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I'm a bit of an eclectic mess πŸ™‚ 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: πŸ‡±πŸ‡°πŸ‡ΈπŸ‡¦πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡ΈπŸ‡³πŸ‡ΏπŸ‡ΈπŸ‡¬πŸ‡²πŸ‡ΎπŸ‡¦πŸ‡ͺπŸ‡«πŸ‡·πŸ‡ͺπŸ‡ΈπŸ‡΅πŸ‡ΉπŸ‡ΆπŸ‡¦πŸ‡¨πŸ‡¦

Fahim Farook

I like amnesia stories πŸ™‚ "Miss You" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt32553846) was interesting not just because of the amnesia aspect but also because of the way the story unfolds.

What you think happened/is happening is not always the case. I liked the layering.

#Movies #Tamil #Kollywood
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Fahim Farook

30+ years ago, I used to do Freeware because I enjoyed building stuff that others found useful. (I also met my wife because of that πŸ™‚)

Today, I think most people won't download it because it's free. Or, they'll wonder if I'm stealing their data or training AI with it πŸ˜›

#Coding #Freeware #Musings
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Exciting news! Trip Tunes was named App of the Year by What the Tech! πŸŽ‰

Thanks to everyone who’s downloaded, shared, and supported the app.

To celebrateβ€”and to help with your New Year’s travelβ€”I'm running a 2X tapes sale. Perfect time to relive the mixtape magic! πŸŽ΅πŸ›£οΈ

Check out the broadcast: wbbjtv.com/2024/12/26/what-the-tech-app-of-the-year-trip-tunes

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@jkirkendall As @AngelaPreston mentioned, the wife and I love playing games together πŸ™‚ For us, the gaming rig of choice has been the PlayStation .. mostly because of games like the "Horizon" series, or "Uncharted".

Unfortunately, though both of them involve shooting and killing though in the case of "Horizon", it's robot animals. We don't really enjoy the killing/fighting games but we did like those two because of the really well done stories.

If you leave out fighting games, it becomes harder to find two player games. I think "Unravel" was already mentioned and that was fun πŸ™‚

But one thing which has made things a lot more fun for us on PlayStation has been the co-pilot feature ... though that might not be what it's called on PlayStation (or other platforms since I believe XBox has this too ..) Basically, you can play any single player game with two controllers and can take over from each other as you need.

Since this is a built-in feature (you do have to enable it in the PlayStation settings) this means that you can play any single-player game together πŸ™‚

This feature did open up a lot more games for us to play together and one of the ones that we've enjoyed playing together this way has been "No Man's Sky", which is a space exploration game where you explore a vast universe.

Also, this site is always useful in finding good co-op games for the platform and genre of your choice:
https://www.co-optimus.com/

@SRLevine
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@davemark Would it be cheating to suggest my own book? πŸ™‚

It's humorous science fiction, and is under 500 pages. I think it's a great read, but I might be biased πŸ˜€
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@zombiewarrior I loved it when it came out πŸ™‚ Or maybe I'm thinking of the later TV series? It was so long ago ...

I personally think that Neill Blomkamp did the concept better in "District 9".
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Fahim Farook

When you say SciFi, people might think rayguns and aliens. For humorous SciFi though, I don't know if they'd have a clear idea.

To me, it's Reagan and aliens β€” not the crossing borders without visas kind, but the extraterrestrial kind πŸ˜› How would Ronald have reacted to aliens?

#Writing #Humour #ScienceFiction
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Fahim Farook

I had a vivid image of a scene (and the text to accompany it) as I was halfway inbetween sleep and wakefulness last night πŸ™‚

While my ability to paint isn't great, I want to try painting the scene first, and then try to write the story ...

Will I get to it today? No idea πŸ˜›

#Writing #AmWriting
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Fahim Farook

"The Wild Robot" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt29623480) is beautifully animated, emotional, and heart-warming.

Sure, the story might not make sense logically, but who wants to talk logic when a story makes you smile, laugh, and want to hug somebody? πŸ˜›

#Movies #English #Hollywood
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Fahim Farook

If anybody's looking for a post-holidy light read, I'd like to offer a light sci-fi novel for your consideration πŸ™‚

It's about a man on the run from his wife's wrath, a bunch of bounty hunter clones, and assorted other miscreants:
books2read.com/b/mB1zAM

#Reading #Author #FediBooks #Bookstodon
A book cover with the title "Ho…
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@OrionKidder You asking about places other than Amazon reminded me that my first novel is now out of Amazon contract. So I put it up on D2D today in the morning after our conversation πŸ™‚

So if you want to get that, then that's available now from a bunch of places linked to here:
https://books2read.com/b/mB1zAM

More places should be added on as Draft2Digital get things going. It's not set in Sri Lanka but instead is in Afghanistan (don't ask me why πŸ˜›)

Totally different set of characters than the other book, but still the same universe πŸ™‚
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@OrionKidder I realized the same issue after I got into a deal with the devil πŸ˜›Given how the contract works, I have to wait till February (I think) for the book to come out of Amazon exclusivity ...

Once it does, it should be available from other online retailers (or at least, that's the plan at the moment). But till then, I'm stuck with Amazon πŸ˜•
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@OrionKidder You're welcome πŸ™‚Let me know what you think if you do read it.
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@OrionKidder I have one which is not set in the western world, if you're looking for different perspectives πŸ™‚

It's set in a future Sri Lanka ruled by a guild of thieves.

If you're interested, you can find it here:
https://books.farook.org/sir-lanka-files/
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@trode I was using Cursor when a couple of people mentioned that Windsurf was better than Cursor πŸ™‚

Personally, I like the LLM when it just completes the code that I actually want to write. Don't really want it writing code *for* me ... but I'm probably in the minority.

The biggest annoyance for me with Windsurf (besides the zombie files) was that its suggestions would pop up all the time and it was hard to see where the suggestions were and where my code was.

I'm back to VS Code again but am using the Codeium extension to see if that's less intrusive ...
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Fahim Farook

Been trying out Windsurf as a VS Code replacement since some folks raved about it.

But I'm getting really tired of Windsurf because it seems to randomly recreate files that I'd deleted/renamed. I don't want no zombie files πŸ˜›

#Coding #IDEs #VSCode #Windsurf
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@aerobender I do understand the cash-grab part, but if they'd actually made a decent movie then it would have left the door open for them to grab more cash the next time πŸ˜›

These were so horrible that I'd probably not even want to look at each franchise ever again.

Ah well, I guess we are well and truly in the age of mediocrity πŸ˜›
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Fahim Farook

Wrote close to 4.5k for the Flutter kids book yesterday but it's become a massive chapter πŸ™‚ Time to move on to a new chapter I guess?

#Writing #Coding #Flutter
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@chrislee35 Just knowing somebody thinks it's a good idea is very encouraging πŸ™‚So thank you!

If you have kids, or know some who might be interested, would be great to have some beta readers at some point. I try to explain everything but maybe I'm explaining things too much? Or not enough?

Knowing the right note to strike would help and would probably help the final reader too since they might not get bored or throw the book away because they are drowning in words πŸ˜›
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Fahim Farook

Somebody quipped that "Sir Lanka Files" (https://books2read.com/b/mgw00v) is not fiction since it's about an island nation ruled by a guild of thieves πŸ˜›

I started the book during the aragalaya. Have a sequel in mind but I will have to wait a couple of months to see where things go?

#Writing #LKA
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