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Ask HN: Teach me something new

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Re: Ask HN: Teach me something new

#631

Post by gnubison »

schoen wrote: post #139
hiisukun wrote: post #123

In a lot of terminals, Alt+. (or Option+. on Mac) will paste in the last argument of the previous command. $ mkdir hi $ cd You can hit . several times to cycle through earlier final args.

Wow, I did not know that! I would have referred to this using !$, which is one of the Bourne shell history substitutions. Like $ mkdir awesome $ cd !$ (The "!" has the connotation "history" in the shell, while the "$" has the connotation "last", as in regular expressions.) An advantage of the way you mentioned is that you could actually see the history item displayed on the command line before running the command!

History expansion originated in csh, and was never in the Bourne shell. Bash, certainly.

Re: Ask HN: Teach me something new

#632

Post by mikelevins »

sleightofmind wrote: post #601
mikelevins wrote: post #524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might like the Linnstrument: https://www.rogerlinndesign.com/linnstrument As a longtime guitarist myself, I found it quite easy to learn. You can think of each row as a guitar string. In the default setup, each row is a perfect fourth above the row below. The green lights are the white keys on a piano; the unlighted keys are the black ones. The blue lights are C natural. Skip a square diagonally up and to the rig…

I watched the LinnStrumentalist video per your first link. Amazing stuff. And it does seem to reduce the amount of finger contortion required compared to most keyed or stringed instruments. It does, though, seem to demand that the player look at the keyboard. For an instrumentalist, this may not be a big deal. For a performer accustomed to connecting to his audience with his face, as do many singers, it seems like a…

Yes, the Eigenharp is easier to play without looking, but I can say a couple of things about the need to look at the Linnstrument.

I've only had mine for a few weeks, but the need to look at it seems to be slowly disappearing. Now, the surface does feel really uniform, which is not so helpful for that. As you probably expect, there's not much on it that you can use to orient your hands by touch. Still, I do seem to be gaining some ability to know where my fingers go without looking. Partly it seems to be just acquiring a feel for how far apart the keys are (and you can feel the boundaries between keys). Part of it is starting to know which keys I'm touching from the pitches it's producing.

The second thing is that I've seen videos of players who attach a guitar strap and sling it over their shoulders (it comes with the attachments for that), playing it flat against their chests.

Taking those two things together, I'm fairly confident that it's possible to learn to navigate the keyboard by feel.

I haven't tried the over-the-shoulder thing, myself. So far, I play it on a table like a piano, or like a lap steel guitar or dobro.

I find it easy to learn, both comfortable, and expressive, and it's quickly become my favorite MIDI controller. I prefer it over both piano-style keyboards and MIDI guitars.

Re: Ask HN: Teach me something new

#633

Post by gnubison »

pxeger1 wrote: post #145

Double-clicking on text selects the whole word. Double-clicking and dragging selects text word-by-word. Triple-clicking selects the whole paragraph. Middle-clicking a link opens it in a new tab. Middle-clicking a tab closes it. Middle-clicking in general often has useful functionality!

In Emacs, right click adjusts the closest side of the selection, and double right-click cuts that region. (And it obeys the mode of selection if you started with a double- or triple-left-click.) Double-left click also selects s-expressions.

Re: Ask HN: Teach me something new

#634

Post by alar44 »

mikelevins wrote: post #428
alar44 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take some acid and what you are describing regarding consciousness becomes fairly apparent. The amount of things that automatically happen or get filled in for us goes unnoticed until you get a chance to step outside of it for a while.

I can't say that I agree. I got pretty thoroughly familiar with several psychedelics in the late 70s and early 80s, and although I value those experiences to this day, they didn't teach me anything especially relevant to the scotoma or sleep/wake experiences I've reported.

Interesting. In my experience, I end up cleaning my house the next day, because I noticed that the light switch in my room isn't just a light switch, it's a dirty light switch. I'll see stains or smudges that I never noticed. Suddenly there are tons of details that I can see that just got smeared in "normal" waking life.

Re: Ask HN: Teach me something new

#635

Post by aszantu »

mikelevins wrote: post #28

I've described this on HN before; forgive me if you've already seen it. I have chronic migraine. It sounds worse than it is; I rarely suffer attacks anymore, and when I do, they're usually mostly harmless, as in the case I'll describe below. Contrary to popular belief, migraine is not a headache. It's something a little more like an epileptic seizure. Intense headaches are one common symptom, but there are a lot of o…

I suffer from migraines from time to time, over the years I've found that some foods can trigger them, for example plant oils. I eat salad with olive oil and half an hour later I start getting these headaches that start at the eyes.

Re: Ask HN: Teach me something new

#636

Post by aszantu »

majkinetor wrote: post #402
caseyslaught wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grapefruit juice can also increase the amount of a drug absorbed into the bloodstream. It blocks an enzyme in the small intestine that breaks down many types of drugs.

Those are called bioactivators. The other ones are piperine from white pepper and MSM which promotes nutrient digestibility.

what's msm?

Re: Ask HN: Teach me something new

#638

Post by rnjesus »

mncharity wrote: post #6

Consider arm sized, hand sized, fingernail sized, and pinched-fingers "tiny" sized. About 1000, 100, 10, 1 mm. Tray of cookies, hand-sized cookie, chocolate chip, and tiny crumb - yum. Now zoom 1000x, taking tiny sized to arm sized, and they become 1000, 100, 10, 1 um. Call this microview, with microscopic microorganisms measured in micrometers. A grain of salt is sized like a cardboard box, a head hair like a hand-s…

for a neat visualization of this, https://www.htwins.net/scale2/ — it’s a bit old now, so to view it on mobile the app is pretty much required. i can’t remember exactly what i paid for it on the app store, but i know it’s been worth the few dollars

Re: Ask HN: Teach me something new

#639

Post by ASalazarMX »

Molotov cocktails are named that way because Balts have a twisted sense of humor.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov_bread_basket

In 1939, the Soviet Foreign Minister, Vyacheslav Molotov, claimed the Soviet Union was not dropping bombs on Finland, but merely airlifting food to starving Finns. The Finns sarcastically dubbed the RRAB-3 cluster bomb "Molotov's bread basket." Consequently, the improvised incendiary device that Finns used to counter Soviet tanks was named the "Molotov cocktail", "a drink to go with the food."

Re: Ask HN: Teach me something new

#640

Post by atoav »

mkl wrote: post #394
atoav wrote: post #232

Ordering a typical printed circuit board with components placed on it is so cheap nowadays that this is a viable option for electeonic hobbyists nowadays (e.g. just ordered 50 pieces of audio output amplifiers at 3,49 € per piece (customs and shipping included), where 1.60 € would be the parts cost of the two chips on it. Only thing you need for this is: 1. An idea and some knowledge about electronics 2. An EDA softw…

What are the minimum order sizes like? Could I get two of something instead of 50, or would the per-piece price skyrocket?

Jlcpcb has a minimum quantity of 5
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