efaardvark

Anyone remember Fred Fish and the Fish Disks?  Sounds like a bad band name right?  

It was actually a very popular collection of free software for the Commodore computers back in the 80s when sneakernet and floppies were considered high tech.

Found this and a bunch more Amiga-era stuff in a box in the garage.  I should probably clean the place more often.  I don’t even have the computer anymore!

Here’s another relic from a former age… an actual commercial Netscape CD, bought and paid for off the rack at my favorite computer store at the time.  I’m probably one of maybe 3 people worldwide who ever actually paid for Netscape. 
 

For those who don’t recall, Netscape was the commercial version of “Mozilla”, which was one of if not the original web browser.  In fact, Netscape the company was founded by none other than Marc Andreessen himself.

42 minutes ago, Sakura said:

Hopefully this isn't going to affect your job is it?

It is too early to know the details yet but unfortunately I'm almost sure it will.  Certainly if the cuts are as large as 25-50%.  Thanks to SpaceX making access to space so cheap there has been a huge increase in the DSN's workload over the last 5-10 years.  Personally I would not mind a bit of a slowdown in that regard.  But at that level of cuts it will be more of a shutdown than a slowdown.  We've already had 3 rounds of layoffs amounting to about 10% of the workforce in the last year and a half at JPL where the DSN is managed.  We're already stretched pretty thin in the manpower department.  Most of the robotic deep-space planetary science missions are planned and managed here as well.  Any additional cuts will mean existing missions will have to be shut down and plans for future missions will be put back on the shelf.  Hardware upgrades such as plans for new ground antennas or network bandwidth increases for the DSN will probably not happen now.  One or two flagship projects like James Webb will likely be kept running, but they will have to be funded by cancelling older, ongoing projects that have finished their primary mission.  This would likely include most if not all of the half dozen spacecraft and landed assets at Mars, the two Voyager probes, and older space telescopes such as Hubble and Chandra, among others.

Feeling more than a bit trepidatious after hearing that NASA will be facing heavy budget cuts.  Like most government agencies NASA overall is facing 25% cuts, with some areas looking at double that.  Yikes!

Even before the current Administration money has always been tight at NASA, especially in the DSN communications area where I work that supports NASA’s robotic Deep Space science and exploration missions.  (Think Voyager, Juno, the rovers on Mars, etc.)  Now Ars Technica has a story that NASA's Science Mission Directorate may be facing cuts of up to 50%, something the Planetary Society and many scientists are calling “an extinction-level event” for deep-space planetary science.  

Looks like next week v2.3 of the Distant Horizons mod gets released.  This is the first (released) version that has server support.  I've been running nightlys in single-player and it's been working great.  Looks awesome with Sodium/Iris, the Complementary shader, and a 64x resource pack.  Pretty good performance too.  I can drop the built-in render distance down to 12 to free up some processing cycles, then use them to bump DH's render distance up to 256 to get some really nice vistas going even on my 8G RX 6600 gpu.

This last pic has F3 enabled for those that want the gory details.  I've put the cursor on the boundary where Minecraft's built-in renderer leaves off and DH's takes over.  For this pic I have DH's render distance set to 256 but I've taken it up to 1024 and still been able to get a playable frame rate.   

Free Fallin' - Petty
 

あいくらふと

Very rainy and windy.  There's even evacuation warnings going out due to flooding and the danger of mudslides, especially in the nearby burned areas.  The weather dude was saying that they might see over 4 inches of rain overnight in the area of  the recent "Eaton" wildfire.  With no plant life left on the hillsides to soak it up and hold the ground in place I'm sure tomorrow we'll be hearing about slides causing more damage over there.

This happens to me all the time.  In fact, I don't usually start watching a series if I know it extends more than a season or two.  Later seasons are almost always inferior to earlier ones.　By the third season it feels like a slog through filler and recaps and I've typically lost all interest.

The other thing is the longer ones tend to leave the story open at the end of the last season instead of having a satisfactory ending.  Even if there's no interest / funding / contract for another season they don't provide a good end to the story.  They just leave the viewer hanging with dangling plot threads and / or unsatisfactory plot twists that veer off in a completely different direction, just in case.  *IF* there's another season they can sometimes recover, but most of the time they just end, leaving the viewer in an unsatisfied "WTF" state.  Give me a good story with 12 or 24 episodes and a great ending and move on to the next story.  Don't waste my time with hundreds of episodes (half of which are basically reruns and pointless filler) and no climax or ending.

I won't point fingers but tell me if this sounds familiar...  The first movie / season is a blockbuster.  The second not so much.  The third made a bit of money for the studio, but mostly just because the die-hard fans of the first 2 releases felt they were too invested to skip it.  By the 4th or 5th the franchise has gotten so bad that even the fans lose interest and / or give bad reviews so the release loses money.  The producers left the ending dangling so they could try again, but the suits kill it because of the negative return and that's the end of it, leaving just the shitty, unsatisfying ending and ruining the originally awesome story.   I wish they'd just keep it to 2 or three great movies / seasons at most, with the last one having a satisfyingly solid end that doesn't lend itself to any sort of continuation.  Make your point and move on.

This isn't just an anime thing either.  Regular TV and even movies are full of examples where the story was extended far beyond anything reasonable and the whole franchise sinks into the swamp.  Hollyweird  seems especially good at this. 

and an F3 shot for those interested in the gory details.

System summary:

• game: MC1.21.4
• mods: Distant Horizons 2.3.0-b-dev (nightly build), Sodium 0.6.6, Iris 1.8.5
• shader: Complementary Unbound 5.4
• resource pack: Faithful 64x
• CPU AMD Ryzen 7 2700X 8/16 core
• 32GB RAM (6G allocated to java/minecraft)
• 8GB Radeon RX 6600XT GPU

I followed an ass through the nether. 

 

Wet and rainy.  45F / 7C so a bit on the chilly side for SoCal too.

Last week everyone was worried about fires, this week it's mudslides. 

Wind / fire weather.  Again.

19 hours ago, Sakura said:

I got locked out of class today along with like 50 other students because our teacher is an idiot. He has this policy of locking the door the second class is supposed to start and anyone not there can't come in. Like okay I get it, be on time blahblahblah, but I've never been late before, ever. It takes me around 5 minutes to walk to that class from my previous class and I have about 10 minutes to get there but with all the ice it's not exactly possible to do because they haven't cleared any of the snow or ice. You have to slide down a giant hill that is solid ice to even get there and you have to go very carefully, so getting there takes a lot longer now. Practically the entire class was outside the door and he didn't let anyone in which was the dumbest thing I've ever seen like excuse me for not breaking all my bones to get to this pointless class ¬.¬ 

Whatever I went and had a bagel and sat talking to some dude I shouldn't be talking to. Hooray for bad decisions. 

That guy sounds like a Crazy Eddie straight out of a Niven novel.  Unfortunate for you but good thing he’s only in charge of a classroom.  Idiots like that will be the downfall of civilization.  You have my sympathies.

Today I’m spending the day in my car so I can get some work done on my laptop while the power is out in the house.  For some reason SoCal Edison (my power company) would rather pay dividends to shareholders and bonuses to C-suite execs than invest in equipment maintenance and upgrades that would let them keep the power flowing to their customers when it gets a bit windy.

What a year this week has been!

4 hours ago, Sakura said:

Yeah I saw a video earlier of the LA skyline with just fires in the back and it looked really bad.

I hope everything will be okay and you'll be safe where you are @efaardvark  

Thanks.  Up until a couple hours ago I was under an evacuation warning (meaning, pack the car and be ready to go, but ok to stay for now) but it has been lifted now and the electricity is back so I'm taking a breath while I can.  More "red flags" - high winds plus ultra low humidity - in the forecast for this weekend but for now I'll take what I can get.

My boss lives in Pasadena only a block or three from the "Eaton" fire.  His mom's was one of the houses burned down in nearby Altadena so he may not be in next week.  (She's ok but the house is gone.)  JPL had been evacuated like everything else in Pasadena and completely shut down but now that the evacuations have been rescinded they're rebooting and dusting everything off to get things going again.  I'm not sure if things will be ready for us to go back to work next week or not though.  Got a text this afternoon saying that people who are able should plan on working remotely for at least next week.  Rather difficult to do without power and like I said, there's likely to be more "red flag" weather over the weekend and into early next week.  Considering calling my aunt over in Ventura and visiting her for a week. 

Still quite a lot of recovery to do on many fronts.  I spent the last few hours after power came back cleaning the ash and soot that's covering everything like a layer of snow.  Not complaining tho.  At least I still have a house to clean.

Not much.  Kind of nervous + bored. Work is closed.  Power is still out so no internet except for my phone.  Outside it’s smoky and air quality is extremely poor so even physical exercise is out.  Mostly keeping my batteries charged and listening to the radio reports on the “Eaton” fire.

Smoky, with a chance of high winds and fire.  Hopefully not so much as a couple days ago.

On 1/8/2025 at 7:19 PM, Sakura said:

YASSSSSS ~ Super excited for it. They keep changing the amount and don't seem to really know what we are going to get but I'm happy even on the lower end of the scale and just getting 4. I'm hoping it's not ice or anything though because that hasn't been fun. It's also near impossible to do anything with this snow because it's a powdery snow and I tried to build a snowman on the balcony earlier and I can't because the snow just falls apart instantly  I ended up with hands I couldn't feel and just a lump of snow ~

I have next to no experience with such things but my brother in Wisconsin says that it has to be close to freezing to make a good snowman.  Not too cold, because It has to be a little wet.  Like when building a sand castle at the beach.  In fact, he says that driving on really cold, freshly-fallen snow is a lot like driving on sand.

33 minutes ago, Sakura said:

Wow really, you guys have snow?  That's weird indeed ~ I know there are regions in Cali with snow, but I guess snow is the last thing I think about when I think of out there lol I hope they get those fires under control :c 

 

The snow is not sticking around but apparently the low-pressure system driving these winds came from up north and brought some very cold air with it, cold enough to create snow at higher elevations.

Not sure about the fire.  It all depends on the winds.  The wind fell off a bit this afternoon but it has been picking up again this evening.  Strongest winds are supposed to be tonight and into the wee hours of tomorrow morning but they're not supposed to fall off completely until Thursday morning.  Until they go away and air drops can be made safely fighting the fire will depend mainly on ground forces.  Overnight they'll probably have to ground the aircraft completely due to darkness, terrain, smoke, and winds making flying too dangerous for water drops.  Without water drops the ground troops won't be able to reach the parts of the fire that are in the mountainous brush areas away from city streets and fire hydrants.  Right now the firefighters are in structure-protection mode with the fire 0% contained.  The fire has the initiative and the firefighters can only react to whatever it does.  If the fire goes into the hills they'll just have to let it burn where it will and hope the wind doesn't drive it back into the inhabited parts of the city somewhere else.

WINDY!  So much wind!  Bits of rain and even snow too, even though temperatures are in the upper 60s.  Very strange weather.  Work sent out a text this morning for everyone to stay/go home today and plan to do the same tomorrow.  The weather people are saying it's the worst wind situation for SoCal in decades. 

Edit: and of course with the low humidity windy weather is fire weather

Used up a whole stack of TNT blowing holes in the nether looking for netherite.  Found 22 ancient debris.

The nether looks awesome with the Distant Horizons mod and Complementary Unbound shaders btw.



But then I got back to base and discovered that a zombie had been molesting my librarians and had converted several of them!  Fortunately the golems that had spawned to protect the villagers were not able to reach them after they were zombified and I was eventually able cure them.

Did a bit more exploration in minecraft.  Still looking for a decent-sized pale garden.  Or at least one that has a creaking heart in it.

Goofed around in minecraft with my SIL building a sniffer enclosure and breeding sniffers after hatching a couple eggs that we found while exploring an underwater ruin.  The adults are huge!

Dynamic trees has been updated to 1.20.1 and Distant Horizons now works with neoforge.  So now you can get both mods working in the same game.  Pretty cool.

Finally got a chance to play some more minecraft after work this evening & found another trail ruin.  Hard to spot these things.  I almost walked right past it.  Fun to excavate however.  Good place to find pottery sherds.  Usually a couple armor trim templates mixed in as well.  I may dig into it this weekend.

Found my first pale garden too, but only a small one.  Maybe a couple dozen trees, some of which burned down as I got there due to a nearby lava pond.  No creaking or hearts in the ones that were left.    Took a bunch of pale wood, saplings, and moss bits back to base.  I like the doors made from the wood.

The Ravages of Time - Threshold