Not if he’s off screen. It’s only a visual cue if it’s captured by the video.

If you have a separate video of the guy falling over dead, you can use that video to get a window of time to view in the other video, but one video that captures only parts of the scene can easily leave you with no visual cues.

Just to add to the “completely change fields” thing in light of your “move to the woods” option:

I did the move to the woods thing (technically, bald prairie…) and found that there were enough other people out there to still find work. And where I moved to, they were desperate enough for good workers that most employers were willing to train, including picking up the tab for short courses. Some of the jobs were pretty shitty (sometimes literally: I spent a few years cleaning out clogged sewer lines), but, for me, the rest of the lifestyle more than made up for it (we found a place on the shore of a lake).

Although my objective was to just ditch tech, once word of my past got around, I had to beat them off with a stick.

I was probably in a bit of a different place, too. My main objective was to bridge the decade between “I just don’t want to work anymore” and my actual retirement.

Also, my wife might have gained more from the move than I did!

If you explore this route, I recommend looking into service organizations to join in the area. Joining one rapidly turns you from outsider to insider. Mine was volunteer fire and rescue.

I like the basic premise of GoVTT, that you trust the players to not cheat. I’ve got a project on the back burner to allow people to play online games the same way they play in person: rules are agreed upon and enforced collectively instead of imposed and enforced programmatically. I figure to start with ordinary playing cards, then build up from there.

Excellent! I’m working on my own workbench. I’m still at the design and layout stage, because, like pretty much every client I’ve ever had, I’ve fooled myself into thinking I have special requirements that can’t be met with an existing, proven design.

A lot of great information and food for thought.

Although I’d love to run something local, I’ll probably rent a VPS to avoid the various hassles associated with Starlink.

I dealt with a similar situation by simply purchasing the code from my employer. I guess that technically it was a form of licensing, because we both had the right to use, modify, and resell as we saw fit as long as there were no infringements on branding or trademarks.

They may not offer favourable terms, but it might be worth asking.

I always read a lot. 100+ books a year, plus magazines. Then I got a job in the boonies and got home only on weekends. All of a sudden I was reading a book a day. Even with the library and used book stores, that was financially ruinous for our young family. So I bought a VIC-20, a used b&w tv, and the programmer’s reference manual to take out to the work camps… The savings on books paid for the system in just a few months.

One thing led to another and a decade or so later I made the transition from hobby to career. Now I’m retired and looking to reboot as a hobbyist.

Hell, I barely know 20 people, let alone 20 people who both use Android and would be willing to participate. 😀

Thanks. I’m working on a requirements document to help me figure out exactly what I want to do and how to accomplish that.

What I’ve got so far is leading me in the self-hosting direction. Scale is certainly part of it, but it seems likely that the best way for me to get more people on board is to set up a family server. That way it’s not so much about “here’s a new way to communicate” but “here’s a small, private space to plan family reunions and keep everyone up-to-date on family events.”

Also, I have some other projects that I’ve been putting off because of the need to figure out self-hosting. Running something for the extended family might be the push I need :)

Snikket looks like it checks off a few boxes. It looks pretty simple. It uses Docker (not that I care, exactly, but it seems that Docker is something I will have to come to terms with in general for other things on my self-hosting roadmap). The Android app is available through F-Droid, something that only I care about, but I do care about that.

So, finish fixing the snowblower (today, I hope), figure out how to get my OCI server running properly, then work on snikket. Maybe this time next week? 🤞

I will!

I’ve been the phone number route, so now it time to try the right way. If I can get my son on board, my wife will follow and that’s all who’s left on Signal anyway.

Thanks. Done and done.

I started and ended my working life as the proverbial blue collar worker, mostly a labourer. Programming was my hobby and I loved it. I lived and breathed and dreamt programming.

I went pro for one reason and one reason only: money. Well, okay, there was some satisfaction in helping nice people solve interesting problems, something that is rare when working as a labourer.

I knew my days were numbered when an HR goon started using transparent misinterpretations of various motivational theories to lecture me on how money really didn’t matter that much to me. She was right in the sense that prefer I time at home to getting paid time-and-a-half for overtime, even when I’m clearly underpaid, but completely out to lunch when considering my desire for hobbies and travel.

Money may not be a very good motivator, but lack of money is one hell of a demotivator!

Yes. What I thought, or at least hoped, we would get was something like podcasts. Everyone puts out whatever, there are some official networks, but everything is available through your app of choice. Ad supported by default with easy ways to pay for reduced ads and no ads, and major distributors (like Spotify, Amazon, and Apple) where one subscription gets you access to almost everything.

Oh, I forgot about that! I had better luck getting people on to Signal, so that’s what I settled on. I’ll take a look again.

Thanks!

I’m just getting back into programming as a retirement hobby after leaving the field due to burnout 15 years ago. That means I’m only just starting to figure out editors and such.

I don’t know of any code editors that use tab stops the way a word processor does. A word processor uses tab stops specifically for alignment at defined positions rather than tab characters equivalent to specific number of spaces (or tab key to insert specific number of spaces). Without the ability to set positional tab stops, I don’t know that proportional fonts will be all that great for most people.

I took a look at your link to almost proportional fonts. Thanks. I don’t know how I missed that, given that iA Writer is one of the editors I’ve been playing with for general purpose writing. (I’ve become disillusioned with the state of modern word processors.)

I’ve long preferred proportional fonts and positional tab stops like what you find in a WYSIWYG word processor. Got a tab position wrong? Drag it as appropriate or, if necessary, add a new one. In fact, during a period where I was doing far more writing than programming, in the days before code completion, I preferred my WYSIWYG word processor to my code editor. I had appropriate scripts and macros for cleaning up imported text files and to always save both native format and a text file with spaces in place of tabs. I also had different templates for different languages so that I could have custom processing for different languages. (It helps that a big part of that job was teaching people how to use word processors as far more than just electronic typewriters.)

Now, of course, the programmer’s editor is an advanced tool tailored to the job, making it lunacy to even consider a word processor as code editor. Which doesn’t mean that there aren’t word processing concepts that might be valuable.

Nick Gravgaard has some good writing on the subject and links to a variety of resources, including to at least one proportional font designed for programming.

I agree, but I cut them some slack based on history. They started off using SMS for transport, encrypting everything in place and encrypting sent messages when the recipient also had Signal (Text Secure at the time, I think).

When they switched to using internet for encrypted messages, they kept SMS capabilities. I liked that they did that, because it let me use one app to communicate with everyone: encrypted with other Signal users, SMS with those using competing and incompatible products or just stuck on SMS.

They recently dropped SMS support, so now my contacts are fragmented and I still have to use SMS as a lowest common denominator unless I want to install multiple apps. And since I’m on Android, one of those apps is not possible to install.

Since dropping SMS, there is no reason to hang on to phone numbers, and they seem to be headed that direction.a

I understand all the reasoning. I don’t understand why nobody seems to be building nice apps using interoperable protocols and encryption. (Well, I do understand the greed, whether for money, power, or fame, I just don’t like it.)

Going freelance. All the stuff I learned in formal and informal study and from those around me pales in comparison to what I learned from having to craft useful, affordable solutions for a wide variety of customers in several different fields.

It’s true that certain aspects of my technical knowledge took a hit, but creating line of business software solutions in direct collaboration with the actual end-users was a transformative experience.

One of the most important things I learned is that approximately nobody actually knows much about how to efficiently and effectively use a computer. About one third of my time was spent teaching people how to use computers.

Yes, that fits my own mental model of the online world I’d like to see.

You’re considering only the prospect of doing things the YouTube way, as a service owned and operated by a single entity. As my dad was known to say “there is more than one way to skin a cat.” Who knows whether that is literally true, but the metaphor has proven accurate every time someone finds a different, often better, way to do something.