Project Wonderful, 2006-2018
Thursday 14 June 2018, 16:15Project Wonderful, a banner-ad network popular among Web comics authors, suddenly announced a few days ago that they would be shutting down. I've used them off and on almost from the very beginning of the system in 2006, at that time to bring in traffic for my own Web comic and later for some other projects, both buying and selling ads. There was a Project Wonderful ad box on this very Web site for several years, now replaced by a permanent ad for North Coast Synthesis Ltd.
Ad stramineum hominem
Sunday 25 March 2018, 16:11Sometimes I find myself on the receiving end of false accusations of "straw man" argumentation, and it feels like this happens abnormally often to me in particular. It's baffling because when it happens, it doesn't make any sense.
Live video streaming with free tools (A Gruesome Orgy Of Yak Shaving!)
Friday 26 January 2018, 17:07I recently set up my own server for streaming live video over the Web. That was complicated and difficult, and although I found some useful resources on the Web, none of them were complete and many of them were out of date. So here are my notes on what worked, both for my own reference and in the hope they may be useful to others.
Technologies covered here, more or less in order of signal flow from the origin of the video content to the viewer's screen: OBS Studio for generating the video signal; FFmpeg for encoding it; OpenSsh for securely transmitting the signal to the "repeater" machine that serves it to the users; HLS stream formatting; the Apache Web server; and the VideoJS HLS Javascript-based video player for displaying the stream in the viewer's browser.
These notes are current as of late January 2018. Pay attention to the date on these notes or any other information sources about this topic, because the relevant technologies change over time and there's a lot of outdated information out there.
tikzpeopleで新しいキャラ
Tuesday 12 December 2017, 14:59これは TeX ＆ LaTeX Advent Calendar 2017 の 13 日目の記事です。 昨日は tattsan さんでした。 明日は p_typo さんです。 外の年も記事を書きました。 2014 2015 2016
Nils Fleishhacker さんからのパケージ『tikzpeople』は、 人のノードを書きできます。 マイクロソフトビジオのようを持ちます。 たとえば暗号プロトコルので便利です。 だから Alice と Bob の名前あります。
今日新しいキャラを上げましょう。 トトロとカッパと四人の JK です。
Installing Slackware on a Dell Inspiron i3162-2040
Wednesday 15 November 2017, 12:52My venerable Asus eeePC netbook finally gave up the ghost, and I replaced it with a Dell Inspiron i3162-2040. Here are some notes on what I had to do to get it up and running with Slackware Linux, both for my own future reference if I ever have to reinstall from scratch, and to help others who may be facing a similar adventure.
This is why your Shopify storefront has no sales
Sunday 8 October 2017, 11:03Since launching my own Web shop on Shopify in August, I've spent a fair bit of time on the Shopify forum, reading comments from other shopkeepers. There's a specific genre of discussion thread that comes up there about once per day: the "Why don't I have any sales?" thread. Someone will post that question, with a link to their own shop, and ask for advice from the other shopkeepers. I don't have all the answers, but I have noticed some pretty consistent habits of shopkeepers who have no sales and are asking the forum for help.
Begin Primary Ignition
Saturday 22 July 2017, 13:41I'm very close to officially launching the North Coast Synthesis Web storefront. I have stock for the first product ready to sell. All that remains to do is file a few more sales tax registrations, and I expect to sort that out this coming week. I'm aiming for August 1 as the launch date. If you're reading this on my Web site you'll note I've replaced the long-running Chessudoku ad with one for my new store.
North Coast May update
Thursday 18 May 2017, 12:10It's been a while since I posted an update on where things are going with the synthesizer business, so here are some notes.
Mastodon WTF timeline
Sunday 23 April 2017, 20:08In the last few days I've been fortunate to witness an interesting chapter in the Internet's history, and I'm trying to compile a timeline of what has happened while the memories are still reasonably fresh. This is incomplete and a work in progress; I'll be updating it, and not necessarily in chronological order, as I dig up other things worth including. Some of my TODO markers may remain. But here goes.
The Well-Rounded Total
Saturday 25 March 2017, 12:30I've posted some notes on the computer-science aspects of reporting rounded numbers in financial statements and hoping for the totals to add up correctly. You've doubtless seen footnotes on things that say "Totals may not add due to rounding." Can that be avoided? Here's a detailed examination of the question.
