• 2 Posts
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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 5th, 2023

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  • Sorry to hear that. Though a broken pain must not necessarily mean severe pain. It depends on which bone you break, where and how. You got unlucky there. I had a couple of broken bones, my big toe, my hand and part of my hip (not the joint, but the Illium, which has a purely protective function), and in all those cases the pain was managable without painkillers, as long as I didn’t move the injured body part at least. It was always a closed wound and there was a crack in the xray but the bone had not moved much out of place and never needed an operation. Also adrenaline played a role, I broke my hand at a Judo competition and at first just thought I just bruised, but the paramedid noticed that it moved where it shouldn’t.

    With all my traumatic injuries I was consoled by the fact that soon I will arrive in the hospital, will be cared for and the pain will stop.

    The worst pains I had were a severe tooth ache and strong migrain attacks. It was worsened by the fact that I didn’t know when the pain will end.


  • Definitely the opposite of “light”, but you mentioned chess and if you’re into something similar but very different, you might try learning #Go together on online-go.com. That site has a very short introduction into the game under the Learn tab, but it only covers the very basics and initially you will have no idea what you’re doing. The rules are simple, but there is a lot of complexity that arises from that and professionals study the game for years. But even as a complete beginner it’s fun. Full on 19x19 games can take a long time, but games on a 9x9 board are fairly quick, comparable to a chess game.

    Still, this would be a journey. If you want something not turn-based and relaxing to play while chatting maybe try something else but I can’t give any recommendations.


  • Kbin and Lemmy are both different pieces of software that can be used to spin up an instance of a reddit-like news aggregator. Both speak the ActivityPub protocol, a common “language” that allows instances in the Fediverse to connect. In theory a Lemmy or KBin instance can connect to all other Fediverse instances via ActivityPub, no matter whether the server runs on the Lemmy or KBin Software or it’s an instance of Mastodon or Pleroma. But the administrators of a particular instance can restrict which servers they want to federate with, but that is not a feature of the used software. A caveat is, that in practice there had been some issues with federation between Lemmy and Kbin servers in the past, at least I heard so. You could regard this as software bugs and in current versions that should be better.

    Also a reason that many people choose KBin over Lemmy is that supposedly, the original Lemmy developer has some far-left “tankie” world-views and runs the “lemmygrad” instance. Many instances defederate with that (and maybe other Lemmy instances), but those are social aspects, and not an issue with the Lemmy software itself.



  • Thumb-Key is aiming to be an FOSS replacement to the now unmaintained MessageEase. Like MessageEase, it offers a 3x3 touch-and-swipe layout. Such a layout takes some time to learn, but allows to type fast and accurately, thus getting rid of the dependence on prediction/auto-correction, without which QWERTY on small touchscreens would be unusable. Some people report being able to type > 50 WPM on MessageEase and the same should be possible with Thumb-Key. It’s a young project and is still missing many features and gestures of MessageEase, but it is active and has a community here at thumbkey@lemmy.ml.

    I only recently switched from GBoard to MessageEase and ThumbKey, and I still around 25 WPM, but I found that I stopped making mistakes when typing out the long master password for my password manage on my phone, because this is one of the areas where auto-correct couldn’t help.

    But I am still far away from reaching the speeds of swiping on a QWERTY-keyboard without word prediction. So if you don’t mind that and don’t want to spend your free time learning alternative layouts, stick to QWERTY layouts, but if you want a keyboard layout to type exactly what you want, try one of these 3x3 boards. To be honest, if you want to give it a shot, out of the two I wound probably still recommend MessageEase, as Thumb-Key is very alpha, but that might change. I have both with the same layout and switch back and forth.


  • I often share (“boost”) lemmy posts on mastodon. I would like to be able to add hashtags to the boosted post, because on mastodon I rely on hashtags to find content that interests me (e.g. I follow certain hashtag. Lemmy doesn’t need those because the general theme and topic is often obvious from the community context it was posted in, but this context is lost when sharing on mastodon. For example, when I post something in c/baduk@lemmy.ml, for lemmy users it will be clear that this post is about Baduk (the Korean name for the game of Go). But when I boost the post on my private mastodon, it’s not obvious anymore that this was posted in a Baduk community and the Baduk-interested people on mastodon will never see the post except if they follow me or the lemmy comunity. All solutions that come to my mind seem a bit awkward, are there any best-practices for that?




  • Here some not yet mentioned #FOSS #Android apps that I think add value to me:

    • Anki-Droid (github) for spaced repetition learning, synced with the Anki desktop app. I create and manage cards in the desktop app, but a mobile client is convenient for review on the go. Makes memory a choice.
    • AntennaPod for #podcasts
    • #OSM: Organic Maps, and StreetComplete for easy contributing
    • Wikipedia
    • Orgzly outliner using the org-mode markup format of the #Emacs text editor. I use it to view and edit my org-mode notes created in the Emacs text editor on my phone. That use-case is pretty niche, but the app is also decent by itself.
    • Syncthing for syncing directories between several devices (mobile & desktop) without the need for a central “cloud” server.
    • Wallabag: Self-hosted pocket alternative. Save websites to read later and sync that list across devices.

    Not on F-Droid:

    • Medito (IzzyDroid, github): Guided #meditation for beginners and a FOSS alternative to headspace and the like. Though if you’re experienced just a timer app might be sufficient, there are plenty of those. Might do some tracking, there seem to be some problems getting it into FDROID, see this issue

  • This only my second home-made batch overall, and I didn’t taste this one yet, so will speak from memory from my first batch. Also I have not much “tasting” expertise, so I can’t give a sommelier-style description. Makgeolli has this fine sparkling going on, a smooth mouth feel and is quiet sweet. Compared to other alcohols it’s maybe similar to Federweisser, a fresh, still sparkling white wine. Home-made makgeolli is surprisingly similar in taste to the one you get in the store, but has a bit more of a sour note. I did the variant where in addition to nuruk I added some brewer’s yeast which contains different yeast strains. If I remember correctly it might get even more sour and less alcoholic if you omit that, but not sure, never tried.

    To be honest I never tried any other rice wines, makgeolli is my first brew after mead, and I like how simple it is, no need for aging or fermentation caps, no temperature control. Also due to my Korean girlfriend I’m very interested in Korean culture and its cuisine, especially its richness in fermented products.

    Sandor Ellix Katz in the “Art of Fermentation” also describes a variant of Makgeolli with sweet potatoes, I might also experiment with that in the future. Surprisingly, in his book he has rice wines in the same category as beers and not as wines, because both are done through fermentation of grain using enzymes to bread down starches. Which in beer is done in a distinct fermentation step, but for rice alcohols usually happens in parallel to the alcohol fermentation.


  • I made some #Makgeolli, a milky white Korean rice “wine”. It’s made by fermenting steemed rice with the “nuruk” starter culture, which contains both the enzymes to break down the rice starches into sugar and the yeast cultures for turning the sugar into alcohol. I used the Danyangju recipe from A Primer on Brewing Makgeolli.

    The most difficult part is finding the Nuruk online. I found it in a Korean online store as “Powdered Enzyme Amylase”. And you need a steamer that fits 1 kg of glutinous rice. But the fermentation is done in a single step after just around 7 days at room temperature.

    Today I filled it into plastic water bottles. Not pretty on pictures but the store version is also sold in plastic and it makes it easier and safer to gauge the pressure, as it will contiue to ferment and make CO2 (though slowly after refrigeration).

    I first tried Makgeolli in Asian supermarkets, but the exported one is pasteurized and not alive anymore, which is why I wanted to mak my own. The homemade one is much stronger in Alcohol than the store one, so usually I dilute it before drinking, and thus the 2L brewing yield is not that little.

    Makgeoll in Fermentation jar a day before bottling Freshly bottled Makgeolli