Ben Combee

Ben Combee

@unwiredben.combee.net

He/Him/His. Maker of neat things; software eng @Roku; member, NYC Resistor; vice-chair of Austin Technology Comm. Opinions expressed are my own, not my employer's. Can't evolve into Vespiquen. Occasionally on Mastodon at https://nycr.social/@unwiredben

1K followers928 following675 posts

Definitely worth a watch, and not just because I'm one of the producers.

Scott Bateman@scottbateman.bsky.social

YOU GUYS! My short film Film That Never Begins finished its festival run yesterday, and but so today I'm making it public for the very first time! Film That Never Begins is easily my biggest hit with festivals--it got into an astounding 45% of festivals I submitted it to! youtu.be/u9efmjbtTFQ?...

As best I can tell, it's impossible to send the simple text message "stop" using Android Auto's voice assistant, as that's also the "don't listen to me anymore" cue.

I've not watched the Ted Lasso S4 finale yet, but my hot take on the season is that the writing reminds of an improv player that always goes with the first idea. I was taught that you get better results when you reject that one and go for idea #2, as that will be more original and more true.

Version 1.3.0 of Oregon Ho! for #pebble watch now published, has settings page allowing you to set your own party members and disable gun-related events. You can indeed pick andy, peperony and chease if you wish.

@coolhand.bsky.social trying out LocalType, and I like it a lot, but I find I'm often typing and hitting a bottom row key instead of space, so get a token like "itndossnt" when I was trying to write "it doesn't" that just sits there and never gets corrected to multiple words.

Also just noticed that after I manually corrected the word "doesnt" to "doesn't" it didn't automatically remove the trailing space when I entered a following quote. If I tap on a word to fix, it can easily get extra spaces.

About to board my plane, but just pushed version 1.2.0 with a less derpy ox, more random events, and some friends included in the party names.

I was trying to 3-D print the whole Shire from the Lord of the Rings books, but I had to stop. . . . . It was too hobbit-forming. #dadjoke

While on a work trip this week, I started working on a very weird dating app simulator for my #Pebble Time 2 after thinking about how to randomly generated faces. I've got a basic shell going, but it needs some expansion before release.

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Finally, I need a good name for this. Working title is "Swipr", which is 100% the name a sitcom would pick for a Tinder clone in a very special episode.

While on a work trip this week, I started working on a very weird dating app simulator for my #Pebble Time 2 after thinking about how to randomly generated faces. I've got a basic shell going, but it needs some expansion before release.

You can swipe right and left on the Time 2 screen to make a thumbs animation and move to the next image, although I have to admit I needed a web search to know which swipe went with which action.

I really got to learn more about the new sound and touch APIs. I went through some iterations about how to handle starting new waves and detecting when touch had been disabled by the user. Still to implement: better difficulty tuning and better suspend/resume handling.

Definitely looking for feedback. With my digits, I need to keep my finger right at the bottom of the screen to see what's going on. I think I want to have waves alternate between faster but smoother motion then same speed but more erratic.

Ben Combee reposted

Here we go: My first real feature film You, Your Brain, & You is now FREE and PUBLIC on both YouTube and Vimeo! This movie's been hard to see for a long time and I'm thrilled to get it back out into the world. A fun and weird mockumentary about the brain! Links in comments.

Just returned from a screening of "Coyote vs. Acme" with the kids. Everyone had a good time, although some jokes definitely need reading skills, and others riffed off things that aren't so familiar to kids not raised on Looney Tunes on TV every afternoon. Recommended.

Introduce yourself with 10 acts or bands you've seen live The New Pornographers Asylum Street Spankers Tegan & Sara They Might Be Giants The B-52's Freezepop Los Campesinos! Ben Folds Sparks Sleater-Kinney

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I like Bluesky. It has enough critical mass so that my terrible dad jokes and occasional project announcements get a few likes, and I'm OK with that. I can keep up with political opinion and news here and also geek out here.

Ben Combee reposted

Bluesky is a "liberal bubble" because fascist chuds can't get traction without algorithmic assistance and because people here trained themselves to block "debate me" trybois the instant they roll up

The Verge@theverge.com

Bluesky's new CEO Toni Schneider on the platform's reputation for being a liberal bubble: "Yes, we definitely want that to change. It is already changing. It certainly wasn’t designed to attract one specific group of people."

Just noticed that the revised artwork for the movie "WarGames" that shows up in Roku search features a book on C++ that wasn't published until 1985, two years after the film.

I watched the 1993 film "Demolition Man" tonight for the first time since it came out, as I remembered that I enjoyed it. There's some fun satire of what they thought 2032 life would be like, but so much filler and scenes stuffed with over-the-top violence without consequences.