I became a stay at home dad a few years ago, so while I have given up some work stress, I received a different kind of stress.

Don’t get too excited, this is an extremely rare occurrence for me as it’s only happened once before. But 12 years ago when I worked in a call center doing tech support in the US. It was near constant nightmares about getting calls in the call center, and the beep in the headset. I didn’t get good sleep or enough sleep between shifts. You win some you lose some.

I had a dream not too long ago (week maybe) where I didn’t dream about an event or a past, but I dreamt about a project I was working on and I invented something for myself that I can actually build right now if I wanted, but it is meant for me a decade or two in the future.

I’m a wood carver and I’m currently carving a gift for my brother in law. The dream was me fixing a lot of the things I had issue with in the project, and a future idea about my parents that I’ll be writing down and brainstorming until the times comes that I’ll probably want to build it.

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I use a seedbox to download the file from their site links for me, so I don’t see any of that anymore, so while I use their site I don’t directly interact with the torrent files or magnet links.

From personal experience yts.mx the site is full of ads redirects, etc. so using their site with proper ad, java blocking is a must, as for the files themselves having issues (viruses, worms, Trojans) I have not had issues as I scan everything in a secure space before adding to my server. And nothing has been detected so far.

I was under the impression that fossil had a classic watch that either made a sound or flashed a small light when a notification came in. Connected to phone via BT, so the power cost was “minimal”. Not sure if they make those watches anymore but it’s worth a look if you are interested.

Agreed, finish a work and move forward. Don’t linger on something to get to “perfection”. Strive towards that in the next painting. These are always a delight to see, a bright spot in my day when things have gone sideways.

I haven’t commented in a while. Having skipped a few I can see a lot of difference between them and now. The color choices and blending looks so much smoother and more nuanced. Your lights and darks are looking more dynamic, but could use a bit more work, it’s ok to get really dark and to hide detail if the artwork calls for it (the bottom of the photo has the jacket and shirt almost too dark to see detail while the painting just a smidge too light in tonal value(dark vs light)). Keep up the fantastic work.

Looking great again. The head shape, eyes and skin are all seeing the work you put in from your previous paintings. By taking the artistic license to edit out the bit of jowl hang makes being able to see the chin much nicer. You have a wonderful job on the eyes so much of how Samuel shows his work is through the eyes so it’s nice with the whole package looks like it should. I think now you might consider doing a bit more on blending with your colors. Right now it looks like Samuel but you could much closer with a bit more time adding more colors to give yourself a smoother time blending.

This is just good, solid work again. The blending on the cloths is great and getting much better. You work on the face is where I feel you could use a bit more focus when you are painting the next Sam. Other than the dimple that someone else mentioned you seem to have lost a bit of his jaw line to help separate his jaw and neck. Not a huge deal, just an observation where you might consider putting more focus on color blending and light/dark color choice to help you.

Got to keep the train rolling. Always point out the things done well so that they can focused on more. Overall there is steady progress so I can’t point directly to any one area that needs your direct focus. Eyes are always going to be hard, they have so many shapes, colors, textures, and reflections, that doing all of it, all the time is hard, try not to beat yourself up too much.

The confidence again is being put on display. Confident enough to try a beard and a background. I’m happy to see you kept the focus on Samuel and kept the background basic. The blending is getting much better and selecting blend-able colors for the skin is getting much better. Good sharp edges from face to beard edge. Keep going, this is great.

I’ve been watching you post these since #1. I can say that I enjoy all of them, but it sure looks like you are getting more comfortable with what you’re doing. This #5 feels more like you have proportions and shading much more focused, and dialed in.

Painting portraits of people is hard work, especially famous people. Humans in general focus on pattern recognition and the things we see a lot of are peoples faces, so humans tend to be “good” at finding flaws when something doesn’t look quite right. Don’t let this discourage you. This is looking great. Keep it up.

In response to a similar comment about her appearance, Marilyn Monroe did an entire photo shoot in a flower potato sac.

The issue with Linux is that the best way to run jellyfin is to use docker (setup and running docker is its own thing that takes more time than I care to work on over lemmy). That way it’s Linux distro agnostic. With windows and Mac there is no issues as they have native apps from the server side that gets timely updates.

If you want to use windows, Mac or Linux, plex downloads for the server to house and stream media from can be found here: linux
choose your distro and install as per your distros standard instructions: windows
you can also install the server software via Microsoft’s windows store if you are so inclined.
mac/apple I have no clue if plex lists their server app via the App Store so your on your own there.

Plex will walk you through setup and ask where to find the files you want to add. Jellyfin as well.

Jellyfin files for the server and client(player/viewer) can be found here jellyfin

some options have instructions. Some options require you to be able to understand how to install software specific to a Linux distro and the windows/Mac options should be easy to install and understand.

The Linux distro you want to use will depend on you, but each service has their own preferences.

The end goal of installing all of this is to stream from your server client to the player client software. The server client software will have options on how you want the server seen on your internal network (intranet) and if you want to be able to access the server outside your network, say on your phone on the go (internet). The server clients will also ask you about where they need to look to find the media files you wish to stream locally or outside your network. plex and jellyfin have all of this and more to mess around with, but if you are just doing this at home no need to explore too much if you don’t need to.

I can help start you off if you want.

(To ward off the mods all of these suggestions are for personal photos and personal video files, created by, or for the user, and in no way am I recommending that piracy is ok or legal)

There are a few frontend/backend solutions that you can pick from that are popular and well supported.

• plex
• Jellyfin
• Kodi

Plex and jellyfin are my picks as those are what I’ve used. They will work on any laptop or desktop running windows/mac/Linux (with some caveats).

The front end that you pick can be a steaming device like a Amazon fire stick, Roku, or AppleTV, this also includes smart TVs, (not all TVs support all or any) for widest support an Android tv would work).

As for where to get your media files there are a lot of options out there, but be careful (I don’t know the this instance’s stance on site recommendations so I can’t list them). As for how, torrenting is still the most popular, but not the only option. You’ll need a torrent program to get the files to download to your “server”. It is also very encouraged and recommended to use a vpn while you download and seed to protect yourself.

While not expansive or detailed I hope this helps.

My Lemmy profile has my matrix ID so if you wanted to talk in a space with more privacy you can send me a message there.

The pen flip/flicking seems like a skill I would love to learn. Do you have a video or know of a video showing or teaching this?

Your second link is honestly should be a sticky on a lot of communities and I try to always show people that video to illustrate how hard things are for people.

If you also live in Europe or set up your computer in the US with European English then you can also skirt some of the ads as well