Boonoo Boonoo River, New South Wales Superthread

[Axver]

A hot chocolate laced with whisky is a great idea for a cold night and I recommend it to one and all.

 

[Axver]

all this commute stuff is making me hope i can make freelancing work. my commute would be about a minute.

I'm about to turn my spare room into a home office thanks to all the "no allocated space" hot desk bullshit implemented at work... not sure how desirable it would be though.

I got a desk at work back in 2012 precisely because working at home had ceased to be effective for me. I'd get distracted or be hideously unproductive. And now I'm really fond of the sociability of work. If I worked at home, sure I'll still have active weekends and stuff but I'll go days in the week without talking to anybody and I fear I'd go crazy/lonely very quickly. Plus working on campus is pretty useful from a professional perspective, and convenient being next door to the library.

So hopefully I'll be able to make one of these hot desks "freeze".

 

[KhanadaRhodes]

the world's gone to shit since david bowie died. this is a provable fact™.

 

[bono_212]

People of New Zealand. Where do you watch your movies legally? Do you have a certain normal site you would rent movies from? I am involved in a gift exchange on Reddit, and I stupidly said I'd go international, now the person I picked said they wanted a movie recommendation, so I wanted to get them a $10 Amazon gift card and three movies to watch with it, but now it's like, oh wait, you can't stream movies off of Amazon in NZ?

 

[Axver]

Not being much of a movie watcher, I could barely answer that for Australia, let alone New Zealand.

Ian?

 

[KhanadaRhodes]

yeah, there's no nz version of amazon. you could see if you could get them a nz itunes card. idk how it works buying gift cards for international versions though. this makes it seem like it's not possible unless you were to set up a proxy. but surely if it's too much of a pain, you could just paypal them the money.

 

[Axver]

I recall that when my father bought me an NZ iTunes gift card, I couldn't use it through the Australian iTunes store, which was a huge fucking pain in the arse.

 

[bono_212]

Ughhhhhhhh, why can't we all just be a big happy family and use the same websites.

 

[bono_man2002]

Because none of the big companies can make any money otherwise.

 

[Axver]

Don't you love it when you get a new keyboard and you keep hitting basically every key just to the left or right of the one you want because it's slightly different in shape to the keyboard you're used to?

Because the tiny little bluetooth keyboard that's come with my new iMac is causing me to type some unbelievable abominations.

 

[Axver]

I'm trying to decide if I should probably not buy things while at least a bit drunk, or if the fact I've never once regretted a drunk purchase means I should definitely buy things.

Oh, it's bedtime. Well I guess that's money saved then.

 

[KhanadaRhodes]

i had/have the keyboard issue when using my pc. i'm too used to my macbook pro.

i love having to use two computers! yay! (i could sell my macbook since the pc is what i need for school but you'll pry macs from my cold, dead hands)

 

[Axver]

I can't even use PCs any more. God Windows is an ugly OS.

 

[Mack_Again]

I do hate Windows but i particularly don't like Mac, either. I do use Apple products pretty consistently as my dad has been Apple fan since 90s.

 

[Axver]

At least when Apple design something it's clear somebody thought about the aesthetics and appearance. Windows products look and run like somebody slapped shit together as quickly and cheaply as possible.

Which is funny for me to say, because I remember disliking Macs in the late nineties for an ugly OS. Windows back then seemed to be the better designed product but they have long since lost their edge. I'm sure Apple will too in the fullness of time.

 

[KhanadaRhodes]

yeah, mac os 9 was ugly. but now i'm stuck with yosemite, because i don't want to upgrade to el capitan. why did they have to change the system font? i love that they made helvetica neue the system font, i don't want to have to look at ugly ass california.

 

[Axver]

I haven't even noticed the font change on the new iMac I just bought.

When don't you like about El Capitan besides that?

 

[KhanadaRhodes]

nothing, haha. i usually don't even pay attention to a lot of the features now that they roll out a new os so frequently (i remember when they came out every few years instead so each os had bigger improvements so each one was a bigger change is what i mean). my last macbook ran on mountain lion and this one has yosemite and when i started using it, i fell in love with all of the features. i'm sure some of the stuff i love is probably not even new features, but being able to swipe on the trackpad to go back a page and stuff, basically using the trackpad as if it were a smartphone is amazing.

honestly, i really don't use a lot of features. file sharing (old as shit feature i remember using on jaguar, aka 10.2) over home network — pretty helpful since i use two laptops and also have my desktop in memphis, various trackpad gestures, i'd use airdrop if i had any other macs to share with that had the feature (my imac runs snow leopard so it's too old), and basically otherwise just browse the internet, use garageband, ms office, yeah.

metal api sounds cool, although the graphics card in my pc is apparently way better (my mac would've barely had been able to run skyrim even on its lowest settings had i run boot camp on it, for example. and i just got this last year!) so idk if i'd see much of a difference. i never notice that stuff anyway.

i like the idea for snapping two windows side by side. i know windows has had that since i think 7, not that i use the feature (i should, it's a pain switching between windows when translating).

 

[Axver]

...you definitely know more about the features than I do! I just turned on the new computer and went "huh, so this is what my laptop would look like if I got around to that update it keeps pestering me to do. Nice."

There are a few aesthetic elements that I prefer from the old version, but within a week I'll probably forget there was ever a difference.

Also holy shit I love having such a big screen.

 

[KhanadaRhodes]

i only know about the features in el capitan from looking them up on wikipedia just now.

i'm jealous, my screen's pretty small. i didn't have a big budget when i got my laptop last year so i basically had to walk into the store and buy the cheapest mbp they sell. i'd waited so long to buy one though (i replaced a...late 07 model i think? maybe early 08?) that it seems lightning fast in comparison. and my pc laptop seems too big, almost cumbersome at 15.6".

 

[coolian2]

Well, I'm clearly way too late to the party from earlier, but Netflix.

 

[Axver]

I'm not Netflix-and-chilling with you, sorry.

 

[KhanadaRhodes]

 

[Mack_Again]

but Netflix.

oh no, Ian.

 

[Kieran McConville]

At least when Apple design something it's clear somebody thought about the aesthetics and appearance. Windows products look and run like somebody slapped shit together as quickly and cheaply as possible.

Which is funny for me to say, because I remember disliking Macs in the late nineties for an ugly OS. Windows back then seemed to be the better designed product but they have long since lost their edge. I'm sure Apple will too in the fullness of time.

Not to weigh in on this topic, but I personally don't give a hoot. I hear all this stuff about Windows and PCs, have done for decades at this point, and it's not untrue as far as it goes, but I don't give a hoot. My computer is a known quantity and it mostly behaves as I expect it to. I know my way around it and I can do the things I want to on it (which is a lot more than just viewing content btw).

So it's like, imperfect, clunky or whatever. Some of the programs I use on it are likewise not the best thing going. But there's a lot to be said for a known quantity. I don't have time to worry about the aesthetics of my metaphorical hammer and chisel.

Though one thing I will say is that Windows updates are more trouble than they're worth, and after one particular offender back in 2012 had the unintended side effect of rendering a number of my fonts useless in certain design programs, I've made a point of turning off all updates, permanently. Happy days.

 

[Axver]

Oh yeah, I'm definitely an "updates? I don't have time for that shit" kind of guy. My laptop is stupidly out of date.

At least Mac updates usually aren't as disastrous as Windows ones, but I'm convinced they keep wrecking things in iTunes.

I do think the rivalry thing is a bit silly - but then put me at a Windows machine and I'll soon start swearing about how annoying I find it to use. That's probably mainly a result of having lost familiarity with it.

 

[Mack_Again]

i wasn't aware of the true meaning of Netflix and Chill until early this year.

 

[Axver]

And then she asked you to Mack... again.

 

[Kieran McConville]

Oh yeah, I'm definitely an "updates? I don't have time for that shit" kind of guy. My laptop is stupidly out of date.

At least Mac updates usually aren't as disastrous as Windows ones, but I'm convinced they keep wrecking things in iTunes.

I do think the rivalry thing is a bit silly - but then put me at a Windows machine and I'll soon start swearing about how annoying I find it to use. That's probably mainly a result of having lost familiarity with it.

Since they're like, the only machines I've ever used in all my life, I'm probably like that person born with a missing limb who doesn't know any different.

 

[Mack_Again]

And then she asked you to Mack... again.

she actually asked me to be even more ironic. or whatever that means