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So, while I've always loved the idea of #chess, I've also always been spectacularly bad at it. Can anyone recommend any books or other resources that might help? I had an eBook (or was it a PDF?) on tactics once upon a time, but I don't know what happened to it.

I know that an important key is practice, but the problem is that when I lose, I don't know why I lost, so it's difficult to learn from the experience.

Sico Axial reshared this.

in reply to Wayne Myers

@conniptions I believe it’s lichess.org.

Building on this: learn to analyse your games using an engine. Only play 5-10 games per day, but analyse each one. At first, look through the game without the engine, try to observe the flow of the game. Try to see if you got outplayed positionally, or you missed a tactic, hung a piece, etc.

Then analyse with the engine. Don’t focus too much on absolute swings of the evaluation, but more on trends.

in reply to Sebastian Lauwers

@teotwaki Doh, of course yes, apologies, was v tired when I posted.

Agreed in re usefulness of using engine for analysis (and importance of analysing games) once there's a grasp of the basic value of material, basic tactics and so on.

Not yet mentioned - the usefulness of puzzles: simpler puzzles help you drill basic patterns and tactics - it's one thing to know what a fork is, but another thing to look at a position and quickly spot an available fork. Lichess puzzles v good for this.



rant about lies and masking

Some people's capacity to just straight-up lie to your face without skipping a beat astonishes me.

Take this conversation between Katy and an unnamed family member:

F: I need you to drive me to the clinic (because I've caught the cough that's been making the rounds in my household for weeks now).
K: Okay, but we can't afford to get sick.
F: It's okay, I'll wear a mask the whole time.
K: Okay.
F: Afterwards, we can go out to eat.
K: How are we going to eat while wearing masks?
F: It's okay, I'm not contagious.

(╯° □°) ╯︵ ┻━┻

Edit: typo

in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

rant about lies and masking

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meta
With all this talk of #Bluesky vs. #Mastodon, I'd like to take this moment to remind everyone that the fediverse is bigger than just Mastodon.
in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

meta

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How much does the aurora borealis weigh?
It's pretty light.

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cult brainwashing (trigger warning)

I found some of my old notes from church. God, I really drank the Kool-Aid, didn't I?

Here's a sample:

When I negotiate my standards, I cheat myself of the blessings the Lord wants to give me.


🤮🤮🤮

"The blessings he wants to give me?" Isn't he supposed to be an omnipotent being? I had no idea I was so powerful that I could tie his hands like that.

#ExMormon #apostake #NotACult

in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

cult brainwashing (trigger warning)

I also love how I was able to take down an idea, and then immediately contradict myself with the next one, e.g.:

- Heavenly Father did not put me here to fail.
- A failure is nothing more than an opportunity to learn.


This is the definition of doublethink.



Katy bought a bread slicer, so obviously I had to make a loaf of #sourdough #today to test it out.

Why does it have to take so long to cool?

screwlisp reshared this.



Trying out #Friendica's #Bluesky bridge. If you've been followed there by @jlamothe.bsky.social, that's me.

Let's see if this post actually shows up there.

Brian Pierce reshared this.

in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

For sure, I’d rather keep following you here. I just wanted to confirm your bridge is working but wasn’t sure if I was doing something wrong or your setup is somehow incomplete 🤷
in reply to ilyess

@ilyess It looks like there's a bit of lag in the bridge, but I guess that's to be expected.

in reply to Aziz

@Aziz @Jon's Blog Yeah, for me, it's about the auto-repeating tasks. I can't get that with pen and paper, otherwise I'd go that route too.

I'm trying to take the lowest tech route possible these days.

in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

@me
"I'm trying to take the lowest tech route possible these days."

Exactly.



Just had a monitor fail in the most bizarre way posible. I got some weird screen flicker/tearing. I assumed that it was my video card doing someting wonky, especially since it would happen sporadically when playing Minetest, and would often persist for a while after. A reboot cleared it the first time it happened.

This time it was really bad though. The weird thing is that when I disconnected the HDMI cable, the distortion persisted on the OSD. Also, there was still very distinct remnant of the image that had been on the screen. It wasn't your typical burn-in, as it wasn't static. It was just... weird.



It's been over a year now since my last blog post. #Today I started working on a new one about my adventures with #org-mode. As an experiment, I'm trying to compose the post itself in org-mode, and then export to HTML for the site.

Depending on how reasonable the resulting HTML ends up being, this might be my go-to method of composing blog posts going forward.


in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

Worse than back to square one. I can't access it through a browser either.
in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

Hopped over to another server and all's well again. We'll see for how long.


Just got my sample ink pack in the mail, and I've got to say Diamine Ruby Blues might be my new favourite ink. The photos online don't do it justice. The ink changes colour depending on the angle you look at it from. Is this a more common thing than I realize?
#FountainPens
in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

I really LOVE my Ruby Blues ink. The intense deep blue with unexpected subtle red flash in certain places. And that astounding bottle!
The color change in various angles and light is called 'sheening'/'sheen' and many sites that sell ink have the sheening inks sorted in a category or at least the ability to search for sheen in the description.
in reply to redbanjer 🪕

@redbanjer 🪕 My two suppliers of choice are Phidon (a local-ish brick and mortar store) and Goulet Pens. Though I've recently heard good things about Jet Pens (I think) but I've no experience with them.
in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

Yes I have bought a lot of stuff from Goulet Pens. Also from FPR (Fountain Pen Revolution)... I love their Ultra Flex nib pens.
in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

P.S. Sheening ink...--> Not to be confused with 'shimmer'/shimmering' inks which have actual microscopic bits of sparkle glitter in them (which may cause clogging issues in some pens, depending on who you ask).


mh
Hit negative spoon territory. Didn't know that was possible. Calling it a night. Hopefully I don't start tomorrow at a defecit.


Just ordered an "inkvent" calendar because apparently they sell out fast. Now I just have to restrain myself from opening it until December. Fortunately I ordered a random sample pack as well, so we have something to keep us occupied in the meantime.
#FountainPens

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Unknown parent

Cynthia loves masks
thank you, I look forward to what you share.
in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

Welp, I had hoped this would arrive before the Canada Post strike. I guess not.

That's unfortunate.




I think, for the sake of my mental health, I'm going to take a step away from the news and social media for a bit.

reshared this

in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

Use that time instead to connect w/ your affinity group(s). You will need them.



Every time papa cleans and re-inks his pens I must supervise. I don't know why he keeps trying to stop me.

Jonathan Lamothe reshared this.



Broke my #LambdaMOO sushi bar by accidentally going over quota trying to add a requested item to the menu.

Don't have time to fix it at the moment, but I'll take care of it in the next couple days.

Sorry @screwlisp et. al.

screwlisp reshared this.



Typesetting question:

I've noticed that in many novels there will be a scene change within a chapter that is marked by a larger than normal gap between two paragraphs. Is there a way to represent this in a #LaTeX document?

in reply to Matthew Skala

@mattskala not internal,, as they are user level commands. But yes, it's part of #TeLaTeX without any package

NewDocumentCommand is the modern replacement of newcommand. (see `texdoc usrguide`)

The hook with OmitIndent allows to set the \noindent for the following paragraph, while \noindent has to be called at the beginning of that paragraph.(`texdoc ltpara-doc¸`)

Online links of the documentation:
texdoc.org/serve/usrguide/0
texdoc.org/serve/ltpara-doc/0

in reply to Marei

@mattskala Oh and I of course I agree there are document class which support that by default. Just sometimes one may not use those or can't or whatever. So I wanted to provide a general option. Of course you should check the documentation of the document class first.

memoir's plainbreak is defined similar. But what I don't like about it, that it does not have a default value for the size. So I'd still define my own \chapterSep to be like \plainbreak{1} to be able to adjust that globally.



ph
Of course, just as I'm starting to get this cough back under control I had to go and choke on my water again...


Just got a notification from F-Droid that my browser ( #Fennec ) has known #security issues. Looks like I'm in the market for a new browser on my mobile devices.

I know I'm gonna hate asking this, but what browser sucks the least on #Android these days?

reshared this

in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

I saw over on Mastodon that an update is coming soon, so I don't think you need to be in a rush to switch.
in reply to Russ O ❤ 🇺🇦

@Russ O ❤ 🇺🇦 Yeah, I mostly only use the browser on my phone with trustworthy-ish sites, so I'm not in a huge rush. If they fix it before I find an alternative, so much the better.


Does anyone know if #org-mode has a way to specify a repeating scheduled item in UTC time? I have a few of these, and don't want to have to adjust them all when the clock changes. #emacs

reshared this

in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

Maybe a answer : org-mode utc
in reply to lann

@lann This is close to what I'm looking for. Ideally, I'd like to be able to do something like set a property on a headline that says "treat everything in this subtree as UTC".
@lann


ph
Oh neat, I'm doing the cough-so-hard-I-almost-pass-out thing again. 🙃
in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

ph

Sensitive content



So, for the last few days, #Emacs has been glitching out on me. When I'd try to do certain things, it'd complain about an undefined variable and then just refuse to do the thing I asked it to do. Today, it started doing this when I tried to list the manuals.

I deleted the cache files and restarted it. Everything's fine now. I'm glad it's fixed, but... really?

in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

Do you use emacs.desktop files, eg with desktop-save? I've also had strange goings-ons where starting emacs gives errors and even C-x C-c doesn't work. Removing the .emacs.desktop file in use resolves it.
in reply to mocom

@mocom I think this is what broke it.


I think the problem started when I installed the org-mode package from M-x list-packages even though it was already installed via apt. I removed it again, but I think it broke things.

in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

org is a built in package :
  org                            9.5.5          built-in              Outline-based notes management and organizer

So no reason to install it


Our garbage can broke. It's one of those ones with a foot pedal and a soft-close lid. They're normally over $100, so obviously I'd rather fix it than replace it, but the damn thing is deliberately designed not to be repairable.

I've identified the issue though. I'm going to try to design and 3D print a brace to reinforce the broken part. It won't be a pretty fix, but I think it'll work, and it'll be on the underside so nobody will ever see it.

I'll have to get some epoxy to fasten it, though. I hope it works and I don't make it worse.



@buoou Is your Gemini capsule down? I'm getting an error 53.

Maybe it suddenly doesn't like my VPN?

@uoou
in reply to uoou

@buoou There it is.

...wait, you've been awake since Thu 31 Aug 2023 23:45 BST? 🙃

@uoou
in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

Yup, it's been a long day 😢

Honestly, I have a script that tells me when I should be tired. And it was pulling from that online data. And I was without internet for a while so I made it all offline and forgot to get back to uploading.

Was only really useful for people who can just ask me anyway 😁



TIL that #Emacs' built-in web browser is named eww.

That seems an appropriate name for a web browser, tbh.



One of my favourite marketing weasel words (weasel phrases?) is "clinically studied".

It really means nothing.

"This product has been clinically studied."

"Neat, what results did those studies yield?"

*crickets*

Boyd Stephen Smith Jr. reshared this.



You know, it says something about the complexity of a program when its help system has a help system.

uoou reshared this.

in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

TBH, most of the moo programming I do is directly through tintin++. I'm considering switching to using emacs as a moo client, but I'd have to find a way to port over the rather heavy customizations I've made to tintin++. Things like managing the sushi bar are done via local scripts.

The org-mode stuff I'm doing right now is kind of separate from moo.

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Why does #Debian's #Emacs package not include the documentation?

Turns out that's in the emacs-common-non-dsfg package... obviously.

JJDavis :terminal: reshared this.

in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

because emacs' manual is licensed under dsfg (EDIT: i meant gfdl, lol) which is not free in debian's perspective
This entry was edited (4 weeks ago)
in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

Links to a lot of the background on the many, many discussions that happened around the GFDL and its compatibility with the DFSG:

wiki.debian.org/GFDLHistory



Is there a way to tell org-mode's agenda view not to show completed to-dos and schedule entries that are more than say a week past completion?
#emacs

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in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

```
;; to the first question: not to show completed to-dos in agenda view
(setq org-agenda-skip-scheduled-if-done t)
```

#orgmode



I've been an #Emacs user for a long time because it's just what I got used to. I had no particular loyalty to it.

The more I dig into org-mode though, the more I see it as its killer feature though. This alone is enough to keep me from ever switching to another editor.

Please note: if you like another editor better, that's perfectly fine. Use what works for you. For the love of God, I'm not trying to spark an Emacs vs. vim flame war.

screwlisp reshared this.

in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

org-mode is too slow for me. I load it up like "I have to wait 20 seconds for a file to load? For this?" It's 2024 ffs
in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

I keep not-quite fully embracing org-mode because I spend too much time outside of Emacs (e.g. on mobile devices). I probably just need to work out some scripting to dump into an inbox queue.

Plus work being absolutely inflexible about not letting work sync to anything else, though it helps enforce life boundaries. 😀



subpost
It's interesting how often the people who encourage you to "question everything" get upset when you question them.


Since we broke the pens out of storage, Katy's been taking up calligraphy. She's rather good at it too.

Anyhow, I cautioned her against using cheap paper with a #FountainPen because I've found it to be an unpleasant experience. Despite this, she's using a notepad from the dollar store. As it turns out, the paper is surprisingly good quality. No feathering or bleed through whatsoever.

Colour me impressed.

in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

I've used fountain pens on a variety of papers. Cheap American notebooks are usually not bad -- in fact my gripe with them is usually that the ruling is always too dark, the paper itself is okay.
This entry was edited (1 month ago)
in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

generally, Vietnamese paper is pretty good for FPs. Vietnamese paper often shows up in cheap binder notebook paper or composition books, so I’m not surprised that it could show up in a dollar store notepad


So, while there is a #FountainPen community here in the fedi, is there a #teeline community?

reshared this

in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

Goodness, this has made me feel a tad nostalgic. I used pitman in my work, but a music journalist flatmate was taught teeline. I wonder if there’s much need for either these days…
in reply to Seven ✨🍂✨

@Seven ✨🍂✨ For me, it's part practical, part just because it's cool. I have ADHD and sometimes my brain runs faster than my hand can write. I tend to type notes, but I don't always have a keyboard handy.

I also like being able to write notes without having someone read over my shoulder... unless of course they happen to be a British journalist, which is unlikely in Canada.



I wonder how much hair pulling would be involved in switching to (and learning) Xmonad...

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