise.

And even all this assumes it is possible to program a reality for greater than one person to believe, which is a huge maybe in itself. Perceived reality is subjective, and jacking directly into people's brains would actually make it much, much harder. We're all of us constrained to a certain extent by the physical limitations of our bodies and how they interact with the brain and much like physics, science is well below 1% at best when it comes to pretty much most shit including biolog. I cannot even imagine how to programmically recreate the body of someone with an autoimmune disorder or insomnia or hell, chronic fatigue syndrome well enough for them not to feel something is off above and beyond, much less individualized experience with such. And that leaves off psychological conditions and I am seriously stumped how on earth no one seems to consider the problem of the brain's ability to randomly override pretty much any function for the fuck of it but sometimes for also legit survival related reasons.

In other words, if I get chased by a bear in the matrix, if the brain thinks my body has been sleeping in my bioprison, it probably is going to hit me with enough adrenaline to knock me out of the matrix and/or cause heart failure because BEAR DEATH WHY ARE YOU SLEEPING YOU IDIOT. And unlike the Matrix, the real world's rulesets are persistent variables and you cannot program my real life brain not to do the unexpected. The brain does crazy shit for fun and wtf; hook someone into the Matrix, there's no way to know how the brain would react to that. It may not even let a person accept that as reality even on the off-chance it was perfect. The brain regularly rejects reality as reality for fuck's sake.

In other words, biology is fucked in the Matrix; for fuck's sake, how do you simulate unknown mutations, much less frequency to match something even passing for real and useful in the real world? With random numbers? Heh. I'll get to that.

And every bit of this assumes programmers won't make mistakes and as a professional QC analyst: oh God, that's funny. It also assumes that mistakes are the reason programs sometimes don't do what you want and sometimes do something you didn't expect: that's even funnier. Computers be crazy; they're subject to reality, where there are no constants, only variables, and only a very few persistent. The more complicated the program is, the more chance even perfect programming will interact in unexpected ways; not because anyone did anything wrong, but because that's the nature of complex systems. You cannot predict the unpredictable.

Now, my biggest and seemingly minor problem except it's a major one: random numbers.

Well known but not appreciated fact: there's no such thing as random number generation in a program.

It look random, and we're developing very sophisticated ways to simulate the random number, but--it's not and can never be truly random because the basis is and will always be a formula. It may take a very, very long time to work it out, it may require a massive amount of data before you can see it, it may be incredibly difficult and very improbable you will work out the pattern, but there is a pattern, all starting with a function (or program) who's only job is to produce seemingly random numbers. Which means that every single thing inside the Matrix would not ever be random, ever and reality is--well, really really random.

Like I said, the formula can be very sophisticated: it could be 'use my gps coordinates right now, add six, and divide by the age of the president of the US who was born closest to this date at his time of death'. It could be that 'plus the number of cats in this pound in Chicago on this day five months ago, then translate the number to binary, and divide by the date of the nearest holiday to this date'. Add in 'Let's base twelve this entire thing now' to round it off.

That's still a pattern.

Maybe not one a person could work out on their own, but. A computer could find the pattern. They're actually pretty good at that, provided you know what you're doing and sometimes when you don't. And if you have a computer sophisticated enough to build reality and you are the type who really believes--insanely--that you're doing this to Forward All Sciences, then short of hobbling your Matrix-reality computers to not work--and truthfully, that's so meta my brain hurts--all you'd need to break the Matrix is someone to track random storms, random tornadoes, random hurricanes, random anything and given enough data, a pattern will emerge eventually. A normal scientist, maybe not: but building a Matrix for Science means you want the best minds in the world, so yeah, they'll find it. Which means a.) broken immersion or b.) illegitimate science because in the real world, random number generation patterns do not predict when tornadoes happen. We don't know anything but conditions that could make them happen; to predict in the Matrix, all you need is to know the formula and once you know there's a pattern, finding the formula is just a matter of time.

(Not to mention the sheer amount of processing power needed just to create seeming randomness. The more power, the closer you can get to random, but--seriously, you'd need entire machines dedicated to nothing but creating those 'random' numbers. Now my head hurts.)

This little problem with random numbers will also cause problems in pretty much any higher math and all of physics--random chance and chaos are actually really really really really important to the very fundamentals of science--as well as really fuck up any legit programming people in the Matrix try to do, and that's just the shit I understand well enough to write here (no promises on if I understand more than the problem exists); there are entire branches of math and computer science that simply won't work in a programmed reality at all.

On any other show, I'd go with it, but Eureka--which is literally About So Much Insane Unknown Science--I just cannot deal with a Consortium who seem to at least know what science is (though maybe not) thinking 'this is a really brilliant idea' like--ever.

I needed that rant so badly. I feel better now.

Okay one more thing: for fuck's sake, your insane matrix made a dragon in like the first week. A. Dragon. The programming created a dragon. Dragon.

DRAGON.

You think your Matrix can be a haven for real, legitimate scientific discovery when it randomly makes fucking dragons? The Matrix can't even manage to reproduce known reality but you think unknown reality won't be a bit of a problem? WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?

Okay, really done before I lose my shit over rendering errors and how it didnt' seem to occur to anyone that when the brain is jacked directly into the matrix, your physical body isn't actually involved, especially say, the optical nerve or like, the physical eye. Rendering errors occur exclusively in a visual medium with a physical body looking at something.

The Matrix is not a visual medium; what they see is what is programmed into it. This isn't happening on a computer screen or hologram for them; they are not physically inside some kind of super sophisticated chamber of Matrix doign shit with their own bodies; this is happening inside their minds. The only way a rendering error should even exist is if their physical bodies are involved in a simulated environment. THIS IS IN THEIR BRAIN. THERE WILL NOT BE RENDERING ERRORS.

There will be weird shit like birds in rocks, yes. There will be even weirder shit that can happen. But the only way they will see a rendering error is if you specifically program it in to happen under certain conditions, and why would you do that?

Dragons and rendering errors and random numbers and balsam wood causing destruction of everything. Okay, really done.

Really done. Promise. Mostly. Posted at Dreamwidth: https://seperis.dreamwidth.org/1081526.html. | You can reply here or there. | comments

eureka - the continuing adventures

seperis — Wed, 30 Sep 2020 17:55:20 GMT

Random observations since I'm sometimes going out of order to follow storylines:

1.) I hate Beverly Barlowe so much. She's lied to herself so much about her own intentions--and that of the Consortium--that she actually believes they have good intentions. She also believes that good intentions always matter and justify anything. And when she has to acknowledge that hey, they don't always, it's an exception and not her fault.

2.) OTOH, I was surprised to realize that Henry's actions after his GF's death, though imprudent and thoughtless, weren't nearly as bad as I remembered or thought. His intentions weren't necessarily always noble, but they weren't always driven by revenge or even that tiny streak of power that comes standard for scientists in Eureka. His actions were sometimes questionable, but most of what happened with him came to 'things he almost did or thought about' most of which he didn't do and sometimes even chose not to do, which I can't hold against him.

Overall, he caused a lot less damage himself personally, and contributed to even less, than pretty much any scientist in Eureka on a bad day. Far more important, when given the choice, he chose to do the right thing and acknowledged he'd made bad choices. And honestly, in balance? He tried to be worse than he was and failed; he's just fundamentally not a selfish egomaniacal, or immoral guy, and it says a lot about him that to get him even close took a massive and extremely condensed trauma.

Yes, I was mad he went to prison. At worst, he should have gotten like, a disappointed speech from Carter, which yes is painful but that's what you get for lying to your friends. Carter totally deserved half an hour of being verbally disappointed over beer with Henry.

(I love Henry and Carter's friendship so much; Henry perfectly understands Carter and effortlessly translates for him when needed for geekspeakers. And they're so fun together. And I hugely appreciate how marriage/relationships for them both actually added to them and their relationship instead of pulling them apart or cutting into it. The depressing thing is that I think the only show I remember that managed that balance well was fucking Friends.)

(Note: I do absolve Henry for pure selfishness in taking Carter's memories of the lost years. One, he did ask first and two, Carter was in fact on the edge of crazy and while yes, Henry did want more freedom to do his thing, he was also aware Carter was suffering like he was and genuinely didn't want him to go through this if he didn't have to. Whereas, however misguided, Henry did think his suffering was for a greater purpose.)

3.) Nathan Stark's death was gutting this time around the way it wasn't before. Multiple rewatch, I paid a lot more attention to him and honestly, his coming to Eureka felt like the end sequence of a character arc where the arrogant character realizes how much he lost and starts coming to terms with it and fixing his life. I have thoughts on this but they're disorganized, so yeah.

And I do better appreciate Nathan with Allison. He's arrogant, selfish, scientifically classist, but he also is trying--with success--to get better and it shows. Not around Carter, but to give him credit, Carter is very obviously going after Alison and Allison is showing interest so I can see why he's reverting around him.

4.) Related, I felt terrible for Allison even more this time around. Watching again, it's fairly obvious on the wedding ep that she's massively overexcited but trying to be casual and whatever when no, she was not. She was getting back the second great love of her life (Allison is A-type; she's sure as fuck isn't going to be limited to just one; she gets three and deserves them all).

(This explains a lot about her planning with Carter on their wedding; this time she was milking every drop of joy she could get openly and without shame.)

5.) Zane before and after the 1947 are way more different than I thought.

In comments on the previous entry, miss_porcupine mentioned her problems with the changes in Zane in post-1947, and I'd totally forgotten my first reaction to the change (hatred). So along with Henry-watching, I paid attention to Zane, and I realized something.

I liked 1947 Zane, but mostly as part of Jo-and-Zane. The character himself...I'm not sure I really thought of him alone. Watching this time, for the most part, in pre-1947, I'm most interested in him when he's with Jo.

Post-1947: I'm way more interested in watching him as a character in his own right. Because yes, he's different, but it's not just Zane with Jo is different than Zane without Jo. There is a fundamental difference in Zane the person; something in the post-1947 timeline's past was so different--and not in a good way--that not even their insane chemistry--and I mean, it's still there in post-1947 in spades--was enough for Jo to even try with Zane. Jo of this timeline (as Jo discovered when she got there) hated Zane.

This isn't just Zane if he never got together with Jo after they first met so progressed on the same dick axis; this is a Zane that had no goddamn chance with Jo in the first place because he was on a worse axis already.

It's really noticeable, especially watching a Zane-ish ep right before and right after: Zane hasn't reverted to worse factory setting. Like Kevin, Zane is fundamentally very different. First watch, I was way too annoyed to map it; the last few watches, I got to thinking and noticed some other things.

a.) It's not just the haircut; there's the clothing style. Pre-1947 Zane had a very geeky lack of fashion sense as well as love of t-shirts, whereas post-1947 he's more conservative or at lesat realizes what looks good on him. I mean, post-1947 Zane would not be caught dead in nightmare plaid shorts and a purple shirt.

b.) There's also his maturity and I don't mean how he acts or even his chronological age; I mean, how he feels on where he is in adulthood.

Pre-1947 was still growing up when he met Jo, and as of the last ep in the pre-1947 timeline, he was still pretty young, even up to his proposal to Jo. Watching it now, it really make sense that Jo hesitated; he doesn't feel quite old enough to be ready for marriage.

Post-1947 not only feels older, he acts older; immature asshole, yes, but all the kid-parts of Zane aren't just gone; they're dead and have been for a while. Which may explain part of why he feels so much more obnoxious to me, when objectively, I don't think he really is, or at least, not ridiculously so. It's more that he feels too old to be this goddamn obnoxious still.

I wish I knew another way to put it because 'maturity' is too linked to specific types of behavior in people's mind. It's the difference in life experience, I think; 1947!Zane has a metric ton more than pre-1947 did, and it hasn't been good.

Example: Pre-1947 Zane did not feel out of Zoe's general age range (or wouldn't be once she hit adulthood). Zane always felt younger than Jo--not ridiculously so, but on the low end of her age range, like he'd be on the high end of Zoe's once she was about twenty/twenty-two or so. In all honesty, he and Jo's relationship--which I loved--really felt sometimes like she had to coach him though his first adult relationship because he wasn't old enough to have had one before.

(This wasn't all bad, either; Jo always came off very mature but also a little old for her age, like she'd spent a lot of time with older men and women and grew up and matured very fast (I'm guessing Special Forces has that effect). Zane definitely influenced her to relax a little and remember she's not a fifty year old army general who's fought in ten wars. It's actually something I liked about them together; she didn't always have to be the only adult in the room. Sometimes, you don't need an adult in the room at all.)

Post-1947 Zane and Zoe makes me flinch like hard, and not just on Jo's behalf; Zane is noticeably older, enough that he's well out of Zoe's high end and weirdly, now feels older than Jo, at least by a year or two (which is another reason he feels so insanely obnoxious). Zane's very obvious and dismissive 'it's just a crush' when Zoe is brought up makes it pretty clear he feels it, too; that was the reaction of a grown man to a girl he's know for years and watched grow up, someone with a decade or greater age difference and a lot more life experience when they first met.

Post-1947 Zane also feels like someone who's been in a relationship with another adult as an adult. He feels like someone who's lived as an adult for a while, and not well, and part of his behavior is in reaction to that.

6.) I say this loving the pre-1947 Jo and Zane relationship; post-1947 Zane and Jo did very good, different things for me. Zane's pursuit of Jo alone is goddamn fascinating and how that pursuit led to how he changed in other ways.

Pre-1947 Zane pretended he had the kind of confidence that he could have someone like Jo, who, let's just say it, was out of his league in so goddam many ways. And that sometimes showed when he was around Jo; I'm not sure 'intimidated' is quite the right word, but something like that; there was a sense he felt like she was conferring a favor by being with him instead of believing she liked him as-is. Again, he felt younger; someone in his first adult relationship with an extraordinary woman and wanted to be what she wanted and sometimes not really quite believing he already was.

Post-1947 Zane has the confidence and to spare, and he's not pretending. And while yes, he does change due to Jo, the process isn't artificial, to be what he thinks Jo wants; that shit never works. It's more that Jo highlighted for him his own flaws, and to his own surprise, he genuinely wanted to fix them. Not just to have Jo--though that's a good reason--but more importantly, realizing he didn't want to be an immature asshole no one really trusted; he genuinely wanted to be better. And I never got the feeling pre-1947 Zane ever actually got that far in terms of self; it was really all about Jo.

It's not just Jo that helps him along: one of the big catalysts, at least to me, was Fargo.

Pre-1947 Zane was not the kind of guy who could have developed that kind of deep friendship; not only did he and Fargo feel about the same age (in terms of life experience) and were competitive over the same woman. I went back to the eps right before the 1947 change, and I can see the traces are there, but neither are really mature enough to want to develop that.

Now yes, part of the change was also Fargo maturing in the post-1947 timeline, which came about a great deal because of the help and support from the others affected by the timeline change. Pre-1947, Fargo never had this kind of support group and certainly wouldn't have been able to support others like he does after; he didn't have that kind of confidence in himself. Post-1947, that group makes a huge difference for everyone affected, and for Fargo, especially Jo when he realizes a.) they really aren't even close to each other's type, b.) she's too old for him no matter their chronological ages and always will be, and c.) he doesn't need to date her to have an amazing relationship with her.

(It definitely helped that post-1947, Jo's head of GD's security and they're together in figuring everything out. Working with her directly as well as supporting her and her supporting him helped him transition Jo to a very safe and healthy hopeless crush and a model for what kind of woman he wants (and Jo is an excellent model). Holly is very similar to Jo in terms of personality in a lot of ways. Much geekier, yes, but while she may have social anxiety about other people, she's just as confident in herself as a scientist as Jo is as a soldier, and she doesn't hesitate to speak her mind whatsoever or call people on their shit when in her element.)

Pre-1947 Zane just didn't seem to really have many (any????) close friendships that weren't directly related to his relationship with Jo and didn't seem to care much. Post-1947 Zane, otoh, seems to realize he kind of wants some actual real friendships and starts to develop them himself.

Fargo's developing friendship and protectiveness of Jo helps a lot when it comes to Zane and Fargo's relationship, but Zane's active interest was kind of required. And much like his pursuit of Jo, post 1947!Zane has the confidence in himself to realize he has something to offer as a friend if he'd just try. The Matrix-bond definitely helped when it comes to Fargo (though honestly, the shuttle really laid the ground work wonderfully for it to develop), but I cannot see in any world pre-1947 Zane stepping up like he did with Fargo by his own choice both helping him with the tech parts of helping Holly but emotionally supporting him as well. It's very much like what Carter and Henry--or Carter and Jo, for that matter--have developed together.

And as Jo said to Zane: they were never friends before.

(Note: And truthfully, I'm not sure they could have been and it does make me wonder about their future if 1947 hadn't happened. Watching the pre-1947 relationship compared to the post-Matrix one--or even the build-up to the Matrix--they're in a different place per comparison to their pre-1947 relationship yes but they're both in the same place.)

Pre-1947, they had insane chemistry, they fell in love, but a lot of their bumps pre-1947 was the sense (from both their sides) that they didn't have much in common or to offer to each other or the right things. Jo telling hallucination!Zane that sometimes he made her feel dumb: yeah, that's...not entirely untrue. It wasn't deliberate on his part, though. Which again goes back to how he felt younger than her then and his lack of confidence; he didn't quite believe he was good enough for her or that she genuinely wanted to be with him.

Post-1947 Zane, however: no, he's not good enough for her, but that's not a matter of confidence in himself; it's very obvious to him it's because he's an asshole. Becoming a better person means he becomes someone Jo likes as well as falls in love with on his own merits (separate from pre-1947 Zane). Zane's also aware if he wants a real relationship with Jo, they can't skip a step like pre-1947 Zane and Jo did (and led to those bumps); Jo being in love with him isn't enough, she also needs to like him.

(And it does say a lot that Zane doesn't feel he's competing with pre-1947 Zane in her memory (which you'd think he would, but nope), but reacts (badly, admittedly, but truthfully I don't blame him) to Carter post-Matrix.)

I have so many feelings. Posted at Dreamwidth: https://seperis.dreamwidth.org/1081259.html. | You can reply here or there. | comments