@metaning@mastodon.social cover
@metaning@mastodon.social avatar

metaning

@[email protected]

Sculptor in welded steel & eWaste. Studio & Landscape photography. Comics & Graphic Novels. Burning with the Holy Fire for VR.

BFA in Sculpture from the National Art School, Sydney.

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@metaning@mastodon.social avatar metaning , to random

Look at my ENTIRE lizard again.

Setting up this shot, I put the tape out, then put the food down, assuming Chonk would walk alongside the tape, and give me a good shot for scale. He immediately grabbed the body of the tape measure in his mouth, and we had a tug of war over it. Eventually I had to distract him with the food, and put the tape down AFTER he started eating.

A blue tongue skink sitting on a grey doormat, next to a plastic container lid containing a meal of pumpkin, chicken, blueberries and rocket. Next to him, is a retractable tape measure, laid out to show the scale of the lizard. He is approximately 45cm long.
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metaning OP ,
@metaning@mastodon.social avatar

For anyone interested, is a wild animal that patrols the courtyards where I live, not a domestic pet.

The fences are made with the corner palings a few CM short of the ground, so the population can roam between courtyards.

@metaning@mastodon.social avatar metaning , to random

So the 6 month dietary experiment in adding ~140gm of well marbled red meat pretty much every day... good cholesterol up, bad cholesterol down.

@metaning@mastodon.social avatar metaning , to random

An observer from outside would note that the people who bombed abortion clinics, achieved their aim of making abortion unavailable. The people who attacked and assaulted democratic politicians, achieved their aims of making Democrats ineffective, irrelevant and cowed. The people who stormed parliaments, achieved their aim of controlling parliaments.

@metaning@mastodon.social avatar metaning , to random

"White South African creates a virtual black man to work for him" is possibly the least surprising thing I've heard about

@metaning@mastodon.social avatar metaning , to random

The Racists in charge of the should be excommunicated from the Australian Arts community. For life.

No more gala luncheon, no more social networking, no more Orders of Australia, no more board appointments. Done. Gone, for ever. Off the artistic roll-call.

@metaning@mastodon.social avatar metaning , to random

I want to see Gary Oldman playing J.W.Pepper in a new film.

@metaning@mastodon.social avatar metaning , to random

OK, just watched the new Fantastic 4 movie, and going to rewatch The Incredibles directly after, followed by Moonraker. Do recommend.

@metaning@mastodon.social avatar metaning , to random

It's almost like government companies & departments should be banned from using private sector consultancies and service providers, and required to perform all their tasks in-house, so as to create a permanent institutional knowledge, workforce, and expertise that government can call on with a known and controllable cost structure.

@metaning@mastodon.social avatar metaning , to random

Your reminder that the purpose of the under-16s social media ban is to prevent organisation of a(nother) school strike against / policy, because Australian children overwhelmingly skew towards , and will continue to do so when they start voting.

@Daojoan@mastodon.social avatar Daojoan , to random

Today on The Internet is Stupid: people are convinced my screenshots are fake because the date says November 5 when it's November 4 in America.

Reader: it is November 5 in Australia.

May I introduce you to the concept of timezones

metaning ,
@metaning@mastodon.social avatar

@Daojoan Hegemon's gonna hegemon.

@arstechnica@mastodon.social avatar arstechnica , to random

OpenAI acquires the team that made Apple’s Shortcuts
The acquired firm was working on a tool to control macOS directly with AI.
https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/10/openai-acquires-the-team-that-made-apples-shortcuts/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

metaning ,
@metaning@mastodon.social avatar

@arstechnica @lisamelton Apple users marked safe from having this forced upon them by Apple acquiring it.

@metaning@mastodon.social avatar metaning , to random

"Historians have a word for people who joined ...

...That word is "Fascist". Nobody cares about their motives any more."

@homegrown@social.growyourown.services avatar homegrown , (edited ) to random

Something that could make Mastodon safer and more pleasant to use would be reply controls.

This would optionally allow users to specify who can reply to their posts, so that people who experience abusive replies from bigots, trolls etc can pre-emptively prevent that happening.

It would also give people a middle option between follower-only posts and public posts.

If you're comfortable using Github, you can vote for this by giving a thumbs up at https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/14762

metaning ,
@metaning@mastodon.social avatar

@homegrown from a experiential perspective, what's the difference between controls to prevent someone replying to your post, and muting or blocking the person replying, so you don't see their replies?

Is it about preventing other people from seeing replies to your post by someone to whom you object?

metaning ,
@metaning@mastodon.social avatar

@homegrown Yeah, I guess not having that experience, my natural inclination is concern that mechanisms to; prevent posts being quoted, and preventing replies to posts, creates an almost tailor-made platform for astroturfing / PR, etc.

@metaning@mastodon.social avatar metaning , to random

Woke up my to find one of my desktop pictures (the active one, they rotate every 5 minutes) had just corrupted itself. No change in its modification date, loading it into image editors - shows the black as white. shows the whole image as grey. shows the image as attached. Loading it into Mona, my mastodon client, the whole image shows up undamaged (and possibly scaled), so I had to take a screencap to post this.

A screen capture of an image from the videogame Stray. All but a narrow band of the image has been lost and is rendered as black. the dividing line between them is a thin band of coloured noise.
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@joyousjoyness@mastodon.social avatar joyousjoyness , to random

✨ A Sprinkle of JoyousJoyness ✨

Mesmerizing!

Have a JoyousJoyfulJoyness day!

video/mp4

metaning ,
@metaning@mastodon.social avatar

@joyousjoyness Waiting for Raul to tell us how you can fit them in your car as suspension components.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pb8C7dxTGRM

@metaning@mastodon.social avatar metaning , to random

Observing my ~80 year old mother using her , the tasks she's doing now; scanning, printing, photos etc are no more complicated that the tasks she used to do as a Pagemaker operator in the 1980s. What is different, is that has spend years removing that was learnable, and structurally linked to the process of doing tasks, and replaced it with "intuitive" process-free black-box workflows.

Example: file saving. Not having to save files makes computers harder to know & use.

metaning OP ,
@metaning@mastodon.social avatar

If you don't know how a computer works, if you don't know where your files are, you can't feel confident, or safe in doing anything with them. You have to rely on faith that the files are taken care of, that they're stored correctly, that the search tools will surface them. (1/3)

@ProPublica@newsie.social avatar ProPublica , to random

For Blake Gerard, a fourth-generation farmer working the flood-prone fields of the Mississippi River bottomlands in Alexander County, Ill., there was no sense in fighting nature.

“I could grow something that would grow in water,” he said. Or quit.
https://www.propublica.org/article/illinois-farming-rice-soy-corn-flooding-mississippi-river?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=mastodon-post

metaning ,
@metaning@mastodon.social avatar

@ProPublica @lisamelton Grow sugarcane for Ethanol, and basic manufactured carbohydrate ration units, that will be the bulk of the American diet in 15 years time?

@JessTheUnstill@infosec.exchange avatar JessTheUnstill , (edited ) to random

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    metaning ,
    @metaning@mastodon.social avatar

    @JessTheUnstill As a GenX child, I knew which wall in my house (the central spine wall shared with the adjoining property) to lean a mattress up against as shelter for when a nuclear detonation occurred targeting my city.

    This was from a TV show broadcast in prime time on mainstream television "When the bomb drops".

    When, not if.

    @GameFromScratch@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar GameFromScratch , to random

    Unity have just released a controversial Unity Hub upgrade... You can no longer create non-Cloud projects!

    We discuss what exactly this means and how you can work around it.

    https://gamefromscratch.com/unity-now-forcing-cloud-projects/

    metaning ,
    @metaning@mastodon.social avatar

    @GameFromScratch The Unreal company rep used to (he moved interstate, and is missed) bring cupcakes to the (100+ employee) studio my partner works at, when he did his ~monthly dropin to check how things were going, answer questions, see if anyone needed help.

    For comparison.

    @louie@pdx.social avatar louie , to random

    You know, I could write a whole blog post about this—and I might—but I think we need to start addressing the very likely possibility that the entire thesis that “UI should get out of the way” and “apps should focus on content” is wrong.

    Apps aren’t just for looking at photos or videos. They’re for navigating through these things, organizing them, editing them. The tools to do those things should not get out of the way. They should be clearly defined and separate from the content.

    A screenshot of the Photos app on macOS Tahoe, with Liquid Glass toolbar buttons, icons, and a search field, which blend so much into the content that they’re barely noticeable.
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    metaning ,
    @metaning@mastodon.social avatar

    @louie Someone at Apple created a tool to make realtime glass physics a thing the compositing engine could do. Then everyone fell in love with the tools so much they lost sight of what they were using the tools to make. It didn't matter if the OS became unusable, the UI a dumpsterfire of wasted space and excessive corner radii, as long s they got to use the Glass tools to make it, they were content. Soon everything that fails to serve using Glass will be gone.

    metaning ,
    @metaning@mastodon.social avatar

    @louie people get lost in their tools all the time - how many coders do you know who are only interested in doing a project if they get to use their preferred language, or dev environment to do it.

    Same thing here... someone was so busy making Liquid Glass "cool", they're too deep in emotional sunk cost to consider if it's good. It's been clear for a long time that Apple has been decorating macOS to look like a VR environment fanfic UI, this is just another step.

    @lowqualityfacts@mstdn.social avatar lowqualityfacts , to random

    Please stop sharing this picture of JD Vance. The Vice President is not happy that it's going viral. JD's wife told reporters he is so upset that he hasn't left the couch all day. He's so distraught that he won't even let her go in the room.

    Bald JD Vance.
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    metaning ,
    @metaning@mastodon.social avatar

    @lowqualityfacts the new Smooth Yoda.

    @aeva@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar aeva , to random

    Remember how gui icons used to come in all sorts of shapes and colors and represented their function, and you could see at a glance what something does and pick it out without having to hunt for it because it looked different from the other icons? I liked that a lot. Can we bring that one back?

    metaning ,
    @metaning@mastodon.social avatar

    @aeva Apple only has Graphic Decorators (I won’t call them “designers”, because design is how it works, and Apple’s doesn’t), and the Graphic Decorators want everything to look the “same” and be “harmonious” because making it “simpler” to look at makes it “easier” to use.

    This is of course nonsense, as you rightly pointed out - there is a level of visual chaos that improves usability and recognition of individual elements.

    @metaning@mastodon.social avatar metaning , to random

    Any type folks recognise what's happening in this screenshot of an connection attempt? It will loop this indefinitely. Hosting provider seems to be unable to fix it, or is out of their depth. This is after the webhost did an internal system migration. No change at my end (which worked perfectly before their migration).

    According to them, FTP works fine for them. For me, it effects all FTP apps, and whether my ISP IP, or any VPN IP.

    @panic

    Transcript of FTP connection attempt.
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    metaning OP ,
    @metaning@mastodon.social avatar

    @panic thanks for replying. Trying the connection to the IP address in Transmit doesn’t have any change in effect. The host whitelisted my (non-fixed) ISP-provided IP in their firewall, and the connection worked with me on that IP. As best as I (and a more experienced advisor) can figure, the problem is their firewall isn’t opening the ports Transmit (or any other client) has negotiated to use for the PASV / EPASV connection.

    Does that sound like a credible explaination for the symptom / log?

    @unseenjapan@mstdn.jp avatar unseenjapan , to random

    Many in Japan continue to wear masks for health reasons. A significant number of Japan's young are also masking up daily. Some in this "mask generation" say they're used to it thanks to the pandemic. Others feel showing their faces is just "embarrassing."

    https://unseen-japan.com/japan-young-mask-habits/

    metaning ,
    @metaning@mastodon.social avatar

    @unseenjapan Good for them. Go seek out the game Sable - a whole society based upon the idea that masks (in the distant past worn for necessity) are worn for all public interactions, and the chosen style is a signifier of one's function, or calling within said society.

    @indivisibleteam@mastodon.social avatar indivisibleteam , to random

    250 years ago, the American people made it clear that they weren’t going to be ruled by kings.

    On June 14, we’re taking to the streets in a nationwide day of defiance to reject authoritarianism and show the world what democracy really looks like. https://www.nokings.org/?SQF_SOURCE=indivisible

    metaning ,
    @metaning@mastodon.social avatar

    @indivisibleteam 250 years ago, the American Revolution leadership sent a letter to King George offering him the entirety of the American colony, and its people to be his personal feifdom, if he would overthrow the democratically elected British parliment, and remove the taxes necessitated by the defence costs incurred from colonists pushing into native American territory, against Parliment's specific direction to cease expansion.

    King George refused.

    THAT is why America revolted.

    @georgetakei@universeodon.com avatar georgetakei , to random

    Least shocking story of the day.

    A post from Secular Talk (@KyleKulinski ) on X shares a Yahoo News article from The Wrap. The headline reads: "Author of Upcoming Elon Musk Biography Says ‘There Is No Evidence’ Billionaire Has Any ‘Intellectual Achievements’." The article is written by Stephanie Kaloi, published on Fri, February 21, 2025, at 11:05 PM EST, with a 5-minute read time and 7.4K shares. The Yahoo News interface shows a search bar, a "Shop Social Media Faves" button, and an Amazon ad.
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    metaning ,
    @metaning@mastodon.social avatar

    @georgetakei Like Batman, his "superpower" is... inherited wealth.

    @eniko@peoplemaking.games avatar eniko , to random

    If a company has genetic data

    And it's going bankrupt

    And that causes one of the biggest economies in the world, California, to warn people to delete their data before that happens

    Because they're very concerned about who the genetic data will be sold to in bankruptcy court

    Idk man maybe it should just be illegal to sell genetic data in bankruptcy court? Or it should require stringent oversight and regulation?

    metaning ,
    @metaning@mastodon.social avatar

    @eniko ALL user data should be a non-saleable item for any bankruptcy, regardless of the company or business. If you buy the assets of a bankrupt company, you get real estate, plant and customer-data-erased equipment.

    @Daojoan@mastodon.social avatar Daojoan , to random

    if you have ever used the phrase “fiscally conservative, socially liberal,” please understand that a great and terrible curse has already been placed upon your house. And you deserve it.

    metaning ,
    @metaning@mastodon.social avatar

    @Daojoan "everyone should have the right to pay to use whatever public bathroom they choose"

    @Gargron@mastodon.social avatar Gargron , (edited ) to random

    I'm a bit curious how other people engage with photography and art on . Do you typically click the 1:1 button on the media overlay and admire pictures in full resolution, when using the web app?

    metaning ,
    @metaning@mastodon.social avatar

    @Gargron "I don't use the Web App".

    @NanoRaptor@bitbang.social avatar NanoRaptor , to random

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    metaning ,
    @metaning@mastodon.social avatar

    @NanoRaptor As an Australian... Outback Steakhouse is the funniest thing American humour has ever produced.

    @aral@mastodon.ar.al avatar aral , to random
    Cybertruck burning in front of a Trump property.
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    metaning ,
    @metaning@mastodon.social avatar

    @aral all the grandeur of a history painting by Jacques-Louis David.

    @kenSwinson@indieweb.social avatar kenSwinson , to random

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    metaning ,
    @metaning@mastodon.social avatar

    @kenSwinson trying to remember my Art School ceramics track... that's a dark clay slip layer applied to the lighter clay body?

    @thelinuxEXP@mastodon.social avatar thelinuxEXP , to random

    Damn, that BcacheFS developer is really unhinged. It’s not just « The rules don’t apply to me », he’s now going « waah waaah codes of conducts are ruining FOSS »…

    The only reason CoCs are needed is because of people like him. They’re not silencing YOU, buddy, you’re creating THEM. Learn to be an adult, and everything will be fine.
    Funny how the most toxic people always are the ones trying to say community is the most important part… newsflash, you’re ruining these communities, not CoCs.

    metaning ,
    @metaning@mastodon.social avatar

    @thelinuxEXP I’m sure his filesystem(?) will be wonderful company with Hans Reiser’s.

    @aral@mastodon.ar.al avatar aral , to random

    I don’t know who needs to hear this but “more capitalism, harder” isn’t going to fix the problems created by capitalism.

    metaning ,
    @metaning@mastodon.social avatar

    @aral when a theology fails to produce a result, it’s always a failure of faith & devotion on the part of the congregation, never the tenets of the religion itself.

    @Daojoan@mastodon.social avatar Daojoan , to random

    This is the paradox of modern loneliness. We're more connected than ever before, but rates of loneliness and social isolation are skyrocketing. How is this possible? Well, it turns out that having 500 Facebook friends doesn't necessarily translate to having someone to call when you're having a shitty day. And it’s highly unlikely to translate to a dropped-off, homemade lemon drizzle cake on your doorstep.

    https://joanwestenberg.com/the-mind-bending-reality-of-non-euclidean-social-networks

    metaning ,
    @metaning@mastodon.social avatar

    @Daojoan You can have hundreds of friends on Facebook, who won’t notice when you just disappear from Facebook, because the algorithm hasn’t been showing them your posts for years. You can have close friends who know you’re immuno-suppressed, and keep talking about “when you come around for a drink”, but won’t ever schedule time to catch up over a video call...

    @GameFromScratch@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar GameFromScratch , to random

    Remember when Unity self destructed with the whole run-time fee and all their competitors dunked on them?

    Well... it's Adobe's turn.

    Affinity have announced a 50% off Flash sale on their Adobe-alternative software Affinity.
    https://gamefromscratch.com/affinity-products-50-off-in-flash-sale/

    metaning ,
    @metaning@mastodon.social avatar

    @GameFromScratch Been using Affinity since Photo v1 launched, and folks need to be aware that there are some real blind spots in Serif’s ideas for how apps should work.

    • Affinity Photo doesn’t let you see mask effects while editing a vector mask.
    • Affinity Publisher has no concept of document-wide layers.
    • The tools palette isn’t included in Studio Preset for arranging palettes on screen(s).
    • You can’t work on more than one document on screen at a time.