• 0 Posts
  • 42 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
cake
Cake day: June 11th, 2023

help-circle


  • As someone with the opposite problem, too formal and not very good at casual writing. Truth is, formal writing is robotic and in today’s context it is regarded as awkward except in a few places. Most of the samples online that the bots are trained with are overly formal examples. 99% of cover letters are never published online, so that’s an area they’re lacking. What they have access to is the awfully generic slop that’s impersonal and meant to sell online workshops about writing cover letters.

    There’s a very difficult task in making formal writing feel natural and warm. I would advice instead to aim for transparency. A cover letter is supposed to highlight a match between your skills and personality, with the company role’s needs and work culture. It’s not a cold sales pitch, you must show that you did your due diligence about getting to know the place before applying for the job. As long as it sounds like the genuine you talking, not a façade, it doesn’t has to be too formal, just keep the content and vocabulary professional. How you would talk in the workspace with a coworker that you don’t know too well yet. A cover letter is more like corporate flirting than lawyer speak.

    As for material, read the basic common sense guides online, but, and it is a big but. Also read a lot in general, specially in English as it isn’t your first language. Unlike LLMs humans are actually intelligent and we can use experiences from other contexts, and good writing in general shares common principles across all genres. Even if every genre has specificities, they’re usually an addendum or exception of general good writing. Variety is the spice of life.


    1. Yes, you can share location, the widgets aren’t as fancy as Google integration with everything.

    2. Not feasible without the constant data harvesting in the background, which it doesn’t do. It doesn’t log your every move as Google does. Privacy vs surveillance, will always be at odds.

    3. Depending on the area. In my country public transportation is way better on OSM than on Gmaps. Oftentimes Gmaps won’t even have large structures like train stations or bus terminals. It depends on users and contributors.



  • Ok, this is a sidetrack but hear me out. Floppy disks would make awful coasters. A coaster has to be somewhat absorbent to avoid spilling condensation water on the table. This is why cork is the most popular material for coasters. The best coasters are a cloth top over a cork shape with a plastic rim and a felt bottom. This ensures total protection to the table and gives enough freedom to be creative with shapes, prints, colors and figures. The novelty printed plastic disks are the worst coasters possible, and floppy disks will only drip all over the table defeating the purpose of a coaster.


  • Never let perfect be the enemy of good enough. Do you want to do the thing or do you want to stress about the thing for days, delay it for months while you save up then suffer regret anxiety about whether it was the correct choice? For a lot of people the latter is the part they enjoy about the hobby. For others it isn’t worth the time and resources requires, they’d rather do the thing now with what they have and enjoy it as it is. Where does the inflection point lies between hassle and enjoyable results is personal and everyone has different criteria for different goals and contexts, and that is OK.





  • Adults and even animals do this too. It’s a response to frustration. It’s what’s behind the “tear it down and rebuild it again from scratch” mindset. It stems from perfectionism and neuroticism. A good rule to teach kids is that mistakes are acceptable and nothing will ever be perfect. An existing partially good result is preferable than an inexistent perfect result. Enjoy and trust the process, ignore results for a while, learn from mistakes.

    It’s also related to tolerance and flexibility. For example, some people find it intolerable to dirty up or scuff a newly bought item, let’s say a new car or new phone. Being overtly careful or even refusing to use it at all to avoid damage (how people also avoid doing things they fear they will fail at or be embarrassed). But come the first scratch, you now have to live with it. To survive the emotional response to frustration, our brain drops expectations and sometimes overcompensates exciting our aggression impulse.

    This is why we recommend people certain exercises of pure exposition to frustration. Like those theater exercises that make you act ridiculous in front of the class, or thought dumping to get rid of writer’s block, or doodling to break in a new sketchbook. It’s like recalibrating emotional responses to be more flexible and tolerant of imperfections. To get comfortable with discomfort and learn to bounce back from failure.



  • See, the thing with this argument is that, however much I agree with the basic idea, it’s still not useful. We can agree, sure, that overall the UI and UX (two different things) on GIMP is not as subjectively good as Photoshop. But saying, it’s easier, it’s faster, it’s whatever, still does not help at all. It’s still all just vibes and impressions, it’s not actionable.

    “The default UI is not like Photoshop” is inactionable. It’s different from the opinions I left on this thread. That GIMP need to have a way to save and reload layouts, that’s an specific feedback, concise, concrete and actionable. I also agree that some workflows take too many clicks, maybe have simplified tools to do common actions. That is also actionable, specific, concrete.

    Your comment offers nothing to go on with. It even manages to ignore and bypass my criticism, it doesn’t address the “Industry standard” bias and privilege. Because when pros try GIMP the response “It doesn’t work the way I expected and are used to, so I don’t like it” is a garbage feedback. The only thing you are offering is “clone photoshop”, and that’s just not what the project has ever been about, or will ever be about. So the conversation is fruitless.


  • You missed the point of my post. You’re right in that you are left with amateurs as an audience. But, and it is a big but, the amateurs aren’t comparing you to Photoshop, they are comparing you to the UX friendly app they have on their phone (no matter if they say otherwise). Yet the pro won’t ever give GIMP any chance because it doesn’t carry the “industry standard” label and the privilege that comes with it. When people are learning graphic design or photoediting they are mandated to learn Photoshop. Either by a rigid teaching system or the cultural environment prevalent amongst the people with strong passion to learn on their own. The result is that a lot of UX and UI quirks and headaches (which photoshop does have, let’s not lie to ourselves here) are overlooked or just accepted as the norm. Humans can adapt to a lot of fuckery and bad design, that doesn’t make it good UX. GIMP does not have the label, leniency or benefit of the doubt from anyone. Just read this thread, people complaining and whining about the default layout. No one has addressed the things that GIMP does better UX wise or when ways to overcome its shortcoming are mentioned people react with hostility and denial. Most even admit that they have never used GIMP or that they have no business anywhere near an image editor. But here we are, discussing the opinions of the peanut gallery based on feefees and second hand vibes.



  • All I want is to GIMP to save tabs layout as workspaces. That is enough. Part of GIMP hate is based on 15 year old complaints. Just like people still complains today about stuff of Linux that has been resolved for decades. It’s just memery that has stuck around.

    There are issues with GIMP, but none are about the stuff most people meme about in social media. Every tool has room to grow, but GIMP UI suffers from the “too amateur to know what’s wrong” loud majority effect. Imagine someone who has no concept of music appreciation in their lives sits at the front of a grand organ. Then proceeds to complain that the pedals get in the way of sitting on the stool and that he founds the three keyboards redundant and unintuitive. This notion is valid, from his point of view. But it informs nothing about the usability of that particular instrument for a professional organ player.

    The same thing tends to happen with several software packages, specially the open source ones. Since they don’t have the industry standard tag, they don’t get any leniency when it comes to learning their features and capabilities. Then, when the amateur checks them out, they don’t compare it to the industry standard (which does have a leniency license) but compare it to the simplified, accessible for everyone and strip down apps. These people don’t have the foresight to understand that this tool is capable of way more than their reference point, and the initial friction is an indicator of their inexperience, not of the tool’s quality or potential.

    The amateur is more comfortable sitting in front of a Casio learner piano. And we shouldn’t lend much credence to their feedback about the ergonomics or key feel of a Steinway concert grand.


  • You can click the tool, configure it, then hit tab to work on the image. Then tab again to click on the new tool, tab, work on the image. It’s a nice and simple workflow. I don’t know what to tell you, it’s not rocket surgery. I mean, you’re the one trying to do image work on a tiny ass screen. I’m giving you a neat trick that worked perfectly for me. Sorry it is not good enough for you, I guess.



  • Krita lacks a lot of tools to work with photography. It’s OK with general image manipulation but you have to really struggle to do anything that’s not digital painting.

    That said. The left side of GIMP is wide because the tool options are under the tool’s icons. While Krita has them on the top as a bar.

    Both programs let you move and change the layout to whatever you want, though. No one serious about using either program uses the default. There’s a bunch of stuff you don’t need to use that only takes up space when you’re just doing one particular task. Hence why saving and reloading layouts is such a powerful feature.

    EDIT: Here is, for example, my layout.

    Also, the little logo on the corner has a purpose. It’s a small area where you can drag and drop any image file from your file explorer and it will automatically open the file for editing, instead of pasting it on the current open project as a new layer. It’s super useful.


  • They copy pasted the Columbia University press release word for word. Which is unfortunately way too common on science journalism. The article just repeats the researchers claims which may or may not hold water. Their main claim that they proved that inter fingerprints aren’t unique is just semantic manipulation. That’s probably what irked reviewers. Their research doesn’t support their claims. At best, they’re proposing a mediocre application of AI to detect markers that were already known about.