akavel's digital garden

“What I Wish I Knew As A Young Artist” (youtube).

• @snip

“A simple watercolor palette for beginners (and experts)”. Spelled out as Winsor & Newton brand colors, plus their universal pigment names: ☛ cyan: Winsor Blue (green shade) PB15:3 a.k.a. Phthalocyanine Blue; ☛ magenta: Quinacridone Magenta PR122; ☛ yellow: Winsor Yellow PY154 a.k.a. Azo Yellow Light a.k.a. Benzimidazolone Yellow; ☛ black: Payne’s Gray PB15+PBk6+PV19.  Extra colors for extreme cases - forming a kind of a modified “split primary” palette in the end: ☛ black: “Lunar Black” from Daniel Smith PBk11; ☛ green: Winsor Green (yellow shade) PG36; ☛ violet/purple: Winsor Blue (red shade) PB15:1; ☛ red: Cadmium Red Medium PR108.  Note: those are mostly staining colors, which reportedly has a number of advantages, but also results in less “typical watercolors texture”.  Some deeper exploration with some scientific background as well at: “Watercolor Palette Building III: Choosing a CMY Primary Triad” and the connected playlist.

• @snip

“The difference between undefined behavior and ill-formed C++ programs” (via). See also especially muvlon’s rant in the discussion on lobste.rs.

• @cpp
• @prog
• @snip

Some thoughts for “overcoming the hump” in solo RPGs: ☛ “Less is more.” (via) Basically, I interpret it as to consider reducing the notes, minimizing the bullet points, to reduce the ratio of writing vs. imagination and memory, and to reduce the weight of the notes. Also: ☛ “a 3:1 ratio [time limit:] I give myself 3 hours to stare at one spot on the wall and do absolutely nothing ‘or’ 1 hour of play time. No looking around the room, no letting your mind wander, just focus on the spot. Let your mind blank out. Don’t think about all the other things you could be doing right now, if something comes into your mind, push it out and focus on the spot. The only thing you are allowed to think is: I can stare at this spot on the wall or I can play. During this time you won’t allow yourself to feel bad about doing nothing. If you do nothing the whole three hours and don’t play at all, that is ok. You’re not going to feel bad about it. Allow yourself to be bored. It usually takes me between 5 & 10 minutes of doing nothing before I start to play and have a wonderful time. I also find that I spend way more time playing than the 1 hour ratio limit I impose on myself.” (via) Also: ☛ “Play one-shots [ - ] that’s good enough. [None of my short nor long stories] started with the idea of a grand campaign.” (via)

• @ironsworn
• @snip
• @solo

“How do we make remote meetings not suck?” (via) Hints on how to use moderation in meetings to solve caucus problem.

• @psych
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“Hands Free RPG” by Eric W. Lund (via) — a short, free solo RPG for playing purely in your head (no dice required). The core brilliant innovations: ❶ “Stroke-counting” as a technique for generating a random roll, up to d10: think of a random word or phrase, then imagine writing it with a pen/pencil, and count the number of strokes you make; for a d10, wrap around back to 1 after reaching 10. ❷ “Wordle” as a technique for generating a random word oracle: think of a word (can be related to the asked question), then try to find another word while: keeping one letter of the original at the same position, and one other letter at a possibly different position. ❸ Borrowed from Diedream: “Rapid Associations” as a technique for generating a random word oracle: quickly think of some related word, then again of a word related to that new word, repeat in sequence ~four times (can count on one hand fingers for a slightly less hands-free experience, or imagine jumping five pips of a die face for a visual aid: ⚄), — use the final, ~fifth word. (TIL: the pattern of five dots arranged as on a die ⚄ is called quincunx!)

• @rpg
• @snip

“Ironsworn is not about simulating a world, it’s about simulating a story. This is important. (…) It is about story simulation: simulating the high and lows of a story as you could read in a book. If a character falls from a cliff and takes damage, it’s not because the cliff was very high, it’s because the story required a setback, a dramatic tension to be built so that the spectator would halt their breath and wonder if this is where it ends. And that’s why you’ll always have the option to Face Danger and catch a branch midfall and miraculously save the day. (…) And we can even find examples of this in literature: consider the book series The Black Company where pages upon pages are dedicated to a card game while there’s an entire battle against a fortress that’s given but one line.” (via)

• @ironsworn
• @snip

“Open Decision-Making”, by John Ousterhout (via, via, via). How to “make the best possible decision, (…) do it efficiently, (…and) get buy-in for implementation.”

• @psych
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“7 Approaches to Journaling in Solo Roleplaying Games”, by Man Alone. This video was transformative to me, in how it helped me “overcome the hump” in solo roleplaying, loosen some anxiousness that I “must do it some specific way” I had in my mind.

• @ironsworn
• @snip
• @solo

“A Guide to Undefined Behavior in C and C++, Part 1” & Part 2 & Part 3 by John Regehr, and “Falsehoods programmers believe about undefined behavior” (via, via).

• @cpp
• @prog
• @snip

“Writing commit messages” (via) by Simon Tatham.

• @git
• @snip

“Why you don’t need flake-utils” plus “Nix flake architecture in practice” (both via).

• @READ
• @nix
• @snip

“Understanding the neuroscience behind burnout” (via)

• @psych
• @snip

“Leaving Rust gamedev after 3 years” (via).

• @rust
• @snip

“Prefer Rust to C/C++ for new code” (via). Also, maybe then “Learn Rust the Dangerous Way”.

• @rust
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“The Rust compiler isn’t slow; we are” (via). TL;DR: try using cargo tree, cargo-bloat, and “dependencies” stats on lib.rs to replace dependencies with simpler ones; e.g. maybe gumdrop is enough vs. clap for args parsing, and nom vs. lalrpop for parser generator.

• @rust
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DIY radar on the cheap (via, via, via); see also: “Heartbeat detection with radar” (via).

• @diy
• @snip

simonwillison.net/tags/sqlite/ & simonwillison.net/2023/Dec/8/weeknotes/ & simonwillison.net/2023/Sep/4/llm-embeddings/ (via) — reminds me a lot of one (now defunct) blog from which I got the “via” links idea.

• @inspiration
• @snip

“Saved by NixOS Integration Tests, Surprisingly” (via)

• @nix
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“I have to keep reminding myself that the only person I have to entertain in a solo RPG is myself. Who cares if it’s cliche or not a great story or has some flat characters? Who cares if I spend an entire session ruminating about my PC’s morals or simply talking to myself about the game world instead of pushing the adventure forward? Those kinds of things may not work in group play, but if they’re fun for me, then that’s all that really matters.” — from u/ctalbot76 (via)

• @rpg
• @snip
• @solo

“On Light, Colors, Mixing Paints, and Numerical Optimization.” (via)

• @snip

“Frugly”: display the following banner: “This is a free/unregistered/trial account/version [of an app/service]. Register/subscribe for $xyz to remove this ugly message.” (via, via). Previous art: Total Commander. (Note: TotalCmd then adds a “Registered for [John Smith]”-like message which is nice. Contrast this with otherwise awesome Calibre which does not.)

• @snip

In Google maps, tap the GPS-identified “blue dot” on the map, pick “Calibrate with live view”, scan the surroundings with the phone’s camera (via, via).

• @snip
• @til

“Duplication is better than the wrong abstraction” (via, via)

• @snip

"The RISKS Digest. Forum on Risks to the Public in Computers and Related Systems" (1st issue from 1985, and still going strong).

• @prog
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“The poet Paul Valéry once said that poems are only abandoned, never finished. I’m realizing that every project has a point where the creator, no matter how unsatisfied, has to stop iterating and decide to put what they’ve made out into the world. And it’s always a compromise, because they know every little flaw about the thing they’re making” (via)

• @snip

typelit.io (via): a website to practice typing text (e.g. on a new ergo keyboard) by retyping entire novels.

• @ergo
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In Firefox, entering about:config, then enabling browser.urlbar.suggest.calculator (via) makes it show results of math expressions typed into URL bar.

• @snip
• @til

Verify if all tests compile successfully: go test -exec echo ./…

• @go
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