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#i got it on A FLOPPY DISC
systimming · 3 months
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Edgar board!
- Mod Pent + Mod ENA.
((Sources of gifs: x, x, x | x, x, x | x, x, x ))
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rubberbandballqueen · 9 months
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WATCHING VIDEOS OF A GUY EXECUTING A BUNCH OF ANCIENT COMPUTER VIRUSES ON ANCIENT COMPUTER DEVICES N EXPLAINING WHAT THEY DO N HOW THEY WORK N STUFF N I JUST SAW THIS MAN LOAD UP A FLOPPY DISK AND SOMEHOW I FELT THAT IN MY BONES.
THE ANCIENT RITUALS... I HAVE DONE THEM BEFORE...... LONG, LONG AGO...........
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Bro FUCK wireless headphones all my homies HATE wireless headphones
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inkskinned · 2 years
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we were the liminal kids. alive before the internet, just long enough we remember when things really were different.
when i work in preschools, the hand signal kids make for phone is a flat palm, their fingers like brackets. i still make the pinky-and-thumb octave stretch when i "pick up" to respond to them.
the symbol to save a file is a floppy disc. the other day while cleaning out my parents' house, i found a collection of over a hundred CDs, my mom's handwriting on each of them. first day of kindergarten. playlist for beach trip '94. i don't have a device that can play any of these anymore - none of my electronics are compatible. there are pieces of my childhood buried under these, and i cannot access them. but they do exist, which feels special.
my siblings and i recently spent hours digitizing our family's photos as a present for my mom's birthday. there's a year where the pictures just. stop. cameras on phones got to be too good. it didn't make sense to keep getting them developed. and there are a quite a few years that are lost to us. when we were younger, mementos were lost to floods. and again, while i was in middle school, google drive wasn't "a thing". somewhere out there, there are lost memories on dead laptops. which is to say - i lost it to the flood twice, kind of.
when i teach undergrad, i always feel kind of slapped-in-the-face. they're over 18, and they don't remember a classroom without laptops. i remember when my school put in the first smartboard, and how it was a huge privilege. i used the word walkman once, and had to explain myself. we are only separated by a decade. it feels like we are separated by so much more than that.
and something about ... being half-in half-out of the world after. it marks you. i don't know why. but "real adults" see us as lost children, even though many of us are old enough to have a mortgage. my little sister grew up with more access to the internet than i did - and she's only got 4 years of difference. i know how to write cursive, and i actually think it's good practice for kids to learn too - it helps their motor development. but i also know they have to be able to touch-type way faster than was ever required from me.
in between, i guess. i still like to hand-write most things, even though typing is way faster and more accessible for me. i still wear a pj shirt from when i was like 18. i don't really understand how to operate my parents' smart tv. the other day when i got seriously injured, i used hey siri to call my brother. but if you asked me - honestly, i prefer calling to texting. a life in anachronisms. in being a little out-of-phase. never quite in synchronicity.
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raziraphale · 2 years
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born in a really stupid year where when I started school they hadn't given up on computer classes yet under the weird assumption that ""digital natives"" don't need to be taught computer skills (I'm so sorry younger gen z), but they had definitely given up on formally teaching kids how to type by then so I type like an idiot now and forever
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foone · 8 months
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So I'm annoyed at a collage of minidiscs ending up in my timeline because I follow "diskette" but that's not important...
You know how weird the etymology of "diskette" is?
So, it's a portmanteau of "disk" and "cassette".
Disk as in "a round flat thing", and it's the American spelling, because the diskette was invented by IBM, an American company. Disk (usually spelled "disc" in commonwealth countries) comes from the Greek dískos, as in "discus", the circular thing you throw for sport.
And floppy disks are primarily a circle of magnetic material. That's actually how they were first conceived, as a flexible version of the rigid metal magnetic circles used in hard drives. But they quickly realized that it was impossible to keep them clean: fingerprints and dust stick to the surface too easily, ruining them. So they were given a vinyl (and later, plastic) jacket, so they could be safely carried around.
And thus, diskette was coined. Sometimes you'll see it etymologized as "small disk", like a disk-ette, but that's wrong: it's a portmanteau with cassette. Because cassettes were made by taking reel to reel magnetic tape and putting it in a small case, so they can be quickly and reliably loaded.
And why are cassettes called that? Well, it's French. But in French it's quite simple: it's the diminutive of "casse", which means case. It's a little case. You put the tape in a little box. It's a cassette.
So similarly, diskette was made by cassettizing "disk". You put the disk in a little case. It's a disk cassette, a diskette.
This sort of thinking also explains why they're called "floppy disks" when they've been hard plastic since 1984: it's just like how we call cassettes "tapes". They're not tape, they're a little plastic box containing tape. Tape is a thin flexible thing that you wrap around a spool, not a little plastic box. But we call them "tapes"/"a tape" as synecdoche: a part is used to represent the whole. It's a "tape", fittingly because the tape is the important part. It's the part that stores the audio, the rest is just packaging to keep it safe and reliable.
Floppy disks are similarly called such: the floppy part is the magnetic disk inside the vinyl or plastic case. We're calling the whole package by the part that actually stores the data.
And in any case, they were named as such in comparison to "hard disks": the metal or glass surfaces used by hard drives.
Anyway, three final things:
1. You ever wonder why it's Floppy Disk but optical discs? You have a DVD* disc or a CD (compact disc), not a DVD Disk or Compact Disk. I already basically explained it: floppies were invented in the US, and compact discs came from a Philips/Sony partnership: a Dutch/Japanese partnership. So they used the commonwealth spelling, thus it became a standard to refer to optical media as "discs".
2. My favorite silly floppy fact comes from this sort of thing: so the first floppies were 8", then the 5.25" model was invented, and in 1981 we got the 3.5" floppy. These are by far the three most common floppy disks, and those are their names, used nearly** universally in English.
But here's the thing: one of them is wrong.
8 inch floppy disks? They're eight inches even. 5.25 inch floppy disks? They're 5.25 inches even.
3.5" disks are actually 3.543"!
This is for the same reason why we have disk vs disc for floppy and optical media: 8" disks were invented by IBM, an American company. 5.25" disks were invented by Shugart/Wang, both American companies.
3.5" disks were invented by Sony, a Japanese company. They're not 3.5" disks... They're 90mm disks!
But it was already the standard in English that floppy disk formats get called by their size in inches, so it has always been called the 3.5" disk, because that's close enough for jazz.
3. to get back to the first point of this post: minidiscs aren't diskettes. Diskette is for disks, and minidiscs are discs. They're not flexible, they're rigid: minidiscs are actually magneto-optical discs, where there's a small plastic disc like a CD, which is read by a laser but written by a magnetic read head. Since they have to be rigid for the laser to work, they're (rigid) discs, not (flexible) disks. They are confusing, I agree: usually magnetic media is disk, while optical is disc, and disks have cases, while discs are just a plastic circle... But minidiscs are magnetic AND optical, and they're optical but inside a case. They're one of those exceptions that makes taxonomy so difficult. (they're very trans in that way, imo)
* I intentionally didn't expand out the acronym DVD, because the fun fact is about that is that DVD is not an acronym. Not anymore. It was originally supposed to be Digital Video Disc, but the later Digital Versatile Disc to better reflect the non-video uses of the disc, but apparently the official meaning of the acronym is now that it just is the name of the disc. It's a DVD: it doesn't stand for anything.
** one exception to the "universally called by their sizes in English" that I'm aware of is South Africa. For Reasons they just called the 5.25" disks "floppies", and then when 3.5" disks came around, they called them... "stiffies". Yes, this is hilarious. They know.
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sirfrogsworth · 3 months
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The Death of Physical Media
I keep seeing this concern around all of my home theater circles. Ever since Best Buy decided to abandon physical media there has been a call to arms to save it.
Chris Stuckman did a great video on his love of physical media.
youtube
I admire and share his passion.
That said, I think there is nothing to stop physical media from being scaled back. At best, it will end up like vinyl and only a few select titles will still be pressed.
Which is why I think saving physical media is the wrong fight.
There is a much larger fight that encompasses more than just blu-ray discs...
(I'm going to use really big letters for dramatic effect so don't get startled.)
DATA OWNERSHIP!
(Imagine a long trailing echo when reading that in your mind.)
(Sorry, I probably should have included those instructions in the previous parenthetical. So go back and read "data ownership" again with the proper gusto.)
(Did you do it?)
(Was it cool?)
(Cool.)
A blu-ray is just data.
The disc does not positively affect the visuals or the sounds. It's just 1s and 0s coded into microscopic pits. You can put that data on a hard drive. You can put it on an SD Card. You can put it on a thumb drive and wear it on a necklace.
You can even use WinRAR to break it up into little 1.44 megabyte chunks and save it to floppy disks.
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Another 40 more cases of floppies and you've got Avatar preserved for life!
The medium is not important.
The *data* is important.
And as everything turns into a subscription we are losing out on ways to own data. Beyond that, people aren't yet seeing the value of owning data. If renting a digital download is cheaper, they are almost always going to choose that option.
So the fight is two-fold.
We need to fight for the right to parrrrrty own data.
We need to convince the populace of the value of owning data.
This can apply to software, movies, video games. Hell, I don't even own my damn doorbell videos. There is no way to download all of the footage. I'd have to do each video one at a time. And if I don't keep my subscription, I will no longer have access to that data as it will soon be deleted.
We would need a platform similar to Steam—though it isn't the perfect data ownership solution. Many titles require internet connectivity and DRM verification. What happens to our media when a company goes out of business and the infrastructure to verify the DRM over the internet is gone?
So that would need to be addressed. Perhaps a new form of DRM linked to our digital identity that can be verified locally.
I mean, I'd love to get rid of DRM, but that is probably not realistic.
I think the best avenue is probably a congressional law.
"The Own Your Own Data Act"
TOYODA?
We can workshop the name later.
In conclusion, we don't need to save blu-rays. We need the option to buy data and actually own it in perpetuity.
Meaning if a streaming service deletes a movie or a movie studio goes belly up, our data doesn't disintegrate along with it. We cannot let our favorite shows go extinct. We need to be part of preserving that history. Not to mention discs have a shelf life. But data can be transferred to new mediums indefinitely.
My house is just going to be wall to wall floppy disks.
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superlinguo · 2 months
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Research Data Management. Or, How I made multiple backups and still almost lost my honours thesis.
This is a story I used to tell while teaching fieldworkers and other researchers about how to manage their data. It’s a moderately improbable story, but it happened to me and others have benefited from my misadventures. I haven't had reason to tell it much lately, and I thought it might be useful to put into writing. This is a story from before cloud storage was common - back when you could, and often would, run out of online email storage space. Content note: this story includes some unpleasant things that happened to me, including multiple stories of theft (cf. moderately improbable). Also, because it's stressful for most of the story, I want to reassure you that it does have a happy conclusion. It explains a lot of my enthusiasm for good research data management. In Australia, 'honours' is an optional fourth year for a three year degree. It's a chance to do some more advanced coursework and try your hand at research, with a small thesis project. Of course, it doesn't feel small when it's the first time you've done a project that takes a whole year and is five times bigger than anything you’ve ever written. I've written briefly about my honours story (here, and here in a longer post about my late honours supervisor Barb Kelly) . While I did finish my project, it all ended a bit weirdly when my supervisor Barb got ill and left during the analysis/writing crunch. The year after finishing honours I got an office job. I hoped to maybe do something more with my honours work, but I wasn't sure what, and figured I would wait until Barb was better. During that year, my sharehouse flat was broken into and the thief walked out with the laptop I'd used to do my honours project. The computer had all my university files on it, including my data and the Word version of my thesis. I lost interview video files, transcriptions, drafts, notes and everything except the PDF version I had uploaded to the University's online portal. Uploading was optional at the time, if I didn't do that I probably would have just been left with a single printed copy. I also lost all my jewellery and my brother’s base guitar, but I was most sad about the data (sorry bro). Thankfully, I made a backup of my data and files on a USB drive that I kept in my handbag. This was back when a 4GB thumb drive was an investment. That Friday, feeling sorry for myself after losing so many things I couldn't replace, I decided to go dancing to cheer myself up. While out with a group of friends, my bag was stolen. It was the first time I had a nice handbag, and I still miss it. Thankfully, I knew to make more than one back up. I had an older USB that I'd tucked down the back of the books on my shelf (a vintage 256MB drive my dad kindly got for me in undergrad after a very bad week when I lost an essay to a corrupted floppy disk). When I went to retrieve the files, the drive was (also) corrupted. This happens with hard drives sometimes. My three different copies in three different locations were now lost to me.
Thankfully, my computer had a CD/DVD burner. This was a very cool feature in the mid-tens, and I used to make a lot of mixed CDs for my friends. During my honours project I had burned backed up files on some discs and left them at my parents house. It was this third backup, kept off site, which became the only copy of my project. I very quickly made more copies. When Barb was back at work, and I rejoined her as a PhD student, it meant we could return to the data and all my notes. The thesis went through a complete rewrite and many years later was published as a journal article (Gawne & Kelly 2014). It would have probably never happened if I didn’t have those project files. I continued with the same cautious approach to my research data ever since, including sending home SD cards while on field trips, making use of online storage, and archiving data with institutional repositories while a project is ongoing.
I’m glad that I made enough copies that I learnt a good lesson from a terrible series of events. Hopefully this will prompt you, too, to think about how many copies you have, where they’re located, and what would happen if you lost access to your online storage.
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annabelle--cane · 6 months
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hello, I would love to hear your magnus protocol theories if you have any?
every single one of the following theories are exactly as serious as each other, none of these are jokes at all:
the arg end page on the oiar site saying "all of that was 100% a totally fake training exercise so destroy any evidence you kept or be charged with treason" is such a massive lie <3
the oiar is the new seat of power for the alternate-universe-sorta-beholding. the magnus institute burned down and it simply didn't matter to the dread powers, they just jumped ship and let all their human servants die, which would tie-in to the pitch of protocol being more about systems whereas archives was about personal choices. a single person did manage to burn down the torment nexus institute but it simply didn't matter in the grand scheme of things.
lena kelley is alternate jonah magnus's current host
archives 'verse einsamernarr was the one who leaked those statements in 1999 mentioned in mag 68. the timelines don't quite line up, but several time stamps from the usenet forum look rather, shall I say, like they've been affected by exposure to a massive hole in reality that links to a different slightly out of sync universe.
the magnus institute was burned down by a cataclysmically angry mother who realized the extra curricular classes her kid went to was giving them "haunted by ghosts" disease.
gwendolyn bouchard is alternate jonah magnus's current host
hokay one of the arg documents pulled from a floppy disc found at an irl event had a spreadsheet in it written in german with what looks to me like dates and locations of statements (or maybe incident reports...?). I think this might have some clues about the protocol 'verse fear taxonomy, as the notes section of uncorrupted rows seem to have explanations for the events. most of them are "cats lol," but some labels ring bells for me, like "war people / warriors" (slaughter) and "avoid" (lonely), and some don't but are still spooky. "ink" comes up several times, "never again" and "unhappy child" once each. one that took place at a somerset theme park is noted with "mr b," so clearly bonzo himself is also an entity of fear.
lady mowbray is alternate jonah magnus's current host
she's also just a front for funneling money to the great bonzo
I really think that under no circumstances are we going to definitively know what happened to jon and martin from the archives 'verse, but we could definitely see what their alternate selves are up to in this timeline. I've got nothing to back this up but I'd like to see them being evil and doing evil laughs and enacting evil actions.
I shall be real, I have no idea what the deal will be with celia ripley, I just know that it's significant that she's called celia when her alternate self chose that name AND saw a fire ghost woman. here's how agnes montag--[I am shot]
bonzo is alternate jonah magnus's current host
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theehorsepusssy · 1 month
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what was ur favorite subject in high school
i hated high school and dreaded going to pretty much each and every class equally except maybe
Sophomore year 10th period study hall in the commons was a daily Euchre tournament until sometime near the end of the year they outlawed playing cards and made us read books and shit
Senior year last semester i found my favorite class ever Personal Typing and Word Processing. It was fun and it had no homework. The word processing part was kind of a joke because we only had like 2 Apple II computers for the whole school and we spent one day lined up to sit down and learn how to insert a floppy disc, type some quick brown fox shit and save the file.
Junior year Summer School English. it was like a 4 or 5 hour class with 2 smoke breaks and a lunch. Got stoned every day. Did acid once. Most the kids in the class couldnt read. I got a College Prep equivalent credit for reading Killing Mr Griffin or Beezus and Ramona or some shit
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thedreadvampy · 4 months
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We had our team Christmas party/goodbye Ruth do today. and I need to show you what my friend at work made me for a leaving present because even for him it's a work of mad genius, I was just sitting there like WHAT. WHAT IS HAPPENING.
so you know, I get leaving gifts from my team, it's lovely, notebooks, pens, gift card, fond farewells, it's lovely, people say nice things about me
then my friend Zain says "I also got you something"
Now the thing to know about Zain is his party acumen is legendary. every year we're all resigned from the off to losing at Secret Santa because his gifts are insane. last year he made his secret santa a custom play set of one of our services in a branded box with tiny props. this year he made a custom Ken doll and box representing our colleague and it has a tiny collection bucket and a "collect them all!" sticker on the back where he'd found pictures of Barbies and Kens that looked like the rest of the Fundraising team. we'd just got done with a quiz where he made a custom video package, a Family Feud round with buzzers, and TWO Photoshop picture rounds. once. ONCE. we asked him to facilitate a team meeting and he wrote and animated a theme song. the man is insane. everything he does is so thoughtful, so labour intensive, and also so off the wall weird.
so I'm intrigued. especially since all he's holding is an envelope.
he says "I got you something. It's kind of an experience."
and hands me this letter.
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(there's a bunch of good bits in here but I will particularly note that "It's going" has been his perpetual refrain for months every time I ask how it's going, to the point he usually doesn't even bother saying it any more.)
ok. I am confused. what is. THE DEVICE.
he puts THE DEVICE on the table. he hands me 4 cardboard floppy discs.
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THE DEVICE is a large cardboard box. You will observe that THE DEVICE has an LED on the front. You may also observe that THE DEVICE has both a button. and a set of speaker holes.
this is because upon pushing the button on THE DEVICE, it makes a jaunty startup noise and an AI voice launches into a full minute setup speech before instructing me to load the included floppy discs into THE DEVICE. during the period of silence as I feed them into the slot, THE DEVICE says things like "ow, careful!"
THE DEVICE then makes loading noises, and instructors me to open THE DEVICE to see the contents of the discs.
inside the box, there are 4 gifts, each corresponding to a floppy disc and also to a conversation we've had at some point in the last 2.5 years.
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this, of course, is in reference to my infamous Blobbyland post, and indeed to the fact that Zain, who is 3 years younger than me, actually FOUND OUT ABOUT MR BLOBBY from me taking about my popular Tumblr post
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Gawrsh.zip references a conversation about Goofy dying in Kingdom Hearts, the first video game I remember finishing
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EIGHT MONTHS AGO Zain asked me what my top 5 films of all time were and I said easy, Mirrormask, 10 Things, Angels In America, Everything Everywhere All At Once, Fury Road, boom. He's been just HOLDING THAT INFORMATION IN HIS HEAD FOR MONTHS.
the last one is my favourite. I was like oh no what could be in this poster tube cause what's left of the floppies is NIGHTMARE.EXE.
at my Halloween party last month, to which Zain was my only work friend who made it, we watched Nightmare on Elm Street and Zain, who had recently watched some video breakdowns on it, was pointing out humorous background details. and in the sleep therapist scene, both he and Tim pointed at the screen and started shouting TRAM CATS!!! and we were all losing our shit
the thing is there's a Very Weird poster in that scene. and now. now it's in my house also.
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anyway I legit almost cried this may be the most unhinged and lovely gift that anyone has ever given me. I'm going to miss working with this weirdo so much.
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Growth
Characters: Ian Hecox, Anthony Padilla
Tags: tripple drabble, friendship, light angst, communication, growth, protective Anthony, 2023 Smosh
word count: ~ 300
A small moment between two friends and the art of ellipsis and omission.
~~~
"They're wrong. You know that, right?"
Anthony's voice was low, but weirdly determined.
As if he had made up his mind bringing this up and was dead set on doing it.
Ian paused, signaling that he had heard his friend, but kept typing. He frowned though, while not looking up from his task - typing out the last words of the sentence.
"What?", he replied then, clicking the floppy disc icon on the screen of his laptop, throwing a confused glance towards his best friend.
"Some of the viewers, they still... well. I...they say..." Anthony started, but recognition appeared on Ian's face, as he understood. His chest clenched for a short moment.
It would be okay, they had learned to have these moments now.
"I just-"
"Don't. Please. I don't wanna talk about that. Not right now. Sorry.", Ian interrupted his friend, firm but not unkindly. He seemed apologetic and a bit nervous, even to his own ears. But the other man would understand. Anthony closed his mouth with a click of his teeth, shifting his weight on the couch in Ian's office. His hands were smashed against each other in his lap, crossed legs bopping up and down. He met Ian's eyes. The lights in the offices outside were mostly out, making this room's lights seem strangely solemn.
They stared at each other for a moment, racing thoughts in their heads.
"They are though.", Anthony said, voice low and a sad smile on his face.
"I know, Anthony.", Ian replied, his eyes earnest and the corners of his mouth pulling up slightly. "This time around I know. I remind myself once in a while.”
Anthony's smile became happier and he nodded slightly.
"Okay, I'll remind you if you forget."
"Sure." Ian huffed a small genuine laugh. "Thanks, man."
“You got it.”
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inkskinned · 2 years
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one of the oddest arguments i've ever gotten into was like. i had agreed to give a dude a chance. we were on a first date. and he got. just. so mad. because i had told him i read about 2-5 books a week.
but he found out it was actually that i listen to 2-5 audiobooks. he was dead set on the idea - that's not reading, it's just listening. that i was lying, somehow, by implying i'd "read" the book.
language has a beautiful ability to adapt over time, particularly in the face of technology. when i "connect to the internet" i'm referencing the oldschool method of literally plugging into the internet - which i very rarely physically do. i roll down my window, which is a reference to the circular mechanical action it used to take. hell - the floppy disc remains our resolute save file icon. when i say i "ran to the store," nobody expects me to actually run - and what my version of running to the store looks like and your version are probably pretty different.
i told the guy, baffled: i look at things through glasses, that's still seeing. nobody complains i'm filtering the image.
he says: that's not the same and you know it.
i use audiobooks because i have adhd, and it makes it so i can actually focus. i am using it to help a medically diagnosed condition.
language also has a really cool ability: when we read something, our brains look at a word and make an image. when we hear a story, our brains hear a word and make an image. whether we hear it or read it - the word means the same thing, written or spoken. there is no quantifiable difference in the knowledge-encoding experience - i still happily hallucinate while i'm listening.
and i just kind of stared at him while he was telling me that "claiming" i had "actually read" a book that i had actually-listened-to was lying
and my only baffled response was like: "... are you gatekeeping the experience of... reading?"
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dat2ndaccount97 · 10 months
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So over the weekend I FINALLY opened up the rest of that 80s-90s New in Box Barbie stuff I thrifted last year, this being remaining dolls (and the Pepsi Spirit Barbie I got from eBay with B-Day Money Last year) Again Didn't take any out of box photos yet as I mainly just wanted to get everything unpackaged so I can finally have that closet space back. And yes that's the version o Earring Magic Barbie that comes with the 2 Barbie PC games on Floppy Discs which were included.
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showamagicalgirls · 13 days
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I got my hands on this Magic Angel Creamy Mami (魔法の天使クリィミーマミ) computer game. I love the box and I love the old school floppy discs. I will scan those too.
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foone · 1 year
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Hi I'm Foone Turing. I've been here a while but never really did an introduction post, so...
Hi. Yes, that's my name. I'm an asexual trans enby (they/them pronouns), I'm married, and I'm both older than you expect and younger than you expect, depending on what you know me from. I'm a writer and programmer. I'm better known on Twitter, at the moment. I'm well known for being severely ADHD and I'm also on the autism spectrum, somewhere near ultraviolet. I live near Oakland, California, USA, but I grew up on a farm in the south. I'm a furry, but I don't have a fursona yet.
I'm big into retrotech stuff, especially floppy disks. 80s and 90s PC stuff mainly, but I have a passing interest in everything else. I loves me some weird tech that you have no idea ever existed. I'm also big into analog media. VHS tapes, laserdiscs, that sort of thing.
Fandom wise, I'm a Trekie from way back, primarily in the TNG/DS9/VOY/ENT era. I haven't yet gotten into the new stuff, and I have only a passing knowledge of the original series. I'm also a big fan of Babylon 5, Red Dwarf, and Doctor Who (4th doctor, and new who doctors 9,10,11). I watch a bunch of British panel shows: HIGNFY, Mock the Week, Nevermind the Buzzcocks, 8 out of 10 cats (primarily the countdown spinoff).
I am a Big Hater on crytypocurrentseas and AI art. I used to be famously mad at the JWST, but now that it's in space and functional, I've calmed down. They just need to rename it and I'm golden.
I'm currently splitting my social media presence across three sites:
* Tumblr, obviously. Shitposting, jokes, queer stuff, and queer joke shitposts are all going here.
* mastodon: I'm putting my tech stuff here. Teardowns, building new death generators, fun historical weirdness.
* Twitter: formerly my primary platform, but now I just use it to keep in touch with people and make fun of the impending collapse of Twitter.
Stuff I do and have done after the readmore.
(I'm on mobile now but I'll get back to this on the desktop and add more links)
* I run lettuce.wtf, a webcam showing a lettuce to see if it will outlast Twitter. (My money is literally on the lettuce)
* my long running site The Death Generator: a tool for making fake video game screenshots, with user supplied dialogue.
* I run some Twitter bots, one of which is more popular than me, and all of which will need to be migrated soon: Gay Cats, WinIcons, Print Shop Deluxe, and Every Clue Line.
* I got Microsoft 3D Movie Maker open sourced
* I got rickrolled so hard that it ended up on national TV
* I ran doom on a pregnancy test
* I have made many horrible and weird keyboards. Keyboards with hair, keyboards which write poetry, keyboards that take 5 hours to say "hello world", keyboards with randomly placed keys, keyboards with 7 toggle switches instead of buttons, and many more.
* I tear down random electronics and try to figure out and explain how they work. (originally on Twitter, but moving over to mastodon now)
* I pissed off the FBI on more than one occasion. They tried to get me fired, they delayed my wedding by over a month, and they mentioned my 4chan nickname in a federal trial.
* I used to work for 4chan. I was a moderator and coder, I created /rs/ and /r9k/, and I convinced moot to destroy the original politics board (for obvious reasons). Things went further to shit after I left, but I am still glad I left. Oh and I also inadvertently prevented the creation of the 4chan dating/meet up site by being too ADHD to actually complete development of it. You're welcome.
* I ran a windows 95 machine for the maximum amount of time. There's a bug where it crashes after 49.7 days of uptime, so I let it happen. I livestreamed the end on YouTube.
* I've done exhibits at the Vintage Computer Festival on the history of floppy disks and optical discs.
* I've worked with the Video Game History Foundation (and others) to preserve old games and game development resources (source code and such). I'm big into archival!
* I wrote a really famous Twitter thread about the surprising way our vision works, which is still circulating in screenshots (including on Tumblr!) something like 5-6 years later.
* I made my old apartment play the Zelda Ocarina of Time shop music when you walked I the door.
* I run the Tumblr animefloppies, collecting screenshots and GIFs of floppy disks in anime.
* I run several other sub-tumblrs for collecting weird things, but I'll have to link them later.
* I am technically a speedrunner. I did the TAS of Duke Nukem 1, episode 1, and a joke speedrun of Solar Winds, where I beat the game by ignoring every single possible objective and just flying to the end, which takes over an hour.
* I used to make games. Some of them are available for download.
* but it still do, too: I'm working on a (currently unnamed) game about managing a dairy farm. Both the developers have ADHD. This is going to take forever before it comes out, if it ever does.
* I'm currently working on three books. Two are compilations of stuff previously twitterized, one is a novel:
- Always Screaming Forever: non-fiction, stories about my career in the tech industry and various other tech/science/history stuff I love ranting about.
- The Other Side of Screaming: fiction. My short stories.
- Mundane Kaya Sona (placeholder title): a linguist gets pulled into an FBI investigation into a car crash. An unknown language leads to the discovery of a wizard living in a forest in Oregon, and an interdimensional plot to smuggle nuclear weapons to another world, and break a cold war stalemate we (the planet earth) didn't realize we were in. I've been working on the setting for this story since I was about 7 years old, and I'm excited to finally get it out of my head and into yours.
* I'm probably forgetting like 5-10 major things I've done but ADHD is a hell of a drug. I'll add more as they come to me.
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