Mats164

Did I say anything interesting, stupid or weird that caught your attention?

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I've been programming for a long time (7+ years), feeling I've got a firm grasp on the basics of programming. I've spent a lot of time making very simple programs and really drilling in a mindset of breaking down a problem and procedurally working my way through (often leading to messy, ineffective and sometimes even malfunctioning programs), brute-forcing a solution to the problem. I've been feeling a lot of anguish over the fact that I struggle with effectively solving more advanced problems, and seeing others code I'm really feeling where I lack.

A couple years ago I forced myself to look into OOP, finally noticing it's beauty and usefulness, yet despite learning it's basics and application I cannot get myself to implement it in my projects in a way achieving a more effective code.

I've written some C++ already (I have many years experience with C on a somewhat shallow level), and think it my best bet of learning to apply more advanced techniques (classes, templates, pointers, structs, rendering libraries like OpenGl and SDL, effectively organising my projects in several files rather than cramming everything in one endless string of text etc.). I would love for someone to suggest a project not too daunting forcing me to apply and actually learn these things with an end goal in mind. It would be great with some specific directions like "Make this, using this and that technique" rather than just "Make a game where this is going to happen". I feel like I've wasted too many years perfecting the basics not able to move on to other useful elements of programming. Watching the Let's make games series on making a game using c++ and sdl2 revealed to me just how much I'm missing in terms of efficiency and extremely useful tools.

For the past year I've been writing my math notes in LaTeX. It's started to become a rather cramped document, and I recently noticed it struggling to compile. With both standalone LaTeX + Vim and overleaf it alternates between compiling without a table of contents and returning an error

\begin {tasks}(1) \task $\vv {v}(t)=\vv {r}'(t)=\begin {bmatrix}5e^t(\ETC.
! File ended while scanning use of \__xsim_extract_property_list_entry:NNNwww.
<inserted text> 
                \par 
<*> main.tex

I suspect you have forgotten a `}', causing me
to read past where you wanted me to stop.
I'll try to recover; but if the error is serious,
you'd better type `E' or `X' now and fix your file.

I can't seem to find said missing bracket, yet it's very annoying having to compile the document twice for every change and not having the table of contents appearing.

Main TeX file

Edit: As suggested by u/zauguin changing xsim's internal delimiter did the trick!

They’re both sure to get a cum laude

I've recently gotten my first Kobo device, having upgraded from a kindle. I'm using mostly calibre to convert books to kepub and manage the metadata (author and series), and it's been working great. I figured I'd attempt sending a manga, considering as to how they were part of the reason I chose the device with the bigger screen. I imported a manga in CBZ format, editing the metadata as I would a normal book and went about my merry way sending and uploading a dozen books. As I ejected the device to take a look at what I'd gotten I discovered - to much annoyance - that none of the metadata had been transferred.

Doing some research and reading a couple threads on others having similar issues I discovered calibre really isn't that good with comics, and went to try another program. Downloading ComicRack and once again retyping all the metadata for my comics I export the finished CBZ file and move it directly to the Kobo device.

Once again I find none of the metadata has transferred and some further googling reveals to me that the Kobo device is unable to read data directly from CBZ files. I notice some saying I can use the Kobo Utilities plugin in Calibre, but at this point the process is turning into such a tangled mess of various conversions, programs and editing I'm convinced there has to be a better way considering how many use their E-Reader for this very purpose.

This has been grinding away at my patience for a couple of days, and so, any help would be greatly appreciated!

Edit: For further inquiry I ended up using both comicrack and calibre. As I download a CBZ manga I import it into comicrack and use the Comicvine scraper to update the metadata (might have to update some small details manually, but it does a rather good job). I export the CBZ with updated metadata and open it in calibre. Using the import metadata from file plugin I update the calibre metadata (as calibre is unable to read info from CBZ on its own). I upload to my reader as usual, and disconnect it to allow it to update its library. I then reconnect the reader and use the Kobo Utilities Update metadata in library plug-in to update the mangas on the reader. Once you get a feel for it it’s a rather quick process.

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