Jack William Bell @jackwilliambell@rustedneuron.com

Even so, I highly recommend Fruits Basket, even to #Anime neophytes. The characters are interesting, they are all dealing with some really bad stuff, and they are (almost) all good people doing their best despite all that.

You can find Fruits Basket on Crunchyroll and Funimation, plus Funimation also has the original series as well, if you want to contrast and compare.

If you aren't familiar with Fruits Basket, the title is based on a Japanese children's game similar to Musical Chairs here in the USA.

Only thing, despite being a light-hearted children's game, Fruits Basket has a dark core of cruelty.

The #Anime and #Manga storyline of Fruits Basket is the same way. It seems like a bit of a lark about a family of people who, poof, turn into animals of the Chinese Zodiac when hugged by the opposite sex. But it is laced through with darkness and cruelty.

Just watched the 25th and final episode of the Fruits Basket reboot, and the feels are overwhelming. What's more, they are promising a 2nd season in 2020, so maybe we'll get the whole story from the #manga this time?

For those who don't know, Fruits Basket was done as a one cour #Anime of 12 episodes about 20 years ago. It was good, but nowhere near the level of the reboot.

Among other things the reboot is much deeper: 25 episodes covering the same basic storyline as the first 12.

Span calculator. https://www.awc.org/codes-standards/calculators-software/spancalc

Good for figuring lumber size and spacing for weight.

#relevanttomyinterests #projects #Design

Trans Astronautica Corporation is developing some very interesting technology for mining water and other volatiles from lunar regolith and asteroids. https://www.transastracorp.com/home.html

#relevanttomyinterests #Space

Of course this micropayments idea suffers from the same problems as all micropayment systems. The only thing it has going for it is easy adoption by client web sites.

Since I don't want to play with other people's money that way, I'm throwing the idea out for anyone who wants to give it a shot. I'd be a customer!

(If you want a full product design instead of something that wishes it was a half-baked idea, contact me. Then you'd be MY customer.)

#Idea: a service selling passes similar to gift cards, where the passes can be spent in one cent to ten dollar increments by visiting a web page and logging in with the pass credentials. (Websites just need to add a user for each pass and ping each page refresh while the user is logged in.)

The service charges nothing to web sites, provides free integration libraries, and even integration help. But passes have a fifteen percent surcharge to turn off logging; paid by any user who wants privacy.

Made only a little progress on my #projects today, mostly just moving things around and cutting drywall. Spent much of the day researching shower units, being as it looks like my current plans aren't going to work unless I put in a hell of a lot more effort than originally planned.

So mostly a think day.

Arrr mateys, it's #talklikeapirateday today, donchaknow!

expandpass is a simple string-expander. Useful for cracking passwords you kinda-remember. https://github.com/Phildo/expandpass

#security

It was raining all day, so instead of working some more on my modular firewood rack I spent the day in the house de-cluttering and moving things around to make room before I start work on the master bedroom.

I've got a lot more de-cluttering and organizing to do. For the last ten years I've used the house for storage while working on it and–except for the coldest winter months–lived in a 5th-wheel trailer. Only the work was going really slow.

But this is the last year for that!

#projects

This morning I made some progress on a programming project. This afternoon I built a PoC of a covered firewood rack module.

Since this was the first one it took all afternoon because I was figuring things out as I went. There's still a few tweaks I want to make to the design, but this looks like it will work.

Next I'll set it up and load it with firewood. If it seems sturdy enough I'll build three more modules and hook them together.

#projects

Sending a Spacecraft to Interstellar Comet C/2019 Q4 (Borisov). https://arxiv.org/pdf/1909.06348.pdf

Remember C/2019 Q4? The new interstellar object transiting our solar system? Well, some scientists figured out if and how we could land a probe on it.

#relevanttomyinterests #Space

So, let's see if I have this straight: we're going to war with Iran because they backed Houthi rebels who attacked Saudi Arabian oil facilities in retaliation for the Saudis attacking civilian sites in Yemen; but we won't do it until the Saudi's give us the go ahead and say how?

If that's a fair description of the current situation, it is now clear the Saudis are in control of the US government…

I'm no longer working as a programmer for a living, yet I'm reading articles about #C preprocessor tricks for fun. Is there something wrong with me?

* https://github.com/pfultz2/Cloak/wiki/C-Preprocessor-tricks,-tips,-and-idioms

* http://jhnet.co.uk/articles/cpp_magic

#relevanttomyinterests #programming

Exceptions in #C can be supported with a little jmp hacking. See, Exception Handling in C without C++. https://www.on-time.com/ddj0011.htm

Here are some examples:

* Exceptions in C - https://adom.as/excc/

* Exception handling and smart pointer (automatic cleanup) libraries for C https://github.com/psevon/exceptions-and-raii-in-c

#relevanttomyinterests #programming