Another mystery/horror story that came as a dream (and somewhat terrifying one at that)...

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A group of friends are traveling to a new city and staying there for a bit. It is a tropical beach city - a sandy, walkable, small town with low-rise, shack-like residences.  They play video games as a team online the first night and joke about why they bother to name the group if they can't beat anyone yet.  After midnight, they order food delivered on GrubHub, since it's too late to go out and fall asleep after eating.

The next morning,...[More]

General notes and things I wish I knew as I delved deeper into #UE4:
- Package build by default includes unused assets, which can bloat the size of your game.  Go to Project Settings -> Packaging -> List of Maps to package only assets referenced by that map.  To be more aggressive and reduce unused assets in general (or to keep smaller backups), right-click your map and Migrate to a new project to create a new folder with only the assets used in your game.  More tips on this here.
- Shipping build will give you an instant 10-15 FPS increase, if you're trying to squeeze performance (ie for VR).  However, it disables using command line arguments (such as to create listen servers); the way to get around that is to build both shipping and dev in the same folder.  You can then create shortcuts to target the shipping or dev exe file depending if you want to launch server or client version of the game.
- Do not use numbers in the project folder name.  Otherwise builds will fail to run.
- Do not use Duplicate, as it moves the object slightly.  Use copy+paste.
- Never use...[More]

Sims 3 Generations Build Mode OST by Steve Jablonsky (@jablonsky_steve)

In case anyone finds it useful, this is the code I use to automatically detect US holidays.  I don't claim credit for it - added bits and pieces over the years from various sources until it was complete enough that I didn't have to worry about it anymore.

[code]
        public bool isHoliday(DateTime date)
        {
    ...[More]

Getting a Black Screen Trying to Login After a Remote Desktop Session

I recently started on occasion having a black screen come up when logging in.  This happens if I previously signed into Windows remotely.  The mouse is gone, keyboard does not work, etc.  It turns out this is caused by Nvidia's GeForce Experience ShadowPlay.  Disabling Shadowplay stops this from happening.

More details here:
https://superuser.com/questions/1026423/windows-10-black-screen-after-local-login-and-previous-remote-desktop-session

For those still using SMF1, PHP5 or later will throw a lot of deprecated errors and warnings, which quickly clog the error log.  This thread below isolates the 3 changes you need to clear them:
https://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=534915.0

To stop error logging internally to SMF:

To stop errors showing on the page itself:

"Game module could not be loaded. There may be an operating system error or the module may not be properly set up."

After reinstalling Unreal Engine, my project stopped loading up. The above error message was extremely unhelpful, especially as any search for it online referred to moving DLLs around which had nothing to do with my issue. It turns out what was missing was the exact version of Visual Studio that I had when I last worked on my project. It has to be the exact version with the extras for C++ game development included. Any newer or older version still returns the same error. In my case, it was Visual Studio 2019 paired with Unreal Engine 4.23.1; it took me a few reinstalls just to figure that out because the help docs point you instead to Visual Studio 2017.
This is more a reminder for myself in the future to avoid losing a day to this again, but maybe it helps save someone else the time as well.

Below is a blog describing a great fix for the excessive CPU usage Chrome has with multiple tabs open.  Specifically the Suspender extensions will stop any tab not in the foreground from continuing to use up CPU.
https://www.socmedsean.com/butchering-the-google-chrome-cpu-hog/

Despite having a quad-core CPU, Chrome somehow still uses up 100% of my resources especially if any tabs open are Google Drive / Sheets.

How can you say you love someone forever if as soon as they die, you ditch them in the ground to rot and never look back? What kind of horrible, inhumane person does that?

This is just my own personal preference in lifestyle obviously, but one of the thoughts I can't stand is how repetitive the life of a modern teacher must be, the dread of just living year after year on loop teaching the same thing but with no progression and not even the same students to share the journey.  To me, the thought of it is like being trapped in Groundhog Day.  You are the rock that never moves while all your students pass you by.  Fifty years can pass, your students already having lived entire lives, and when they come back to visit, you're still there doing the same thing, as if part of the historical scenery itself.

I kind of wish there was a more old-fashioned approach, where you and your teacher are both a team growing and learning together until the student finally one day becomes equal or even surpasses the teacher.  What we have instead with schools/colleges is more an assembly line where students churn in and out, the teachers sometimes...[More]

Daydream Believer Cover by Youmou & Ohana

What $200/night gets you in SF, worst part of town but rated 4/5:
https://www.sfgate.com/travel/article/I-paid-202-to-stay-at-a-micro-hotel-in-SF-14287621.php#photo-18030559

What $65/night gets you in Tokyo, center of Shibuya:
https://www.themillennials.jp/shibuya?lang=en

And food prices:...[More]

For those also running into issues with starred places on Mobile not showing on desktop:
https://www.reddit.com/r/GoogleMaps/comments/97inxv/saved_places_stars_not_showing_up_on_desktop_when/

Basically the saved place is not being saved correctly with proper date.  To fix, you need to go to Bookmarks and resave each that has a Nan date.

Found @dillongoo's fan animation sadly more satisfying to watch than the second season. #OnePunchMan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niXMKRey9Yg

Had an idea for a story recently for if society found a way to make someone naturally like the taste of healthy foods (like vegetables, etc) - imagine if what you liked and craved lined up with what was good for you.  It sounds and all seems well, everyone eating better diets and enjoying better lifestyles.  Then imagine one day unexplained animal attacks start leaving people dead and torn up, seemingly at random and in generally urban settings with no dangerous wild predators.  As the story goes on, footage and evidence start to reveal the attacks seem to come from not any animal but a human.  The authorities track down and arrest one suspect, but the killings continue, seemingly at random and with no motive.  It turns out not to be any one person but people at random who suddenly go mad for human meat.  The commonality is they've all been genetically modified to like the taste of whatever is good for them, and it worked too well.  Because the healthiest...[More]

Something to remember to do every time you add SQL users to an Azure database.
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/19334041/the-select-permission-was-denied-on-the-object-users-database-xxx-schema

Bitcoin is moving so fast that call options on @LedgerX are priced below parity, as if $BTC was still below $11K. Literally free money (just buy the call and sell one Bitcoin to net the difference). #Bitcoin #BTC

Personal theory on where the #USDT is going - it's actually lent out on #Bitfinex. Risk-free return for the minters while collecting borrow fees during $BTC rallies. The thought came to mind when I noticed a $77M lending wall in their funding page at the same time the $100M USDT headline came out. Other exchanges having increased borrow rates once $BTC broke $9000, but the rates on Bitfinex stayed about the same.

Bitcoin Options Price Feed Data and Analysis on LedgerX

This is a spreadsheet I created to compare what call or put options are best to buy, specifically using this for Bitcoin options on LedgerX but can be used with any options really.  You can essentially use this as an API for LedgerX options price data into your own scripts as well by using the ImportRange function.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1dZbFjCrr2FykdPvE4UVLp8kOO5Iox9lmctSmfqSTq1I/edit#gid=0

Sometimes the...[More]

For me it's still easier to flag a taxi in #NYC. It'd be great if you can flag @Uber or @Lyft the same way and just swipe QR codes to pay. Then you don't have to wait 5 min for the app to find drivers or for someone else further away to circle the block after accidentally passing you a few times.  Since many drivers already label their cars with Uber or Lyft signs, this is sort of part way there already.  The only thing missing is for a way to pay without driver searching, which would be solved by QR scanning the driver's phone when the passenger steps in to bypass the search process.