melfie

Ha, and that’s why they exist despite what an otherwise terrible idea they are. 😂

Ads are an odd concept—it’s someone paying money to toot their own horn, which most of the civilized world looks down upon. In fact, the best way to sell me your product is to have the humility to tell me its downsides or give me a nuanced explanation of when to buy your product vs. a competitor. Otherwise, it’s always much better to let someone else sing your praises. I do find documentation, videos, and other factual information about a product to be the best possible sales pitch—give me an accurate picture of it, and if it’s really any good, I might just buy it. If I think you’re trying to bullshit me, I’ll assume your product has to be shit, or otherwise you’d just tell me the facts.

I was contemplating switching from Cinema4d to Blender for a long time, but the UX of C4d was so nice and Blender’s frankly sucked. Then 2.8 came out with a UI overhaul that changed all that and now I’d never dream of switching to another 3d package when Blender is so easy to use, extensible with Python, and has a huge community around it. Blender’s popularity soared after the UX changes. Sometimes, a UI overhaul can make all the difference.

Even where Blender falls short, there’s usually an addon that fills the gap, often paid, but still open source, which is 1000x better than competing options that almost always involve a subscription.

The benefit of a community of open source software around it also can’t be overstated. For instance, MakeHuman kicks ass, Auto-Rig Pro makes it usable for mocap and character animation, etc. Blender Studio’s projects like Flamenco render farm and automated Blender Studio pipeline built around the also open source Kitsu that I self-host are also amazing. Collectively, it all blows Autodesk out of the water and should be a shining example to all other open source projects.

I stand corrected about PostgreSQL support dropping in 10.11. Seems we may still have quite a wait ahead of us.

I was imagining setting up an old laptop as a backup to my main server with PostgreSQL replication for the Jellyfin DB and some sort of file synchronization for media and metadata. I have yet to manually setup PostgreSQL replication outside of a cloud provider where the process is automated, so I was planning it as an interesting learning experience. However, from the post above, it seems I was misinformed about the timeframe of PostgreSQL support in Jellyfin.

Ah, seems I had a misunderstanding and appreciate the info!

I’m also quite happy with the LCD model myself. Most games are running on medium settings on a low-res screen without RTX, so the eye candy is at a minimum anyway and I never imagined a better screen would make much difference.

The beauty of the Deck is how easy it is to pick it up and play an hour here and there wherever you are, so I’ve played a lot of games I’ve been meaning to play for years that I frankly would’ve not have gotten to play otherwise. Better with less eye candy than not at all.

I got the LED 64GB model last year for like $280 and added a $80 1TB SSD myself, which is an easy 20 minute job. For such a low powered machine, mid 300s is about what it’s worth to me, or otherwise might as well get a gaming laptop. I have a MSI laptop with a RTX 4060, 32GB of RAM that was around $800 on sale, which I mainly use for Blender, so I can’t see paying anything close to that for a handheld.

Steam Deck will not be able to compete with Switch 2 for first party titles since it can barely emulate Switch games at a decent frame rate. Will likely need a proper gaming PC to emulate S2 first party titles. For all other games, Steam Deck wins because the games don’t cost $80, vastly bigger selection, mods work, etc.

Really looking forward to 10.11 when the EFCore functionality is in place so I can run it with PostgreSQL and actually backup the DB properly and also have proper replication for a hot standby.

I think it’s fair enough to put in some really intense years with the promise of a nice payoff and ability to retire early, as opposed to spreading that effort and payout over decades with work / life balance. The problem is when that same intense effort is asked of anyone who will not be getting such a payout at the end. Even workers with equity in a start-up can get the shaft due to the fine print where the VCs take the lions share of the exit money and the workers end up with a paltry sum to that won’t even cover their medical bills later on after the stress takes its toll on their bodies.

It was a better display alive where it was than in any museum.