• 16 Posts
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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 6th, 2023

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  • We all could see that Unity’s layoff was coming, that pricing backlash not only drove away many developers, also probably was driven by troubling financial within the organization.

    Twitch is sort of unexpected, but when I see the number of impromptu rules they rolled out and rolled back last year, whether from restricting multi-streaming, to limiting showing brands logo on stream, to restricting / unrestricting female streamers from showing too much skin, etc. I assume that means that even with all those intrusive ads, Twitch is still losing money.

    I guess from now on, when a tech company starts to arbitrarily change their T&C / rules to either protect their revenue / market share, and maybe rolling back from backlashes, then it’s a sign that there’s trouble brewing (if you work at those companies, beware)




  • I’ve seen quality drops of Duolingo, ever since their … IPO, sadly.

    Anyway, here’s some ways you can milk the rest of the Duolingo before completely abandoning it.

    • Use the web version, and type in all the answers if it’s possible. Selecting words are good for introducing new words (and reminder in case you forgot), but by typing it on your own, it’s faster to commit into memory.
    • Use classroom mode to get unlimited hearts, create your own classroom and invite yourself in. I assume that Duolnigo will probably eventually stop this loophole
    • Use search engine to search for the sentences you’re unsure of. No, don’t use machine translation, but search on the internet, and see if the sentence ever being used by the sites (news, academic, or personal homepage) using the target language.

    I sadly still don’t know what other comparable free alternatives to Duolingo. Anki is great, but it’s largely flashcard for words, not sentences (unless you want to create your own deck). The others require subscription fee.

    Other methods? Search for pdf of language grammar files, there are a lot out there. Some are godawful to read, especially those ‘Comprehensive Grammar Guide’ books. Some are amazing, e.g. Tae Kim’s Guide to Japanese.










  • sub_o@beehaw.orgtoMusic@beehaw.orgGetting Back Into Music
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    11 months ago

    I was looking for a Sitar, it was really expensive.

    Anyway, if you’re looking into beginner music theory, musictheory.net is a good place to start.

    The moment I understand how to do all the diatonic seventh chords of a key, how to construct scales & chords, and how it ties to modes, it makes a lot of thing easier to process. E.g. knowing what notes / chords to play when you’re in certain key.

    It’s even easier when applied to guitar, since I can learn D minor 7 in one shape, and I can use the same shape for all other minor 7 chords (in the same inversion).

    I have a hard time finding free piano sheet music, so I mostly use MusicNotes, which is not free, and the viewer is really not good. For guitar, maybe spend some money on Guitar Pro, and go to ultimate-guitar.com to find tabs to download.

    To delve more about piano chords, I use Chordie App, but if you’re just venturing out, I don’t think you should get it yet.




  • I finished (again) God of War 2018. I thought it was going to sour on me, just like how my 2nd playthrough of Horizon Zero Dawn did (and subsequently my 1st playthrough of Forbidden West). But no, it’s still a very good game. Combat is simple but still satisfying, side quests aren’t excessive like Forbidden West, story is still good but less intense than TLoU. My only complaint is that the fast travel is just way too slow. I’m looking forward to Ragnarök now.

    Here are some games that I really enjoyed playing/replaying last year
    • FINAL FANTASY XVI
    • Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon
    • Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII - Reunion
    • Live A Live
    • PARANORMASIGHT: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo
    • Tactics Ogre: Reborn
    • The Case of the Golden Idol
    • Voodoo Detective
    • Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising
    • Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge
    • Shin Megami Tensei: Persona
    • Sword of the Vagrant
    • Tail Concerto
    • The Bizarre Adventures of Woodruff and the Schnibble
    • Wild Arms
    • Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana
    • Ys: Memories of Celceta
    • Zero Escape Trilogy
    • God of War

    My top is probably FF16, I have soft spot for this type of siblings story, also loving the Asura’s Wrath section.


  • No, there’s a mac version of retroarch. OpenEmu is a bit better in term of user interface.

    And RetroArch has a history of harassing emulator devs, e.g. Stenzek who made Duckstation, were harassed by them until Stenzek went hiatus. IIRC, they might have harassed Near (developer of Snes9x), Near eventually killed themself.

    I try to minimize the use of RetroArch




    • I finished the first Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney from the remake trilogy

      • The game is really frustrating, because at times it feels more like you’re supposed to guess what’s the developer want you to do, instead of presenting things based on logic / evidence to the witness’ statement
      • The writing can be very awful, some characters are just straight up annoying in order to pad the game. People veer off conversations all the time, trying to be funny, but they are not. And the melodrama that’s supposed to convey the character’s feeling, can be repeated on every new scene that it’s very tiring to play thru it.
    • I’ve also finished Curse of the Monkey Island

      • It’s still a such a hilarious delightful game. Many people stopped by my stream to tell me that they love this game. I was expecting to the game to be not clicking with me since Ron Gilbert departed after Monkey Island 2, but apparently it’s still a very good game.
      • My main complaint is the clicking mechanic, where you need to click and hold to bring up the talk / observe / use option.
    • I’m currently replaying God of War (2008)

      • Apparently I forgot to upload my save to the cloud, so I can’t do NG+
      • It’s still a very good game. I’m at the Alfheim region now, and unlike Horizon Zero Dawn, I have yet to feel fatigue replaying this game. Maybe it’d happen later in game