Ben S.

Dad. Software engineer. Gaming / electronics / computing enthusiast (especially retro). Xennial suburban white cis het ex-religious SJW. I microblog my way through old games a lot (especially CRPGs).

Pronouns: He/Him
Location: King County, WA, USA
Occupation: Software Engineer
Now Playing: Rust (2013), Deus Ex: Mankind Divided (2016)

Last Notes

2025-10-17 21:33:39 UTC

Trying to write modern C++ is frustrating because they add new features but not completely enough for them to feel first-class.
Example is that I need to pass a stringstream to a Boost method, but I have a string_view. No problem, I'll just pass the string_view to the stringstream's constructor - NOPE, not until C++26!

2025-10-01 17:32:34 UTC

PSA: #jetbrains is going to feed your code and other interactions into AI unless you opt out.
Edit: Blog Link with info on how to opt out: https://blog.jetbrains.com/blog/2025/09/30/detailed-data-sharing-for-better-ai/
https://mastodon.sdf.org/system/media_attachments/files/115/300/097/159/662/760/original/61554e7e857168da.jpg

2025-08-15 18:29:37 UTC

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if you don't mind me asking, what desktop environment did you pick (if any)? There are so many to choose from these days.

2025-01-20 06:34:31 UTC

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Decided to download a random decibel meter app on my phone and see how the receiver's test tones registered out of each speaker - and it was a mess. Adjusted them all at a couple of volume levels, and I think it sounds much better.
I think the subwoofer is actually spot-on when playing Dolby Surround decoded stereo, so it's only 5.1 or Atmos LFE that's too boomy. I swear I found a separate setting for that, but only once - maybe it only appears while such content is active?

2025-01-18 08:07:15 UTC

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The last thing to get used to is that the Denon loves to mute itself whenever the audio or video signal changes, or I got into our out of a menu on the receiver, etc.
At first I got really frustrated, but it seems to snap out of it after a couple seconds if I'm patient. Probably it's trying to avoid clicking or major audio level changes, or just trying to wait for the signal to stabilize.

2025-01-18 07:57:02 UTC

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I will say it has a nice menu system on the HDMI out, but would probably be a pain to navigate via the front panel instead (the Yamaha's sparse menus were easily navigable on either the TV or the front panel).
Both the Fire Stick 4K and Wii video seems to mostly work fine. The Denon seems to only support upscaling to 8K, so with my 4K TV it just passes through everything untouched (which is fine).

2025-01-18 07:53:26 UTC

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It also knocked the center channel down too far IMO, and detected a higher crossover frequency on it versus the surrounds, even though the center has two equal-or-larger drivers and is from the same set.
Anyway, it's still listenable, and I'll be redoing the calibration anyway once the bookshelf speakers show up.
I did bump the subwoofer from -3.5dB to -7.0dB though, because it felt so boomy that I was worried the entire neighborhood could hear it.

2025-01-11 07:45:43 UTC

TV digital audio mess:
Got a Samsung S90D 65" TV over the holidays to replace our almost 15 year old 47" Vizio.
Fire Stick 4K had to be connected directly to the TV because the old Yamaha RX-V665 AV receiver doesn't support 4K HDMI. Receiver also doesn't support eARC, so I had to connect a TOSLINK optical audio cable from the TV to the receiver.
The TV absolutely refuses to output optical audio unless I also leave it connected via HDMI for some reason. It's totally bizarre!

2024-12-06 17:01:45 UTC

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that's valid. Personally I don't enjoy chasing the shiny new thing, and am also extremely tired of corporate web platforms.

2024-12-06 16:55:42 UTC

Them: "I'm probably going to lock my Mastodon account and take a mental health break from social media."
Me: I bet they went to #bsky.
*checks bsky, sees multiple posts from them in the last hour*
You don't have to be weird about it, you can just leave - or post on both - or whatever.

2024-11-05 21:32:40 UTC

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making her victory about Trump seems fraught. I also expect she'd avoid sounding vindictive out of concern that it would increase the chance of post election unrest.
This reads exactly like something Trump would say though.