Tootfinder

Interesting thing about tomorrow's tarot show, rendering now, is that I upgraded from Blender 4.0 to blender 4.4 and it's quite a bit nicer to look at the timeline editor.
Was sad to find that the render time was up though. From about 3 seconds per frame usually to more like 12!?
Trying it with an old version I see that the lights and textures look way better with 4.4 than 4.0 though. A substantial step up in the way the show looks without me even doing anything other than waiting four times longer per frame.
Seems to be heavily dependent upon lighting now. The slow frames are like 12 seconds but the fast frames with minimal lighting and close up on the video are more like 2.
Looks too beautiful now to go back though. Upgraded my cloud-remote render machines too. We will render on four machines tonight. FOUR! The power of it all.
g3.4xlarge is no faster than g3.large but g6.xlarge seems to be twice the speed.
But hard to be sure really coz of the massive variance in time depending on the lighting.
Anyway, great show coming tomorrow. Sometimes I wonder what the hell I'm trying to do with it but tomorrow's show is the answer. Hide the angry bitter political rant behind a strange CGI tarot show. When the rant comes together well I like it.
https://wordcloudtarot.com/@wordcloudtarot/statuses/01JYFF0GQV1680Z0VG0YTFZDTP

Einem Artikel des sehr informativen Magazins für Teekultur "t" entnehme ich, dass die aktuelle Matchaknappheit sich auf stark erhöhte Nachfrage nach Premium-Matcha zurückführen lässt. Teetrinkende im Westen würden nun vermehrt auch für Mixgetränke Matchapulver besserer Qualität (und in größerer Menge) verwenden, u.a. auch, seit sie inflationsbedingt dazu übergingen, ihr Zeug selbst zu Hause anzurühren. Die Matcha-Jahre 2025 und 2026 bleiben spannend, so die Experten.

"Wir wussten nie, von wo der nächste Angriff kommen würde. Das ist auch in der echten Welt ein Problem, denn es gibt keine deutsche oder europäische Gegenstrategie."
Der verstörendste Satz in dem sehr lesenswerten Text von @… .

Greedy Gossiping
Kada Williams
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.17804 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2506.17804

Greedy Gossiping
The renowned Gossiping Problem (1971) asks the following. There are $n$ people who each know an item of gossip. In a telephone call, two people share all the gossip they know. How many calls are needed for all of them to be informed of all the gossip? If $n\ge 4$, the answer is $2n-4$. We initiate and solve the related Greedy Gossiping Problem: given a fixed number $m<2n-4$ of calls, at most how much gossip can be known altogether? If every call increases the total knowledge of gossip as much…

IT audit criterion: the screw must be anchored in the beam. ✅ Reality: mostly like this.

Pretty sure my experience of having spent the better part of 25 years asking technology questions on Freenode and getting a spectrum of answers anywhere from Really-Helpful to “You don’t want to do the thing you asked for” unintentionally prepared me for navigating the minefield of AI chat “answers” which are also a spectrum of outright lies to sometimes-leads-me-down-a-useful-path.

Exploring Low-Dimensional Magnetism in Cobalt Vanadates, ${A}$CoV$_{2}$O$_{7}$~(${A}$~=~Ca, Sr) : Crystal Growth and Magnetic Properties of Effective Spin-1/2 Zigzag Chains
Anzar Ali, Guratinder Kaur, Arvind Maurya, Isha, Kathrin K\"uster, Ulrich Starke, Pascal Puphal, Arvind Kumar Yogi, Masahiko Isobe
https://arxiv.org/ab…

Exploring Low-Dimensional Magnetism in Cobalt Vanadates, ${A}$CoV$_{2}$O$_{7}$~(${A}$~=~Ca, Sr) : Crystal Growth and Magnetic Properties of Effective Spin-1/2 Zigzag Chains
We report the successful growth of high-quality single crystals of \ACVO, a quasi-one-dimensional zigzag chain compound containing Co$^{2+}$ ions, using the optical floating zone method. The crystal growth was stabilized under high-pressure argon-oxygen gas with slow growth rates, overcoming challenges associated with the incongruent melting behavior of this material. X-ray diffraction confirms the zigzag arrangement of Co$^{2+}$ ions, forming a quasi-one-dimensional chain structure. Magnetic s…

#Wordle 1,433 5/6*
⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜ <1% of 212,891 (265)
⬜⬜⬜🟩🟨 0 of 58 (10)
⬜⬜🟩🟩⬜ 0 of 0 (2)
⬜⬜🟩🟩⬜ 0 of 0 (1)
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WordleBot
Skill 97/99
Luck 38/99
Wasn't sure that last guess was really a good 5th guess, but decided it would provide useful info even if wrong.
Look at that I actually narrowed it to 2 and used my friend @… 's patented method of trying all the wrong answers first to get it! 😁 She said she's going to put it in the public domain, so anyone else is also free to use it!

Zu US-Angriff auf Iran - Darum bleiben Russland und China verdächtig ruhig #News #Nachrichten

This week instead of a playlist with random rock/metal stuff, I'm working on Progressive Metal playlists. :blobkeyboard:
First one has:
- "Tiara" by "Seventh Wonder"
- "The Waking Hour" by "Age of Artemis"
- "Secret Garden" by "Angra"
- "V: The New Mythology Suite" by "Symphony X"
- "Contingent" by "Pyramaze"
(no Dream Theater, sorry!)
YT Music: …