Paranoid Factoid

Started on 1993 with Yggdrasil Plug and Play Linux. Before kernel 1.0! Before ELF binaries, even.

I’ve been running Ubuntu Studio for almost ten years. Before that it was Redhat variants. Before Linux, a short time with 386/BSD. But for work, SunOS, Irix, HP-UX, and a stint on a team supporting a VAX 8900 running VMS

I’m about to dump Ubuntu Studio. Thinking either Fedora or Debian.

There was a competitor of Digg to flee to. Reddit, and the other social media platforms, solved that problem with anticompetitive practices to prevent a migration they previously benefitted from.

I remember when Reddit was run out of spez’s Somerville apartment on a little PC. No subreddits, just one top page. Terrible performance and no users. Everyone was at either Slashdot or Digg. Even Kuro5hin by then was dead. Reddit beat Digg because Digg got stupid and abused their community. Reddit is a million times worse now than Digg ever was.

Inkscape has a few text deformation tools Gimp lacks. Importing svgs produced from Inkscape would be a big win. People will use that.

An alpha mask on an adjustment layer allows for all sorts of useful adjustment blends using paint brushes or black and white gradients. I’m sure you’ve seen how Ps handles adjustment layers. Krita is similar. This is just a common interface element now. It works well. Shrug.

Good luck. Thank you for Gimp 3. It is a real improvement over prior major releases.

I realize Gimp is a free project and has limited resources. I’m thankful there are people (like you) who maintain and improve it. Because I run Linux, Gimp and Krita have been my only available go-to tools. But it is painful. I really hope you guys rework the alpha mask code so each adjustment filter gets its own mask. Maybe in 3.4 or whatever.

Layer styles for text are a big deal. Being able to reorder adjustments in the stack is a big deal. Vector layers are a big deal. Real improvement has happened. But I do actually use adjustment masks. A lot of people do.

Thank you for these updates. Another thing I’d really like to see is better integration with Inkscape. It does text better than Gimp. Being able to craft text there and flawlessly import that into Gimp, with all its filters and effects, would really be nice. Inkscape is quite good.

Come on. Since 1997 and Ps 7, every adjustment had its own alpha mask to paint where and how much that adjustment would take place in the frame. Affinity does this. Hell, Krita has done this for nearly 20 years.

Gimp 3 is a genuine improvement. But what you propose is the kind of delusional thinking seen in ‘Gimp is better than Photoshop’ advocacy videos on YouTube. The kind of advocacy that has ruined GIMP’s reputation among people who actually use this software.

Your half baked solution does not do the job.

I’m less interested in games and more interested in creative apps. If Affinity on Linux is actually useful now, I’d make the transition. Gimp still lacks layer masks for adjustments. I want better tools.

Reminds me of that movie, Crash:

It took a lot of customer abuse to break Reddit’s stranglehold, but they are perilously close to a Digg like migration off their platform. Spez can take a hike into bankruptcy.

This explains it:

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_Motion_Picture_(4K_Ultra_HD)

There’s a new 4k Blueray that has extensive effects and scene updates.

What’s the issue with the 10a?

The updated directors cut of TMP really improves that movie. It remains my favorite Trek film, with ST II: WoK a close second.

Nautilus can move groups of numbered files, which is useful for image frames stored separately. But it has bugs. One of them won’t let you start a sequential move from any number other than 1. Which is idiotic.

Dolphin can’t even do that.

The command line can, easily.

Isn’t the second word a racist slur??

Not that I’m aware of. This phrase was common with East Coast kids in the 1970s. It meant something like, ‘that’s cool’ or ‘amazing.’

“Wicked Nipper Keen”

Yggdrasil Plug and Play Linux!

So, fuck Nerdrotic and all the other overtly anti-woke political gatekeepers with a following. They don’t care about story, they care about shoehorning their ideology into everything cultural. They’re culture warriors, not storytellers. But there are good ones out there. For example, I really like Steve Shives’ work, he’s focused on the storytelling and has been fair in his Trek criticisms (IMO). YouTube is a mixed bag, but there’s good stuff out there too.

I saw enough to warrant walking away. Whatever Trek is, it’s not what it was. And what it has become is not for me.

For older stuff, I still think Farscape and the 2000s BSG remake still hold up too. I especially like the unreliable narrator thread in Farscape when Chriton had the brain implant. That was peak paranoia. Good stuff. The Expanse was good too.

I don’t think producers like JJ and Kurtzman are idiots. I think they have jobs. They know what their distributors want and give it to them. This is why they remain employed. They’re trusted by the money men. This, in contrast to actual geniuses like Terry Gilliam, David Lynch, John Carpenter, etc, who just want to make their visions come hell or high water.

For all I know, from a business standpoint Paramount execs might well be right. That is, chasing the youth market and hoping for a splash is the demo advertisers want. It’s their property, so good luck to them I guess.

I have a lot of respect for all the artists involved. The set and costume designers, vfx artists, grips and cinematography guys. They put a lot of work in and it visually shows. I hope they all get a good payday.