#I'm thinking maybe doing Engineering with Python

[arsanatomica]

Story from today. There is a local engineer that is a python breeder on the side.

Reticulated pythons are the longest snakes in the world. They are massive snakes. They get to be like 25 ft long and thicker than a human thigh.

Anyway, a while back he gave me a 10 ft male.

This was a wild snake that he had imported from Indonesia and was trying to breed it to one of his females.

Breeders do this sometimes because animals in captivity tend to become inbred, so once in a while some breeders will hire someone in a foreign country to go out to the forest and catch a wild animal and then put it in a box and ship it to the United states.

That way it introduces fresh genes into the gene pool. bonus money if it has any special patterns or coloration.

Anyway he got the young male shipped in and put it together with one of the females and instead of having babies the female killed it.

So he gave it to me and I've had it in the freezer.

I pulled it out last night to thaw.

Males and females snakes need to be prepped and processed differently. The anatomy of male snakes requires special equipment.

So the day before I got all the equipment ready. I got up early, started work, cutting into the tail section.

It doesn't look normal on the inside.

I'm not seeing the structures that I'm supposed to see in male snakes.

I'm very confused..... does it have some sort of condition where it didn't develop correctly?

Maybe it's too young? It's 10 ft long. I don't think it's too young.

Could it be intersex? That's super rare but I've seen it a few times.

It's a FEMALE

So it turns out that this breeder had gotten someone on the other side of the world to catch and ship this snake to him for thousands of dollars and all this time it was a female.

And then he put this smaller female in with a much larger older female and she killed it.

Through the dozens of people who have handled the snake and imported it and worked with it, everybody has completely missed the fact that its been mistakenly sexed

Welp...

[nhaneh]

tbh thinking maybe I should try to take the time to overhaul most if not all of the various tweaks and mashups I've made for XIV once the Forbidden Magicks become fully available once more.

The problem outside of fatigue lmao is that neither 3ds Max nor Blender can really do everything I need them to - the former consistently breaks both shapes/morphtargets and vertex colour information, while the latter refuses to let you directly work with and modify custom vertex normals, among other things.

I'm really tempted to try to look into just fixing at least some of these issues myself since both 3ds Max and Blender support having extensions written for them, but neither is a particularly small endeavour and Blender's plugin documentation is ... not great - for one it keeps referencing a C++ API that was apparently deprecated years ago?? At least the API it does have uses Python which is familiar, but it doesn't really offer a lot of examples for how and where to get started beyond the extremely basics, making it difficult to figure out where to look to accomplish the things I would need it to do.

Also honestly the fact that 3ds Max is the one that fails to properly import/export data from .fbx files when the .fbx file format is Autodesk's own proprietary interop file format is just utterly pathetic?? Like Blender had to actively reverse-engineer the format themselves without any information on how it works and still did a better job at it?? Seriously autodesk how are you consistently failing this hard

[watchmorecinema]

Normally I just post about movies but I'm a software engineer by trade so I've got opinions on programming too.

Apparently it's a month of code or something because my dash is filled with people trying to learn Python. And that's great, because Python is a good language with a lot of support and job opportunities. I've just got some scattered thoughts that I thought I'd write down.

Python abstracts a number of useful concepts. It makes it easier to use, but it also means that if you don't understand the concepts then things might go wrong in ways you didn't expect. Memory management and pointer logic is so damn annoying, but you need to understand them. I learned these concepts by learning C++, hopefully there's an easier way these days.

Data structures and algorithms are the bread and butter of any real work (and they're pretty much all that come up in interviews) and they're language agnostic. If you don't know how to traverse a linked list, how to use recursion, what a hash map is for, etc. then you don't really know how to program. You'll pretty much never need to implement any of them from scratch, but you should know when to use them; think of them like building blocks in a Lego set.

Learning a new language is a hell of a lot easier after your first one. Going from Python to Java is mostly just syntax differences. Even "harder" languages like C++ mostly just mean more boilerplate while doing the same things. Learning a new spoken language in is hard, but learning a new programming language is generally closer to learning some new slang or a new accent. Lists in Python are called Vectors in C++, just like how french fries are called chips in London. If you know all the underlying concepts that are common to most programming languages then it's not a huge jump to a new one, at least if you're only doing all the most common stuff. (You will get tripped up by some of the minor differences though. Popping an item off of a stack in Python returns the element, but in Java it returns nothing. You have to read it with Top first. Definitely had a program fail due to that issue).

The above is not true for new paradigms. Python, C++ and Java are all iterative languages. You move to something functional like Haskell and you need a completely different way of thinking. Javascript (not in any way related to Java) has callbacks and I still don't quite have a good handle on them. Hardware languages like VHDL are all synchronous; every line of code in a program runs at the same time! That's a new way of thinking.

Python is stereotyped as a scripting language good only for glue programming or prototypes. It's excellent at those, but I've worked at a number of (successful) startups that all were Python on the backend. Python is robust enough and fast enough to be used for basically anything at this point, except maybe for embedded programming. If you do need the fastest speed possible then you can still drop in some raw C++ for the places you need it (one place I worked at had one very important piece of code in C++ because even milliseconds mattered there, but everything else was Python). The speed differences between Python and C++ are so much smaller these days that you only need them at the scale of the really big companies. It makes sense for Google to use C++ (and they use their own version of it to boot), but any company with less than 100 engineers is probably better off with Python in almost all cases. Honestly thought the best programming language is the one you like, and the one that you're good at.

Design patterns mostly don't matter. They really were only created to make up for language failures of C++; in the original design patterns book 17 of the 23 patterns were just core features of other contemporary languages like LISP. C++ was just really popular while also being kinda bad, so they were necessary. I don't think I've ever once thought about consciously using a design pattern since even before I graduated. Object oriented design is mostly in the same place. You'll use classes because it's a useful way to structure things but multiple inheritance and polymorphism and all the other terms you've learned really don't come into play too often and when they do you use the simplest possible form of them. Code should be simple and easy to understand so make it as simple as possible. As far as inheritance the most I'm willing to do is to have a class with abstract functions (i.e. classes where some functions are empty but are expected to be filled out by the child class) but even then there are usually good alternatives to this.

Related to the above: simple is best. Simple is elegant. If you solve a problem with 4000 lines of code using a bunch of esoteric data structures and language quirks, but someone else did it in 10 then I'll pick the 10. On the other hand a one liner function that requires a lot of unpacking, like a Python function with a bunch of nested lambdas, might be easier to read if you split it up a bit more. Time to read and understand the code is the most important metric, more important than runtime or memory use. You can optimize for the other two later if you have to, but simple has to prevail for the first pass otherwise it's going to be hard for other people to understand. In fact, it'll be hard for you to understand too when you come back to it 3 months later without any context.

Note that I've cut a few things for simplicity. For example: VHDL doesn't quite require every line to run at the same time, but it's still a major paradigm of the language that isn't present in most other languages.

Ok that was a lot to read. I guess I have more to say about programming than I thought. But the core ideas are: Python is pretty good, other languages don't need to be scary, learn your data structures and algorithms and above all keep your code simple and clean.

[nameforadragon]

I keep seeing posts being like "omg. The kids don't know how to use computer! They don't know how to use a mouse! They don't know what a command line is! They can't even use a browser. The kids don't know anything about technology if not app on phone:("

And idk dude like. I'm not gonna accuse these people of lying but I am gonna accuse them of being completely biased with absolutely no self reflection at all. You sound like your parents. Like holy shit. First of all, LOTS of us [aged<20] have had computer classes. "Computer lab" was a class all throughout primary school for me, and in grade 8 I had a required course where I learned some Python, had to use Adobe Photoshop, that kind of stuff. I know so many people who go further than that (including myself) and take elective coding classes. Now, it would be incredibly fucking biased of me to conclude that, because almost everyone I know is at the very least functional with a computer and can use a mouse, this means everyone is. Of course not. But thats what these posts do. "I only interact with children who don't know this, therefore no one under 20 knows anything and they're all stupid with their little tik toks" you have a very incomplete sample of kids at this age, and you barely acknowledge it.

Secondly, more on the self reflection bit. This is absolutely a privilege issue. Not a "the kids are so dumbb omggg" issue. Kids don't have computer classes? It's a privilege I was able to get that education. Should we mock people who didn't have music classes growing up and don't know the difference between a rhythm and a beat? If your answer to that is no, then maybe we shouldn't mock kids for not knowing the difference between a search engine and a browser. I know plenty of people bring up the issue to try and get at this, but I cant shake the undertone that all of these posts have in common, which is essentially this air of superiority, like people who grew up with desktop computer access are somehow better than people who didn't, which is just kind of terrible?? Like no joke, I've seen people complaining about uni students who don't really know the ins and outs of programming yet in undergrad and its like,,, did you just not want them to go to school because they didn't know that prior to post secondary? Like, what do you think school is for? Being perfect all the time and telling the teacher that you know everything already? I was under the impression that school was for acquiring knowledge and skills that you previously didnt have.

I also know people who are much older than me, and could have been coding all of their life, but didn't so much as touch a computer until after college, and they learned how to use it, and how to code, and now it's their career! You don't need to learn how computers work when you are five! I grew up scribbling on ms paint and being confused how solitaire worked, and struggling to comprehend minesweeper strategy on a very old version of Windows. I could functionally operate a mouse at the age of one, and that's all privilege. I'm not smarter, or better or more refined or anything, I was literally just born into a family that had desktop computers. And again, to point out the bias, I know way more adults that fit the whole "don't understand it if it's not an app on my phone" than kids.

Finally, a minor nitpick but I feel like it's warranted since the people authouring these posts often present themselves as being more knowledgeable about computers than the average teen? Don't go just saying incorrect bullshit. If you mean PC, say pc. If you mean a desktop computer, or a laptop, say that. Phones are not "fake computers" they just ARE computers. They are computers that have been engineered to be tiny. Their size does not mean they are not computers, it just means they are small. Furthermore, an "app" isn't a "thing u use on a phone." It's literally just the word application shortened. Anytime you use an application that you download on a laptop, or a pc or whatever, you are using an app. Your browser application is an app. I hate to tell you, but it must be said.

Sorry if anything I said in this is straight up wrong, I am not immune to hypocrisy, yadda yadda you know the deal. I also AM NOT an expert on computers, I have (what I, a teenager consider to be) a relatively baseline understanding of computers. And I'm writing this exhausted because I can't sleep. Admittedly on the mobile app, (which explains any typos) but I swear to you that I have a laptop and I use it more than I use my phone most days. I doubt anyone will really see this post but thanks for reading if you got this far I guess. Maybe let's just not fearmonger about "the kids these days" when we should be trying to help kids become functioning adults. I didn't get past my struggles with reading as a kid by being told that I was stupid, or getting mocked. I got past them by finding a book that I loved, and by being encouraged to read by adults who genuinely cared about my education. I really don't see how computers are different, that's all I have to say.

[paradoxcase]

So I've actually found a way to be productive with my free time, which means I've spent comparatively less time reading the Locked Tomb and writing tumblr posts about it, haha

@wellhappybirthdaytomeiguess:

Pal is still working on his path towards a new lyctorhood I think.

Interesting, I'm curious as to how many other different ways there are to becoming a Lyctor? At the end of the last book, I assumed he meant whatever happened with John and Alecto, but obviously that isn't an option for him and Camilla because his body got exploded, so it will have to be some kind of body sharing solution

I still giggle at John’s ‘see I did create a utopia’ comment. I can just picture John’s ‘like and subscribe’ at the end of his streams :-p

Yeah, that's such a millennial bit of humor, my first priority for my utopia was not to recreate the internet. But that just makes me wonder, if it was intended to be a utopia in some way, why has it been 10,000 years and people are still getting mumps? Honestly, an even better question than "why did you create a world without modern medicine/vaccinations" is how did he even manage to create something that was so utterly static for 10,000 years?

This is I think sort of it: chapter 14 of Harrow: “the emperor of the nine resurrections looked at you for a long time, and then he swore, very quietly, under his breath. You thought you understood but ten he said: “this was….all so different…before we discovered the scientific principles.” Page 156 in hard copy

Yes, thank you! It was right after Harrow described how her parents used the thanergy from the 200 children:

So maybe John doesn't treat it scientifically mainly because the scientific knowledge of it resulted it being put into these kinds of like, engineering purposes. He can just think stuff and it happens, and he because he has so much power he doesn't have to optimize or engineer anything or think about what the consequences of necromancy are for the people who do optimize and engineer it. It's kind of like how programmers back in the day had to be much better engineers than programmers now, because they had to work with a much more limited supply of space, RAM, CPU, etc. and now we can afford to use languages like python, which are pretty to look at and easy to use but don't have great performance, because the time and effort spent coding is now at a higher premium than the actual computer resources that are being used, in some cases. John has infinite resources, so he doesn't have to do any engineering, he can be as inefficient as he wants and he doesn't have to think about exactly how much death it takes to achieve whatever result

[blubberquark]

New Year's Resolutions

Hey everybody. It's a new year. Happy New Year!

Gamedev Blogging

Last year I have fallen behind on posting gamedev stuff. It's mostly because there is no good way to format code listings in the new editor. So this year, I am not even going to try eith gamedev tutorials on tumblr. I might post them elsewhere and just link them. I have already taken a look at Cohost, but It doesn't have the features I need. Wouldn't it be cook if you could post pico-8 carts on cohost? Or source code listings? Or LaTeX? I might as well write the HTML by hand and host it somewhere. But that won't be the focus of this blog in 2024.

Instead I'm going to do more tumblr posting about game design, just less on the code side. It will be more on the screenshot side. First thing will be about my 2023 Game Of The Year. It will probably surprise you. I did not expect it to be this good. You can also expect something about some of my old prototypes. Over the years I have started and abandoned game prototypes after either concluding that the idea won't work and can't be made to work, or after learning what I needed to learn. What did I learn? Wait and find out!

Computer Litaracy

I'll also attempt to write more about general computing and "computer literacy" topics. I have two particular "series" or "categories" in mind already. Almost Good: Technologies that sound great when you hear abut them, but that don't work as well as you might think when you try them out. Harmful Assumptions About Computing: Non-technical people often have surprising ideas about how computers work. As a technically inclined person, you don't even realise how far these unspoken assumptions about computers can reach.

Usability of computers and software seems to have gotten worse rather than better in many aspects, while computers have become entrenched in every workplace, our private lives, and in our interactions with corporations and government services. Computer literacy has also become worse in certain ways, and I think I know some reasons why.

There will also be some posts about forum moderation and community management. It's rather basic and common-sense stuff, but I want to spell it out.

Actual Game Development

I am going to release a puzzle game in 2024. You will be able to buy it for money. You can hold me to it. This is my biggest New Year's Resolution.

I will continue to work on two games of mine. One will be the game I just mentioned. The other is Wyst. I put the project on ice because I was running out of inspiration for a while, but I think I am sufficiently inspired now. I will pick it up again and add two more worlds to the game, and get it into a "complete" state. I'll also have to do a whole lot of playtesting. This may be the last time I touch Unity3d.

I will try out two new engines and write one or two proof-of-concept games in each of them, maybe something really simple like "Flappy Bird", and one game jam "warm-up" thing, with the scope of a Ludum Dare compo game. Maybe that means I'll write Tetris or Pong multiple times. I probably won't put the "Pong in Godot" on itch.io page next to a "Pong in Raylib" and "Pong in Bevy", but I'll just put the code on my GitHub. The goal is to have more options for a game jam, so I can decide to use Godot if it is a better fit for the jam topic.

In the past, I have always reached for PyGame by default, because Python is the language that has flask and Django and sqlalchemy and numpy and pyTorch, and because I mostly want to make games in 2D. I want to get out of my comfort zone. In addition to the general-purpose game engines, I will try to develop something in bitsy, AGS, twine, pico-8 or Ren'Py. I want to force myself to try a different genre this way. Maybe I'll make an archaeologist dating simulator.

All in all, this means I will so significant work on two existing projects, revisit some old failed prototypes to do a postmortem, I'll write at least six new prototypes, and two new jam games, plus some genre/narrative experiments. That's a lot already. So here's an anti-resolution: I won't even try to develop any of my new prototypes into full releases. I will only work on existing projects from 2023 or before if I develop anything into playable demo versions or full games. I won't get sidetracked by the next Ludum Dare game, I promise. After the jam is over, I'll put down the project, at least until 2025.

[bitcrushgames]

It's been a while, huh? Turns out that while making games is hard, having a freelance job is harder. And I'm a people-pleaser who is also working on a game engine, so it took several months of several people telling me to make something for myself for me to come back here.

This game is a "short" platformer called Cloudforest, that has been in my brain for over a decade. It started in a custom python engine, got moved to Unity when I started this blog, and is now ported to Godot. This time, maybe I'll actually finish it lol. I like Godot more than Unity for this project so far.

I don't think I ever even showed the art for these rocks here - I spent a week on that formation in the second screenshot, blithely saying to myself "I'll turn it into tiles later" - then I realised how difficult it was going to be and gave up. So, a few years later, I'm finally trying to do it properly, and the first screenshot shows my progress. Needs a bit more space between repeats, but I'm pretty happy with it so far.

The quick technique I discovered to get these rocks done:

1. Start on a dark background and don't be afraid to let things fade into it 2. Draw a flattened, down-pointing triangle in a light colour - that's a rock's top plane 3. Draw a longer triangle under it on the left side - so two points join the light triangle - in a medium colour. That's a rock's left plane 4. Mess around with intermediate colours and a highlight/shine colour until it looks ok

Then repeat steps 2 to 4 a few thousand times, varying it each time…

[inkofamethyst]

April 5, 2025

I've had an idea for an app for a while now. It's based on a notion template that I use but have heavily edited since, and I think it'd be useful for several of the people I've talked to in a finance way and it baffles me that this isn't something I've come across in the three banking apps I've used. Unfortunately, I've never made an app before. I've (obv) done some coding, but I'm no graphic designer, software engineer, any of that. I know there are similar apps on the market, but I think I have ideas that'd make mine distinct based on the ways that I'd customize my notion page even more (which I don't think notion can handle). It's an idea I'd considered building last spring for my coding final project, but of course I gravitated toward """game design""" more (I'm still really proud of that project.. maybe I'll go back to it sometime and make the additions I'd dreamt up). Anyway I really think the app could be useful.. just not sure when I'll have the time to build the skill necessary to make it.

Coding is totally a muscle in that it needs to be regularly strengthened and stretched to properly maintain its efficacy. If replit keeps their 100 days of code available online for free, those could be fun little exercises to work on to build skills (though only in Python... perhaps I could find some other mini-course for other languages (though I had a look at html earlier and maybe that's why I didn't enjoy coding when I first took CS in hs, html looks awful)). Maybe in the fall? My summer is going to already be pretty packed with learning bass and prepping cosplays and moving forward with lab work.

Speaking of the summer, my island-friend's suggestion of keeping a task journal was so good in keeping me motivated to complete things week over week. Now that I've let that practice slide, I'm not nearly as active in lab (possibly partly due to writing my quals). I will get back on top of that, I think. I have a few research-based deadlines coming up that I'll need to hit.

Also speaking of the summer, I just finalized my last month of saving toward my bass guitar fund. That feels so crazy to me. I'm technically a month ahead due to an erroneous calculation a while ago, but still, this is a representation of the end of my second year. And after the last, mmm, week and a hallf/two weeks, I don't feel so intimidated by it anymore.

There was this one girl in my program who would tell me that she always looked at the examination portion of the quals as a wonderful opportunity to have esteemed scientists try to help you excel in your field. I thought she was full of it tbh. But recent weeks have shifted my mindset on it quite rapidly, and maybe I've stopped thinking of it as being so adversarial. Yes, I will prepare as though it is an examination. But I feel good about what I know. And I want to do good science. So I want to improve my ways of thinking. Highkey I'm looking forward to the panel's commentary now??? Who even am I??? Where did that anxious version of me go???

And, for a bit of TMI, my hormone cycles have been fairly regular all my life. Four weeks to the day. The first time I experienced disruptions was during the last semester of college when I was interviewing for graduate school and deciding where would be the best fit. My cycles became irregular or shortened by a week. The second time started during the first semester of grad school, where the same thing happened. Except it didn't stop. I have been irregular or short by a week for almost two years, with the greatest amount of joint pain I've ever felt, in addition to fatigue and brain fog, all more often on a shorter cycle. The only times I magically got relief happened to be when I would travel home for breaks, and they'd magically lengthen to normal again, only to shorten right when I got back to school. This month, I had a normal-length cycle. And I think it's because I've been so insanely stressed that I wouldn't be able to get over this hurdle for literally years and it's only recently just kind of.. melted away.

Today I'm thankful for a normal cycle. And ibuprofen.

That said,

MY STOCKS D:

Okay, there is one more thing to be thankful for. I'm thankful that my father had the literal divine foresight to suggest that I open a second Roth IRA account where I could keep the full year's amount in cash or conservative investments while slowly dripping funds into my aggressive, professionally-managed account over the year. Last year, I put in the whole year's worth at once (due to a policy with another account I have blah blah blah), and had I done that on April 1 this year, I would've been in for a much bigger world of hurt than I currently am.

But I'm not sure when I should start the drip. It's hard to know what's a momentary market freak out and what's a sign of economic collapse, you know? Or maybe it's not hard. Maybe I'm just not educated enough on the matter. But I also don't fully trust pundits who often are just catering to what their audiences want to hear (even if, in the case of liberals maybe, what they want to hear is that this is an awful awful thing and that we're going to enter a depression etc etc). Anyway I guess attempting to time the market is bad as a noob so maybe I'll just drip teeny tiny amounts into my managed account over the next several days. I cannot touch the big amount anyway for the next forty years other than to invest it or let it sit.

Maybe I should be more concerned, but some part of me has trust that the billionaires to profit from the system the way it is don't want it to collapse. So I feel like it won't. That could be naive. Idk. I've never been the biggest fan of having my chance at a dignified retirement dependent on me investing into capitalism (honestly, it feels like a threat to me), but there's currently no other way that I know of.

[wrenyellowrose]

Oran Odon! I already explain the name and stuff in the silly little blurb so go read it if you want! He has a funky little sweater vest/dress type deal! I thought the yellow would help blend him more towards feiry colors and not be as bright and glaringly different as orange or yellow would be. I call him "probably a trans alagory" in the other blurb, I hope I used alegory correctly, I definetly didn't spell it right but it's fineeeee, anyway! The easiest way to tell the difference between dragonflies and damselflies is that when resting dragonflies have their wings out and damselflies have them tucked away. Those aren't dragonfly wings!

I'm so excited, he's gonna be Cnidaria's best friend. He's a miniboss, I have such ideas for the main boss of the ruin-sey area but I can't figure out how to get the hair right :{ I will say I have an idea for the Waterfall shopkeeper! She's gonna be based off of the Norse Goddess Rán, because she has a net! And in Magnus Chase they trade things with her! I also have plots and schemes for the entire world!

Basically when I was younger I went to th ebeach and someone dug a really really deep hole. And when you looked in it there was just this massive cavern under the sand with sand salagmites and stalagtights and there was water and it probably wasn't real be ause the sand would fall down on top of it, but younger me thought it was and since then held the belief that everything ends up water if you dig deep enough. So, since Cnidaria falls a lot further down after getting smacke din th eface with a fireball, everything's very wet. The Ruins area under the ruins is a bayou/swamp/carnival, the snowdin area is gonna be like the artic circle, a bunch of islands and sheets of ice adrift in a sort of sea, I'm sticking a mangrovey area inbetween the Ruins and Snowdin area because I fucking love mangroves so much you don't understand, and Waterfall's gonna be more under-the-sea themed I think. I have notes for an area inbetween the Snowdin themed area and the Waterfall themed one, but my phone is dead so I can't check it right now. So everything's wet and danc-y! I think I talked about how everything's dancy already, so I won't talk about it again. Unless I didn't! In which case whoops! If there's any recomendations for things that aren't dance but are very similar, please give them to me!!! I already have color guard, circus/trapeeze stuff, and aerial hoop. There are deffinetly others but again, dead phone.

Honestly if people are intrested please ask me questions. I have sketches/notes from the corners of my math notes if people want to see those. I'm gonna be very very busy very very soon until like the 13th but I'm hyperfixating so hard please ask me questions.

Also apperently it's damsel and not dame? I thought it was damesfly this whole time.

Also also! I have no clue if before June 5th is a reasonalble deadline! I took AP coding! I've never made a video game or know how to code in a game engine! I can Python, that's about it! I'm hoping to at least have all the characters/sprites and area layouts done! Maybe soundtracks stuff? Definetly the Ruins. If I can I might do a demo of just the Ruins, but I have no clue unfortunatly. I'm also toying with the idea of making a demo with just a passifist option? We will see!

[stin0banin0]

CS: Globehead

Time to set the precedent: what will this series of babblings look like, and what's the purpose?

Practically, I want to tell about some projects I've worked on, and how I forgot about them. I'll pretentiously call these 'case studies' (CS), as if I have any formal education in productivity to apply. I think it can help myself find out what's so difficult to keep working on projects, and just perhaps other people can relate and take inspiration from some of the ideas I have. So let's start with our first case study, then.

Globehead

About two years ago, I started getting really into programming, and my big dream was to make video games. Not unusual for someone of my age and love for gaming. So gradually I learnt more about programming, and I found a game engine called Godot. Not the most popular, but some friends of mine had experience, so I figured it'd be a great place to start. Especially since the programming language it used (something called GDScript) was based off Python, a language I have experience with.

I started work, gradually learning more and more about how the engine and its language worked. How to do collision, movement, textures, etc. Eventually I felt like I needed a project to focus on, and that's where this story begins.

Globehead was the first name that popped into my head. A curious little man with the Earth for a head, who crashed on an unknown planet where he didn't speak the language - yet. The player would set their user language, and a language they had always wanted to learn, and the game would speak to them in their own language, but all NPCs would speak in the language they want to learn. That way surely, the player would learn the language oh so quickly.

For a sort of demo or proof of concept, I made some basic stuff. Some tile textures, a main character, some assets like buttons and doors, and a little puzzle, with the learning language German. You would find a button to open a door, to find a shovel. Then you could bring that to an NPC, who would look at it and say something like 'Ah, schön, du has eine Schaufel gefunden.' That way the player could infer that the bold (or coloured, or whatever) word was the word for 'shovel'. Exactly what I had in mind, just as a simple proof of concept.

I'm not sure where it went wrong. Perhaps it's the fact that it was a bit difficult to make this proof of concept - with some collision acting up, and me not sure how to make buttons open doors, etc. - or maybe I wasn't happy with the reactions I got from people, but I don't think it was more than a week before I never touched the project again.

Conclusion

Oh no, I forgot I had to do the difficult bit too. Welcome to the conclusion! Here I'll try and say something useful about this project, and why I never finished it. In this case, I have a few ideas.

As I mentioned before, I had some difficulties with the POC (proof of concept). I didn't understand how signals worked in Godot, I had difficulty referring from one object to another, and I had some difficulty with textures and collision. This made the whole exercise take days, while I had to find time for school and hobbies. My brain probably associated the game with difficult work and a lot of time lost, and there we go: no want do anymore. Almost like a force field that my mind would have projected, to keep away all the yucky-no-fun work. Especially if I'd have to make a whole game out of it.

So the first conclusion: sometimes projects start off really rough. That's why you want to make it fun. Put on some music, don't force yourself, and give yourself plenty of time. If you don't, it turns so very sour.

But that's not everything. See, as a project for school around the same time, I needed to do some research into what 'customers' (in this case players) like in projects, and even more so how to find out what they like. So I chose to do that about this game. I showed the game to some people, and sent them an exported version so they could play it, and then I sent them a questionnaire to fill in about it. Of course handling feedback is difficult, but asking for it is perhaps more difficult still.

Now, I don't have the form anymore, but it's possible, if not likely, that I accidentally made it seem like this was an actual first level, or a pilot for the game. But it was a POC above anything else. I can't confirm this bit, but it's well possible that I got back feedback that was oriented more for an 'if I'd release this game next week, what do I need to fix before then', rather than as an 'I can still change anything about it, I just need to know what I want to change.' Feedback would have been quite critical, and probably put me off my appetite to work on it any more.

So my second conclusion: don't be too hasty to get feedback, and make sure to give some context when you do. What is it supposed to be, what stage or creation are you at, and what are things you already know won't work? Especially being honest, but also being transparent will make this feedback far more useful and constructive.

And heck, why not one more? See, programming is difficult. And so is making a game. And so is pixel arting a hundred different textures for one game. For that reason it's crucial to start slow, and consider different options, different ideas. Then when you know what you're working to make, you can actually begin to implement it. Any silly little me-me would have forgotten about that before you could say 'you're a nidiot', and certainly before I had the first, well, anything done. So by the time that this little chap with a spinning Earth for a head was drawn, I had already thrown some bears on the road for myself.

Quickly I'd forget to make the game work, and instead commit myself to making eight different angles of the Earth in pixel art, so that the head could look like it spun around. That's the effort you go through for a 2D game. But not as a first thing. First, you have a texture that's good enough for now, then you make that walk, then you make a background, then you make a first puzzle, then you make it feel a little better, and so on. But by the time that I got to programming in the first place, I was already starting to get sick of the pixel art.

And the programming didn't go much better. I hadn't structured my thoughts properly, and I hadn't made sure that all the objects in my program were accessible to others that needed it. I soon realised that it was going to be quite difficult, and much later that it didn't need to be difficult. But I told myself that I was already beyond the point of no return. No time now to change what I'd already done. Keep soldiering on with broken code. That was not the right answer.

So there we have our third wisdom of this project: all in due time. Take logical steps, use dummy textures, remake things if they don't work how they are right now, or even if they could work just a little better. And I'm sure you won't follow this one - I have yet to do so too - but perhaps the next time you realise you've crashed another project, think about me and my smart words, and realise how important this tip actually is.

Quick Afterword

So, that feels like a solid first "edition". Again, I don't know yet what this project will feel like or how it will change. Maybe I'll make it more comedic, more analytic, or more something else. But for now I think I've sketched a fair first impression.

[chiderilas]

8 months huh? That is a while indeed. I guess personal development refers to moving on. I mean, Swiftogeddon was amazing. The thrill from the companion was also real. But I think I always jinxed myself on the third time then. I still look at my PlayStation friend's list, I do. But anyway, that was in the past, and maybe it's for the best.

Separations still sting me. But that's just what I've become now, I'm too good at goodbyes -- or even the ones that have never been said. Yes, Gower holiday was amazing. But in the combination of being ill and work being busy, things happen for a reason. It's fine. I will be fine.

Let's start with work. Something that's been very glaring since January. Yes, I changed jobs not long after that last post apparently. It was a bit of a leap of faith to be honest, that I wasn't sure about applying, but having a very supportive partner who really pushes you does help. A lot. I'm actually quite surprised that I'm actually in a position where I'm at that position where I'm actually doing a combination of Data Analyst and Data Engineer. Oh also with some developer work in the mix. It really sounds unreal, from my January perspective. But yes, that's what you are doing right now. In fact, you're actually even writing a program for your hobby now using Python and creating databases using SQL. Obviously, you're still making data dashboards, but not just data cleaning, but you also creating the data structure for these databases. Damn, who would have thought?

Relationship stuff now, huh? Well, that's also the interesting thing. As I guess now we're a party of three. I mean, the signs were all there back there to be fair. But being in a mature relationship does help a lot, in exploring yourself and understanding each others' needs. I mean, I still can't believe the amount of drama that happened in between. But I guess that's just inevitable, isn't it? At least it's kind of stable now. Who would have thought that I had to see things unfolding in front of my eyes when someone actually got kicked out of the house and at risk of being destitute just because of their life choices that don't align with the family? I mean it doesn't sound that bad when I'm putting it that way. But it's just fucking wrong to kick someone out just because of someone that they love.

As for health, it was also interesting. I did miss the Eras Tour because I had problems with my foot. I couldn't even walk for solidly 2 weeks (at least) just after Gower. It was excruciating and it's a bit annoying that the physiotherapist only says what it is. I know the NHS is under such pressure, but I really feel like they're not trying to address the root cause. It's really bad that I have to understand what's going on with myself rather than the one with training trying to figure out what it is. Long story short? Yeah, Gout. My heritage finally kicking in now. In fact, it happened again just last week. Had to take colchicine and suddenly everything makes so much sense.

Now for the last thing, family. Both related to the family that I born with and the family that I chose to create. There's been a whole lot of things going on with the born-family. Oh yeah literally went to Hongkong Disneyland with them, and I am very glad that I got to do it with my sister. Yes it was chaotic with having 2 babies. But I would say it's worth it. After all, that was the first and the last family holiday we would have. I'm still a bit saddened with things that just unfold in the last few weeks. It is sad, but that might be for the best to be fair. As I would rather not to force "fake happiness" when there are people chronically hurting in the background. Life's too short for that.

As for the family that I chose to create, yah, it's been fun with the family of three now. But I just realised that I barely got time to myself. Which is probably why I'm writing this right now. Daryl, you need to remember what happened last October. When you were being put in that position back in London. It was awful, but that happened because you didn't speak up. Because you got carried with people's pace. So yeah, keep in touch with your inner side and speak up if things aren't right. You're a bit too exhausted, I think, right now, as you are carrying a bit too much on your shoulder. It's a whole new dynamic now, but it doesn't mean you have to put down who you are, just before the party of three.

Oh yeah, also, there might be a chance I'll be moving into a new home when I'm writing next. Yay?

[howlongisthedata]

Advancements in AGI

François Chollet, the original creator of the deep learning framework Keras, created a dataset called ARC to assess a systems level of AGI. The ARC dataset is composed of roughly 900 puzzles to be solved, so this is not a traditional ML dataset. François Chollet also makes claims that the dataset could not be solved by LLMs. Prior to 2024, the highest score was around 30% correct and human-level performance was around 84% correct.

In this article (https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Rdwui3wHxCeKb7feK/getting-50-sota-on-arc-agi-with-gpt-4o) Ryan Greenblat discusses his roughly 70% correct solution using GPT-4o on the public validation set. Essentially he uses an AI Agent to write a unique Python program for each puzzle. The AI Agent will write a program, test it, then think about what it did wrong, then revise the code and test again.

Why is this important? And why write about it? #1) I think this isn’t as well known as it should be. #2) Personally I was someone who thought the latest advancements in LLMs hardly qualified for the expansive use of the term “AI”. Now I think the hype and use of the term “AI” is nearly appropriate. The ability for an AI Agent to write code, think about what it did wrong, revise that code, and re-test feels like a system that is approaching the functionality of our prefrontal cortex. I feel that François Chollet and other AI researchers have sort of touched on the point that we’ve never really had systems that even remotely mimicked the prefrontal cortex. But now, with AI Agents, I’m not sure we can say that anymore. I'm not saying that AI Agents can solve all problems, not in the least, but I do think that claims from Yann Lecun that auto-regressive inference is dumb … might not be true. Maybe by itself, but coupled with prompt engineering and repeated LLM calls, it seems to show its strength without a doubt.

[worldjumper]

Ship log: 0005.5

Current Captain: Alexander V. Brochure

Time of Writing: 12/3/1977 AT

Status: Public announcement to all crew. Conversation between [Captain Alexander V. Brochure], [Deckhand Calvy R. Firefome], and [Rossy Riviter's captain, Sally Goodmen]

Sally: I'm sorry, what the f*** do you mean we're all fired!

Calvy: While I do not necessarily agree with Sally's choice of language, I would like to know, captain, as to the circumstances leading to the dismissal of the Riveters. I was not consulted in this matter, and I can't find any documents from the Company allowing such an action

Alexander: You don't get paid to ask questions Calvy.

Sally: I sure as hell don't! What do you mean we're fired!? We have a full contract that lasts till the gold belt! Along with union assurances!

Alexander: Like I stated, your crew have distracted my crew, and have desturbed the peace on my ship! I simply can not let that slide!

Sally: The hell are you talking about! We barely interact with anyone, from the other parts of the ship! Preston is the only one who bothers coming down here, and that's just because he's contractually obligated to make sure we haven't turned into raisins!

Calvy: I also have to agree. There hasn't been anything to even subject that. Not to mention those are too vague to reasonably be considered reliable grounds for anything.

Alexander: Look, I don't have to explain anything to some engineering crew. Yet alone a fired one. You will be left onto Amon. End of discussion.

Sally: Yeah, you've said that! Also, AMON!?! How the hell are we suposed to get home from there!?

Hello?!?

Don't Ignore me, Alex!!! So help me!

Calvy: Look, I'm sure he's just acting out. I'll make sure you can stay aboard the Python. I'll even arrange for extra pay for the inconvenience.

Alexander: Don't step out of line Calvy! This is my final decision, and as the captain of the vessel, it is non-negotiable.

Calvy: Wha???

Sally: Hey look, the coward shows himself.

Alexander: As for your conserns of how you'll get home, Sally. Why not use those union transports your all so proud of. maybe get some use ouut of them.

Sally: IN THE MIDDLE OF BUM F*** NOWARE!? You're stranding us on an isolated gas giant sectters away from any major node jumps!

Alexander: Well, you should have thought about that before you destroyed the peace on my ship. Once on the planet, I'll hire some real engineers!

[Captain Alexander V. Brockure] has blocked all messages from [Rossy Riviter Captain Sally Goodmen].

Sally: Did, he just block my messages?

Calvy: It would seem so.

Sally: Mother... Ya know what, I'm glad I made this text log public so everyone else on the ship can see.

Calvy: I wonder if he noticed that. Hopefully, he realizes what he's done and peddles back. his reputation would be ruined if he didn't.

Sally: We'll have to see.

[Captain Alexander V. Brockure] has unblocked all messaged from [Rossy Riveter Captain Sally Goodmen].

Alexander: Go ahead, make it public!! I don't care! This is my ship and my crew! You can't touch me! Do you know who I am little girl!!!

[Captain Alexander V. Brockure] has been permanently kicked from this call by [Deckhand Calvy R. Firefoam] with no defined time limit

Sally: Damn, kicked his ass out before he could finish his rant? smart move overall, but he's gonna be pissed at you for that from what I've seen.

Calvy: It's fine. I'll handle this privately.

Sally: Beter that than let him humiliate himself more. Good luck with him. me and my girls are gonna bounce.

Calvy: Wait, What? You don't have to!!! His word isn't legally-binding!

Sally: Yeah, but if someone like that is in power here, I think it's best if me and my girls go while the getting is good. We'll manage.

Calvy: Very well, I will calculate the current payment for you and your crew based on the job you have completed. Hopefully, you will find your way home. without incident.

Sally: Same here. Good luck with, whatever Alexander is doing.

[dreydreydreydrey]

Howdy!

Disclaimer, this is an 18+ blog, if you're a minor get the fuck out, respectfully yet please don't interact with adult blogs. I'm not your parent, yet think with your mind and not your dick/clit. That can end up in either you being manipulated by someone, or someone just feeling disgusted by inappropriatly interacting with a minor unbeknowst to them. I will block minors and suspicious accounts without hesitation.

For the rest my dm's and asks are open :)). Yet do some unconsensual or disgusting things. Or demand me to dominate you or any other of those things and you'll get blocked too :)).

Me as a person:

My name's Drey, 21yo, male, probably have C-PTSD, on the asexual/demisexual spectrum or just haven't figured out what arouses me? Still searching on that front tho. I study psychology, people consider me as a smartass, old soul, childish, a genius, unpredictable and multiple people have already told me that I'm somehow one of the most interesting people they know of? That makes me hella uncomfortable tho. Idolisation gives me the ickies, although maybe I should be more confident on that front? Anyway I have an interest in nerdy things:

-music (we can make a spotify blend if you ask :)): The Strokes, Jpegmafia, Daft Punk, King Krule, Radiohead, Jeff Buckley... and that doesn't even scratch the surface

-classical literature (I should do this more tho): Dostoevsky, trying to get into Murakami, Kafka...

-poetry: Edgar Allen Poe, Rumi, Mary Oliver, Rudyard Kipling...

-philosophy: Kant, Nietzche, Spinoza,...

-cinematography: Wes Anderson, Andrej Tarkovsky, Stanley Kubrick, Quentin Tarantino, ...

-photography

-gym (or wel just started again)

-urbex -A loooot of scientific unneeded shit: -I know how to find Exo-planets with Python

-I may or may not have made some explosive substances and rockets (sugar rocket on yt)

-I read complex psychological, philosophical, engineering, astrophysical, biological, historical,... literature for... wel... fun

-... (just ask ;))

Me in the BDSM/Kink community:

Finally last but certainly not least (since my whole blog will probably be about this) destroying pretty little things untill theres nothing left except for my little dumb cumdumpster blissfully laying in a puddle of her own grool, spit, squirt, tears and A LOOOT some of my cum... bruised, covered in bitemarks, ropeburns,... etc you know the usual stuff like, primarily for me:

-impactplay

-shibari (or any other form of bondage)

-primal play

-switching (Yet idk about my sub side still tbh...) I've been in BDSM communities for some time now. Been to my fair share of dungeons (not the dnd kind...), been lurking in some online communities in the past and decided to make something out of my "passions"... Kinda all started when my friends started to get laid, yet it confused me why I wasn't able to enjoy it? For some reason just hooking up with a girl didn't interest me at all. Even after doing it a couple of times it felt as if I would've been better of just jerking off. I don't get aroused by physical appearances (although they still are important, yet clearly not enough). I get aroused by the mind and soul that are attached to it? (and maybe tears, tears make me hard...)

[yuna-writes]

Career selection is a weird phase

This is probably an unpopular opinion but I always wonder what the purpose of choosing a career at a really young age is suppose to achieve. I always think to myself, do other people have figured it out? Because I'm not some young person anymore and I still haven't figured everything out. But it's bizarre to me that we give this huge responsibility to 19 year old to pick one career and stick with it for the rest of their lives. I feel like the most realistic reality is that you probably don't know what you really want to do, because you're always changing or evolving as a person. For one, I thought I was going to be some artist or a graphic designer because I used to think I was really into art. I still am but nowadays I realize I'm interested in programming, data analytics and entrepreneurship.

I thought about picking up a Python book and learn some programming languages to understand Bitcoin better. But yeah, something I wouldn't even considered when I was 19. I just thought I would always be doing art related. It's funny how we have to choose a major in college, and pay so much for the education, but then how can you be so sure that the one thing you chose is the one? That's a lot of pressure for a young person who didn't even had much experience actually working at different jobs. It took me almost doing odd jobs from retail, healthcare, marketing, and design to figure out what kind of career I like. Shouldn't experience come first before choosing a career? Yet, I feel like it's the other way around where we decide early on what we want to do before actually experiencing it.

For me, I think finding the right career has always been sort of challenging. I feel like I'm always unsure, or maybe I'm just thinking about it more compared to other people who may have chosen something out of pressures from family or something. I'm not sure if much of my issues have to do with gender thing too. I realize some of the careers I really like are heavily male dominated. And It's not like I was deterred or discouraged from those careers but I didn't have much role models or exposure to women working in the careers I like. Even day trading was from some dude who was one and I heard about it through him. Usually the software engineers I met were all men. I only met one female software engineer in my lifetime but that was after I finished college. My experience was usually the women around me usually go for more social jobs such as teaching, counseling, human resource, social work, or healthcare jobs like nursing or doctor. In other words, jobs that involves paying attention to people. And usually, they seem to be really sure of what they want, and don't seem to change careers so often. At least, from my observation. I realize over time, I'm not so interested in those careers.

Design is relatively gender neutral. It used to be male dominated, but nowadays there's more female designers, but these days I don't know if I'm that interested in being a designer too. While design can be fun in some aspects, I realize later that being designer is actually a very sociable job. You can't really design things without the approval of other people. And design is more subjective then hard concrete data. There's some challenges with being a designer too, since it's subjective, it's hard to prove why your designs are right.

Anyway, going back to career selection. I'm always wondering why don't people talk about this more? It's surprising to me that we have to choose a career early on in our young teens. I feel like there's a higher probability you might choose the wrong career that doesn't fit your personality and interest. Usually, people just find it normal that we send young people to college, and they take on enormous debt, and expect them to stick with the career they have chosen forever. And I don't know, I just don't find that realistic. I wasn't the same person when I was 19. I have more knowledge and experience compared to decades ago.

[kyungtae-nim]

Sometimes people cough bigots cough just don't get that exposure to people with different identities doesn't mean you WILL take on that identity.

It only strengthens your conclusion about who you are as a person.

I'd say I know myself pretty well BECAUSE I've been exposed to different concepts of identity.

I KNOW I am cisgendered because I've EXPLORED the possibility of me being trans before I concluded I'm not. I KNOW I'm bisexual because I have explored the possibility of being lesbian/straight etc. and concluded I'm not.

And I've never even actually engaged in or presented them outwardly, I just LISTENED to people with those identities, put myself in their positions, analysed the differences between me and them, and figured out how I felt about it.

For some folks, they'd have to actually experience it BEFORE changing their mind. And that's completely valid too. People change their minds all the time. People make decisions as they themselves change with time.

PEOPLE CHANGE.

Also isn't it weird when you decide that, "ah, maybe computer science isn't for me. I think I'm more passionate about biology". So you pursue a masters in biology, then change your career, only to have people say things like:

"I've only known you as a software engineer. So you're a software engineer. I REFUSE to call you a biologist JUST to make you feel good about yourself. FREE SPEECH!!"

or

"Once you're a software engineer, you're a software engineer. Nothing is going to change that, even if you haven't used python for 10 years and never kept up with new tech. You will NEVER be a biologist!!"

or

"You being a biologist when you used to be a software engineer is just hurting biologists!!"

Like do y'all ever take a moment to..idk..listen to yourself??