A.C. Flory's Blog, page 9

Why humans are still worthwhile

Comments are closed. Just enjoy.

Meeks

How can this not be ‘inciting to violence’?

I was told the following by someone who calls themselves ‘an apathetic Unaffiliated American’. In my humble opinion, this person is not apathetic at all. Judge for yourselves:

‘“Trump will get rid of the competent, rational people and replace them with his own sycophants” i hate to say this but this is more real than you might know. Prior to the primary I was an unafilliated voter, but one cannot be unaffiliated and/or independent to vote in the primary in Pa, so I switched to democrat. As an unaffilliated voter i was sent political crap mostly from the Trump side (which made me feel like Dems only court Dems) one of those was access to the vetting website by the Trump campaign. The 1st 10 questions were normal like did you vote trump, do you feel the elections are rigged ect. It was the next bunch that disturbed me. Are you willing to give up free will for the President ? Are you willing to commit murder even if it’s a member of your own party that the President deems a traitor. Ect. That to me is frightening and why I voted Harris, but at the same time didn’t vote Harris in the primary because it wasn’t an option. This is why I am unaffiliated because both major parties can’t be trusted.’

Now tell me, how can “…Are you willing to commit murder even if it’s a member of your own party that the President deems a traitor.” not be a crime? And people must have answered yes in order to be accepted by the vetting program…

I’ve been shocked by a lot during the US Presidential campaign, but nothing, nothing has shocked me as much as this. If I wasn’t scared before, I am now.

Meeks

To all my friends…

A great many of my friends are in the US. Others are here in Australia, South Africa, the UK, Europe, South East Asia… But wherever we are, we will all end up affected by the outcome of the US election. This result says something about humanity that scares the shit out of me.

My Dad was a very cerebral person, and he brought me up to value logic and reason, truth and honour. Mum was the exact opposite. She was all emotion, yet somehow she couldn’t really see outside her own emotions. Whenever we argued, and we argued a lot, she always ‘won’ because her version of reality was the only one that mattered.

I never really learned to deal with my mother because she always brought out the worst in me. I’d end up shouting at her because nothing else worked. In the end, I pushed her as far out of my life as I could whilst still fulfilling my obligations as an only child. Because those obligations were about honour. Mine.

I don’t know how the US election could end like this. It feels like my Mother all over again, but even being on the other side of the Pacific ocean won’t be far enough to escape the consequences. Like it or not, that man will have the power of a dictator over the richest, most powerful nation on earth. I cannot tell you how much that scares me.

This is not the post I hoped to write today. I’m still shocked that it’s come to this. Why, America? Why?

Meeks

Yet another housing video… :D

I promise, this one will be the last, at least for a while:

Even if you don’t like the video, stay tuned because I have a very special guest post coming up.

cheers,
Meeks

Google Play setup – just horrible

Rather than vent my anger, I’ll simply detail everything that’s wrong with the interface. Here we go.

Problem 1:

Before you can do anything on Google Play you have to setup a payment account. Simple, right? Just type in your BSB and account numbers and away you go!

Actually no. Google requires your bank account details to be verified. It’s a safety measure. I’m ok with that. But…in the instructions, they tell you that they will send a small amount to your account and that you should verify the account by entering the ‘last 6 digits’ shown on the transaction [see step 4 under Request a verification code]:

Oh and all of that could take up to 7 days. For me, the arrival of the transaction took almost 2 days. Not a problem. I logged into my account, found the transaction, dutifully wrote down the last 6 digits and tried to get back into the Google Play setup screen.

Problem 2:

Logging back in, I discovered that the setup screen showed my payment profile as complete, with no apparent way of entering the damn verification code:

To enter your verification code you have to:

Select the Payment center option on the left, and then click ‘Edit’ next to your account:

But then…you get this:

Clicking ‘Verify now’ gets you to this:

…and, of course, they didn’t say I’d need the stupid looking amount as well, now did they? So I had to log out and log back into my bank account to find, and write down, the amount.

Fuming, I logged back into Google Play and navigated my way back to Payments, clicked on the down arrow near ‘Select the amount’ and clicked on the amount I had received:

Clicking the nice, blue Verify button took me to:

To say I was unimpressed would be an understatement. Clearly, whichever moron created this interface never tested it. Or they changed it at some point and didn’t change ALL of the instructions. Grrrr….

As a teacher and ex-tech writer, I’ve always believed that confusing a new user is the cardinal sin. I honestly don’t know how non-tech savvy authors navigate this interface, especially as the problems I’ve detailed were only the beginning.

This post is already too long, so I’ll do a follow-up tomorrow.

Not happy,
Meeks

Just for Fun! Oct. 31 2024

I dare you not to smile!

Meeks

Recipe: Peanut Butter Biscuits

Homemade biscuits chez acflory!

I don’t particularly like peanut butter, but I do love peanuts, so I looked up some recipes and found one with only 3 ingredients. Yes..THREE:

I cup of peanut butter, I cup of sugar, 1 egg.

Not wanting to waste a ton of ingredients, we only used 1/2 a cup of peanut butter, 1/2 a cup of sugar, and 1 egg. Technically, it should have been only half an egg, but let’s not quibble. We also crushed some unsalted peanuts and dipped the little balls of dough into the nuts before baking them. But those are the only things we changed.

Honestly, I was prepared to throw the whole thing out if necessary. I mean, three ingredients? How can you make anything out of just three ingredients, especially when none of them include flour?

Well, I’m here to tell you that they were absolutely delicious. We have never made anything this easy before, and unless you have a peanut allergy, I really urge you to try these moreish biscuits for yourselves.

You can find the complete recipe here. You’re welcome.

Meeks

Google Play auto-narration: it begins

I love new tech, but for a variety of reasons, I’ve been slow to embrace audiobooks. In the end though, it was something Chuck Litka said about Android phones [see the comments], that finally made the penny drop: I may be an old fuddy duddy when it comes to smartphones, but most of the younger generation have them permanently superglued to their ears!

Young people do everything on their phones, and that includes listening to audiobooks. That was my revelation. For some stupid reason I imagined people listening to audiobooks on their pc’s or laptops. At a real stretch, I assumed they might use their Kindles…-smacks head on keyboard- Boy am I out of touch.

Anyway, the only cure for stupid is to do something that isn’t stupid, so as of two days ago I’ve started reading Miira out loud. Not for the audio book, I hasten to add! But to change the prose into something more attuned to how people speak and listen.

As a reader/writer, I’ve always hated the over-use of ‘bold’ and ‘italics’ to imply emphasis. I grew up believing that strong words do a better job of getting the message across… but in reality, that only works when the prose is read in silence. Our brains automatically insert the emphasis implied by the words. Or at least they do, if you’re a human being. But as Audrey Driscoll explained in her post about auto-narration, a computer voice needs to be told how to read those words out loud.

So that’s what I’m doing with Miira. I started by creating a copy of the ebook file. This allows me to make small changes – like adding emphasis and … pauses – see what I did there? – before I give it to the AI. I’m hoping that the new version of the book will reflect how I think the narration should sound.

This is the male voice I like the most:

https://www.gstatic.com/play_books_pfe/audiosamples/archie.mp3

I’d originally thought I would have a female voice narrating Miira, but none of the female voices I listened to felt ‘right’ to me. They were all too high pitched, too girlie, too…young?

I’d also hoped to use an Australian voice, but there were only four to choose from, and I didn’t like any of them. A couple of the French voices were gorgeous…but they were speaking in French. Ah well, if I ever get around to having my books translated into other languages, I’ll know where to go.

So there you have it. Me, new tech, big job, busy, busy, busy.

cheers,
Meeks

Stephen Fry, Nick Cave, and ChatGPT

What do Stephen Fry, Nick Cave, and ChatGPT have in common? A letter, written by Nick Cave, about ChatGPT, that is read out loud by the inimitable Stephen Fry. The reading is short, only about four minutes, but well worth every second:

For those who are not familiar with Nick Cave, he’s a singer-songwriter with an odd, gravelly voice and sharp, pointy lyrics. I’m not a huge fan myself, but I do love this one song that was used to promote South Australian tourism. The contrast between the idyllic visual images and the dark lyrics of the song really appealed to me.

I couldn’t find that promotional video, but I did find the original video for Nick Cave’s Red Right Hand:

Enjoy.

Meeks

My house in Palia

Palia is an MMO [Massively Multiplayer Online game] that’s like a non-violent cross between the SIMS and games like ESO [Elder Scrolls Online] and Final Fantasy XIV that have a strong, player housing component.

I started playing Palia when I couldn’t login to ESO, now it’s become the place I go to at the end of the day…to relax. I created the video below to showcase some of the truly innovative features of this odd little game. If you’ve never tried an MMO before, then Palia could be a gentle introduction to the genre. Enjoy.

cheers,
Meeks