#love noticing the differences between the first run vs the current edition

[twottie-m8]

[chronotsr]

Pre-G1 Modules, part 5 - The Tower of Zenopus

So you probably noticed that this is being posted after G1. Sorry! File this in July 1977, so just after DK1 and 2 and Tsojconth and City-State and Tegel Manor but before Thieves of Badabaskor et c.

This post being released out of order is a function of where Zenopus is hiding. You see, the dating of Holmes Basic is a little squirrely. Most places say 1977 broadly, some people will say "the earliest reference is an ad in Dungeon in September '77", and a few internet sleuths say July 11th . So I hadn't had that down in my to-review list before I released G1, and in the rush I had forgotten that hiding in the back of Holmes Basic is the beloved little module simply entitled "Sample Dungeon", later known as The Tower of Zenopus.

And, consequently, I have no fancy cover to show you! Just this hand-drawn little map:

The Tower is unique in that it is the first module on this list that I have actually run for a real party. Now, granted, I did not run the Tower in Holmes Basic (I ran it in Fantasy AGE 2nd edition), but nonetheless -- it's the first one I have personal knowledge of. And I love it quite a bit.

So historywise Holmes Basic has a lot going on that I cannot quickly explain, so simply accept that Eric Holmes offered and was eventually hired to re-edit Original Dungeons and Dragons ("Little Brown Booklets") into a less labyrinthine mess. This was an extremely good call, and the Basic productline would go on to live for a very very long time in one form or another, only getting seriously changed much later by Frank Mentzer in 1983. There is a lot of Corporate Politics wrapped up in the release of ADND vs Basic vs Original DND, with concerns about copyrights and royalties and extremely Type A Gary Gygax not wanting to share his toys with the others. And, done.

The Tower is interesting from a historical standpoint in that whereas The Tower of the Frog is "here is a dungeon, here is what that looks like", Tower of Zenopus is "here is how to make a dungeon, and this is a dungeon that will teach players how to play". There will be far better attempts at those two goals, but nonetheless Tower represents a module that genuinely holds up in 2024 with some cleanup. It was given a loving nod in 5e's Ghosts of Saltmarsh by having the neighboring Portown be a little up the coast from Saltmarsh and I strongly recommend having that be your second adventure after the haunted house.

So, what's Tower's backstory? Both more and less than you'd expect. Zenopus built the tower next to the graveyard, it was suddenly engulfed in green flame, Zenopus was killed "by some powerful force he had unleashe din the depths of the tower", and it sat around for a bit. The villagers saw spooky shit going on there and smashed it with a catapult. Your party has assembled in the Green Dragon Inn and is going to investigate for phat lewt. Go on, scamp!

The structure of the tower is unusually genius for an early module, in that it features a lot of routing loops that allow for nonlinear but clear movement through the dungeon. The overall structure is, ultimately, a rimmed wheel, an outer ring connected by spokes to the hub. The shape hides this well but not too well, which is perfect for the new DM. So here's the room by room highlights:

The party enters on a four-way intersection, each taking you to a different feature of the dungeon. I have heard this dungeon describes as "like a theme park with four wings" and that's an apt descriptor here -- you're picking between the rat area, the pirates area, the wizard area, and the tomb area.

A very cute and simple puzzle, which is one of those most precious things in life: a four-way room freely opens from the outside, but only lets you out from one door. A statue in the center points towards the door that is currently open, and the statue can be spun to change the door. It's a neat little trick in that if the party gets separated during combat, anyone in this room can't assist anymore unless they work out the trap, but outside of combat it is largely a non-issue so long as they take the time to puzzle it out.

A pretty standard but new for the time tell that the wizard has a petrification wand with a little garden of stony adventurers. It's a classic for a reason.

A regulation water-rush trap that separates the party with the current -- again, a certified classic, creating tension by making fair encounters that are hard if the players get separated by traps

Ye olde "question answering mask" with, again, a precious simple puzzle: a tiny little riddle. If you parse out that the mask is powered by the sundial, you can abuse your light sources to make it be 4pm.

G i a n t c r a b, the most classic of scary "normal monsters", because it is armored and hits hard but people still immediately understand "oh fuck it's a crab" in the way they understand a bear is a serious issue

Giant spiders ambush from the ceiling silently. Zenopus really is a classics fest, but in 2024 that's kind of novel simply because THIS type of classic isn't done anymore.

For reasons I cannot fathom, the local pirates have taken to smuggling in the Tower because it's connected to the sea. This works in Ghosts because Portown is abandoned and so it's far away, but as-mentioned in the original module the tower has to be suuuuper far away from town, but also near enough to be the graveyard, for it to be a good smuggler's den. Regardless, there's a canned setpiece in the sea access room where pirates are coming on boats with a kidnapped noble lady from Portown. They're moving in on skiffs when, a giant octopus attacks! It's very, very good. This is, for my money, the best room in the dungeon and also one of the best moments in DND until we get all the way to N1's tavern.

In the center of the dungeon is a staircase leading up into the remains of the tower -- I made a rather major change from the original here, the original is merely an old alchemist's laboratory complete with a pet ape.

Instead of the alchemy lab, for my adventure I made a rather large change: the original module suggests expanding downwards because That Is How It Was Done in 1974. Instead, I went up. The horrible thing Zenopus discovered had formed a shadowy parallel dimension, so they were in a pocket dimension where the old tower was, even though in the prime material plane it was simply rubble. This blog is not About My Modifications but, that's my free tip about the tower if you ever run it -- subvert the old timey expectations by making it an upward dungeon instead of a downward dungeon, with the power of weird magic.

Anyway, that was all, and amends are now made for my previous error. See you in checks notes like 5 hours with G2!

[pumpkinpaix]

hello there, hope you're having a nice day <3

so i've been reading a lot of fics lately, uk for sanity's sake, and i've noticed that in most of them, lwj doesn't use contractions (eg., says do not instead of don't)?? and i think he doesn't in the novel either but i don't remember lol so i can't be sure but anyway that made me curious - does chinese have contractions as well? does he not use it bc it's informal?

hello there! I’m doing all right, i started to answer this ask while waiting for a jingyeast loaf to come out of the oven 😊 many thanks to @bookofstars for helping me look over/edit/correct this post!! :D

anyways! the answer to your questions are complicated (of course it is when is anything simple with me), so let’s see if I can break it down--you’re asking a) whether chinese has contractions, b) if it does, how does they change the tone of the sentence--is it similar to english or no?, and c) how does this all end up with lan wangji pretty much never using contractions in english fic/translation?

I’m gonna start by talking about how formality is (generally) expressed in each language, and hopefully, by the end of this post, all the questions will have been answered in one way or another. so: chinese and english express variations in formality/register differently, oftentimes in ways that run contrary to one another. I am, as always, neither a linguist nor an expert in chinese and english uhhh sociological grammar? for lack of a better word. I’m speaking from my own experience and knowledge :D

so with a character like lan wangji, it makes perfect sense in english to write his dialogue without contractions, as contractions are considered informal or colloquial. I don’t know if this has changed in recent years, but I was always taught in school to never use contractions in my academic papers.

However! not using contractions necessarily extends the length of the sentence: “do not” takes longer to say than “don’t”, “cannot” is longer than “can’t” etc. in english, formality is often correlated with sentence length: the longest way you can say something ends up sounding the most formal. for a very simplified example, take this progression from least formal to absurdly formal:

whatcha doin’?

what’re you doing?

what are you doing? [standard colloquial]

may I ask what you are doing?

might I inquire as to what you are doing?

excuse me, but might I inquire as to what you are doing?

pardon my intrusion, but might I inquire as to what you are doing?

please pardon my intrusion, but might inquire as to the nature of your current actions?

this is obviously a somewhat overwrought example, but you get the point. oftentimes, the longer, more complex, more indirect sentence constructions indicate a greater formality, often because there is a simultaneous decreasing of certainty. downplaying the speaker’s certainty can show deference (or weakness) in english, while certainty tends to show authority/confidence (or aggression/rudeness).

different words also carry different implications of formality—in the example, I switched “excuse me” to “pardon me” during one of the step ups. pardon (to me at least) feels like a more formal word than “excuse”. Similarly, “inquire” is more formal than “ask” etc. I suspect that at least some of what makes one word seem more formal than one of its synonyms has to do with etymology. many of english’s most formal/academic words come from latin (which also tends to have longer words generally!), while our personal/colloquial words tend to have germanic origins (inquire [latin] vs ask [germanic]).

you’ll also notice that changing a more direct sentence structure (“may I ask what”) to a more indirect one (“might I inquire as to”) also jumps a register. a lot of english is like this — you can complicate simple direct sentences by switching the way you use the verbs/how many auxiliaries you use etc.

THE POINT IS: with regards to english, more formal sentence structures are often (not always) longer and more indirect than informal ones. this leads us to a problem with a character like lan wangji.

lan wangji is canonically very taciturn. if he can express his meaning in two words rather than three, then he will. and chinese allows for this—in extreme ways. if you haven’t already read @hunxi-guilai’s post on linguistic register (in CQL only, but it’s applicable across the board), I would start there because haha! I certainly do Not have a degree in Classical Chinese lit and she does a great job. :D

you can see from the examples that hunxi chose that often, longer sentences tend to be more informal in chinese (not always, which I’ll circle back to at the end lol). Colloquial chinese makes use of helping particles to indicate tone and meaning, as is shown in wei wuxian’s dialogue. and, as hunxi explained, those particles are largely absent from lan wangji’s speech pattern. chinese isn’t built of “words” in the way English is—each character is less a word and more a morpheme—and the language allows for a lot of information to be encoded in one character. a single character can often stand for a phrase within a sentence without sacrificing either meaning or formality. lan wangji makes ample use of this in order to express himself in the fewest syllables possible.

so this obviously leads to an incongruity when trying to translate his dialogue or capture his voice in English: shorter sentences are usually more direct by nature, and directness/certainty is often construed as rudeness -- but it might seem strange to see lan wangji’s dialogue full of longer sentences while the narration explicitly says that he uses very short sentences. so what happens is that many english fic writers extrapolated this into creating an english speech pattern for lan wangji that reads oddly. they’ll have lan wangji speak in grammatically incoherent fragments that distill his intended thought because they’re trying to recreate his succinctness. unfortunately, English doesn’t have as much freedom as Chinese does in this way, and it results in lan wangji sounding as if he has some kind of linguistic impediment and/or as if he’s being unspeakably rude in certain situations. In reality, lan wangji’s speech is perfectly polite for a young member of the gentry (though he’s still terribly rude in other ways lol). he speaks in full, and honestly, quite eloquent sentences.

hunxi’s post already has a lot of examples, but I figure I’ll do one as well focused on the specifics of this post.

I’m going to use this exchange from chapter 63 between the twin jades because I think it’s a pretty simple way to illustrate what I’m talking about:

蓝曦臣道：“你亲眼所见？”

蓝忘机道：“他亲眼所见。”

蓝曦臣道：“你相信他？”

蓝忘机道：“信。”

[...] 蓝曦臣道：“那么金光瑶呢？”

蓝忘机道：“不可信。”

my translation:

Lan Xichen said, “You saw it with your own eyes?”

Lan Wangji said, “He saw it with his own eyes.”

Lan Xichen said, “You believe him?”

Lan Wangji said, “I believe him.”

[...] Lan Xichen said, “Then what about Jin Guangyao?”

Lan Wangji said, “He cannot be believed.”

you can see how much longer the (pretty literal) english translations are! every single line of dialogue is expanded because things that can be omitted in chinese cannot be omitted in english without losing grammatical coherency. i‘ll break a few of them down:

Lan Xichen’s first line:

你 (you) 亲眼 (with one’s own eyes) 所 (literary auxiliary) 见 (met/saw)？

idk but i love this line a lot lmao. it just has such an elegant feel to me, probably because I am an uncultured rube. anyways, you see here that he expressed his full thought in five characters.

if I were to rewrite this sentence into something much less formal/much more modern, I might have it become something like this:

你是自己看见的吗？

你 (you) 是 (to be) 自己 (oneself) 看见 (see) 的 (auxiliary) 吗 (interrogative particle)？

i suspect that this construction might even be somewhat childish? I’ve replaced every single formal part of the sentence with a more colloquial one. instead of 亲眼 i’ve used 自己, instead of 所见 i’ve used 看见的 and then also added an interrogative particle at the end for good measure (吗). To translate this, I would probably go with “Did you see it yourself?”

contained in this is also an example of how one character can represent a whole concept that can also be represented with two characters: 见 vs 看见. in this example, both mean “to see”. we’ll see it again in the next example as well:

in response to lan xichen’s, “you believe him?” --> 你 (you) 相信 (believe) 他 (him)? lan wangji answers with, “信” (believe).

chinese does not do yes or no questions in the same way that english does. there is no catch-all for yes or no, though there are general affirmative (是／有) and negative (不／没) characters. there are other affirmative/negative characters, but these are the ones that I believe are the most common and also the ones that you may see in response to yes or no questions on their own. (don’t quote me on that lol)

regardless, the way you respond to a yes or no question is often by repeating the verb phrase either in affirmative or negative. so here, when lan xichen asks if lan wangji believes wei wuxian, lan wangji responds “believe”. once again, you can see that one character can stand in for a concept that may also be expressed in two characters: 信 takes the place of 相信. lan wangji could have responded with “相信” just as well, but, true to his character, he didn’t because he didn’t need to. this is still a complete sentence. lan wangji has discarded the subject (I), the object (him), and also half the verb (相), and lost no meaning whatsoever. you can’t do this in english!

and onto the last exchange:

lan xichen: 那么 (then) 金光瑶 (jin guangyao) 呢 (what about)？

lan wangji: 不可 (cannot) 信 (believe)

you can actually see the contrast between the two brothers’ speech patterns even in this. lan xichen’s question is not quite as pared down as it could be. if it were wangji’s line instead, I would expect it to read simply “金光瑶呢？” which would just be “what about jin guangyao?” 那么 isn’t necessary to convey the core thought -- it’s just as how “then what about” is different than “what about”, but “then” is not necessary to the central question. if we wanted to keep the “then” aspect, you could still cut out 么 and it would be the same meaning as well.

a FINAL example of how something can be cut down just because I think examples are helpful:

“I don’t know” is usually given as 我不知道. (this is what nie huaisang says lol) It contains subject (我) and full verb (知道). you can pare this straight down to just 不知 and it would mean the same thing in the correct context. i think most of the characters do this at least once? it sounds more literary -- i don’t know that i would ever use it in everyday speech, but the fact remains that it’s a possibility. both could be translated as “I do not know” and it would be accurate.

ANYWAYS, getting all the way back to one of your original questions: does chinese have contractions? and the answer is like... kind of...?? but not really. there’s certainly slang/dialect variants that can be used in ways that are reminiscent of english contractions. the example I’m thinking of is the character 啥 (sha2) which can be used as slang in place of 什么 (shen2 me). (which means “what”)

so for a standard sentence of, 你在做什么? (what are you doing), you could shorten down to just 做啥? and the second construction is less formal than the first, but they mean the same thing.

other slang i can think of off the top of my head: 干嘛 (gan4 ma2) is also informal slang for “what are you doing”. and i think this is a regional thing, but you can also use 搞 (gao3) and 整 (zheng3) to mean “do” as well.

so in the same way that you can replace 什么 with 啥, you can replace 做 as well to get constructions like 搞啥 (gao3 sha2) and 整啥 (zheng3 sha2).

these are all different ways to say “what are you doing” lmao, and in this case, shorter is not, in fact, more formal.

woo! we made it to the end! I hope it was informative and helpful to you anon. :D

this is where I would normally throw my ko-fi, but instead, I’m actually going to link you to this fundraising post for an old fandom friend of mine. her house burned down mid-september and they could still use help if anyone can spare it! if this post would have moved you to buy me a ko-fi, please send that money to her family instead. :) rbs are also appreciated on the post itself. (* ´▽` *)

anyways, here’s the loaf jingyeast made :3 it was very tasty.

[thewritinggrindstone]

Who Is Your Main Character, Anyway?

Over the last six months, I have noticed a recurring problem in every fiction manuscript I’ve edited and a few other nonfiction projects to boot. It’s a problem that’s both made editing significantly more difficult than the task otherwise might be and it’s killed all of these potentially entertaining novels dead, so permit me to ask you a question:

Who is your main character?

No, really. I’m serious. Do you know who your MC is? Can you point at a single character and definitively say, “Yes, this is my MC”?

If not, you—and your story—might be in trouble.

For reference’s sake, some of the novels I’ve edited since June 2019 include:

A collection of sci-fi short stories tied together with alternating chapters of an extremely and alarmingly abstract, philosophical variety

A contemporary novel revolving around health problems, corrupt management, and struggling teachers in a NYC school

A contemporary novel set in a heavenly courtroom that functioned as a soapbox for the author’s opinions on the current state of the US government

An urban fantasy set in modern-day NYC with trolls, fairies, dragons, and other fantastical beasts

I also edited a memoir about life in Crete during WWII that was told via a progressing series of anecdotes.

All five of these projects, which sound so different from the outside, share the same issue: The author didn’t understand the need for a main character.

But why is a main character important? In fact, isn’t it possible to have more than one MC? I hear the arguments: the MCU doesn’t have a single MC, and look at how utterly lucrative that series has been.

Fair point, and I’ll touch on multi-POV later, but for now, bear with me and treat the idea of a main character as one of the fundamental storytelling rules. And like all rules related to writing, you need to know how it works before you can effectively break it.

So what is a main character?

The typical main character in a novel is, at their very core, the character who both:

Has the highest stakes in the story’s climax

Goes through the most dramatic change themselves (positive/negative arc), or has the most dramatic change on the world around them (flat arc)

If either element is missing from the character, chances are they aren’t actually the MC.

Why is this important?

It’s important because if you don’t consciously determine who your MC is, you’re far more likely to be swayed by other characters who pop up and their respective stories. Suddenly one character has severe anxiety due to a crummy upbringing and all but vanishes after they begin recovering after a failed suicide attempt. Another is stealing medication from the locked nurse’s office to deal with a problem that isn’t quite important enough to actually receive mention in the novel. Yet another character becomes a mouthpiece for a topic the author is passionate about but doesn’t actually tie into the novel’s plot or theme. Suddenly there are characters crawling out of the woodwork, all interesting and unique and playing important enough roles that the author becomes distracted with the shiny and the tantalizing and doesn’t quite realize that they’ve completely failed to mention a character isn’t a human at all and indeed is a troll until page seventy-three. Oh, and there’s no climax to the novel either. Huh. How did that happen?

One consequence of an author failing to identify their main character is that failing to do so often leads to an unfocused story. POVs hop from character A to character B to character C to character D, and somehow we find ourselves at character M before finally circling back around to character A, whose story... I no longer quite remember—or care about, because character G was fascinating and I want to get back to them.

Another consequence is that POV oftentimes is distributed unevenly throughout the story. A concurrent issue I’ve noticed cropping up is the use of omniscient POV in these troubled manuscripts. While that’s a topic for another post, I will say that a lack of main character + omniscient POV = stories that are notoriously difficult to edit effectively because it’s one thick layer of confusion on top of another thick layer of confusion. Trying to determine what the authors want out of those stories requires a frankly outrageous amount of effort compared to a story with a single main character and a limited POV because the editor has to spend so much time and energy guessing what the author truly wants.

On top of that, I’m going to take a wild guess and say that most authors don’t want to tell an unfocused story. Sure, we might want to obscure some facts, might want to leave the occasional little mystery for the reader to enjoy puzzling out, but we want our writing to be understood. We want it to resonate. And it’s difficult for a story to resonate when half its notes are atonal and the other half are outright missing.

Step 1 is to identify who your main character is. Step 2 is to determine what characters are masquerading—temporarily or completely—as the main character. In the contemporary novel set in the school I mentioned above, there were at least eight initial contenders for the role of main character, all with their own unique stories and all with significant POV time, but only one character had any bearing on the climax, and it was a character who didn’t appear until almost a third of the way into the novel but got less POV time than several other characters. This doesn’t work.

This doesn’t work because the reader assumes, particularly in genre novels (excepting romance), that:

the first character we meet, and

the character whose POV opens the novel

is going to be the main character. This isn’t a hard-and-fast rule, and there are absolutely exceptions—such as The Great Gatsby, in which the MC and the narrator are two totally separate characters—but this post is about identifying MCs in particular. Narrator vs MC is a topic for another day.

(In conventional romance novels, the POV is split fifty-fifty between the two love interests. This post doesn’t really apply to conventional romance, but it’s still not a bad idea to check yourself once in a while to make sure you don’t have any characters who are trying to worm their way into being the MC when they shouldn’t be.)

Some of the problems I’ve encountered in the five projects I mentioned above include:

A POV that skitters from character to character, even to characters who have no arc or bearing on the overall plot whatsoever

An unfocused climax or a total lack of climax

Numerous subplots that never resolve and/or never have any bearing on the climax

Significantly lowered chances that the reader will bond with or care about any of the characters

Unsatisfying character arcs and/or plots

Plots that wander to places they never should have gone

Subplots of subplots that have nothing to do with the main character and/or climax at all

Painfully boring scenes that serve no purpose

The author bending the characters and plot to A Message rather than allowing either to exist naturally

The author not understanding what is truly important or interesting in their story

Stories that try to cram way too much information into a single book

The exclusion of details that are vital to understanding the overall story

Before throwing the unfinished book aside, the reader asking the two deadliest possible questions: So what? and Who cares?

That’s a rather terrible and terrifying list, isn’t it? All because each author never chose a single main character for their novel.

So I ask again: Who is your main character? Are they present from as close to the beginning of the story to as close to the end of the story as possible? Are they the most changed (or do they cause the most change around them) of all the characters in the story? Are there other characters around them who have plots or subplots that don’t tie into either the climax or the main character in any way? Is there another character who has more of an effect on the climax than your current labeled MC? More POV time or overall focus?

If you don’t have a main character to anchor your story around, the chances of it wandering, drifting away on every little eddying breeze that comes along, stumbling into dead ends and boring climaxes and unsatisfying character arcs grow with each added word. So challenge yourself to nail down a single main character. Wrap the entire plot around them, tight enough to choke them if you must. Get your facts straight; tie every detail back to them. You might find extraneous loose threads you can pluck out, be they characters or plot elements—but you might also find areas that are weak and need building up. You might even find both coexisting in the same story, because writing is sometimes just like that.

And once you know how to identify and use your main character, you can begin adding other elements to your story, elements that can create a bit of breathing room wherever necessary, all without the story losing its focus or meandering away from you into an area that leaves your reader—or editor—baffled at best, furious at worst.

 That said, of course it’s possible to have more than one MC, but with each MC you add to a single novel, the more work you’re creating for yourself, because each MC needs to have equal stakes in the climax and, preferably, an equal amount of attention throughout the story. Conventional romance, with its lack of a single MC, works because the climax hinges on the two characters who have received equal attention (via POV time and word count) up to that point. They both stand to win—and lose—the same thing, namely their mutual happy ending. Adding in a third main character is possible but tricky. Four? If you can do it, you’re a better plotter than me, friend, and I salute you.

A note: yes, subplots are a great way of adding extra characters or situations to a story that don’t necessarily run through the main plot. Ideally, though, most subplots should be resolved as close to the climax as possible to give the entire climax that added oomph. Again, there are exceptions, and it’s often a per-story situation, but a story can only handle so many notes being played before the sound of it gets muddy. Plot accordingly, and don’t lose sight of who the main character is.

Another note: yes, the MCU doesn’t have a single main character. Even some of the MCU films don’t have a single main character, particularly the Avengers flicks, and discussing how to handle a story that has multiple MCs is not really what I wanted to focus on today. Summarized, those stories are possible but tricky. Please notice the way very few of the MCU main characters get introduced in the big team-up films. Most of the characters get their own films or get introduced as side characters in those films so the audience has to do less work initially investing in them when there is more than one main character present.

[chipotle]

Panic's Nova text editor (a review)

Review: Panic’s Nova text editor

Panic, the long-established makers of Mac utility software, seems fully aware that introducing a new, commercial code editor in 2020 is a quixotic proposition. Is there enough of an advantage to a native editor over both old school cross-platform editors like Emacs and explosively popular new editors like Visual Studio Code to persuade people to switch?

I’m an unusual case as far as text editor users go: my primary job is technical writing, and the last three jobs that I’ve worked at have a “docs as code” approach, where we write documentation in Markdown and manage it under version control just like source code. The editor that works best for me in tech writing is the venerable BBEdit. When it comes to editing code, though, BBEdit lags behind. My suspicion is that BBEdit’s lack of an integrated package manager has hurt it here. Also, BBEdit’s language modules don’t support extending one another, making it effectively impossible to do full highlighting for a templating language like JSX or Jinja.

When I was a web programmer, I was one of many who moved to TextMate, and used it for everything for a while. When the Godot-like wait for TextMate 2.0 became unbearable, I wandered the text editing wilderness, eventually splitting my loyalties between BBEdit, Sublime Text, and more recently VS Code. At this point, I suspect nothing will pull me away from BBEdit for technical writing, but for programming I’m open to persuasion.

So: meet Nova.

I’ve been using Nova off and on in beta for months. I’ve reported some bugs, although I may mention a couple here that I didn’t catch until after 1.0’s release. And, I’m going to compare it to the GUI editors that I’ve been using recently: BBEdit, Sublime Text, and VS Code.

Nova is a pretty editor, as far as such things go, and with files of relatively reasonable size it’s fast. With stupid huge files its performance drops noticeably, though. This isn’t just the ridiculous 109MB, nearly 450,000-line SQL file I threw at it once, it’s also with a merely 2MB, 50,000-line SQL file, and Nova’s offer to turn off syntax highlighting in both files didn’t help it much. This may sound like a silly test, but in my day job I’m occasionally stuck editing an 80,000-line JSON file by hand (don’t ask). This is something BBEdit and VS Code can do without complaint. Panic wrote their own text editing engine for Nova, which is brave, but it needs more tuning for pathological cases like these. They may not come up often, but almost every programmer has one stupid huge file to deal with.

Nova has an integrated terminal and an integrated SSH client, and even an integrated file transfer system based on Panic’s Transmit. In fact, if you have Transmit and use Panic Sync, it knows all of those servers out of the box. Nova has a task workflow system for automating building and running. You can associated servers, tasks, and more with individual projects; Nova’s project settings are considerably more comprehensive than I’ve seen in other editors. You can even set up remote tasks. Nova has a serviceable Git client built in, too. Like VS Code, Nova uses JavaScript for its extension API, and it has built-in Language Server Protocol support—it’s a superbly solid foundation.

Beyond that, some smaller features have become table stakes for modern GUI editors, and Nova handles them with aplomb. “Open Quickly” can jump to any file in the open project, as well as search by symbols or just symbols in currently open files; it has a command palette; you can comprehensively edit keybindings. It has multiple cursor support for those of us who like that, and a “mini map” view for those of you who like that, although know that you are wrong. Nova’s selection features include “Select all in scope” and “Select all between brackets,” a command I often use in BBEdit and miss dearly in Code. (Both Nova and BBEdit select between brackets and braces, although BBEdit also selects between parentheses.) This effectively becomes “Select between tags” in HTML, a nice touch. There are a few other commands like “Select all in function” and “Select all in scope” that I didn’t have any luck in making work at all; a little more documentation would be nice.

That’s worth an aside. Panic has created a “library” of tech note-style articles about Nova sorted by publication date rather than an actual manual, and it’s not always easy to find the information you want in it. I know this is just what a technical writer would say, but I’d dearly like to see a human-organized table of contents starting with the editor basics and moving to advanced topics like version control, server publishing and extension authoring.

The Zen of Language Servers

A lot of Visual Studio Code’s smarts depend on the implementation of a “language server” behind the scenes: language servers offer almost spookily intelligent completion. For instance, take this PHP snippet:

if ($allowed) { $response = new Response(405); $response->

If you have the Intelephense PHP language server plugin, Code understands that $response is an instance of Response and, after you type the > above, offers completions of method names from the Response class.

Right now, Nova’s mostly limited to the language servers Panic provides, and they’re… not always so smart. In that snippet above, Nova starts by offering completions of, apparently, everything in the open project, starting with the variables. If I type “s,” it narrows things down to methods that begin with “s,” but it’s all methods that start with “s” rather than just the methods from Response. The “Jump to Definition” command shows a similar lack of context; if I highlight a method name that’s defined in multiple places, Nova shows me a popup menu and prompts me to choose which one to jump to, rather than introspecting the code to make that decision itself.

But, this is a solvable problem: there’s (I think) no reason someone couldn’t write an Inteliphense plugin for Nova. If Nova’s ecosystem takes off, it could be pretty formidable pretty quickly.

Walk like a Mac

Even so, LSP support isn’t Panic’s biggest selling point. Unlike Sublime Text or VS Code, Nova isn’t cross-platform: it’s a Mac-only program written to core platform APIs. Is that still a huge draw in 2020? (Is it instead a drawback?)

You can definitely see a difference between Nova and BBEdit on one side and Sublime and Code on the other in terms of resource usage. With the two Ruby files shown in the screenshot above loaded, I get:

VS Code: 355 MB, 6 processes

Sublime Text: 338 MB, 2 processes

Nova: 101 MB, 2 processes

BBEdit: 97 MB, 1 process

Code is an Electron-based program, although Microsoft famously puts a lot of effort into making it not feel like the black hole a lot of Electron-based apps are. Sublime uses its own proprietary cross-platform framework. In fairness, while us nerds like to harp on research usage a lot, if your computer’s got 16G or more of RAM in it, this probably isn’t a big deal.

You notice Nova’s essential Mac-ness in other ways. Its preference pane is, like BBEdit’s, an actual preference pane, instead of opening in another tab like Code or just opening a JSON file in a new tab (!) like Sublime. And while all editors better have first-class keyboard support—and Nova does—a good Mac editor should have first-class mouse support, too, and it does. You notice that in the drag-and-drop support for creating new tabs and splits. Nova’s sidebar is also highly customizable, possibly more so than any editor I’ve regularly used. (Yes, Emacs fans, I know you can write all of Nova in Lisp if you want. When one of you does that, please get back to me.)

Unlike BBEdit, though, Nova doesn’t have a Mac-like title bar, or a Mac-like outline view of the project files, or Mac-like tabs. (Well, BBEdit doesn’t have tabs at all, which turns out to be a great UI decision once you have a dozen or more files open, but never mind.) This isn’t necessarily bad; people often say BBEdit “looks old,” and it’s hard not to suspect that what people mean by that—whether or not they know it—is that it looks like the long-established Mac program it is. Nova is relying less on “we have a Mac UI and the other guys don’t” than on “we have Panic’s designers and the other guys don’t.” Make no mistake, having Panic’s designers counts for a lot.

What may be more disappointing to old school Mac nerds is AppleScript support: none whatsoever. It doesn’t even have a vestigial script dictionary. Again, this may not be something most people care much about; personally, I hate having to write AppleScript. But I love being able to write AppleScript. BBEdit’s extensive scriptability is one of its hidden strengths. Nova’s Node-based JavaScript engine is probably more powerful for its own extensions and certainly more accessible to anyone under the age of 50, but it may be hard to call it from external programs.

So is it worth it?

That probably depends on where you’re coming from.

If you loved—or still use—Panic’s older editor, Coda, this is a no-brainer upgrade. If you used Espresso, a Coda-ish editor that always seemed to be on the verge of greatness without ever reaching it, Nova may also be a no-brainer for you.

If you’re a fan of Sublime Text, BBEdit, TextMate, or another editor that doesn’t have native Language Server Protocol support, you should definitely try Nova. Sublime and TextMate have more plugins (especially Sublime), but many extensions seem to be languishing (especially TextMate). BBEdit never had a great extension ecosystem to start with. All of these editors have strengths Nova doesn’t, but the reverse is also true, and Nova may catch up.

If you’re an Emacs or Vim power user, we both know you’re just reading this out of academic interest and you’re not going to switch. C’mon.

If you use Visual Studio Code, though, it’s way tougher to make the case for Nova. Code has a vastly larger extension library. It has the best support for LSP of any editor out there (LSP was developed for Code). Despite being Electron-based, it’s pretty high-performance. Code doesn’t have an integrated SSH or FTP client, but it does have an integrated terminal and task runner and Git client. If you don’t object to using an editor that isn’t a “perfect fit” with the Mac UI, Code is very, very good… and it’s free.

I don’t object to Nova’s pricing model—$99 up front including a year of updates, $49 for future years of updates—but I can’t help but wonder if Panic should have gone with super aggressive introductory pricing. Also, I saw more than a few suggestions on Hacker News about how there should be a Code-to-Nova extension translator; I’m not sure automatic conversion would be practical, but a guide on manual conversion seems like an excellent idea.

For my day job of technical writing, I’m going to stick to BBEdit. (One day I’ll write up an article about why I think it’s the best “documentation as code” editor on the market.) For programming and web editing, when I was working on both a Ruby and a PHP project—the former a Rails learning exercise, the latter an obstinate “I am going to write a modern PHP app without using a framework” exercise—I kept trying Nova’s betas and then switching back to Code for Inteliphense and, I swear to God, MacVim for Tim Pope’s amazing rails.vim plugin. I suspect Nova could duplicate both of those, but I’m not sure I want to be the one to do it. (Also, while Panic has decent reference documentation for writing extensions, I’d like to see a few simple end-to-end walkthroughs for those of us who look at a huge list of reference topics and don’t know where to start.)

But Nova isn’t just pretty, it’s powerful, and has a lot of promise. The editors I’ve been comparing it to have been around since 2015 for VS Code, 2008 for Sublime Text, and 1992 (!) for BBEdit; it’s not reasonable to expect Nova to blow past them in every respect right out of the starting gate. Even so, they are Nova’s competition. Catching up fast is an essential requirement.

So: yes, I’ve bought Nova, and I’m rooting for Panic here. I’ll come back in a year and report if I’m willing to stay on the update train.

[justlightthefirstspark]

As promised, my analysis/opinion/thought piece on today’s MUWFC game vs Spurs. Everything is chronological which I feel like should go without saying but in the interest of clarity 🤷🏽‍♀️ but not everything is tagged to the minute cause I am an idiot that didn’t realise that that would be helpful til like the 2nd half. Also, if I missed anything, or got players mixed up or anything pls lemme know and I’ll edit accordingly! I’ve never really done any from of sports based writing before (I don’t think tweets count lol) so pls be nice, merci 😘

Line up as follows, I guess this is pretty common knowledge but you know, coherency and such.

Tbh it was kinda hard to see *a lot* of this game, especially on the far side of the pitch and by both goals because of the weather, felt like I was watching Silent Hill for a little while there, but I did my best. My wifi is also horrendous atm, and we all know that the FA Player can be problematic so there’s a very good chance I might have missed something due to a lag or buffering btw. Just drop me an ask if you notice anything that mightn’t be quite right, and I’ll fix it asap! Some ~analysis~ (if you could call it that lol) is more detailed than other bits cause there was a lot happening and today I learned that it’s kinda hard to write one thing and watch another at the same time lol

First half:

Quick, fast and almost successful start. A much-needed improvement on the stagnancy vs Bristol a few weeks ago, and obviously we couldn’t see the midweek game vs Brighton so I can’t compare them.

I have to say I’m not a massive fan of all the back passes, all the time. I think a more attacking FB might be needed in the summer, or maybe Ökvist should be given some time to acclimatise to the WSL soon? I was never the biggest fan of Harris last season, I personally don’t think she’s fast enough – she gets outpaced down the flank by attackers 90% of the time, which isn’t good. I think A. Turner is the strongest FB option currently, at least defensively, and she’s shown she has a decent attacking ability, and has a wicked long ball, as well as crossing. My only issue is sometimes those tackles of hers can be a liability, giving away unnecessary fouls. It’s almost like she doesn’t think before she flies in sometimes, which is a shame, cause I love them. A lot.

There were a couple of really good chances in the first half, including a great ball in and run up from Galton, which should have resulted in probably the opening goal but whether it was as a result of the weather or just misjudged timing and placement from both Ross and Sigsworth, the chance went to waste. Groenen had an excellent chance to net her first for United but unfortunately sent it just wide. Another glorious link up between A. Turner and Galton led to another decent chance, a gorgeous cross in from the right to the opposite side of the box, and the perfect header which unfortunately was aimed straight at the keeper. Very unlucky to head in at the break with nothing.

There was an incredible double save from Earps around halfway through the first half. I have to say, I have some anxieties with her sometimes. She is quite good, but has a tendency to make some silly mistakes, and doesn’t always make the right call for a save. But my god she was on her game today, even if a potential error might have led to the first save. Didn’t disappoint me anytime she was called on this afternoon.

A few frustrations started to show around the 30 min mark, a few sloppy passes and challenges making the rounds. It was also around this time that I realized I’d picked a pretty poor game to start this thing on because I could barely see anything.

Zelem seems to be back in form, which can only be a good thing. But I would very much like it if somehow she could drag some of the other girls back up with her.

There were a fair few soft calls going Spurs way, which I wasn’t entirely convinced by. But then again I’m probably just naturally biased towards my girls.

Another great ball in to Sigsworth from A. Turner which was just *chefs kiss* but unfortunately came to nothing. There was also a spin move either to commit or avoid a challenge, I couldn’t really tell tbh, which was very impressive, as was her chase down on Mitchell at around 43 mins. (Amy’s my favourite player, can you tell?)

Booking for Kirsty Smith just before half time, but I gotta be honest I couldn’t see it due to the fog, so I have no idea what happened. Couldn’t find anything about it in the United post-match report either so apparently we’re just deleting that from the history of the earth which is completely fine by me to be honest.

Second half:

My main takeaway from this game is that both Sigsworth and Ross always seem to be looking for the same ball in the penalty area, and there very rarely seems to be anybody else around looking for a potential rebound. I think that James (who missed today’s game due to suspension) seems to be our main (only?) front line creator and finisher; Sigsworth is fine, that girl works like a dog and always gets the job done, I think she may have just needed another goal to boost her confidence, but I have no real concerns with her. Ross, however, I’m not entirely convinced by, I think a lot of her finishes have been a bit lucky and flukey so far. I’d start Toone over her for the rest of the season to be honest, Ross hasn’t done anything that tells me she deserves the starting place. Feel free to disagree with this of course, this is just my own personal opinion.

56 mins – confusion has entered the chat. McManus ends up pretty much through on goal, and then the ref whistles for what I assumed to be an offside. So naturally I nearly kicked my laptop out the window. The ref then awards a United penalty, and I’m even more confused now than I was in the beginning. I genuinely didn’t see anything but did hear a few shouts from what I’m assuming was the United bench for handball, so I have no idea what happened here.

‘58 – GOAL. Who else? God bless Katie Zelem is all I’m saying.

‘61 – Hanson 🔁 Ross. I think this was a good swap. I don’t think Ross was particularly good today, and Hanson immediately sparked that RW. I would have subbed Ross off sooner but that’s my only issue.

’64 – GOAL – Sigsworth with a pretty perfect if slightly scruffy strike from a corner.

A much better corner than previous attempts, and Spurs hadn’t defended any of them particularly well. I think that we have a major issue with set pieces, I dunno what exactly the problem is, whether they need to allocate a new taker or whatever but before today had we scored from a corner all season? Lemme knowwww.

’65 – A few decent chances for Spurs around this time. One pretty clear run in from the right, and one or two shots bounced right of the crossbar and the post. Basically my heart stopped for about 8 mins.

’66 – I DO NOT WANT TO SEE BACK PASSES IN THE BOX AS OPPOSITION PLAYERS SWARM IN. CLEAR IT. I DON’T CARE WHERE IT GOES JUST GET IT OUT. (sorry for the caps but my anxiety was out in force this afternoon)

United started playing much better after both goals, think they just needed a kick up the arse. *Ahem* A confidence boost. 👀 Much better intensity for the final 30 mins than the previous 60 imo.

’68 – Another decent chance for Spurs, with Earps coming way too far off her line than sat right with me. Very lucky nothing came of that.

’69-72 – Around this time I started to get *very* confused between Amy and Abbie cause they both had yellow boots on and literally the only thing I could see on the far side of the pitch was feet. That was fun.

’73 – The wasteful corners made a return. Slightly less panicked about that one considering we were already 2-0 up but still, I would like to see the glaring set piece issue sorted asap thanks girls x

’75ish – Toone 🔁 Groenen. Man I love Jackie Groenen. She really has been immense for us so far, and there’s a definite difference in how we play without her.

’78 – Harris 🔁 M. Turner. I’ve said my piece about Harris above but man, can we take a second to appreciate Millie Turner. She never, ever stops. Literally the heart of our defence.

’86 – GOAL – Oh captain, my captain. Beautiful strike from a free kick just outside the box, with the perfect bend around the wall and subsequently the keeper to make it 3-0.

United were very obviously stronger in the second half, almost looked like a completely different team at times. Whether they just got the hairdryer treatment at the half (I would imagine Casey is terrifying when she’s mad.) or the goals gave them that spark they desperately needed to kick on, they definitely made up for all the missed chances in the first half.

’90 – 4 additional minutes.

’92 – Another United free kick. McManus found herself almost clear in (again!), but due to an unlucky fumble with the ball at her feet unfortunately nothing came from this one. Surely a 4th goal otherwise.

’93 – FIIIIIIIIGHT. Kinda. You love to see it. Spend a little while conducting some, scientific research 🌚 and have concluded that Toone was tackled from behind just as the ball left her feet, which led to the ~scuffle~. Have to say that Amy walking away with Ella was extremely 🥰🥰🥰 (This is my research - https://twitter.com/48hours8/status/1218896406020349953?s=21)

’94 – Red card for Tooney. I would assume for her reaction more than anything but the camera didn’t catch it so I guess we’ll never know. I would have thought a yellow would suffice, considering that’s all the Spurs player in question received, but apparently not. 🤔 I’m still kinda confused tbh.

’95 – Full time.

Thus concludes what was certainly an interesting match. Please enjoy this comparison of United vs Spurs chaotic energy from @danieljamesmufc

Also thanks for reading if you got this far, it’s a bit stop-starty and clunky cause I just wrote down thoughts and whatever as they came into my head and then pieced it all together later on. I also just wanna say that I was massively impressed with Smith today. She hasn’t had many chances to prove herself this season, but that combo of herself and Galton down the left was lethal today imo. 🔥

Some extra thoughts:

I’m not a huge fan (like, at all) of fans singing men’s orientated chants. Let the women’s rivalries develop on their own, in their own way, and don’t drag the vulgarities across! That said, I do think that particular group of United fans has the potential to be a very, very good thing.

Also, just wanna say that these are my girls, and I would die for every single one of them. None of my criticism is meant to be intentionally negative, I just tried to be as objective and realistic as possible, without being a fangirl lol. Even my faves aren’t immune to criticism unfortunately.

And this picture is now my favourite thing ever to exist

[snkpolls]

SnK S3E15 Poll Results (Manga Reader Version)

The poll closed with 321 responses. Thank you to everyone who participated!

Please note that these are the results of the manga reader poll. Anime only watchers are suggested not to read if you do not wish to be spoiled about certain events! Anime only viewers, click here to view your poll results!

RATE THE EPISODE 308 Responses

Overall the fandom enjoyed the episode, with the vast majority of votes being at either a 4 or 5.

Best ep of the season thus far, Bert's monologue/transformation was amazing. Some fantastic VA work by Tomohisa and Inoue as well. CG CT also looked far better than I thought he would. These next few episodes are going to kill me. I can't wait.

Fantastic episode. Bertholdt's monologue was the best part.

Great episode, very dramatic, awesome OST. I am not looking forward to the next few eps, except for Floch's villain origin story!

Can’t wait for the next episode, this one was so good!

Editing was a bit choppy, voice lines cut half a second too quick a few times.

First ep of S3P2 to get a 10/10 from me <3

The animation was pretty lacking in this episode. R&B’s running animation on the wall felt pretty lazy, there was that reused shot of the beast Titan’s throw from season 2, Bertholdt’s character design felt inconsistent as well as Zeke’s. They really need to get the old team back on the animation cause the current team clearly doesn’t know how to handle aot. It’s getting on my nerves.

The episode was absolutely awesome.

WHICH OF THE FOLLOWING WAS YOUR FAVORITE MOMENT? 308 Responses

The Bertl Bomb™ was the scene that respondents were most excited about. Following behind that was Mikasa’s brief skirmish with Bertolt, and closely behind that was Armin and Bertolt’s shouting match on the rooftops.

BERUTORUTO=GOD

I’m mikasasexual

As a huge Bertholdt fan, it was so great to see Bert as the centre of attention for once. It makes me really sad knowing what comes next.

Bert bomb made my bomb go off

I love Bertholdt's resolve. This scene made him one of my favorite characters.

Bertholdt vs. Mikasa was so fire 🔥

One of the best episodes without a doubt. Bertholdt's monologue before transforming was even more impactful than in the manga.

Explosion aftermath was disappointing. I expected a sea of fire. The one they gave us doesn't feel like something big just happened

That "Levi's 5 seconds of screen time" was good, too!

Why isn't "Mikasa comforting and protecting Armin" an option for favorite moment in this episode? Because those were definitely my favorite moments in the episode

The partner gesture between Reiner and Bertl is the death of me

Am I the only one who get's goosebumps  in the scene before he transformed himself into the colossalus titan and said: 'I feel like, no matter how this all plays out, I can accept whatever happens. That's right, nobody's in the wrong. There's nothing we could do. Because this world....is just...that cruel.' This scene was impressive back in the manga and I'm proud how good Tomohisa Hashizume nailed it. He's an amazing voice actor, especially for Bertholdt.

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE APETITAN AND YOUSEEBIGGIRL REARRANGES? 296 Responses

Overall the fandom was excited about the new versions of familiar songs with 71% of respondents feeling that they were “totally epic!” 18% agree that the rearranges were good, but that they can’t surpass the original versions.

The soundtrack was lit.

Music was awesome!

Ngl I've watched the episode many times bc the OST during some scenes is just SO GOOD!!

WHO WON THE SHOUTING MATCH? 308 Responses

Over ¾ of the fandom agree that Bertolt dominated the shouting match on the rooftop.

I feel Armin won the "debate" because Bertolt, in his zeal to convince himself that he wanted to kill people he used to see as friends, wasn't making any sense

HOW DID YOU FEEL ABOUT BERTOLT’S DEVELOPMENT AT THIS POINT? 308 Responses

46% of respondents were happy to see how far Bertolt had come as a character at this point in the story, while 34% were just happy to get more dialogue and thoughts from him. A small percentage had been curious where his character would go from here.

Godtolt on the way

He ditched the alter ego built up out of guilt, and it's cool to see him truly one of the strongest characters fighting off Mikasa while in human form

I wish we had more Bertl development! He could’ve been really complex, but just isn’t due to a lack of screentime. Compared to someone like Reiner or Annie, this was his one moment of pure raw character development

He reveals his true warrior colors

I loved it, one of my favourite chapters because of his resolve and how he himself was surprised about it.

He's only moving forward as a character and does what needs to be done. Bertholdt, your doing amazing sweetie!

With all this development just to kill him off was heart breaking.

Honestly, I’m so proud of him. He was amazing and it’s so nice to see a confident Bert. I don’t think it’s a development worth praising in terms of moral standards but it suited and made sense for his character

I feel like this is where his character peaked. It was pretty flat before season 2

I just don’t like bertolt in generalI really like his development but it's a shame that he severely lacked screen time before this episode

I'm not really a fan of Bertolt so I'm neutral on this

I still hate his traitorous guts and can't wait for THAT scene to be animated

Fucking loved it. It's one of my favorite chapters (and now episodes) just because he's talking so much and he's badass af. My boy is finally shining!

HOW DID YOU FEEL ABOUT ARMIN BLUFFING ABOUT ANNIE A SECOND TIME? 306 Responses

Just over half of respondents feel that Armin should have tried a different tactic with Bertolt, while 46% felt that it was worth another shot to try and manipulate Bertolt’s feelings for Annie again.

Has Armin ever convinced anyone of anything they didn't already believe?

He was so used to Bertholdt’s behavior and there was nothing that would’ve made Armin think Bertholdt would have the reaction that he did

Lame. He didn't use much of intelligence here.

It's low, I'm happy it didn't work again

He learned some pretty vital things - how far the Warriors are willing to go, what their priorities are, what Bert's state of mind is, and where his loyalties truly lie. I don't imagine Armin went down that track solely because he thought it would have the exact same effect, but rather to 'check something' - exactly the same as Bertolt.

I think it not only was a good attempt to take (it worked before, why not try it again), but I also think it is incredibly important to show Armin's flaws. Yes, he's an amazing strategist. He's also still sixteen and not always entirely confident. Having Armin make mistakes like relying on old ploys that worked keeps his character more grounded and realistic

Smart people tend to use the same tactics over and over again as long as they're successful and for good reason. After all, why wouldn't you use the same tactic if you know it brings success? If it ain't broke, don't fix it. It's only when said strategy or tactic doesn't work where the individual would entertain the prospect of changing it or never using it again.

That’s Very Unfortunate!

WHAT DID YOU THINK ABOUT CGI COLOSSAL TITAN? 306 Responses

36% of respondents aren’t very impressed with the CGI colossal titan, while 29% actually found the effect to be pretty awesome! 13% feel it’s disturbing and a small 7% just find it cringeworthy.

Alright

CGI doesn't bother me. What bothers me is how animators overly rely on it. Several decades ago animators made great masterpieces without cgi, all by hand. I understand using it because it makes things easier, but exceeding quality should still be top priority. If you can't make it better with CGI, then go old school and do it right.

Decent but could be better

U can still notice it is CGI but I think their CGI has gotten better compared to some of their earlier uses of it

Doesn't fit with the art style, which is as bad as unfair splitting potatoes

Not too bad but could definitely have been better. Understandable since there has only been one full body shot of it before and that was a sharp backwards, down looking angle.

Don’t really care much for cgi complaints, animating that would be a lot of work, their efforts are better elsewhere

It was necessary and didn't look appallingly bad.

I don't get why people hate it so much? I think it's fine

I hated it in season 2 and I hate it more now

Bad

Don't like CGI anything in any anime so take from that what you will

Most angles he looks fine! The only part that he looked off was when we got the face shot of him panning out to the rest of his body

Thought it looked solid. There were some really great shots of him this ep imo. Hopefully the action bits will look as good, and they mix in some 2D shots as well.

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THE 104TH RIDING ON TITAN EREN? 306 Responses

Over half of the fandom agree that this detail is something that’s very adorable, while 22% feel it’s just pretty neat. A combined 21% of respondents either feel it’s not that big of a deal or simply don’t care about it.

>AMJCS who cares?

Good boy protecting his friends? Hell Yeah!

I want to ride pieck - Not an innuendo, i just want a go in one of her turrets

It's gay

Lads you would never get me off that thing, I'd be saddling him up to go grocery shopping

Save me a seat guys!!

HOW WELL DID THE EPISODE ADAPT THE CORRESPONDING CHAPTERS? 306 Responses

Manga readers are overall happy with the adaptation of chapters 77 and 78, with over 90% saying that it was close to being perfectly done.

DID MARCO’S DEATH AFFECT YOU AS MUCH AS IT DID IN THE MANGA? 305 Responses

41% of respondents felt more heartbroken to see Marco’s death play out in the anime, while 31% say they felt more sympathetic toward Marco. 14% weren’t affected when this scene played out in either story-telling medium.

About the same level, still utterly heartbreaking, though

DEATH TO THE TITAN TRIO!

Didn't feel as much. Not because it was a bad adaptation, but just because I've already read it and knew what went down.

I felt more sorry for RBA than Marco in this version

I still had lot of emotions with the adaptation, but there's no compare to experiencing it for the first time

I was absolutely sobbing when I read it in the manga. Anime-wise I was more prepared to handle the scene

Watching Marco die again reminds me of why, even in current manga, I still completely and utterly LOATHE/DESPISE/HATE RBA. No, I don't care about their "tragic backstory", they don't deserve empathy of any kind.

It had the same impact when I first watched the trailer for the Lost Girls OVA, which spoiled me his death

It was tough to watch, but it was necessary to deepen Reiner, Bertolt, Annie (and Marco)'s characters. It was very well done, dramatically

Oh fuck it was WAY WORSE animated. Actually hearing his cries and screams is something that can never be duplicated in written form

I did not anticipate being as affected as I was by the Marco flashback. That doesn’t give me hope for how I’m going to handle the rest of the RtS arc. The emotions of the characters are being portrayed very well this season.

NOW THAT WE’VE HAD A CHANCE TO LISTEN TO ZEKE HAVE MORE DIALOGUE, WHAT DO YOU THINK OF HIS VOICE? 305 Responses

The majority of the fandom believe that Zeke’s seiyuu is a good fit for his character, although over half of the fandom had expected his voice to sound a bit different. 10% feel it wasn’t the best choice, while a small sliver of respondents don’t care for the voice at all.

I can't unhear DIO. Thanks Zeke, thanks Koyasu.

Zeke's VA also voices a lovely, kind character in Violet Evergarden, so his lines are making me really, really uncomfortable

WHAT DID YOU THINK ABOUT PIECK’S TITAN VOICE? 307 Responses

30% of respondents are excited about Pieck’s titan voice, while 28% feel it’s not what they expected to hear. 18% find the voice “acceptable” while 17% want to wait and hear more before making a final verdict.

Pieck's voice was unexpected in that it was terrifying, much like Ymir's Titan voice

Holy shit. I'm gonna hear it in my nightmares

I rabu Piku.

REGARDING CURRENT MANGA EVENTS, DO YOU THINK REINER STILL WANTS TO STAY TRUE TO HIS PROMISE TO YMIR? 308 Responses

Nearly half of the fandom believe that Reiner would still like to honor his promise to Ymir, but feel that he will never actually get to pull through. 15% believe that he’s still determined to save Historia no matter what, and 18% believe that he’s actually stopped caring about his promise (or perhaps just Historia in general) altogether.

Good question. I really want to have a scene with him facing Historia, his reaction to her pregnancy should be interesting

He doesn't want to save HISTORIA because he doesn't know her. The one he wanted to save was KRISTA. But she is already "dead"

I think Reiner has done what he needed to

I'm not sure, I think his main concerns are the kids and stopping Eren

It has to be real low on his priority list right about now given the circumstances

Of course not, Reiner only cares about his own manpain

He still calls her Krista and she probably has already chosen a side most likely Yeagerist

ARMIN HAD WISHED FOR A CHANCE TO NEGOTIATE AT THIS POINT, SIMILAR TO CURRENT MANGA EVENTS. IS THIS PROOF THAT HE HASN’T BEEN CHANGED BY BERTOLT’S MEMORIES? 308 Responses

44% don’t want to say either way whether Armin’s pre-titan behavior is indicative of the influence that Bertolt may or may not have over the Armin we know in the current manga. 39% believe that this is proof Eren’s words to Armin were total B.S., and 12% think this isn’t really proof of anything.

Armin Has always been the diplomat, while Eren is a man of force. Mikasa is in between. It has always been that way.

Past and future are influenced the same when paths are concerned so there's no way to tell.

I don’t think it’s enough to prove or disprove but this is an interesting idea

I don't get this 'changed' shit. Of course having access to someone else's memories has its own influence on a person, but that's true of anyone on the planet who's read a memoir as well. Everything has its effect. The titan shifter thing is obviously a bit more invasive than that, but it doesn't mean he's now suddenly possessed by Beartoto's fucking undead spirit.

I'd like to think it is but with everything Isayama's been throwing at us from out of left field who knows

he's always wished for negotiation, but he seems to have changed in his methods for negotiation. armin used to be more abrupt and upfront, whereas now he seems more tentative

No, he wasn't chanced that much. He understands RBA better and has more sympathy for Annie (maybe even has a crush on her) but it has nothing to do with being a slave.

SIMILARLY, MIKASA POINTS OUT HOW BERTOLT FEELS LIKE A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT PERSON. ARE THE MEMORIES OF HIS PREDECESSOR AFFECTING HIM IN THIS ARC? 306 Responses

Over half of the fandom feel that Bertolt’s current behavior at this point in the series is of his own will, and not influenced by any prior holders of the Colossal Titan. 38% think it’s possible he’s being influenced by memories of his predecessor(s) at this time, while a small percentage feel that he is definitely being influenced by someone else’s memories.

He was badass but I think he was affected by memories of the previous CT owner.

I think that Mikasa thinks he’s acting like a different person because he is. I think this is what Bertholdt is really like but with the 104th he was playing a role so he didn’t get too attached to them.

Still wondering if the "he seemed like a different person" comment was a note about development or supposed to foreshadow something about the Titans influencing their hosts.

I think it’s original Ymir controlling him through the paths

Probably. It seems like a bit of a drastic change to go from quiet, self-deprecating and remorseful to cold, outspoken, and trying to morally justify his actions. It's just too drastic a change.

Confidence boost is completely irrelevant to paths.

We don’t even know Bert’s previous predecessors!

Nope, that's have something to do with "character development", people change sometimes after time and grown more indepented and strong of their own shadow.

I always thought of it more as Bertie finally coming down on a side and the pair picking up on that. He was always so meek and indecisive, but now he's been forced to make a choice and to do it he has to shed his old skin and become more ruthless.

Not at all he ditched his guilt that made up the act they knew him for.

WHAT SCENE ARE YOU MOST LOOKING FORWARD TO IN THE PREVIEW? 307 Responses

The overwhelming majority of respondents are looking forward to the Survey Corps’ suicide charge against the Beast Titan and his flying boulders. Nearly 30% are looking forward to the moment that Levi gives Erwin his promise to kill the Beast Titan. A small percentage are most looking forward to Armin and Jean decide who’s going to lead the 104th to victory.

I am not ready for the next two episodes

I’m gonna get my ASS FUCKED SO HARD I DONT KNOW WHAT TO DO. THERES GONNA BE SHIT EVERYWHERE. ERWINS GONNA FUCKING DIE. LEVIS GONNA BE SAD.

fuck next week's shit is good, hype

ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS ON THE EPISODE?

The "predecessor's memory affecting current shifter" is, as far as I'm aware, just a theory that I don't buy into. I've only seen a person "changed" because of the Founding Titan's vow. Otherwise, the shifter's personality remains the same. Armin has always been an advocate for talking and negotiation. We see this in the Trost arc when the Garrison nearly kill Eren with that cannonball. So no, I don't think anyone's memories are "affecting" anyone, including current Eren.

Loved pretty much everything in this episode except for the CGI CT. Didn't expect to see uncensored Reiner, which was weird because Mikasa cutting off Bert's ear was more censored. And I'm a bit disappointed we didn't see more shots of Bert with his V fringe off his forehead. He looked so cool in the manga!

This episode gave me anxiety 'cause I know what we'll going to deal in the next three ones. The soundtrack gave intensity in every scene that its put on it, plus the fantastic job of the VA, perfect work. And just thinking about how the next episodes will be.... *goosebumps*

Wit studio handled the cgi very well imo. It's very difficult to animate this action heavy arca with rubble, smoke, odm scenes etc. and I think they are adapting the manga very well with the right pacing per episode which is also a challenge to fit within 20 minutes.

Bertolt is best boi and this episode was the best of all 3. He deserved to survive and mature up. Hashizume nailed him JUST RIGHT and his interactions with Reiner this episode were on point. The scene where he outsmarted Armin and countered Mikasa was worthy of applause.

i wish it wasn’t too rushed some moments aren’t as emotional as they should be

mikasa looked so good this episode and i'm so happy with how wit isn't screwing her over

After seeing this episode and Marco's death, it makes me sad that Reiner lost his pal Bertolt. They should be suffer bois together. Even still, some of the animation this episode was reallyy not great, so I rated the episode a 4.

Bertolt has proved on this episode that he's one of the best character of the series

I miss berthold so much and seeing him at his best was awesome but it’s really hard knowing what’s going to happen next

This is shaping up to be the best season of Attack On Titan. Cheers for more!

zeke’s beard is the tenth titan shifter

WHERE DO YOU PRIMARILY DISCUSS THE SERIES? 295 Responses

Thank you to everyone who participated! We’ll see you again in a few days! 

[klebdieblazer1982-blog]

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[suzanneshannon]

What is Developer Experience (DX)?

Developer Experience¹ is a term² that has one somewhat obvious meaning — the experience of developers — but it eludes definition in the sense that people invoke it at different times for different reasons referring to different things. For instance, our own Sarah Drasner’s current job title is “VP of Developer Experience” at Netlify. But a job title just one way the term is used. Let’s dig in a bit and apply it to the different ways people think about and use the term.

People think of specific companies.

I hear DX and Stripe together a lot. That makes sense. Stripe is a company almost exclusively for developers. They are serious about providing a good experience for their customers (developers), hence “developer experience.” Just listen to Suz Hinton talk about “friction journals”, which is this idea of using a product (like Stripe) and noting down every single little WTF moment, confusion, and frustration so that improvements can be made:

Netlify is like Stripe in this way, as is Heroku, CodePen, and any number of companies where the entire customer base is developers. For companies like this, it’s almost like DX is what user experience (UX) is for any other company.

People think of specific technologies.

It’s common to hear developer experience invoked when comparing technologies. For instance, some people will say that Vue offers a better developer experience than React. (I’m not trying to start anything, I don’t even have much of an opinion on this.) They are talking about things like APIs. Perhaps the state is more intuitive to manage in one vs. the other. Or they are talking about features. I know Vue and Svelte have animation helpers built-in while React does not. But React has hooks and people generally like those. These are aspects of the DX of these technologies.

Or they might be speaking about the feeling around the tools surrounding the core technology. I know create-react-app is widely beloved, but so is the Vue CLI. React Router is hugely popular, but Vue has a router that is blessed (and maintained) by the core team which offers a certain feeling of trust.

> vue create hello-world

> npx create-react-app my-app

I’m not using JavaScript frameworks/libraries as just any random example. I hear people talk about developer experience as it relates to JavaScript more than anything else — which could just be due to the people who are in my circles, but it feels notable.

People think of the world around the technology.

Everybody thinks good docs are important. There is no such thing as a technology that is better than another but has much worse docs. The one with the better docs is better overall because it has better docs. That’s not the technology itself; that’s the world around it.

Have you ever seen a developer product with an API, and when you view the docs for the API while logged in, it uses API keys and data and settings from your own account to demonstrate? That’s extraordinary to me. That feels like DX to me.

Airtable docs showing me API usage with my own data.

“Make the right thing easy,” notes Jake Dohm.

That word, easy, feels highly related to DX. Technologies that make things easy are technologies with good DX. In usage as well as in understanding. How easily (and quickly) can I understand what your technology does and what I can do with it?

What the technology does is often only half of the story. The happy path might be great, but what happens when it breaks or errors? How is the error reporting and logging? I think of Apollo and GraphQL here in my own experience. It’s such a great technology, but the error reporting feels horrendous in that it’s very difficult to track down even stuff like typos triggering errors in development.

What is the debugging story like? Are there special tools for it? The same goes for testing. These things are fundamental DX issues.

People think of technology offerings.

For instance, a technology might be “good” already. Say it has an API that developers like. Then it starts offering a CLI. That’s (generally) a DX improvement, because it opens up doors for developers who prefer working in that world and who build processes around it.

I think of things like Netlify Dev here. They already have this great platform and then say, here, you can run it all on your own machine too. That’s taking DX seriously.

One aspect of Netlify Dev that is nice: The terminal command to start my local dev environment across all my sites on Netlify, regardless of what technology powers them, is the same: netlify dev

Having a dedicated CLI is almost always a good DX step, assuming it is well done and maintained. I remember WordPress before WP-CLI, and now lots of documentation just assumes you’re using it. I wasn’t even aware Cloudinary had a CLI until the other day when I needed it and was pleasantly surprised that it was there. I remember when npm scripts started taking over the world. (What would npm be without a CLI?) We used to have a variety of different task runners, but now it’s largely assumed a project has run commands built into the package.json that you use to do anything the project needs to do.

Melanie Sumner thinks of CLIs immediately as core DX.

People think of the literal experience of coding.

There is nothing more directly DX than the experience of typing code into code editing software and running it. That’s what “coding” is and that’s what developers do. It’s no wonder that developers take that experience seriously and are constantly trying to improve it for themselves and their teams. I think of things like VS Code in how it’s essentially the DX of it that has made it so dominant in the code editing space in such a short time. VS Code does all kinds of things that developers like, does them well, does them fast, and allows for a very wide degree of customization.

TypeScript keeps growing in popularity no doubt in part due to the experience it offers within VS Code. TypeScript literally helps you code better by showing you, for example, what functions need as parameters, and making it hard to do the wrong thing.

Then there is the experience outside the editor, which in the browser itself. Years ago, I wrote Style Injection is for Winners where my point was, as a CSS developer, the experience of saving CSS code and seeing the changes instantly in the browser is a DX you definitely want to have. That concept continues to live on, growing up to JavaScript as well, where “hot reloading” is goosebump-worthy.

The difference between a poor developer environment (no IDE help, slow saves, manual refreshes, slow pipelines) and a great developer environment (fancy editor assistance, hot reloading, fast everything) is startling. It essentially makes you a better and more productive programmer.

People compare it to user experience (UX).

There is a strong negative connotation to DX sometimes. It happens when people blame it for it existing at the cost of user experience.

I think of things like client-side developer-only libraries. Think of the classic library that everyone loves to dunk: Moment.js. Moment allows you to manipulate dates in JavaScript, and is often used client-side to do that. Users don’t care if you have a fancy API available to manipulate dates because that is entirely a developer convenience. So, you ship this library for yourself (good DX) at the cost of slowing down the website (bad UX). Most client-side JavaScript is in this category.

Equally as often, people connect developer experience and user experience. If developers are empowered and effective, that will “trickle down” to produce good software, the theory goes.

Worst case, we’re in a situation where UX and DX are on a teeter totter. Pile on some DX and UX suffers on the other side. Best case, we find ways to disentangle DX and UX entirely, finding value in both and taking both seriously. Although if one has to win, certainly it should be the users. Like the HTML spec says:

In case of conflict, consider users over authors over implementors over specifiers over theoretical purity.

People think about time.

How long does a technology take to adopt? Good DX considers this. Can I take advantage of it without rewriting everything? How quickly can I spin it up? How well does it play with other technologies I use? What is my time investment?

This kind of thing makes me think of some recent experience with Cloudflare Workers. It’s really cool technology that we don’t have time to get all into right here, but suffice to say it gives you control over a website at a high level that we often don’t think about. Like what if you could manipulate a network request before it even gets to your web server? You don’t have to use it, but because of the level it operates on, new doors open up without caring about or interfering with whatever technologies you are using.

Not only does the technology itself position itself well, the DX of using it, while there are some rough edges, is at least well-considered, providing a browser-based testing environment.

A powerful tool with a high investment cost, eh, that’s cool. But a powerful tool with low investment cost is good DX.

People don’t want to think about it.

They say the best typography goes unnoticed because all you see is the actual thing it’s telling you. That can be true of developer experience. The best DX is that you never notice the tools because they just work.

Good DX is just being able to do your job rather than fight with tools. The tools could be your developer environment, it could be build tooling, it could be hosting stuff, or it could even be whatever APIs you are interfacing with. Is the API intuitive and helpful, or obtuse and tricky?

Feel free to keep going on this in the comments. What is DX to you?

Are we capitalizing Developer Experience? I’m just gonna go for it.

Looks like Michael Mahemoff has a decent claim on coining the term.

The post What is Developer Experience (DX)? appeared first on CSS-Tricks.

What is Developer Experience (DX)? published first on https://deskbysnafu.tumblr.com/

[placetobenation]

A lot has happened since we last met! First and foremost, we hope everyone out there in Place 2 Be Nation is safe and healthy. That’s what’s most important!

Now, as far as the WWE is concerned, there are various developments on many fronts. It’s been reported that the WWE has already taped all their programming through WrestleMania including the RAW and NXT after WrestleMania. That falls in line with the April 9th date that has the Performance Center closed by local officials in Orlando. The April 10th edition of SmackDown is also rumored to take place at the Performance Center as well.

The coronavirus has had many effects on the way to WrestleMania and now has impacted the card itself. According to various reports, Roman Reigns, citing health concerns and his battle with leukemia, has bowed out of his Universal Championship Match with Bill Goldberg.  The Miz, due to being sick, is out of his SmackDown tag team title match. Andrade has been replaced by Austin Theory, who will now team with Angel Garza against The Street Profits in the RAW Tag Team Title Match.

Things are VERY fluid these days in the WWE. Stay tuned as things could (and WILL) change over the next few days. We’ll have to see just how much that has leaked out comes to fruition or gets redone over the next 7 days.

Updated WrestleMania Card (as of 3/28/20 with reported changes):

WWE Championship: Brock Lesnar vs. Drew McIntyre

Universal Championship: Goldberg vs. Roman Reigns  Braun Strowman

Boneyard Match: The Undertaker vs. AJ Styles

Firefly Funhouse Match: John Cena vs. “The Fiend” Bray Wyatt

RAW Women’s Championship: Becky Lynch vs. Shayna Baszler

NXT Women’s Championship: Rhea Ripley vs. Charlotte Flair

SmackDown Women’s Championship – WrestleMania Fatal Five-Way Challenge Elimination Match: Bayley vs. Sasha Banks vs. Lacey Evans vs. Tamina vs. Naomi

Last Man Standing Match: Edge vs. Randy Orton

Kevin Owens vs. Seth Rollins

RAW Tag Team Championship: The Street Profits vs. Andrade Angel Garza & Austin Theory

Aleister Black vs. Bobby Lashley

Elias vs. King Corbin

Intercontinental Championship: Sami Zayn vs. Daniel Bryan

Otis vs. Dolph Ziggler

SmackDown Tag Team Championship Triple Threat Ladder Match: The Miz & John Morrison vs. The New Day vs. The Usos (possibly a 1-on-1-on-1 match with Morrison vs. one member of The Usos vs. one member of The New Day)

Not announced: Women’s Tag Team Championship Match – Kabuki Warriors (Asuka & Kairi Sane) vs. Alexa Bliss & Nikki Cross vs. ???

RAW

RESULTS

Andrade & Angel Garza defeated Cedric Alexander & Ricochet

Non-Title RAW Tag Team Championship Match: Champions The Street Profits defeated Shane Thorne & Brendan Vink

Aleister Black defeated Leon Ruff

Definitely, a different vibe with RAW tonight with the different camera angle. A more cozy look to the show helps. It was also good to see them finally acknowledge the “tough times” the Country is facing, something they didn’t address last week. It’s ok to be honest with the audience, we can take it.

A #LastManStandingMatch with @EdgeRatedR at #WrestleMania…@RandyOrton ACCEPTS!#RAW pic.twitter.com/EClUDXwjXH

— WWE (@WWE) March 24, 2020

As usual, the promo work from the likes of Paul Heyman, Seth Rollins and Randy Orton delivers home runs in pushing forward their respective matches for WrestleMania. I especially liked the mixing of video directly into Orton’s promo, a nice touch instead of just tossing to a video on the big screen.

What exactly is a Boneyard Match AJ Styles? I’m assuming it’s something to do with a cemetery, right? We’ll find out I’m sure over the next week what it will entail for The Undertaker. BTW: What is his fascination with Michelle McCool anyway?

Interesting that the WWE had chosen to give United State Champion Andrade and Angel Garza a tag team title match without really accomplishing anything as a tag team. But, at this point, it’s all about getting their top stars into matches for the two-day event. Now, with Andrade reportedly out, it’s NXT’s Austin Theory who will get the title chance with Angel Garza.

Also, interesting that they chose to use stars from EVOLVE and NXT in matches rather than current RAW talents. As we’ve said previously, they are taping a lot of content over the course of a few days to maximize time and talents with the coronavirus still spreading. So, it could be just that.

While addressing #WrestleMania, @QoSBaszler just got introduced to a steel chair by @BeckyLynchWWE!#RAW pic.twitter.com/rPeuw4c3jQ

— WWE (@WWE) March 24, 2020

BANG! How did that chair shot feel Shayna Baszler? The Man, Becky Lynch sure delivered a wallop there!

The team of @AndradeCienWWE & @AngelGarzaWwe is out to impress NEXT against @KingRicochet & @CedricAlexander on #Raw! pic.twitter.com/fPWboNXga8

— WWE (@WWE) March 24, 2020

Damn, Charley Caruso sure is getting a lot of airtime these days. What and when will we get a payoff with Angel Garza and “Chuck?”

Finally, continued good use of prior matches to push current stories ahead. The 2015 Royal Rumble match with Brock Lesnar defeating John Cena and Seth Rollins cements further the fact of how dominant he’s been for 18 years. Charlotte Flair’s streak-ending win over Asuka at WrestleMania 30 boosts her stock as well heading into her NXT Championship match with Rhea Ripley.

Overall, an enjoyable show considering the circumstances.

NXT

RESULTS

Tyler Breeze defeated Austin Theory

Killian Dain defeated Tehuti Miles

Cameron Grimes defeated Tony Nese

NXT Women’s Championship #1 Contender’s Ladder Match: Io Shirai defeated Aliyah

Oney Lorcan & Danny Burch defeated Shane Thorne & Brendan Vink

NXT Women’s Championship #1 Contender’s Ladder Match: Candice LeRae defeated Kayden Carter

Matt Riddle defeated Roderick Strong

On NXT, we get matches again after a week off for some really good storytelling. That definitely helped the ratings get back up with a big boost this past Wednesday night (nearly 669,000 after last week’s 500,000)

Two more additions for the #1 Contender’s Ladder Match as Io Shirai, subbing for an injured Xia Li, joins Candice LeRae for the right to face Rhea Ripley down the road.

Even though it backfired on Austin Theory, loved the use of Tyler Breeze’s cell phone in their match. It was a good back-and-forth between the two to start the night!

.@Malcolmvelli, what have you unleashed upon our #WWENXT Tag Team Division?

@SuperKingofBros pic.twitter.com/UvYvnmF5wP

— WWE NXT (@WWENXT) March 26, 2020

Matt Riddle gets the win over Roderick Strong before being taken out by the returning Malcolm Bivens and his new tag team, “the future of the NXT Tag Team Division.” Way to take advantage of Pete Dunne being stuck overseas!

Two weeks notice. Empty building, referee, @NXTCiampa, @JohnnyGargano. When it's over, it's 𝙊𝙑𝙀𝙍. #WWENXT @TripleH pic.twitter.com/9dNgz23QHs

— WWE NXT (@WWENXT) March 26, 2020

To cap the night, Triple H lays the edict down on Tommaso Ciampa and Johnny Gargano. They get one last match to end the feud. It’ll be in an empty arena with just a ref to say it’s over! Sounds like we will get one for the ages if their romp around the Performance Center last week is any indication.

Tick tock, @JohnnyGargano & @NXTCiampa…

#WWENXT pic.twitter.com/6PAXiYWt3G

— WWE NXT (@WWENXT) March 26, 2020

But, before they were done, Triple H, Ciampa and Gargano get interrupted to end the show with Tick. Tock. Apocalypse! Killer Kross is coming folks! It’s official! We can only hope that he brings Scarlett Bordeaux with him!

An entertaining show that definitely moved things forward. Quality stuff and some 205 Live mixed it to boot, thanks Tony Nese, even in defeat!

SMACKDOWN

RESULTS

Drew Gulak defeated Shinsuke Nakamura – Danial Bryan wins Intercontinental Championship Match vs. Sami Zayn at WrestleMania

Alexa Bliss defeated Asuka

The Usos vs. The New Day went to a no-contest when The Miz & John Morrison interfered – The Usos & The New Day win SmackDown Tag Team Championship Match at WrestleMania

Very surprised at how little things changed on SmackDown Friday night given the fact of how much we know things WILL change in regards of WrestleMania. It almost seemed like they were going out of there way not to admit things are changing. I would’ve been up front with it. We all know that COVID-19 has affected everything. They’ve yet to come right out and say it. Just do it!

We still got Triple H hyping up Roman Reigns and his match against Bill Goldberg for the Universal Championship. That came after a replay of Reigns beating Triple H back at WrestleMania 32 in Texas. We now all know that Reigns has bowed out of WrestleMania 36, but the WWE is still hyping the match. In fact, they doubled down after SmackDown by hyping a final confrontation between Reigns and Goldberg on next week’s show.

"Why do you keep hitting me?"#SmackDown @MichaelCole @NikkiCrossWWE pic.twitter.com/gqZC25lkTJ

— WWE (@WWE) March 28, 2020

They’re also still hyping a possible Women’s Tag Team Championship Match for Alexa Bliss & Nikki Cross against The Kabuki Warriors after Bliss beat Asuka Friday night in a fun match. Loved Nikki Cross on commentary too! Unpredictable is a good thing!

As for the Women’s Championship, the show opening promo-fest with Bayley, Sasha Banks, Lacey Evans, Naomi and Tamina was nothing short of predictable and did little to gain interest, IMHO.

We knew it was coming – Daniel Bryan gets his I-C Title shot against Sami Zayn after Drew Gulak took out Shinsuke Nakamura, with Bryan’s help.

What did @BaronCorbinWWE just do?! #SmackDown pic.twitter.com/PhekgVPuxK

— WWE on FOX (@WWEonFOX) March 28, 2020

A couple of things that bewildered me. First, how can Elias really compete at WrestleMania in a week after being thrown off a balcony by King Corbin? Seriously?!

NEXT WEEK on #SmackDown!@JohnCena @WWEBrayWyatt pic.twitter.com/xWXQ2wZQML

— WWE (@WWE) March 28, 2020

What exactly is a Firefly Funhouse Match? It sounds intriguing as hell, so I hope it delivers between The Fiend and John Cena.

With The Miz & John Morrison doing ringside commentary, do you really need a crowd to fill the noise? Damn, they are entertaining and non-stop!

Parting shots:

There’s plenty of wrestling on TV for the WWE before WrestleMania.

Sunday – 4:30pm ESPN – WWE Behind the Curtain

Sunday – 5:30pm ESPN – Ric Flair 30 for 30

Sunday – 7pm ESPN – WrestleMania 32 from Arlington, TX

Tuesday – 7pm FS1 – Royal Rumble 2020

Thanks for letting us share our thoughts! Shoot me an email at jcrowe567@gmail.com. We’d love to hear your comments and suggestions! You can also check out my blog, The Crowe’s Nest as we delve into more pro wrestling, sports entertainment and the World of Sports. My apologies ahead of time – I AM a Patriots and Red Sox fan! If you’re not down with that, I’ve got TWO WORDS for you… NEW ENGLAND!

[evanvanness]

Annotated edition, Week in Ethereum News, March 21, 2020 issue

Shill alert: Gitcoin’s 250k in matching grants is live.  My grant is here.  If you give because you particularly want the annotated edition to continue, could you add .11 to whatever you give?  eg, 1.11 DAI or .11 ETH or .01011 ETH.  The previous round went great but tracking what people like is hard.  

The $250k includes $100k for tech, 50k for media, and 100k for public health, mostly related to covid.  I’m curious as to how this goes - I find it very hard to evaluate the public health proposals, whereas Eth proposals are easy for me to evaluate.  I mostly know the people, I know the ideas, etc.  None of that is true for the public health category.   There’s an opportunity for someone knowledgeable to (anonmously?) evaluate all the applicants and shape what gets funded.  

Eth1

Latest core devs call. Tim Beiko’s notes.

Discussions (non-exhaustive list) about EIP inclusions in next hard fork: eip2537 (BLS12-381 curve precompile) final, so we can have eth2 light clients on eth1. eip2456 timestamp for scheduling instead of block number, eip2542 vs ungas, eip2046 reducing gas cost for static calls, and eip1962 generalized precompile

Geth v1.9.12 – eth_call no longer defaults to first account

Merry Go Round – an idea for syncing state, a la Bittorrent

Lots of talk in the core devs call about all the different EIPs being evaluated for the next fork.  

In some ways this week is a synopsis of what’s happening at the protocol layer: people are working on the things for the next fork and arguing over what should go in, as well as what is ready to go in.  The Geth team are chugging along keeping the majority of the network humming, and there is research and ideas being passed around about how to get the current Ethereum mainnet to be stateless.

Vitalik’s long-term roadmap below also does a good job of explaining the main things being worked on in eth1.   I wasn’t exactly sure where to put it, probably incorrectly chose to put it in eth2 since so many things are long-term.

One interesting thing to note is that this is Vitalik’s “personal” vision.  Of course most of it is not controversial, but he just did this by himself.  Does it mean that it is Ethereum’s roadmap?  No.  It means that Vitalik came up with it at some point and decided to publish it - it does not necessarily reflect what everyone thinks.  He didn’t build consensus, he just published what he was seeing on the day he wrote it down.  

I noticed plenty of misinformation about Vitalik’s roadmap, as if none of this will happen for a decade.  Quite the opposite is true: the top 2/3 of the page is being worked on right now.  The Beacon Chain of eth2 is still set to launch in the next few months. 

The bottom third of the graphic is much more speculative.  Polynomial commitments instead of state roots?  That just got published last week, that’s likely years away.   When CBC Casper?  I’m not sure but it’s not soon and the transition is far from clear - to me, anyway.  Perhaps Vlad would give you a different answer.

Eth2

Danny Ryan’s Eth2 update

Latest what’s new in Eth2

Prysmatic client update – stable testnet for a month (but to be rebooted to current spec), surround vote slashing

Tutorial to run your own Lighthouse testnet

Vitalik’s personal long-term ETH roadmap, beyond eth2

Mikhail Kalinin’s writeup of his eth1<>eth2 bridge idea

Sensor fusion for BFT clock sync. Alex Vlasov’s research on hardening timestamps

State transition in Eth2 explainer from Nethermind’s Sly Gryphon

How Eth2 improves on Eth1’s weaknesses from Prysmatic’s Ivan Martinez

Gitcoin playlist of short eth2 explainer videos

I know probably no one else sees the order of things when I try to order things properly.  So here’s who it went: Danny’s update was high-level.  Ben’s was a bit more in the weeds.  Even further into the weeds is client update and “run your own testnet node.”  Then we got into Vitalik’s roadmap, which bridged the current eth2 with the future work.   So then we got writeups of research like eth1/eth2 merge, hardening timestaps, before getting into a few explainers that were a bit more for broader audience.

The ordering flowed perfectly in my mind, but probably only in mine!

Layer2

Why iden3 is using zk-rollup for universal identities

Having been using Loopring’s exchange running on zk-rollup, gotta say: it’s a great experience.  It’s like using a centralized exchange, only it’s a dex.

Stuff for developers

Solidity v0.5.17 (last?) release of 0.5.x (since 0.6 is out) disallowing overriding of private functions

TenderlyPro released – simulate txs, advanced analytics, debugging

Debugging transactions with Buidler and Truffle

Subspace v2, much easier to track events in React.

A demo on observing Defi with Subspace

svm: Solidity version manager

Choose how many IPFS replications you want pinned in each region with Pinata

Austin Griffith video on gas limits and gas prices

Intro to Eth for Python devs using web3py

Compare Eth API performance with the Versus tool

Tutorial on Ethereum RPCs, methods and calls in Infura

Mahesh Murthy updated his famous “Full Stack Hello World Voting Ethereum Dapp Tutorial” to use current libraries

Guide to building a margin trading platform on 0x

A quick start guide for devs to borrowing assets from Compound

Solidity went back to the v0.5 series to fix a bug that not everyone agrees is a bug!

Meanwhile, lots of interesting tools and tutorials this week, I suppose they all speak for themselves.  I thought it was neat that Infura released a tool to let you compare API performance.  Nice little bit of subtle bragging.

Ecosystem

A taxonomy of the advantages/disadvantages of different types of Eth wallets

How do we better onboard newcomers to Ethereum?

Custom text records on ENS

Onboarding newcomers is something I’ve been thinking about lately, and was tangential to my EthCC talk, which that post references.   Community has decentralized, which is good, but also poses some challenges.  A good portion of people who think of themselves as “Eth community” get their news from publications which are outright clickbait or have historically not done a very good job at ascertaining facts.  Still churning over this one, should probably turn some of my talk into a series of blog posts myself.

Someone at EthCC told me that they summarized my talk as “Make r/ethereum great again,” which is fair.  Yet while I continue to put a decent amount of time into r/ethereum, it’s not crystal clear whether we should try to revive it to be the main community discussion point.  For one thing, the existing rule is that it’s English-only, which feels unfair, but perhaps necessary for moderation purposes.  Can Reddit be the main ecosystem gathering point?  Do we need new tools?  Should they be web3-friendly sites, or should we keep Reddit as something that new people can find?  

Enterprise

Baseline Protocol is now open source, a common system of record between enterprises

“blockchain will do, for networks of companies and business ecosystems, what ERP did for the single enterprise” – Paul Brody, Cornell Blockchain interview

Resolving key considerations for blockchain connectivity with PegaSys Orchestrate

Hyperledger Besu v1.4.1

First public meeting of EEA’s mainnet working group scheduled for April 3

EY and Brody have made a big bet on mainnet, and it appears to be paying off.   In his interview, he framed the competition as between public mainnet and private chains, as EY is far ahead in expertise of using mainnet.  

It was also super interesting to get some of the backstory that led to the IBM/Samsung washing machine in 2014.

Governance, DAOs, and standards

Technical overview of Vocdoni’s anonymous voting system

The two token structure of SingularDTV’s SnglsDAO

Application layer

USDC added as collateral for Maker to help restore DAI to 1:1 parity with USDC and more Dai liquidity in liquidation auctions and MKR auctions. In Maker parlance, liquidation auctions are flips, and MKR auctions to cover system deficit are flops

flops.live to track the MKR auctions

Backstop syndicate is live. Pool your DAI to buy MKR at a favorable price, if an auction should drop that low

NexusMutual declined claims from Maker liquidated auctions since smart contract cover doesn’t include the risk that only one bot bids on the auction

DeFiSaver and liquidated auctions, the oracle delay was a problem but did 12500 ETH worth of Aave flash loan volume over 4000 transactions

Also check out Covalent if you need advanced notification as a user

Balancer’s 80/20 liquidity pools

Making requests on ErasureBay

OpenLaw: smart clauses for digital legal agreements

Depending on how you count, DeFi was 5 or 7 out of 9 bullet points.  That’s my running tracker that I like to occasionally check on.

Backstop was a very cool community effort.  Love to see that people get together to make sure the system functions - and they were also incentivized to do so.  

Tokens/Business/Regulation

Microsponsors: mint and auction your time as NFTs on a 0x market

Making sense of synthetic assets on Ethereum

Ryan Sean Adams on Covid-19 and crypto

Capital markets meltdown signals the birth of DeFi

Jonathan Joseph’s piece on how Black Thursday is the beginning of the DeFi area would have made the #Mostclicked if I’d tweeted it out just a bit later. 

General

AZTEC’s Plookup tables for faster SNARK verification of digital signatures

Using machine learning classifiers and SNARKs to detect improper video transcoding in Livepeer

Benchmarking performance of Rescue and Poseidon hash functions vs MiMC

ICL paper says bZx flash loan attackers left money on the table

NYT’s Nathaniel Popper reports on how the lead dev of Venezuela’s Petro scam got screwed

The NYT on how the Venezuelan kleptocrats screwed the dev is the epitome of something-we-all-saw-coming, which you already knew if you’ve read the newsletter for a long time.  I got criticism from a bunch of different corners (”oh that’s because you’re an American,” “you can’t say that, people will think it represents us,” etc) for calling the Petro a scam when it was announced, and I ignored it.  I don’t know why you got into this space, but I didn’t get into it to help kleptocrat leftist authoritarians.  

Meanwhile, lots of cool stuff in SNARKs, including in Livepeer about how they might be able to detect improper transcoding.  

Finally, Cristian Espinoza translated last week’s annotated edition into Spanish, which to my knowledge is the first time that the annotated edition has been translated.  Very cool, and support his Gitcoin grant for more translations!

I’ll add the #mostclicked here.  Amusingly I had some maxis spreading more lies about me this week because my tweets auto-delete.  So here’s a screenshot since that’s more durable than linking to a tweet