akavel's digital garden
âHow do we make remote meetings not suck?â (via) Hints on how to use moderation in meetings to solve caucus problem.
⧠2024-07-14âHands Free RPGâ by Eric W. Lund (via) â a short, free solo RPG for playing purely in your head (no dice required). The core brilliant innovations: ⶠâStroke-countingâ 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. â· âWordleâ 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. âž Borrowed from Diedream: âRapid Associationsâ 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: â), â use the final, ~fifth word. (TIL: the pattern of five dots arranged as on a die â is called quincunx!)
⧠2024-07-13âIronsworn is not about simulating a world, itâs about simulating a story. This is important. (âŠ) 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, itâs not because the cliff was very high, itâs 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 thatâs why youâll always have the option to Face Danger and catch a branch midfall and miraculously save the day. (âŠ) 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 thereâs an entire battle against a fortress thatâs given but one line.â (via)
⧠2024-07-11âOpen Decision-Makingâ, by John Ousterhout (via, via, via). How to âmake the best possible decision, (âŠ) do it efficiently, (âŠand) get buy-in for implementation.â
⧠2024-06-17
â7 Approaches to Journaling in Solo Roleplaying Gamesâ, by Man Alone. This video was transformative to me, in how it helped me âovercome the humpâ in solo roleplaying, loosen some anxiousness that I âmust do it some specific wayâ I had in my mind.
⧠2024-06-15
âA Guide to Undefined Behavior in C and C++, Part 1â & Part 2 & Part 3 by John Regehr, and âFalsehoods programmers believe about undefined behaviorâ (via, via).
⧠2024-06-07âWriting commit messagesâ (via) by Simon Tatham.
⧠2024-05-20âWhy you donât need flake-utilsâ plus âNix flake architecture in practiceâ (both via).
⧠2024-05-16âLeaving Rust gamedev after 3 yearsâ (via).
⧠2024-04-27âPrefer Rust to C/C++ for new codeâ (via). Also, maybe then âLearn Rust the Dangerous Wayâ.
⧠2024-04-25âThe Rust compiler isnât slow; we areâ (via). TL;DR: try using
⧠2024-04-25cargo tree
, cargo-bloat, and âdependenciesâ 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.DIY radar on the cheap (via, via, via); see also: âHeartbeat detection with radarâ (via).
⧠2024-04-05simonwillison.net/tags/sqlite/ & simonwillison.net/2023/Dec/8/weeknotes/ & simonwillison.net/2023/Sep/4/llm-embeddings/ (via) â reminds me a lot of one (now defunct) blog from which I got the âviaâ links idea.
⧠2024-04-04âSaved by NixOS Integration Tests, Surprisinglyâ (via)
⧠2024-03-02âOn Light, Colors, Mixing Paints, and Numerical Optimization.â (via)
⧠2024-02-27âFruglyâ: display the following banner: âThis is a free/unregistered/trial account/version [of an app/service]. Register/subscribe for $xyz to remove this ugly message.â (via, via). Previous art: Total Commander. (Note: TotalCmd then adds a âRegistered for [John Smith]â-like message which is nice. Contrast this with otherwise awesome Calibre which does not.)
⧠2024-02-26In Google maps, tap the GPS-identified âblue dotâ on the map, pick âCalibrate with live viewâ, scan the surroundings with the phoneâs camera (via, via).
⧠2024-02-26âDuplication is better than the wrong abstractionâ (via, via)
⧠2024-02-21
"The RISKS Digest. Forum on Risks to the Public in Computers and Related Systems" (1st issue from 1985, and still going strong).
⧠2024-01-31
âThe poet Paul ValĂ©ry once said that poems are only abandoned, never finished. Iâm realizing that every project has a point where the creator, no matter how unsatisfied, has to stop iterating and decide to put what theyâve made out into the world. And itâs always a compromise, because they know every little flaw about the thing theyâre makingâ (via)
⧠2023-12-19
typelit.io (via): a website to practice typing text (e.g. on a new ergo keyboard) by retyping entire novels.
⧠2023-11-02
In Firefox, entering
⧠2023-09-12about:config
, then enablingbrowser.urlbar.suggest.calculator
(via) makes it show results of math expressions typed into URL bar.
đż budding â maturing works that I have spent considerable time and energy cultivating but have not finished. They are teenagers who have outgrown their seedling status and may someday grow into ripe;
đł ripe â complete works that I have edited and published as a cohesive whole. They are similar to a traditional blog post published at a point in time in that wayâthough I still tend these over time;
â thanks to petemillspaugh for this categorization.