Fantasy Buddy Reads discussion
A Hodge Podge Folder
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We could maybe do several templates? One 'normal', one with additional stats (book/short/novellas/tomes, etc.), and even one more with more specialized data (publication date, genre). That way, we would easily be able to accommodate requests, since it's easier to delete excess stuff than add it after creation. It's just a thought tough...If I learned anything from last year, it's that it's mostly going to be a case-by-case for very specific requests.
But yeah, maybe it would have been easier to ask for specific request in the sign-up thread...
EDIT: Tbh, the improvements I've thought of have been mostly for my personal spreadsheet, or yours... :p
Mod
We clearly end up with the most complicated sheets :D
It's definitely easier to build from the ground up... adding columns once the monthly data section is setup is rough... and rearranging columns is rough...
I like your plan... having several complexity level templates will also make taking requests easier, once they see what the base 2020 sheet is going to look like...
I just remember the flood of requests January 1st and 2nd, "last" year...
Yup... Weirdly, it's easier to imagine the possible requests and implement things to prepare for them than actually having to modify them later...I've sent a PM to Jenna to see if it's possible to add a line for spreadsheet requests to the sign-up. So we only have to wait now...
Do you know if Rob will host the spreadsheet this year again? I don't mind doing it if he doesn't want to/can't do it, but I already host the BR requests spreadsheet, and it seems like a bad idea to have one person/account getting everything... Single point of failure and all.
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I've sent a PM to Jenna to see if it's possible t..."
Haven't seen him around in a couple days... if he doesn't, I guess I can, to spread it around like you said...
I think he's in the Blood of Empire thread...
Ow, WoW! I've played that ages ago. The only thing I remember was that I had a hunter dwarf level 70 or something.I kinda like the idea to choose from several sheets, being different in difficulty level, so that we can choose and maybe then personify it.
Mod
Then it was Burning Crusade. My hubbie is playing something called the vanilla version of WoW.
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I've sent a PM to Jenna to see if it's possible t..."
I duplicated the sheet and named it 2020 sheet... I copied the permissions, so you should have an email with a link... then I deleted all the sheets except for the orange ones with collated data formulas, the TEMPLATE, the Primer we made last year, our chitchat tab, and my 2019 tab and yours, since I think they were the main ones filled with extra formulas... most other people's extra formulas were built off our template...
If I missed anything, you can always copy it and paste it in a blank sheet to transfer it in...
Last thing I did was unlink the duplicate form and remove everything to do with form inputs (except for that one data cell on the template page)
Robert Aspirin’s Myth series is pretty good and quite an easy read
Sure hope you enjoy it. Another one I was going to recommend was Piers Anthony’s Magic of Xanth except it might be considered YA
I'm late to the computer discussion, but I'll still chime in.I still have very old parts, except an SSD which I bought 1-2 years ago. The rest is smth like DDR2 ram, duo core cpu, internal graphics card, and a 320 GB HDD.
And thank god all this is enough for almost everything I need to do on a computer. The main problem is (and this seems VERY odd to my layman self) internet browsing: having two browsers open concurrently with 20-30 tabs on each one is apparently too much to run fast. While full hd video? No problemo.
Aaaand even this problem will be solved in short order, because I got an early brthday gift in the form of a computer. It still is old. But better: an external graphics card.
The plan is to make a frankenstein monster out of the new and old computers and install windows 10 instead of windows 7 (the latter being much shittier, according to the gifter).
That, and I think my current... mmm, rectangular thingy that powers the computer, is dying.
Mod
I still have very old parts, except an SSD which I bought 1-2 years ago. The rest is smth like DDR2 ram, duo core cpu, internal graphi..."
Power Supply / PSU?... anyway, Windows 7 is dropping support next month, except with a subscription for businesses that need more time to upgrade... I think I have DDR3 RAM, but DDR4 & 5 are more common these days...
Tons of tabs can definitely be a problem... each tab needs at least a bit of CPU/RAM space, 30x means a lot... there's probably some browser addons you can get to cut down background RAM usage or something... I know Google Sheets causes a fair bit of lag on my PC whenever I open a computationally heavy sheet... and Google Chrome is even more of a CPU hog than other browsers, since each tab is treated independently, so a problem on one tab doesn't freeze up the whole browser...
Timelord Iain wrote: "idiffer wrote: "I'm late to the computer discussion, but I'll still chime in.I still have very old parts, except an SSD which I bought 1-2 years ago. The rest is smth like DDR2 ram, duo core cpu,..."
Didn't use google sheets, but I did use google docs. And my god is it shit. If you have a 40 page text document with tens of comments that go in the space to the right of the text (this is a goodle docs feature), then the page takes ages to load all the text and comments. Ok, you can say that my computer is shit, but i stress that we're talking about TEXT documents here. The better programmer will make a program use less resources, just as a good video encoder will make a file smaller with the same quality. And I don't even know what happens if you try to open google sheets or docs on a phone. Not everyone has a high-end expensive-ass phone.
Regarding resource-hogging of browsers, I have no prob with CPU usage at all. It all comes down to RAM. I have 6 GB of it, and that is barely enough. I used to use firefox but I switched to chrome because firefox lagged even more.
I didn't even know about DDR5. Ugh, I hate technological progress (half-joke). Speaking of.. where are my fucking quantum computers??? The ones that take processing power from parallel dimensions, not the stupid cubit ones. Progress me that, science!
UPD. Oh wait, i did use google sheets when we were doing that group challenge in FBR. Everything was fine, iirc.
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And I jumped the gun on DDR5... internet says it's dropping next year when I searched...
Google Sheets get slower the more that's going on, so the sheets get slower the later in the year it is, with our sheet... also, I don't think you participated this year, and me and Virginie upgraded the sheet over last year, adding a ton more formulas and graphs for data analysis, so it slowed it down a bit more from the beginning... we're paring things down a bit for people that don't care about the extra analysis in 2020...
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https://www.tor.com/2019/12/10/brando..."
1. Zero_G Comments
YAY!
That is all.
Holy crap! Peace Talks has a release date!!!https://www.tor.com/2019/12/16/jim-bu...
I think I see some Dresden Files in my future :D
Narilka wrote: "Holy crap! Peace Talks has a release date!!!https://www.tor.com/2019/12/16/jim-bu...
..."
Yay!
Merry Christmas ❤️🎄 to all & I'll see everyone in the new year. Coffee (money) and cookie in very bad (dim) coffeeshop lighting:
https://www.goodreads.com/photo/user/...
Mmmm, gingerbread :)Merry Christmas to you Zaara and everyone!
Mod
Midday traffic has been crazy the last few days... I definitely miss getting off work at 6am, this time of year...
Yes indeed, wishing all a wonderful Christmas/Holiday Season :-)
Thanks everyone and I hope you all had wonderful holidays so far, merry christmas and a great time with all your loved ones! ❤️
Timelord Iain wrote: "Merry Christmas... I survived... just finished my last day of work... off until Friday... got a nice little 3 day weekend bracketing the holiday...Midday traffic has been crazy the last few days...."
Ah, that sounds horrible, I hate the traffic around this time. And lucky you, I have to work today... and yesterday as well, at least part-time. The only day I'm off this week is tomorrow, the 26th and I'm really looking forward to it!
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Thank you always for filling our group with cheer!
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I'm feeling good about having no major commitments this month thats for sure! We're hopefully going to be getting some new workout equipment now that my health benefits have renewed and I get a bit of spending cash, and my son has a mini hockey tournament this weekend. I'm excited to see him play a game now that he's been skating like a champ!
Margret wrote: "What's everyone up to now that the holidays are over?I'm feeling good about having no major commitments this month thats for sure! We're hopefully going to be getting some new workout equipment n..."
Hugs and best wishes for Colt & the mini-hockey.....awwww he will look so sweet all togged up and gung ho to "kill" the other team...😄
EDIT re the question, just got back from holiday and am sorting out my BRs...so quiet for so long and I missed the busiest week of the FBR calendar...😂
+ yay on new equipment, I'm literally swimming in my clothes now and my pants are hanging off my legs now so just...MOAR + strengthening...my "plank" is so pathetic and wimpy because I have the upper body strength of a child!! Need to buy some good new running shoes, I wore out two pair last year...so that's 💪💪💪 I still don't run tho...I just walk and yoga...
+ making a care package for my youngest bro...I love buying presents...Ima insert some cringeworthy jammies as a trick gift...
Planning to go to Turkey this year...one of my favourite places in the world...that's about it for 2020 plans...as of now!
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I've been on-the-fence about this since the End Of Life announcements started for Windows 7 back in September, but gaming bugs have me pushing forward...
I created a USB installation device, for current PC use and new PC use... I bought a cheap 1TB external HDD to backup my SSD containing Windows 7, and I stored nvidia drivers for Windows 10 on another USB...
I was all ready to go when i got home today basically... then I started trying... I moved my keyboard to the top left USB slot (which I never noticed before) and got USB working to access BIOS... I tried forcing USB-HDD and a bunch of other option to get Windows 10 installing... nothing... finally found a BIOS setting disabled that allowed USB slots to function during BIOS (why was this off?... this is probably been the cause of my keyboard issues all along)...
THEN I get Windows 10 install going, only to find that if I want to upgrade and keep files/etc, I can and HAVE TO use setup while already inside Windows OS... so I need to turn off PC and remove USB and try again... well, this involved PC restarting a few times, since I wanted PC off when I removed the USB...
This point jumps into speculation... I think my BIOS might be defaulting to booting USB first... I vaguely remember something in the settings, but it never triggered before, because USB was disabled during BIOS/startup... I think it might be trying to boot my backup ISO image of my main SSD, since the external HDD is plugged into a USB slot... this hangs... so I restart PC and force boot from main SSD with Windows 7... but I've restarted so much now, or something, that Windows 7 wants to verify all the data in the SSD for errors... I let that go on for 5-10 minutes... it restarts... hangs on loading OS again (this is why I think the boot order is wrong, paired with the external USB backup, or something)... restart AGAIN... force SSD... finally back in Windows 7 and talking/ranting here...
And now I'm going to restart AGAIN, and check BIOS...
Timelord Iain wrote: "Upgrading my decrepit Windows 7 PC to Windows 10 (for the short-term, mind you, since I'm buying a whole new rig soon) is turning out to be almost more trouble than it's worth...I've been on-the-..."
Oy. I've been holding off on this decision myself so I'm interested in your final result. Kind of like you I'm planning to buy a new rig in a few months and thinking to forgo the middle step and just wing it on Win 7 for a couple months.
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I think I have it all sorted, now...
Narilka wrote: "Oy. I've been holding off on this decision myself so I'm interested in your final result. Kind of like you I'm planning to buy a new rig in a few months and thinking to forgo the middle step and just wing it on Win 7 for a couple months."Same here. Well, the one buying the new rig is my brother (when he comes back from traveling in South America) so he gave me his 'old' computer. Unfortunately, that means that I have to wait until he buys his new one and retrieve his data before switching to W10.
Timelord Iain wrote: "Also got OpenShell off of GitHub to recreate some of the look and feel of Windows 7 (the start menu mostly)I think I have it all sorted, now..."
Good to hear it wasn't so bad. I'm still not sold.
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I think I have it all sorted, now..."
Good to hear it wasn't so b..."
@Narilka: Really, it's been night and day... Windows 10 has a TON of options you need to turn off, if you don't want things spying on you and sharing data, but other than that, it's been so much faster/better than Windows 7... I feel like I've been crippling myself for years...
Like someone said online, Windows 7 stopped getting performance/optimization updates in 2015, and it shows... the main reason I upgraded was because of a bug in Path of Exile that was causing a memory leak... every 30-60 minutes, POE would be using 5.5GB of memory (I only have 8 in this old rig... but people with 12/16 were having similar problems)... now, if I tab out for awhile, POE can drop down to 400MB of memory usage, since garbage collection is so robust...
I'm really happy with the upgrade, and kinda wish I'd done it sooner... but I'm always worried about breaking something and bricking my PC when I do a big change...
@Virginie: Windows 7 reaches the end of life next Tuesday... that means no more security updates to protect from viruses/vulnerabilities/etc... how big is the main HDD/SSD/partition of the PC?... The C:/ drive in My Computer... if it's a reasonable size, you can buy an external HDD and back everything up for your brother... in the US, I can get a 1TB external for $50, 2TB for $70, 4TB for $100... my main partition was only 128GB, since I had games audiobooks on secondary HDDs and SSDs purchased later... 128GB SSD cost $100-$150 in 2012, I think... now I got a 1TB SSD for under $100...
Anyway... buy external HDD, plug it in, go to control panel and make a System Image, maybe copy over some unimaged folders (Libraries/Documents/etc), and you can safely upgrade to Windows 10 with the Windows Media Creation Tool...
Then, you can use those backups to rescue your PC if something goes wrong, AND your brother can access his data on his new PC, no hassle...
@Iain Hmm. You're starting to sell me on it. Did you need to reinstall all your games and stuff? Is there an online guide for what to turn off to stop the spying?I already use a secondary drive for everything (images, videos, software installs, etc.) with only Windows and I think my web browser on my primary SSD to keep it running fast.
Maybe I'll give myself a weekend project.
Mod
I already use a secondary drive f..."
All I did was back everything from the main drive up on the external I bought, and then run the WIndows 10 USB I setup for install (this can also just be done directly, without making a USB... the USB is mostly for installing on a new PC)...
Upgrading from Windows 7 to Windows 10, by running the setup file while logged into Windows 7, transfers everything, except programs/apps that are incompatible with Windows 10 (all the ones I noticed were old ones I hadn't used in years, so nothing critical)...
Backing up everything on an external or secondary drive was/is the safety measure... you can recover files from your Windows 7 backup image, if anything goes wrong, right from the Control Panel...
If you use a 3rd-party antivirus like Avira or AVG or the many other options, you probably need to turn it off or fiddle with the options while making the Installation USB... since the USB makes an autorun file during creation, and Avira will try to block that... you also want to disable the 3rd party antivirus before starting the upgrade, since Windows will be fiddling with registry data/etc that antiviruses normally protect...
Once I got everything prepped, and past my BIOS issues (that were me doing things wrong, since you just run everything inside Windows 7), everything took less than 2hrs to install/process...
At the end of install, Windows 10 will pop up some intro stuff, and that's when you can start disabling data collection options... there are about a dozen during setup, then when you get into Windows 10, you go to the Control Panel, and there are about 100 more... that's why you're better off just using a program like https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10
It's a german company that most people are pretty confident in, and it collects those 100 or so options into a single screen, and even explains the settings better, and why to opt-in/opt-out... the Windows settings pages actually require you to go in and out of about a dozen sub-menus to make the same changes... ShutUp10 only needs to be run once, then you can close it and forget about it, until the next big Windows 10 update... apparently, in this new era of Windows as a service, there are big OS updates every 6 months or so, that can revert these security settings... but there are also options to delay big OS updates like that (but not security updates, for obvious reasons)... I think ShutUp10 says it saves your settings preferences, so it's faster in the future to fix your security settings when you want to fix Windows automated changes...
Mod
Timelord Iain wrote: "@Virginie: Windows 7 reaches the end of life next Tuesday... that means no more security updates to protect from viruses/vulnerabilities/etc... how big is the main HDD/SSD/partition of the PC?"Meh, storage space is not the problem :)
SSD is 256 GB.
I've got secondary HDD, one 320GB for essential back-ups (photos mostly, I have a reflex and shoot in RAW :p) and one 1TB for movies/TV-shows/animes I'm not currently watching, games I'm not currently playing, audiobooks, etc. Also have 2 external HDD, 1TB and 2TB, for backuping anything and everything (yes, I'm paranoid, but I lost family pictures to a disk failure once so....)
I know W7 is reaching end-of-life but... I was already installing updates only sporadically so... Still got 7 months on third-party security software. It's a temporary measure, but I'm planning on making the switch to W10 in a few months so it'll do in the meantime.
The real problem is that my brother's got virtual machines on C: due to his work (though from what he told me, he deleted everything but non-work related pet projects). The data is encrypted, so I have to built & launch the machines, then modify the disk access authorizations before I can actually copy the stuff. If my explanation is lacking, it's because I didn't completely understand when he tried to explain, so that's further proof I really shouldn't mess with it xD
That, and I don't fancy going through the 'update the drivers' hell nor the 'deactivate data collection stuff from W10' one (went through that one with my own Lenovo notepad already) I'd rather wait a bit if that means I get to sit back, watch him do the work and cheer at appropriate moments.
Will do the switch on my two unused portable computers (yes, I've got 4 computers...) to upgrade their W7 Retail licenses to W10 Retail licenses :D Just in case Microsoft shuts down the free W7 to W10 upgrade (like they were supposed to in 2018), and I have to cannibalize the licenses :p
EDIT: will take a look at ShutUp10 though. Thanks for sharing :)
Mod
In that case, if you wanted, you could make the PC dual-boot... if you have the space on another internal SSD/HDD, you could create a fresh installation of Windows 10 separate from the existing Windows 7 installation, and just change the boot order so it defaults to Windows 10 unless you purposely decide to access Windows 7... then Windows 7 and the virtual stuff will be ready and waiting when your brother returns...
This might not be worth it, tho, and you'll need a new product key, since Windows 7 will still be using your W7 key... a little online searching will find you some retailers selling keys for under $20 tho... just make an Installation USB like I mentioned above and install from the Boot Menu at startup...
Timelord Iain wrote: "Virginie wrote: "Timelord Iain wrote: "@Virginie: Windows 7 reaches the end of life next Tuesday... that means no more security updates to protect from viruses/vulnerabilities/etc... how big is the..."Dual boot. Interesting idea. Hmm. Thanks for all the info. It is much appreciated.
Dual boot huh.. Mmmmh...*watches her unused old portable computer, with its SSD and Retail W7 license*
Little computer, you've served me well for years. How do you feel about being an sacrifice/offering for a brighter future?
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*watches her unused old portable computer, with its SSD and Retail W7 license*
Little computer, you've served me well for years. How do you feel about being an sacrifice/o..."
:D
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Timelord Iain wrote: "Notifications seem to be broken... I just thought to check some threads..."I was just about to comment on that here! My last notification is from 13 hours ago but now I saw updates of people posting in this group...
Timelord Iain wrote: "Notifications seem to be broken... I just thought to check some threads..."Yeah. And then I had 40 load in all at once tagged as at "about an hour ago" when posts were from all times throughout the day.
Fantasy Buddy Reads
Books mentioned in this topic
Once Was Willem (other topics)The Society of Unknowable Objects (other topics)
Elder Race (other topics)
Elantris (other topics)
Mistborn: The Final Empire (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Michael Lesley (other topics)Michael Lesley (other topics)
Michael Lesley (other topics)
Michael Lesley (other topics)
Michael Lesley (other topics)
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Simplifying sounds useful for formula calculations (at least the extra monthlies)... the top row stuff seems important to people who like excess ranking data (like me)