Der Name ist Splatz. Karl Splatz.

main cause of packet loss: packets being shot on sight while attempting to cross the DMZ

OH: Stroh 80 in der Dose

the crows at work are making my monthly peanut expenses explode

👀

the annual test confirms once again: if something ever happens, I'll die

(didn't get the cell broadcast)

PSA: big wee-woo day in Austria today

Tell me where is Gandalf, for I much desire to speak with him

"matrix is shit" is national news today, which is both absolutely hilarious and quite weird, considering how often people must be saying Teams is shit, yet that's never news

archeological excavations of my phone's USB-C port have revealed evidence of previously unknown ancient lint-inhabiting civilisations

I didn't know all the exact details for any of these mathematical constructs, but I knew what to look for. Most of that knowledge came from math class in school, so if you think you'll never need any of that stuff again, here's an example where I did :)

As often with math, a big part of the solution was figuring out which abstractions to use. I first tried doing all the trig manually, chasing angles, constructing triangles, but in 3D, that's _tedious_. Eventually I realised that the problem can be modelled very naturally using vectors, which made creating a formula downright trivial. Solving it for the unknown still seemed like a big mess of linear equations until I remembered from school that this can be modeled as a matrix multiplication.

Now of course I could have probably also given this problem to an LLM of choice and gotten some ready-to-use, probably-correct python code out in a lot less time - but I wouldn't have learned a single thing. Doing stuff the hard way *is* how learning happens.

With lots of help from Wikipedia, I spent a couple hours over the last two days going through trigonometry, vectors, matrix multiplication and matrix inversion, and have now ended up with a beautiful tiny formula that, given elevation and azimuth of the sun, only needs a couple operations to arrive at an awning extension percentage. Looking at the results, as far as I can tell, I got all the math right - let's see how reality works out :)

okay, so. At work, we have awnings in front of the windows, which are very good at keeping the sun out. BUT I don't want them extended all the way all the time, because it can get quite gloomy then - not a problem, we have full control over them with homeassistant! Unfortunately, it turns out that calculating the required extension given the current position of the sun is actually somewhat nontrivial.

Luckily, I know enough math to be dangerous!

"oh no you put an oily spoon within 5m of the mixing bowl, now beating the egg white won't work"

bullshit. it doesn't care. you can dump half a yolk in there and it'll be fine

cream, on the other hand? you whip that fucker for half a second too long and you're left with butter and skim milk, guaranteed

anyway, yay

spent waaaaaaay too long trying to figure out why test-ipv6.com was reporting a PMTU blackhole only on my phone, but not any other device in the same network, only to find out that the *one* mirror that it picked on my phone has a broken backend

why my phone prefers going to Sao Paulo instead of Amsterdam like my other devices? fuck knows

can't park there mate

RE: https://social.treehouse.systems/@krutonium/117222362309718982

yeah that's me