Completely Off Topic Chat

hhh · 2022-02-12 03:11:21

^ OMG, black main characters! /s

Sun For Miles · 2022-02-12 05:09:48

Does that imply something terrible happened to all back characters after this prequel timeline considering the movie casts?

hhh · 2022-02-13 21:19:19

In the original films all the black characters were Orcs. The Goblins were sickly green and Gollum was grey.

ree!

hhh · 2022-02-13 21:55:50

Fly, you fools!

https://media.vanityfair.com/photos/620 … gs-004.jpg

Should have said character, kind of lonely, isn't she?

johnraff · 2022-02-16 08:31:08

tl:dr check the takeaways below.

The other day I was playing with OCR for the first time. Had a couple of book pages scanned in that I wanted to print out nicely. Going from the xsane scanner software, there's an OCR menu item that seemed to be tied to something called gocr. Installed and tried it, but it left quite a lot of post-conversion cleaning up to do. Then found tesseract looked better, but how to use it from xsane? The options in the preferences seem aimed specifically at gocr. Eventually discovered that xsane comes with a little bash script that's supposed to improve communication with tesseract: /usr/share/xsane/ocr-scripts/xsane2tess3.sh Looks promising - let's run it with '--help' and see what the options are...

Very weird terminal output but no help message. Discover that it needs to be run with no arguments to see them. Finally set up xsane to use it, but processing a single page takes forever, and the result isn't that great anyway. Much better, it turned out, was the GUI tesseract frontend gimagereader. You have to save the scanned image first as a file then process it, but it's easy to leave out things like embedded images in the text, remove line breaks and generally clean things up before saving the text file. I quite liked it.

The story's not over. A bit later I noticed that my terminal no longer had its coloured prompt, even after closing and re-opening. Odd... something changed in .bashrc? Uh oh - there is no .bashrc. No dotfiles at all!! Not cool.

It was that xsane2tess3.sh script. The last line but one is:

rm $FILE_OUT.*

If you run the script with an argument of '--help' as I did the first time, then FILE_OUT is unset and that line resolves to

rm .*

ie remove all the dotfiles in the current directory (which was my HOME). Not cool at all.

Luckily I did have a backup to hand made the previous evening so got the missing files back from there. Except for .bash_history which had looked OK but turned out only to be ~500B instead of its usual 500KB. By the time I noticed that my evening backup had already been overwritten with the latest version... Again, luckily, a hard disk backup was to hand to fill in the history which I sort of rely on to save having to remember commands.

Sigh... panic over.

Some takeaways:

1) Just because a script has been shipped with a Debian package doesn't mean you can trust it. I had a close look at xsane2tess3.sh later and it's not too impressive.
2) Backups are for more than recovering from a disk failure. If you make a daily mirror of your files you'll soon lose the OK stuff you just nuked. Something a bit more sophisticated is needed. (Task for me.)
3) Don't rely on .bash_history - make a note of useful commands somewhere else.
4) I'm sure there was more...

jeffreyC · 2022-02-23 16:39:17

misko_2083 wrote:

Someone made a Android TV x86 that should turn an old PC into a TV but I could not find the download link.
https://forum.xda-developers.com/t/andr … s.4182205/
Requires at least 1.2 GHz dual-core 64-bit capable processor with a typical Intel/NVIDIA/AMD GPU having 64MB of video memory.

Newer, with links:

https://forum.xda-developers.com/t/andr … v.4227253/

Last edited by jeffreyC (2022-02-23 16:39:43)

Sun For Miles · 2022-03-16 20:59:53

I haven't been called by them possibly due to my recent change of the cell phone number, but they showed up at my door ten days ago. Two young people - really tall guy and a pretty girl. I told them I ain't voting for their boss.

Funny that they reminded me of Jehovah's Witnesses reaction when they knocked on my door 15 years ago and I answered "Yes, I do know that Bible holds all the answers" to their opening question. Little did they know I was just toying around. Eventually they gave up once they realised I am just syphoning their promo material for the laughs.

trilobite · 2022-03-17 20:35:10

Jehovah Witnesses - I just tell them we worship Satan and we're getting ready to sacrifice a goat. They leave pretty quick. If we did not move so often maybe they would not talk to me any more.

Sector11 · 2022-03-18 18:40:51

I thought Saskatchewan was Chewbacca's cousin.

_________________
sayz another Canuck

jeffreyC · 2022-05-31 13:13:24

misko_2083 wrote:

By the way, why there isn't a single word for a "day before yesterday"?
Like presterday or something.

Is there in some other language?
We're using English, we'll steal it.

trinidad · 2022-05-31 13:14:58

why there isn't a single word for a "day before yesterday"?

Shortest US military slang = "balls-2" or "balls-48".

It is odd that English uses a noun phrase rather than a single word, while German regularly combines noun phrases into single words.

TC

ceeslans · 2022-05-31 14:09:31

jeffreyC wrote:

misko_2083 wrote:
By the way, why there isn't a single word for a "day before yesterday"?
Like presterday or something.
Is there in some other language?
We're using English, we'll steal it.

there is/are :
in german: "vorgestern"
in dutch: "eergisteren"

try to englify that...

glittersloth · 2022-05-31 16:04:43

trinidad wrote:

Shortest US military slang = "balls-2" or "balls-48"

So;
Jeff Bezos launched his rocket the day before yesterday = Dickhead shot dick balls-2?

trinidad wrote:

It is odd that English uses a noun phrase rather than a single word, while German regularly combines noun phrases into single words.

To be fair, German combines anything into anything.
I mean, what sort of German rap is "Grundgesetzveränderungsabkommenskoalitionsvertrag" ??!?

ceeslans wrote:

try to englify that...

Well, I tried to englify this;
https://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/netzpol … b5f51ab942

....and managed to come up with a single word; terrifying!!

Last edited by glittersloth (2022-05-31 16:15:49)

Martin · 2022-05-31 17:53:06

ceeslans wrote:

jeffreyC wrote:
misko_2083 wrote:
By the way, why there isn't a single word for a "day before yesterday"?
Like presterday or something.
Is there in some other language?
We're using English, we'll steal it.
there is/are :
in german: "vorgestern"
in dutch: "eergisteren"
try to englify that...

"förrgår" in Swedish.

/Martin

Martin · 2022-06-01 05:32:28

misko_2083 wrote:

Martin wrote:
"förrgår" in Swedish.
/Martin
And day is går?

"igår"

/Martin

Martin · 2022-06-08 05:59:47

"igår" = yesterday
"idag" = today

Maybe Sweden should sue Apple.

/Martin

Last edited by Martin (2022-06-08 06:00:41)

unklar · 2022-06-12 11:50:27

misko_2083 wrote:

Please remove my account!
Hopefully the parsley card won't be necessary.

misko, what's wrong, did I miss something?
You can't leave here! You're too valuable for that.

Martin · 2022-07-08 22:35:15

Helium & Strindberg

/Martin

dolly · 2022-09-23 11:42:05

Finally a jump up the version ladder.

https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/firefox-esr

johnraff · 2022-09-24 01:03:17

^Hopefully fixes some security issues, but I never look forward to a Firefox version jump. These days it usually means an unpleasant change to the interface, and some feature that I've been using for years has been taken away.

EDIT: My Firefox-esr just got upgraded to 102.3 with no nasty results so far!

Last edited by johnraff (2022-09-24 05:50:41)

#3601 2022-02-12 03:11:21

Re: Completely Off Topic Chat

#3602 2022-02-12 05:09:48

Re: Completely Off Topic Chat

#3603 2022-02-13 21:19:19

Re: Completely Off Topic Chat

#3604 2022-02-13 21:55:50

Re: Completely Off Topic Chat

#3605 2022-02-16 08:31:08

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#3606 2022-02-23 16:39:17

Re: Completely Off Topic Chat

#3607 2022-03-16 20:59:53

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#3608 2022-03-17 20:35:10

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#3609 2022-03-18 18:40:51

Re: Completely Off Topic Chat

#3610 2022-05-31 13:13:24

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#3611 2022-05-31 13:14:58

Re: Completely Off Topic Chat

#3612 2022-05-31 14:09:31

Re: Completely Off Topic Chat

#3613 2022-05-31 16:04:43

Re: Completely Off Topic Chat

#3614 2022-05-31 17:53:06

Re: Completely Off Topic Chat

#3615 2022-06-01 05:32:28

Re: Completely Off Topic Chat

#3616 2022-06-08 05:59:47

Re: Completely Off Topic Chat

#3617 2022-06-12 11:50:27

Re: Completely Off Topic Chat

#3618 2022-07-08 22:35:15

Re: Completely Off Topic Chat

#3619 2022-09-23 11:42:05

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#3620 2022-09-24 01:03:17

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