Roy Tang

Programmer, engineer, scientist, critic, gamer, dreamer, and kid-at-heart.

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Archive for June 2020

Posts (8) :: Photos (9)

Posts

  • My stuff: This week’s pandemic notes. Easily the most annoying thing this week: our broadband modem conked out Wednesday night. Customer support isn’t super responsive for local telcos: I called their support line the next day (support line is not even available 24/7!), got put on hold for 45 minutes TWICE before they agreed to send a repair crew over the next day (Friday). Friday morning I got a text that the technician visit was actually scheduled for SATURDAY morning.

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  • Scraping Facebook

    I had been meaning to quit Facebook for more than a year maybe, but I kept putting it off. The main reason being that I like having backups of my own digital data (still very much a pack rat), and Facebook’s social media export is less than ideal, for me at least. Less than ideal why? It doesn’t include a lot of content I would like backed up, including: comments on my posts (there have been some good conversations with friends over the years I would prefer to preserve) things I’ve reposted from other people content of certain groups I’m members of (again, mostly for some interesting discussions over the years) pictures posted by other people that I’ve been tagged in For a while I looked around for scraper programs/scripts to this for me, but none really did what I wanted.

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  • My stuff: This week’s pandemic notes. Some days still hot, but weather beginning to turn for the better. Sleep kind of better and a bit more regular too. Did my quarterly medical checkup this past week (slightly delayed). No issues, but I need to do an FBS test for next time. Sleep schedule kind of settling back into my usual biphasic sleep. Although the second phase seems to move around a lot… Not much work-wise the past week, and a bit more family-related expenses.

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  • Weeknotes 2020-06-14

    Surprisingly, no new crises have emerged during the past week. I think. More of the same crises, carrying on. Last Friday was the PH independence day holiday. I didn’t feel like celebrating. It doesn’t feel like we are free. In any case, a protest rally against the yet-to-be-signed terror bill took place at the university that morning, inspite of threats from the authorities that it wasn’t allowed. The protestors spaced themselves out and everything.

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  • It’s a bit interesting, this mentality of “I can’t trust this person because they appear to be a goody-goody do-gooder, they’re probably fake or have ulterior motives!”. I’m no psychologist, so idle speculation thread: Quoted gangbadoy's tweet: So, apparently they DO message! Nice. Happy Sunday, everybot! (Click to view full-size) 7 Jun 2020 8:43amClose It makes you wonder what kind of trauma this person must have experienced in his life, to automatically mistrust people who present as good people; were they betrayed by some person who initially presented as a good person?

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  • Weeknotes 2020-06-07: Mad World

    The world isn’t letting up. The virus is still around, but both the US and my own country have gotten distracted. The US is in its second week of police brutality/black lives matters protests. Meanwhile, our government took on a sidequest of trying to enact a wide-ranging and easily abusable anti-terror bill, triggering some smaller (by comparison to the US). I haven’t written about the terror bill, mainly because I haven’t had the opportunity to dig into it too deeply.

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  • Why Twitter?

    Alright so someone responded to my previous post on quitting facebook asking why I’m quitting facebook but keeping Twitter. This is a fair question; after all, Twitter also makes its money off targetted advertising, can also get you addicted to engagement (likes/RTs), the Twitter app can also be dumb, and there can also be a lot of toxic people on this platform. So here are my reasons for keeping Twitter, and you may also get some tips for improving your twitter experience:

    read more (922 words)

    Posted by under post at #tech life
    Also on: mastodon twitter / 1 / 922 words
  • Quitting Facebook

    (This will be cross-posted to my Facebook account.) It’s been long overdue, but I’m quitting Facebook. Why? It’s not you, but it’s not me either. It’s Facebook. There’s a ton of reasons for quitting Facebook, but here are some highlights: Facebook is dumb. The site is barely usable and the app is a big battery hog. And posts don’t even support formatting so now you’re getting this one in Markdown.

    read more (740 words)

    Posted by under post at #tech life
    Also on: mastodon twitter / 2 2 / 740 words

Photos

2006 vs 2020
2006 vs 2020
Got my internet back and immediately did an #m21 draft. 5-3 isn’t great, but I guess it’s not bad for a first foray? #mtg #magicarena
Got my internet back and immediately did an #m21 draft. 5-3 isn’t great, but I guess it’s not bad for a first foray? #mtg #magicarena
Cube draft is about to rotate out, let’s waste some gold #mtg #magicarena
Cube draft is about to rotate out, let’s waste some gold #mtg #magicarena
After some back and forth from Diamond 1, this filthy casual finally hit Mythic with some weird totally unoptimized Gruul thing. #magicarena #mtg
After some back and forth from Diamond 1, this filthy casual finally hit Mythic with some weird totally unoptimized Gruul thing. #magicarena #mtg
After some back and forth from Diamond 1, this filthy casual finally hit Mythic with some weird totally unoptimized Gruul thing. #magicarena #mtg
Foot Dispenser
Took me a few tries, but I finally managed to get to 7 wins in Arena Cube draft (with a control deck no less!) #mtg #magicarena
Took me a few tries, but I finally managed to get to 7 wins in Arena Cube draft (with a control deck no less!) #mtg #magicarena
Took me a few tries, but I finally managed to get to 7 wins in Arena Cube draft (with a control deck no less!) #mtg #magicarena
“It’s just a super quick change, I’ll fix it directly in prod.”
This world is terrible, time to escape to one where the bad guys are easier to beat #PS4share
Far Sector #5 #BlackLivesMattters #comics
Far Sector #5 #BlackLivesMattters #comics