The Computer And General Tech Thread - Software, Hardware, Questions, etc.

[Man in Space]

There are now, not one Google bot, but two Google bots crawling the ZBB. Where will it all end?

2googles.jpg

Google bots, Google bots everywhere.

Continued: How on Earth can the Google Adsense Bot view a User Control Panel?

itsdoingwhat.png

Maybe that’s its way of saying it’s checking robots.txt?

[alice]

I also have no idea what's going on in malloc's case.

In his case or in his phone's case?

[zompist]

Well, how do you break a cellphone charging port? All the cellphones I can remember owning had charging ports that were simply openings in the surface! The idea sounds like an assault in which an orifice was cut off to me.

The charging port broke free from the exterior frame of the phone and slid inward, making the charging plug unable to reach the metal socket. If necessary, I could make a chart since admittedly this does sound rather odd.

FWIW I just looked at the two cell phones in our place, one Samsung and one Apple. Both have a hole in the case, and behind it a metal bracket surrounding the actual charging tab. If that bracket got forced out of its socket, you'd have the problem malloc is having.

Also FWIW, googling "phone charging slot loose" will suggest solutions, though it doesn't sound like DIY solutions are a good idea here. There are phone repair services.

[malloc]

Thanks for the suggestions, although I already got a new phone. Aside from the broken charging port, it was showing its age in other ways so I figure it was time to upgrade. Despite some initial complications, I did manage to transfer my phone number.

[Lērisama]

I also have no idea what's going on in malloc's case.

In his case or in his phone's case?

It was the phones case. But zompist's explanation of how the tongue is fixed ton a bracket makes sense now.

[Raphael]

Well, how do you break a cellphone charging port? All the cellphones I can remember owning had charging ports that were simply openings in the surface! The idea sounds like an assault in which an orifice was cut off to me.

The charging port broke free from the exterior frame of the phone and slid inward, making the charging plug unable to reach the metal socket. If necessary, I could make a chart since admittedly this does sound rather odd.

FWIW I just looked at the two cell phones in our place, one Samsung and one Apple. Both have a hole in the case, and behind it a metal bracket surrounding the actual charging tab. If that bracket got forced out of its socket, you'd have the problem malloc is having.

Also FWIW, googling "phone charging slot loose" will suggest solutions, though it doesn't sound like DIY solutions are a good idea here. There are phone repair services.

Ah, thank you, now it makes sense.

[Travis B.]

I am mesmerized by a version of 'Bubble Universe' sped up considerably by using a look-up table for sine and cosine functions that is running on my PicoCalc. I can't otherwise use my PicoCalc without exiting out of it, but I don't want to exit out of it.

Edit:

And here is a screenshot of it.

Bubble Universe screenshot

BUBBLE.PNG (10.65 KiB) Viewed 4004 times

[Raphael]

I just noticed that my mouse pointer seems to look differently big from my subjective perspective in different parts of the screen based on how its immediate surroundings look like. Weird.

[Travis B.]

I just noticed that my mouse pointer seems to look differently big from my subjective perspective in different parts of the screen based on how its immediate surroundings look like. Weird.

Is this related to how the moon looks bigger the closer to the horizon it is?

[Raphael]

I just noticed that my mouse pointer seems to look differently big from my subjective perspective in different parts of the screen based on how its immediate surroundings look like. Weird.

Is this related to how the moon looks bigger the closer to the horizon it is?

Probably.

[alice]

I just noticed that my mouse pointer seems to look differently big from my subjective perspective in different parts of the screen based on how its immediate surroundings look like. Weird.

Now I cannot unsee this.

[Raphael]

I just noticed that my mouse pointer seems to look differently big from my subjective perspective in different parts of the screen based on how its immediate surroundings look like. Weird.

Now I cannot unsee this.

Not sure I understand what you mean - you can't unsee my post, or you can't unsee the same effect on your own screen?

[alice]

I just noticed that my mouse pointer seems to look differently big from my subjective perspective in different parts of the screen based on how its immediate surroundings look like. Weird.

Now I cannot unsee this.

Not sure I understand what you mean - you can't unsee my post, or you can't unsee the same effect on your own screen?

The latter. Ironically it was the same with the aforementioned effect with the Moon.

[Travis B.]

I ported an old raytracing demo for the Tufty 2040 to the PicoCalc with the RP2350 using hardware single-precision floating point (the original program used S15.16 fixed point, which was non-ideal).

You can see the source code at https://github.com/tabemann/zeptoforth/ ... d_light.fs.

And here is a screenshot:

RAYTRACE.PNG (15.97 KiB) Viewed 3755 times

[Raphael]

Now I cannot unsee this.

Not sure I understand what you mean - you can't unsee my post, or you can't unsee the same effect on your own screen?

The latter. Ironically it was the same with the aforementioned effect with the Moon.

Ah, thank you!

[Travis B.]

Someone wanted to run zeptoforth side-by-side with Meshtastic on different cores of the RP2040 or RP2350 so I created preliminary single-core versions of zeptoforth for the RP2040 and RP2350 to enable this. Of course, this was greatly simplified by the fact that my support for STM32 platforms was already single-core, so the amount of work needed to enable this was significantly reduced.

[Raphael]

GIMP and/or Inkscape and/or whatever else might work question: Is there a way, in some Linux-compatible graphics software, to take a line of text, and turn it into some kind of regular curve? That is, some kind of effect or method that would turn something like the top line in this poorly done drawing into something like the bottom line in this poorly done drawing? Or perhaps to write the text in a curved way in the first place?

curvedwriting.jpg (38.85 KiB) Viewed 3575 times

[Raphael]

OK, I found this link and am currently trying to read it: https://goinkscape.com/how-to-curve-text-in-inkscape/

[Raphael]

There seems to be something seriously wrong with my Inkscape settings. Whenever I try to use either the pen tool or the pencil tool to draw simple lines, I don't get lines at all, I just get filled-in geometric shapes. Any idea what might be wrong, and how I can fix it?

[bradrn]

There seems to be something seriously wrong with my Inkscape settings. Whenever I try to use either the pen tool or the pencil tool to draw simple lines, I don't get lines at all, I just get filled-in geometric shapes. Any idea what might be wrong, and how I can fix it?

Open the ‘Fill and Stroke’ panel (Shift+Ctrl+F, apparently), set the fill to none, set the stroke to whatever colour you want. Or the other way round if you want to draw filled-in shapes, of course.