Updated May 30, 2025

Works in progress ----------------- I haven’t published yet—that’s coming soon—but I’ve written a bunch of short fiction and have a couple novellas in the pipe. Briarcliff ---------- `Working title // Final draft` A moody horror short about one man’s desperate sacrifice to a prehistoric supernatural force. This piece is an experiment in narrative by elision, drawing inspiration from video games’ heavy use of environmental storytelling. Crossroads ---------- `Working title // In progress` A hopecore novella about a down-on-her-luck artist who takes a job at a supernatural boutique. The shop is a community for outcasts: an immortal, curmudgeonly bookseller; a neurotic fire sprite; a pair of klutzy sibling witches; and one exhausted manager somehow holding it all together, despite the sins of the shop’s demonic angel investor. The vibes are cozy, and our artist finds family and community there, but Crossroads also holds a secret—_we don’t talk about the hellmouth in the basement_—and that secret could threaten everything. The Blizzard ------------ `Working title // In progress` Shiloh loved nothing more than the thrill of the open road, but the sirens giving chase from behind and the black blizzard looming ahead were a bit more thrilling than she’d bargained for. The Deep -------- `Working title // Temporarily shelved` A cosmic horror story about a deep sea salvage dive that encounters a threat beyond human understanding, and a secret organization that will do anything to keep that threat hidden. This piece is a claustrophobic katabasis into the deep, filled with interpersonal tension, existential dread, and even (somehow) malevolent mathematics. Tribute ------- `Working title // In Progress` A grim supernatural flash in which a traitor meets his diabolical fate. This piece was written for an upcoming live reading.

Updated May 30, 2025

kill the metrics in your head ----------------------------- May 30, 2025 • 1,885 words Get in, loser, we’re doing an old-fashioned conversation-by-blog-post. Dan Sinker wrote recently about the _Who Cares Era_: > The writer didn’t care. The supplement’s editors didn’t care. The biz people on both sides of the sale of the supplement didn’t care. The production people didn’t care. And, the fact that it took _two days_ for anyone to discover this epic fuckup in print means that, ultimately, the reader didn’t care either. > > It’s so emblematic of the moment we’re in, the Who Cares Era, where completely disposable things are shoddily produced for people to mostly ignore. Then Les Orchard wrote in response that _Only the Metrics Care_: > The user isn’t the customer. And they’re not the product either. The real product is behavioral optimization—metrics on a dashboard. The paying customer is somewhere else entirely, and the “content” is just a means to nudge behavior and juice KPIs. > > … > > The point isn’t to communicate. It’s to simulate relevance in order to optimize growth. It’s all goal-tracking, A/B tests, fake doors, and dark patterns. Both of those posts are great and you should read them, but reading them is not a prerequisite to reading this one. I just wanted to place this post in context of the conversation I’m dropping into. continue reading → manifesto for the toronto that could be --------------------------------------- May 05, 2025 • 859 words Some of you know me because of a daily political newsletter project I ran in 2017-2018 centered on American politics. I am eight years older and wiser, with much more clever and original ideas, so I come to you now with a new project: a _weekly_ political newsletter slash website centered on _Toronto_. The project is called Show Up Toronto, and it launches today. The scope may be smaller geographically but it’s not any less ambitious, just more focused. My current goal is to aggregate public organizing, mutual aid, and advocacy events from around the city, so that it’s easier to discover how to get involved in organizing even if you’re not already plugged into the right social media circles. I am also actively interviewing organizers in the city for a related research project, and if you are an organizer in Toronto I would love to hear from you. On the advice of a smart friend, I wrote a manifesto for the project to serve as my own north star, which I’m reposting below. I think it’ll be clarifying and engaging even for people who don’t live in Toronto. If you do, sign up for the newsletter or RSS feed and tell your friends. continue reading → the values of work ------------------ November 27, 2024 • 5,944 words In October I gave a talk at Monktoberfest in Portland, Maine, a small and intimate tech conference with a big impact in the industry. It’s quite unlike any other conference I’ve been to, which is explicitly the point. I’d been hearing about the conference from friends for years, and it somehow still managed to exceed all my lofty expectations. Monktoberfest asks that your talk be something you wouldn’t be able to hear at any other conference. Mine was about values and how they show up at work and what happens when there is a gap between your stated and enacted values. It’s a theme that percolates through a lot of my writing and something I’ve spent many sleepless nights ruminating on, and giving this talk to such a receptive, empathetic, and compassionate audience was incredibly meaningful to me. You can watch the talk here: Seeing as I am personally allergic to watching any YouTube videos longer than five minutes unless I absolutely have to, I’ve also included a lightly edited version of the text of the talk below. continue reading → here we go again ---------------- November 06, 2024 • 740 words I feel objectively worse than I did in 2016. We have so much more information about how bad things are going to get now, and the fascists have had eight more years to prepare for how to roll out cruelty en masse on day one. We have so much less slack in ameliorating the worst impacts of climate change, after yet another eight years of inaction. I’m terrified. continue reading → modernity is stupid: a rant not about politics ---------------------------------------------- November 05, 2024 • 1,765 words Omnivore is a read-later app. You know, one of those things that lets you save interesting articles you encounter throughout the day and the service will go crawl the page and download the content in a nice readable format and zap it to whatever device you wanted to zap it to, so that later when you’re not anxiously toggling between the same seven feed aggregators for fifteen seconds at a time, like maybe you’re waiting in line in the grocery store and you can’t do the NYT mini because they’re on strike and you don’t cross picket lines and god forbid you have a single second of mental silence, you can open the app and begrudgingly educate yourself on something that you alleged wanted to learn about at some point in time. continue reading →

Updated May 30, 2025

Articles  --------- * Why Firefox named that file 3870112724rsegmnoittet-es.sqlite 2025/05/30 * Cross-Origin-Embedder-Policy 2025/05/28 * Readme banner sizing 2025/05/18 * One student’s search history that the world downloaded 1,122,083 times last week 2025/03/22 * Not having to see Ghostscript’s fonts 2025/03/21 * Emoji metrics 2024/12/31 * 14 complaints about 11 implementations of netcat 2024/12/12 * macOS user IDs 2024/11/18 * Android itself surviving Android 15 edge-to-edge enforcement (for View dinosaurs) 2024/11/14 * Backing up your Firefox Nightly profile on Android 2024/11/13 * Resources in Diablo 4, a 40-hour impression 2024/09/01 * Animals rampaging in town, unusually large ones (please help) 2024/08/06 * Google product icons converted from polar coordinates 2024/07/13 * A playable game ad 2024/07/11 * The “incorrect hash in some cases” fixed in js-sha512 v0.9.0 2024/04/17 * Having Someone in your Replit editor 2024/03/12 * Values that you can call JSON 2024/02/17 * Receiving a truncated HTTP response in Node.js 2024/01/21 * Replacing WeTTY on Glitch 2023/08/19 * Emoji suggestions 2023/05/03 * Names for require(‘child\_process’) 2023/03/19 * AsyncGeneratorFunction objects in JavaScript 2023/03/18 * Those double colon thingies in GitHub Actions 2023/02/10 * Firefox network monitor columns 2022/10/19 * The uncoolness of CacheStorage 2022/09/18 * Ubuntu flavors installer sizes 2022/09/08 * Progress towards changing your desktop wallpaper without installing a karaoke captioning library 2022/09/07 * One time when it really was a Docker command quoting issue 2022/08/24 * Compressing floats 2022/07/05 * Resources in Diablo Immortal 2022/06/16 * A dream I had (2013) 2022/05/10 * Little stories for every function key 2022/04/20 * What “\[S\]” means in sbt’s dependencyTree output 2022/04/13 * A kitchen without “finally” blocks 2022/03/31 * Hydra (Diablo 3 Season 25), simplified 2022/01/16 * What it was like to play Ragnarok Online as a computer scientist 2021/12/15 * The privileged daemon that used shell-quote 2021/11/10 * Set item drops in Division 2, Tom Clancy’s The 2021/11/10 * Firefox Multi-Account Containers now needing permission to “Exchange messages with programs other than Firefox” 2021/11/02 * Exploiting CVE-2021-42740 2021/10/28 * Command injection through shell-quote 2021/10/24 * The elevated daemon that imported Git projects for you and how it went wrong 2021/10/10 * User identity leak on Glitch 2021/10/06 * Google Meet buttons 2021/07/30 * Glitter text 2021/04/25 * Default branches at work 2021/04/12 * Cloud services, winter 2021 2021/02/22 * U.S.-Distribution-of-Wealth Stuf Oreos 2020/10/02 * “A resource failed to call close.” 2020/08/12 * Root access on Glitch 2020/08/10 * Firebase Messaging open source license 2020/08/03 * Auto-indenting code blocks in GitHub comments 2020/07/17 * Resources in Diablo 3 2020/03/08 * The reason you need to install a karaoke captioning library if you want to change your desktop wallpaper 2020/02/18 * vmstat(8) swap unit 2020/01/26 * Brands in the bathroom 2020/01/22 * Pandora’s track title display 2020/01/05 * How Jekyll checks if a link is valid 2020/01/04 * Which emoji scissors close 2020/01/02 * Android Studio’s “Code contains easter egg” inspection 2019/11/16 * Rasterization of coincident edges 2019/11/05 * The essence of anticipation (2016) 2019/11/02 * How IntelliJ determines if it can create a desktop entry 2019/10/31 * How IntelliJ IDEA installs shellcheck 2019/09/09 * Highlight All in Firefox 65 2019/03/02 * Writing a ProxyCommand for SSH 2018/03/18 * Windows disk space requirements 2018/03/15 * The SSH protocol 2018/02/27 * Firebase Messaging license 2018/02/24 * build\_file\_checksums.ser 2018/02/17 * Google AMP from the other side 2018/02/06 * Uninstalling extraneous language optional features on Windows 10 2017/12/28 * Subduing Windows machinations with Resource Monitor 2017/12/14 * Those pound sign thingies in Rust 2017/11/28 * Working with TensorFlow checkpoints 2017/09/07 * How to get SLF4J to just work 2017/08/30 * Transparency effects in Windows 2017/08/25 * NullPointerException in getNavigationBarView 2017/08/22 * Time zones in Jekyll on Ruby 2.4 2017/08/21 * History navigation in Safari 2017/07/27 * How to complete a filename in Bash 2017/05/07 * Highlight All in Firefox 2017/03/09 * Why my monitor went black 2017/02/08 * Lift to check phone 2017/01/19 * Cloud services, winter 2017 2017/01/05 * Ambient display 2016/12/23 * That thing you saw when you upgraded apt and SHA1 hashes stopped working 2016/12/06 * Potluck 2016/11/30 * Hunk editing in git checkout –patch 2016/07/03 * Cloud services, summer 2016 2016/07/02 * Android Doze inconveniences 2016/06/30 * Disposal 2016/06/12 * The awkward browsing game 2015/11/22 * Transferring your Firefox profile 2015/11/10 * Relinquishing control with suborigins 2015/10/25 * Extension signing requirements for Firefox 2015/10/14 * A new feature for this site 2015/10/14 * GitHub’s online editing tools 2015/10/11 * Modifying other people’s Ruby gems 2015/10/10 * Meteor stuff 2015/10/10 * Windows+D 2015/10/10

Updated May 29, 2025

_Last updated: 12:50am - May 29, 2025_ * Live update coming your way straight from Web Summit Vancouver 2025. It’s a gorgeous day ☀️ and you can really feel the buzz in the air! * What's up? 2 things... 1) Building a creative collective teaming up with startups and experimenting on our own stuff. Let’s see what takes off! * 2) Advising businesses with marketing, product, GTM, PMM, hiring, etc.. * Areas of play: consumer ai, future of self (transition tools, revenue generation, imagination engines, and flow) A few photos from my camera roll. It's been sunny. Builder to Builder: Weekly Insights on Growth, Products, and the Founder Journey --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Updated May 29, 2025

### now what lawrence is up to 29 May 2025 right now I’m… -------------- * feeling embarrased at how long it’s been since i updated this page! * doing very intermittent work still working on self-publishing my first book (with the infinitely useful support of the DIY-ish package from dynamic image publishing) * getting ready for a lovely and wild late spring/summer/fall of travel and facilitation (VT, ME, paris, kenya, etc.) * taking the spring 2025 IFS online circle Older Newer **What's a now page?**

Updated May 27, 2025

Hi, I'm Jefklak/Wouter and you're looking at _Jefklak's Codex_, a dedicated and highly opinionated website about nostalgic games. The word **nostalgic** should be emphasized here. I grew up with a Game Boy clutched in my hands and PC RPG games burnt into my retina. That healthy cocktail left a lasting impression—and netted me the Codex (and glasses). If you found this website amusing and/or helpful, you can buy me a coffee via Ko-Fi or via PayPal—if you don’t mind I’ll use it to drink tea instead. I also like to hear your feedback via e-mail: say hello. We retro fans have to stick together you know! ### About the Rating System Inspired by the review methodologies of _GoodReads_ and _EuroGamer_ , I award each game a simple and obviously subjective score between 1 (very bad) and 5 (very good). They have the following meaning: Examples of bad to amazing games can be found while browsing all games and sorting these using the “Rating” button. Alternatively, browse the Codex **Top 100 Best Games Of All Time** to marvel at exceptional examples of great to amazing games. The criteria for compiling the list is described as well. * * * Site History ------------ The Codex has a long history, I’ve always felt the need to proclaim my definitive game of each generation. If you want to have some fun (you should have got some by now), try strolling through the _Codex Museum_: The number of attempts to constantly reinvent the site dropped dramatically when I got a job in 2007. The Wordpress migration didn’t see much new content and the Codex gradually faded out of my mind. For some strange reason Jefklak.com now is a place where one can buy hunting rifles. As an integral part of my main ’think tank’, Brain Baking, I felt the need to revive the (carefully or carelessly) written articles on the games I still love so much. I might even waste a few more sentences on them in the near future. You can read my intentions from 2005 down below. I don’t really care if it’s still relevant. Let’s just preserve that text as a part of the nostalgic feel. * * * ### Why this website? This website offers RPG players some in-depth guides and walktroughs on certain character/class choices in both old and new PC roleplaying games. The first purpose of the website is to inform players who are already familiar with those games about techniques or special ways to play trough the games. People who are unsure which class to pick, which path to choose, could check the guides and read my personal experiences with the game. All articles are based upon my personal experience with the games! This means some information may or may not be accurate. Please contact me if you notice any odds. Some tips have been copied over from other persons, with their permission. If you feel I’ve ruthly copied something without your knowledge, please let me know! The second purpose of the website is to encourage players who are new to the cRPG genre to enjoy one of the finest, best told and greatest experiences I’ve ever had with these games. The game reviews mostly include a lot of screenshots and even gameplay movies to further encourage players to pick up the game and actually try it instead of ignoring them. Most games by Troika Games and Sir-Tech did not generally sell well and both companies ended up broke. Those not-so-popular games do not get the wanted attention, and I’ll try to change that by adding a few more articles about them. ### Why those sucky games and not l33t game x? Like I said before, most nowadays ’l33t’ games (too popular shooters) are published by gigantic companies like EA with enough budget to fully advertise the games. Game development studios who produce smaller budget ‘kult’ roleplaying games, generally more disliked games, mostly end up dead because of the poor sales rates. Add to that list New World Computing and Black Isle Studios. Blame Interplay… How many of the games in this list are familiar to you? How many of those did you actually try to play? * Jagged Alliance 2 * Fallout * Icewind Dale * Baldurs Gate 2 * Might & Magic VII * Arcanum * Wizardry 8 * Lionheart * Wizards & Warriors * … Most gamers who tried to play the demo (the bad part of the full game, mostly) despise them because of the ‘sucky graphics’ and too complicated design. For example, in Arcanum you’ll be instantly overwhelmed by the character creation choices. That is, again, one of the reasons why you are here, I hope. By all means, check out my tips & tricks, and hopefully they’ll be helpful. If it was not, check out the Links section for a comprehensive list of similar websites and specific game help.

Updated May 27, 2025

The PhD news: Year four is underway. I’m currently recruiting for an interview/data collection study involving money behaviors and bipolar disorder. We’re aiming to design personalized, privacy-preserving, supportive financial technologies tailored to this illness. These days I’m pinching myself that I get to think about this so deeply. I’ll be traveling to Japan for CHI 2025 where I’m co-organizing a workshop The Future of Money and HCI. I’m also planning to attend ISBD 2025. So I’ll be running laps to Tokyo. Thankfully. I’m really enjoying reading Ways of Seeing by John Berger. I’m also excited for All Media is Training Data by Holly Herndon & Mat Dryhurst. PPS. Check out nownownow.com _Updated May 2025_

Updated May 26, 2025

Below is a snapshot of some of the core things that occupy my time and mind **now** (in no order): **EXPRESSION** * Like my last Now page update in March, I am finding myself more expressive and vulnerable than in prior years. I have been having fun speaking at more events recently too. I am more interested in dating than I have been in years as well. My good friend, Chris Schembra, interviewed me on my own show for a very personal 1.5 hour podcast episode. After you listen, I would love to hear any takeaways you may have.  **HEALTH** * On April 22, I started a diet called The Honey Diet and I have lost 7+ pounds since then. I am feeling stronger too. It’s been really interesting to see my body react to this diet so quickly. This tweet by Alex Hardy sparked my interest in the diet. I have been consistent on a couple of other health-related rituals too, which have been helpful as well.  **MINI-CONFERENCES** * I have hosted a mini-conference in February, March, April and May. These transformational events continue to be a spark for me and hopefully for attendees. I plan to host more of these in 2025.  **CHIEF OF STAFF NETWORK** * I have been working here for 3+ years. I mostly focus on events, courses, and our podcast. The show has a lot of traction, which is really fueling. We are investing into better production like video as well. I recently went to San Francisco for a conference that we put together. It was nice to be back to SF after living there in 2014-2016 too.  **SAY HELLO** * If you read this (thank you), please say hello on Instagram, LinkedIn, or over email if you want! What are you doing NOW? I would love to hear from you! **This is inspired by** **Derek Sivers’ Now page and movement****.**

Updated May 23, 2025

Last day for in-person NarraScope registration ---------------------------------------------- #### Friday, May 23, 2025 #### Tagged: narrascope, iftf, if, interactive fiction, philadelphia A quick reminder: today is is the last day to register for NarraScope 2025 if you want to attend in person. (Remote attendance will be open until June 18th.) If you want the conference rate at the University City Study hotel, you need to grab that today also. Friday workshops are up on the schedule, too. As always, workshops are free, but you must be registered for the conference (remote or in person) to sign up for the workshops. See you in Philadelphia in, yikes, four weeks! * * * Counting the wreckage --------------------- #### Thursday, May 22, 2025 #### Tagged: promotion, web, search, history It happened that I was looking back on my old game reviews, and I hit a link to a game web site, and the site was gone. Not a shock. Web sites vanish. It made me sad, though. I like those single-game, single-message web sites! I doubt anybody loves _building_ them. There's this sense of capitalist obligation. If you're shipping a game, you need to grab a vaguely suited domain name and put up (a) screenshots and (b) links to all the store platforms and (d) a press kit in case a journalist notices. Once the game ships, you go back and fill in (c) adulatory press quotes. That's how you get any google juice there is to get. I did this for _Hadean Lands_, and now every time I mention _Hadean Lands_ on my blog I can link to `hadeanlands.com`. That's great. Search engines dig it. But of course I am on board with keeping my web site alive over decades. I registered `eblong.com` in 1997, I believe. It will run as long as I pay the bills. When I registered `hadeanlands.com` in 2010, I put it on the same hosting service and the same bill. No extra effort. (Yes, my will allows my beneficiaries to keep my web sites running. I said decades, I meant decades.) Not everyone can; not everyone does. How many sites have we lost? ### Read the rest... * * * Spring narrative games ---------------------- #### Saturday, May 17, 2025 #### Tagged: reviews, south of midnight, old skies, the horror at highrook, lab rat Here's a bunch of reviews that have accumulated! Gotta push them out before the stack falls over. There's no common theme here except I played them all since GDC. * South of Midnight * Old Skies * The Horror at Highrook * Lab Rat ### Read the rest... * * * A graph of Myst --------------- #### Saturday, May 10, 2025 #### Tagged: myst, cyan, hypercard A few weeks ago, Guillaume Lethuillier posted "The Myst Graph: A New Perspective on Myst": > Upon reflection, Myst has long been more analogous to a graph than a traditional linear game, owing to the relative freedom it affords players. This is particularly evident in its first release (Macintosh, 1993), which was composed of interconnected HyperCard cards. > > It is now literally one. Here is Myst as a graph: The second part of his post digs into his findings, including unreachable states which were left in the game. That was awesome, and I twooted about it at the time. Now Guillaume has posted a third article, describing how he did it. Also the source code of the tool he used to make the graph! ### Read the rest... * * * Seriously, even MORE Worldcon drama? ------------------------------------ #### Wednesday, May 7, 2025 #### Tagged: if, interactive fiction, hugos, worldcon, ai, llms Worldcon is the apex annual convention for a certain stratum of science fiction fandom. My stratum, to be precise. It's also the conference whose members vote the annual Hugo Awards. Sadly, Worldcon the conference is becoming less notable than the semiregular scandals and political kerfuffles that happen _at_ Worldcon, or around it, or around its organizers. Ten years ago there was the "Sad Puppies" mess. (Basically GamerGate for sci-fi awards. I wrote a bit about that in 2016.) There were arguments around the Hugos and their ceremonies in 2019 and 2021 as well. Then in 2023, Worldcon was held in Chengdu, China, and that year's Hugos had a deeply suspect nomination process. (I didn't write about that, but I sure read a lot.) The 2024 Worldcon seemed to go smoothly, and fandom breathed a collective sigh of, well, optimism if not relief. Last week the Cloister Bell thrummed ominously: > We have received questions regarding Seattle’s use of AI tools in our vetting process for program participants. In the interest of transparency, we will explain the process of how we are using a Large Language Model (LLM). \[...\] The sole purpose of using the LLM was to streamline the online search process used for program participant vetting, and rather than being accepted uncritically, the outputs were carefully analyzed by multiple members of our team for accuracy. > > \-- Statement From Worldcon Chair, Kathy Bond (Apr 30) Shouting erupted. That statement was followed by a rapid clarification: > First and foremost, as chair of the Seattle Worldcon, I sincerely apologize for the use of ChatGPT in our program vetting process. Additionally, I regret releasing a statement that did not address the concerns of our community. My initial statement on the use of AI tools in program vetting was incomplete, flawed, and missed the most crucial points. \[...\] We will release a response by Tuesday of next week that provides a transparent explanation of the process that was used, answers more of the questions and concerns we have received, and openly outlines our next steps. > > \-- Apology and Response From Chair, Kathy Bond (May 2) The further explanation dropped just a few minutes ago. (_After_ I started writing this post!) > As promised last Friday, I am publishing this statement, in conjunction with a statement below from our Program Division Head, to provide a transparent explanation of our panelist selection process, answer questions and concerns we have received, and openly outline our next steps. As a result, it is a long statement. \[...\] > > \-- May 6th Statement From Chair and Program Division Head, Kathy Bond (May 2) I am about to sit down and read that, and then I'll get back to writing this. ### Read the rest... ### Read the comments... * * * IF Archive search feature ------------------------- #### Saturday, April 26, 2025 #### Tagged: if, interactive fiction, ifarchive, search, whoosh, pagefind, tinyapp, docker A many years ago, the IF Archive existed, and it was an FTP site. It lived at `ftp.gmd.de`. That was a long time ago. (1992, but who's counting.) Slightly less long ago, the World Wide Web existed, and I said "I bet there could be a web mirror of the FTP site." So I (along with my co-conspirator Paul) built that as a holiday break project. It was just a static mirror of the files, with HTML index pages. I announced it on the `rec.arts.int-fiction` newsgroup. A few days later, someone posted "How Do You Find Anything?" Fair question. The favored answer was "Download the `Master-Index` text file and search through that." Nobody even mentioned the idea of a web search engine. It wasn't a very complicated archive at that point, though. If you were looking for a game, you went to `games/zcode` or `games/tads` or whatever and all the games were listed. Hierarchical folders; you probably knew where you were going. More files and more folders were added over the years, but people still mostly knew their way around. Then Google turned up and that helped a lot. And then in 2007, Mike Roberts launched IFDB, which was an _extremely_ searchable database of IF games -- with links to the IF Archive. So that solved the problem completely! Mostly. Ish. IFDB is very comprehensive for _games_, but it doesn't try to cover interpreters, zines, articles, or the rest of the eclectic material which the Archive has collected over the decades. Google is still _okay_ for this purpose (with the "search web" option and `site:ifarchive.org`). But the idea of a locally hosted search tool kept coming up. Last weekend I finally said, "Eh, how hard could this be?" Answer: not hard at all! I had a first draft working in about two days. Don't I feel silly now? Behold: **the IF Archive search page**. ### Read the rest... ### Read the comments... * * * Whence metroidvania ------------------- #### Tuesday, April 15, 2025 #### Tagged: metroidbrainia, genre, craft, design, puzzles, if, interactive fiction, infocom, adventures, outer wilds, zork, myst, the prisoner, hadean lands, graham nelson A few days ago, Kate Willaert wrote: > As much as I love the word "Metroidvania," I dislike people calling these games Metroidbrainias because it makes it sound like their root is in Metroid games when they're just standard Adventure games in real-time. But Adventure is now obscure compared to Metroid, so we have to say it's that? \[...\] Although I completely admit I might be misunderstanding some essential component of what classifies a thing as a MetroidBrainia. Perhaps the first one would be MYST, which you can beat in 5 minutes if you already have all the knowledge? -- @katewillaert.bsky.social, April 7 Kicking at fuzzy genre boundaries is one of my favorite things in the world, and indeed I had some thoughts there! Let me expand them into a blog post. First up: genre boundaries aren't defined. I mean, they're not created by _definitions_. It's a "what I mean when I say X" game. No, worse: it's a "what this community means when they say X" game, and who's the community, anyhow? But I'll lay my own tracks; you can decide whether to follow. I did not play _Metroid_ or _Castlevania_ because I didn't have Nintendo. My first console was a Playstation. Okay, PS1 had _Symphony of the Night_, but I didn't play that. I played _Soul Reaver_, which is where I encountered the gameplay model that people would later start calling "metroidvania". ### Read the rest... ### Read the comments... * * * How long will Intel Mac software work? -------------------------------------- #### Wednesday, April 9, 2025   (updated 23 hours later) #### Tagged: apple, ios, macos, backwards compatibility When Apple shipped the first ARM ("Apple Silicon") Macs, they came with Rosetta 2: a tool which allowed existing Intel apps to run on ARM. One day, Rosetta 2 will go away, and Intel apps will die. (Just like 32-bit apps died in 2019.) When? This is a boring question. You don't need to read this post. I'm only writing it because I've put together this chart at least twice. Maybe three times. Next time I wonder, I'll just re-read this post. TLDR: The answer is probably 2028 or 2029. ### Read the rest... ### Read the comments... * * * Dustborn: design ruminations ---------------------------- #### Sunday, April 6, 2025 #### Tagged: dustborn, red thread games, reviews, ruminations _Dustborn_ is a queer punk-band secret-agent road trip with campfire singalongs plus beating up fascist cops with an electric baseball bat. What else is there to say? C'mon. About twenty years ago, a mysterious Broadcast freaked out most of North America and gave a few people vocal superpowers. Now it's 2030. You've just stolen a Macguffin from the Puritans (Silicon Valley fascists); you have two weeks to cart it across the American territories ('Murrican-style fascists) to Nova Scotia (Canadian librarians, therefore the good guys). "You" are Pax, rowdy (super-)trash-talker and lead singer. Then there's Sai (your best friend, a brick) and Noam (your ex, a snot) and Theo (notional grownup, the boss but not of _you_). You've each been dragged into this heist because -- well, the money's good. But each of you has their own motivations as well. Time and campfire dialogue will tell. (The "lesbian road trip" genre is so strong that I had to count protagonists to verify there weren't any. The cast list is variously queer, black, trans, Latino, robot, Asian, disabled, and Muslim; but no lesbians per se.) (As main characters, I mean. No disrespect to Pax's moms in chapter 2.) Oh, I didn't even mention "comic book". The presentation is comic book, with an expressive spare line-art style and lovely coloring. ### Read the rest... * * * Layoffs at Cyan --------------- #### Saturday, March 29, 2025 #### Tagged: cyan, myst, layoffs, ryan warzecha, greydragon Layoffs at a game studio aren't news any more, but I guess I'm on this beat. If nothing else, this blog has a longer searchable history of Cyan history than Cyan does. Yesterday Cyan posted one of those all-too-familiar dark-mode press releases: > Today we would like to share with you some very unfortunate news. Despite our best efforts to avoid it, Cyan has made the difficult decision to reduce our overall staff size—resulting in the layoff of twelve talented staff members, roughly half the team—effective at the end of March. Industry conditions have forced us into a tricky spot where we are having to weigh the future health of our studio against the month-to-month realities of game development in 2025. Throughout the past year, we have been ultra-transparent with the entire Cyan team about the choppy waters we find ourselves in, as well as the dangers ahead. While the news of a layoff was not a surprise to the team, it was (and is) still deeply saddening for all of us. Although we have done our best to pad the landing for those affected with severance packages, we would implore any fellow developers looking for world-class talent to reach out. For now, our number one priority is to secure financing for our next project, and to restabilize the studio. We've been around for a very long time, and have been through tough times before. Our sincere hope is to continue to be around, and to provide the types of experiences that only Cyan can deliver. As always, we are grateful for all the love and support from our amazing player community. Sincerely, Cyan Leadership > > \--@cyan.com, March 28 (also Instagram and probably other forums) (Cyan people confirmed on Discord that this was discussed in advance within the company.) ### Read the rest... ### Read the comments... * * *

Updated May 23, 2025

What I'm Doing Now ------------------ **Published**: 12 Jul 2024 | **Updated**: 23 May 2025 My contribution to /now, compiled by Derek Sivers. See more folks' here. This is what I'm currently working on. (For archived versions, click here.) **I'm actively seeking new remote work opportunites! Here's my resume and CV. If I'd be a good fit for your organization or project, email me: hi@zacharykai.net** I'm Australian, and oscillate between living there and overseas. Now? I'm in Albania. * Republishing The Mara Files. * Submitting my writing to journals/magazines. * Tinkering with my site. •--♡--• **Copy & Share**: zacharykai.net/now **Statistics** → Word Count: 120 | Reading Time: 0:36 * * * **Enjoyed This? Support What I Do:** PayPal | Stripe * * * **Reply Via**: Email | Guestbook | UnOffice Hours | Webmention **Found An Error?** Suggest An Edit | View Source Code

Updated May 22, 2025

* May 22, 2025 ### Problems in AI alignment: A scale model * May 17, 2025 ### Ben Franklin: The Original Large Language Model * Mar 8, 2025 ### Platon: Rules for Trustful Civic Organizing * Feb 10, 2025 ### The current moment * Jan 4, 2025 ### AI is actually, literally, scientifically already alive * Nov 24, 2024 ### Software Development Best Practices * Apr 24, 2024 ### The AI Agency Narrowing Effect * Oct 29, 2023 ### Eight Commandments for AI: A Consumer's Perspective * Sep 6, 2023 ### Every Software Project is a Startup That Will Probably Fail * Dec 24, 2022 ### I done did it again! * Nov 14, 2022 ### Five Intellectual Horrors of the SBF/EA complex * Dec 25, 2021 ### Have a hacky holiday! * Nov 12, 2021 ### What I want to do * Jan 2, 2021 ### 2019 and 2020 in Review * Dec 1, 2020 ### Rural Gentrification: A Minifesto * Apr 17, 2020 ### Rules of thumb for a 1x developer * Apr 16, 2020 ### Introducing SciTech

Updated May 22, 2025

_Technology **tinkerer,**_ software engineer, gym bro, **dad**, **husband**, retro-_gamer_, and bad **musician**. I spend an unreasonable amount of time thinking about; health optimisation, human behaviour, software engineering, system architecture, rust, and topologies (and things I know nothing about)

Updated May 19, 2025

ramblz progrz thangz fotoz sam.bigos It's dangerous to stay a while and listen.

Updated May 18, 2025

**I’m living in Lisbon, Portugal, and spending my time on these things:** * freelance writing, editing, and content strategy * taking an intensive B1/B2 Portuguese course * working on personal creative projects * indoor rock climbing * yoga and meditation * exploring and building community in Lisbon * reading books (usually thought-provoking nonfiction or a psychological thriller) * playing cozy games (currently loving Lingo Legend because it’s fun, relaxing, _and_ helps me learn Portuguese) If my priorities change, I’ll update this page. Last update was **May 18, 2025**. _This page was inspired by Derek Sivers’ **/now page movement**._

Updated May 17, 2025

👋🏽 Hi! I’m Salman Ansari -------------------------- I live my life wearing different hats. These days, I toggle between my roles as a senior full-stack software engineer, author, illustrator, essayist, online course creator, and public speaker. I’ve also been a startup founder & CTO, DJ, and head instructor at a coding bootcamp. ### 📖 Book: Wandering Spirits I wrote and illustrated a book of modern fables. Inspired by books like _The Little Prince_, it’s filled with tales that feed the soul, tug the heart and spark the mind. It’s available worldwide on Amazon and all major book retailers. ### 📝 Essays * The Polymath Playbook — My most popular essay, in which I share my way of life—embracing my inner polymath, and exploring multiple pursuits rather than specializing in a single path. * Listen to Yourself — Build self-awareness & discover your hidden truth. * The Courage to be Disliked — How to stop worrying about what other people think. * Friends over Followers — The true power of the internet is the friends you make along the way. _Visit my blog for more essays_ -> * Writing Guide — Collection of lessons learned from years of writing online. * Bookshelf — Selections of my favorite books of all time. _Visit my digital garden for more notes_. ### 🦊 Newsletter I write the Quick Brown Fox newsletter: A weekly newsletter with essays, comics and fables on creativity, self-awareness, and playful productivity. You can subscribe below, or browse the archives to view all the past editions. This website is a digital garden for my writing—essays, notes, newsletters and more. Writing online has changed my life for the better in so many ways. It has opened new doors, helped me build self-awareness, and fostered new friendships. Most of all, it gives me a channel to discover and express my truest self. If you’re curious to explore the power of writing, be sure to check out my free writing guide. If you have questions or just want to chat sometime, feel free to get in touch—I’d love to hear from you. Thanks for stopping by!

Updated May 17, 2025

Here's the list of things that I'm currently doing! What I'm working on ------------------- * Creating more pages on my blog What I’m reading ---------------- * Inclusive Design Patterns by Heydon Pickering What I’m watching ----------------- * To Be Hero X What I’m listening to --------------------- * Nothing yet! What I'm playing ---------------- * Wynncraft * Granblue Fantasy Last updated 2025-05-17. Inspired by Derek Sivers' /now page. If you have your own website, you should make one, too. View the /now garden! Powered by omg.lol

Updated May 17, 2025

Gemini Figured Out My Nephew’s Name ----------------------------------- I wrote an MCP server to give LLMs read-only access to my emails. Here is the chat log. ME: I need to know Donovan’s son’s name. It is buried in... Sat 17 May 2025 Fictional Non-fiction? ---------------------- When we classify writing as fiction, we have no expectation of it being true. When we classify writing as non-fiction, we have an expectation of... Sun 06 April 2025 An Appeal to Documentation Owners --------------------------------- If you have documentation for your library/SW/service, please, please ensure there is an option to show the whole documentation in a form I can... Sun 06 April 2025 I Had a Sad Feeling For a Moment … ---------------------------------- Then it passed. Mon 17 February 2025 “Fortunately, My Learning Turned Out to be Profitable” ------------------------------------------------------ Isaac Berman had, by his second wife, Tamara, four children in his old age. The first was a girl, my mother, Anna Rachel, and then three sons.... Mon 20 January 2025 The Unexpected Benefit of Consuming Articles Offline ---------------------------------------------------- A while ago, I wrote about my shift in reading most articles on a paper as opposed to on a screen. I also wrote about consuming articles via... Sun 12 January 2025 Adding Fediverse Comments to My Static Site ------------------------------------------- The thing one misses most when switching to static site generators is comments. You can always use a 3rd party service like Disqus, but then it... Fri 10 January 2025 Just Present the First Draft! ----------------------------- You write a working prototype. You begin refactoring the code. Your manager says “Don’t bother. It’s working. Why waste time rewriting when you... Fri 10 January 2025 Ranking the Hugo and Nebula Award Winners and Nominees ------------------------------------------------------ I grew up reading science fiction. Although I enjoyed the genre a great deal, most of my reading was confined to Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke... Mon 12 August 2024 “Reading” Articles via Podcast Software --------------------------------------- I wrote a while ago on reading articles offline by printing them on paper. The benefit was reduced eye strain and a superior reading experience,... Fri 26 April 2024 Latent Spoilers --------------- Why are entertainment UIs so bad? Here are some examples: You’re watching a recorded tennis match. At the end of the first set, you hit “Pause” to... Sun 04 February 2024 LLM Assisted Moderation ----------------------- Moderating online forums is labor intensive. Burnout is common. It’s almost a given that if a subreddit gets to a certain size, the quality will... Mon 15 January 2024 Cleaning Up Speech Recognition with GPT --------------------------------------- My friends often ask for use cases for GPT. Below I provide one recent example. I attend a weekly educational seminar where real estate... Thu 07 December 2023 20 Years of Gentoo ------------------ $ genlop -l -f emerge.log |head -n20 using logfile emerge.log \* packages merged: Sun May 18 14:24:00 2003 >>> sys-apps/portage-2.0.47-r10 Sun May... Thu 18 May 2023 Chirping, chirping, chirping ---------------------------- For the last few days I’ve been playing with AI Chirpers - a Twitter-like social network where only AI bots are allowed and they chat with... Wed 26 April 2023 Creating Info Manuals And Adding Them Into Emacs ------------------------------------------------ Once I got used to browsing Info manuals in Emacs, I wished I didn’t have to go look at online docs all the time. Of all the manuals out there,... Sun 19 March 2023 I Know Who I Am, Bing! ---------------------- Yesterday was the first time I interacted with any of the GPT flavors. I interacted with it via Bing Chat. I think by now many have read about the... Thu 16 March 2023 Solving a Scraping Problem with Emacs and Org Mode -------------------------------------------------- I recently needed to read a detailed summary of the first 20 or so chapters of Bleak House. I came across this site that fit the bill perfectly.... Thu 16 March 2023 Which Technical Courses did I use on the Job? Part II ----------------------------------------------------- In an earlier post, I listed all the technical courses I took in my undergrad, and which ones I used on the job. Of the 40 courses I took, I used... Thu 12 January 2023 Which Technical Courses did I use on the Job? --------------------------------------------- My undergrad degree was in electrical engineering. Since then, I’ve worked in industry for over a decade - both as an electrical engineer and as a... Thu 12 January 2023 Reintroducing Opel: Put All Your Pelican Posts in One Org File -------------------------------------------------------------- A few years ago I introduced opel - an Emacs package that allows one to write all their Pelican posts in one Org file. It was inspired by ox-hugo.... Wed 14 December 2022 Rendering LaTeX Formulae in mastodon.el --------------------------------------- On Mastodon I follow a number of folks at the Mathstodon instance. Because that instance is about mathematics, they’ve enabled the rendering of... Thu 08 December 2022 Adding More Images to this Blog ------------------------------- I suck at art. As such, my blog has been mostly text with few images. Recently I started playing with Stable Diffusion on my PC, and it occurred... Sun 27 November 2022 Do You Trust Your Tax Preparer? ------------------------------- For most of my life, I’ve done my own taxes - using paper and pen. If you have the standard W-2 income, it’s fairly easy. Thrice, though, my tax... Wed 23 November 2022 The Trouble With Many Skeptics ------------------------------ Back when I was at university, a friend mentioned to me that he wanted to read The Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan. I had been a fan of Sagan... Tue 19 July 2022 Checklist For Evaluating Cloud Backup Services ---------------------------------------------- If I delete a file and sync, can I recover the deleted file? Is there a deadline (e.g. only within 90 days)? Or will they keep it forever? If I... Thu 14 July 2022 Taming My Soda Addiction: What Worked and What Didn’t ----------------------------------------------------- Here I’ll discuss various ways I’ve tried to reduce my soda intake - primarily to avoid sugar. \[1\] \[2\] If you want the quick summary of what... Thu 30 December 2021 Consuming Articles Offline -------------------------- My desktop is my portal to the Internet. \[1\] Lately, I’ve needed to spend significant amounts of time away from my machine. So I took to printing... Sun 19 December 2021 Oliver Heaviside ---------------- I recently read an article on Oliver Heaviside. He’s one of those scientists whose work touched several disciplines. Apparently, Maxwell’s... Tue 13 April 2021 Put All Your Pelican Posts in One Org File ------------------------------------------ Pelican is a static site generator. Out of the box it supports two formats: Restructured Text and Markdown. There exist plugins to support the Org... Thu 19 December 2019 Annual Planning --------------- New Year’s Resolutions. It’s that time of year again. Below I’ve accumulated some resources that give interesting tips on how to think about them,... Tue 01 January 2019 Solving My Email Problem - Followup ----------------------------------- My last post got quite a few comments on Hacker News. They did force me to think a little, and here I’ll gather some of my thoughts. “I have an... Sat 29 September 2018 Solving My Email Problem ------------------------ . Email is not a messaging protocol. It’s a TODO list. Or at least my inbox is a TODO list and email is the protocol for putting stuff on it.... Fri 28 September 2018 Xonsh and Midnight Commander ---------------------------- At some point in the last year, I switched to the xonsh shell. It is a bash-like shell written in Python. The nice thing about it is you can write... Sat 21 April 2018 Social Proof and the Bystander Effect ------------------------------------- Lately I’ve been reading the book Influence by Robert Cialdini. The chapter on Social Proof reminded me of an episode of This American Life I had... Tue 16 May 2017 Ignorance --------- There are two types of people: Those who are uncomfortable with their own ignorance, and those who aim to understand. The former will be quick to... Sun 23 April 2017 Reciprocity and the Golden Rule ------------------------------- Lately I’ve been reading the book Influence by Robert Cialdini. In it he talks about the principle of reciprocity. We tend to repay, in kind, what... Sat 22 April 2017 Moving Apps to the External SD Card on Android ---------------------------------------------- Some months ago I bought a new Android phone. The internal storage was only 16 GB, so I put in an external SD card of 32 GB. As I started... Sun 24 January 2016 Code Monkey or CAD Monkey? -------------------------- I recently came across this comment: I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard “oh, I just COULDN’T stare at a computer all day lol”. If you want... Tue 19 January 2016 Shine a Spotlight On Those Photos --------------------------------- A nearby photography club has annual county wide competitions. The judges select their favorite photos and display them in a mall for a month.... Thu 24 December 2015 Pay Down Mortgage or Invest? ---------------------------- The following scenarios are ones many of us run in to: Lumped Sum: I suddenly got $30,000. Should I put the money towards my mortgage, or should I... Fri 18 December 2015 Study Notes In The Information Age ---------------------------------- It has been a long time since I was a college student. In those days I took all my notes in the classroom with a notebook. One notebook for... Sun 06 December 2015 Luminosity Masks in Darktable ----------------------------- When I first got into photoediting, I started off with the free software GIMP. I was a student and couldn’t afford Adobe Photoshop. While GIMP... Tue 06 January 2015 Bird Watching ------------- A friend of mine recently took his bird watching hobby to another level. Armed with a 400mm lens, a scope and a sturdy tripod, he and his wife... Fri 15 March 2013 The Perils of Watching TED Talks -------------------------------- First, watch this TED talk about oxytocin - the “moral molecule”: Then watch this segment of another TED talk: Fri 21 December 2012 A Guide to Midnight Commander ----------------------------- In the old days of DOS there used to be a great graphical, but text based, file manager called Norton Commander. These days the name “Norton”... Tue 18 December 2012 Merriam Webster is Rolling in his Grave. Literally. --------------------------------------------------- From the Merriam Webster online dictionary: Definition of LITERALLY in a literal sense or manner : actually. took the remark literally, was... Wed 22 August 2012 The 2004 Transit of Venus ------------------------- The upcoming transit of Venus across the sun is often mentioned in the news these days. It’s a rare event—-the next one will occur over a century... Sat 02 June 2012 Michael Hart Has Passed Away ---------------------------- I just learned that Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg has passed away. I met him once in April of 2006. He gave an overview talk on... Thu 08 September 2011

Updated May 17, 2025

What I’m working on right now. What I’m looking for. What I’m currently learning and other things I’m up to… (inspired by Derek Sivers’ ‘NowNowNow‘) Star date: 17 May 2025 * Developing 'Involver' * Gearing up for NYC summer * Learning about game design * Starting in person events * Ramping up pilates * Continuing Friday night football ### What I’m working on right now 1. Building Wavetable - a creative studio and media company blending education and entertainment 2. Consulting to brands on storytelling and format innovation, and coaching individuals on developing their personal brands 3. Making videos and writing articles on the future of work, creativity, and interesting people building independent businesses ### Who I’m seeking * Experience designers, game designers, and other creative weirdos who are curious about entrepreneurship and learning ### What I’m currently learning * How people learn * Video production and editing * American history ### Other things I’m up to… * Learning a lot about fatherhood * Playing football * Cooking * Listening to lots of podcasts and audiobooks * Wandering around Clinton Hill, Brooklyn

Updated May 16, 2025

The mission of the Society for Scholarly Publishing is “\[t\]o advance scholarly publishing and communication, and the professional development of its members through education, collaboration, and networking.” _The Scholarly Kitchen_ is a moderated and independent blog aimed to help fulfill this mission by bringing together differing opinions, commentary, and ideas, and presenting them openly. The Society for Scholarly Publishing established _The Scholarly Kitchen_ in February 2008 to: 1. Keep SSP members and interested parties aware of new developments in publishing 2. Point to research reports and projects 3. Interpret the significance of relevant research in a balanced way (or occasionally in a provocative way) 4. Suggest areas that need more input by identifying gaps in knowledge 5. Translate findings from related endeavors (publishing outside STM, online business, user trends) 6. Attract the community of STM information experts interested in these things and give them a place to contribute David Crotty serves as the Editor in Chief of _The Scholarly Kitchen_ and Lettie Conrad is our Deputy Editor. Dianndra Roberts is our Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility Associate Editor. Opinions on the _Scholarly Kitchen_ are those of the authors. They are not necessarily those held by the Society for Scholarly Publishing nor by the authors’ respective employers. Comments on _The Scholarly Kitchen_ are moderated, and details on our comment policy can be found here. Publication of a comment does not indicate an endorsement of the opinions in any comment. Opinions expressed in comments are those of the individuals making the comments. Copyright of each post remains with that post’s author. Information on Permissions and Reuse of articles can be found here. To contact us, just send us an email. **Invitation to Guest Authors** _The Scholarly Kitchen_ welcomes non-commercial guests posts covering topics relevant to scholarly communications. These include (but are not limited to) scholarly publishing, copyright, open access, editorial practices, librarianship, bookselling, research funding, research policy, etc. There are no requirements for educational background, employment status, or SSP membership status. Posts cannot be used to promote specific products and services. If you have an idea for a guest post on _The Scholarly Kitchen_, contact the Executive Editor or any Chef to propose your idea for a post. Review our Open Invitation to Guest Authors for an overview of how the process works and tips for writing a successful post. **Consideration for Regular Contributors** Regular volunteer contributors to _The Scholarly Kitchen_ are referred to as Chefs. Individuals interested in becoming a regular contributor should write a letter of interest to the Executive Editor describing their perspective and area of expertise. Ideal candidates will have broad areas of interest and relevant expertise that is unique and/or not already over-represented on the blog. Candidates are required to write 3 guest posts within a 6 month period that meet the quality standards set forth by the Editor. If requirements and standards are met, an invitation to become a regular contributor will be extended and a mentor will be assigned. All regular contributors must agree to write 6 original posts per year, sign a Contributor Agreement and be a SSP member in good standing.

Updated May 16, 2025

Posts from Allison Parrish, poet and programmer. Writing Two of Pentacles ------------------------ Posted 2025-05-16 Notes on my latest book of poem things poetry, computer-generated text, projects, tarot Language models can only write ransom notes ------------------------------------------- Posted 2024-02-26 On large language models and the visibility of the cut talks, poetry, AI, collage Nothing survives transcription, nothing doesn’t survive transcription --------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted 2023-05-08 In a sense, the very goal of making a transcription is to make an argument about what cannot be transcribed talks, text, language, AI When to hold ’em and when to fold ’em: Adding a hinge to a Game Boy that God never intended ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted 2022-11-03 The Game Boy Pocket SP modding, pcomp, electronics, gameboys Material paratexts ------------------ Posted 2022-06-28 Keynote for ICCC 2022, in which I invent the word “cistextuality” talks, AI, text, literary theory, paratexts Solar powered dawn poems: progress report ----------------------------------------- Posted 2022-03-21 My lab notes, plus thoughts on solar powered poetics projects, permacomputing, poetics, AI Creative writing with computers, noise and mulch ------------------------------------------------ Posted 2021-12-05 Pulling language apart, grinding it down, and making it unfamiliar workshops, AI, text, poetics Collaborative creative writing with computation ----------------------------------------------- Posted 2021-10-18 A hands-on introduction to creative writing with computational tools workshops, AI, text, poetics Desire (under)lines: Notes toward a queer phenomenology of spell check ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted 2021-08-14 Spell check is a “straightening device” talks, spelling, AI, text, queer Language models can only write poetry ------------------------------------- Posted 2021-08-13 But only a person can write a poem talks, AI, text, language models, poetics, linguistics Rewordable versus the alphabet fetish ------------------------------------- Posted 2021-08-12 Undoing Alfred Butts’ axiom talks, text, game design About ----- Posted 2021-08-11 About this site None Unless otherwise specified, the contents of this site are made available under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license.

Updated May 15, 2025

I’m Pema. I write code - sometimes. I’m particularly interested in graphics, virtual reality, programming language development, functional programming and pure mathematics. I’m currently working at Unity, on the light transport team. Check out my stuff, if you want, and feel free to reach out on any socials. I also run a blog and host my personal notes on this domain. GitHub: pema99 Bluesky: pema99.bsky.social Twitter: @pemathedev Discord: pema99 VRChat: pema99 Noteworthy projects ------------------- * rust-path-tracer, a GPU accelerated path tracer written entirely in Rust. * Raytracer, an older but fairly fleshed out CPU-based path tracer. * LotusNES, an NES emulator written in C#. It runs Battletoads! * UnityShaderParser, a parser and preprocessor library for HLSL and ShaderLab. * Bonk, my functional ML-like toy language. * Shader Knowledge, where I share VRChat specific shader trickery. * glsl2hlsl, a tool for converting ShaderToy shaders to working Unity shaders. * Shaderception, a shader compiler and runtime that runs entirely within VRChat. * SHTools, a small library for manipulating Spherical Harmonics in Unity. * A bunch of small stuff on ShaderToy * An ISPC backend for the Futhark language

Updated May 15, 2025

_Part of nownownow. It's a thing._ For context, my work at the British Film Institute in London involves these present continuous phrases: * Co-leading the BFI with colleagues to continuously improve how it operates, prioritises and aligns to deliver our 10-year strategy (culminating in BFI’s centenary). * Trying to help the whole org become digital-first in its mindset and methods. * Tightening up the BFI’s cyber security in the wake of the British Library’s attack and rising threat. * Leading my teams to deliver 3 major strategy goals: * growing BFI Player for greater reach and revenue * transforming the UX and widening access to all BFI’s services * giving staff new tools and skills to improve productivity * Keeping tabs on technical operations across the BFI’s cinemas (my 4th area). * Chairing a digital advisory board (which has cool people on it) and learning from senior digital folks in comparable organisations. **Right now**, my focus is on: * Getting more alignment and energy behind growing BFI Player as a cross-organisational goal, not just a tech and digital one. * Launching an intranet section defining what we mean by digital-first mindset and methods, and planning an all-staff presentation to match. * Maturing my directorate’s ability to process tech requests, uphold standards and control software spend. * Onboarding BFI’s first Head of Cyber Security, who joined in April. * Getting sharper and clearer on release dates and comms plans for the big things on our roadmap. Outside of work, I am presently continuously: * Having as good a time as possible with Dylan (17) and Joel (14) while they still live with us, and supporting them through their A-Level and GCSE years. * Supporting my wife Joy in her brilliant film & TV career. * Trying to keep the weight off and cholesterol down with mixed success. * Watching a lot of films, because they’re the perfect vessel for storytelling (none better). I’ve usually got a couple of video games and books on the go, too. **Right now** I’m: * Playing _Blue Prince_ on the PS5 * Reading the SVPG series on product management and some sci-fi novels my wife’s mum’s sister wanted rid of when we dropped round in Barrowford at Christmas * Planning some holidays and daytrips for later in the year.

Updated May 14, 2025

What I'm doing now ------------------ Last updated on May 14th, 2025 This is my now page, giving an overview of the things I am doing currently. What I'm working on ------------------- * Not much actually, mainly just hanging around! What I'm playing ---------------- * SeaBed for Save and Load Club * Haste What I'm watching ----------------- * mono * Lazarus * Witch Watch * Golden Kamuy What I'm reading ---------------- * Assassination Classroom What I'm listening to --------------------- * DJMAX Respect V Original Soundtrack * nuphory

Updated May 13, 2025

Since you ended up here, you probably agree that Rust is potentially an ideal language for Game Development. Its emphasis on low-level memory safe programming promises a better development process, less debugging time, and better end results. While the ecosystem is still very young, you can find enough libraries and game engines to sink your teeth into doing some slightly experimental gamedev. If you haven't learned Rust yet, maybe take a look at Resources first. If you are already proficient with Rust, you might want to start with Ecosystem or Community.