Mastodawn

R.L. Dane

🍵

@joel

Tempting price, but no built-in illuminator and maybe a proprietary ebook format? Not sure.

Proprietary format? It uses EPUB. And only DRM-free ebooks.

And it's opened up somewhat officially for alternate firmware like CrossPoint: https://github.com/crosspoint-reader/crosspoint-reader

GitHub - crosspoint-reader/crosspoint-reader: Firmware for the Xteink X4 e-paper display reader

Firmware for the Xteink X4 e-paper display reader. Contribute to crosspoint-reader/crosspoint-reader development by creating an account on GitHub.

GitHub

imo physical page turn buttons are a bigger deal than built-in light. And the price point is really compelling.

(I will probably be buying this when back in the US.)

Chrono Mar 11

@amin @rl_dane and of course, just get a lamp! They are cute and attach to the back with magnets

Meh, I did the non-illuminated e-ink thing for a couple generations of nooks. Not going back. But y'all have fun!

Does look darn cute.

Given the form factor its main use case seems to be reading on the go, so I'll have plenty of light to read with during the day. I'll still have my kindle if I want to read in bed or on a plane or whatever, and CrossPoint supports KOReader Sync, so I could sync my reading progress between them.

I'm still trying to figure out how to sync my highlights back to Calibre on my Kobo. I'm using the stock reader software. 🤔

I don't think Calibre keeps track of highlights? Does it?

Sam D Mar 12

@amin @rl_dane @joel I've never tried to use it to track highlights. I'd be surprised if EPUB has a way to track it, every device I've ever used tracks highlights in a separate file that the reader loads in parallel to the original file.

@spaceraser @rl_dane @joel

I expect if Calibre's viewer stores highlights it does it in the Calibre DB or in a metadata file external to the actual EPUB.

@spaceraser @amin @joel

Ah, that tracks, KOReader creates an .sdr directory and a metadata.epub.lua file in that.

So Calibre probably doesn't even care about that stuff.

I haven't poked around on my Kobo to see what kind of file it creates for the highlights.

Yo, I gotchyo e-reader right HERE, badda bing!

https://pixelfed.social/p/rl_dane/937412470962037225

R. L. Dane (Pixelfed) (@[email protected])

Found this delightful old fossil while rummaging through some old things yesterday. https://www.calculator.org/calculators/Canon_LS-61.html #Casio #Calculator #Solar #hello Posted from Fediphoto-Lineage.

Pixelfed

When might that be? ;)

I mean, with all that's going on, I sure wouldn't be in a hurry to come back. XD

My family has been planning to be back this summer. They only really have an opportunity every other year, so they take it. I'm kinda toying with the idea of staying behind and writing, but I haven't seen my cousins in a couple years and this would be a chance to see them again…

Just curious, where do your cousins live that you haven't seen them while you were still living here?

(You can fuzz the details, obvs.)

The ones in California are the ones in question. Saw them once while my family was in the US.

My "nephews" (my twin youngest cousins, whose mom keeps accidentally calling me their "Uncle Benjamin") are turning five this summer!!! 🥴

My oldest cousin is about to start college!

I'm sure you can give them lots of pointers! ;)

Done! I've been chatting with them on Signal, giving tips on dual booting Linux, and got them into Fosstodon.

…is there another way to do college?

lol, literally following your footsteps.

I know you're joking, because in reality, you'd get them to join polymaths. ;)

Chrono Mar 12

@rl_dane @amin he doesn't want them here cuz he's evil

@joel @rl_dane

a succinct synopsis

Actually, they asked to join Polymaths and I said no.

I… kinda made a rule that I don't want family members in a community I run. Big conflict of interest from a moderation standpoint, and a big mental burden for me.

Plus, family is the one thing I don't break anonymity about online, and having a family member in the same small online community would kinda ruin that. So we interact some here but I won't be shouting out their account as belonging to my cousin. ;)

Ah, that makes sense.

Interesting that fosstodon was your recommendation. I guess they've cleared their name (from your perspective) from previous moderation oopsies. ;)

mirabilos Mar 12

@amin @joel @rl_dane they did not, but we unblocked them nevertheless.

Chrono Mar 12

@mirabilos @amin @rl_dane we did tho :3

@joel @mirabilos @amin

The question wasn't whether fosstodon tried to make up for previous mistakes, but whether or not they had done so to amin's satisfaction.

As for me, I have no particular beef with them, was very happy for my time there, and would recommend them freely.

Chrono Mar 12

@rl_dane @mirabilos the truth is @amin wants to sabotage me!

@joel @mirabilos @amin

In what sense?

I think they’re doing better, yes.

I think they’re doing better, yes.

thedoctor Mar 12

@amin Wait, there are cousins of yours interacting with you here? So you and @joel are actually related?!

@rl_dane

@thedoctor @rl_dane

Scubrats, you figured it out

kabel42 Mar 12

@rl_dane @amin @joel what pointers do you need? int? char? void? ohh... ;)

heh, I was going to make a joke about pointers to functions, which was the most cursed form of pointers I could think of.

kabel42 Mar 12

@rl_dane @amin @joel to me those feel the least cursed, but maybe thats just because they look the same as in python

Wait... python lets you have pointers to functions.

That's very weird.

I thought pointers to functions was just for people who wanted to do OOP in C. :P

pixx Mar 12

@rl_dane
No, they're also for people calling machine code they don't control 🤪

Or defeating the optimizer 🤦‍♂️

@kabel42 @amin @joel

kabel42 Mar 12

@rl_dane @amin @joel you can pass functions to other function, which is probably the only reason you want pointers to functions?

The one really annoying thing about Python to me is that anonymous functions (lambdas) can only be one line of code. JavaScript has awesome anonymous functions that are so useful…

kabel42 Mar 13

@amin @rl_dane @joel if you need more than a line, just give it a name

Ah, but I am! In one spot in Ariadne's codebase, I'm wanting to assign functions to the values in a dictionary. So there is a key in the dictionary; I want to be able to refer to it via, say parsers['body']['html']['function'] (that way I can iterate through each metadata field in a standard way and call the function to parse it from a page) but for a multi-line function I have to name it separately and then reference it in the dictionary.

Makes the script's namespace more complicated than it needs to be.

kabel42 Mar 13

@amin @rl_dane @joel but can't you

def fun():
     a = "FOOOOOO!!!"
     def bar():
         print(a)
     parsers['body']['html']['function'] = bar

Yeah, that sounds pretty Pythonic.

Meanwhile Perl anonymous functions probably make you breakfast and straighten your tie. ;)

@rl_dane @kabel42 @joel

A fun trick in JS:

You can only use the await keyword inside an asynchronous function. You can make the entire script asynchronous by wrapping it in this:

(async () => {
    // code goes here
})()

This creates and then immediately calls an asynchronous anonymous function that's wrapped around the whole script! :D

The one really annoying thing about Python to me is that anonymous functions (lambdas) can only be one line of code. JavaScript has awesome anonymous functions that are so useful…

Sounds like a scary practice. My inner security wonk is shuddering.

kabel42 Mar 13

@rl_dane @amin @joel you are not supposed to pass user supplied functions :)

Well, duh XD

But still.

@rl_dane @kabel42 @joel

Dunno if it’s the same but you can make recursive arrays/objects in Javascript, where an array is a sub-item of itself.

Umm, ok, but we already knew JS was cursèd. XD

@rl_dane @kabel42 @joel

I actually was able to increase the performance of a piece of code I was writing tenfold in JS by using recursive arrays…

I was trying to use a thesaurus library to create a list of synonyms and their synonyms and so on and so on, where proximity in the list roughly corresponded to word similarity. I made an object where each key pointed to a sub-object, which had a "synonyms" property that was an array. Within that array were references back to items in the parent dictionary. It was pretty cool. (I'm not remembering the exact structure, but that should be the gist of it.)

That does sound neat!

mirabilos Mar 13

@rl_dane @kabel42 @amin @joel ? No.

Callbacks are the natural use.