It just feels like there are so many (life) lessons to be learned from the characters and especially from Chris. From his readings and interpretations, but also from his interactions with other characters.
I remember his patience with Maurice and others was exemplary, almost to a fault. Maybe he was more forgiving of others because he was incarcerated earlier in life, I don't know. In one episode he finally loses his cool with a builder who has completely bodged the decking and plumbing outside his caravan in a hilarious way, but even then he manages to stay calm and polite when firing him.
I have never seen M.A.S.H. but I agree the human moments were unique to this show. I didn't mind the jokes- I thought they kept it light, almost a reminder of how it didn't take itself too seriously.
This episode is just one of the gems and if I remember correctly Maggie eventually returns the washer because she misses the social interaction.
I'd have to respectfully disagree and feel the show holds up surprisingly well when you stick with it and forgive it the sort of things you would find in shows of that time. It's like a refuge from the dark and gritty stuff that you can't escape on streaming platforms these days.
I had the privilege to watch this show last year for the first time and I was completely blown away by it. I still think about it from time to time and it is easily my favourite show ever. Every actor is great and every single character in it is likeable (despite their flaws) and the show is proof that not everything has to be edgy, dark, gritty and have a murder in it to be good.
The writing is phenomenal. Sure, some things wouldn't get past studio execs these days but it holds up very well and there is a spirituality and positivity about it that sticks with you long after you finish watching the 110 episodes.
For a while CBS refused to put Northern Exposure on streaming platforms due to the rights needed for all the songs that appeared both in the soundtrack and just in the background on KBHR.
I ordered the DVD box set during COVID, later sent it to my parents, who also enjoyed the re-watch. Great show that mostly still held up over the years.
I read about this. I watched it on Amazon UK where it was included with a Prime subscription until recently. I never found out it if it had the original score for all episodes, if it didn't I thought it wasn't too obvious.
Coincidentally after I watched the show I found that the original leading actors (Rob Marrow and Janine Turner) had started a podcast called 'Northern Disclosure' right at that moment (https://www.youtube.com/@NorthernDisclosurePodcast/featured).
Have you watched the movie, "Local Hero" that the show was inspired by? And Doc Martin is another more recent show in the same genre, and also fantastic.
Thanks for the recommendation, I'll definitely add "Local Hero" to my list. I like Doc Martin.
If I had to think of anything recent that would perhaps have a similar feel it would be "The Detectorists" and (very recent) "Small Prophets" (by the same writer).
Best Medicine is a transplant of Doc Martin into the US (and Clunes played his father in an episode). It was a bit slow to get going but it starts to click a few episodes in.
The Playdate seems an ideal device for busy dads and mums who would pick it up to play a few games here and there and
are into programming and maybe would like to teach their kids how to program. I've had a quick play with the tools and API Panic provides and they seem very, very good. The games on it seem to be ideal for short stints of gameplay and are made by some very creative folk.
This seems to be the ideal target audience for a device like this, however at around £250 including delivery here in the UK it's wildly expensive and falls well outside the 'frivolous expense once in a while' range for most parents (I'd say it would be a stretch at £150). I find that really strange, are these just economies of scale or is it a business decision Panic has made and now likely regrets?
The Playdate is... limited though; it's very small, much smaller than e.g. the gameboy or DS, so it's not particularly ergonomic. Fine for playing around with on occasion, but it's not a platform for spending long hours with. And it made the same mistake as the GBA did - no backlight.
It does not feel like good value for money. But then, it's positioned as a niche / quirky device, manufactured in batches once a year or so, not a mass market device.
I do hope they build a follow-up some day though - make it twice as big (at least), add a backlight, make turning it off more obvious, and give more clarity about the availability and cost of games.
>They are supported on just about every device and platform
Except they aren't. I recently used a simple SVG in a background and Safari wasn't able to render it properly so after trying lots of different things I gave up and used different sizes of raster images instead.
SVGs also are mostly unsupported for og:image tags (dependents on the app/browser). I know it's supper specific and I am not even sure if open graph is standardized protocol or not, but it's used everywhere.
What was the SVG that didn't work? In Jon's example in the original post, the SVG he embeds there was one he wrote in around 2005. That's a pretty impressive run for it to render 20 years on...
This seems to be concerning but as a Dutch person who has lived in the UK for a long time the relatively recent home-grown 'fatbike' issue seems to be a much more pressing problem for Dutch road safety than this and isn't being dealt with effectively as far as I understand.
Having said that I think these American pick-ups (and large SUV's, they are part of the same problem) are a common sight here as well and should not be allowed on the road (unless maybe you can show you need one for work or business).
I see those in Sweden as well. But I also know that people are stupid. And I rather have a stupid person on a stupid bike than a stupid person in an SUV. Especially since in an accident, they will lose in any case because most are likely not street legal.
> This seems to be concerning but as a Dutch person who has lived in the UK for a long time the relatively recent home-grown 'fatbike' issue seems to be a much more pressing problem for Dutch road safety than this and isn't being dealt with effectively as far as I understand.
This is the appeal to worse problems fallacy. Both are problems, both need to be addressed.
They are routinely modified to exceed legal speed limits and owned by 10 year old or younger kids. Going nearly 30mph on a footpath whilst holding a mobile phone.
I think they are also unregistered.
Easily modified to go as fast as 50 MPH on a chassis not designed for it. Drivers aren’t licenced and often are young kids. No registration. No insurance. No training. Very hazardous to pedestrians.
Yes- in the Netherlands the term 'fatbike' is pretty much synonymous with the battery powered bikes only (I presume elsewhere this may be different). They are mini motorcycles really- but exempt from all the rules and regulations that would apply to regular motorcycles.
This is a great idea except for me (and for the author I suspect) I regularly come across attachment of Imgur hosted images on sites (like a post on a DIY forum but not all of them) so it wouldn't solve my issue unless I were to use your browser in the container all the time (I suspect the author also doesn't just 'surf imgur' but randomly comes across images hosted on imgur linked to from other locations).
I usually feel ambivalence with announcements of new C# versions.
Yes, a lot of great features have been added over the years. But it also introduces some amount of cognitive load and confusion. Take the first new feature in the example:
> Field-backed properties simplify property declarations by eliminating the need for explicit backing fields. The compiler generates the backing field automatically, making your code cleaner and more maintainable.
Huh, I thought we have had this for years, what were they called, ah Auto-Implemented Properties- so why is there a need for this? In this example:
// Automatic backing field with custom logic
public string Name
{
get => field;
set => field = value?.Trim() ?? string.Empty;
}
Ah so it's a way to access the backing field of Auto-Implemented Properties if you need more logic. And in the above can we just say:
get;
or do you need to refer to the field keyword explicitly in the getter if we use it in the setter?
I feel like the documentation is always somewhat lacking in explaining the reasoning behind new features and how it evolves the language from earlier versions.
> The new syntax avoids having to do that "double" declaration.
Yes, that's right. It is in other words a way to access the compile-time generated backing field for auto-implemented properties. It is quite nice to be honest, I just wish they presented a bit of context in their announcements.
Agreed. I feel like we're getting diminishing returns out of the language as they try to squeeze out every last keystroke (as though the challenge of software development is in the typing)
I'm thankful I've been along for the ride so I know the "archaeology" but pity those freshly dunked into its increasingly complicated ocean
An incredibly beautiful visualisation but I felt the same. As well as being confused by the threshold map, at first the text seems to suggest that the 'binary' image is the input to the dithering algorithm in order to 'flip' some of the whites to black and vice versa but then it uses a gray area as input to the threshold map.
I remember his patience with Maurice and others was exemplary, almost to a fault. Maybe he was more forgiving of others because he was incarcerated earlier in life, I don't know. In one episode he finally loses his cool with a builder who has completely bodged the decking and plumbing outside his caravan in a hilarious way, but even then he manages to stay calm and polite when firing him.