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Support Hot Potato
Text I wrote from an email nearly two years ago, after a corporate re-organization: Here is a common scenario at a megacorp, a glimpse into “real programming”. Group A (imagine they’re the point-of-view character in this story) makes a software component, and it is widely well-received. Group B hears about it and wants to use…
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Let Me X That For You
It happened. I asked a technical question in a forum. A day later, someone I don’t know responded “would this work?”, with a short link to them copying my query directly to a text-based AI. The AI’s response was completely irrelevant and unusable, despite giving the standard “verbose confident technical” aesthetic. 10-15 years ago, it…
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Talk @ Roguelike Celebration 2022
This upcoming Sunday, Oct 23, I’m doing a talk at Roguelike Celebration, a conference about the creation, appreciation and analysis of roguelikes; that odd genre of game incorporating procedural generation, permanent consequences (often called permadeath) and maximalist systems. In 2020, I did a short talk on Procedurally Generated Technology Trees. This year, I’m talking about…
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GPT-2 and Culture Ship Names
Brief Personal Update: I accepted a new job and moved to Manhattan – more on that later. Critically, I signed a lease on an apartment after 3 years of cybernomadism. I intend to live here for a while, but I want it to feel like a spaceship on the move. Thus, it needs a proper…
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Breaking Up With Git LFS
After using Git LFS on and off for over two years, even going through one major version change, I’ve decided git LFS is not for me, at this stage. Here’s how I took an existing repo using Git LFS, and removed it to return to a vanilla Git repo. Briefly, Git LFS is a way…
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Splitting a big, single-page pdf into print-size pages
Context: I’m currently putting together a grant application. This means I need to get together documentation and press for what I’ve done. I need to submit this all on printed physical paper. URLs or pdf files by themselves are not enough. I’m on macOS. Normally, you can just print a webpage to pdf from the…
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Git LFS Sucks the Least: Prototyping and Version Control with Large Binary Assets
Here’s a story of my struggles with version control at Raktor as I push it to the limit for a variety projects in the Unity engine. Pour a drink and commiserate with me. I love git. My background is in handling large, complex codebases that go all the way down to the metal, so distributed…
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The Painting — An Immersive iBeacon Theatre Experience Powered by Webble SmartSpot
Here is a first-person walkthrough of an immersive theatre show I did with Joshua Marx, as part of Floodlight Productions. We built it in a section of The SpeakeasySF while it was still under construction. UPDATE: See my talk at Hackaday’s Supercon about this project: https://hackaday.com/2015/12/18/immersive-theatre-via-ibeacons-with-dustin-freeman/ During the show, the single audience member uses an…
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Big Blimpin’: Getting the Right Feel of Flying an Airship for an Installation
This is an install in a 3 x 8 metre room with stereoscopic projection (a Hive) in the Communitech Hub in Kitchener, sponsored by Christie Digital and CAFKA. The project was started by Ruth Gibson and Bruno Martelli (aka Igloo). There is more about the conception and themes of the project on their page. This…
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I Need a Better Distributed Notes Service
I sync many, many plain text notes between my phone and various computers I use during the day. Some of these are little reminders, like what I need to buy for dinner, some of these are freeform narrative ideas about a story, and some of these are links of stuff to read. I’m looking for…