My elders complained when rotary phones lost their wheel, getting replaced by push buttons. It was mayhem! We don’t live in a Matrix, we live in a loop. LOL.

@movq@www.uninformativ.de Yeah, give it a shot. At worst you know that you have to continue your quest. :-)

Fun fact, during a semester break I was actually a little bored, so I just started reading the Qt documentation. I didn’t plan on using Qt for anything, though. I only looked at the docs because they were on my bucket list for some reason. Qt was probably recommended to me and coming from KDE myself, that was motivation enough to look at the docs just for fun.

The more I read, the more hooked I got. The documentation was extremely well written, something I’ve never seen before. The structure was very well thought out and I got the impression that I understood what the people thought when they actually designed Qt.

A few days in I decided to actually give it a real try. Having never done anything in C++ before, I quickly realized that this endeavor won’t succeed. I simply couldn’t get it going. But I found the Qt bindings for Python, so that was a new boost. And quickly after, I discovered that there were even KDE bindings for Python in my package manager, so I immediately switched to them as that integrated into my KDE desktop even nicer.

I used the Python KDE bindings for one larger project, a planning software for a summer camp that we used several years. It’s main feature was to see who is available to do an activity. In the past, that was done on a large sheet of paper, but people got assigned two activities at the same time or weren’t assigned at all. So, by showing people in yellow (free), green (one activity assigned) and red (overbooked), this sped up and improved the planning process.

Another core feature was to generate personalized time tables (just like back in school) and a dedicated view for the morning meeting on site.

It was extended over the years with all sorts of stuff. E.g. I then implemented a warning if all the custodians of an activitiy with kids were underage to satisfy new the guidelines that there should be somebody of age.

Just before the pandemic I started to even add support for personalized live views on phones or tablets during the planning process (with web sockets, though). This way, people could see their own schedule or independently check at which day an activity takes place etc. For these side quests, they don’t have to check the large matrix on the projector. But the project died there.

Here’s a screenshot from one of the main views: https://lyse.isobeef.org/tmp/k3man.png

This Python+Qt rewrite replaced and improved the Java+Swing predecessor.

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org I didn’t know they had a name, to be honest. When I/we last had a dot matrix printer, I just sat alone in the basement and made these. 😂

Good morning. Driving the dot matrix printer from my little real-mode toy OS. 🖨️

(This is just a wrapper around BIOS INT 17. I love it nonetheless. 😅)

https://movq.de/v/6b3f9a2837/MVI_8839.MOV.mp4

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Yeah, removing the cover will probably help. I’ll have to try. 😅 And, yes, the scrolling is pretty annoying (and kind of ruins the experience a little bit).

The printer isn’t that loud – at least not for a dot matrix printer. 😅 It’s been ~30 years since I’ve last seen them in person, but I remembered these things to be louder. I’m typing on my Model M, maybe that contributes to the perceived noise on this video. Here’s an isolated recording of that keyboard: https://movq.de/v/ddc98b03d8/2022-02-21–model-m-goes-brrr.ogg 🤣 It really sounds like that when you’re typing fast. Brrrrt.

@prologic@twtxt.net Anything above a couple hundred Euros. 😅 The current Epson LX-350 appears to be not that pricey, though. 🤔

I mean, what do you want to do with it? If you want to use this as an actual printer for daily use, I’d get a laser printer instead, because they’re very reliable and the print quality is top notch.

I got my dot matrix printer mostly for experiments and nostalgia, so I wouldn’t want to pay something like 300-400€ for it.

@prologic@twtxt.net Yeah, those POS thingies are similar. There’s “ESC/POS” as a variant of “ESC/P”, if I’m not mistaken.

All I can say is, when I go to big stores like Amazon, then I have trouble finding “traditional” dot matrix printers for use at home. 😅 Epson still sells them, but they’re more expensive than my laser printer was. So yeah, they still exist, just expensive, by the looks of it.

@movq@www.uninformativ.de Are you sure?

because there is virtually no market for these devices anymore, meaning new ones are very, very expensive.

I think dot matrix printers are still pretty common in many Point of Sales (POS) registers right? At least here in AU they’re very common. I had a quick look myself today, there seems to be quite a solid market for these types of printers. In fact even EPSON still sell Dot Matrix printers themselves 🤣

@movq@www.uninformativ.de Kind of curious now… Is there a (to buy new) dot matrix printer you’d recommend if someone wanted to get into this sort of thing (sending plain ‘ol bytes to a printer port)? 🤔 (I remember this back in the ye ‘old days!)

@movq@www.uninformativ.de Heck yeah, have fun! :-) We never had a matrix printer, started off with a cathode ray tube and an inkjet pisser.

I’m happy to see you compose your first twtxt message using ed on your new output device. We definitely need video proof of that! ;-)

Sooooooooo, things happened, and I now have a dot matrix printer again. 😍😂

(One of the end goals is to simulate a hardcopy terminal on my old box. I’m waiting for another cable to arrive, I don’t have USB there. And then use ed(1) like it was meant to be used! 😅)

https://movq.de/v/850e04ba36/VID_20250821_180801.mp4.mp4

https://movq.de/v/850e04ba36/closeup.jpg

@andros@twtxt.andros.dev Thanks for consolidating a lot of good ideas. Especially how you have deiced to just extend the mention syntax for location-based treads. This might even be backward compatible with older (pre-yarn) clients.
What about using Z for UTC +00:00- is that allowed in your specs?
Regarding url = I would suggest to only allow one and the maybe add url_old = or url_alt = !?
I’m still not a fan of a DM feature, even thou it helps that i have now been split out into a separate feed file. Instead if would suggest a contact = field for where people can put an email or other id/link for an established chat protocol like signal or matrix.

@abucci@anthony.buc.ci two things. Conduwuit, a Matrix server written in Rust, is no longer going to be developed. The other is, I didn’t mean to tag you, but because Yarnd was broken it happened. Apologies.

Conduwit is set to archive on GitHub. It was my favourite Matrix server, which I still self host. I think I am going to get off Matrix altogether now.

Maybe go back to Jabber?

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org I guess the thing is that usernames are no longer needed for many popular things, like WhatsApp. “Just install the app”, done. When I ran my Matrix server for our family, this was the first thing that people were bummed out about: “Oh, this needs a username and a password? Why doesn’t it just work? That’s annoying.”

People are less and less exposed to “low-level” details like this. There was also this story in 2021 about the concept of a “file”: https://www.theverge.com/22684730/students-file-folder-directory-structure-education-gen-z

Posted to Entropy Arbitrage: Free Social Networking Showdown - Matrix https://john.colagioia.net/blog/media/2020/03/28/riot.html #socialmedia #freesoftware #riot #matrix #socialshowdown