Stop making me learn stuff, dammit!
Still struggling with VR technology. Specifically, UEVR – a mod that supposedly lets you play existing games made with the Unreal engine in VR. Which is lots of games, including lots I own and like. So it’s really, really worth it.
Most VR games suck, because they count on the VR wow! factor to distract you from shitty graphics. (I’m lookin’ at you, Gorilla Tag).
All the cool YouTubers say it – just plug it in and WHEEEEE!…it doesn’t work.
The mod operates by injecting itself into the running code. That is also what viruses do. So Windows Defender slapped it out of my hands as soon as I tried to download it, and at every step along the way.
Anyhoo, that was Obstacle One. I won’t bore you with the rest. I’ll get there in the end, but’s it’s all so tiresome and it’s Booze O’Clock. I wish they’d stop making me learn stuff. I’m too old for it.
Have a good weekend!
March 22, 2024 — 9:02 pm
Comments: 2
Cursed, I tell you
Last night’s post has vanished without a trace. It was just a boring thing about trying to get the Hogwarts game to run in VR, but that’s not the point. It’s not in the database; it’s not in drafts. It’s just…gone. Uncle B saw it, so I’m not nuts.
This afternoon, I was Googling around, trying to find out how to draw a page border in Google Docs, and I clicked on a popup I really shouldn’t’a. My ‘cookie warning’ reflexes took over and I batted it away carelessly.
Sure enough, I caught a dose of the “You’ve visited illegal infected website” scam.
It’s fairly harmless. It just makes that or a similar message pop up every few minutes in hope you’ll click on the link (where the real mischief would happen).
To my surprise, Malwarebytes couldn’t find it. I gather it acts like some kind of…fake browser plug-in? I deleted the most recently installed program and rebooted, but no. In the end, I had to reset the browser. Which closed all my tabs. Which really bummed me out because I keep, like, thirty open tabs as reminders of things I need to do.
I wonder if the missing post will ever float back in…?
March 21, 2024 — 7:51 pm
Comments: 8
Where will I get my conspiracy theories *now*?
Looks like my Twitter is borked. No idea why. If I were suspended, I would expect it to tell me so. My work account seems okay. Is yours working?
I’ve had a technology day, whether I liked it or not. I bought the Hogwarts game in the Steam Spring Sale and I’ve spent my day trying to mod it to work in VR.
Just a couple of clicks! say the YouTubers enthusiastically.
Feh. There was a time in my life when I loved figuring out a new piece of software. Now I just want it to shut up and work.
March 20, 2024 — 6:55 pm
Comments: 8
Welp, he just lost the British vote
(They don’t want Harry back).
Could he do this? He could. Harry admitted to illegal drug use in his autobiography, which is disqualifying.
I used to hang out in a forum for Americans immigrating to the UK, and (more rarely) vice versa. People think marriage is an automatic in. It ain’t.
I remember one case of a couple who married abroad – she was British and he was American – and he wasn’t allowed into the UK because he’d done time for a felony.
Sufficient lawyering can eventually overcome a case like that. In extremis, the European Human Rights lot will probably step in if appealed to (yes, sadly, the UK is still signed up to that madness). But they don’t half put you through years of courts and hearings and long distance relationships. Earning that British passport was a very scary and expensive process.
Going the other way – UK to US – is famously even tougher.
Trump probably wouldn’t really deport Harry, though. Sad.
Still no official Royal announcement.
March 19, 2024 — 8:01 pm
Comments: 5
Making me crazy
I’m not much of a royal watcher, but shit is just weird. This was supposed to happen last night, then any minute now all day long.
The Russkies put it out there that King Chuck was dead. Kate hasn’t been seen since Christmas, or maybe she was seen at the farm shop this afternoon looking fine.
And what is Barack Obama doing at Downing Street? Politicians this side of the pond didn’t think much of him when he was president. Has he become Klaus Schwab’s representative on earth or something?
Baffled.
March 18, 2024 — 6:43 pm
Comments: 9
GAH!
I’ve spent my whole evening trying to get my Chromecast to talk to my phone. It all started when I wanted to show a clip off Xwitter to Uncle B and ended an hour and a half later in tears. Metaphorical ones, but still.
Why is technology such shit?
We have a new wifi router, which was the start of the problems. I put in the new password, no soap. Then I thought maybe the Chromecast was trying to connect at 5GhZ when it’s an original and can only do 2.5GhZ. So I tried going into the router and renaming the two connections so I could tell which one it was trying to open. And that broke everything.
I know just enough to fuck everything up completely.
Anyway, I’m going to add alcohol to this mix. That always helps. Good weekend!
March 15, 2024 — 8:44 pm
Comments: 3
I was really confused for two seconds
I was looking for a date for local elections and found some really confusing results – until I worked out there’s a town in Wisconsin called Sussex. It was founded in 1843 by a bricklayer from Beckley, a tiny town up the road from me. It must not have been incorporated until 1924, though – see the anniversary celebration.
It looks like a charming little town, with a leprechaun hunt and a village softball team. It’s probably a hotbed of neighborly intrigues and burning resentments, but heigh-ho.
They’ve ruined my theory that American small towns never call themselves villages unironically, though.
No elections in my village this year.
March 14, 2024 — 7:42 pm
Comments: 9
Today I did an impossible thing
I threw away a trash can. I’m sure there was a comedian who had a bit about that. Sounds like Stephen Wright. How do you do it?
The council gave us a huge recycling bin. I take every opportunity to make them regret it.
Wikipedia tells me Stephen Wright is a paraprosdokian enjoyer. “A paraprosdokian (/pærəprɒsˈdoʊkiən/) is a figure of speech in which the latter part of a sentence, phrase, or larger discourse is surprising or unexpected in a way that causes the reader or listener to reframe or reinterpret the first part.”
I suppose that’s a “time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana” kind of thing. There. You’ve learned a word.
I stole the picture out of Uncle B’s photos. Daffs in our garden this week. This is been a bumper year for daffodils, which has slightly repaid the miserable, wet weather we’ve had. Doesn’t really work in black and white, does it?
I could have written an interesting and engaging post. Instead, I took a nap. I think I made the right choice.
March 13, 2024 — 7:54 pm
Comments: 3
Yeah, I think I could tear this in half
Ladies and gentlemen, positively the last phone book. I’ve bought thicker magazines.
I’m not sure I believe this, you know. My memory is the last few phone books were called the last. I’m not sure why we’re getting it now, either – it was billed as coming out in October. I think this is a money spinner and they’re marketing it to businesses as, “be in the last ever phone book!”
But I can’t be arsed to open it because, who cares?
The very first BT phonebook was published in 1880 and had just 248 London names – and no telephone numbers! Sixteen years later, the first national phonebook was 1,350 pages and 81,000 names.
I know. The idea of a national phonebook is brain hurty.
The first American phone book was published in 1878. It was a sheet of cardboard with 50 names on it all from New Haven, Connecticut. Reason being, it was invented nearby and Bell had demo’d it in New Haven the year before. So, fifty early adopters.
Names, again. You don’t think they’d dial numbers themselves? They called the switchboard and had the girl do it.
March 12, 2024 — 7:48 pm
Comments: 10
Woohoo! Lookatit GO!
My Bitcoin balance. A reminder that I bought of £50 it in the Spring of 2019. I intended to buy regular small amounts, but my only UK ID expired so I wasn’t allowed. From then on, I could only watch.
That there graph is the movement of £50 and £50 only during the last five years.
I’m thinking of returning to the original plan and putting a small sum by every month, the original plan. I know it could all go bust, but I won’t be out much. But somehow, having this one pristine index has a huge appeal. Maybe I’ll open an account somewhere else.
Today was my first day out of the house in six days, and that was to go shop for symptom relief. Not the worst cold I’ve ever had, but it is a bitter clinger.
Can you imagine what my inbox will look like tomorrow?
March 11, 2024 — 8:44 pm
Comments: 4