Only thing I don’t like with Photolab is that there is no Linux client. I ended up getting a Mac because I liked the latest version of Photolab so much for my workflow. Deepprime xd3 is just ridiculous at cleaning up my high ISO photos.

Are you using assisted culling in Lightroom for culling? As yeah, thats just missing from Darktable and you would have to use another (opensource) tool to do that.

However if you are still manual, I dont agree once you have learned the keyboard shortcuts, that’s as fast for me in both, or in my current tool of choice, photolab. Even just using 1 to 5 to do basic culling with auto advance is a game changer for manual review.

Editing really depends on your workflow, if you have a lot of similar shots you can just copy and paste a working set across everything thats similar and then manually tweak. Even if the shots aren’t the same just applying the usual set of modules with some sensible defaults across photos is very helpful. I used to keep one back from my last set as a template.

Jeff Jarret has let himself go

This is why its been announced now. With all the tracking Microsoft has in W11, including being able to track usage to an email account for most, they will have a good idea who has binned windows and who hasn’t.

Its this volume of switching that has them worried enough to actually pretend to fix things. I say pretend as its fairly obvious what they need to remove to reduce the bloat on RAM but their business it tied to it now, like concrete over boots on a mafia snitch.

Exactly!

I felt such an idiot when I realized their band name translates to angina, I kept reading it as poutine for some reason.

Microtonal but with super catchy riffs, thumbs up from me.

This performance has just broke out for them.

They were told by the Studio that they needed to add a veteran actor to the cast for season two, Danny was one of the choices so obviously they picked him

https://www.looper.com/349130/the-real-reason-danny-devito-joined-the-cast-of-its-always-sunny/

Latest hobby is photography, I had a camera for Christmas after not having a camera with interchangeable lenses in decades. I like that it gets me out the house as like nature/landscape/train photography.

Long standing hobbies are mechanical keyboards and coffee, espresso and pour over.

Keyboards I have really slowed down my purchases to just two or three new keyboards each year.

Coffee I have not purchased anything other than beans in a long time, but I still want to upgrade my espresso machine (marax) at some point.

The Aliens in Aliens are loosely based on Naked Mole Rat cultures and behaviours complete with hive mind that talks via chirps and trills, giant queen with extended baby area, specialized roles (this is more from the expanded universe), not liking other clans of Aliens, resistant to pain/acid etc. There are just so many parallels.

I say Aliens as the Alien in Alien was slightly different depending on if you consider the deleted scenes canon or not.

Most amateurs have signifcantly more time they can cut by training better and harder than spending thousands or tens of thousands on better components.

Its a very small list of amateurs who train to the same level as a pro who has a good chance of winning any of the big competitions.

Stick that under 30s pro on a cheap bike geared the same as a midlife crisis amater 45 year old gear head on an ultra expensive bike and guess who wins?

If you want to buy wins enter an amateur car racing event, those are mostly reflective of money spent given a base level of talent and training (which costs far more money per hour than training for cycling).

Its hands down my most useful tool, especially as I can both invite people to my events and I can share my calendar with people I choose. Everything goes into the calendar, from appointments to birthdays to holidays to when things need to be renewed. Only time I forget something now is if it hasn’t gone into the calendar.

I especially like being able to send the address of where I am meant to be going straight to my maps program, as I will usually try and work out where I want to park when going somewhere. Saves so much hassle when you actually get to the event.

I did a large scale data rationalization and migration project for a company that is heavily regulated. They can be asked to prove they have this or that document from seven years ago, for no other reason than they should have it. Not having it means big fines and negative press.

Hundreds of Tbs of data got appropriately labelled and migrated, even more got left behind on the old system till it could be decommissioned safely after a period of parallel running.

As part of the decommissioning the data was backed up twice, and I wanted the backup properly tested with some random file restores. Not a full restore, just a few random restores just a proof of life test that the backups worked. I was told that wasn’t a reasonable request and it wasn’t needed as the architect in charge of backups trusted his backup team and he “designed pragmatic solutions”.

I still mean to call in to the regulator in a year or two to trigger a restore request, lets see if a pragmatic solution design is actually the same as performing some basic testing.

I was diagnosed as dyslexic as a young child, I spent a lot of my childhood reading, and it definitely helped my ability to read. So much so I was ahead of my reading age by the time I hit secondary school.

However it did next to nothing for my auditory processing or my ability to phonetically spell out words. I did have significant coaching around this during school age but nothing ever really stuck with it.

I still cannot reliably phonetically spell out words today, many decades later. Pretty much every word I can spell I have had to brute force learn the hard way, letter by letter with a lot of repetition.

I have had the same problem with handwriting, its completely illegible unless I take my time and draw my letters the same way that people draw pictures, fine for forms but way too slow for notes. Thankfully I can type everything like that now.

I did cooking at school, all the way to GCSE, very nearly went to culinary school instead of doing A Levels and Uni. I decided against it as chefs are more likely to work evenings and weekends than your average IT nerd. I do not regret it, IT can be toxic but nowhere near as toxic as a lot of commercial kitchens.

As I got older I realised that I enjoy cooking, and I am a good cook, but I am not a chef and being a chef is a completely different level due to the volume of food and dishes you have to make. Cooking for yourself you make for a handful of people most of the time, usually a single meals worth of dishes, and you will still eat it even if its bad most of the time. A chef might do over a 100 covers from a menu of dishes and they have to be at least good, while working as a team to do so.

At least for GCSE there was a lot of repetition over dishes to get good at them and their basic techniques, and an encouragement to experiment with them. I must have spent six weeks making victoria sandwich cakes for example.

Post school, cooking books and youtube to expand the range of cuisine that I can cook.

Often they don’t actually use the cards themselves, paying is the job of an assistant so its more likely to be some sort of company credit card.

Heres Rishi Sunak completely failing to get how contactless works, literately the simplest process to pay for something, you don’t need a PIN or put the card into the machine, you just tap the card reader. Its like hes never paid for anything in his life before.

https://www.independent.co.uk/tv/news/rishi-sunak-contactless-fail-video-b2043035.html

Macro photography is always an option for indoor

Assuming you want to use the laptop for this hobby, I would suggest getting a cheap, secondhand camera, old DSLRs are like £50 with a lens and perfectly fine starting point, but you can spend as much as you want on a setup. Only recommendation I would make, is get something thats still supported today for the lens mount type, that way you know you have a constant upgrade path.

Get the camera with the right lens included for what you want to start taking, additional lenses will increase the budget significantly even at the bottom end as they can often work well with better (and more expensive) camera bodies if you decide to upgrade later on.

Then you can use Darktable & GIMP to play with the photos to your hearts content or “spend” on Light Table & Photoshop. You can do anything from basic image correction up to full blown re-imaginings of your photos. Plenty of online tutorials to walk you through the processes.

Yeah for the average user, a Mac with Apple silicon is a great choice, you do not even have to buy new as a second hand M1 or M2 can have its battery replaced by Apple for about £160 and have a warranty on the work. The M1 for the average user is still more than powerful enough if you avoid the base RAM and storage. If you get really desperate there are also the genius bars, lol.

Sure you can pick up a secondhand Thinkpad for the same amount of money, replace the battery for less, stick whatever flavor of Linux on it you like, but the average user doing that by themselves and ending up with the same easy to use experience is unlikely. I would rather do the latter as I would pick a model I can upgrade RAM/Storage myself, but then I simply do not see the average user wanting to do that.

I get paid for all OT, either a half day or a full day depending if I go over, its enough money to make it worth while as I am mattress stuffing being close to retirement.

I have been working from home for more than twenty years now, when I started doing one or two days a week before then I am old enough to predate any sort of Internet VPN and had to dial in directly.

In my time I have had jobs were I have never been into the office, not even once, for the duration of working there.

Main benefits are:

–The time and cost savings of a lack of commute, which are significant

–Get paid London rates while living somewhere a lot lot cheaper

–Get to spend far more time with my kids as they grew up

–Work from anywhere, I have worked from sail boats and while camping

–Quiet days you can do what you want

Main downsides:

–Busy days can turn into no sleep multiple days if you aren’t careful

–You are often expected to be available for far longer hours due to no commute dead time

–No such thing as a snow day, and sick days you have to be really ill to be off

–I don’t get to dress up for work anymore