Gremlins and Chaos and Being

The gremlins in my head, on a quiet day, ask only that I wash my hands a bit more than an average person would.  On a raucous day, they demand that I create something and share it.  They don't ask nicely.  It doesn't matter what I come up with, whether it's any good, or with whom I share it.  This occasionally causes some embarrassment, but one learns to deal with that.  If the gremlins are ignored, they begin wreaking havoc and this fun, grumpy person becomes an un-fun grumpy person.

A side-effect of paying any attention to the world around me is that when the world goes mad, I go a bit mad with it.  Anxiety and dread leak right inside and stir the gremlins.  "Pain is good for art" and all that.  I'm a very fortunate and privileged person, and not what most would call talented, so my use of the words "pain" and "art" is a bit of a stretch.  But that's fine.  In any case, my brain gremlins and I have been on edge lately.

The gremlins are soothed by simple seeds growing into complex patterns.

I played around with randomized, low-fidelity pixel art.  8x8 noise of a single random color, mirrored for symmetry.  The human brain (well, mine anyway) will turn almost any such shape into something recognizable.  A penguin with antlers.  An armored soldier.  A dog walking upright.  A happy toad or a skull with pigtails.  Once I got a bunch of these drawing on screen, it seemed like asking the simple question "who are you?" might be interesting.

The gremlins like music; during worrisome times, songs get stuck in my head far more easily than usual.  Recently my noggin was cycling this Cat Stevens song, for reasons I won't try to understand.

The bit that kept rolling around in my brain was "if you want to be me, be me".  Might it be interesting to have some kind of interactive mechanic that boils down to "be me" when you meet someone?  Well, I already had plenty of random pixel people to meet.

You can see I've got some other stuff going on there too.  Random names, offspring from mathematically averaging the pixel characters.  I also threw something together to randomly build up a map.  And some random special rooms for whatever weird tools and functions I was playing with. And gave each character random traits that determine what and how they can see, where they can go, how they get noticed.

Why I stuck with an Atari aesthetic (including directions and one action button) I do not know.  Why I wrote the code almost entirely on my phone during insomnia hours rather than from the comfort of a proper computer, I do not know.  Why I named it "RPG1" and retrofitted a bunch of acronyms in its manual, I do not know.

What I do know is that from the chaos, some interesting effects cropped up.  As a moose I traded feet with a bunch of bananas, and suddenly I could go places I could not reach before.  I was a butterfly who talked with and became a spring-propelled robot, after which I could not see the butterfly anymore.  As a thief, I met a two-headed bird and had a screen full of three-headed turtle babies.

Play online:  http://rpg1.penduin.net

It's a bit of a hot mess, but there.  Happy, gremlins?  No?  You already have some more stupid little projects lined up?  Hm.  Gonna be an interesting few years to be me.

Inaugur- (wretch)

Here it is.  The new age, where nothing makes sense and the more asinine it sounds, the more likely it is to be happening.  Good, evil, right, wrong, fact, fiction, none of it means anything.  Things just are.  Because loud, proud ignorance says so.

It's an interesting time to be alive.  I've never been bored in my life, but I would sure love to try it.  As it is, though, I'm going to be angry and frustrated and terrified and indignant for some time.  I'd say something like "four years", but let's not assume time or space or anything else are comprehensible phenomena anymore.  Or that dissidents like myself won't be jailed or hanged by then.  Or that all life on Earth won't have simply been obliterated by nuclear weapons.  Nothing's given, things just are.  Because small, spiteful vanity says so.

So far, the worst expectations I could muster have only ended up demonstrating the limits of my own imagination.  But my dense optimism means everybody here has one more ally -- I will stay and fight.  The temptation to abandon this poisoned ship and its lunatic captain will be overwhelming, but we have to stand strong.  Because courage and right and decency say so.  Those things don't exist in this age, true enough, so it falls to each of us to create them.

Dissent is patriotic.  We shall overcome.  [Inspirational quip #3 not found.]

Huh.

Well, I was wrong.  This is worse.  Best of luck everybody.

Let's Get This Over With

I know these things happen every four years and therefore cannot last any longer than that, but it feels like I can no longer remember a time when I wasn't worrying that a superbly-qualified world leader might lose the presidency to a prejudiced reality show pseudo-celebrity.

In the primaries I voted for Bernie, because I think we desperately need some socialist ideas and tools to pull us back from the brink of commercialist self- (and planetary-) destruction.  My wife voted for Hillary, and we were both glad to be supporting both candidates.  They each rank among the most honest politicians our country has to offer, and the most progressive.  (Yes really.  Do some actual research if those things sound strange to you.)  Voting felt really good in the primary.

Since then, we've witnessed the rise of a monster created and fueled by the worst runaway features of our young nation - money equaling speech, entertainment posing as news, echo chamber information bubbles, and more racism, sexism, zealotry, bigotry, and other forms of reckless fear-mongering hate than I would have ever imagined.

I've been all but paralyzed by anxiety for what feels like ages.  I'm normally not a terribly worrisome person.  I've always trusted that most of the time, most of the people will do the best they can.  I still feel that way.  But there is so much influence and so much concentrated power which is willing to swallow any pill no matter how horrifying, as long as it means perpetuating itself.  There are so many lies told so often and so loudly.

My wife observed that every four years the Republican party puts up somebody worse than the last time.  We had Dole, who seems a perfectly respectable statesman at this point, then W, McCain, Romney, and now Drumpf.  (I wouldn't necessarily have ranked McCain as worse than Bush if it hadn't been for Palin, who herself almost sounded cogent compared to today's toupee'd cheesepuff.)  In trying to figure out who is next, assuming we get to keep having elections, the only figures who come to mind for me are Scott Walker (yes, more dangerous than Trump, because he's actually accomplished terrible things instead of just blustering on about them) and whomever is the head of the KKK.  (Please excuse my gross ignorance of the grossly ignorant.)

We've always liked the ritual of voting on election Tuesday.  Ours are not particularly ritual-filled lives, but we've got a few we really feel are worth hanging on to.  Next time around though, we think we'll vote early, as so many have done this time.  I doubt I would have quite the same level of apprehension if this thing were already 100% out of my hands.

Anyway, I look forward to being productive again.  I look forward to being able to relax, find some peace, maybe even fall asleep.  I hope I can do it here in the nation of which I was born.  The one where different kinds of people can work together.  I hope that nation is still here.  I think it is.  Hillary Clinton is seeking what seems to me an impossible job, but if anybody on the planet is up to it, if anyone can be prepared enough, strong enough, compassionate enough, she's the one.

Please vote tomorrow if you haven't already.  Let's get this over with.

Happy Halloween!

This election and this year in general can't be over soon enough.  But there is always room for warmth and fun in life, and Halloween is one of my favorite times to find such things.

A big round one with fuzzy facial hair, a cute classy one, and a splotchy little one with fangs.

Pre-carving inspection by this family's splotchy little fanged member.

...And for everybody's sake get out and vote next Tuesday.  (For the sane, qualified one, please.)

KBtris

Some day, I will stop thinking of ways to ruin Tetris. But it is not this day.

A little while ago my brain finally realized that two very familiar sets of numbers match up.  Ten main keys on a computer keyboard's homerow, four main rows of ten keys each.  Ten columns in a Tetris playing field, four orientations for Tetris pieces.  And that was that.  From that moment, I had no choice.

A version of Tetris requiring most of the keyboard had to exist.  If it already did, I couldn't find it.  So now the world has one more Tetris clone.

http://kbtris.penduin.net

KBtris has a steep learning curve, which is something I would normally shy away from in a game.  But the idea is too compelling.  Traditionally, when a Tetris piece appears, even if you are a master player you still have to get your fingers or thumbs to input something like:

left-left-left-left-rotate-drop

Now, you can do the same thing with:

q

One keystroke will both rotate your piece to the desired orientation and move it to the desired column.  This of course means you need to _have_ a desired orientation and column, and then hit the correct key out of forty.  It's efficient, but you need all your fingers and your wits about you to get started.  From there, it's not completely unlike learning the piano.

I've played a lot of Tetris in my life; I consider it one of the purest gaming experiences imaginable.  My first goal now that KBtris exists is to get as good and as fast as I can at it.  I'm curious whether I'll be able to keep up with friends who are faster typists.

Beyond that, I want to see someone get really good.  Way beyond my abilities.  I want to see a KBtris Olympian and be shamed.

Maybe _then_ I'll stop thinking up ways to ruin Tetris.

How to Fix: Firefox + Wine + "Open With" List

I forget why I even have wine in the first place, but I do.
(Wine, in this context, is a piece of software that lets me run Windows programs on my Linux system.)

Every once in a while, Firefox and Thunderbird would come across a file or attachment and prompt me for what to do with it.  Infuriatingly, the default choice was sometimes wine or some terrible wine version of explorer, or something.  I scoured Firefox's about:config and anything else I could think of, but there was no mention of wine associated with file types.  Web searches were useless too.

Finally, I found this:

https://wiki.winehq.org/FAQ#How_do_I_clean_the_Open_With_List.3F

Relevant snippet:

rm -f ~/.local/share/mime/packages/x-wine*
rm -f ~/.local/share/applications/wine-extension*
rm -f ~/.local/share/icons/hicolor/*/*/application-x-wine-extension*
rm -f ~/.local/share/mime/application/x-wine-extension*

That is what I needed.  ~/.local/share had some crap in it which many desktop applications, Mozilla's included, found and used to figure out handlers for different file types.  I can't imagine that setting anything to do with wine for such things could ever be useful for any reason ever, but if you use windows programs on purpose, you may wish to pick through those files a little bit more carefully than I did.

After nuking those, extensionless text files no longer try to open in some bastardized version of notepad.exe, oddly-formatted image files no longer try to launch some weird windows tool, and I no longer get angry at my computer for trying to run terrible programs for no reason.

My hope is that if I post this, I'll save at least one poor sap some time in their search for the same answer.

BUB on Nintendo 3DS

Well here it is, my first game "published" (in some sense anyway) via entirely-above-board means on a Nintendo console.  (Tong on Wii was great fun to do, but requires a little hacking for others to play.)

I got to draw Ork a couple dozen times.  I got to play and re-play a game-in-progress over and over.  I got to write a program in BASIC, complete with PRINTs, GOSUBs, and DATA blocks.  Every once in a while, I engage in a project that makes me feel like a kid again.  This was such a project.

For anyone and everyone who has SmileBASIC, here is the download code for BUB:

83DXN3L4

I posted that code on Nintendo's own built-in chat-about-games-you're-playing service, and it looks like some people are already having fun, including someone who recognized BUB from its Gamebuino version!

https://miiverse.nintendo.net/posts/AYMHAAACAAADVHksVo-stg

Anyway, that's my latest.  Some insomnia-hours programming and scribbling has become my favorite-so-far version of BUB.  I like to think somewhere there's somebody whose mind is set to sparking by this and other such toys.  Toys they can enjoy both as games and as a means of learning to program.  May the source be with you!

Smile!

A short while ago, the best software yet came out for the Nintendo 3DS.  It's not even a game.  It's called Smile BASIC, and it turns any 3DS into the magical kind of flexible, programmable, easily-learnable computer that is sadly otherwise absent from the modern world.

I was a child in the 80s, when Apple II and Commodore 64 computers were everywhere.  You could check out computer books and magazines from any library and type in listings of BASIC programs.  Once you got something running, you could modify or expand on it in any way you were clever enough to figure out.  The first open-source software that got me excited wasn't GNU or Linux or anything like that - it was some random maze-generating program or box-drawing routine that I copied off a printed page.

Now, that same magic, that sense of learning BASIC from examples and figuring out how to make a computer do things of your own design, is available in a $10 download, on a ubiquitous handheld computer.  And in addition to all those tricks we did on 8-bit, keyboard-enclosed, tube-TV-connected 80s technology, a slew of new BASIC commands are available which open up the 3D display, stereo speakers, wireless networking, and many megabytes of RAM to the same kinds of easy programming as PRINTing "Hello World".

If it were up to me, this or something like it would come standard on anything and everything with a CPU.  I don't care if BASIC isn't a powerhouse language, or if the hardware abstraction is limited in some ways, the point is that there needs to be a way to begin learning, on some level, how these gadgets we keep buying actually work!

A while back, I became a registered Nintendo developer.  That meant I could order dev kits, create software, and sell it through Nintendo's eShop services on Wii U and 3DS.  As a long-time Nintendo fan this was an exciting step, but as someone who values sharing ideas (and code) more than making money, it tore me up a bit to think I'd be putting out software which the next generation of me's couldn't poke around in, learn from, and make their own changes to.

Now, I don't have to.  Anybody who creates anything using Smile BASIC can publish it online, ready for anybody else to download, use, and edit just as if they'd copied it out of the back of a magazine.  Stay tuned; I'll be posting my first 3DS game very soon!

Ten Years

Ten years ago, Kim and I got married.  We didn't know then what those ten years would look like, nor do we now know much about the next ten, but we'll continue to figure it out together.  (With healthy doses of sarcastic humor and genuine love.)  We're not big on vacations or travel, but we decided to take some time off for our 10th anniversary and visit Lake Superior.  We got to do plenty of walking around Duluth, I got to sample a handful of local brews, and we got to spend a week together on own terms, according to our own whims.

 I'm thankful every day that our lives connected and joined.  We're pretty private and introverted people, but I'm happy to share a little moment like this.

Super Eclipse

Got to stare at the moon and stars with Kim last night while the moon put on a big show for us.  Last time I saw something like this, I was left to my own thoughts.  While I'm always captivated by any and all celestial dances, everything is made more enjoyable when shared with someone you love.

As it happens, we were also accompanied by a camera which was up to the task this time.  We brought some lawn chairs out to the little park area behind our apartment and watched from full moon through after the umbra had passed by before clouds started interfering.  My tripods are still in storage, so the shots I took were hand-held; 1/10th second exposures were about as long as I could get away with, but I still got some very satisfying photos, including this one.

We'd heard "blood moon" among the terms being thrown around leading up to this eclipse, and it really earned its name.

I'll have to play with some of the multiple-exposure shots I took as well.  The camera does have an HDR mode but as I mentioned, no tripod, and besides I don't actually know how to use it yet.  When we bought it, video was my first priority, and learning all the still features took a back seat so distant I still haven't gotten around to it.  :^)  I fumbled around in the dark a good while just figuring out how to get the basic shots I did.

Curiously, at maximum zoom (300mm) I was able to focus behind the moon.  I suppose that means we need to go hunting for Jupiter and Saturn sometime.

(Stars already appear very crisp in these moon shots, so I probably just misunderstand what's going on when I dial the focus past a certain point.  Regardless, gas giant hunting sounds fun!)

Shoes

My wife's been convinced for some time that I've needed new shoes.  Fine, fine, I got a replacement pair.  Same exact make and model, not sure I can even tell 'em apart.  I guess the female mind is just better tuned to pick up on these subtle details.

48-Hour Film: Enjoy the Show!

Well we did it.  Mike, Jed, myself, and a bunch of other very fun people got together the other weekend and dove in head-first to the Minneapolis 48 Hour Film Project.

That means we drew a genre out of a hat, got assigned some required elements, wrote, shot, edited, scored, and submitted a short movie in less than two days.  The nominations are set for the contest part of the event (not us!), so the embargo is lifted and we can now share our movie anywhere we please.

Take a look, enjoy the show (see what I did there?  ...'cause that's the title of ... oh forget it.) and if you like, check out a site where I detailed our production and have a bunch of related crap available for download:

http://penduin.net/48hfp/

A Proud Day

So the US Supreme Court has handed down two sane rulings in as many days?  What curious times we live in...

Congratulations to marriages and families of all kinds!  It shouldn't have taken until 2015, it shouldn't have taken a supreme court decision, it shouldn't have been such a close vote, and it certainly shouldn't have to endure the hissyfits which the ignorant will doubtlessly continue to throw.

Progress is slow and messy, but it's oh so satisfying to witness the right side of history during these victories.  I never had to fight for my right to marry, but I'll continue to fight for others.  And today... today is a good day.  Today we should all be proud.

Mr. President, P.S.

...And now we're supposed to get behind extending various provisions in the friggin' Patriot Act?!

I can only hope this is all part of some bizarro, genius strategy to get the right-wing nuts in congress to throw yet another anti-Obama tantrum, and ultimately ends in these terrible ideas dying out.  That wouldn't be the worst plan, actually, but this is a bit confusing for those of us who agreed with the Barack Obama we voted for.

Dear Mr. President, A Reply

As he does from time to time, president Obama has graced my inbox with an (entirely personal, I'm sure) email.  Often, these are asking for a show of support, standing up against the lunatic fringe known as more than half of the U.S. government.  This one required a little more thought.

Overall I think Obama has done a good job; I think history will be kinder to him than the present is.  But on this particular topic I'm not convinced I can stand with him.

"I want to set the record straight", he begins.  This is about the Trans-Pacific Partnership that's been drawing so much fire.  I figured I would put my reply here, since this blog is exactly as likely to make it across the commander-in-chief's desk as my email response.

Normally, when I have thoughts that thousands of people have, I don't bother posting them.  Why pollute the internet with opinions others have expressed at least as well?  But this time, the fact that my voice is not unique is, I think, part of the point.  So to begin with, here is the key paragraph from Obama's message:

But as long as 95 percent of our potential customers live outside our borders, we don't have the option to sit back and let others set the rules. We need to take this opportunity to level the playing field -- because when we're competing on equal ground, American workers win.

There was more, but this was as close as he came to addressing the secretive nature of the agreement, which is my primary concern about it.  (I have plenty of secondary concerns based on the leaked draft sections.)  So, here is my reply, to president Obama and to anyone who cares about my two cents:

I want to trust you're looking out for us.  But you also promised transparency, and you haven't made a convincing argument about why the details of this agreement must be kept secret.  The wikileaks draft has some very alarming provisions.  We the people don't know whether that stuff is being reigned in or made worse.

Keeping citizens out of a conversation between governments and multinational corporations on sweeping international trade deals does not feel very lowercase-d democratic (or party Democratic for that matter).  It sure doesn't sound like the level playing field you're talking about.

I'm sorry.  I stand behind many of your actions and attitudes, but secrecy and ramming legislation through raise red flags for me.  Public scrutiny is a necessary part of our republic, and I will require evidence and thorough logical arguments before I can stand with you on this big, hush-hush deal.

-Owen Swerkstrom

Another silly device, another silly game

The other day, a friend tipped me off to an in-development smartphone with a round display. Circular. I've used a computer mouse that shape before, and wasn't super-impressed, but until/unless I see one in person I won't make jokes.

But it got me thinking, what sort of game or toy might I create for something with a round display?  My first ideas were tilt-based, like those old BB-in-a-maze toys.  But for whatever reason, I was compelled to quickly throw this together:

http://turn-n-seek.penduin.net

It's really dumb.  You have a little view of the goal pattern (which you can scoot around to see more, but never much at once), and you turn the dials around to try to match it.  Get everything lined up within +/-5 degrees, and you win.  Then it resets, and picks a new random number of dials, segments, and colors.

As it turns out, it's a kinda fun little time-waster on a normal slab-shaped phone or tablet too.  (Note: Android's stock browser is terrible; use Firefox or Chrome instead.)

I have a running in-joke (so in, it's basically just with myself).  The more effort I put into a game or app, the less people will care about it.  For example, according to the stats on the Firefox app marketplace...
https://marketplace.firefox.com/search?author=penduinbits
My most popular app by far is a stupid QR scanner I wrote in an hour.
In distant second is Halloween Artist, which I did put some effort into.
Dead last is Picross, which was by far the most work of the few apps I have listed here.

So, by this logic, since it took no time to throw together, my new "turn & seek" game will soon have hundreds of thousands of people playing!  ;^)

Bub Bub Bubbin' Along

Not a lot to show yet, but here's a side-by-side glimpse into the past and future of my silly Bub game:

I'm rebuilding the game with full animation support (rather than building on the table-based code I whipped up for the prototype), so there's still a lot to do as far as gameplay.  Right now, there is only walking left and right, and no logic for slurping up bubbles, bonking into walls, or really doing anything other than seeing my scribbles begin to come alive.

If you have a decent browser (Firefox, Chrome, probably Safari, maybe newest IE) you can always try the latest checked-in version here:
http://smogheap.github.io/bub/html5/
...and of course I'll post to this blog when there's something worth posting.

The current controls highlight just how much is yet to be done:

• mouse click: test a random screen transition
• left/right key: walk

...and that is all.  :^)

More and Again

Disclaimer: I know very little about economics or sociology.  This is just a thought I felt was worth exploring.

One of the effects of living in a capitalist society and consumer culture is the notion, the drive, to acquire more and more.  What we've got is not enough, we should keep getting and getting.  It's not in the pledge of allegiance (but then, neither was monotheism until 1954) or otherwise literally expressed, but it's a kind of background radiation.  A color given to "normal".  A base molecule found everywhere in our cultural fabric.

Part of it is biological - we still have all the hunting and gathering instincts our ancestors did, and some of us certainly have hoarding tendencies which can take great mental discipline to keep in check.  But all cultures have that; that's not even exclusively human behavior.  What I'm talking about is man-made.  Not just the commercials and sales and the keeping up with the Jones', but the unspoken institution of perpetually wanting more.

As consumer goods became cheap and profitable to manufacture and distribute, this "must get more" norm grew organically.  Means of injecting this idea into as many minds as possible became a business itself.  Those who had the means to manufacture and sell invested in amplifying it, one product or subscription or investment opportunity at a time.

Here's the crux of my thought:  That message of always needing more has spread so completely that those at the top, those with the means, are also being injected with it.  With their own amplified message.  The vast wealth they've made from feeding consumer culture is not enough.  Black Friday shoppers have nothing on the wealthy anytime a million dollars can be spent acquiring more millions.

So there we have it, great income inequality and all the economic badness that goes along with it.  I've seen it grow in my lifetime, but history suggests there may be cycles at work.  The rich get richer, the poor poorer, then things go pear-shaped.  More equality leads to more opportunity and growth, then eventually we start spiraling out of control again.  If there were some good way to measure the background radiation of more-more-more, I wonder if it would rise and fall along with these cycles.

I also wonder if we can learn from the past and maybe stop swinging around so much.  And in the meantime, I hope another ever-present message gets some amplification of its own:  "There are more important things in life than money."

Go and vote. Period.

Moving back to a swing state in the months leading up to an election, even a midterm, has been interesting.  The "news" was on here the other night and after an ages-long commercial break containing literally nothing but campaign ads, the next story was about yet another campaign ad and whether it was true.  The segment after that was a few minutes of free air time for a couple of local candidates.

Between the flood of emails begging for money and the 24-hour mudslinging, I'm beginning to think that even if all the wrong people get elected, resulting in the most crooked and backwards outcome for each office in play, at least this madness will be over.  Small consolation, but palpable relief nonetheless.

I gassed on earlier about how preposterous amounts of money will be spent lying to us.  I sure wish I could say I was crying wolf. There are local politicians I like, those I consider a lesser evil, and those I dread.  But the bigger, money-soaked picture has been all dread.  Well, save for this fascinating little proposal:
https://mayday.us/

I've embraced the irony; the idea of killing ridiculous political spending by means of ridiculous political spending makes me smile (even if I'm also shaking my head).  If a politician's platform includes stamping out the absurd legal equivalency of money and speech, includes patching up known corruption vectors, includes valuing human citizens even if they aren't billionaires, then he or she has my support.

I hope you agree with that sentiment, wherever you find yourself on America's silly one-dimensional political spectrum.  But even if you don't, I hope you go and vote.  Period.

We have no right to complain about our civilization if we don't exercise our most basic civil liberty.