akavel's digital garden
âA simple watercolor palette for beginners (and experts)â. Spelled out as Winsor & Newton brand colors, plus their universal pigment names: â cyan: Winsor Blue (green shade) PB15:3 a.k.a. Phthalocyanine Blue; â magenta: Quinacridone Magenta PR122; â yellow: Winsor Yellow PY154 a.k.a. Azo Yellow Light a.k.a. Benzimidazolone Yellow; â black: Payneâs Gray PB15+PBk6+PV19. âExtra colors for extreme cases - forming a kind of a modified âsplit primaryâ palette in the end: â black: âLunar Blackâ from Daniel Smith PBk11; â green: Winsor Green (yellow shade) PG36; â violet/purple: Winsor Blue (red shade) PB15:1; â red: Cadmium Red Medium PR108. âNote: those are mostly staining colors, which reportedly has a number of advantages, but also results in less âtypical watercolors textureâ. âSome deeper exploration with some scientific background as well at: âWatercolor Palette Building III: Choosing a CMY Primary Triadâ and the connected playlist.
⧠2024-08-26âThe difference between undefined behavior and ill-formed C++ programsâ (via). See also especially muvlonâs rant in the discussion on lobste.rs.
⧠2024-08-05Some thoughts for âovercoming the humpâ in solo RPGs: â âLess is more.â (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: â âa 3:1 ratio [time limit:] I give myself 3 hours to stare at one spot on the wall and do absolutely nothing âorâ 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. Donât 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 wonât allow yourself to feel bad about doing nothing. If you do nothing the whole three hours and donât play at all, that is ok. Youâre 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.â (via) Also: â âPlay one-shots [ - ] thatâs good enough. [None of my short nor long stories] started with the idea of a grand campaign.â (via)
⧠2024-08-02âHow 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)
⧠2024-07-11
âOpen 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).
⧠2024-05-16âUnderstanding the neuroscience behind burnoutâ (via)
⧠2024-05-11âLeaving 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)
⧠2024-03-02âI have to keep reminding myself that the only person I have to entertain in a solo RPG is myself. Who cares if itâs cliche or not a great story or has some flat characters? Who cares if I spend an entire session ruminating about my PCâs 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 theyâre fun for me, then thatâs all that really matters.â â from u/ctalbot76 (via)
⧠2024-02-27âOn 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.