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A portrait of myself
music: Malagueña for tenor recorder.
<Glider_IRC> It's a nodejs mentality, not understand what you do, not
understanding what the machine do, not understanding what your
code do, and not understanding what the code parts you
put together like lego do.
<Glider_IRC> In others words and shorter, understanding nothing.
I almost broke (again) my laptop; I am not amused by my misery without a computer.
In a WWW that all looks the same, it is always exciting to find pages that are styled differently.
Recorder ranges, clefs, and other useful information is full plain-text, yet so cosy and easily browseable; I wonder if I could convert this site to plain-text.
User Sentimental eXperience is a bit of a blast from the past, where navigation and discovery were paramount.
⏪,⏩: Dichiarazione d’amore di altri tempi ◊ The future of road transportation.
art // a statue in Yekaterinburg ◊ Tiempo convertido en espacio:
Photography is time converted into space. In fact, every virtual art is, movies included. We have the impression that Scarlett is having a coffee, but she will never get to it because time has disappeared, and with it life and reality. Such is the demiurgy and powerlessness of art.
Not one, but two games I have enjoyed during Easter:
Return of the SLIMEPIRES!
The Bones of Rosalinda, a simple, clever gamebook.
Rest: The kinds of portraits I prefer ◊ Whatsapp suicide.
BTW, I use lentil quite often, I like it! And your code base is really nice!
Always take a moment to thank devs/maintainers, it might make their day (for sure it made mine).
Links:
How new Linux users can increase their odds of success. tl;dr: learn to use the shell; learn to find package via command line; try a tiling window manager; compile a program from source; help someone out.
Indeed eons ago, when I started using Linux, the turning point was to avoid the «like Windows, but one click more» experience.
A very good Ludum Dare (3-day game jam) entry by NuSan:
War: Waiting (What Silence is Made of).
Outside it’s totally quiet. No people, no cars, no ambulances honking. It’s not a quietude of expectation, not a feeling of ominous foreboding. But people turned inward, to wait and see what the next day will bring, and then the day after.
I have friends in Russia, they are distraught as I am. This war has a culprit: Vladimir Putin. Sadly, the responsibility of the horrible aggression on Ukraine and Ukrainians will likely not fall on his shoulders.
Art: Prismatic break, excellent chiptune ◊ Grounded by the Sky.
Weird City Interloper: A short game, fun, expertly written. It comes with an innovative navigation interface; many games could benefit from it to interactive fiction more accessible.
Art: Medusa ◊ Exploring Rare Manchu Books at the Library of Congress.
Essays:
Framing accessibility in broader terms:
Importantly, accessibility also means understanding that there are many other kinds of users who have accessibility needs.
For instance, consider someone who cannot afford a computer as nice as the one your developers are using. When your Electron crapware app eats up 8G of RAM, it may be fine on your 32G developer workstation, but not so much for someone who cannot afford anything other than a used $50 laptop from eBay. Waking up the user’s phone every 15 minutes to check in with your servers isn’t very nice for someone using a 5-year-old phone with a dying battery. Your huge JavaScript bundle, unoptimized images, and always-on network requirements are not accessible to users who are on low-bandwidth mobile connections or have a data cap — you’re essentially charging poorer users a tax to use your website.
Is the juice worth the squeeze?:
Do you have the courage to be found on the wrong side of history?
Kappa, A Gulliveresque novella by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa:
[it] Seduto tra le rocce vicino al torrente, aprii una scatoletta di carne e accesi un focherello con quattro sterpi, e proprio in quei minuti la nebbia si diradò rapidissima: l’avermi indotto a ripercorrere tanta strada mi sembrò una beffa. Sbocconcellavo il mio pane, e ad un tratto guardai l’orologio: l’una e venti. Ma ciò che mi stupì non fu tanto l’ora quanto un volto straordinario riflesso per un istante dal quadrante. Mi voltai, e per la prima volta nella mia vita vidi un ᴋᴀᴘᴘᴀ.
[en] I sat down on a rock by the stream to take a meal. I think I had spent about ten minutes cutting open a tin of corned beef, gathering dead twigs and making a fire. Meanwhile the fog was lifting fast, as if it had brought me all the way down for the sole purpose of making a fool of me. Biting at a piece of bread, I looked at my wrist-watch. It was already twenty minutes past one. But what surprised me more was a strange, weird-looking face reflected for an instant upon the round glass of the watch. I looked back, and for the first time in my life I saw a—^kappa!
art: I made a vase for my daughter. It's made from a discontinued glass light bulb diffuser and cardboard ◊ Nuestra Señora de las angustias, Granada.
Escape from M.O.N.J.A.S is a lovely little adventure for the ZX Spectrum which you can play with an emulator or straight in your browser; availble in Spanish and English.
The game fits in 47K, roughly ⅔ of the above screenshot. Controls: Q A O P to move, M to interact.
The particular situation I have in view is the hijacking of public discourse (and consequently the political order) by the endless proliferation of manufactured news and fabricated controversy.
Unica e insondabile (tutte le nebbie lo sono):
how stereograms work ◊ pictorialist photograp ◊ root system drawings ◊ a poem in pencil ◊ daily retrocomputing ◊ harmonium jrpgesque music.
A couple of games to play for Christmas:
Art:
Essay:
<FSi> it's almost as if GTK maintainers are paid to keep the most common
use-cases taking at least 1 click more than those on win/macos
Grab a magnifying lens and examine any photo printed in a newspaper or a book, and you will see a similar complex pattern of dots. But if you find such a printed photo and scan it, you don’t automatically get its pixels back. No, you get new, smaller pixels that replicate the exact nature of halftone dots. And with those confused pixels, you also get one more thing: a warm hug from something called moiré.
music: J. Pachelbel - Ciacona f-moll on a lovely portatif ◊ i want to talk to you about time.
Type: Unstable Vampire, a lovely action game through text in only 4kb.
two lovely retro sites: A Few Tips on Crow Care ◊ THIS AND THAT.
Inspired by a series of posters, I wondered what did my favorite books look like without words. Can you tell them apart or are they all a-mush? In fact, they can be quite distinct.
Green is a difficult color- stay away from it.
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyse a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
[ita] Bruco
«Smetti di prendermi in giro» ho tagliato corto io. Sta di fatto che – forse proprio a causa del tono vibrante, quasi profetico – ancora adesso le sue parole mi risuonano nelle antenne, come se le avesse appena pronunciate.
An Illustrated Guide to Guy Debord’s ‘The Society of the Spectacle’
Note the words “need” and “representation.” Ask yourself — what compels us to buy the latest tech gadget? Why do we spill our feelings out on Facebook, in posts that are archived on servers deep underground? Which is more important, the expression of the feeling itself, or the knowledge that it will be documented and seen by others? Why do we incessantly take selfies, or record our every moment for posterity? Are we afraid of being a nobody — of being on “the margin of existence?” If you’re concerned with how you appear, then are you really living?
art: [IT/EN] Enzo Mari, corso di disegno per Abitare ◊ Walking ◊ Umi no sachi (via FSi).
Have you ever wanted to painlessly extract code blocks from Markdown documentation? Then check dram.
Photographic oddieties from Madrid: demonios de barro and jabato lisiado.
Poor typist reviews new typewriter:
The luxury of age was the giving up of vanity.
Play azimuth a challenging and deep metroidvania.
I have entered Librejam 202108 with a small cyoa.
You can now receive this stream in your mail rather than RSS, if you prefer; click on by email on top of this page.
Photographs: Corniglio IR and digital, Waterway.
4 pensieri di F.F. sulla comunicazione:
Nei confronti della comunicazione e del discorso di massa occorre aumentare il grado di consapevolezza che ogni comunicazione (e tanto più quanto più è di massa) non è né immediata né spontanea né naturale, ma sempre non naturale, non spontanea, mediata, storicamente determinata.
A pair of list of «rules» (one, two). I liked
13. Don’t debate with analogies. - Never mistake an aesthetic for an ethic.
VVVVVV is an acclaimed puzzle/platformer released in 2010, and recently made source available.
The story, the cast (Viridian, Vermillion, Vitellary, Verdgris, Violet, Victoria), the action and the relatively short length (≃2 hours) make it a good recommendation.
Compile it yourself or if you prefer buy it on GOG.
Jour 1 a diary of a day spent taking pictures.
What is a language? This is something that is surprisingly controversial. There’s some easy ways to tell when something is a language (one of them being that they have an army), but what about things like emoji? Is emoji a language? In this article I will attempt to argue that emoji is not a language unto itself.
Dino Commando, a surprisingly playable pulp gamebook by kung fu space barbarian.
I decided to go with a mostly realistic scenario - I’ve been in this situation before, but as a human.
You are an anthropomorphic dog standing in the middle of Glasgow Central Station. Your train to Manchester has been cancelled, but nobody seems to know why. You walk up to the customer service desk and ask for a ticket.
By printing 350.000 images, uploaded in a twenty-four hours period, the feeling of drowning in representations of other peoples’ experiences is visualized.
more pictures: Nature’s Art Museum and the Art of Aging ◊ Novara - cemetery
Luckily I’ve already had found an alternative home for my tutorials. It’s called PeerTube. PeerTube is video sharing software but contrary to YouTube, it is open source. In addition it’s also decentralized and federated.
I want to try peertube too.
the weather (or: mass shooting)
Looking back on it now, those two years in a basement in South Boulder were the best that town ever treated me. Martian Acres, with Martin Park for a back yard. The bike path all the way out to Gunbarrel for work, or jamming onto the crowded bus up Broadway. Beers at the Southern Sun, breakfast at the Walnut Cafe to go with the hangovers.
<FSi> 1. type "git" in terminal, thinking to finish it later
<FSi> 2. switch to a different tab/screen to check things
<FSi> 3. switch back, type "git add ."
<FSi> 4. end up with "git git add ."
handwriting: Burro e tutori
[P]lease provide me with four or five pounds of good butter. Regarding the price, I refer to you.
art: Pat Perry, Sketchbook
music: Percy Grainger, The Immovable Do played by Artis Wodehouse.
art: The Bridge and Hell ◊ a weird instrument, the cervellato (rankett) Zarlino: Dulcian Rankett.
Just because you have some money, that doesn't mean that you have to spend it, in my opinion threat #1 to every Open Source project.
Looking back, my games that were the most joy to work on were text-based. Even as they were also my least successful. From text adventures through tabletop RPGs and to dungeon crawlers, whenever I was able to blend writing and games, it made me happy.
[ita/de] Jan Wagner, abendlied, lago di como:
herbst, wenn die kastanien die waffen strecken, autunno, quando gli ippocastani depongono le armi, morgensterne ringsum versteuter am boden mazze chiodate giacciono sparse sul terreno liegen in den zweigen die vogelbeeren all’intorno, sui rami le bacche del sorbo selvatico prahel mit ihrem gift. si gloriano del loro veleno.