CerebralHawks

Tom Petty and Whitney Houston. Two of my favourite singers of the 1980s and 1990s.

Chester Bennington didn’t hit me at all — at first. Linkin Park had been growing out of favour with me, especially with regards to some of the things the band (and I think Chester) were saying about fans who preferred Hybrid Theory or Meteora to the newer stuff. Then I heard what Chester went through in his youth and how the music was therapy for him. It gave context to what he/the others said, and then it hit me. I hate that he felt he wasn’t enough to overcome his demons, but I hope that his music makes the next person stronger. Truly a loss for humanity and the arts. Good on Linkin Park for forging ahead, though I didn’t care for the new record. (Nothing against the singer, I just didn’t like the album.)

It’s worth noting that my favourite band was hand-picked by Chester to tour with them, but then he died and that didn’t happen. The band is ONE OK ROCK, originally from Japan (based out of Los Angeles for the last 10 years, though, and most of their songs are in English, or at least their music since the move). They did fine without Linkin Park, but I would have loved to see the two of them together (with Chester). Mike Shinoda either did a few live shows with ONE OK ROCK, or Takahiro Moriuchi did a few live shows with Linkin Park (or maybe just Mike Shinoda), shortly after Chester died. It’s just some live stuff though, and poorly recorded. Taka would have made a better singer for Linkin Park as he could do most of Chester’s style, but I wouldn’t have liked the move as it would have ended my favourite band. So I’m glad we still have both, and maybe Linkin Park’s next album will be better — I will certainly be here for it.

I use DuckDuckGo. And I have a good example: I asked it what the birthdays of the KPop Demon Hunters girls are. (I have an “anime birthdays” calendar on my computer. It’s cool to see who has a birthday, even if it doesn’t really mean much. And I wanted to add the HUNTR/X girls (and maybe Jinu). Duck.ai happily told me that while the girls’ birthdays are not widely known, it still generated a table. It listed a fan site and Wikipedia as its sources. Neither had birthdays listed for the girls.

I then found a fandom site (I know, they suck, they’re like the crotch of wikis, or at least the armpit). They listed two of the girls’ birthdays, and their source was an Instagram post by the official social media team. So as far as fictional characters’ birthdays go, that’s good enough for me. I added Rumi and Mira to my calendar. They have nothing for Zoey (ostensibly, her birthday hasn’t come around since the movie came out, which means it’s coming up soon) or Jinu (same, or they don’t care about his).

Zeroth rule, optional: Use an AI that is private and won’t use your query to train itself (these are going to be not as good because of the hindrance).

First rule: Use an AI that cites its sources.

Second rule: Check its sources. If for whatever reason you must use an AI that does not list sources, you can either ask it its sources, or you can fact check them manually (as I ended up doing).

Honestly it’s the same as Wikipedia, check the source. AI can be fooled. Wikipedia can be vandalised.

Not by choice.

When I drive with someone else at work (not often but sometimes it happens), they often want to listen to the radio, which means we’re listening to ads for 90% of the trip and then we get one song. And people are okay with that. Fucking mindless drones.

Radio really has gone to shit. If you haven’t listened in a while… the ads are almost worse than going online without an ad blocker. You won’t get a virus or spyware, but you might spend the whole trip listening to ads before you earn the right to hear one censored song. Then you get back in the car and the ads start over again. It really is mostly ads these days. Most radio stations in an area will be owned by the same company, and they sync the ads so you can’t just change the channel.

Oof. Didn’t know it went up. We paid a total of $15 and we’re happy with it, but we’ve had the benefit of having used it for the past 16 years.

If the price is too high, Google Keep is pretty good for doing a similar thing.

Isn’t it standard for a website to be able to detect browser/extensions?

Funny that the name dropping of Chrome in the link summary implies Firefox users are safe.

OurGroceries.

The year was 2010, and the iPhone was not yet available where I lived. I could have bought one, and I could have activated service with it, but I would never be able to use it at home or anywhere around home. So it would have been pointless. I wanted one. Android was cool, but it wasn’t really what I wanted. Wife needed a new phone, and our carrier had a deal. Two Android phones for $100, and each came with a $20 Android Market (what Google Play Store was called then) gift card. So yeah, we took that deal. The phones were ass, but I was able to put CyanogenMod (now called Lineage) on them and make them a little better.

We wanted a grocery app, and we discovered an app called OurGroceries. Free with ads, or $5 to remove the little banner at the bottom. Even without paying, it offered synced grocery lists and even Web access. As in, my wife is at the store and I’m on the computer, I just hit the bookmark and add something to the list, she sees it in a second or two (provided she has signal or WiFi). We both paid. The app was useful and it was nice.

When I got an iPhone, I immediately paid the $5 again. They since changed it to where only ONE person on the sync account needs to pay. That is to say, if you and five family members all download it, all six of you get ads. But if ONE person connected to the sync account pays, the paid status syncs and nobody has ads. That said, I’m not mad because $10 of the $15 I’ve paid wasn’t even mine to start with, it was on a gift card. It’s been 16 years, and we still use it.

Is it the best grocery app? I think it still ranks highly. Personally I think the one in Paprika is a little better. Our first requirement is that it must support iPhone, Android (my wife still uses Android), and computer. Paprika checks those boxes — so does Google Keep, which is another good option (that is also free!). Apple has shopping list support in Notes, and our computers are Macs, so that works, but Apple Notes doesn’t really work on Android. It actually does, I think, through the browser (since my wife has an Apple account, on the Mac and on her iPad), but it’s not as robust if you actually have an iPhone. Any note taking app should work, but the sync won’t be there.

So if you don’t want to pay, Google Keep should be your first stop. If you don’t like Google for privacy or whatever reason, you’ll probably have to pay. OurGroceries is either a single developer or a small team, and they’re independent, and deserve at least the $5 they’re asking for a whole family to use their app indefinitely (as long as they keep the server up — I hope, should they ever decide to take their server down, they allow a self-hosted option). If you want more features, Paprika is definitely a solid choice, but you’ll want to wait for a sale. Normally it’s like $10 on phones and $20 on computers or something. But it’s actually not a shopping list app. It’s a recipe manager that has a shopping list and a pantry inventory. And a couple other things. (OurGroceries also has a recipe manager, but it’s not great, it’s really just another kind of shopping list that can be copied into an actual shopping list — you can have multiple.)

Floor 796 is a… I’m not even sure what to call it. Mosaic doesn’t quite cover it. There are interactive parts as well. It’s an art piece featuring various pop culture characters together on a space station. See who you can find.

Oh yes, I’ve used diced white onions in my tuna salad as well. I don’t like relish (or celery), it’s just not the flavour profile I’m looking for.

BBQ sauce = ketchup with molasses, more or less, I think, on the off chance you were asking what it was. I don’t think that’s the case, just covering my bases. Anyway, I use the sweet/spicy kind, so it adds a kick. I wouldn’t do both BBQ sauce and Tabasco. Tabasco gives it a kick, but it’s more subtle, the flavour of the sauce is covered by the tuna, but the heat is still there. For heat plus added flavour, I go for the BBQ sauce. Specifically Sweet Baby Ray’s sweet and spicy (or whatever that variety is called).

Fry sauce! I add hot sauce to mine. Popularized in the American Midwest but you can make it anywhere.

What TF is tuna spread? We always called it tuna salad, even though it’s not really a salad.

The traditional recipe I know calls for mayonnaise, mustard, and relish. I do not use relish. However, I’ve been known to add minced garlic, Tabasco sauce, and shredded cheese. Sometimes, chopped olives. If you don’t use mustard, you can also use BBQ sauce.

Egg salad is messier by far, and I have an egg guillotine. The kind you put a hard-boiled egg in and it slices it. Then you carefully turn it and repeat. Once it’s sliced two ways, I’ve never been able to get the third dimension, I just push it through to the bowl like that. So I get long pieces, but there are ways to 3D slice it (patience? skill? Yeah, probably a skill issue).

Tuna salad is not that messy. I’ve also been known to eat it without bread. It’s very high in protein, and cheese adds more. Screw those nasty ass snot-consistency protein drinks, I’d rather eat tuna out of a small container. I’d LOVE to get a CLEAN can of cat food and put it in there, and walk around looking like I’m eating cat food like a mad lad (it kinda looks/smells like cat food). Like the old “put vanilla pudding in a mayonnaise jar and walk around eating it to look crazy” thing I’ve never actually seen anyone do.

FWIW, Sir is gender neutral in the military — this came up in Star Trek Voyager, anyway. Basically if your senior officer isn’t male, they’re sir until they tell you otherwise.