More a reminder for myself how to set up a remote server/vm like Azure to run and record games.  Otherwise, you'll run into issues like lack of GPU/DirectX or no sound.

1. Create a VM with Windows 10 and a GPU (for Azure, it is the NC series).
2. If your GPU is a Tesla, make sure to install Nvidia drivers and enable graphics rendering on it.
3. Install VB-Audio virtual sound card to be able to capture sound from the game.
4. If an Unreal...[More]

If you use inside-out #VR / #WindowsMixedReality headsets like @Samsung Odyssey, you'll run into the controllers glitching out when out of view (below or behind your head). In an #UnrealEngine or #Unity game, a workaround is to store the location of the controllers but avoid updating if the location moves too far from the headset (the glitching out when out of view). The rotation of each controller still works as they're based on gyroscopes instead of cameras, so you'll still want to update the rotation, just not the location which is now some absurd unusable number.

In Unreal Engine, it would look like this:


This really should be internalized into the headset driver itself, as it only makes sense to not update to a location that is physically impossible.  For now, you have to do that check yourself.

Another story that came as a dream, ironically as a movie I was watching in the dream.

The movie initially starts as a horror film about boy initially trying to escape the home of a crazed family with a murderous cyborg child.  The home is more or less a cave with no open windows or exit (all boarded up).  The parents are human but very old and clearly insane, sort of like the fake grandparents from The Visit.  The cyborg behaves more like an animal and is Frankenstein-like, with loosely pieced together scrap metal for arms, blades for hands, barely functional prosthetics for what's left of the face (doll-like eyes, unmoving lips, etc), etc.  Often it crawls on all fours or climbs the walls, staying in the shadows.  It is unclear if it was once human at all or entirely machine to begin with.  The pacing and feel is almost like a Saw movie at first, with no indication how the we arrived here or why things are.

After about halfway through...[More]

Not surprised about ETC 51% attack since everything in blockchain is only "statistically impossible" (low odds) instead of true certainty. Expecting more problems like this over time. More surprised some now defend lack of certainty as a feature instead - https://coingape.com/pow-blockchain-secure-post-ethereum-classic-attack/
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In line with what I wrote before:
https://www.pftq.com/blabberbox/?page=Bitcoin_Probability

Recipe for the best smoothie (originally from Earthbar).  Serves 2 16 oz cups; half the amounts for 1 serving.
- 1 frozen Sambazon Acai bar (pure and unsweetened)
- 1 cup of frozen wild blueberries (aka billberry).
- 2 bananas
- 2 teaspoons of unfiltered flax oil (lignans for anti-cancer).
- 2 tablespoons...[More]

Surprisingly comfortable ergonomic-wise since everything from the screen position/height and keyboard/mouse are adjustable.  But the screen isn't big enough for me to see without my glasses sadly.

Finally uploaded pictures I took in Japan and Norway last year.

Norway
Kyoto, Japan
Tokyo, Japan

There's a feeling you get when summer hits and school is out.  When you were younger, it might have been excitement, freedom.  As you got older, it became more an interruption, an emptiness, time crawling by as you waited to see your peers again, an interlude as you waited for the next adventure. Except... on the 12th time, summer doesn't quite end.  It keeps going, no matter how long you wait. That feeling - when you're the only one still wandering the campus while everyone else already left - gradually becomes your everyday.  And at some point, you look back and realize this is the rest of your life.

Haiiro to Ao Cover by Kobasolo (@kobamakolts)

Seems there's a reason @GoogleCloud's market share trails behind Microsoft's @Azure and is nowhere near Amazon's @AWSCloud.  It's just insanely difficult to get up and running.

First is the error that I need to enable the Google Cloud service in my Admin Console, but Google Cloud is not even listed there.  The specific error is "Google Cloud Platform service has been disabled. Please contact your administrator to restore service in G Suite Admin console."



Have to contact...[More]

If you're trying to use the GPUs Azure VMs for actual graphics like in game development, DirectX, or other things where the GPU has to be detected, you need to set the Tesla GPUs to WDDM mode.  By default they are in TCC, which doesn't let them be detected by the system in RDP and has graphics disabled.  Not even Nvidia control panel will see the card.

Solution is pretty quick - just a command line entry.  It can just be done in Command Prompt, no additional software needed.  Credits to the comments on Reddit here: https://www.reddit.com/r/cloudygamer/comments/7twmiq/problem_with_azure_nv6_and_nvidia_tesla_m60/

(Make sure you first have the Nvidia drivers installed, either by starting the VM with an image that has them or installing manually.)

Very interesting article that sounds a lot like the ideas portrayed in @MNightShyamalan's @SplitMovie
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/07/magazine/placebo-effect-medicine.html

Would love to be shown wrong here, but as far as I've found, money on @Patreon is taxed for both patron and creator. In any other situation, only the giver or receiver is taxed, not both. Donations to non-profits are deductible, salaries of employees are deductible expense for the employer, even traditional non-Patreon patron/sponsorship arrangements are at least some form of write-off/expense for the sponsor.  But for Patreon, unless you go through the excessive effort of establishing yourself as a company with an elaborate case for how giving to artists is business-related or straight up start a non-profit organization yourself, the money you give on Patreon is going to be from income you paid taxes on, and then that creator also pays taxes on it as their income.

This is a simplification of the math but just to illustrate: If you made $100k this year and wanted to give away half to artists on Patreon, you literally can't...[More]

Guess that's my cue to finally leave SF... (esp with the asbestos exposed)
https://abc7news.com/fire-burns-multiple-floors-of-san-francisco-high-rise/4538088/

Save you the trouble of buying a fax machine or paying for a service.
https://faxzero.com/

Tired of having my words reinterpreted to mean different things. People are too busy looking for what they want to hear and not thinking about what someone else is actually trying to say.

Typical investor/businessman thinking: If I could just find a genius smart enough to make me a million dollars but too dumb to do it unless I tell him to...

Somewhere out there right now is someone seeing light from a distant planet Earth and assuming there is no intelligent life because it is light from thousands of years ago.

Note to future self. Source of line-in recording noise is the MIDI USB cable from the piano to computer. Do not replace the sound card, do not buy an audio device. #audio #recording

Premise of a horror film I thought of while staying up too late.
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Imagine every night you hear the loud humming of what you think are street sweepers driving by.  One night, you get tired of it and venture out into the streets to complain, except there's nothing there.  You run towards the sound, but it just keeps getting louder and louder, with nothing in sight for as far you can see.  The sound eventually starts moving away and goes quiet, like it does every night, and you go back home confused.

The next night, you run out again when you hear the sound, trying to get to the center of it before it goes away again.  This time, you keep running towards it as it tries to get away from you.  At first, you are barely able to keep up with the sound as it is moving away.  At some point, you realize the sound is suddenly getting louder and louder than it ever has before.  You get so caught up running towards the sound that you don't...[More]