The van and garage doors shared a moment.
Brainstorm: hide away bedside cords from the cat.
(Our implementation was simpler but works :^)
Tuesday, August 08, 2017
Move Moments
We bought a house. We've been moving into it. There's more to tell there than is worth telling, and certainly more than is worth reading about. But the other day we moved a big couch and chair, which required renting a van. In lieu of my usual long-winded babbling, here are a few captured moments.
It's just a bruise. But yeah, it scared me at first too.
Monday, June 26, 2017
Doodled Dudes
One thing that I haven't seen dug up from the 1980s, slathered in modern attention-deficit-mediocrity and re-sold to us is those little finger puppet monsters. They contained no sound chips, activated no unlockable video game content, and were cheap enough to come in happy meals. Probably. Who knows if I can remember the 80s correctly.
Alternate opening paragraph:
Nowadays everybody's 3D-printing fidget spinners. Perfectly fitting for today - can't sit still, noisy, no personality. Me, I've got a not-completely-atrophied imagination and my little 3D pen came with some flexible rubbery plastic stock. So now if my fingers need to do some fidgeting, here's what I've got:
Precision, detailed figures they are not. But, they're cute enough not to have been banished from my desk yet.
Alternate opening paragraph:
Nowadays everybody's 3D-printing fidget spinners. Perfectly fitting for today - can't sit still, noisy, no personality. Me, I've got a not-completely-atrophied imagination and my little 3D pen came with some flexible rubbery plastic stock. So now if my fingers need to do some fidgeting, here's what I've got:
Precision, detailed figures they are not. But, they're cute enough not to have been banished from my desk yet.
Friday, June 23, 2017
Cobbled Counterfiet Cat Carrier Clip
A lifetime ago, we had a sweet kitty who, when boarded at the vet's while we were away, managed to knock over a room full of pet carriers. Everything survived, more or less, but ever since then our carrier has been suspiciously missing one of the clips that holds it together.
With Murphy, that wasn't a problem since she basically weighed nothing. Our current kitty, though, has a bit more junk in the trunk, and is going to need proper support when we move, and take her to her overdue vet visit, etc.
3D printers are all the rage, able to turn files from CAD or animation software into physical, strong plastic parts. I'd like to have one of those some day but for now the closest I've got is a more arts-and-crafts version - a 3D pen that draws in plastic by hand. It really is to a 3D printer what an ink pen is to an inkjet printer. With a steady hand and some thinking ahead, it's possible to make useful stuff.
My hand isn't super steady and I don't plan things all that well, but still the replacement carrier clip turned out pretty nicely. :^)
The inside of a pen with a couple layers of masking tape was just the right size to scribble the part's "hooks" onto. The flat bits are just a matter of filling in a shape on paper (or on masking tape, since the melted plastic doesn't stick to that quite as stubbornly).
It snapped right into place, just like the "real" one. If I cared about it being pretty, I could sand it down a bit, but since its lot in life is to clamp together a cat carrier, I called it good as-is.
If it's not a bit dinged up and cobbled-together, it's probably not mine. (My wife wishes I wouldn't say that, but she's the exception that proves the dinged-up, cobbled-together rule. :^)
With Murphy, that wasn't a problem since she basically weighed nothing. Our current kitty, though, has a bit more junk in the trunk, and is going to need proper support when we move, and take her to her overdue vet visit, etc.
3D printers are all the rage, able to turn files from CAD or animation software into physical, strong plastic parts. I'd like to have one of those some day but for now the closest I've got is a more arts-and-crafts version - a 3D pen that draws in plastic by hand. It really is to a 3D printer what an ink pen is to an inkjet printer. With a steady hand and some thinking ahead, it's possible to make useful stuff.
My hand isn't super steady and I don't plan things all that well, but still the replacement carrier clip turned out pretty nicely. :^)
The inside of a pen with a couple layers of masking tape was just the right size to scribble the part's "hooks" onto. The flat bits are just a matter of filling in a shape on paper (or on masking tape, since the melted plastic doesn't stick to that quite as stubbornly).
It snapped right into place, just like the "real" one. If I cared about it being pretty, I could sand it down a bit, but since its lot in life is to clamp together a cat carrier, I called it good as-is.
If it's not a bit dinged up and cobbled-together, it's probably not mine. (My wife wishes I wouldn't say that, but she's the exception that proves the dinged-up, cobbled-together rule. :^)
Friday, April 07, 2017
What's Next?
So the Grievous Oligarchy Party has, on behalf of those few who already have everything, have taken by hook and crook the final pillar of this old republic. Any legitimacy of our institutions is truly forfeit. Power and money now rule people who once ruled themselves.
And now they're going to war. Now, it doesn't feel, to me, today, like nuclear annihilation of humanity is certain or imminent. But it also doesn't feel very far-fetched. And I suspect that if the day comes, for many of us it will be a bit of a surprise, even now.
Just in case we don't have a lot longer, I want to thank the people who have touched my life. I hope I've made you smile; that's the most rewarding thing I've found in life. My thanks to you. To everyone who's made me smile, and who's made anybody smile. Humanity has in many ways become a blight on this little blue orb in our little arm of our not-terribly-unique galaxy in our grand cosmos, but I'm happy to have existed. We are what we are. We like to pretend that isn't so, that there's "us" and "them". I do it too. Right up there, I call out some of us as power-hungry. Tyrannical. Illegitimate. Dishonest.
We're all just humans, which have a tangled and snarly genetic ancestry. We grew capable of guiding our own development, building our own significance. That was a neat trick. We don't know any other critters who managed it. We even grew capable of authoring our own ending, releasing our own constructs. It's a shame, it's a waste. But that is power.
That is what we acquired. Power does not care whether it is stolen piecemeal or granted by unanimous consent or a byproduct of natural physics. Power made us, and will some day, some way, unmake us. Gravitational dances of rocks wield more power than anything we humans have faffed around with. We can shape and transform our own little sphere, to an extent. We have the power to destroy everything everybody has ever built, and to feed and care for everybody who's here now. Most of the time we use our power without such concentration. Destroy a bit here, care a bit there.
So, what happens next? There's no "them" to ask, just us. All of us: what's next?
[ Edit about the whole "going to war" bit: It seems increasingly likely that this was just a bit of illegally-conducted theatre, but we're talking about an unstable amateur bombing an unstable region, and a complicit congress which talks big but does very little to restrain the madmanchild. Let's hope I'm overreacting, like I was about Citizens United and rich bastards lying to us. Oh wait. ]
[ Second edit: Oh for crying out loud what are we doing. ]
And now they're going to war. Now, it doesn't feel, to me, today, like nuclear annihilation of humanity is certain or imminent. But it also doesn't feel very far-fetched. And I suspect that if the day comes, for many of us it will be a bit of a surprise, even now.
Just in case we don't have a lot longer, I want to thank the people who have touched my life. I hope I've made you smile; that's the most rewarding thing I've found in life. My thanks to you. To everyone who's made me smile, and who's made anybody smile. Humanity has in many ways become a blight on this little blue orb in our little arm of our not-terribly-unique galaxy in our grand cosmos, but I'm happy to have existed. We are what we are. We like to pretend that isn't so, that there's "us" and "them". I do it too. Right up there, I call out some of us as power-hungry. Tyrannical. Illegitimate. Dishonest.
We're all just humans, which have a tangled and snarly genetic ancestry. We grew capable of guiding our own development, building our own significance. That was a neat trick. We don't know any other critters who managed it. We even grew capable of authoring our own ending, releasing our own constructs. It's a shame, it's a waste. But that is power.
That is what we acquired. Power does not care whether it is stolen piecemeal or granted by unanimous consent or a byproduct of natural physics. Power made us, and will some day, some way, unmake us. Gravitational dances of rocks wield more power than anything we humans have faffed around with. We can shape and transform our own little sphere, to an extent. We have the power to destroy everything everybody has ever built, and to feed and care for everybody who's here now. Most of the time we use our power without such concentration. Destroy a bit here, care a bit there.
So, what happens next? There's no "them" to ask, just us. All of us: what's next?
[ Edit about the whole "going to war" bit: It seems increasingly likely that this was just a bit of illegally-conducted theatre, but we're talking about an unstable amateur bombing an unstable region, and a complicit congress which talks big but does very little to restrain the madmanchild. Let's hope I'm overreacting, like I was about Citizens United and rich bastards lying to us. Oh wait. ]
[ Second edit: Oh for crying out loud what are we doing. ]
Thursday, March 09, 2017
Sockmonster Mk. 4
Autumn is a strange little cat. There was no distinction in her little head between fun-exercise playing and life-or-death fighting when we first got her. She's much less rough around the edges now, but when she's feisty, there's a bloodlust and a need for savage close-quarters combat I've not seen in a domestic cat before. Batting a little ribbon or feather does not cut it in most cases.
In the heat of mock-battle, there's hissing and growling and grabbing and kicking and yelling. Claws and fangs swing and chomp without restraint. With my childhood cat, I did this kind of thing by hand, and got a little scratched up. This one plays ROUGH - bare handed play might end in me bleeding out. (I have seriously considered buying a falconry glove, but it would need a pretty long sleeve.)
By the by, it is remarkably difficult to A) record video of a cat while playing with her, and B) convince a cat to do even a very usual thing on-command. This is the best I could get without waiting for her to decide on her own that it was feisty time.
All this brings me to my latest haphazardly-crafted object: Sockmonster Mk. 4!
This is the entire Sockmonster family line, or what's left of it. The original Sockmonster is actually inside of Mk. 2; its skin was a much flimsier and less interestingly-textured sock, and it was the quickest to spill its (mostly plastic-bag) innards. All but the latest incarnations have had gashes patched up with the handyman's secret weapon, duct tape.
Mk. 2 subsumed the original and added an inner skin of brown paper for extra crunchiness. Over time the stuffing got all shoved into the end, and indeed began to get ripped out like viscera.
Mk. 3 introduced a semi-rigid spine, a nice thin chunk of plastic that would bend a bit and spring back. I also attempted to build it with segregated internal stuffing compartments, Titanic-style, to keep the stuffing evenly distributed. But as you may be able to tell, the mid-point is a very popular kicking target, so the spine broke and the center stuffing compartment appears to have hernia'd out.
For the fourth one, the spine is a towel rolled up as tight as I could get it. No plastic to wear out and snap. The stuffing is in one big tube around the spine, and of the whole thing is wrapped in a couple layers of claw-armor burlap and chompy-thick felt.
Originally, I had both ends sewn up, but the thickness and firmness of the thing made it hard to grip one-handed. Luckily, one end was pretty weak since this whole thing was an exercise in making it up as I go, and Autumn quickly tore it open again for me. A little stuffing out of that end, squeeze up the sides a bit and boom, handle. Much better. :^) It's a collaborative process, as it turns out.
So, we'll see how this works. As one might expect, if one were familiar with cats, now that some effort has gone into constructing a more robust Sockmonster, kitty's aforementioned interest in brutal hand-to-hand combat has begun to sharply drop off. These days she's all about running and being chased.
I concentrated a lot on physical points of failure, but forgot that a cat toy is a failure right away if the little furball doesn't want it. Still, we'll see. She has her moods and phases; it may well fall into favor again one day.
Update:
She may not like the thing I spent time and effort on, but boy does she ever go nuts on this $5 grill mitt.
Another update:
We've gotten our $5 out of the mitt, but it now offers very little fang or claw protection.
In the heat of mock-battle, there's hissing and growling and grabbing and kicking and yelling. Claws and fangs swing and chomp without restraint. With my childhood cat, I did this kind of thing by hand, and got a little scratched up. This one plays ROUGH - bare handed play might end in me bleeding out. (I have seriously considered buying a falconry glove, but it would need a pretty long sleeve.)
By the by, it is remarkably difficult to A) record video of a cat while playing with her, and B) convince a cat to do even a very usual thing on-command. This is the best I could get without waiting for her to decide on her own that it was feisty time.
All this brings me to my latest haphazardly-crafted object: Sockmonster Mk. 4!
This is the entire Sockmonster family line, or what's left of it. The original Sockmonster is actually inside of Mk. 2; its skin was a much flimsier and less interestingly-textured sock, and it was the quickest to spill its (mostly plastic-bag) innards. All but the latest incarnations have had gashes patched up with the handyman's secret weapon, duct tape.
Mk. 2 subsumed the original and added an inner skin of brown paper for extra crunchiness. Over time the stuffing got all shoved into the end, and indeed began to get ripped out like viscera.
Mk. 3 introduced a semi-rigid spine, a nice thin chunk of plastic that would bend a bit and spring back. I also attempted to build it with segregated internal stuffing compartments, Titanic-style, to keep the stuffing evenly distributed. But as you may be able to tell, the mid-point is a very popular kicking target, so the spine broke and the center stuffing compartment appears to have hernia'd out.
For the fourth one, the spine is a towel rolled up as tight as I could get it. No plastic to wear out and snap. The stuffing is in one big tube around the spine, and of the whole thing is wrapped in a couple layers of claw-armor burlap and chompy-thick felt.
Originally, I had both ends sewn up, but the thickness and firmness of the thing made it hard to grip one-handed. Luckily, one end was pretty weak since this whole thing was an exercise in making it up as I go, and Autumn quickly tore it open again for me. A little stuffing out of that end, squeeze up the sides a bit and boom, handle. Much better. :^) It's a collaborative process, as it turns out.
So, we'll see how this works. As one might expect, if one were familiar with cats, now that some effort has gone into constructing a more robust Sockmonster, kitty's aforementioned interest in brutal hand-to-hand combat has begun to sharply drop off. These days she's all about running and being chased.
I concentrated a lot on physical points of failure, but forgot that a cat toy is a failure right away if the little furball doesn't want it. Still, we'll see. She has her moods and phases; it may well fall into favor again one day.
Update:
She may not like the thing I spent time and effort on, but boy does she ever go nuts on this $5 grill mitt.
We've gotten our $5 out of the mitt, but it now offers very little fang or claw protection.
Monday, March 06, 2017
How to Fix: Maddening Subpixel Font Rendering
This is mostly a note to my future self so that next time I set up a Linux machine, I don't have to re-invent this particular wheel.
Most computers nowadays, by default, display text using sub-pixel rendering. Microsoft calls their implementation "ClearType", and I'm sure Apple has some similarly innocent-sounding name for it. Without getting into the technical details, it's an optical illusion that, apparently, for most of the population, makes text nice and clear to read. For me, it looks smeary, and makes my eyes continuously strain and toil to make everything all right. They fail, and I get a mighty headache if I keep looking for too long.
Naturally, on my own computers I turn this noise the hell off. But for a while now, there has been one niggling little hiccup where the first QT program I load (or maybe it's KDE specific, I really don't know. All GTK and other programs are fine.) would fail to honor my very explicit settings and fall back on the default behaviour of stabbing me in the corneas. The workaround was quick and easy, and generally if I'm at the computer I'm busy trying to do something, so I let the problem stagnate.
But in upgrading my laptop recently, I had one more little burst of attempting to figure this nonsense out, and figure it I finally did.
I don't even know which line(s) make the difference. I just found a handful of Xft settings to try and lo, once these crunch through xrdb when the session starts, all is well. These can go in a global Xresources file too of course.
I hope this helps somebody else, and I'm pretty sure it will at least help future me.
keywords for searching:
Most computers nowadays, by default, display text using sub-pixel rendering. Microsoft calls their implementation "ClearType", and I'm sure Apple has some similarly innocent-sounding name for it. Without getting into the technical details, it's an optical illusion that, apparently, for most of the population, makes text nice and clear to read. For me, it looks smeary, and makes my eyes continuously strain and toil to make everything all right. They fail, and I get a mighty headache if I keep looking for too long.
Naturally, on my own computers I turn this noise the hell off. But for a while now, there has been one niggling little hiccup where the first QT program I load (or maybe it's KDE specific, I really don't know. All GTK and other programs are fine.) would fail to honor my very explicit settings and fall back on the default behaviour of stabbing me in the corneas. The workaround was quick and easy, and generally if I'm at the computer I'm busy trying to do something, so I let the problem stagnate.
But in upgrading my laptop recently, I had one more little burst of attempting to figure this nonsense out, and figure it I finally did.
~/.Xresources:
Xft.autohint: 0
Xft.lcdfilter: lcdnone
Xft.hintstyle: hintnone
Xft.hinting: 0
Xft.antialias: 1
Xft.rgba: none
I don't even know which line(s) make the difference. I just found a handful of Xft settings to try and lo, once these crunch through xrdb when the session starts, all is well. These can go in a global Xresources file too of course.
I hope this helps somebody else, and I'm pretty sure it will at least help future me.
keywords for searching:
disable subpixel antialiasingTo others whose eyes are allergic to this crap but are also stuck on Windows, be warned: your Windows lies to you. If you ask it to turn off ClearType, it will claim that it has done so and carry on smearing your text with eyeball-shredding colors. You have to go through some crazy multi-step "Which of these looks better to you?" quiz to truly turn it off, and sometimes every one of the options presented will be using subpixel rendering. So, as always, good luck Windows folks.
prevent sub-pixel anti-aliasing
qt kde first launch ignore freetype settings
why the crap do some programs use horrible blearytype font rendering
Tuesday, February 28, 2017
Doubles Storytelling
I have made a toy which two people, near or far, can use to tell stories.
http://rpg2.penduin.net/
I was going to write about it here, but I wrote about it within itself instead:
http://rpg2.penduin.net/#release.json
http://rpg2.penduin.net/
I was going to write about it here, but I wrote about it within itself instead:
http://rpg2.penduin.net/#release.json
Thursday, January 26, 2017
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.
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.
Friday, January 20, 2017
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.]
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.]
Wednesday, November 09, 2016
Monday, November 07, 2016
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.
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.
Monday, October 31, 2016
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.)
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.)
Thursday, June 02, 2016
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.
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.
Tuesday, March 29, 2016
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:
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.
(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.
Monday, December 14, 2015
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!
Friday, December 11, 2015
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!
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!
Wednesday, October 14, 2015
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.
Monday, September 28, 2015
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!)
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!)
Tuesday, August 25, 2015
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.
Saturday, July 04, 2015
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/
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/
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