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Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff: The Apache Helicopter of Toaster Ovens

In the latest episode of their crispy-in-a-good-way podcast, Ken and Robin talk agency in the sandbox, air frying, Alphonse Bertillon, and numbers stations.



  • Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff

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Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff: Yell Down Into the Hollers

In the latest episode of their unswervingly loyal podcast, Ken and Robin talk Night's Black Agents vampire concealment, Gideon & Longknife, Robin's Yellow King novel, and Time Inc vs the Iowa caucuses.



  • Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff

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Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff: The Toppling is the Point

In the latest episode of their feathery but unruffled podcast, Ken and Robin talk history spoilers, political pigeons, Sarah Bernhardt, and the Dark Watchers.



  • Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff

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Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff: The Owl Costume Never Pulled

In the latest episode of their swelegant podcast, Ken and Robin talk GUMSHOE One-2-Ones you should writer, an Esperanto commune, screwball comedies, and the Takenouchi Documents.




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Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff: Vigorous Deaccessioning Policy

In the latest episode of their high-flying double-decker podcast, Ken and Robin talk making mind control fun to play, Nadar, the occult adventures of Bruce Lee & Jimi Hendrix, and the Rotodyne.




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Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff: Existence Does Exist

In the latest episode of their safely sheltering podcast, Ken and Robin talk remote play tips, secret museum scans,  war movies you can nerdtrope into Yellow King RPG: The Wars scenarios, and USAF involvement in UFO patents.



  • Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff

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Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff: Sonia Plus Melted Cheese

In the latest episode of their thoroughly vetted podcast, Ken and Robin talk converting standard GUMSHOE scenarios to QuickShock, a Ukraine mole, QuestWorlds with Ian Cooper, and moving Lovecraft to Chicago.



  • Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff

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Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff: Fruit Cutting Policies

In the latest episode of their correctly advertised podcast, Ken and Robin talk intelligent maps, Guelphs vs Ghibellines, bad place psychology, and a terrible novel and/or occult tome.




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Congress Sets Up Taxpayers to Eat $454 Billion of Wall Street’s Losses. Where Is the Outrage?

Congress Sets Up Taxpayers to Eat $454 Billion of Wall Street’s Losses. Where Is the Outrage?

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 7, 2020 ~ Beginning on March 24 of this year, Larry Kudlow, the White House Economic Advisor, began to roll out the most deviously designed bailout of Wall Street in the history of America. After the Federal Reserve’s secret $29 trillion bailout of Wall Street from 2007 to 2010, and the exposure of that by a government audit and in-depth report by the Levy Economics Institute in 2011, Kudlow was going to have to come up with a brilliant strategy to sell another multi-trillion-dollar Wall Street bailout to the American people. The scheme was brilliant (in an evil genius sort of way) and audacious in employing an Orwellian form of reverse-speak. The plan to bail out Wall Street would be sold to the American people as a rescue of “Main Street.” It was critical, however, that all of the officials speaking to the … Continue reading

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Home workouts 101: Creative ways these innovators are staying fit

As the coronavirus pandemic has forced us to break out of our normal sports and fitness routines, these innovators -- and professional athletes -- are making the most of their time at home with creative takes on the games and workouts we know and love.




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Timofei Shatrov: Previewing images in and out of SLIME REPL

As any Common Lisp coder knows, a REPL is an incredibly useful tool. It can be used not just for development, but for running all sorts of tasks. Personally, I don't bother making my Lisp tools into executable scripts and just run them directly from SLIME. As such, any operation that requires leaving the REPL is quite inconvenient. For me, one such operation was viewing image files, for example in conjunction with my match-client:match tool. So lately I've been researching various methods to incorporate this functionality into the normal REPL workflow. Below, I present 3 methods that can be used to achieve this.

Open in external program

This one's easy. When you want to view a file, launch an external process with your favorite image viewer. On Windows a shell command consisting of the image filename would launch the associated application, on Linux it's necessary to provide the name of the image viewer.

(defvar *image-app* nil) ;; set it to '("eog") or something

(defun view-file-native (file)
  (let ((ns (uiop:native-namestring file)))
    (uiop:launch-program (if *image-app*
                             (append *image-app* (list ns))
                             (uiop:escape-shell-token ns)))))

Note that uiop:launch-program is used instead of uiop:run-program. The difference is that launch- is non-blocking - you can continue to work in your REPL while the image is displayed, whereas run- will not return until you close the image viewer.

Also note that when the first argument to run/launch-program is a string, it is not escaped, so I have to do it manually. And if the first argument is a list, it must be a program and a list of its arguments, so merely using (list ns) wouldn’t work on Windows.

Inline image in REPL

The disadvantage of the previous method is that the external program might steal focus, appear on top of your REPL and disrupt your workflow. And it's well known that Emacs can do everything, including viewing images, so why not use that?

In fact, SLIME has a plugin specifically for displaying images in REPL, slime-media. However it’s difficult to find any information on how to use it. Eventually I figured out that SWANK (SLIME’s CL backend) needs to send an event :write-image with appropriate arguments and slime-media's handler will display it right in the REPL. The easiest way is to just send the file path. The second argument is the resulting image's string value. If you copy-paste (sorry, "kill-yank") it in the repl, it would act just like if you typed this string.

(swank::send-to-emacs '(:write-image "/path/to/test.png" "test"))

You can even send raw image data using this method. I don't have anything on hand to generate raw image data so here's some code that reads from a file, converts it to a base64 string and sends it over SWANK.

(with-open-file (in "/path/to/test.png" :direction :input  :element-type '(unsigned-byte 8))
                (let* ((arr (make-array (file-length in) :element-type '(unsigned-byte 8)))
                       (b64 (progn (read-sequence arr in) (cl-base64:usb8-array-to-base64-string arr))))
                  (swank::send-to-emacs `(:write-image ((:data ,b64 :type swank-io-package::png)) "12345"))))

Note that the first argument to :write-image must be a list with a single element, which is itself a plist containing :data and :type keys. :data must be a base64-encoded raw image data. :type must be a symbol in swank-io-package. It’s not exactly convenient, so if you’re going to use this functionality a helper function/macro might be necessary.

Image in a SLIME popup buffer

Inline images are not always convenient. They can’t be resized, and will take up as much space as is necessary to display them. Meanwhile EMACS itself has a built-in image viewer (image-mode) which can fit images to width or height of a buffer. And SLIME has a concept of a “popup buffer” which is for example used by macroexpander (C-c C-m) to display the result of a macro expansion in a separate window.

Interestingly, slime-media.el defines an event :popup-buffer but it seems impossible to trigger it from SWANK. It is however a useful code reference for how to create the popup buffer in ELisp. This time we won’t bother with “events” and just straight up execute some ELisp code using swank::eval-in-emacs. However by default, this feature is disabled on Emacs-side, so you’ll have to set Emacs variable slime-enable-evaluate-in-emacs to t in order for this method to work.

Also Emacs must be compiled with ImageMagick for the resizing functionality to work.

Anyway, the code to view file in the popup buffer looks like this:

(defun view-file-slime (file &key (bufname "*image-viewer*"))
  (let ((ns (namestring file)))
    (swank::eval-in-emacs
     `(progn
        (slime-with-popup-buffer (,bufname :connection t :package t)
          (insert-image (create-image ,ns))
          (image-mode)
          (setf buffer-file-name ,ns)
          (not-modified)
          (image-toggle-display-image))
        ;; try to resize the image after the buffer is displayed
        (with-current-buffer ,bufname (image-toggle-display-image))))))
    ))

Arriving to this solution has required reading image-mode’s source code to understand what exactly makes image-mode behave just like if the image file was opened in Emacs via C-x C-f. First off, image-mode can be a major and a minor mode - and the minor mode is not nearly as useful. slime-with-popup-buffer has a :mode keyword argument but it would cause image-mode to be set before the image is inserted, and it will be a minor mode in this case! Therefore (image-mode) must be called after insert-image.

Next, the buffer must satisfy several conditions in order to get image data from the filename and not from the buffer itself. Technically it shouldn’t be necessary, but I couldn’t get auto resizing to work when data-p is true. So I set buffer-file-name to image’s filename and set not-modified flag on.

Next, image-toggle-display-image is called to possibly resize the image according to image-mode settings. It's called outside of slime-with-popup-buffer for the following reason: the buffer might not yet be visible and have any specific dimensions assigned to it, and therefore resizing will do nothing.

Here’s an example of how calling this function looks in Emacs.

The position of the popup buffer depends on whether the original Emacs window is wide enough or not. I think it looks better when it’s divided vertically. Use M-x image-transform-fit-to-height or M-x image-transform-fit-to-width to set up the auto-resizing method (it gets remembered for future images). Unfortunately there’s no way to fit both height and width, at least with vanilla Emacs. I prefer fit-to-width because in case the image is too tall, it is possible to scroll the image vertically with M-PgDn and M-PgUp from the other buffer. Unlike other image-mode buffers, this buffer supports a shortcut q to close itself, as well as various SLIME shortcuts, for example C-c C-z to return to the REPL.

That's it for now, hope you enjoyed this overview and if you happen to know a better way to display images in Emacs, I would be interested to hear about it.




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South Kingstown Beach House














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Citywide Blackout: Steampunk Dragons

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I've been podcast! Or at least my words have, podded up into an electronic bundle and cast out into the Noosphere. Over on Citywide Blackout, I discuss The Iron Dragon's Mother, worldbuilding, and the novel I wrote with Gardner Dozois--City Under the Stars.

It is impossible to exaggerate the influence Gardner had on my life. Over the course of a single evening, he and Jack Dann taught me how to write.  He and I and Jack, in various combinations, wrote stories together and routinely sold them to publications like Playboy, Penthouse, and (this always amused Gardner hugely) High Times. Gardner and his wife, Susan Casper, were good friends to me and to Marianne for over forty years.

But then Susan died and, a little later, Gardner did too, leaving our last collaboration unfinished. But he'd told me how it would end and so I finished it so all the world could discover that he'd finished on a high note. I wanted one last novel, to stand as a monument to him.

You can hear the entire story by clicking here.


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Mixed feelings around hockey about holding NHL draft early

Mixed feelings around hockey about holding NHL draft early




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12-Tone Music, explained without needless worship

Vi Hart, adept at mathematics, music, and explaining things, made this video that explains the point (and the lack of point, too) of 12-tone music:




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A new comic (in 2 languages) about Ig Nobel Prize winners

A new comic strip—in Russian and in English—about some of the curious characters who have won Ig Nobel Prizes. The series appears on Instagram.




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Out of school? Make Friends Challenge

Hi all.  Check out some of the really great party ideas some of you have added to my last post.  Watch the What’s New on the homepage.  Soon we’ll be doing some of them.  Continue to send me your party ideas – you guys rock. I have a challenge for you – how many NEW friends can […]




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The Caffeine Traces Give the Car About 100 More Horsepower

The tail light cover used to be a plastic Folgers can. I know because the label is still on it.



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  • car-repairs-tail-lights

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How to make a bug out bag

When this website was focused on post apocalyptic survival one of the topics I mentioned was how to create a “bug out bag”. These are ready made emergency packs that you would grab when staying in your home was not an option. A bug out bag or emergency bag can be used for more then the possible collapse of civilization as we know it. In the event of a natural disaster, or if your stranded in the middle of nowhere, having an emergency supply of necessities can save your life.




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How to pack a bug out bag

Now that you know what essentials you need to pack in your bug out bag, we can now pack it. But packing your bug out bag isn’t just stuffing it in a big ball and hoping for the best. You need to pack it in an organized manner that allows you to find things quickly and know exactly where they are, and allow you to easily keep track of your bug out bag’s inventory when it’s being stored. As a former soldier I can’t stress the importance of keeping things organized and neat because when your adrenaline is going and your in a fight or flight state you won’t be thinking rationally. So here’s how you pack your bug out bag effectively.




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A basic understanding of youtube copyright

Posting videos on YouTube can be a great way to show off your video editing skills, post video blogs, or even your own mini series. Because YouTube is the largest video sharing site it’s also a great way to promote products, or your website to thousands new potential viewers. But what happens when you post a video and it’s either slapped with a copyright infringement or banned all together, and what are the consequences to your account?




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How to get your youtube videos more hits

YouTube and other video sharing sites like Vimeo for example are great places to get traffic to your website or blog. But there only as effective as the traffic those video receive, makes sense right. Obviously if your vides are getting next to no hits, your website will see little to no increase in traffic, which in a word sucks. So for this post I'm going to go over some simple steps you can use if your new to YouTube to help get your videos noticed. In the next post I'll cover some ways you can take those videos and use them to get traffic back to your site.




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How to use youtube to get more traffic

In my last post I showed some simple ways you can use to help get your videos more views and subscribers. Now let's talk about getting some of that traffic over to your website or blog. Being that YouTube is the most used search engine in the world right now, and showing no signs of slowing down, this is something you want to tap into.




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How To Pick The Right Backpack For Your Bug Out Bag

So you’ve decided to make a bug out bag, you’ve picked all the items you know will be the most effective. But what about the bug out bag itself? Selecting the right pack is just as important as what you put inside it, after all this will probably be on your back for a good length of time. The last thing you want is a bag that either isn’t strong enough to hold the weight of your equipment, and doesn’t fit you properly causing pain and discomfort. Here are some things to look for when selecting the proper bug out bag for your emergency supplies. The first thing you want to do before you buy anything is know what your budget is. Check online and store flyers to see what brands they have for sale and compare prices. Other sources to investigate are websites such as Ebay, Craigslist, or Kijiji, to see if there’s some second hand bags that are in good shape. Also check with places like Amazon.com and U.S Calvary (U.S Calvary deals with military and police clothing and equipment) And of course look for local military surplus stores. Now you want to decide what type of bug out bag you want to use. All bags can be broken down into three categories.




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How To Become A YouTube Partner

If you’ve spent some time on Youtube you’ve probably heard of their partner program, and that you can make money from your videos through revenue sharing. This means that you put ads on your videos and get paid for them. Sounds good right but what do you need to do to be a partner and is it worth it? How to become a YouTube partner, to partner with YouTube you have to meet some criteria before they’ll consider you for a partnership. There are four things that YouTube analyzes before they accept or reject your application, they are 1. Subscribers And Friends 2. Video Views 3. Daily Video View Count 4. Copyrighted content




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How To Protect Your YouTube Videos

Recently a friend of mine who creates fan videos like me had one of his videos copied and re uploaded onto YouTube. The copied version was almost 100 percent identical except for a 2 second picture of a movie poster at the beginning, and a short video about Christian persecution attached to the end. Apart from that it was the same video, music and everything. The reality is this is a very common problem amongst people who upload videos on or other video sharing sites and it’s extremely easy to do. There are countless numbers of sites where you can download videos and easily upload them onto your channel and claim them as your own. So how do you protect your YouTube videos from being copied?




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How To Make A Bug Out Bag - Bug Out Hygiene Kit

When it comes to bug out bags one of the biggest overlooked areas is how to making a hygiene kit. Personally I find it strange considering cleanliness is a huge factor in overcoming a disaster or when the SHTF. The obvious reason is keeping clean helps keep away infection. It also plays a big role in morale; I mean who the hell wants to feel grubby and greasy for weeks on end? I know I don’t and I’m willing to bet you don’t either...................... While making a bug out hygiene kit isn’t complicated it still takes some planning to figure out what you’re going to need. So with that being said here are some things that I pack in my bug out bag so you can get some ideas of what to put in yours.




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How To Link To The Middle Of A YouTube Video (blog post)

Let say you found a video you want to share with some friends. Or perhaps you want to post it to your website. The problem is that it’s long and the stuff you want people to see is in the last half of it.




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Should You Stay Or Should You Go - Bugging In Vs Bugging Out

To bug in or to bug out that is the question. Nobody can argue that being prepared in case of an emergency or disaster is a bad thing. If your like myself and live in an area that’s prone to natural disasters (in my case earthquakes) you would be very stupid not to have some level of preparation. For many this means having a bug out bag packed with all the survival goodies one could ever want and ready to go at all times. Again I think it’s a very smart idea and I have one myself. But just because you have a bug out bag, doesn’t mean bugging out is your only option when the SHTF...............




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Optimizing Your YouTube Channel And Videos For Traffic

YouTube is one of the most important marketing tools out there when it comes to getting the message out about your business or your website. It’s currently the second most used search engine behind Google (which owns YouTube by the way) and is the biggest video sharing site in the world. Like it or hate it having videos on YouTube is a good way to promote what you have. But just having videos isn’t enough to get a tonne of traffic; you need to know how to optimize your YouTube channel and videos to get more traffic......................




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Why Outbound Links Are Good For You

Outbound linking it seems to go against the grain to get your site noticed. You’ve probably heard over and over again about the importance of having high quality back links pointing to your site, these links help boost your search ranking, page rank, and hopefully get you some more traffic. Outbound linking you would think would be the opposite of that. It turns out though that outbound links are good for you. Having quality outbound links can have some big benefits to your website or blog...................




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Squeeze More Earnings Out Of Your Adsense Account In 5 Minutes Or Less (Blog Post)

Google Adsense it’s usually the first place people go who want to monetize their websites and blogs with the hope those Adsense earnings will net them some big cash. Normally these ads will be matched to your site based on the content and browsing history of the people visiting your site. The goal is to tailor make ads that will hopefully be appealing for people to click on......................




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Heat Maps What About Them And Where To Get Them

It doesn’t matter what website you’re looking at, every site online has something that naturally catches your attention. It could be a picture, a graphic, a video, there will be something that naturally stands out and gets your attention. If you’re looking at turning your website into a source of revenue you want your ads or products displayed in such a way that they grab your visitor’s attention. There are two ways you can go about doing this, the wrong way which is to force your ads on people which will drive them away from your site. Or using heat maps to attract your visitors to them without forcing them..........




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5 Ways To Make A Fire In An Emergency Without Matches

Knowing how to start a fire without matches is an important skill you need to know. Personally I recommend you never venture into the woods be it a camping or hiking trip without a means to start a fire, such as a magnesium fire starter, or wind and waterproof matches. That being said, in a disaster or emergency situation you might not have access to those emergency supplies you have stored in your bug out bag or emergency survival kit.......................




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5 Of The Most Overused And Annoying Songs On YouTube (Blog Post)

I like making videos on Youtube, its fun. And while I’m far from being a pro I learn new tricks with each new video. One of the things I’ve learned from trial and error is what songs work and what doesn’t. Sure it doesn’t really matter if your videos are only for a hobby or just to show something off. However if your looking to get your name out there, get your videos popular, and not have people leave after 10 seconds then understanding what songs work and don’t is important.........




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Fallout New Vegas Lonesome Road Trailer

Say what you want about Fallout New Vegas with its glitch problems it’s a hard game to not get addicted to. When it comes to post apocalyptic RPG/ shooter games, Fallout is the best out there. Like its predecessor Fallout 3, New Vegas has additional downloadable content to enhance the overall story and make the game more enjoyable…..well I can’t say that Honest Hearts made the game more enjoyable with its thick religious overtones that felt more preachy then back story..................




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Early superannuation withdrawals frozen as hacking fallout revealed - Daily Telegraph

  1. Early superannuation withdrawals frozen as hacking fallout revealed  Daily Telegraph
  2. Calls for better superannuation protection  Busselton Dunsborough Mail
  3. AFP investigating 'sophisticated' theft of $120,000 from 150 super accounts  Sydney Morning Herald
  4. Is your super payout at risk? Thousands drained by fraudsters in COVID scam  7NEWS.com.au
  5. Police confirm up to 150 victims of early super access fraud  The New Daily
  6. View Full coverage on Google News






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Waiter, there's a fly in my waffle: Belgian researchers try out insect butter

Belgian waffles may be about to become more environmentally friendly.