Delay

Shocking news (and tl;dr): Cheap push buttons suck and break quickly. Right, so a while ago I bought an Arduino as part of some larger set of parts. One of them was an 8x8 LED matrix that was driven via an IC, along with 5 buttons. I decided to code a small, simply and very known game for it - Snake. That was quite fun, since it was the first time I used a datasheet for a chip I actually had and a chip had a use for. It's simple serial communication, but I was glad when it worked flawlessly on the first attempt. Then I had some problems setting up the buttons because they worked a bit differently to what I expected and I wondered why three of the four didn't break the circuit. And I thought I made a mistake in the code first, checked the function numerous times and couldn't find anything wrong. Anyways, I got the buttons working in the end and around a day and corrections of minor brain farts later I had everything running as well as I had hoped. The controls are still just on a breadboard and the display on its own, premade pcb, but I genuinely want to solder this onto a perfboard or something. I'm proud of this and I really want to keep it. This was the first time I technically developed a game! However, not even a full day after I had everything working, the buttons started breaking. I know it's them and not the wires (i.e. not the breadboard's fault) because they sometimes work depending on where I press. And that's incredibly annoying, especially if you want to test a "winning" state you just implemented to prevent a softlock if the snake gets too long and can't get that far in the game because the damn thing doesn't turn left! I need some better buttons for this. Ones that don't break after a week of use.

Modded installs should be copied out of Steam to be independent from it. There are no problems with that, everything will still function fine. But in the meantime, Steam allows you to back to earlier versions of the game, under the "Betas" (I think that's what it was) option in the launch settings. Simply select the earlier version and redownload it.

30 or so minutes before I closed the windows on turned the heater up, which is only around 1 meter away from the console. Adding to that, the cooling is at the bottom, which is also kinda where the ground is. So, no circulation of air, heat coming from right next to the thing, generally humid air in my room and (apparently) very sensitive hardware. I wouldn't exactly be surprised if that contributed to a system reset. But I might look around a bit, if things still look okay. Just looking for now. The problem is that I really don't want to make it worse. I still want the console to work fine after I'm done messing with it! Edit: I'm all over the place right now. Sorry. Anyways, I opened up and took apart an old computer my dad for some reason kept. I want to practice soldering on/off that before even thinking about touching the N64 with that. So... what am I looking for? Like, this is obviously a capacitor and it's not looking so good anymore: But then, when I look up "smd capacitor" on Google, I get that pictures of these things: ...which the N64's PCB has quite a few of. I'm not entire sure what I would look for when I do eventually open up the console.

I think my N64 overheated. I've been playing SM64 for around 6 hours (hence I think overheat) and it suddenly reset itself, which is apparently common. ...but could the console have picked any worse time to crash than the third stage of the final Bowser fight?

Well, no. In fact it was nothing particularly major (in terms of cause, at least). The ear felt so blocked because that's what it was. I'm just glad it wasn't something worse. Had an appointment today and cleaning the ear was literally all that was done. So, in total, everything is okay again, actually a lot better than before. I should have done that much earlier. But that was indeed the worst. That night was terrible with so much pressure on the eardrum.

Right ear is completely gone since late yesterday. I can barely hear anything. The left ear is still perfectly fine, it's just extremely uncomfortable and, provided the sound is loud enough, a bit painful. It's weird that the absence of sound could be a source of pain.

So... Just watched Terminator 2 for the first time in complete, on DVD. I've seen small snippets of it every now and then on TV, but now I've seen it in complete, uninterrupted. No other movie that I have watched so far made me want to rewind the player all the way to the beginning to watch it again. None. Beyond a shadow of a doubt, this was the best movie I've seen in my life. I cannot even think of anything to improve. The humor is spot on (for me), the effects are outstanding and I enjoyed every minute of it without exception.

Spent the last few days working on my configs again. Now that I'm in vacation I actually have the time and motivation to do this kind of work. ...Meticulously aligning the specular maps with main texture features, I mean, so that highlights look like this... ...and not like this. It's as fun as it looks, turns out.

I occasionally find myself literally forgetting to take my mask off because I don't care about having it on in the first place.

I like this a lot. The Kerbals didn't have a lot of personality before, outside of a few reactions in the portraits. However, if I understood correctly, the Kerbals actually scream now? Regardless of whether or not I did, I'm not entirely sure if I like that. I think part of the "fun" is having to imagine the helpless screams that accompanies their gestures and flailing. It gives you much more freedom as to what they really are like, not every one is going to agree to the presentation in the game. I, for one, find these screams way too high pitched and prefer something closer to the end of the 1.0 trailer.

In the meantime, my sky is covered with clouds. I can only see the moon.

Only watched the replay now. That was amazing! They almost stuck the landing on the first attempt! Also, you just have to appreciate how persistent SpaceX (and I guess in particular, Elon) is. SN8 just went up in a huge fireball, and the stream shows "SN9 is up next!".

I literally just heard of the collapse. That's 50 years of astronomical history gone in just a few seconds. I would have wished for the telescope, if not used, to be at least preserved because of it's huge importance to astronomy. Alas, that definitely won't happen now.

I would guess a space elevator? I dunno; there's a tower and a train...

Banned for liking Python.

Whatever that F1 race in Bahrain today was, I don't think I'm going to forget that for a while. That first lap Those first three turns were not what I was expecting. In case you don't know what I mean.

The godrays are particularly impressive. Smooth, (at least by your selection) bug-free and freely adaptable to whatever is wanted. However, as gorgeous as the effect looks, keep in mind that crepuscular rays are very rare in real life. Not every cloud - by far not every cloud - casts one of these.

So you're rotating the probe core to turn the rocket since SAS will aim to align the core to whatever attitude it was set to?

The second wave - or for the US: Wave 1, Act III - has been surprisingly low in deaths as the CFRs decreased from 3-5% to roughly the figures you provided. Maybe the pandemic was brought more under more control after all? It indicates that especially those at risk of dying from COVID are better protected. Either that or SARS-CoV-2 decided to take the H1N1 route of killing less in exchange for spreading even faster. And just as there are undetected infections, there may also be undetected deaths. Mostly from those who don't/didn't think the virus existed - you cannot expect these people to even get diagnosed.

H1N1 is still around. Yersinia pestis is still around. Yet they play very little role today, in spite of massive and disastrous outbreaks in the past involving these pathogens. So while it may never be 100% over, there is a chance it could be "de facto" over at some point in the future. I mean, at less than 1 year as of know, COVID-19 would be an extremely short pandemic, these things take years to solve.

Sure it isn't sustainable, but how are you going to convince people, on a large, effective scale, to minimize contacts and perform social distancing if it isn't for at least partial lockdowns and (severe?) restrictions? Not saying humans are too dumb to live otherwise, but... some of us aren't necessarily bright...

IT IS!

Dragon separation!

...AND a successful stage 1 landing!

Reentry burn ...and a good insertion!