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absurdbootlegs · 7 months ago

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Jidan Electronic Co., Ltd.

Type: Bootleg Tamagotchi company, bootleg digital game company Founded: 2004 [source] Logo:

About: Jidan is well known for its truly strange infrared tamagotchi clones, such as Honey Lover (which is apparently two tamagotchis that graphically mate using infrared). They claim to be compatible with actual Tamagotchis.

Jidan also makes low-quality Gameboy Advance clones.

Notably, much of the packaging is in Spanish. Official Company Description:

Jidan Electronic Toys built in 2004, and the main products include all kind of handheld game like brick, virtual pet, infrared pet, and icon game etc. Except these popular game, we have a professional development team to develop and design new toy&game accroding to client requirements.

In 2005, we set up own wholesale store in GuangZhou to show our items and serve clients directly and conveniently.

As company setup, we have developed the closest relationship with several factories who in charge of the whole assembly process. They are the foundtion of production. Another partner is the software design team responsible for the application and R&D of electronic system. With their cooperation, we can create and produce all the items required.

We are a group conbiming the strength of market analysis, product design, programming, and manufacture. And we will offer the most various and competitive items to satisfy the market demand.

We design and produce all kind of handheld game, and electronic toys. With our own engineer team, we can have different solution for your unique market segment, change music, graphics, even the operation process would be our competitive strength.

Tama Bootlegs by Jidan:

(Eventually all of these will get their own posts)

Terradura Tama [Source] Description:

New member of infrared tamagotchi family, more advanced, convenient and interesting!

1. Advanced operation: Touch screen, operating with the stick. Lock model touch pen

2. Interactive game: Connecting with other infrared tamagotchi to exchange gifts, make friends, and even marry.

3. Vivid breeding process: Growth, marry requirement when getting mature and then give birth to a baby.

Tamagotcha Familitcha [Source] Description: New V5 version

Each time raises three tama characters

Chimney dasign

House shape color card

Accessory: Cute key

Conexión Animal [Source] Description:

Infrared star Tamagotchi, new member of infrared Tamagotchi family, more attractive.

1. New shape, adorable star for all dreaming liking children!

2. Interest: Has emotion, implys its master what to do and how to do; Lives as the similar way as human: Playing with and making friends with each other, choosing lovers when they grown up, and have their generation.

- New IC, new character installed.

- New LCD, more than 1000 dots, the characters and pictrues are more clearer and vivider.

- Gaining password after winning the game, inputting the password and get the secret gift.

3. Infrared connection with others to make friends and exchange gifs, enjoy the communication interest!

5. 1 Free laser pen, 3 AG13 battery and 4 changeable pen tips are enclosed.

9 Llave Animal [Source] Description:

New member of infrared tamagotchi family, more advanced, convenient and interesting!

1. Adding six shortcut keys: Convenient operation and quickly go to the different option. The shortcut key is blinking once pressed. 2. Interactive game: Connecting with other infrared tamagotchi to exchange gifts, make friends, and even marry. 3. Vivid breeding process: Growth, marry requirement when getting mature and then give birth to a baby.

- New IC, new character installed. - New LCD, more than 1000 dots, the characters and pictrues are more clearer and vivider. - Gaining password after winning the game, inputting the password and get the secret gift.

Infrared Tama Tamaschool [source] Description:

New member of infrared Tamagotchi family! More attractive, more smarter!

1. New shape, compack shape and touch screen operaton.

2. Class learning added, make the pet smarter and happier.

3. Interest: Has emotion, implys its master what to do and how to do; Lives as the similar way as human: Playing with and making friends with each other, choosing lovers when they grown up, and have their generation.

4. Infrared connection with others to make friends and exchange gifs, enjoy the communication interest

Honey Lover [source] Description:

*heart shape behind the screen to blink during connection. *connect to the bandai V1& V2 &V3 infrared tamagotchi.

----New IC, new character installed. ----New LCD,clearer and vivider. ----Gaining password after winning the game, inputting the password and get the secret gift.

* install 1 piece CR2032 battery in stead of 2 pcs AG13 batter, its exhausing time would last much longer. *lovely couple package to save some money for client. *zipper attached make it easier to hand on. *manual has been translated into eight language. *newest paper card design.

Animal Imaginado [source] Description: New member of infrared tamagotchi family, more advanced, convenient and interesting! 1. Interactive game: Connecting with other infrared tamagotchi to exchange gifts, make friends, and even marry. 2. Vivid breeding process: Growth, marry requirement when getting mature and then give birth to a baby. 3. New IC, new character installed. Gaining password after winning the game or sucessfully infrared connection with others, inputting the password and get the secret gift. 4. Blinking function - when infrared connect, the inlayed heart would blink. 5. Durable battery: 1 piece CR2032, supporting long process than AG13. 6. Various packing and manual: English, France, Spanish German Portuguese, Italian etc. These worthful gift includes: --calculator --watch --clock --pedometer --counter --game console --laser pen --tamagotchi holder --tamagotchi bag

Azotea Tama [1][2] Description:

1. Wireless connection to exchange gift, make friend, and game compete with others.

2. Touch screen operation and get rid of all rubber keys, more convenient.

3. New IC, new character installed.

4. New LCD, more than 1000 dots, the characters and pictures are clearer and vivider.

Ura-Pet [Source] Description:

Our company is specializing in handheld electronic game, including infrared tamagotchi, sudoku game and icon game. Additionally, OEM is available.

New member of infrared tamagotchi family, more advanced, convenient and interesting!

1. Star model with lovely color. 2. Interactive game: Connecting with other infrared tamagotchi to exchange gifts, make friends, and even marry. 3. Vivid breeding process: Growth, marry requirement when getting mature and then give birth to a baby.

Mini Tamagotchi [Source] Description:

New member of infrared Tamagotchi family! More attractive, more smarter!

1. New shape, mini size

2. Non-infrared function

3. As an onament for key or mobile phone

Keyring Tama [source] Description:

April new item, new design, more funny, we belong to the FAMI-TAMA!

1. The latest V5 familitchi version 2. Lock model with cute key 3. House shape color card

Raise generations of families with proper care and feeding, Communicate with friends using the newest infrared capabilities, Characters can visit friends, play games and give gifts, even marry to having baby, Requires 1 "CR203" battery (not included), Having eight countries language color cards to choose.

Non-Tama Virtual Pets by Jidan:

Tedy Virtual Pet [Source] Description: 1.interesting breeding process to feed him, bath him, and discipline him. 2.good attention will make him grow up well. 3.game practice could bring you much fun.

GBA Bootlegs/Other Bootlegs by Jidan:

MnEIO (Mario GBA bootleg) [Source] Description: --Mario should fight with the dragon who shot the fire ball. --Player should accumulate the score to enter the next level.

Keroro Game [Source] Description: Keroro and his company should practice their fighting skill.

Keroro Fighting Game [Source] Description: Keroro and his company should practice their fighting skill. The stand at different side to strick back each other.

NaruIIto Fighting [Source] Description: 1.NaRudo and his companies will practice their fighting skill in this game. 2.Successful defense will earn one point for player. 3.Speed will increase and vary as score accumulated.

Dragonnumen [1][2] Description: -wireless connection to fight to enemy -pedometer to trace the process of adventure -crash card to vary the shape of digimon immediately

#bootleg #knockoffs #crappyoffbrands #fakies #bootleg tamagotchi #toy knockoffs #tamagotchi #chinagotchi #spamagotchi #Jidan #company #naruto #Mario #digimon #gba

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simulation-machine · 2 years ago

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I was tagged by @teddybearsims! Thank yoooouuuu ♥

rules: shuffle your on repeat playlist & post the first ten tracks

From a playlist quite literally entitled "CURRENT OBSESSIONS" that has existed since 2014 and is 22 hour 37 minutes long.

"Get Down (feat. Mike Mictlan)" by P.O.S.

"The Space In Between" by How to Destroy Angels

"Dance Yrself Clean" by LCD Soundsystem

"Bloodbeat" by Patrick Wolf

"6 Underground" by Sneaker Pimps

"Rattlesnake" by St. Vincent

"Red Right Hand" by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

"Bitter Rivals" by Sleigh Bells

"Hold Up" by Beyoncé

"Inside Out" by Eve 6

tagging: @nitrozem, @simstrashkingdom, @lostinsixam, @marcishaun, @rebouks, @ethicaltreatmentofcowplants, & anyone else who wants to do this can claim I tagged them! <3 (ALSO if you've already done this and I missed this, feel free to disregard. Heck, if you even just don't wanna do it, skip it. I am the dad of 0 people to date and will continue to not be anyone's dad.)

#from the queue #look mom i was tagged in something neat!#fun tagging thing #survey #musics what i listen to #music what i like #rare nonsims content

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mariacallous · 8 months ago

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In June 2018, U.S. President Donald Trump visited Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, around 30 miles south of Milwaukee. Flanked by Republican Gov. Scott Walker, the president broke ground on a site designated for a $10 billion factory campus for Foxconn, the Taiwanese electronics manufacturing giant. “America is open for business more than it has ever been,” Trump said, adding that the factory would be the “eighth wonder of the world.”

The facility, which would produce liquid crystal displays—or LCDs—for television screens, promised to create as many as 13,000 jobs for the area. It would receive $3 billion in tax subsidies from the state, plus local incentives that put the total package at nearly $4.8 billion—the biggest corporate subsidy in Wisconsin’s history and the largest U.S. public subsidy offered to a foreign company to date.

The deal was emblematic of Trump’s trade and economic policy. He has campaigned on tearing up trade deals and pushing U.S. and foreign companies to build factories in the United States. But Foxconn’s plans never quite materialized. When U.S. President Joe Biden took office, he laid a new path to bring manufacturing back to southeastern Wisconsin. Both administrations have sought to curb China’s economic rise through protectionist policies, marking a profound change from the free trade ideology that long dominated Washington. Now Trump and his new opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, have descended on the state to make the case for their approach.

Racine County, where Mount Pleasant is located, is often called an electoral bellwether: The candidate who won the county has carried Wisconsin in every presidential election since 1980 with two exceptions, 1988 and 2020, the latter when 51 percent of voters in Racine County went for Trump but Biden won the state. This year, the key to Wisconsin seems to be a winning plan for the economy, which the state’s voters see as the most important issue. Wisconsin has the second-highest concentration of manufacturing employment in the country, and manufacturing has become a centerpiece of both candidates’ economic policy.

Trump is doubling down on his America First trade policies, proposing a significant escalation of tariffs across the board, especially against China, and easing regulations to encourage domestic manufacturing. Harris’s trade policies are less clear. She has criticized Trump’s sweeping tariffs as a “sales tax” on U.S. households, but she is expected to continue the targeted tariffs that Biden embraced. Harris is also likely to carry on Biden’s commitment to industrial policy: Last month, she outlined a $100 billion tax credit plan for key manufacturing sectors.

Voters in southeastern Wisconsin have seen the effects of these policy visions firsthand; now, they will have the chance to weigh in on which party got it right.

The Foxconn deal at first seemed like a masterstroke for Republicans. The company was regarded as a titan—known for manufacturing iPhones—and many people in the region were eager to hear Trump’s pledge to restore U.S. industrial might. But cracks soon emerged. In 2019, a Foxconn executive told Reuters that it was reconsidering its plans for the site. The company recommitted after pressure from Trump, but it missed its hiring targets, and years after the initial construction, reports found that much of the campus often went unused. (Foxconn has disputed these claims.)

Walker lost his 2018 reelection campaign to Democrat Tony Evers, who sought to renegotiate Foxconn’s incentive package once in office. Meanwhile, homes had been bulldozed, and Mount Pleasant was left with a substantial debt burden. Some of the deal’s skeptics felt vindicated. “It was all about politics,” former state Rep. Gordon Hintz, a Democrat, told the Washington Post last year. “You had a swing state President Trump needed to win. … For Foxconn, it was always about evading tariffs.”

Last year, there was another surge of investment in the region. The U.S. Commerce Department designated southeastern Wisconsin as one of 31 inaugural Tech Hubs under the CHIPS and Science Act. Microsoft bought land from Foxconn in Mount Pleasant and broke ground on an artificial intelligence data center. In May, Biden visited the nearby city of Racine when Microsoft announced an expanded $3.3 billion investment estimated to create as many as 2,000 permanent jobs. It was a promise made in the shadow of a bigger, broken one—but Biden vowed to keep it, and voters likely expect Harris to carry the torch.

Kelly Gallaher, the chair of the Racine County Democratic Party, is a longtime citizen activist who was an early critic of the Foxconn deal—as well as its champion, Mount Pleasant Village President David DeGroot, now a Republican candidate for the Wisconsin State Assembly. As new investment comes to the region and politicians court Wisconsin voters, she thinks that Foxconn’s ghost is still in the room. “There’s a lot of other issues at stake, but in Wisconsin, I’m never going to rule out that Foxconn isn’t also on people’s minds,” she said. “We’re constantly reminded of how it didn’t work out.”

Robert Kraig, the executive director of Citizen Action of Wisconsin, a progressive advocacy group, said Foxconn has become a “dirty word” to the group’s most active members. Kraig has found that people react unfavorably when other major projects—such as the $545 million in public funds approved by the Evers administration for renovations at the Milwaukee Brewers baseball stadium—are likened to the Foxconn deal. The disappointment with Foxconn seeded doubt about any candidate’s promises of economic development in the region, he said.

Others in the state are skeptical that the Foxconn deal still shapes voter sentiment. Brian Schimming, the chair of Wisconsin’s Republican Party and a former Walker administration official, said he thinks that most people understand the good intentions behind the deal. “We get very little flack about it,” he said, noting that though Walker and Trump are no longer in office, local politicians involved in the deal were reelected.

Meanwhile, Microsoft’s projects in southeastern Wisconsin have been galvanizing—but both Democrats and Republicans are taking credit for them. Biden’s May visit was meant to showcase his administration’s successful approach to industrial policy. Microsoft President Brad Smith attributed the expanded investment in part to the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS and Science Act. Evers called it a “watershed moment for Wisconsin.”

Republican politicians, meanwhile, see Evers and Biden as undeserving of the praise and seeking only to curry favor among voters. Rep. Bryan Steil, who succeeded former U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan in his Wisconsin seat, said in May that Biden “is looking for any opportunity to come [to Wisconsin], and he’s more than willing to come and take credit for things that he was not involved in and didn’t do.”

Foxconn supporters, many of whom made great efforts to distance themselves from the fallout of the deal, are also quick to claim victory for the Microsoft investment. They argue that without Foxconn and its corresponding infrastructure investments in the region, there would be no Microsoft deal. When he announced his State Assembly campaign this year, DeGroot highlighted his track record of attracting “numerous businesses like Microsoft,” notably omitting Foxconn.

“Everyone I’ve talked to in Kenosha County and Racine County is fired up about the Microsoft thing,” Schimming said. He suggested that the deal could expand further, though he did not provide specific details; Microsoft declined to comment. Although hopes are high, many locals and officials in Wisconsin acknowledge that the Microsoft deal bears some resemblance to the initial promises made by Foxconn. A major high-tech company again aims to build in the swing state ahead of an important election, promising big money and a lot of jobs.

But Democrats emphasize that this deal is different in key ways. The investment is more reasonably sized and comes from a domestic company with a better reputation, they say. Whereas Foxconn’s LCDs soon became obsolete in a fast-moving market, many experts see AI as a key industry for the future. And Foxconn had a history of overpromising elsewhere in the world, but Microsoft doesn’t have that baggage.

Wisconsin’s Democratic Party chair Ben Wikler added that the Microsoft deal is already more tangible than its predecessor. “The shovels are actually in the ground—and not just in the symbolic way,” he said. “The jobs are already here. You talk to the folks who build things in Wisconsin, they will say that there’s a list of projects that are looking for workers.”

Such job creation could come with other costs. The Foxconn deal drew criticism over its environmental record, but AI data centers have their own problems, starting with energy consumption. In May, electricity provider We Energies asked state utility regulators for permission to bill customers for $2 billion in natural gas investments due to increased energy demand, a move that environmentalists say will push the state’s climate goals out of reach. Some locals are also skeptical of Microsoft’s promises—wary that there are no legal requirements for the company to meet its original projections.

On Nov. 5, the presidential race will be the biggest draw for voters in southeastern Wisconsin, but there is plenty at stake down the ballot. A lively race is underway in the state’s 1st Congressional District, where Mount Pleasant is located, between incumbent Republican Bryan Steil and Democrat Peter Barca, who most recently served as Wisconsin’s revenue secretary. Barca received criticism within his party for effectively greenlighting the Foxconn deal as State Assembly minority leader, but he has a bigger legislative legacy than Foxconn alone. Although Steil has the lead in polls, Wikler—the state Democratic Party chair—called it the “best opportunity we’ve had to flip that district in a very long time.”

Harris and Trump have each come to Wisconsin in recent weeks. On Oct. 1, Trump visited a manufacturing plant in Waunakee, where he rallied around tariffs and flirted once again with the logic of incentivizing foreign companies with public funds to build factories in the United States. A few days later, at a rally in Ripon, which is considered the birthplace of the Republican Party, Harris spoke at length about the constitutional oath, casting herself as someone who upholds its promise and Trump as someone who violates it.

In Mount Pleasant, it remains to be seen which promises voters believe. “Microsoft is a big help, and we appreciate that, but we are very much still living with the failure of Foxconn, and we’re never going to get those 13,000 jobs,” Gallaher said. “And that is a shame. We would do ourselves a favor not to forget it too quickly.”

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sfwordsmith · 1 year ago

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The Astrohaus Freewrite Alpha – First Impressions

Behold the Freewrite Alpha – a distraction-free writing experience, reminiscent of the AlphaSmart Neo 2, its spiritual predecessor, which was discontinued in 2013. Now, in 2024, Astrohaus, the team behind the Freewrite series of writing devices, hopes to continue the legacy of the Neo line with its new portable writing device.

In this blog post I will give an in-depth look at my initial impressions of the Freewrite Alpha as someone with a background in writing fiction of lengths from novels all the way to short stories and flash fiction, as well as blog posts, poetry and song lyrics.

My experience is also bolstered by my fondness for trying out new writing software, devices, keyboards, typewriters and the like. I have used many laptops of various qualities, multiple mechanical keyboards and keyswitch types, bluetooth keyboards, a Royal Deluxe Typewriter, and an AlphaSmart Neo 2. Basically any input device I can get my hands on. I feel I am uniquely qualified in this manner to give a thorough review of how the Freewrite Alpha stacks up in the eyes of an educated consumer in the space.

With that said, I am not going to get into an overly technical explanation of the hardware or the Postbox software, and purely focus on the user experience, and my own personal takeaways after 5 days with the device. This review is going to be a bit of a first-person initial dive into the physical device itself, my experience using it, interacting with Astrohaus customer service, as well as my thoughts on where devices like this should be aiming for in future generations.

Just for clarity sake I will state now that this is not a sponsored post and any of the products I mention here are in no way incentivizing me. I purchased my own Freewrite Alpha through the pre-order program in May 2023. It cost me $299 before tax or shipping. The Freewrite Alpha is now listed for $349 before tax and shipping, and when I went to check the price right now, the Honey browser extension filled in the promo code FREEWRITE5 giving $17.45 off that price. No guarantee that’s still available at the time you read this article. Anyway, I hope that can perhaps frame your perspective on value.

Table of Contents

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Build Details:

The Build Quality

The Keys

The Screen

My Personal User Experience

The maker of the Alpha: AstroHaus

Missed Opportunities & Feature Requests for Alpha V2

In Conclusion

Let’s start it off by breaking down the Alpha and what it’s comprised of.

Build Details:

6.5” wide x 1.2”Reflective LCD Screen

QWERTY style keyboard

Choc V2 low-profile key switches

Integrated palm rest

Kickstand for adjustable typing angle

1.6 lbs total weight

Claimed battery life of 100 hours

Wi-fi connectivity

Cloud syncing to Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, and Evernote

USB-C Charging and direct file management via a computer

So let’s dive in, and start where it really matters.

The Build Quality

It is a beauty. I purchased the Raven Black edition. The red, black, and white color scheme suits my tastes. The plastic is well molded, and overall it feels like a high quality product

One gripe I have is that the finish on this thing gets scratched so easily. I barely ran the flat side of my fingernail down it and it scuffed. I drive a black car so this is something I am used to in pursuit of my dark aesthetic. I think for some, you’ll get used to minor scuffs and dings and won’t pay it much attention. If showing it to people, most eyes giving it a cursory glance in relatively normal light won’t ever notice them and so it may or may not be a big deal for you. But they are there. I wear a metal watch band, and it’s obvious which wrist I use it on from the scratches. Oh well, maybe it’ll develop its own unique patina. Who knows? Only time can tell. All I know is that if you are the type of person bothered by small scuffs and scratches, maybe you should go for the speckled-white version they sell instead. I don’t have one to test, but I imagine it might show minor cosmetic abrasions less.

With that said, I am suspect of this thing’s repairability but I’m not going to risk the warranty on this product to tear it open just yet. There are no visible screws to unleash on the bottom of this thing, and I fear that whatever is holding it together is likely to be under the adhesive feet in each corner. Anybody who has ever modded small electronics with those stupid blobs on them, they never quite go back on the same way do they? Makes me think that Astrohaus, the company that makes the Freewrite isn’t really capable of seeing eye to eye with a section of their user base that probably has a mind to the right to repair movement. But I’ll speak on Astrohaus in more detail later in this post.

The Keys

My first thought was wow. This is a typists dream keyboard.. The white keycaps with the black font gives off a high-end look, and while some people may not be fond of the flat key profile, I myself haven’t had any issues with it. With that said, I have fairly average size fingers and I am a great touch typer so your mileage may vary on that one.

It’s got Choc V2 low-profile key switches, the brown variant, and there are plenty of other creators who can tell you loads more than I can about how those switches perform. This isn’t the article for that.

(

All I know is the keys have a nice thoccy sound and some differing pitches on the non-alpha keys. It’s easy to get into a rhythm on this thing. My only complaint is the horrible out-of-box spacebar sound. It is hollow and rattly and is the loudest part of typing with this thing stock. I added three small O-rings to it and it sounds a lot better. I imagine with some thicker O-rings I could make this a non-issue for the most part.

Side note: Yes, I am aware that the creator of Freewrite seems to dislike O-ring use, but I think that essentially comes down to a personal choice. I am at least going to try them out and figure out what I like for myself. Some keyboards really do wonders with it and from my limited supply on hand it made the sounds of the spacebar improve already. Personally I’m waiting on a new O-ring set to deck the whole keyboard out to silence it a bit. Tune it to your own preference. Objectively this keyboard is a loud keyboard, and for a portable device such as this, how loud it is could lead to you being annoying if you bring it out in public. If you care about such things.

One other point about the keys. I’ve read reports of people who have been having issues with the keys on this thing and mistyping or not having keys register. I’ve had no such issue once I really get into a typing session. At first, I had some non-registers on certain keys at wakeup or when syncing, but after you start drafting it either stops lagging the input or just catches up to speed. From my understating Astrohaus is planning a firmware update to resolve this. I don’t think its a dealbreaker at this point.

The Screen

The Alpha has a 6.5” wide x 1.2” high reflective LCD screen. There is no powered light on this screen. That is an aspect of the type of screen Astrohaus chose to use in this build and knowing that going in is an important part of setting your expectations with this device.

I’m not going to go into the argument of backlit LCD vs reflective LCD. I feel like I understand why Astrohaus did what they did, and I am okay with it. It saves on battery drain, and makes it incredibly readable in decent light. I don’t think it needs a full blown backlit LCD personally, but to each their own. I read a great post by Andrewbp677 on Reddit about reflective LCD’s on the Alpha, and I’m just going to link that here. You should read it. https://www.reddit.com/r/Astrohaus/comments/1amr0vz/for_those_disappointed_by_the_alphas_screen_its/

I will, however, give you a rundown on using it in different lighting conditions. In normal daytime light you’re going to be fine. If you are viewing it with no light against it at all you may be in a bit of trouble. I have 20/15 vision after LASIK and can make out the contrast of the words ever so slightly with no light at all. It definitely needs light or for you to be an absolutely phenomenal touch typer who doesn’t look at the screen at all.

When I think of typing at night with the Alpha, I am 100% adding some light shining on the reflective LCD screen this thing has with my Gritin clamp-on light that I bought for like $15 on Amazon. It clips on perfectly to the upper right-hand corner of the device and does the job with its variable amounts of light and color temperature. If you have an Alpha, just get it. Consider it a vital accessory.

My Freewrite Alpha list up with the Gilkin clip on lamp

As for the text in general, I it seems relatively easy to read on the medium setting, which gives a good amount of drafting space at its size and only gets really hard to read if you tilt it super far off-axis. When I’m sitting on a couch, kinda slumped back, but holding it basically like how I would a laptop on my lap, I can see it just fine with some lamp light reflecting against it.

A complaint I’ve read online is that people were having issues with the legibility of the font on the smallest size. It is important to note that I am writing this on version 1.12.3 so when you are reading this article may come into play. In this version they changed the font away from what they shipped with the original release firmware.

It is this version of the font that everyone was originally complaining about, and while I would like it to be a slightly thicker font, I think it is not an issue that dramatically affects its usability. With light, it appears readable enough to me. With that said, the font does seem blurry depending on the angle of your light. There is a bit of text shadowing though that makes the text annoying to look at – which may honestly be what Astrohaus wanted in the first place. From what I can tell about their design ethos, you aren’t really supposed to be staring at this screen as you write. Just think and type. Learn to touch type on this thing and you can probably get some serious words out.

For reference: My preferred text size of medium on firmware 1.12.3

My Personal User Experience

Anyway, enough about how the Freewrite Alpha looks, sounds, and what it’s made of. Let’s talk about using it.

I am sure the keyboard won’t be for everyone but oh wow does it make this thing fun to use. It’s bouncy like a typewriter but has just the perfect distance stroke so that you can bottom out with these beautifully done keycaps (black on white keys on my Raven Black version). Its LCD screen is snappy and responsive and makes this thing very easy to draft on. I find that it is easy to type on this at a speed in which I am getting the words onto the Alpha in just about the instant that I am hearing them in my head. Obviously, if you compare it to a computer – that’s what you would expect. However, if you think of this thing as what it really is – a typewriter or word processor that syncs automatically to the web, its absolutely awesome. As a writing hardware nerd, they knew their audience and delivered. Well done Astrohaus.

Having to manually connect to different wifis anytime you change locations is a bit of a pain for mobile writers. What I ended up doing is just connecting to my phone’s mobile hotspot and using that to sync myself from time to time when not at home. I hope they figure out an easier way to do this in the future.

I will note that there are some instances of lag from time to time though and I believe its when its syncing to the cloud or establishing a wifi connection. However, my understanding as of the date this was posted is that Astrohaus will be updating their firmware to correct these issues. I hope so. I am certainly interested to see how they make changes as they get more feedback from testers.

That’s really what you are buying when you go after a first-generation product like this – a bit of hardware and the ability to essentially become a beta tester. Even though they have put out a few other typewriters and know what they are doing in that arena, this is the first of its own kind in their arsenal, eschewing their standard fare for a new form altogether. I think that with some fine-tuning, and if they listen to their community’s feedback, they will be able to improve upon it in the future.

This leads me to my next point.

The maker of the Alpha: AstroHaus

I wouldn’t speak on the company and it’s reputation itself if it wasn’t a necessary point of note. However, with a unique product like this, and with it being one of a limited number of options for purchasing a device such as this, I feel that it is important to describe what owning one of these things is like, and part of that is interacting with the company that creates and services it.

This is where I get into the customer service side of things from Astrohaus, and I’m not going to turn this into a rant about what clearly is a passionate small group that is working on a very niche product for our community of writer folks. However, I think there are some things that need to be addressed if I am reviewing my initial experience with the first of their products I’ve received.

I want to be upfront. I was one of the first run Alpha’s that were hit with a bug that could cause you to potential lose words. Mid-connecting to wifi I was force booted from my Postbox account on the Alpha and asked to log in again, only upon doing so to find that all of my drafts on the device had been wiped clean like I was starting from scratch – I even got the opening “press new+new to start your first draft” message that happens upon first use. It had nothing in it. It ended up in me losing an entire document, which, luckily was just me having a friend try out the typing and nothing of any real importance. If it was important to me, I would’ve gotten rid of this thing immediately. Losing words is an absolute NO for me as a professional author and communications professional and will make me immediately discontinue the use of a product.

So let’s talk about that bug that I had. Data loss aside, (which is a big aside), this was entirely preventable. Astrohaus informed Alpha buyers that there was a firmware update that needed to be done to prevent any issues, however, in the email documentation that I received they said that you only needed to factory reset before updating the firmware IF you were already experiencing issues. Now, I am fairly tech savy, so I knew this was super risky to not just factory reset it out of the box, but I wanted to show that Astrohaus did not instruct everyone to Factory Reset.

Alpha Email about initial firmware change needed

So, instead of instructing everyone to do that to prevent any issues, they opted to have the potential of data loss be the driving force behind you needing to do a factory reset. By the way, the factory reset took maybe 15 seconds total to do. The longest part was waiting for the new firmware update to populate. To me, the best way to serve your customers would have been to ask them to force the reset so that there would be no issues moving forward, not waiting for there to be issues and then having your customers lose data and then have to do the reset anyway. I just don’t see the logic behind that there. Set your customer support team up for success.

I had other issues with their customer relations, specifically delays in shipment, no emails to confirm my address when apparently that’s what was delaying my shipment, and not having my updated address when I eventually got them to tell me that I needed to confirm address, and oh by the way, I had already updated my address with them three months prior via email. I don’t want to harp on this too much, because like I said, they are a small team, and bugs and mishaps happen in all industries. Also, I do want to note that their customer support agent is very prompt with their email responses, and I had no issue with any actual communications from them. My issue is more with just how they have chosen to engage with their user base.

And how is that you may ask? Well, it seems that they aren’t quite communicating with their base in the way that they should. Again, small team, don’t want to harp on them too hard, but what they produce is a very niche product with a very small potential user base. Their success as a company entirely relies on making good products and keeping this user base happy. Best way to do that? Listen to what it is that they want and maybe realize that there are ways to keep your vision of a distraction-free device without having an adversarial relationship with your users.

For example, the arrow keys, or lack thereof, is what I almost would call “hostile architecture“. I understand they want to keep people drafting and don’t want them editing on the device. That’s why they make the screen so small and they don’t allow you to load drafts onto the device itself. But to make it so that to move the cursor back one space you need to hit three keys in unison is simply ridiculous. You also cannot hold the keys down to move multiple spaces at once. Asrohaus, do not hamstring your own device because you think you know better than your users. Those same users are just going to be frustrated with your decision when they inevitably do need to move the cursor and are going to have it in the back of their mind every time that happens that its Astrohaus’ fault that they chose to have it this way.

That’s not the type of relationship you want to have with the people who are the driving force behind your sales. If you go on community-driven websites like Reddit for example, and the r/Astrohaus section, you’ll find that the predominate consensus is that their devices are good, but that the software is iffy and the company itself isn’t one that people should support because they do not make decisions that are in line with what their customers are looking for. That sort of sentiment is why I did not buy any of their first three products. I could see the issues, see the complaints from their community members, and see that there was almost no attempt to fix these issues because… well… Astrohaus knows best? I can guarantee that they have lost sales because of this strategy. The only reason that I even bought an Alpha is because they copied one of the best writing devices of all time, the Alphasmart Neo 2, and added modern touches to it such as cloud syncing and a mechanical keyboard with a relatively modest price to boot. (If $350 is modest. I am glad I got the early bird pricing, otherwise, I may still have thought it too pricey and just bought some more Alphasmart Neo 2s.)

So where does that leave us off? Well, despite Astrohaus’ attempts at irking us all, the Freewrite Alpha is a solid writing device. It does everything I need it to do and helps you really knock out words. Is it for everyone? No. Is it for some people? Definitely yes, and those are the people Astrohaus needs to be looking to for guidance in how they should revise these products in future generations, otherwise they will lose the support they do have and writers around the world won’t be better off because of it.

Missed Opportunities & Feature Requests for Alpha V2

I do find there to be a couple missed opportunities for some unique features.

I’m surprised it doesn’t utilize its USB-C port more. If the keyboard could be plugged into your phone to be used as a genuine keyboard, that would be an interesting take for writers. For me personally, if I had some table space to set up, I could see myself plugging into Scrivener on an iPhone and getting some concepting work done directly into where I inevitably dump all my drafts into anyway. Allowing the physical hardware to do this adds to the utility of the device even more. I could sit down at my desk, or really any table, prop up my phone in landscape mode and voila, highly portable mechanical keyboard mini computer. That’s the goal anyway right? For me to carry the Alpha around all the time? It also doesn’t seem like an improbable ask… Hell the Alphasmart Neo 2 lets you do it and that came out in 2007. (If you have a neo 2, get a usb-b to usb-c dongle and plug it in. Super easy to use.)

Another missed opportunity for this device, and I’m sure a lot of people would agree that this is a small gripe, is that there doesn’t seem to be a way to access the files by connecting directly to a phone via USB-C. At least, not on my iPhone 15 Pro Max I can’t. You can however, access it on a computer. This seems like a very closed-minded way to think about how people might use your device. I like to be able to draft anywhere that I possibly am, and anytime that an idea strikes me. I was hoping that Astrohaus would consider that more. As many devices as I can possibly connect to would be a win for me and mobility with this device in general. What if I had no service, no wifi, and only my phone and my Alpha and needed to transfer a file to someone? It would be impossible to do so currently from what I can tell. A simple change like allowing manual connectivity in that way would help.

Improved Wifi. Like even just allow a list of saved networks please. This is simple stuff.

If I could ask for anything for a V2, not counting non-hostile arrow keys, it would be to have hot-swap switches. They did well to include a mechanical keyboard with this, but one of the major aspects of mechanical keyboards is the ability to customize it to your own preferences. Having the ability to swap out the key-switches to your taste would be a luxury worth paying extra for, at least for me. This would also add to its officeability, as some of your co-workers may not be fond of the clickity-clack of this keyboard. (Luckily I’ve conditioned my office mates to the sound of my tactile switch-laden ZSA Moonlander. Or at least, I hope they don’t hate me for it.)

I think some sort of adjustment or relocation of the power button would be nice as well. I am constantly triggering this thing accidentally, so much so that I want to password-protect this to stop my work from having stray characters inputted on the regular. (Apparently there’s an option to do so on the Freewrite’s Postbox website, but when I enabled it, nothing ever happened. Not sure why.)

An adjustable screen would also be nice. This is likely a pipe dream but if you could lift the screen just slightly to adjust for light, I feel that would knock off a lot of the complaints about lighting issues or the shadowing effect you sometimes get based on the viewing angle of the text.

And I know this is damn near an impossibility but the first of these sorts of devices to add seamless integration into Scrivener will have me gladly throw down money to pre-order again right now.

In Conclusion

If you are a writer that is serious about getting more words down on a daily basis, and you think a distraction free writing device is for you, then just buy one. It is the pinnacle of this type of device released so far. My advice, if you do buy a Freewrite Alpha, just have fun with it. That’s what writing is supposed to be. Sometimes it feels like work, trust me, I understand, but in the end it should be fun. And boy do I have fun with this thing. This freaking article comes out over 4400+ words and its been 5 days for me. I can not wait to see what level of productivity this device propels me toward. Thank you Astrohaus for being a champion of distracted writers everywhere. As someone who struggles with his own attention disorder, I am deeply appreciate of this product.

With that said, if you are one of the people who get an Alpha, make sure you factory reset it first, get a clamp-on light, and if you have a phone, just use your portable hotspot to sync anytime you are writing on this thing. It works better than having to connect to a different wifi network everywhere you go. Not to mention, it gives you the ultimate flexibility to go and write wherever your heart desires with the peace of mind of having your data backed up. That’s truly what the Freewrite Alpha is, a typewriter that you can take anywhere and everywhere, forever by your side, your partner in candid observations about the Universe.

Until next time.

-Spencer Spalding

P.S. I wrote this article entirely on my Freewrite Alpha, and then edited it on Scrivener for MacOS. If there’s some other input device or writing software you would like me to test out in the future, please leave it below in the comments.

Read more here

#fiction #author #writing #novelist #independentartist

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sitp-recs · 3 years ago

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In the Bleak Midwinter by @the-fools-errand

Harry/Draco (2022, Explicit, 105k)

After serving in the border wars for the ever-expanding dominion of Lord Voldemort, Draco and his cousins have returned to Hogsmeade to resurrect the old Black Family name in crime. But when a shipment of wands bound for the front lines falls into their possession, they find themselves at the centre of an investigation backed by the Dark Lord himself.

Draco’s ambitions lie far beyond the borders of Hogsmeade, however, and he won’t let anything get in his way – except maybe a bespectacled newcomer to town, who knows more about the missing wands than he’s letting on.

“Of course this wasn’t the life Draco would have chosen for his family if he could wind back the clocks, but the reality was the Dark Lord couldn’t be toppled by one man or a thousand. The only difference was that Neville was prepared to throw away the lives of innocents fighting for a cause that had no shot of success, whereas Draco would never let another soul die on his behalf ever again.”

Interrupting the hidden gems series to scream a bit about the Peaky Blinders AU we didn’t know we needed! I’m finally catching up with LCD and despite having promised myself I’d take a break from long fics I just couldn’t resist this gorgeous claiming post - I knew I had to check this fic as soon as I saw the tags and that incredible art for it, and now that I spent the whole day eating up 100k I can finally say: What. A. Fic! I was sure this would be fun and exciting since Fe wrote one of my favorite AUs last year - if you haven’t read The Secret Keeper yet I urge you to do it ASAP! - and once again I was completely blown away by this brilliant, intriguing, inventive and satisfying ride.

It’s impossible not to start with the clever and detailed world-building; Fe created a magical and immersive PB universe even for those who have never watched the show, and the fic was able to deliver the same sexy and mysterious atmosphere. I particularly loved how the source material was adapted to include magic and small details within character arcs. Speaking of which, what a fantastic (and big) cast! I found each character incredibly fascinating with their own conflicts and distinct personality. From Hagrid and Cedric to Mundungus and Snape they all brought something to the table and it was lovely to see side dynamics like Pansville, Harry & Snape, Draco & Theo, the Weasleys. I was also very happy to see Sirius and Tonks alive here, and by the way Sirius’ heartbreaking back story is brilliant! Such a creative way to explore his canon arc, I loved it.

Now speaking of Drarry, I could wax poetry about their competent, charming and feisty personalities - the clash between Draco’s cool and controlled facade x Harry’s easy yet defiant persona behind his Muggle cover made for some delicious UST that took my breath away. The slow burn is exciting and perfectly paced with alternating POVs and a careful balance of intrigue, slice-of-life, character development and romance. The initial animosity between them gave me butterflies, slowly dissolving into attraction as the characters grow closer and allow themselves to become vulnerable and open with each other; we have no choice but to fall in love with their love even knowing hell’s about to break loose at any moment. I’m so weak for secret identity drama, this is peak angst material 🙌

Fe kept me at the edge of my seat the whole time wondering what would come next, and I kept being surprised and pleased. I remember that by chapter 3 I was already mourning this universe and trying to self-sabotage and stall my reading but I just couldn’t stay away 😂 if you’re looking for your next long read, I can’t rec this AU enough. BAMF Draco, Spy Harry, pub nights, secret relationships, grey morality, horse races, power couple, Harry playing the piano! This fic has it all and whether or not you’re familiar with the show I guarantee this will be a wonderful, thrilling and satisfying case fic and love story. Go forth and come scream with me after you’re done!

Read on AO3

#drarry fic rec

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hackgit · 2 years ago

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[Media] HackRF One + Portapack H2 Mayhem

HackRF One + Portapack H2 Mayhem The HackRF is an exceptionally capable software defined radio (SDR) transceiver, but naturally you need to connect it to a computer to actually do anything with it. So the PortaPack was developed to turn it into a stand-alone device with the addition of a touchscreen LCD, a few buttons, and a headphone jack. With all the hardware in place, it’s just a matter of installing a firmware capable enough to do some proper RF hacking on the go. Enter MAYHEM, an evolved fork of the original PortaPack firmware that the developers claim is the most up-to-date and feature packed version available. Without ever plugging into a computer, this firmware allows you to receive, decode, and re-transmit a dizzying number of wireless protocols. From firing off the seating pagers at a local restaurant to creating a fleet of phantom aircraft with spoofed ADS-B transponders, MAYHEM certainly seems like it lives up to the name. Detailed blog post about installing and using MAYHEM on the HackRF/PortaPack, complete with a number of real-world examples that show off just a handful of possible applications for the project. Jamming cell phones, sending fake pager messages, and cloning RF remotes is just scratching the surface of what’s possible. Example of use: exploitation of a Honda vulnerability Honda's Remote Keyless System (CVE-2022-27254) Firmware to open any and all Tesla vehicle charging ports in range! Buy online: 🛒 https://bit.ly/3AEBFHS #radio #RF #SDR

#cybersecurity #infosec #infosecurity #pentesting #bugbounty #hacking #hackers

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lcdrarry · 1 year ago

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📽 Grab your popcorn! 🍿 LCDrarry is back 🎞

"Lights, Camera, Drarry" (LCDrarry, LCD) is an anonymous prompt-based fest, where authors and artists create pieces that are inspired by or based on a film, a theatre play, a TV series/show, a podcast, an audioplay/drama or an audiobook. The main pairing for all submissions is Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter ("Drarry"). Podfics are also very welcome! More information in the fest rules on AO3.

Find all of the important infos & links under the cut!

Fest Timeline

Prompting: January 10 to January 17

Claiming/Sign-ups: January 20 to March 15

Submissions due: April 15

Posting begins: May 1

Reveals: June 15

Important links

LCDrarry Prompts for Fic and Art <- browse the fic & art prompts!

LCDrarry Prompts for Podfics <- browse the podfic prompts!

LCDrarry Sign-up/Claiming Form <- OPEN TILL 15 MARCH

LCDrarry Rules and AO3 Collection

LCDrarry Fest Discord

Please share and signal boost! We’re so looking forward to all your ideas and creations!

Your LCDrarry mods Tami @celilasart & Suzi @erin-riwen

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researcherdeejay · 3 years ago

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Future Pokémon Part 1: Ironphan

Hello everyone, and welcome to my first research post! In my introductory blog post I told you I had findings that would blow the Violet Book out of the Water, and indeed, I do.

Some background: The Violet book was written proceeding the Area Zero Expedition by a man named Heath, sponsored by the director of Uva Academy at the time. The gist of Heaths findings regarding the Great Crater include a treasures made of blindingly bright crystals, wondrous herbs dubbed the Herba Mystica, and of course, a look at the kinds of Pokémon found within Area Zero. Most of these are Pokémon can be found in many other places in the world, such as Raichu and Naclstack, however, one chapter of the book describes the "Monsters of Area Zero." These beasts are descirbed as compact and cruel, and Heath ponders wither to consider them Pokémon at all, an attitude I can understand, as one of these Pokémon mortally wounded one of the members of their research team. I read the Violet Book for the first time when I first arrived at Uva, and it definitely piqued my curiosity. Well, I finally had the clearance to dive into the Great Crater without fear of my credits being invalidated and expelled from the Academy, I delved in, and began my search, a full team of my trusty Pokémon at my side, ready to get the answers I sought, and by god, I got some.

Returning from the Crater, I had seven "newly discovered" Pokémon. Note the air quotes. Indeed, despite me having these Pokémon in my posession, something to note before I introduce them to you is that they've all been mentioned in one or another publication, either the Violet book, obviously, or somehow, Occulture magazine. Yes, that Occulture. You're going to have to stay with me. There is a very important thing you need to know about Area Zero, and that it has somehow come to host Pokémon that are allegedly from the distant future. Now, I have one or two theories about this claim, but as you look at the Pokémon I have photographed and researched, there is no denying that there is a futuristic look to them. I have returned from the Great Crater with seven of these unique specimen, starting with the following:

Pokémon #323-F

Ironphan

Classification: Iron Treads Pokémon

Ability: Quark Drive

Type: Ground/Steel

Height: ~2'11", 0.9 m

Weight: ~592.2lbs, 240 kg

Pictured here is the Pokémon sketched and almost photographed in the Violet Book. A description of the Pokémon can also be found in Occulture Magazine, where it has been dubbed "Iron Treads." It does not take an expereinced biologist to note this Pokémon's resemblance to a Donphan. If the previously stated theory that this is a Pokémon from the distant future is to be believed, then it's easily to conclude that "Iron Treads" is the form that Donphan will take in said future. Given it's appearance, and it's relation to Donphan, I have named this Pokémon Ironphan, the Iron Treads Pokemon. It's numbering, #323-F, references it's futuristic appearance, however, I don't doubt that should Ironphan be officially added to the Pokédex, it will recieve alternative numbering.

Ironphan is a large quadrupedal Pokémon like it's "ancestor," Donphan, although it should be said that it is notably smaller than Donphan. It's tusks are made from a carbon-fiber material, whilst the rest of the torso is made from iron. Replacing a traditional pair of eyes is what appears to be an LCD screen behind glass. Beneath the eyes is a metal plate that opens, revealing it's mouth. Ironphan has a pair of ears, made from a black-plate type metal, and more metal plates attatched to stubby legs to support it's ability to walk, as little as it does. Ironphan's primary physical feature is, of course, it's iron treads. The treads are black plate seperated by red glowing patterns along it's metal epidermis. I have yet to determine what this red, glowing material is, a running theme with all of these "Future" Pokémon. I have determined it's not blood, but it sparkles in a way, and is rather warm to touch. I speculate that it could have something to do with the tera crystals found within the Great Crater, but so far, I draw no conclusions. Ironphan doesn't have anything that would suggest it to have a physical sex, none of these Future Pokémon do, thus, for the time being this is classed as Genderless Pokémon similar to Pokémon like Magnezone, or caught examples of Legendary Pokémon. Breeding has been unsuccessful.

Ironphan from a long-term evolutionary standpoint has leaned further into Donphan's niche of rolling. It's tusks have become smaller in order for it to tuck it's body in tighter. What Ironphan has over it's predecessor is being able to roll with a full range of sight, and no longer becoming dizzy after rolling for too long. Rather that rolling it's whole body, Ironphan moves along the ground at speed with it's iron treads. This has allowed Ironphan to become a much faster and precise Pokémon on the ground. I have calculated Ironphan's base overall power to be stronger than Donphan's.

Ironphan and the rest of these Pokémon I have caught all seem to have the same ability, which I have named Quark Drive. Quark Drive activated on Electric Terrain, which boosts the Pokémon's prowess even further, whatever the Pokémon is best at, be it attacking, defending or speeding, it gets better. I also found the ability to activate when my Ironphan found a mysterious metal vial of liquid in the lower reaches of the Great Crater. The liquid was similar to red, sparkly liquid found along Ironphan's treads. I've dubbed it Booster Energy.

As Ironphan rolls, it leaves marks along the ground similar to Donphan, however, I have noted these treadmarks to smoulder as they are left behind. It appears that as Ironphan rolls, it's treads get rather hot. The battle I had with Ironphan which led to it's capture allowed it to demonstrate how ruthless it could be. Ironphan allow their opponents no quarter, and will kill given the chance. I made a good call recalling Scarlet, my Armarouge during the battle, who almost became quite badly injured. Post-capture, I found the Ironphan to have calmed down considerably. It warmed up to my presence the same way any of my Pokémon have in the past, and was able to form a bond. I suppose, the use of a luxury ball may have helped in that endeavor! Regardless, the Ironphan plays well with my other Pokémon, including Scarlet, so no hard feelings there I guess! It also took food off me, which surprised me and yet, didn't. I'm unsure if there's anything artificial about Ironphan, but it does seem to enjoy a decent galarian curry!

This concludes my first report. I shall be publishing more over the course of the coming days and weeks. Have a question about Ironphan? Send me an ask, and hopefully I'll be able to provide some insight.

Until my next report, Researcher Deejay, signing off.

#Iron Treads #Pokemon #paldea #pokemon scarlet and violet #donphan #paradox pokemon #future pokemon #paldea region #nintendo switch #ironphan #pokemon rp #unreality

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jui-imouto-chan · 5 years ago

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Haikyuu Hinata-Ship Prompt Dump!! (Number The First)

Send ships you’d want a prompt for! (And if you ever want to elaborate, I am literally begging you, 🅱️lease do.) If anyone would like any of these prompts expanded upon in any way, I’d also love to hear those requests!

(Yes I accept NSFW requests, although I do better writing limes than smut so I’ll probably only go that far 🥲)

This post type came up because @serosbbyy let me scree at them in my replies for the hinaharem celebrity au oops

Feel free to follow #JHHSP (Jui’s Haikyuu Hinata Ship Prompts—real catchy, I know 😅) to keep track of these particular posts!

Also!! Thank you guys so much for 611 follows!! 💜💚💜

Series Masterlist

Prompt 1:

🎮 KenHina 🍊

Kenma always wondered what it’d be like to live in a world with Hinata in it. The ginger smiling through the screen was warm and kind, and he’d always shout encouragements to him whenever he felt down without prompting, even if they were programmed. One night after Kuroo and Kenma bickered over effort and the point of interacting with people, Kenma fell asleep with his console in his hand, screen flickering as his eyes slid shut, with hands reaching past the bounds of LCD to hold him. The next morning, there was someone in his bed, and the person—a familiar, small, bubbly redhead—was proclaiming himself Kenma’s boyfriend to everyone who could hear.

Prompt 2:

🌻 LevHina 🍊

Lev never really understood dating. It seemed kinda boring, though he could at least let his curiousity shine through when his senpai were talking about people they liked. When Hinata confessed to him, then, he decided that he’d try and figure out what all the hype was about. He’ was a bit confused as to why he was starting to experience heartburn(?), feverish redness/ warmth, and urges to drag Hinata into a closet—maybe the weather? People did tend to get sick around that time of year. He’d figure it out eventually.

Prompt 3:

👑 KageHina 🍊

Given!AU. Kageyama finally managed to get onstage with a band, and things were great. At least, they would have been, if it weren’t for the fact that he couldn’t write a single cohesive lyric, nor could he string notes together in a way that flowed.

Lacking inspiration and passion, Kageyama worried he’d lose his spot in the band and would have to give up on a future career in music, until he met Hinata Shoyo, a bright eyed, enthusiastic redhead carrying a guitar too big for him and with no understanding of music. Beneath Hinata’s sunny exterior, however, lurked an agony Kageyama had yet to understand, tied to a single name.... Kenma.

Prompt 4:

🏐 OiHina 🍊

As much as Oikawa loved the attention girls gave him, it was a bit annoying to constantly have to be pulled away from practice for confessions. It didn’t help at all that Iwaizumi would give him a thrashing as soon as he’d come back, scolding him all the while.

Meanwhile, Hinata had been trying to muster up the courage to ask Iwaizumi to hang out with him, as his admiration grew into the inklings of a crush. Right before he could ask Iwaizumi away from the group, Oikawa, who was just about to be put in the same situation by a girl, announced (as loud and obnoxiously as he could), “I’m sorry, but as you can see, my boyfriend desperately wants my attention, so I’ll go give him some love before he combusts from jealousy.”

And, well. As one could guess, things just spiraled from there.

Prompt 5:

🍊 HinaHarem ☀️

Nobody could know he was truly the prince. Natsu’s claim to the throne couldn’t be discarded as long as there were no male heirs, and so he sat beside his beloved half-sister and pledged to protect her as her guard until the day of her coronation.

...If her suitors would stop flirting with him.

(Not that he quite knew they were interested, no. He thought they were just cautious or wary of his presence, or perhaps wanting to spend time alone with his sister and thus shooing him away with their intimate dialogues and wandering hands and eyes. He never really was observant towards anything regarding himself.)

#haikyuu #hinata harem #hinata shoyo/everyone #hinaharem #kenhina #kenma/hinata #kozume kenma #kageyama tobio #kagehina #oikawa toru #oihina #oikawa tooru #Tohru #lev haiba #LevHina #haikyu #hq #jhhsp #natsu hinata

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foreverdavidbyrne · 5 years ago

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David Byrne’s interview in NME magazine

In 1979, David Byrne predicted Netflix. “It’ll be as easy to hook your computer up to a central television bank as it is to get the week’s groceries,” he told NME’s Max Bell, sitting in a Paris hotel considering the implications of Talking Heads’ dystopian single ‘Life During Wartime’.

He predicted the Apple Watch in that interview too: “[People will] be surrounded by computers the size of wrist watches.” And he foresaw surveillance culture and data harvesting: “Government surveillance becomes inevitable because there’s this dilemma when you have an increase in information storage. A lot of it is for your convenience, but as more information gets on file, it’s bound to be misused.”

In fact, over 40 years ago, he predicted the entire modern-day experience, as if he instinctively knew what was coming. “We’ll be cushioned by amazing technological development,” he said, “but sitting on Salvation Army furniture.”

The 68-year-old Byrne says today, “You can’t say that you know,” chuckling down a Zoom link from his home in New York and belying his reputation for awkwardness by seeming giddily relieved to be talking to someone. “It’s crazy to set yourself up as some sort of prophet. But there’s plenty of people who have done well with books where they claim to predict what’s going on. I suppose sometimes it’s possible to let yourself imagine, ‘Okay – what if?’ This can evolve into something that exists, can evolve into something more substantial, cheaper – these kinds of things.”

It’s been a lifelong gift. Byrne turned up at CBGBs in 1975 with his art school band Talking Heads touting ‘Psycho Killer’, as if predicting the punk scene’s angular melodic evolution, new wave, before punk was even called punk. In 1980, Talking Heads assimilated African beats and textures into their seminal ‘Remain In Light’ album, foreshadowing ‘world music’ and modern music’s globalist melting pot, then used it to warn America of the dangers of consumerism, selfishness and the collapse of civilisation. Pioneering or propheteering, Byrne has been on the front-line of musical evolution for 45 years, collaborating with fellow visionaries from Brian Eno to St Vincent’s Annie Clark, constantly imagining, ��What if?’

The live music lockdown has been a frustrating freeze frame, but Byrne was already leading the way into music’s new normal. Launched in 2018, the tour to support his 10th solo album, ‘American Utopia’, has now turned into a cinematic marvel courtesy of Spike Lee – the concert film was released in the UK this week. The original tour was acclaimed as a live music revolution. Using remote technology, Byrne was able to remove all of the traditional equipment clutter from the stage and allow his musicians and dancers, in uniform grey suits and barefoot, to roam around a stage lined with curtains of metal chains with their instruments strapped to them. A Marshally distanced gig, if you will.

“As the show was conceptually coming together, I realised that once we had a completely empty stage the rulebook has now been thrown out,” Byrne says. “Now we can go anywhere and do anything. This is completely liberating. It means that people like drummers, for example, who are usually relegated to the back shadows, can now come to the front – all those kinds of things – which changes the whole dynamic.”

With six performers making up an entire drum kit and Byrne meandering through the choreography trying to navigate a nonsensical world, the show was his most striking and original since he jerked and jived around a constructed-mid-gig band set-up in Jonathan Demme’s legendary 1984 Talking Heads live film Stop Making Sense.

The American Utopia show embarked on a Broadway run last year, where Byrne super-fan Spike Lee saw it twice and leapt at the chance of turning the spectacle into Byrne’s second revolutionary live film, dotted with his musings on the human condition to illuminate the crux of the songs: institutional racism, our lack of modern connection, the erosion of democracy and, on opener ‘Here’, a lecture-like tour of the human brain, Byrne holding aloft a scale model, trying to fathom, ‘How do I work this?’

“I didn’t know how much of a fan Spike was!” Byrne laughs today. “He’d even go, ‘Why don’t you do this song? Why don’t you add this song in’. We knew one another casually so I could text him and say, ‘I want you to come and see our show; I think that you might be interested in making a film of it’.”

Are the days of the traditional stage set-up numbered? “Yes, I think so,” he replies. “At least in theatres and concert halls the size that I would normally play, yes. The fact that we can get the music digitally [means] a performance has to be really of value. It has to be really something special, because that’s where the performers are getting their money and that’s what the audience is paying for. They’re not paying very much for streaming music, but they are paying quite a bit to go and see a performance, so the performance has to give them value for money… It has to be really something to see.”

How does David Byrne envisage the future possibilities of live performance?

“I’ve seen a lot of things that hip-hop artists have done – like the Kanye West show where he emerges on a platform that floats above the stage,” he says. “I’d seen one with Kendrick Lamar where it was pretty much just him on stage, an empty stage with just him on stage and a DJ, somebody with a laptop – that was it. I thought, ‘Wow’. Then he started doing things with huge projections behind. There are lots of ways to do this. I love the idea of working with a band, with live musicians. ‘How can I innovate in this kind of way?’ It’s maybe easier for a hip-hop musician who doesn’t have a band to figure out. The pressure is on to come up with new ways of doing this.”

In liberating his musicians from fixed, immovable positions, American Utopia also acts as a metaphor for freeing our minds from our own ingrained ways of thinking. As Byrne intersperses Talking Heads classics such as ‘Once In A Lifetime’, ‘I Zimbra’ and ‘Road To Nowhere’ with choice solo cuts and tracks from ‘American Utopia’, he also dots the show with musings on an array of post-millennial questions: the health of democracy; the rise of xenophobia and fascism; our increasing reliance on materialism and online communication; the climate change threat; the existential nightmare of the dating app; and, crucially, the distances all of these things put between us.

“The ‘likes’ and friends and connections and everything that the internet enables,” he argues, “even Zoom calls like this, they’re no substitute for really being with other people. Calling social networks ‘social’ is a bit of an exaggeration.”

Byrne closes the show with the suggestion that, rather than isolate behind our LCD barriers, we should try to reconnect with each other. In an age when social media has descended into all-out thought war and anyone can find concocted ‘facts’ to support anything they want to believe, is that realistic?

“I have a little bit of hope,” he says. “Not every day, but some days. I have hope that people will abandon a lot of social media, that they’ll realise how intentionally addictive it is, and they’re actually being used, and that they might enjoy actually being with other people rather than just constantly scrolling through their phone. So, I’m a little bit optimistic that people will, in some ways, use this technology a little bit less than they have.”

A key moment in American Utopia comes with Byrne’s cover of Janelle Monae’s ‘Hell You Talmbout’, a confrontational track shouting the names of African-Americans who have been killed by police or in racially motivated attacks – Eric Garner, Trayvon Martin, George Floyd and far, far too many more. Does Byrne think the civil unrest in the wake of Floyd’s death and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement make a serious impact?

“We’ll see how long this continues,” he says, “but in projects that I’m working on – there’s a theatre project I’m working on in Denver, there’s the idea of bringing this show back to Broadway, there’s other projects – those issues came to the fore. Issues of diversity and inclusion and things like that, which were always there. Now they’re being taken more seriously. The producers and theatre owners realise that they can’t push those things aside, that they have to be included in the whole structure of how a show gets put together.”

“At least for now, that seems to be a big change. I see it in TV shows and other areas too. There’s a lot of tokenism, but there’s a lot of real opportunity and changed thinking as well.”

Elsewhere, he encourages his audience to register to vote, and had registration booths at the shows. He must have been pleased about the record turnout in the recent US election? “Yeah, the turnout was great. Now you just got to keep doing that. Gotta keep doing it at all the local elections, too. It was important for me not to endorse a political party or anything in the show but to say, ‘Listen, we can’t have a democracy if you don’t vote. You have to get out there and let your voice be heard and there’s lots of people trying to block it.’ We have to at least try.”

Will Trump’s loss help bring people together after four years with such a divisive influence in charge?

“Yes. I think for me Trump was not so much a shock; we knew who he is. He was around New York before that, in the reality show [The Apprentice], we knew what kind of character he was. What shocked me was how quickly the Republican party all fell into line behind him, behind this guy who’s obviously a racist, misogynist liar and everything else. But it’s kind of encouraging – although it’s taken four years and with some it’s only with the prospect of him being gone – that quite a few have been breaking ranks. There are some possibilities of bridge building being held out.”

But, he says, “It’s too early to celebrate,” concerned that Senate Majority Leader and fairweather Trump loyalist Mitch McConnell will use any Republican control of the Senate to block many of Biden’s policies from coming into effect. “[This] is what happened with Obama… I want to see real change happen. [Climate change] absolutely needs to be a priority. The clock had turned back over the last four years, so there’s a lot to be done. Whether there’s the willpower to do everything that needs to be done, it remains to be seen, but at least now it’s pointing in the right direction.”

How will he look back on the last four years? Byrne ponders. “I’m hoping that I look back at it as a near-miss.”

American Utopia is as much a personal journey as a dissection of modern ills. Ahead of ‘Everybody’s Coming To My House’, Byrne admits to being a rather socially awkward type. He claims that a choir of Detroit teenagers, when singing the song for the accompanying video, had imbued the song with a far more welcoming message than his own rendition, which found him wracked with the fear that his visitors might never leave. How does someone like that deal with celebrity?

“In a certain way it’s a blessing,” Byrne grins, “because I don’t have to go up to people to talk to them – they sometimes come up to me. In other ways it’s a little bit awkward. Celebrity itself seems very superficial and I have to constantly remind myself that your character, your behaviour and the work that you do is what’s important – not how well known you are, not this thing of celebrity. I learned early on it’s pretty easy to get carried away. But it does have its advantages. I had Spike Lee’s phone number, so I could text him.”

Talking Heads drummer Chris Frantz’s recent book Remain In Love suggests that the more successful Byrne got early on, the more distant he became.

Byrne nods. “I haven’t read the book, but I know that as we became more successful I definitely used some of that to be able to work on other projects. I worked on a dance score with [American choreographer] Twyla Tharp and I worked on a theatre piece with [director] Robert Wilson – other kinds of things – [and] I started working on directing some of the band’s music videos. So I guess I spent less time just hanging out. As often happens with bands, you start off being all best friends and doing everything together and after a while that gets to be a bit much. Everybody develops their own friends and it’s like, ‘I have my own friends too’. Everybody starts to have their own lives.”

The future is far too enticing for David Byrne to consider revisiting the past. “I do live alone so sometimes it would get lonely”, he says of lockdown, but he’s been using his Covid downtime to cycle around undiscovered areas of New York and remain philosophical about the aftermath.

“We’ll see how long before the vaccine is in, before we return to being able to socialise,” he says, “but I’m also wondering, ‘How am I going to look at this year? Am I going to look at it as, “Oh yes, that’s the year that was to some extent taken away from our lives; our lives were put on pause?”’ We kept growing; we kept ageing; we keep eating, but it was almost like this barrier had been put up. It has been a period where, in a good way, it’s led us to question a lot of what we do. You get up in the morning and go, ‘Why am I doing this? What am I doing this for? What’s this about?’ Everything is questioned.”

Post-vaccine, he hopes to “travel a little bit” before looking into plans to bring the ‘American Utopia’ show back to Broadway, and possibly even to London if the financial aspects can be worked out. “Often when a show like that travels, the lead actors might travel,” Byrne explains, “but in this case it’s the entire cast that has to travel. So you’ve got a lot of hotel bills and all that kind of stuff. We wanted to do it. There might be a way, if we can figure that out.”

Once we all get our jab, will everyone come to recognise that, as Byrne sings on ‘American Utopia’s most inspiring track, ‘Every Day Is A Miracle’? “Optimistically, maybe,” he says. “There will be a lot of people who will just go, ‘Let’s get back to normal – get out to the bars, the clubs and discos’. That’s already been happening in New York; there’s been these underground parties where people just can’t help themselves. But after all this it’d be nice to think that people might reassess things a little bit.”

And with the algorithm as the new gatekeeper and technology beginning to subsume the sounds and consumption of music, what does the new wave Nostradamus foresee for rock in the coming decades? Will AIs soon be writing songs for other AIs to consume to inflate the numbers, cutting humanity out of the equation altogether?

“It seems like there’ll be a kind of factory,” Byrne predicts, “an AI factory of things like that, and of newspaper articles and all of this kind of stuff, and it will just exaggerate and duplicate human biases and weaknesses and stupidity. On the other hand, I was part of a panel a while back, and a guy told a story about how his listening habits were Afrofuturism and ambient music – those were his two favourite ways to go. The algorithm tried to find commonalities between the two so it could recommend things to him and he said it was hopeless. Everything it recommended was just horrible because it tried to find commonalities between these two very separate things. This just shows that we’re a little more eclectic than these machines would like to think.”

And in the distant future? Best prepare to welcome your new gloop overlords. Byrne isn’t concerned about The Singularity – the point at which machine intelligence supersedes ours and AI becomes God – but instead believes that future technologies will emulate microbial forms.

“I watched a documentary on slime moulds [a simple slimy organism] the other day,” he says, warming to his sticky theme. “Slime moulds are actually extremely intelligent for being a single-celled organism. They can build networks and bunches of them can communicate. They can learn, they have memories, they can do all these kinds of things that you wouldn’t expect a single-celled organism to be able to do.”

“I started thinking, ‘Well, is there a lesson there for AI and machine learning, of how all these emerging properties could be done with something as simple as a single cell?’ It’s all in there… when things interact, they become greater than the sum of their parts. I thought, okay, maybe the future of AI is not in imitating human brains, but imitating these other kinds of networks, these other kinds of intelligences. Forget about imitating human intelligence – there’s other kinds of intelligence out there, and that might be more fruitful. But I don’t know where that leads.”

His grin says he does know, that he has a vision of our icky soup-world future, but maybe the rest of the species isn’t yet advanced enough to handle it. But if we’re evolving towards disaster rather than utopia, we can trust David Byrne to give us plenty of warning.

December 18, 2020

#david byrne #talking heads #music #new wave #post-punk #art pop #avant funk #worldbeat #interview #nme magazine #2020

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