Because I express my creativity through shitcode, I named my development hardware appropriately.

It’s actially xn–og8h8z because /etc/hostname is allowed to contain only ASCII Latin characters, numbers, and dash, but converting emojis to Punycode using command idn 🌈💩 does the job.

I can log into my Raspberry using command ssh user@🌈💩 however Bash login shell still shows untranslated Punycode hostname instead of rainbow poop symbols, so the support is not yet fully there, and avahi-resolve-address shows hex codes of UTF-8 emojis.

I’m using Debian 13 btw.

When I open Lemmy Connect, I see this. No frontpage posts are loading, however I can open my profile and read my own posts.

I am posting this from a mobile web browser like a savage. Please help!

Components:

• ESP32-S3-Zero with RGB LED. I’ve selected it over more energy efficient ESP32-C6 because bigger chip looks better, and it’s placed symmetrically.
• two CR1220 3V batteries.
• copper wire from Ethernet cable (single-strand obviously).
• lead-free solder (it’s a ring, don’t wear lead on your fingers).
• hot glue gun, because I could not make a battery holder using just wire.
• a piece of small diameter heat-shrink tube for copper wire.
• a jewellery file (optional, only needed if you actually going to wear the thing).

Instructions:

• flash the firmware first, because batteries will obstruct the USB port.
• it is recommended to file off all sharp edges on the board before you start soldering, it will be harder to smoothen the edges afterwards without scratching the copper wire.
• smoothen your wire, wrap it around some finger-size object like a tube of flux, cut the wire spiral into rings.
• solder wire rings into one side of the board, use every hole except for 5V and GND, and TX/RX on the other side.
• put the board onto your finger, measure and cut the other side of the wire rings to match your finger size, solder wire rings to the board.
• Glue two batteries together in sequence, then glue them to the top of the USB connector. Watch out for polarity - CR1220 has positive charge on the body and negative charge on the contact plate, you need to put the negative electrode onto the USB connector.
• wrap a stripped copper wire around another wire with isolation on it.
• bend both wires so that the stripped wire will go into 5V hole, and the isolated wire will go into GND and RX holes. The isolated wire is only needed as a mechanical support, because you should not solder another end of 5V wire to the TX or RX hole, or you risk frying the chip.
• add a piece of heat-shrink tube to the stripped wire. You need to make contact with the battery at the top and prevent the wire from contacting the battery at the bottom. You can try to leave a bit of isolation on the wire, but it’s easier to use the tube.
• solder wires to the board.
• do not to make a common mistake of connecting 3V3 and GND together, or GND and 5V, like I did. 3V3 wire goes under the board onto the finger, GND wire goes above the board to hold the batteries.
• keep wire ends from sticking out of the mounting holes when soldering, they are going to scratch you when you wear the ring. You can file them off afterwards, but it’s easier to not make them stick out in the first place.

Firmware: github.com/pelya/esp32-led-cycle-colors

The only thing it does is cycle LED with random colors. It shuts off power by pressing BOOT button or after 5 minutes. To turn it back on, press RESET button. There’s no WiFi, Bluetooth, or LCD screen, but at least the LED is bright.

I did not measure how long will these two batteries last. When they are empty, I’ll need to rip off hot glue blobs from the board, which would be pretty easy since I only put hot glue onto metallic surfaces.

And it’s absolutely not waterproof, hopefully the finger grease will keep to the underside of the board and won’t short the battery.

Full video: youtube.com/shorts/QZi4RBir2cE

For those who want to try it at home:

ping 33333333
ping 55555555

I am sorry, two random Internet users in Korea and Germany, your IP addresses are simply special.

Google had removed my X server app from Play Store, because it was too old (is 2022 too old?)

But no more! I have recompiled it for the newest Android version and published it back. And you can use it to run GUI apps from Termux. Launch X server first, then run these commands in Termux, then switch back to X server:

pkg install x11-repo
pkg install xfce4
export DISPLAY=127.0.0.1:0
export PULSE_SERVER=tcp:127.0.0.1:4713
xfce4-session

Termux now has it’s own X server, my app is pretty similar, except that it’s landscape by default.

I have mixed sour cream with Marmite to make it spread more evenly over banana, and the taste is… not good. The salt overpowers all other components. It’s even worse than plain Marmite banana, because you can actually taste the banana before Marmite diffuses over your tongue. The best combination was cream banana without Marmite, to no surprise.

Marmite cream oat cookie is a surprising discovery. The overpowering saltness of Marmite is balanced by the overpowering sweetness of the oat cookie, the same way salted caramel works. I don’t think the cream is even necessary, you can rub Marmite on the cookie’s hard surface much easier than on the soft banana.

If combining two things from a fridge could be called a new recipe. It tastes good, I promise.

The shop also had regular sprink bottles with the same cologne, but this bottle is shaped like a fuel can, so it looked manlier to me. It contains 80% alcohol, so it’s also a disinfectant and an after-shave.

I don’t need any fancy tiling window managers. One fullscreen window per desktop, and 12 virtual desktops, that was my workflow for 10 years. Then I incorporated KDE activities into my workflow, which are exactly like virtual desktops but switched with Meta-Tab not with Ctrl-F1 - Ctrl-F12. Wonderful!

And then, Plasma devs broke it. Switching activities now puts my foreground fullscreen window (one per desktop) into background, and switches keyboard focus to the desktop. Give me back my keyboard shortcuts, and you could also rename Plasma back to KDE while you’re at it, thank you very much.

At least there is a bug opened, but it’s doubtful that Plasma devs will fix it before Debian 13 release. I can’t even find motivation to update my OS anymore.

Also works for searches ‘Times new roman’ and ‘Courier new font’, but not for ‘Lucida console font’ or ‘Dejavu sans font’.

1. Get half-kilo of fresh tomatoes, three onions, and three carrots. You can use the cheapest tomatoes for this, the heat treatment will average the taste. Wash everything. Chop onions and carrots, dump into the frying pan. Add salt.

2. Fry diced onions and carrots in a pan, using a generous finger-thick layer of oil, preferrably olive, until the onions don’t sting anymore and carrots start to soften.

3. Cut tomatoes in 2 pieces each, you’ll mash them anyway so thin slices do not matter. Dump tomatoes into the pan. Cover with a lid, cook on a slow fire for about 10 minutes until they become sauce. Mash and stir each 3 minutes so they won’t burn. Cooking less will preserve taste of fresh tomatoes, cooking longer will make it taste closer to canned pasta sauce. But they won’t have that taste of the can that you will get with canned tomatoes.

4. Add the secret ingredient - half-kilo of canned pork. This is an optional step - if you prefer taste over calories, it’s better to prepare a separate meat dish instead. If you want to add hot pepper, add it now so it will spread uniformly.

5. Boil pasta while tomatoes are cooking - the standard 500 gram package will do, preferably something with a lot of surface like penne so it can soak up more sauce.

6. Dump Italian or French spice mix into the pan. Turn off the heat, let it simmer for 1 minute so the herbs will soften.

7. Dump pasta into the pan. Done! Plating is optional, you can eat it straight from the pan. And the next day you can prepare another wonderful dish - yesterday’s pasta re-heated until it’s crusty.

Lemmy Connect attempts to add ?format=webp to the image URL when loading .gif image, this makes many Lemmy servers return an error. When opening the post in the web browser, without the extra addition to the image URL, the image loads correctly.

Post where the bug is present: lemmy.world/post/19556846

Link

I often want to copy some phrase from a post to search it on the web. Long-pressing post text minimizes this post into a single line, which is not very useful IMO, I would rather have text selection cursor like in a web browser.

Some studios are still releasing premium games in 2023. Undead Horde 2 is a dungeon crawler with no ads or IAP, and it costs $10.

It features 3D blocky graphics, although less blocky than Undead Horde 1. The combat is moderately paced and depends more on upgrades than on button mashing, most of the time your minions do all the fighting. There are no puzzles, just some fetch quests to progress the story.

I’ve unlocked all weapons in Vampire Survivors, and I’m too bored to grind the remaining 14 unlocks.

Please recommend me some proper, $10 up-front games.

I’ve alrealy played all versions of Space Marshals, Tesla vs Lovecraft, Tesla Force, Jydge, Crimsonland, Grind Infinity, Solomon Keep, PewPew, and Vampire Survivors (although it’s not twin stick but close enough).

Are there any new twin stick shooters, preferrably something I can pay for once and without IAP going up to $100?

I want to open large image with comments below when clicking on a post, like in Jerboa

Is there a way to cast my phone screen to TV using some kind of Tasker plugin? I’m using screen cast to view one specific app on a big TV, but the screen mirroring stops whenever the wifi blinks, and I’d like it to reconnect automatically.

I’ve encountered many, many mobile games where the character needs to perform five different actions, so the developer adds five separate buttons to the screen. Of course you will mis-tap them and die in the middle of a boss fight.

The best touch controls are achieved when the dev designs the game around touchscreen, not attempts to adapt touch controls for some existing game.

For platformers there are two movement buttons on the left, and three buttons on the right part of the screen - jump, attack, and alternate attack or some action like dodge. Any more buttons make the game hard to play. There is also a common mistake of making buttons the size of a thumbtack. Ideally the buttons should be as big as a 5 Euro coin, that would be a third or even a half of screen width for most phones.

My recommendations are SuperTux and Swordigo.

For twin-stick ahooters there are two joysticks, and maybe one or two extra action buttons above the right joystick, but not anything more.

The best examples are Space Marshals and Crimsonland.

Top-view RPGs and dungeon crawlers also tend to use twin stick controls. The gameplay tends to be more relaxed, because you can slways grind few more levels and don’t bother dodging enemy attacks.

Shoot-em-up is another type of game that works really well with the touchscreen. Your aircraft follows your finger no matter where you touch the screen, it’s simpe and it works well. There is a wide variety of quality shmups on Play Store, try OpenTyrian for some classic DOS gameplay.

Honorable mention to swipe controls. You can swipe up/down/left/right without aiming for a specific button and even without looking at the screen, ao it’s impossible to mis-tap the wrong button. The downside is that swiping is slower than taps, so the gameplay tends to be slower. Reaper is a good example.

First person shooters are okay for casual gaming, but playing any competitive Counter Strike clone like Critical Strike or Critical Force will earn you a friction burn on your finger, because you are swiping the screen non-stop to aim.

I’m not reviewing strategy games here, they can have 10-layer menus and dialogs and still be playable.

Some racing games support gyroscope as a replacement for the steering wheel, it works rather well.

And of course there are infinite runner games. I don’t want to call the whole infinite runner category trash, there are some good runner games like SmashHit or Vektor or Alto’s Odyssey, but if it’s three lanes infinite runner, you will watch ads each 30 seconds, and the gameplay is only fun for the first 30 seconds.

Flappy bird. Best touch controls ever, but the game itself is garbage.

There is a specific class of mobile gamers who are using gamepads. The gamepad is great for sure, you have a separate button for each finger, however the gamepad is more often than not bigger than the phone, so you are losing convenience and need clothing with huge pockets.