The Technology Vent and Rant Thread

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

One can get 21:9 monitors. Of course, anything narrower than movies will have big black zones at left and right....

Yes; but one can't get 21:9 TV's at least not in the most common pricewatch listings in the Netherlands; or I must have missed the option, if they do exist.

I don't have the space right now for anything bigger than 55 inches but if I ever do, I'll probably upgrade to a beamer. That could take another 9-10 years though, because this is only the second TV in my life; and I wouldn't have had that either, if the previous 47 inch TV hadn't started getting issues after almost 12 years.

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

One can get 21:9 monitors. Of course, anything narrower than movies will have big black zones at left and right....

Some games too. There's an entire website dedicated to it.

[pdurrant]

I bought a new 50" flat screen TV. And a mount kit. And two bluetooth headsets, because it's for a bedroom and the description said

Listen with two pairs of headphones, with Dual Bluetooth Connection
New for 2021, Dual Bluetooth Connection lets two of you listen, simultaneously, with wireless Bluetooth headphones. Perfect for immersive listening when the kids have gone to bed, Dual Bluetooth Connection helps keep the action intense, without disturbing others.

So it's mounted, and working nicely. I pair up one headset. I pair up the second headset. I connect the first headset - fine. I connect the second headset - and the first disconnects!

Arghhhhhh!

Waiting to hear back from the retailer....

[DNSB]

Hmmm... one couple that my wife and I are friends with got a new Android powered TV that supposedly supported dual Bluetooth connections. This meant buying two new headsets that supported Bluetooth 5. Sadly, still only worked one at a time. Finally, they got a technician in who showed them how to dig down multiple levels in the TV's menu to find the dual audio option and enable it.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Hmmm... one couple that my wife and I are friends with got a new Android powered TV that supposedly supported dual Bluetooth connections. This meant buying two new headsets that supported Bluetooth 5. Sadly, still only worked one at a time. Finally, they got a technician in who showed them how to dig down multiple levels in the TV's menu to find the dual audio option and enable it.

I fear that in this case the retailer got it wrong. Still waiting for confirmation of that...

[ownedbycats]

I had an itch to play Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion again. And just a few hours in, I notice two things:

1. I think Bethesda blew 90% of their voice acting budget on Patrick Stewart and Sean Bean, because every other character seems to share the same 5-6 voice actors.

2. Potato faces, though they're a little endearing at this point.

3. My female Argonian takes a pair of pants from a dead bandit. When she puts them on, it turns into a skirt. This will not do:

Spoiler:

I found a mod on nexusmods to fix it, but the moment I try to download it the site goes down...

EDIT: Oh fun. Looks like all of Cloudflare went down. Love how centralized the internet is. /s

[Gardenman]

I wish they would make key boards with this key on them.

[PeterT]

Originally Posted by Gardenman

I wish they would make key boards with this key on them.

What key?

Sent from my Pixel 4a using Tapatalk

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by PeterT

What key?

Sent from my Pixel 4a using Tapatalk

A key that automagically types .com when you hit it. I never managed to get the one on an iPhone to type .ca instead.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by DNSB

A key that automagically types .com when you hit it. I never managed to get the one on an iPhone to type .ca instead.

That's less a matter of the keyboard itself than the software used.

On a PC, for example, when you press a key, what gets sent to the computer is a scan cpde that indicates the position of the key on the keyboard.. What character is assigned to that key depends upon things like the language in which you are typing, ans replacement keycaps are common add-ons for home systems.

There are an assortment of keyboard macro programs that will let you define what the computer puts in your text when an arbitrary key is pressed. If the one you use on your iPad won't let you redefine the key from .com to .ca, a feature request to the developers is in order.
______
Dennis

[ownedbycats]

I kinda love/hate how janky the AI behavior in Oblivion is.

Edla may attack horses, including the player's horse, as an unintended side effect of her AI for retrieving arrows after her target practice. If a horse has been shot with an arrow, it goes into the horse's inventory and her AI will try to retrieve it from there by killing the horse. She won't attack the player or NPCs for arrows as her Responsibility statistic is too high to allow that.

It's a bit more 'hate' because then you become short a horse...

This is why you frequently save in Oblvion. Pulling the arrows out of my horse's inventory in advance (mods are very helpful) fixed the issue. The Unofficial Patch also fixes the issue, but I don't like it.

[cc_in_oh]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

I kinda love/hate how janky the AI behavior in Oblivion is.



It's a bit more 'hate' because then you become short a horse...

This is why you frequently save in Oblvion. Pulling the arrows out of my horse's inventory in advance (mods are very helpful) fixed the issue. The Unofficial Patch also fixes the issue, but I don't like it.

I played Oblivion when it first came out - the main thing I remember was the difficulty getting exactly the right experience points to optimize leveling - any extra EPs ended up reducing a character's maximum stats potential. Maybe they've improved that in newer releases?

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by cc_in_oh

I played Oblivion when it first came out - the main thing I remember was the difficulty getting exactly the right experience points to optimize leveling - any extra EPs ended up reducing a character's maximum stats potential. Maybe they've improved that in newer releases?

I don't think they've updated the game in years (too busy re-releasing Skyrim for pocket calculators...) but there's mods that'll fix the levelling issue. My first playthrough I accidentally leveled up too fast and then I broke my save by playing with the duplication glitch too much.

[Solitaire1]

Originally Posted by DNSB

A key that automagically types .com when you hit it. I never managed to get the one on an iPhone to type .ca instead.

I wonder if they could adapt something from Palm PDAs: A shortcut symbol. You assign a shortcut abbreviation (say "c" to the phrase ".ca"). Then when you type something like "|" (the shortcut symbol) followed by "c" followed by a space the "|c " is automatically replaced by ".ca".

It might not seem like much of a savings, but you can assign a large number of letters/numbers/spaces to a shortcut, and you can have a large number of shortcuts for often-used phrases. As an example, you could assign your e-mail address to "em" and "|em " would be replaced by your full e-mail address.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

I fear that in this case the retailer got it wrong. Still waiting for confirmation of that...

The retailer says the manufacturer says that the option should be present. It isn't. Back to the retailer with screen shots....


I mean - I'd be delighted to be wrong, but there's also no mention of "Dual" in the (electronic) manual.