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 🙂

#SSD #Scams #Amazon #TooGoodToBeTrue #SearchFirst

We've enjoyed all the Kandasamy movies since we first discovered them — 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 it’s only been about six years …

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 🙂

But if you haven’t seen the previous movies, you might enjoy it more after you’ve seen the others ...

#Movies #English #SouthAfrica #Tamil #Indian

@FloppySalmon Thank you for the suggestion 🙂

But in our case, the issue is that we have no central location. When we move, it’s generally a permanent move and so have to take the NAS with us.

Haven’t had to move for a while now, but we foresee a move coming in a few months time and so just getting set up for the whole thing with trying to find a more light-weight solution …

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 …

#NAS #Storage #Linux #Debian

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 — 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 “image” should be projected?

It appears that “image” is very important to Indian actors, but if this was about image (and I’m not saying it was), is sacrificing the plot for the sake of an actor’s image the way to go?

#Movies #Tamil #Plot #Image #Writing

"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. It’s almost as if each new movie wants to push the boundary as to how violent they can be.

Leaving aside “Leo”, 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

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

First, the setting is different from most Indian shows — 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

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 — "others" are jealous of us. They want to drag us down.

We'll never change — 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

Sun Tzu said: “If you wait by the river long enough, the bodies of your enemies will float by.”

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." 😛

#TheArtOfWar #Cockroaches #AncientWisdomModernTwist

@ronsboy67 @s1m0n4 😛 I don’t think this one’s going to be a typical Hindi serial. Instead of the 16 one hour episodes from the Korean version, the Hindi version had 8 half hour episodes for the first season.

But it did get through about half of the Korean storyline. So, my guess is that it’ll end with the second season …

But of course, they might surprise me 😀

@ronsboy67 @s1m0n4 If you want a better Hindi remake of a #kDrama, then there’s the remake of “Flower of Evil” — “Duranga” (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt21370880/)

The Hindi version is slightly different as far as some plot points go, and we did enjoy it, but it’s not totally cohesive in terms of plot, unlike the Korean version. Also, the Hindi version is not yet over — season 2 will air soon and theoretically, that should complete the story …

@ronsboy67 @s1m0n4 MY3 - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt28744259

@s1m0n4 We watched the Hindi remake of it first and hated it, but decided to give the Korean original a try. We enjoyed that one a lot more 🙂

@Rycaut When I started reading, the only language I knew was Sinhalese. So I read a lot of classics like “Lorna Doone”, “Robinson Crusoe”, “Les Miserables”, “The Count of Monte Cristo” and so on (too many to count really) all in Sinhalese …

From the lot, “The Count of Monte Cristo” still remains my favourite even though SF/Fantasy became my preferred genre a few years later and still remains so …

But I don’t think I read that may SF/Fantasy books in Sinhalese though. I don’t think there were that many translations of the genre back then — I do recall several SF originals in Sinhalese that got me on track to become a huge SF fan, but it wasn’t until I started reading in English that I hit the motherlode in terms of SF (and later, fantasy …)

I like Santosh Shoban (https://www.imdb.com/name/nm9922589) — 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, I’m hooked and I’m curious to see where it goes ...

#Movies #Telugu #PremKumar #SantoshShoban #SomethingDifferent

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 …

Decided to use the latest in Swift and SwiftUI, and also throw SwiftData in to the mix since this’ll probably be a personal app and not for public release — there are many such solutions out there, but they just don’t have what I want 🙂

Some interesting things to solve to accomplish this — 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 I’ve solved them but the app is very rudimentary at the moment. I’m curious as to things hold when I add in more complexity …

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

Being multi-lingual sometimes leads to weird situations 😛

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 — so parrot pee?

Do parrots even pee? 😀

#Tamil #Sinhalese #Language #Funny #MultiLingualWeirdness

@BobWilliams The first few seasons were utterly brilliant but the last few have gone downhill a lot in terms of quality ….

Still, personally, I feel it’s more entertaining than a lot of stuff out there, but that might be just me. And now that it’s (supposedly) ending, all I can hope for is that they at least give it a good ending, but that might be too much to ask for? 🙂

"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

@gaveen Sorry to hear about the health issues — sometimes, it feels as if you are a besieged castle and when the walls are weakened, all the barbarian hordes come in at once …

Sorry to hear about the office politics too. I’ve never liked that since I don’t know how to deal with that kind of thing. I want things to be cut-and-dried and unfortunately, people are anything but 😞

But I’m glad you are in good spirits and hope all of this passes soon.