1338's recent activity
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Comment on What's something new you started doing this year? in ~talk
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
1338 LinkI've been playing Amber Isle. It's yet another entry in that "life sim" category like Stardew or Animal Crossing. A lot of the mechanics remind me of Dreamlight Valley more than any other (but no...I've been playing Amber Isle. It's yet another entry in that "life sim" category like Stardew or Animal Crossing. A lot of the mechanics remind me of Dreamlight Valley more than any other (but no microtransactions or Disney). Maybe comparable to My Time At series but with much less fleshed out characters, less story, no combat, and with selling focused more than crafting. You run a shop selling things you craft from the wood/stone/etc you find on the island. The core gameplay loop is a simple matter of going through 4 phases per day, for each phase you either run the shop or go harvest material. Mixed in there you unlock more biomes on the Island, build (well, place) houses for your new residents, and run sidequests for them which mostly consists of giving them materials you harvested.
It lacks the depth of the big names in the space, that is there's not many side activities/minigames you can do to break things up. You're running the shop 3/4 times per day and the rest of the time wandering the map collecting materials and looking for sidequests. There's no time limit per phase, so you spend more real-time harvesting until your pockets are full than anything else. But the gameplay loop of those two activities gets a bit redundant after a while. It works out decently for me because I like to read in the evening too, so when I get a bit tired of the repetition I take a break to read a chapter... But that's hardly a gold star characteristic.
The art style is nice, the characters are numerous and have colorful, cartoonish personalities with likes/dislikes. Sadly that color blends together after a while with how many residents there are and how little you interact with each (and with no nostalgic IP like Dreamlight Valley). You can build relationships by selling to/talking to/hanging out with them which gives you more money when in your shop. It's fully family friendly so there's no "Relationship" mechanics.
I've hit a few bugs but nothing game-breaking. A bit more polish would be useful though. There's some things I quite dislike, such as the need to memorize the categories of your items and likes/dislikes of residents. it doesn't explain things like "why do some residents randomly dislike your store layout" and there's not a mature wiki to reference for such issues. Overall it's yet another life sim for those who enjoy the genre, but hardly one I expect to ever go back to after I move onto another game.
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Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp
1338 LinkI've been a bit distracted from working on tilegroxy lately. But main thing I'm working on adding currently is support for automatically reloading the configuration upon change. Thanks to...I've been a bit distracted from working on tilegroxy lately. But main thing I'm working on adding currently is support for automatically reloading the configuration upon change. Thanks to viper/fsnotify the building blocks are there and I made the thing with the expectation of eventually adding this so it wasn't hugely hard. The most annoying thing was getting the change transmitted down from the top-level "command"/config code down to the request Handler. Currently I'm doing that with pointers to functions, which is pretty ugly. Internally debating whether refactoring it to use channels will really improve much.
I also have my exam to get the CKAD cert coming up. Which means I'll need to get Ubuntu installed and usable in the next few days -- ironic the Linux Foundation has such limited linux support for their tests.
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Comment on What are you reading these days? in ~books
1338 (edited )LinkI'm almost done with a combo book of The Lair of the White Worm and the Lady of the Shroud by Bram Stoker. I read Dracula and then the Icelandic translation/fanfic Dracula earlier this year so was...I'm almost done with a combo book of The Lair of the White Worm and the Lady of the Shroud by Bram Stoker. I read Dracula and then the Icelandic translation/fanfic Dracula earlier this year so was curious about some of his lesser known works. I'm disappointed.
The Lair of the White Worm, putting aside the racism/sexism, really felt like the timing was way off. They discover the "monster" way too quickly off too little evidence, it has a lot of filler that doesn't advance the plot or meaningfully establish much, then suddenly it's resolved in a rather unsatisfying manner.
The Lady of the Shroud started a bit slow then got good, but then had the big plot twist way too early. The back half of the book has been entirely focused on B-plot lines I really don't care about. I kind of wonder if Bram Stoker resented being viewed as "the vampire writer" and this is his way of capturing gothic horror fans into reading political intrigue. Maybe something will change in the last 30 or so pages I have left but I'm not optimistic.
edit: nothing changed in the last 30 pages
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Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp
1338 LinkStill working on tilegroxy. I made a 0.8.0 release for stuff I added over the past month. Might go ahead and just do 0.8, 0.9, 1.0 since timing seems to work out. Also made a second demo that does...Still working on tilegroxy. I made a 0.8.0 release for stuff I added over the past month. Might go ahead and just do 0.8, 0.9, 1.0 since timing seems to work out.
Also made a second demo that does a runtime conversion of elevation data into a map of the (weather effects aside) boiling point of water. But since my server is so underpowered I have to restrict zoom level to precached tiles to avoid performance looking bad. Meh. Undecided whether to finish it (need to redo how the tooltip works, probably add a legend, and add attribution) or toss it
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Comment on What are you reading these days? in ~books
1338 LinkI read through the Ministry For The Future recently. It's an interesting book, mostly about how eco-terrorism and the blockchain will save us from global warming. Each chapter has the book...I read through the Ministry For The Future recently. It's an interesting book, mostly about how eco-terrorism and the blockchain will save us from global warming. Each chapter has the book swapping between different areas of focus/subplots with some about the actions of the titular ministry, some short stories about things done by small groups, others about the aid worker who is the second protagonist, and the occasional bit of poetic prose about an abstract. It's a bit hard to follow along until you get into the pacing of things as a result but it's at least fairly quick to read relative to the length.
I also read through How To Talk to Your Cat about Gun Safety -- it's a super short collection of "pamphlets" satirizing how conservative evangelical christian groups would advocate talking to your kids about each topic. And it has a bunch of photoshopped cat pictures and puns. Not super funny or witty but amusing enough for a couple hours.
Next up is probably going to be They All Died Screaming given halloween is coming up. Was recommended it by someone who likes horror a lot more than me so I'm not totally sure what I'm getting into.
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Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp
1338 LinkI've been working on a project I call tilegroxy for the past few months. Use case is basically for when you're building a mapping application and pull map layers from multiple sources, this acts...I've been working on a project I call tilegroxy for the past few months. Use case is basically for when you're building a mapping application and pull map layers from multiple sources, this acts as a proxy/cache/auth/privacy layer in the middle. You probably wouldn't ever use this tool by itself but use it when you have a geospatial heavy application to go along with it.
Recently I've been working on a website for it. The tool is meant to be a swiss-army knife so the configuration can be fairly complex and needs a good reference page to be usable. I have the documentation built up using antorra to read asciidoc files in the repo itself and publish as a website. That's hosted in Cloudfront backed by S3 as a static site. I've also stood up a demo deployment of tilegroxy via a (cheap, underpowered) OVH kubernetes cluster so I can add some live examples to the site. The front-end of the demos is using eleventy for templating and maplibre for the map.
Given this tool is meant to be mainly a middleman, coming up with the demos has been tricky. But I added in a "provider" that pulls MVT tiles from Postgis and used that to make my first demo which shows USA counties over time. I'm thinking of doing a second demo that takes post-storm aerial imagery from NOAA, combines them together and maybe tweaks them. I'd love to make a demo that shows its auth capabilities but I'm not sure how to do that without making a whole other app.
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Comment on Our company is doing so well that you’re all fired in ~finance
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Comment on Microsoft Teams is/was down. What's your fallback? in ~tech
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Comment on <deleted topic> in ~tech
1338 LinkI hit something similar to the first issue. It was caused because some version of firefox had a corruption issue around localstorage/cache. The bug was fixed long ago but they didn't do anything...I hit something similar to the first issue. It was caused because some version of firefox had a corruption issue around localstorage/cache. The bug was fixed long ago but they didn't do anything for recovering already corrupted data. In cases where the data corruption occurred firefox would fail to load local storage data and just stay on a blank page like you described. In that case a vague error message would pop up in dev tools and the only way to fix it was to clear site data (Click lock icon on URL bar and select "Clear cookies and site data") or clear everything/make a new profile. If it was a website you visited years ago but hadn't visited since it's possibly the same issue.
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Comment on Year in Review: Your games of 2023 in ~games
1338 LinkThe last couple years I had transitioned to couch gaming. I had mostly been playing PS4 which a year ago I upgraded to PS5. Kinda regret not waiting on that because the current PS5 is so freaking...The last couple years I had transitioned to couch gaming. I had mostly been playing PS4 which a year ago I upgraded to PS5. Kinda regret not waiting on that because the current PS5 is so freaking huge and really didn't have many games the PS4 couldn't do satisfactorily. Plus halfway through the year it occurred to me that with my PC just gathering dust I should just connect it to my TV and get a wireless keyboard/mouse/lapboard. The second half of 2023 was spent rediscovering PC gaming. I yet again put some hundreds of hours into Factorio and Satisfactory. Mindustry has very recently become my newest favorite, it has the factorio vibe but a much bigger focus on automated defense rather than building a large factory with waves of enemies attacking. RTS not normally my favorite because I like to take my time rather than rabbit clicking but it does a good job of allowing you to "pause" so you can plan your factory plan while mining/building happens in realtime. Couple other smaller games I liked: Dave the Diver, Tavern Master, Mob Factory.
After getting into PC again I of course ended up feeling the need to upgrade my 2018-ish specs. That started with the GPU. I upgraded to a RTX 3060TI. Last time I upgraded was around when the first RTX came out but availability was horrible so I stuck with AMD then and when Cyberpunk first came out my system couldn't do the raytracing and overall framerate was horrible. After upgrading and Cyberpunk 2.0 coming out I was excited to see what it looked like, only to discover my CPU also badly needed an upgrade. Suffice to say everything is upgraded now besides case and CPU. I can play Cyberpunk with much better graphics now but I've struggled to really get into it again. I really liked it when it first came out, maybe I just miss the bugs?
BG3 like a lot of people was a surprise that took my focus for a good chunk of the year. Played a half-orc bard that min-maxed for charisma so I could silvertongue the dialog. I still want to do a second playthrough with the "dark urge" where I make sure not to kill Astorian during that first night he tries to suck you off. I apparently ended up missing a lot of popular content due to that decision.
My favorite switch game was Pikmin 4. I loved the Pikmin games when I was younger and replayed 3 on switch before 4 came out. 4 lightening up on the time pressure and having those separate game modes for it was really nice. Felt borderline open world and certainly modern while still having the same charm and gameplay I loved as a kid.
My favorite game I played on PS is a game that came out several years ago but I only recently discovered: AC Oddyssey. I had never played an Assassin's Creed game before, I had always assumed they were just stealth games. But it was well written, a nice world, and plenty of gameplay. I never fully finished out the DLCs, I need to cycle back on that eventually.
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Comment on Year in Review: Your games of 2023 in ~games
1338 Link ParentThat sounds right up my alley. I have way too many hours in factorio, satisfactory, and various lesser known factory games. Like you I got into MC back in like 2011 haven't played in years. I'm...That sounds right up my alley. I have way too many hours in factorio, satisfactory, and various lesser known factory games. Like you I got into MC back in like 2011 haven't played in years. I'm tempted to give Create a try but apparently microsoft recently threw old accounts in the trash without ever emailing about it. I might have an old copy of the jar from a decade ago in one of my backups, don't suppose Create works with that? lol
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Comment on Doctor Who Special “The Star Beast” - Discussion Thread in ~tv
1338 Link ParentThe release schedule has been confusing since the Matt Smith era, they just randomly skip years or split seasons. I've personally given up trying to follow when episodes will be coming out and...The release schedule has been confusing since the Matt Smith era, they just randomly skip years or split seasons. I've personally given up trying to follow when episodes will be coming out and just treat it like it's been re-cancelled once a season ends. Then when I see online discussion about it again, it's a pleasant surprise and easier to not be disappointed by the off years.
This one was the most pleasant surprise in quite a while.
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Comment on Yup hacks together a cross-posting app for X, Threads, Bluesky and others in ~tech
1338 LinkSo it's like wuphf? Yuphf? Kinda gives off Ryan energy too.So it's like wuphf? Yuphf? Kinda gives off Ryan energy too.
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Comment on Gardeners observations are confirmed as US Department of Agriculture updates plant hardiness zone map in ~enviro
1338 Link ParentMaybe it only shows on desktop but the NPR article has a button above the map to toggle between the 2012 and 2023 versions.Maybe it only shows on desktop but the NPR article has a button above the map to toggle between the 2012 and 2023 versions.
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Comment on What everyday things can you replace with a higher-quality alternative? in ~life
1338 Link ParentThere's also a number of other SBCs available as better alternatives to raspberry pi.There's also a number of other SBCs available as better alternatives to raspberry pi.
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Comment on Widening US highways doesn't fix traffic. So why do we keep doing it? in ~transport
1338 Link ParentYou claim that but Omaha says otherwiseClearly we can't build up.
You claim that but Omaha says otherwise
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Comment on Hahaha we live in hell: "how do we pay for parking?" in ~tech
1338 Link ParentThe rules are also different by state since they're all independent bodies. Not all states have that weight limit or at least have a higher weight limit. Luckily since there's no rules about which...The rules are also different by state since they're all independent bodies. Not all states have that weight limit or at least have a higher weight limit. Luckily since there's no rules about which state's EZpass you have to have, you can always buy from the state whose rules match your needs. I believe I-Pass is especially popular with RVs.
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Comment on Nearly a quarter of ‘Barbie’ filmgoers in the US hadn’t been to a cinema since before the pandemic in ~movies
1338 Link ParentMy last theater movie was Star Wars 9, right before pandemic. But my previous movie before that was Shut In (2016). I'd be pretty OK going another 3 or 4 years without to a movie theater. There's...My last theater movie was Star Wars 9, right before pandemic. But my previous movie before that was Shut In (2016). I'd be pretty OK going another 3 or 4 years without to a movie theater. There's just so little a theater has to offer compared to the cons. Literally the only reason I'd have to go is impatience. The movie-going experience at least sucks less now that they have better chairs and dining options in places, but it's still inferior to what I have at home.
I've been considering going to a drive-in theater as I haven't been to one in a while and that's at least a bit nostalgic for me and better for social aspects since you're not bothering people if you talk. Maybe if one of those 40x motion simulator novelty thingies open up in my area I'd consider going to one of those, since that has aspects of an experience I can't get at home.
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Comment on <deleted topic> in ~comp
The main two for me are reading and working on projects outside of work. Both of those were things I wished I would do going back years.
Ever since leaving schooling I just struggled to read books. I would obsess over page counts (Only 27 pages until I get to page 100... only 26 pages until I get to page 100) and get this obnoxious anxiety rather than really getting into the book. As a result I couldn't really remember if I had properly read a book in close to a decade. I would do audiobooks frequently but the actual act of reading just had this wall for me. I think I finally hit a point where I was able to push past that and so I ended up reading Murder on Sex Island in the first week of January. I then also read a silly book aimed at kids I had sitting around that month so I decided to call it a new year's resolution to read at least 2 books each month. I accomplished that a week ago when I finished my second December read, Game of Thrones! I'm at 43 books/13.5k pages so far this year (will be at least 45/14k by year end but I'm hoping I can get closer to 48/15k to make it rounder)
And this year I started a programming side project. I'd struggled to have the energy to put into such a thing in the past but at this point I do so little actual coding in my typical day I've found I have a lot more coding energy to put into side projects (life energy remains a challenge as always). I found there was a tool we use at work that was dead and had no ideal replacements, so started developing what I'd want that to be. That also gave me an opportunity to learn new languages/tools I hadn't had much opportunity to use at work, plus helped remind me what I liked about coding when I was a teenager.