Luccus

I like to keep my music as plain FLACs. Usually I get them via Bandcamp (for smaller artists), Steam (for game OSTs, if they have it) and, until recently, from 7digital (for larger artists).

But 7digital is seemingly not keeping up with their site. It had some link-rot when I first registered there, but by now it's borderline unusable. I send a mail to ask if they intend to do any upkeep which went unanswered for 2 weeks now. So I guess I'll have to find a better solution.

Are there any recommendations for a good provider? Bonus points if they are good with their artists and don't send any spam/ads per mail. ^^

(I searched for a short bit, but the top results are AI slop and the definitly human written ones are 4 years old. So I thought I might just ask.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_blue

I just don't understand how this is a metric now. With programmers, I can at least see how someone who doesn't know any better might think lines of code is a good metric. But this?

And it gets worse: The company now has to pay both for its employees(' brain) and the damn text-completion machine.

Steinernema feltiae can be used as biopesticide against weevils, cutworms, mole crickets and - importantly for house plants - gnats.

So, over the past few days, I downloaded a few local LLMs to see which instructions they wont execute. And while reading up on some details a thought occurred to me:

Qwen (a Chinese LLM) will never ever answer any questions in regard to the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. It even refuses to work on random mentions such as:

float tiananmenSquare(float massacre){return 1.79284291400159 - 0.85373472095314 * massacre;}

That's really interesting, because the ablated (uncensored) version "knows" quite a bit about it. So there must be a bunch weights with connections that can't be utilized (because they get filtered), while taking up valuable precision (which takes up RAM), that when quantized (to free up RAM) may even fully drop a connection (rendering all linked information unusable).

Wouldn't it be nice to have a collection of words, phrases and other shenanigans, for research purposes, that basically render all related data collected without permission useless, because it is too strongly connected with unwanted outputs?

I am currently creating some meshes that are then exported as OBJs. I am really only interested in the vertex positions and normals, as everything else will be done with shaders. But I keep coming across… well, not really a issue.

Some exported vertex positions deviate from their in-editor position by literally a micrometer. Again, I know that this is basically irrelevant. Perhaps, if I were to compress the files, I might have a few kilobytes more data than actually necessary.

…but I keep seeing this and it annoys me for no practical reason. Does anyone know if there is a "fix" for this behavior?

I need to install an OS for someone whose first impulse upon seeing a screen is to touch it, because they are young and their first assumption is a touchscreen.

They know their way around Windows and Windows is probably tought to them at school, so Windows might actually be the smart move… but I fucking hate it.

Is ZorinOS or similar polished enough that I can leave it to someone whose tech literacy is centered around Roblox, TikTok and evading parental locks? I don't want to normalize the Windows-bullshit. But I don't want their first Linux-experience to be frustrating.

TLDR: The Corsair Virtuoso Pro is good and becomes pretty impressive with a bit of EQ. If you need a microphone, I think this is pretty ideal, especially for the price. And even without the need for a (btw. detachable) mic it's still pretty good. Somehow.

About two months ago, I stumbled across a post on a German blog about Corsair Gaming, Inc's Virtuoso Pro. A gamer headset from a gamer company for gamers. Please excuse my snark, but that raises just about every red flag I can think of.

But somehow, it did pretty good in Igors measurements. Rtings also measured it and it still did well, but other than those two, there's just not a lot of good information on the thing.

About three weeks later it got a bit cheaper (130,-€, instead of the usual ~160,-€. It was 110,-€ last year too). Not exactly cheap, but fine for the assumed performance, and the included microphone solved a problem with my current setup.

By now, I've been running it for a month… and it's good. Not only is it good out of the box, it takes well to EQing. Which, for me, is the absolute kicker and opened the doors to combining it with pretty a cheap Fiio JA11 / JCally JM12 with flashed firmware as they come with built-in PEQ via Web-USB interface (the app is a burning pile of trash btw.) and microphone pass-through, just a lack in power. But the Virtuoso Pros are pretty sensitive anyway making it a pretty perfect match.

I'm currently running them with this EQ:

Preamp: -5.7 dB
Filter 1: ON LSC Fc 28 Hz Gain 2.8 dB Q 0.800
Filter 2: ON PK Fc 150 Hz Gain -2.0 dB Q 0.800
Filter 3: ON PK Fc 1500 Hz Gain 2.9 dB Q 2.300
Filter 4: ON PK Fc 2700 Hz Gain -2.5 dB Q 2.800
Filter 5: ON PK Fc 3900 Hz Gain 6.0 dB Q 1.800

Here's my reasoning for this, if you are interested.

Imo, there are just two problems, both having to do with microphonics:

Corsair somehow thought a nylon sleeved cable was a good idea. Visually, I agree. Microphonically, it's terrible. I don't have a huge problem with it, but both the mic and the ear cups easily pick up any noise that comes with any movement of the cable on pretty much any surface. This is stupid. Secondly, unless you're a horse, the microphone has to be bent into an L shape. The arm is just too long and the microphone is prone to plosives. Not a good combination - even if the L-bend makes it easy to fix.

Other than that; I'd say they are pretty good headphones… with a microphone! Which is rather perfect for my use-case, where I switch from PC-gaming plus voice chat to my phone plus music and mix and match tasks as they come.

Edit: words & phrasing Edit: updated EQ settings

Last year I managed to fertilize a single flower on my cherimoya tree, which is a bit difficult as the flowers are female in the morning and turn male in the evening. This year I will hopefully be able to have the tree in a south-facing window. So I'm hoping for proper fruiting next year.

Also, strangely enough, cherimoyas seem to do well in an indoor environment and don't seem to have any pest issues at all.

About two years ago I read up on chitin as a possible pest control/deterrent as I was always struggling with mealybugs and thrips, especially in spring, and buying IPMs was getting quite expensive.

I had the most problems with my banana tree (thrips) and my kumquats (mealy bugs). But since I added insect frass (in my case sheddings and droppings from zophobas) in the fall two years ago, this problem disappeared almost miraculously. Since then I have added a small handful every spring and haven't seen a single thrip or mite on any of my plants.

Sooo… idk, it definitely gets a "worked for me".

The plants are: a cherimoya, kumquats, figs, a banana, two monsteras, and a bunch of pitahayas (although the cuttings are only 1 year old and haven't found a permanent home yet), hoyas and a small pineapple.

Looking forward to hear everyones experiences with this!

I finally managed to pollinate my cherimoya!

For the uninitiated: Pollinating cherimoyas is a bit tricky, because their flowers only bloom for a single day. During this time, they are initially female and can absorb pollen, but only turn male in the evening to harvest pollen from.

To pollinate them successfully, you have to sacrifice at least one flower, take its pollen and hope that the next flower opens before the pollen is no longer viable.

They also develop large velvety leaves:

TLDR: Citrus keeps turning black and oozing resin. But I can't find the problem. I thought it must be root rot, but they look perfectly healthy:

Long version: Because my first and second citrus trees fell victim to root rot, I started using a very airy substrate made of pine bark, perlite and some humus/worm castings in a 5:1:1 ratio for all my plants (figs, pineapple, cherimoya, monstera, etc.) with little adjustment. You may recognize this as 'aroid mix'. But it works surprisingly well in my indoor space with a west-facing window and terracotta planters (and my tendency to overwater).

But I can't wrap my head around citrus.

It always starts with rapid growth, followed by very suddenly dropping and crisping leaves, black stems and finally death.

I thought I must be root rot again, which I need to mind during winter. But today, when I dumped my fifth (!) tree, I found only perfectly healthy roots and nice smelling substrate.

I think it must be a pathogen… but what? I am at a loss. I keep killing my citrus trees and I don't know why. :'(

EDIT: replaced "5:1:1 mix" with "5:1:1 ratio" for clearification.