Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #geekery, aggregated by home.social.
...y’know, there are times that I don't think I'm much of a train nerd, given how many train-obsessed people I surround myself with that really do know so, so much more than I about the most obscure bit of rail information.
And then I post things like this, and I realise that, yeah, maybe I do know a bit more than the average person about trains.
Phased Maps in Roll20
I've been playing around in Roll20 to make phased maps work without complicating my life with animated backgrounds. Here's how to do it #ttrpg #dnd #maps #roll20
Played is Better than Perfect
This Month's RPG Blog Carnival is Roll for Initiative… Next Tuesday at 7pm? – of Dice and Dragons Thoughts on the theme of Time and gaming. Rules almost, for how I manage, even imperfectly, to keep gaming as an adult. My Two Rules Rule the First: Schedule Ruthlessly. Most of us manage it in our non-gaming lives to a greater or elsser degree and have systems that work. Reapply them to gaming. Rule the Second: Played is better than Perfect. I sometimes couch this in work as "DON't […]https://www.leia.cymru/2026/08/24/played-is-better-than-perfect/
Re: What is your concept of technology? 💭
In answer to Finest Day's question. I think I fall somewhere between Alan Kay's “Technology is anything invented after you were born, everything else is just stuff" and Dougas Adams' overlapping idea which runs: Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in […]https://www.leia.cymru/2026/08/24/re-what-is-your-concept-of-technology-%f0%9f%92%ad/
Ahoska Rewatch with Waffle: Ep 2
Got around to continuing eventually! Since last time I’ve had a go at that lovely bit of light-sabering with the head block that I liked last time. Def something in that. Also started learning some standard blocks and defences for two sabers which has broken all my pre existing muscle memory into pieces but been fun. Onwards. Story and Character We pick up with Sabine being patched back together after her disastrous lightsaber fight with Shin. It is rather on the prickly side… […]https://www.leia.cymru/2026/07/24/ahoska-rewatch-with-waffle-ep-2/
Re: Memorization through movement
Memorization through movement - Finest Day talks about in the first instance what I descibe as the "I can't remember my PIN unless I'm Stood In Front of the Cashpoint" problem. I've run thriugh a range of random physical skills though and definitely also know well the overthinking problem. I've learned to lean into it. One of those obscure physical skills has been flying and I remember writing about this exact thing then. all the mnemonics that flying is littered with slip out of my […]https://www.leia.cymru/2026/07/16/re-memorization-through-movement/
Helemet Games Challenge 2026
One of the things I wanted to do in terms of encouraging myself to play more instead of defaulting to doomscrolling was the Helmet Game Challenge 2026 To remove decision paralysis I spent a sort of session zero looking through the list and deciding what games which I already own matched the criteria – however loosely. I allowed myself a few which had been on my wishlist a while but tried to mainly do it with games I already owned – the aim after all was to play those games more often. […]https://www.leia.cymru/2026/07/12/helemet-games-challenge-2026/
Masks and Movement
Yes I was going to find a way to dress up even for a covid-era videocall Halloween "party" So the month’s IndieWeb Carnival theme is “Masks, Identities & Cosplay” so that’s an easy one. I already waffle about this more than a bit (cosplay | Leia Dot Cymru) and one of my previous Carnival posts was A love letter to cosplay But there’s always more to waffle about and I noticed at the most recent con quite how differently I move about a space in different costumes. Playing as Ahsoka […]
Sonic FanFest Cardiff 2026
The con itself is exactly the sort of event I was being wistful about when I started this blog – just taking over a hotel (or at least a floor of it) and having a bunch of fan-run panels, a bunch of traders and enough free time to chitchat and talk with Internet Friends and new people where the hard part of the conversation starting is already done because after all your both here!https://www.leia.cymru/2026/06/28/sonic-fanfest-cardiff-2026/
Cymraeg, tech a’r Haclediad o hyd
Mae wedi bod yn amser maith ers dw i wedi ysgrifennu yn Gymraeg. Digon hir i fi anghofio hyd yn oed pa offer o’n i’n arfer defnyddio i wirio pethau. Digon hir i gael gliniadur newydd heb y pecyn sillafu Cymraeg arno fe eto. Oedd rhaid i fi chwilio ar gyfer “beth yw enw'r peth gwirio" Gymraeg + Bangor” O. Cysill dyna fe. Hefyd, 600 geiriau i mewn i hynny dechreuodd Libre Writer marcio popeth fel Saesneg yn lle Cymraeg... Pam? Beth bynnag... Ailddechrau'r meddalwedd sortiodd y […]https://www.leia.cymru/2026/06/12/cymraeg-tech-ar-haclediad-o-hyd/
Ahoska Rewatch with Waffle: Ep 1
Episode 1 A blog is a space to waffle about things right? I used to do a lot of fannish waffling about things, on mailing lists and bulletin boards, picking over the fine detail of episodes, speculating, over analysing, enthusing about details. A lot of that happens on YouTube these days it looks like and it’s hard to navigate with stumbling into toxicity. And anyway I like writing better than talking, and I do not enjoy video editing. So the Ahoska live action series... (I actually kind […]https://www.leia.cymru/2026/06/07/ahoska-rewatch-with-waffle-ep-1/
3 Cons
So an Old Internet thing we used to do all the time was share stories from cons. I rather over did it on that front over the bank holiday weekend so have plenty to waffle about! MCM London This was a impulse unwise financial choice almost immediately after Liverpool Comicon only a few weeks earlier but my favouritest of favourite Star Wars characters, even more than my namesake, is Ahsoka... and how often are the American based voice actors over here and and and... So the short version is […]
Daemonwastes – Worldbuilding and Prop Making
I'm doing world building for the Daemonwastes game and making a prop at the same time in the form of a physical field guide. Included are images of some of the pages, and an embedded Spotify playlist for inspirationhttps://timmaidment.com/2026/05/29/daemonwastes-worldbuilding-and-prop-making/
A love letter to cosplay
Apropos of IndieWeb Carnival May 2026 but that really only gave me the title because I'd been meaning to waffle on this for a while. When I did my tally of things I missed from the old internet there was one particular thing which had endured, and that was what we’re now calling cosplay. We called it ‘hall costumes’ back then and I can’t really recall at what point that terminology shift occurred. I do remember being a bit resistant to it – twenty-something me thought it sounded […]
new on my blog: One week with my Xteink X4
Map – Flooded Crossing
A waterlogged new encounter map, and five system-neutral scenario ideas - plus link to the Dungeon Alchemist files #maps #ttrpg
Swipe-back in Obsidian.md
On my Mac, I just figured out how to make it so you can swipe-back to a previous page, or swipe-forward to the next page using the trackpad. Here's how:
On your Mac, go to System Settings | Trackpad | More Gestures.
Set "Swipe between pages" to "Swipe with Three Fingers" (no, "Swipe with Two or Three Fingers" doesn't work. Nor does "Scroll Left or Right with Two Fingers")
By setting
https://www.lee.org/blog/2026/04/11/swipe-back-in-obsidian-md/
#Geekery
#audio #geekery #PSA 4 laptop people:
if ur laptop has decent speakers and ur using lets say a bluetooth speaker, route audio to both the external and ur laptops speakers
ive been away from home a lot in the last few months with only laptop and bluetooth speaker and its always been either one or the other
by default audio goes either external or internal output and the output chooser only allows choosing one but not multiple so this very obvious thing has slipped me quite some time
on mac its trivial to set up a multi output device using the built in Audio MIDI Setup.app > + > Create Multi Output Device and then choose that in the system audio output chooser
the sound now ... incredible for such a small setup with best results when the laptop is in front of u and the speaker behind
(keep in mind different distances to the sound sources will introduce phase shifts in the sound)
lastly 4 the mac ppl i can recommend SoundSource.app 4 audio routing on a by app basis and other goodies
i use that to route only muslc to both, while keeping browser and system alerts to the laptop only
In setting up my home office, I made sure that anyone standing in the doorway would be stared down by the Eye of Vecna, the Wand of Orcus, and Vincent Price. #Vecna #Orcus #VincentPrice #DnD #Geekery
This one is about five beats per minute slower than either 12/31/95 or 7/15/25 which are the same tempo. But I also checked 6/19/95 and it was the identical tempo to this 12/4 one. #geekery
Cybersecurity Event in Review
The conference from Bettendorf, Iowa, has resulted in a satellite event in West Central Ohio with numerous themes and missions, beginning with port numbers, followed by CVEs (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures), followed by exploitation and numerous related black-hat hacking tactics. Even though user creation may have been advised, the truth of the matter was significantly more interesting with each of the users. Every vulnerability would result in additional contexts necessary to […]https://novatopflex.wordpress.com/2025/11/06/cybersecurity-event-in-review/
Il y aura un stand openstreetmap au capitole du libre le weekend du 15/16 novembre à Toulouse. Venez nous faire coucou.
RE: https://mastodon.social/@superbetsy/115363774024636578
It would be cool to read through this user guide. #TechHistory #geekery
If you get this joke, then you’re exceptionally geeky about at least two different things…
Why did I ever abandon HTML/CSS?
@epilanthanomai I would use a Fermi Guess
My variables would include overall ticket sales at the high and and convention goers at the low end to find a guess for how many quote it at all.
Then make a refinement based on how OFTEN they say it on average based on somewhere between daily and annually, (maybe averaging at 6 times a year) then by how much time has passed since the movie.
I don’t feel moved to seek out those first few figures but I think it would work.
My son has a friend who hadn't seen Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings, so they're fixing that. He decided to make lembas for the event. #cooking #parenting #baking #geekery
I'm just wildly pleased with the switch to #NixOS.
My Pi was super dead after the latest storm related power issues, even the external drive doesn't power up properly anymore.
So I hacked together a deploy script and repurposed the mini PC I wasn't actually using. A couple days later and now I've got #HomeAssistant back up in a container, centralized my admin and backed it up to version control.
"Maybe someday" automation items were accessible immediately. I love it.
For those who are interested: This is going well but it is a far longer process than I have done before. Usually I would resize all the disks and install the operating system and then restore the vital data from a backup drive.
This time I have elected to restore everything from my cloud based encrypted backup. This is 300+ GB in size. It's proving to be a long slow process which is annoying but also a really good test of my backup/restore process.
I expected it to be faster. I have restored multi-GB sized chunks of data
using this backup solution with no speed issues. This, however, is crawling. I have 70gb restored after ~7 hours time.
Spent part of yesterday watching how-to videos on OBS (Open Broadcaster Software), which I have in mind to start using in conjunction with Zoom.
I'm amused at my own level of enthusiasm haha! "Ooh i could do _this_! Ooh I wanna try if _that_ works!"
"New toy" energy, and I haven't even downloaded it yet :-)
When I last set up my laptop a couple of years ago I didn't give enough space to the root partition. As a consequence I am running into difficulties when working with databases > 5gb in size. As a result I will be blowing it away completely and doing a full disk reconfiguration and re-install.
The plan is to give the root partition 30GB (prob a bit of overkill) and split out the /var directory onto its own 30GB (perhaps even bigger) partition which should give me enough space.
I know I am a geek as I am quite looking forward to this work.
(Bi-)Weekly Notes: May 12–25, 2025: Two weeks in the life of…. Thoughts, photos, links, and miscellany from the past fortnight. https://michaelhans.com/eclecticism/2025/05/25/bi-weekly-notes-may-12-25-2025
#GAAD #GlobalAccessibilityAwarenessDay #Norwescon #NWC47 #Underworld #WeeklyNotes #Apple #Geekery #Music #Personal
Good vs Bad AI (or ML vs AI): I have decades of experience in creating artisanally hand-crafted typos and errors and have no interest in statistically generating my mistakes! https://michaelhans.com/eclecticism/2025/05/16/good-vs-bad-ai-or-ml-vs-ai
#AI #ArtificialIntelligence #AssistiveTechnology #ChatGPT #MachineLearning #ML #Geekery #Tech
Creating running intervals from Morse Code
Here’s an interesting way to use Morse Code to generate running intervals. It’s complex enough to generate infinite variety, but simple enough to generate a workout quickly.
“Running” Morse Code…
The dot duration is the basic unit of time measurement in Morse code transmission.
Select a corresponding amount of running time for the basic unit; Let’s say a “dot” will be 10 seconds of running.
The duration of a dash is three times the duration of a dot.
…so we’ll be running 30 seconds for each “dash” in Morse Code.
The letters within a word are separated by a space of duration equal to three dots,
…so we’ll have 30 seconds of walking between each letter.
and the words are separated by a space equal to seven dots.
…so 70 seconds of walking between each word.
…from Basics of Morse Code, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morse_code
Finally, you need a handy Morse Code converter, such as moresecode.world. (No relationship to me.)
Build a running sequence like this…
Grab a word, phrase, whatever you want to try “running”. For example, “I AM SLOW”, in Morse Code, is:
.. / .- -- / ... .-.. --- .--
The word “I”, one letter, is simply two dots, ..
…two dots at 10 seconds each, that’s 20 seconds of running for the letter, “i”.
For the space between the words, 70 seconds of walking.
“AM” is, two letters, .- --
…dot-dash is 10+30, so 40 seconds of running
…space between letters is 30 seconds of walking
…dash-dash is, 30+30, so 60 seconds of running
Another space between words, 70 seconds of walking.
“SLOW” is four letters, ... .-.. --- .--
run 30 (S = 10+10+10)
walk 30 between letters
run 60 (L = 10+30+10+10)
walk 30
run 90 (O = 30+30+30)
walk 30
run 70 (W = 10+30+30)
…or more simply, the whole running sequence can be written:
20 / 40 60 / 30 60 90 70
You get a 70-second walking break at the “/” between words, and the 30-second walks between letters at 40-60, 30-60, 60-90 and 90-70.
More examples…
“Mississippi” leads to:-- .. ... ... .. ... ... .. .--. .--. ..
60 20 30 30 20 30 30 20 80 80 20
(with a 30 second walk between each of those letters)
“run faster” is:.-. ..- -. / ..-. .- ... - . .-.
50 50 40 / 60 40 30 30 10 50
…and “movers mindset” is:-- --- ...- . .-. ... / -- .. -. -.. ... . -
60 90 60 10 50 30 / 60 20 40 50 30 10 30
ɕ
#Geekery #Running