“Fingerprints?”

Cut to an animaniac holding a timid looking purple clad rock star.

“No, thanks.” -Dot

I have setup and run what are basically HTPC’s for decades now. Kodi running on a Debian based Linux distribution or just Debian is a solid recommendation and has lots of support for infrared remotes, but kodi can be very fiddly to setup properly. It will work, but don’t expect it to work “out of the box”. You’ll probably still need a mouse and keyboard for anything outside Kodi. You’ll have to read a bunch of documentation and do some customizing to get the most out of Kodi. It’s still easier than most other setups, but it will feel very frustrating if it’s your introduction to Linux too.

I’ve moved to using my HTPC primarily as a server. Once you get comfortable with linux and docker, setting up new server services like Jellyfish, Plex, and and *ARR stack is relatively trivial. The advantage here being that you can serve your media to any device that can connect to your server. For me that means one library of media to share with any TV in my house, any mobile device I own, and any friends and family computer savvy enough to download the right apps and setup an account. If your network (and your Internet connection) isn’t reliable this kind of setup may not work very well for you at all. For example, Plex account authentication will fail is you don’t have Internet. Jellyfin and Kodi fair better when Internet is only available occasionally or is unreliable.

My least favorite part of using Kodi was setting up the remote. Even worse was trying to configure controllers for retro gaming. The situation is MUCH better than it was, but is still far from easy. I was kind of able to side step the remote problem because now I can just use the remote for the TV (if it supports the Plex or Jellyfin apps) or another streaming stick like fire stick, Nvidia shield, or Roku. My Nvidia shield can pair with any Bluetooth controller and runs RetroArch so that problem was side stepped too. ROMs can be copied via samba shares or loaded directly by a USB drive.

TLDR: Kodi has built-in support for IR, but streaming sticks are cheap, and in the long run I found setting up a server was more versatile, more reliable, and less stressful. I know, I also hate it when people ask for a specific solution and others recommend asking a different question. But in this case, my experience is that IR remotes suck, are flaky, and not worth it if there is any other option.

Do you mind sharing what brand retail UPS weren’t lasting a year?

I’m dealing with similar brownouts and also an area with lots of lightning. I got about 5 years out of my UPS batteries. Wondering if I’ve just been lucky.

Funny. This is the same video I show to my friends to help them pronounce guanábana correctly.

They generally don’t breed in large bodies of water where the water is flowing. They moatly breed in the little stagnant pools of water that collect in other spots because of poor drainage or things like tires, empty pots, and other trash being left out in the rain. There exist these little pellets that poison those stagnant puddles for the mosquito, but not your pets. That and proper drainage around your house will do wonders to reduce the excess population. Pointing a fan to blow out at any open window can help too, but proper screens (with a fine enough mesh) would help more. Mosquitoes don’t like a stiff breeze.

Elephants (and mammoths probably) are also herbivores that chew their food. Sometimes that food is a whole tree. Using the polar bear sharp bone strategy would be like feeding a razor blade to a wood chipper.

Try gaffer tape instead. It blocks all the light. It doesn’t reflect much light at all. It generally sticks to anything. You can get it in a variety of colors. It doesn’t leave as much sticky residue when removed or repositioned. I’ve not encountered many surfaces (expect painted surfaces) that it actually damages when carefully removed. I use black gaffer tape on basically all my electronic stuff: one strip to cover the whole light, two strips a razor’s edge width apart so that I can still see the indicator if I try but otherwise 99.9% of the light is blocked, or a strip with a folded over tab at one end for the displays I want to block %100 of the light %90 of the time.

Duct tape, duck tape, electrical tape, masking tape all really suck unless you love that sticky gunky residue they inevitably leave on everything. Gaffer tape isn’t perfect, but it’s much better for this kind of semi-temporary light blocking without too much surface damage kind of job.

This is like a Far Side comic in that I’m sure it’s actually funny, but I have no idea why.

I’ve fallen asleep during the third act extended fight scene of the last 5 Marvel movies I’ve been too that weren’t Deadpool. Same vibes. But, I still wouldn’t use them to try to sleep.

But if you’re looking for relaxing, echo-y, and resonant check out Brian Eno’s ambient stuff. Start with “Music for Airports” and go on from there to some of the others if you like it.

If you’re stuck on opera, maybe you’ll have interesting dreams trying to fall asleep to The Magic Flute. I’d probably just get the tunes stuck in my head.

Also, the genre of modal jazz is rather slower and more resonant than its more hip and excitable cousins. Might be worth exploring. Syncopation would keep my mind to active though.

Does it really? The whole group of main characters is a bunch of stereotypes, over the top affectations, and worn out tropes. This shows the group explicitly accepting Lamar for who they are and celebrating their accomplishments with a level of physical contact and intimacy that literally was making homophobes at the time cringe.

Yeah, lots of movies from that era are problematic now. I’m not going to apologize for them, trivialize the problematic parts, or forget about them. All of those characters were gross parodies of stereotypes and that type of humor is no longer palatable to many people. But, this particular scene felt relatively devoid of any actual malice.

The Revenge of the Nerds technique?

Yeah, lots of movies from that era are problematic now. I’m not going to apologize for them, trivialize the problematic parts, or forget about them. All of those characters were gross parodies of stereotypes and that type of humor is no longer palatable to many people. But, this particular scene felt relatively devoid of any actual malice.

“Sensors” sounds like a magical solution that hasn’t been thought through, but the marketing guys already sold it and won’t listen to the engineers explaining how difficult it is to actually build such a thing.

My insurance seemed to go down about as fast as inflation, so it feels like I’ve been paying about the same for decades. I didn’t really realize how much lower my rates were until I talked to some kids young adults.

That makes sense, but it’s going to confuse anyone that grew up with the many varieties of magnetic tape available. Look on YouTube for Techmoan if you want to go on a charming deep dive into archaic and niche media formats.

What are MCs? Do you mean cassettes? No body ever really called them micro-cassettes, (those were the thing you used to record messages on an answering machine or dictation) so that doesn’t really fit. Certainly not mini discs?

Sounds like an interesting premise for a musical.

This “clarification” is just even more confusing. Like do you mean, “What would be the effect on history if we could all see into the future, but only through song?” I guess I’d hope that we’d try better to stop 9/11, COVID, and Trump.

Likely more than just removed. I’m pretty sure that I left one too many scathing reviews of products that were defective by design or outright frauds, now I can’t leave any reviews.

Pay attention this time. Nobody said they weren’t different. I just said you seem to only like one aspect of the many varied aspects of the many varied Zelda games. Your reading comprehension skills are trash or you’re just burning straw men to make yourself feel better. Stop being a troll.