Tag: facebook

we flew enough

it would be symbolic if they could push it to 80

Couldn’t just pass by

My first sculpture (Blender+SLA printer) – Avatar of Piglet. In the second photo, “Piglet” is quickly colored in “Photoshop” (actually, GIMP). I made the 3D model in Blender, from scratch, while watching the cartoon.

Interesting fact: Moths do not have a mouth. They don’t eat. I showed her what she needs to evolve into in a million years. And set her free.

Check out what I made on the 3D printer today!

It would be logical to implement autocomplete in messengers based on message analysis – in your chats, your friends’ chats, and people with similar profiles (same language, interests, etc.), and to train swipe keyboards, autocorrect, and auto-replies to use this analysis data in making decisions on which word or phrase to insert in autocomplete, autocorrect, or auto-reply. It seems not too complicated, yet somehow no one is doing it. Only Google in their email and LinkedIn in their quasi-messenger are trying with autocomplete. With such training, voice recognition for entering text messages could be made much better than it is now. It would understand slang and a mix of English and Russian words. Translators could do better, as they could be trained on users’ messages. We are generating megabytes of data by typing to each other.

Unfortunately, all the major players in this market consider users’ messages only as raw information for tailoring relevant ads. The messengers themselves don’t seem to change at all.

No messenger supports plugins – the way it’s done in Atom or IntelliJ Idea, or even as in Chrome. It should have a catalogue where you choose, click install, and some useful function gets enabled. But plugins don’t have access to the entire message database, whereas messenger owners do – and they do nothing.

Does Kinopoisk still belong to Yandex, or has someone hijacked and ruined it? It’s been a while since I last visited. In the mobile app, the top-rated movies list starts with “Lords of the Locker Room”, and in fourth place is “He is not Dimon”. The Kinopoisk website is the only one that, upon loading, completely reloads a second after rendering the first page, to load again with me already authorized through Yandex SSO. The mobile app lacks a top 250 and other undoubtedly popular ratings, which, for some reason, have escaped the attention of the product owner of the app. If you ever clicked “I want to watch this movie” or “I watched this movie,” you can’t see what I’ve selected. Apparently, the list of movies selected this way is only available to admins and bots, to build recommendations. Among the top 250 best films of the world, there are a handful of Russian cinema films which look genuinely odd in that company. Really, “Doctor Liza” stands between “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” and “The Devil’s Advocate”.

Looking for pen pals 🙂 I occasionally encounter minor issues with various technology topics, and there’s no one to ask (certainly not posting on Facebook).

1. Could you perhaps introduce me to some experienced digital artists who professionally use a Wacom tablet? I have a few questions regarding its settings. I own a Wacom Intuos Pro Medium.

2. Does anyone have friends (or maybe you yourself) who professionally use Blender for 3D modeling (including sculpting, UV filters, etc.)? I would love to learn from this person 🙂 Also, if there’s anyone skilled in Meshlab…

3. Is there anyone – friends or friends’ friends, who actively use their photopolymer printer? I have a Creality LD-002R.

It’s curious when at the checkout they ask for a normal ticket price of 26 dollars, “how much should I charge?” – you just name any number.

Celebrating Independence Day at the Philadelphia Museum of Art

Finally watched the movie “Awakenings.” Surprisingly, it was “very topical.” It’s also about an epidemic. Of lethargic encephalitis.

The film doesn’t mention this, but from 1917 to 1927 it was a real epidemic, and COVID was nothing compared to lethargic encephalitis.

Imagine this. Hundreds of thousands of people around the world suddenly started “freezing” in place. With food in their mouths, a book in their hands, they would fall into a stupor they couldn’t escape from for years, and every third person died without ever coming back from their dreams. Those affected lost the ability to speak or move, despite having the physical capability to do so. With rare exceptions, only the ability to move their eyeballs remained, while the rest of the body was completely passive. Those who recovered described it as feeling an oppressive force that weighed down on them every time they tried to make any movement.

The epidemic struck everyone, especially children. The pathogen has not yet been identified. It’s suspected to be a virus, but this is uncertain. Perhaps, it was the diplococcus bacteria. It was presumed to be transmitted through contact or via airborne droplets, though the contagion rate was low, or even very low. However, for instance, it is documented that at the Derby and Derbyshire Rescue and Training Home in August 1919, within two weeks, 12 out of 21 girls and women were infected and six died within ten days of infection. In any case, estimates suggest that 1-5 million were infected, with deaths ranging from half a million to one and a half million. This epidemic coincided with the “Spanish flu” of 1918, which then killed 100 times more people, about 50 million. It is suspected that Adolf Hitler suffered from this disease.

The epidemic suddenly stopped in 1927, as abruptly as it had started ten years earlier.

Since 1940, only 40 cases of lethargic encephalitis have been found worldwide.