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I'm a bit of an eclectic mess 🙂 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: 🇱🇰🇸🇦🇺🇸🇳🇿🇸🇬🇲🇾🇦🇪🇫🇷🇪🇸🇵🇹🇶🇦🇨🇦

Fahim Farook

Keerthy Suresh (https://www.imdb.com/name/nm7146337), who's 31, has appeared as the sister for both Rajinikanth, 72, and Chiranjeevi, 68.

Not quite sure how that family math works, but who am I to question Indian cinema? 😛

#IndianCinema #Tollywood #Kollywood
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Fahim Farook

I haven't read "Fables" recently, but I do remember how excited I was when I first read it — it was a brilliant interpretation of classic fables.

This is a brilliant move by Bill Willingham to free "Fables" from the clutches of DC 🙂

https://billwillingham.substack.com/p/willingham-sends-fables-into-the

It’s also a great way to let others play in your sandbox and simply enjoy creating new content for an IP that you might love.

So many possibilities …

#Fables #PublicDomain #Copyright #DC #Comics
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Fahim Farook

Apple’s “Foundation" has bothered me for a while since it’s just not Asimov’s “Foundation” except in name …

But today’s episode is so full of crap in so many ways that I can’t even begin to get into it 😛

There were logic holes, plot holes, and holes of all sorts. Ugh.

#TV #Foundation
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@Alexbbrown I meant using the shared audio feature of AirPods. The audio sharing wasn't the issue though since that's much improved over using a hardware splitter with the shared audio feature 🙂

The issue is using a single iPad between the two of us for the same content.

Ideally, what I wanted was to be able to watch the same content on two devices (without WiFi, so SharePlay might be out .. though I'm still looking into it) and have the playback synced. This should also lend to being able to use devices like the XReal glasses to get a much bigger screen/display but still have synced playback ... At least, that's the dream 🙂

I know this is a long answer for the headphone question 😛 As far as headphones go, our current solution only works for two. But the solution I'm working on should work for more than two as well ...
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Fahim Farook

So this is my day so far:
Update iPhone to iOS 17 RC ✅
Update macBook to macOS 14 RC ✅
Update Xcode to Xcode 15 RC ✅

Now to actually get work done 😛

#DevLife #BetaCycle #iOS #macOS
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Fahim Farook

Would have had to stay up to watch the Apple event last night. Went to sleep instead.

Got up in the morning and discovered I'd missed nothing since all the important stuff had already been leaked weeks in advance 😛

#Apple #iPhone #NewHardware
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@Rycaut Since my memory is failing me (😛) I couldn’t remember what the change to SharePlay was this year. So went back through my old posts just now and realized that you can now (supposedly) start SharePlay sessions over AirDrop! That would be interesting to try and as soon as I have two iOS 17 devices (and provided the feature is available now) I want to try that out and see if the lack of Internet access affects things.

As for your suggestion about a small WiFi network, that’s there already with multiplier connectivity 🙂 You can connect multiple iOS/macOS devices without a network to chat, watch videos, or to transfer files. That’s what I’m using to implement my idea …

Just not sure if that’s good enough speed-wise though since I’ve not had enough time to test this yet. The basic idea works, and I’ve gotten file transfers working too. Am working on chat at the moment, but I really need to do more testing …

Oh yeah, in case you’re interested, the SharePlay session from this year that probably has the info (I forget now if I even watched it) is this one:

https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2023/10239/
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@Rycaut Yep, aware of SharePlay, but if I’m not mistaken, it’s pretty limited if you don’t have Internet access. I believe this might have changed with iOS 17 (I vaguely remember a conversation I had with somebody about this after WWDC) but I haven’t bothered to check it out yet …

Should do that soon though, thanks for the reminder 🙂

Also, FaceTime is blocked in certain countries (like the UAE) so that you can’t use it for video calls. So I’m not sure how that ties into the SharePlay part of it … Guess I’ll find out …
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Fahim Farook

My wife and I, we watch almost everything together — movies, TV shows, even YouTube videos.

This can be challenging during travel since we prefer to watch our own content instead of that provided by the airline. Watching on a single iPad with shared headphones is not a great experience.

I'm thinking of an app to fix this issue which allows us to watch the same content on two different devices, but synced.

Not sure if this helps anybody but us? Anybody else find this useful?

I’ve been thinking about this for a while and have been hoping somebody else would fix it (like Apple VisionPro) but not sure that’ll happen …

So I’m going to take a stab at fixing it myself 🙂

#Entertainment #Sharing #iOS #macOS #Coding
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@jimsalter There’s also the inverse to Clarke’s third law which goes: “Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology. “ ( … and a few other variants)

And so the inverset to your corollary would be:
Any sufficiently advanced malice is indistinguishable from ignorance 😛
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I suppose this is technically a spoiler for "Tears of the Kingdom"
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@AngelaPreston That is a very good question 😛 By now you’d think he would have come up with a system … like AirTags or something 😀
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@callimachus "Jawan" is on my list to watch, but given my location, probably won't get to see it till it starts streaming 🙂 No idea when that will be ...

I used to be a huge SRK fan, but none of his recent movies have hit home for me. The last that I can remember working for me was "Chennai Express" ....

The trailer looked interesting though. And with Atlee and some southern exposure in the mix, I have to say that I'm really curious ...

A part of the trailer made me think of "Jailer", and so I'm wondering if there are similarities or not 🙂
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Fahim Farook

"Rocky aur Rani kii Prem Kahaani" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14993250) is a wonderful movie which challenges stereotypes, bias, prejudice, and a lot more things.

Plus, it's funny (if you like a certain type of humour) and revives some great Bollywood songs too 😛

I didn't think I'd like the movie as much as I did since the beginning was a bit ... umm rocky for me. But then the movie hit its stride and just kept going full steam ahead!

If you’ve watched “Santhosh Subramaniyam”, you might see some similarities, but I think they did it better with regards to highlighting socially relevant themes here …

Definitely worth a watch!

#Movies #Hindi #Bollywood #Indian
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Fahim Farook

I finally got around to trying out the AGD Interactive version of "King's Quest I" (http://agdinteractive.com/games/kq1/about/about.html) and it looks much nicer than the VGA remake from Sierra 🙂

Comparison screenshots below ...

Their macOS app is 32-bit and so won't work on my version of macOS, so I had to resort to CrossOver (https://www.codeweavers.com/crossover) to get it working. But it does work fine on the latest CrossOver (with some tweaking ...)

The CrossOver compatibility database says that the game will install but won’t run. And that’s how it looked on first install with CrossOver 23 too, but once I enabled the DXVK option (which enables Vulcan for Direct3D, if I’m not mistaken), it seemed to work fine …

#Games #KingsQuest #Remake #CrossOver

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Fahim Farook

Edited 1 year ago
Was feeling bored yesterday and didn't want to start a new coding project and so decided to play "King's Quest" 🙂

Dusted off DOSBox-X (https://dosbox-x.com), which has a bunch of features which makes it easier to use than DOSBox, and I was off to the races!

I hadn't played the VGA version of the game before and so it was actually enjoyable.

Now maybe I should look into getting the AGDI version of the game (https://agdinteractive.com/games…) working? Trouble is, the macOS version of the game is 32-bit only and I’m too lazy to set up a VM and do all that. Same with the Windows version, which requires at least Windows ME …

#DOSBox #RetroGaming #DOSGames
A screenshot from King's Quest …
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@SuperSideshow Mine too! But I see it being used more and more and it just drives me mad …
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Fahim Farook

Honestly, I don't really understand the logic in “Star Wars” much of the time since they just rely on stupid decisions to move things along 😛

The latest in a long line appears to be to let Sabine do whatever she wants and trusting in her even though she keeps making one stupid decision after another in “Ahsoka” …

I do realize that the story would be very short if not for Sabine’s not-at-all-well-thought-out decisions, but honestly, this is very lazy story telling where you rely on characters to mess up and have other characters act as if they don’t see this sort of thing coming at all …

#TV #StarWars #Ahsoka
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@xavierLowmiller LOL. Yeah, I loved that one too. I was furiously typing out quotes as I watched the movie and in the end, I think the movie won out and I stopped typing quotes 😛
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Fahim Farook

Edited 1 year ago
"Barbie" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1517268) is probably the best Hollywood movie I've seen in at least two years, maybe longer 🙂

It's brilliant, funny, subversive, thought-provoking and so full of quotes that I think I'm going to love (and use) for a while.

Oh, and the expressiveness of Margot Robbie’s face was just such a joy to watch!

Also, did anybody notice that the palm tree in the roundabout in front of Barbie's house works like a sundial? Or was that just my imagination?

Some quotes I loved (possibly paraphrased a little) were:

"I know I’m stereotypical barbie and therefore don’t form conjectures concerning casualty of adjacent unfolding events but some things have been happening that might be related.”

"You guys are clearly not doing patriarchy well.”

"I'm a man with no power, does that make me a woman?"

"I'm ready to be your long-term, long-distance, casual, low-commitment girlfriend.”

#Movies #English #Hollywood
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@maxx To be quite honest, telling other people what they should or should not do is a bit rude, don’t you think?

Telling me that I *should* continue to use #AIArt presupposes that that’s a rule.

Also, saying “bland computer generate babes” is both a bit insulting and again presumption on your part since I do not generate images with people at all — except accdentally.

Sure, asking somebody to not do something politely is one thing. But saying “you should do this” or “you shouldn’t do this” is not OK.

If this was meant to be a request, you really should change your phrasing perhaps?
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