A friend and I spent a fair bit of time working on a Star Trek: First Contact plug-in, but it didn’t really go anywhere. Somewhere between normal use and programming is the odd art of ResEditing your way into a tool or toy you want.
I did an experiment for a friend recently to prove that a USB foot pedal could be mapped to Photoshop functions, in order to retrieve his left hand from command-z on his laptop and put it back onto his cintiq. It worked, of course.
Not really have the same need, I have found myself creating keyboard maps for other programs - my foot has muscle memory for Youtube's 10 second fast forward. When I am in consumer mode, I can lean back with my hands bundled up in my hoodie pockets and not freeze them in this 48 degree New England house on winter savings mode.
What are some toys you have that were elevated to tool status? Computers, commute, cozy, craft, doesn't matter.
In one episode of That '70s show Kelso and Red complained that the pong game is too easy because the pad is too wide. They opened the console, used the welding gun and successfully shrank the pad and made it harder:
Mark Shuttleworth is trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. The square peg being Steve Jobs' style, the round hole being open source/free software.
This is neat, and I don't want to diminish that, but when I saw the headline "...from scratch", I wasn't expecting that the starting components would include "a full set of keys".
I'm reminded of an old Disney cartoon (maybe WWII era ?) where goofy invents artificial rubber. The catch is that it requires rubber tires as an input.
I am working on a dedicated GPT AI Dungeon Master. Results have been promising so far. Though it has a ways to go before it is even remotely playable outside of "yeah, it'll break if you do that, let me load up the jupyter notebook that can handle that situation."
A physical chores list with a digital component. Unfortunately it has languished for a year due to circumstances of life (family health issues). Now that things are settling down I can return my attention to it.
And I found a functional 4K 55" TV on the street last night that was being disposed of, so I'm trying to decide what to do with that (apart from watching TV on it). I am thinking another cat toy, since the cats trashed their last one.
I'm reminded of the following description of the electronic thumb from Doulgas Adams' The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy[0]:
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> *Electronic Thumb*
> A short squat black rod, smooth and matte with a couple of flat switches and dials at one end. It allows Hitchhikers to flag down passing spacecraft to hitch a lift.
> The Thumb is used by Hitchhikers throughout the Galaxy to steal a ride aboard starships who's operators have little interest in taking along extra passengers.
> Half the electronic engineers in the galaxy are constantly trying to find fresh ways of jamming the signals generated by the Thumb, while the other half are constantly trying to find fresh ways of jamming the jamming signals.
And yea, upon teh n00bs, did Our Geek Jobs set His Obsessive Eye. And He brought forth a device of great sales potential: the iThing, which one can touch with thine finger.
And lo! did teh n00bs poke and jabbeth at the iThing, achieving much of what was desired.
I've thought in the past of how I might turn my grandmother's Underwood No. 5 into a terminal. Now I can just get this! As for all of the hipster references, I'm don't know much about that subculture but I can say that an Underwood No. 5 computer terminal is Steampunk heaven. Just the thing for my Analytical Engine!
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