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I'm a bit of an eclectic mess ๐Ÿ™‚ I've been a programmer, journalist, editor, TV producer, and a few other things.

I'm currently working on my second novel which is complete, but is in the edit stage. I wrote my first novel over 20 years ago but then didn't write much till now.

I post about #Coding, #Flutter, #Writing, #Movies and #TV. I'll also talk about #Technology, #Gadgets, #MachineLearning, #DeepLearning and a few other things as the fancy strikes ...

Lived in: ๐Ÿ‡ฑ๐Ÿ‡ฐ๐Ÿ‡ธ๐Ÿ‡ฆ๐Ÿ‡บ๐Ÿ‡ธ๐Ÿ‡ณ๐Ÿ‡ฟ๐Ÿ‡ธ๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡ฒ๐Ÿ‡พ๐Ÿ‡ฆ๐Ÿ‡ช๐Ÿ‡ซ๐Ÿ‡ท๐Ÿ‡ช๐Ÿ‡ธ๐Ÿ‡ต๐Ÿ‡น๐Ÿ‡ถ๐Ÿ‡ฆ๐Ÿ‡จ๐Ÿ‡ฆ

Fahim Farook

Watched this Tamil movie where the opening scene has a sign which says "The Chemistri of Love" ...

Every time that sign comes into view, the only thing I can see is the spelling mistake ๐Ÿ˜› I can't concentrate on the movie or what's happening ... I just keep staring at the word.

I assume there are others who are affected the same way? Or am I the only one?

#Movies #SpellingMistakes #Distractions
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Fahim Farook

The project for this weekend was to build a usable backup GUI (with rsync as the engine).

I thought it might take longer, but I was able to come up with a working solution in a couple of days ...

It has the ability to do dry runs, runs with deletions (of files which are on the destination but not source), and standard syncing โ€” all with one task config. It also has logging of previous runs and the ability to clone tasks for quick creation of a new backup task.

It still needs notifications and scheduling, but that's about it. So I'm happy ๐Ÿ™‚

#macOS #SwiftUI #SwiftData #Apple #rsync #Backup #GUI #Coding
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Fahim Farook

"Jawan" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15354916) was certainly better than "Pathaan" but it was an uneven movie โ€” there were bits which were good and then a lot of parts which were so very predictable ...

The influences โ€” "Indian" and "La Casa de Papel" โ€” are very evident everywhere and that is a minus for me personally since that made the movie even more predictable.

I could predict every plot beat and even some of the dialog.

But there were some funny one-liners and moments, and there was at least some fan service by invoking various movies that some of the actors were involved in.

Overall, watchable, but not brilliant.

#Hindi #Bollywood #Jawan #ShahRukhKhan #Atlee
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Fahim Farook

Got a 2TB M.2 NVME SSD, an enclosure and tried to set things up for backing up ...

About 300GB was written (macOS Ventura 14.1) in 10 minutes and then I'm told that the drive was ejected ๐Ÿ˜• macOS can't find the drive.

Works fine under Linux. I can access the drive, format it etc. and then I can plug it back into macOS and macOS detects it ... for a short time. But then again, "disk ejected" ...

Seems to be a macOS issue. So much for "ease of use" ...

Iโ€™ve been doing some searches and am seeing a lot of reports of โ€œdisk ejectedโ€ errors and issues with enclosures under macOS. But canโ€™t find any solutions.

Given that the enclosure, drive, and cable work fine under Linux, I donโ€™t think the issue is with any of them.

Anybody experienced this and have a solution?

#macOS #Enclosures #SSD #DiskEjected #BackingUp #Apple #Linux
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Fahim Farook

We found these 16TB external SSDs on Amazon for like $100.

It was just too good to be true and wasn't really expecting to get what was advertised, but I wanted to know what the scam was and so we ordered.

But I probably should have simply Googled for "16TB scam" first since a day later, when I thought to do a search, I found a lot of posts and videos about it which explained the scam in detail.

Fortunately, item hadn't shipped yet.

Cancelled ๐Ÿ™‚

#SSD #Scams #Amazon #TooGoodToBeTrue #SearchFirst
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Fahim Farook

We've enjoyed all the Kandasamy movies since we first discovered them โ€” the only South African/Indian movies we've seen (possibly)?

It seems like so long ago to me but I was surprised to discover that itโ€™s only been about six years โ€ฆ

The latest, "Kandasamys: The Baby" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27048691) can be a bit exasperating at times (due to how some of the characters act/behave) but is still a good watch overall ๐Ÿ™‚

But if you havenโ€™t seen the previous movies, you might enjoy it more after youโ€™ve seen the others ...

#Movies #English #SouthAfrica #Tamil #Indian
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Fahim Farook

We use a Synology NAS for backups and media sharing. But it's a bit heavy when we have to travel and take it with us ...

So looked into a Beelink miniPC running Linux as a NAS. The idea worked, but ran into some issues with heat because the Beelink has no fans for cooling.

The SSD drive I added to the Beelink would heat up way too much when there was any sort of extended activity. So looking into other solutions now ...

I originally wanted to use a specific NAS solution like OpenMediaVault or TrueNAS but they were a bit too restrictive in terms of getting things to work exactly the way I wanted.

So I finally settled on running Debian and simply installing whatever I needed to handle the rest and that actually works so much better for my own purposes โ€ฆ

#NAS #Storage #Linux #Debian
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Fahim Farook

Lokesh Kangaraj and Rathna Kumar are listed as writers for both "Vikram" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9179430) and "Leo" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15654328) ...

Yet, there's a huge difference between the two โ€” the former plot worked, the characters were consistent. The latter not so much, the characters do things which make no sense, or take actions which are not consistent with who the character is supposed to be.

Is this due to the actors involved and how they thought their โ€œimageโ€ should be projected?

It appears that โ€œimageโ€ is very important to Indian actors, but if this was about image (and Iโ€™m not saying it was), is sacrificing the plot for the sake of an actorโ€™s image the way to go?

#Movies #Tamil #Plot #Image #Writing
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Fahim Farook

"Leo" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15654328) is just pointless violence and stupidity ...

What kind of court tests a person's shooting ability when they killed somebody in self-defence? Does India not have self-defence laws?

Half an hour in and it's already very stupid with the promise of the cycle of violence continuing ...

Apparently the wife of a murdering thug does not accept that her husband will die by the gun and so wants revenge and so on ...

Movies, especially Tamil ones, have continued to get violent for some time. Itโ€™s almost as if each new movie wants to push the boundary as to how violent they can be.

Leaving aside โ€œLeoโ€, I find this troubling. I hope this is cyclical and it goes away soon, but if not, where are we headed?

#Movie #Tamil #Leo #Vijay #CycleOfViolence
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Fahim Farook

"Kaala Paani" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt19072562) seems pretty interesting โ€” at least based on the first episode ...

First, the setting is different from most Indian shows โ€” Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

Second, there are all these tiny touches which, if you pay attention, pay off for a viewer. I liked these little details a lot and am hoping that it continues on beyond the first episode ...

#TV #Hindi #KaalaPaani #Netflix
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Fahim Farook

Watched two different Tamil movies today where they mention that China (and other countries) are plotting to stop India's progress by sending drugs and poisoned products to India ...

Seems like classic human behaviour โ€” "others" are jealous of us. They want to drag us down.

We'll never change โ€” we always blame others and want "our" people to be cautious/wary of strangers.

And then we pass on this behaviour to our children ...

#NationalismOrParanoia #PoliticalRhetoric #Politics #Humanity #TheHumanDisease
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Fahim Farook

Sun Tzu said: โ€œIf you wait by the river long enough, the bodies of your enemies will float by.โ€

With cockroaches, it's: "If you kill one and leave the body out and wait long enough, others will come to take the body away and you can kill them too." ๐Ÿ˜›

#TheArtOfWar #Cockroaches #AncientWisdomModernTwist
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Hey friends, Iโ€™m looking for my next role. I like building native iOS apps, and Iโ€™ve got experience with SwiftUI, UIKit, TCA, all of the good stuff. Any shares and leads are appreciated

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Fahim Farook

I like Santosh Shoban (https://www.imdb.com/name/nm9922589) โ€” each of his movies that I've seen so far has had something different/unique about them.

It looks as if "Prem Kumar" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15340716/?ref_=nm_knf_t_3) is in the same mold in that it doesn't follow the typical Telugu movie storyline.

So far, Iโ€™m hooked and Iโ€™m curious to see where it goes ...

#Movies #Telugu #PremKumar #SantoshShoban #SomethingDifferent
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Fahim Farook

After looking at AnyType and several other solutions, I decided that none of them have the flexibility that I want for adding data from various sources and being able to define any type of data storage.

So, working on my own solution โ€ฆ

Decided to use the latest in Swift and SwiftUI, and also throw SwiftData in to the mix since thisโ€™ll probably be a personal app and not for public release โ€” there are many such solutions out there, but they just donโ€™t have what I want ๐Ÿ™‚

Some interesting things to solve to accomplish this โ€” How do you define a data structure which is not predefined in a way that can be used via code? How do you generate a SwiftUI interface dynamically to represent these data structures?

I believe Iโ€™ve solved them but the app is very rudimentary at the moment. Iโ€™m curious as to things hold when I add in more complexity โ€ฆ

#Swift #SwiftUI #SwiftData #Apple #macOS #iOS #PersonalDataManager
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Fahim Farook

Being multi-lingual sometimes leads to weird situations ๐Ÿ˜›

In Tamil movies they sometimes pronounce "graphics" in a way that sounds like "gira-piss" and in Sinhalese, "gira" is "parrot" (or rather, parrot-related) and "piss" would of course be English โ€” so parrot pee?

Do parrots even pee? ๐Ÿ˜€

#Tamil #Sinhalese #Language #Funny #MultiLingualWeirdness
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Fahim Farook

"Billiions" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4270492) has always been a favourite of mine, but this season has felt very weak.

The dialog is overly talky without getting to the point, and hasn't had as much punch.

Now that the final setup, which I assume was what they were aiming for but were getting lost in the weeds getting to, maybe it'll get better?

#TV #English #Billions
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Fahim Farook

While it is a battle between two behemoths, I can't help but feel like supporting Quest 3 just because of the language used by a lot of reviewers.

Like saying, "thereโ€™s almost nothing compelling to do in mixed reality on the Quest 3". And you know that Apple Vision Pro does have compelling experiences? How do you know this?

It's not as if any of these people have used the AVP for longer than half an hour .... So how do you know that AVP will have compelling experiences whenever it launches? Faith in Apple?

Also, will these reviewers actually buy an AVP at 7x times the price of a Quest 3 for themselves? Or is this just hatchet jobs for a paycheck?

I donโ€™t know โ€ฆ but excessive praise for an as yet unreleased product, or damning something that exists for pie in the sky, always makes me uneasy โ€ฆ

#Quest3 #AppleVisionPro #Meta #Apple
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Fahim Farook

It almost feels as if every episode of "Gen V" has a theme and you have to discover it ๐Ÿ˜›

For episode 3 it's โ€” parents (or better yet, family). How parents affect you as a child and the sometimes love-hate relationship you have with them. It's also a tiny bit about trust maybe?

Alliances are made, people begin to trust each other and I'm kind of curious as to how the show will evolve and if the writers will stick to this level of writing โ€ฆ

#TV #English #GenV #Writing
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Fahim Farook

"Gen V" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13159924) episode 2 is a lesson on trust that really drives home the point in multiple ways.

You know the characters shouldn't trust certain people, but they themselves don't know due to how their character works.

It's interesting in how people work and yet, has me screaming at the TV for them to not fall for it ๐Ÿ˜›

Iโ€™m still enjoying the core story and I do like these little touches of psychology and the inner workings of people ...

#TV #English #GenV #Writing
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