Interests: programming, video games, anime, music composition

I used to be on kbin as e0qdk@kbin.social before it broke down.

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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: November 27th, 2023

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  • Thanks. I finally managed to get him this morning! Just barely won though. 23 HP left, Estus flask empty and used an Ember for healing late in the fight… One Ashen flask left. Used the Pestilent Mist strategy in combination with Sunlight Spears and Tears of Denial (which triggered twice, I think, during the fight) – cast using Crystal Chime+5 and unequipped my sword to stay under the 70% weight threshold. 8 Estus / 7 Ashen Estus split. SL143. Ring of the Sun’s First Born, Morne’s Ring, Sage Ring, Estus Ring. Dragoncrest shield (for fire defense) + Crest shield (for Dark defense) that I meant to switch to for the second phase, but didn’t. Armor was a random collection of whatever seemed like it might help – most significant piece was the Winged Knight Armor; I look really goofy. Started game as Deprived and played early game as Dex fighter before switching to mostly pyromancy mid-game. Highest stat is currently 40 Faith – I did some grinding to get there from 35 to free up a ring slot for an earlier strategy that didn’t work. (The 3 guys who drop down on top of the Archive are worth about ~21K souls each with my best grinding gear equipped and are vulnerable to Rapport – best grinding location I’ve found so far.)

    I’m sure the guys who live and breath this game will be like “Lol, git gud scrub” but it’s my first playthrough and I’m just happy I managed to pull it off at all. :p








  • I just ssh in and use the remote computer’s shell (typical bash on the remote side via gnome-terminal on my local Mint system) or mount a remote directory (via sftp) if I want to use a GUI editor. Not sure what hoops you have to jump through on Mac since I don’t use it these days. I’d assume you can ssh into a remote system from Mac’s default terminal app still? (I learned a bunch of Unix basics on OS X in a class ~20 years ago; it worked back then, at least…)





  • I went to a lot of different schools growing up. Some of them were not-very-well-funded public schools, but others were international schools for expats and private US schools – some of which might qualify. Most of the schools I went to had a cafeteria with a typical “go through the line with a tray and get whatever they cooked that day in bulk” kind of system. Some of them also had a store where you could buy snacks, prepackaged sandwiches, and such. I remember bringing lunch from home a lot – either sandwiches or leftovers from dinner the previous night, usually. One of the schools was so small it didn’t even have a real cafeteria for us and all the students (6th~8th grade in the US system) brought lunch from home and ate on fold up chairs in the multi-purpose room every day. I also went to a boarding school for a couple years. That one had a cafeteria system too – but the students were pressed into working on a rotation schedule (wiping down tables, cleaning dishes, and such – I don’t remember preparing any of the food). I don’t recall anything particularly outstanding one way or the other about the regular lunches there, but that one had periodic formal dinners (once a month or so, IIRC) where I had to get dressed up (e.g. put on a tie) and they broke us up into small groups of students and teachers. I remember those being stressful, but also having better than average food.







  • There’s something else going on there besides base64 encoding of the URL – possibly they have some binary tracking data or other crap that only makes sense to the creator of the link.

    It’s not hard to write a small Python script that gets what you want out of a URL like that though. Here’s one that works with your sample link:

    #!/usr/bin/env python3
    
    import base64
    import binascii
    import itertools
    import string
    import sys
    
    input_url = sys.argv[1]
    parts = input_url.split("/")
      
    for chunk in itertools.accumulate(reversed(parts), lambda b,a: "/".join([a,b])):
      try:
        text = base64.b64decode(chunk).decode("ascii", errors="ignore")
        clean = "".join(itertools.takewhile(lambda x: x in string.printable, text))
        print(clean)
      except binascii.Error:
        continue
    

    Save that to a file like decode.py and then you can you run it on the command line like python3 ./decode.py 'YOUR-LINK-HERE'

    e.g.

    $ python3 ./decode.py 'https://link.sfchronicle.com/external/41488169.38548/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuaG90ZG9nYmlsbHMuY29tL2hhbWJ1cmdlci1tb2xkcy9idXJnZXItZG9nLW1vbGQ_c2lkPTY4MTNkMTljYzM0ZWJjZTE4NDA1ZGVjYSZzcz1QJnN0X3JpZD1udWxsJnV0bV9zb3VyY2U9bmV3c2xldHRlciZ1dG1fbWVkaXVtPWVtYWlsJnV0bV90ZXJtPWJyaWVmaW5nJnV0bV9jYW1wYWlnbj1zZmNfYml0ZWN1cmlvdXM/6813d19cc34ebce18405decaB7ef84e41'
    https://www.hotdogbills.com/hamburger-molds/burger-dog-mold
    

    This script works by spitting the URL at ‘/’ characters and then recombining the parts (right-to-left) and checking if that chunk of text can be base64 decoded successfully. If it does, it then takes any printable ASCII characters at the start of the string and outputs it (to clean up the garbage characters at the end). If there’s more than one possible valid interpretation as base64 it will print them all as it finds them.



  • If it actually worked reliably enough, it would be like having a dedicated, knowledgeable, and infinitely patient tutor that you can ask questions to and interactively explore a subject with who can adapt their explanations specifically to your way of thinking. i.e. it would understand not just the subject matter but also you. That would help facilitate knowledge transfer and could reduce the tedium of trying to make sense of something that’s not explained well enough for you to understand (as written) with your current background knowledge but which you are capable of understanding.