What's the latest interesting thing you've accomplished ?

I'm actually using Emacs and messing with both the C++ and JSON from the FOSS game Cataclysm DDA while compiling and hacking around. I'm also working on integrating AI with llama.cpp into Emacs. I've never been able to break into the whole IDE space effectively. I can easily mess with VSC and other easy stalkerware options, but when I actually watch my internet logs, I refuse to accept that kind of traffic and connections as normal.
- .....I understood none of those words.
  
  emacs is keyboard shortcuts turned into computer is magic
  
  Emacs is a Text Editor mostly used for coding. It has a very steep learning curve, pretty hard to master but very powerful
  C++ is a programming language
  FOSS stands for Free and Open Source Software
  Cataclysm DDA (Dark Days Ahead( is a video game, and because it's FOSS you can modify it (programming) if you know what you're doing.
  Llama.CPO is a C++ library providing ChatGPT like features to a program. In this case Emacs.
  IDE stands for Integrated Development Environment. Basically text editors but optimized for coding, like Emacs.
  VSC stands for Visual Studio Code, which is another IDE owned by Microsoft. Hence the complaints against their internet logs. Microsoft collect too much data with VSC.
- If you’d like a spyware free alternative, you can try vs codium: https://vscodium.com
  
  I have tried it, but had trouble when every project and example relies on stuff that only works with the m$ version. Emacs is the exact opposite with real people sharing in a free and open public commons.

A banner for Splatoon Unofficial!

Red over 12 books this year. The goal was 12 by the END of the year.
I've rad maybe 5 in the previous decade. Feels good man.
- Congrats! Started a book yesterday. First in a couple of years. Not great writing, but now, 48 pages in, i feel like i need to finish it.
  
  Google TGBC and see it there's one near you. Its mainly an Aus thing but there are some in the US.

We spent the whole day cleaning my elderly mom's plant-filled patio. Pressure-washed, repotted, and pruned everything. Even got the little cherub fountain working.
- I read "patio" as "piano". I was like "Daaaaaaamn! How bad does it have to get for vegitation to start growing???"

It was a while back but I released an extension for Cinnamon, Linux Mint's desktop environment, that lets you change the opacity of any window on the screen: https://cinnamon-spices.linuxmint.com/extensions/view/101
More recently, I'm working on importing bus stops in my country to OpenStreetMap but that's not done yet.
- Wow nice I will actually use that, thanks!

I got 2 bags of sparkly, brightly-colored art batts (wool, silk, and angelina) at a fiber festival at the beginning of June, and I just finished spinning all of them today (it doesn't take months to do, but I cut my finger in mid-June and had to take a break from fiber arts for a while). Now the singles need to rest, then I can ply them, then they'll be yarn! And then I can knit something very happy with them and maybe have it done in time for winter.
- I would like to see that whole machine some time. That looks fascinating.
  
  It's a Schacht Flatiron; Schacht is, I believe, the largest American spinning wheel manufacturer. https://schachtspindle.com/products/flatiron-spinning-wheel?variant=45418176250151 I really like it. My first wheel was a Majacraft Pioneer (NZ made).

Over the last month:
Replaced the fill valve in the toilet.
Built a back deck. Just a 3x4 foot one for the mobile home.
Stained the front deck.
Built a door for the skirting as the previous one rotted out.
Vacuumed out the car.
Chopped a bunch of vines out of the back yard.
Built a single step for the shed so my mother can get in and out easier.
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In the near future:
I'll be painting the shed.
Building a compost heap with left-over scrap lumber. This is for grass clippings - city doesn't take clippings and they are too full of weeds to mulch.

Well, I managed to join a hispanic choir at a Portuguese church and I must say we're having a blast, language barriers notwithstanding. I am of neither ethnicity but I just play violin so it doesn't matter. And man, latino hymns rock!
Of course I don't understand a thing the priest is saying. This week I thought hang on, I'll just run Google Translate as he's speaking. But I think there's a problem. It could be he's speaking Spanish with a thick Portuguese accent and it wasn't coming out right? Unless he was actually saying:
…And sushi are big carts of yesterday and today as farms catalyzed for purposes. He is not saying about Jesus…

i fixed an old mod i published on steam years ago.
i randomly got a ping on a workshop item for tabletop simulator that i hadn't touched in aaages. in 2019, someone in my friend group had the idea to replicate the TechDif "Two of these people are lying" format, so i hacked together writeable and shuffleable note cards we could use to play online. a week or so ago i got a ping on that item, it was someone asking if they could ask me a question (never ask to ask, kids). this made me realize that it had hundreds of downloads, which made me a bit self-conscious about the code. looking at the other comments, i found some years old feature requests which i stayed up all night implementing.
the most interesting part (or gross, depending on your pov) was the request to make a card read-only. there's no way to mark a text entry box as read-only, but i found out that they are only interactable on one side. so i added a toggle that rotates the text box so the back side faces up, and sets the scale to -1 which mirrors the whole thing.

I misread this as "the least interesting thing" and was going to say I successfully woke up today, but actually interesting? Hmm. Cooked some amaranth leaves yesterday, from my garden. The whole plant is edible, leaves are sort of spinach or chard flavor. It's an ancient cultivated plant, the bees love the purple flowers it has right now and the seeds can be eaten as grain, people bake with it.

Finished installing a 3.5" lift on my truck - it goes in for an alignment Tuesday, and then it'll be ready to drive!
This has freed me to start working on my car again - I had pulled the transmission to replace the clutch, upgrade the synchros, and install a limited-slip front differential. That's going back in, and I also installed upgraded coilovers. Probably have at least a few more weekends of work there to get the car back on the road, but I'm super excited to have two working vehicles on the horizon. The car has been down since around Christmas.

Been on a break for a bit, but before that we got a Tektronix 535A oscilloscope from the 1950s-60s up and running (with the exception of a gain issue with the vertical amplifier, haven't quite figured out the cause yet), and did some work on reverse-engineering and emulating the analog filters of the MOS 8580 SID on an FPGA (still heavily WIP, haven't gotten around to a rewrite yet so it's still really jank, college is a bitch).

Started grafting and propagating fruit trees of all types. Now have fresh fruit from Memorial day until Thanksgiving, and gave dozens of trees away. It is is way easier, and way cheaper to do than you would think. Started out with flagging tape, a utility knife, (although a cheap pocket knife would work) and some waterproof wood glue. Recently added some Parafilm for bud grafting. This is the Youtube video that got me started.

I managed to "preheat" my oven for 2 1/2 hours... That's kind of interesting.
"Ah yes the ribs should be done by now!" quickly turned into "why do I have decayed dog shit where my brain should be?"
So I guess a close second interesting thing I accomplished is surviving not having a functioning brain lol
- At least you still have ribs. When I do interesting stuff with the oven it usually involves my food becoming charcoal.

A friend of mine has what has been referred to as DID and mentioned a lot of people saying they have the condition in order to be trendy. I documented an instance where I unintentionally went full Solomon on one such individual. I asked what something was, that thing happening to have an element of randomization to it. This stranger diagnosed with DID (different person from my friend) answered. Some time later it was asked again, with what appeared to be the same thing. The stranger recognized it too much rather than assuming something was different, and this caused some eyebrows to be raised, and follow-ups happened and a trend slowly died.

I finally got a widget I modeled in OpenSCAD to print correctly in my resin printer. The shape is such that supports were really challenging.
It’s interesting to me because I have graduated from the ‘tchotchkes’ phase of printing into the realm of making functional parts that further my other projects.
Trying to get Cthulu’s tentacle-beard to print correctly was a good exercise, but designing and printing a useful part feels like a real step up.

It's been two and a half months, but I'm almost done creating a board game from scratch. It's like Risk, but Cat themed, and featuring a massive deck of cards.
Next up, gotta start work on the prototype before I can invite some people over to play and hopefully learn if this game actually works as a concept, needs some rule tweaks, or is utterly confusing and broken.

I stopped using smartphone in the bedroom and started reading much more as the result.

I started painting again. I'm finishing up a portrait of Macho Man Randy Savage and another portrait (of my mom) is in progress.
You can view them here.

I beat Melania yesterday. In game, that is.