TangibleLight's recent activity

  1. Comment on Some people can't see mental images. The consequences are profound. in ~health.mental

    TangibleLight
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    This is totally reasonable to me. I have a keyless front door lock, with a little keypad where I type in a code to enter. I honestly do not know the number. I must have known it when I first...

    The other day, I forgot my password to Bitwarden after setting up a new computer. The strangest thing happened, I could let my hands "move" in a pattern I subconsciously and intuitively knew. But if I tried to "think" about what I was doing it sort of broke down and got in the way. This is the muscle memory you are describing.

    This is totally reasonable to me. I have a keyless front door lock, with a little keypad where I type in a code to enter. I honestly do not know the number. I must have known it when I first bought the thing, but several years on, typing the thing in every day without looking, I honestly do not know the number and just go through the motions on muscle memory. I do know the pattern of numbers on the keypad, so I could work it out if I needed to, but the number isn't sitting in my mind as a simple fact.

    Really, thinking about it.... I should probably change that code! It's been the same for quite a while.

    To really manifest what I am trying to say here: it's as if the concepts, properties, and intuitions that are accompanying useful physical analogies (like a box holding things to represent computer memory), are still acting. They are acting in a way in me that are not directly accessible, but they are still there.

    A year and a half ago (wow!) I had a conversation with @RNG on here (here's the comment relevant to this conversation) where they brought up "integrated information theory" of consciousness, which I had never heard of before (and here's the overview of IIT which they linked and also the wikipedia article). That conversation has lingered on my mind ever since, and IIT in particular. The more I've learned and thought about it since, the more convinced I've become that, while that formulation is probably not correct, it's almost certainly on the right track.

    The basic idea is that the experience of consciousness arises from "complexes" of information processing capability. Different regions of the brain process different things in different ways, and as such there may be "sub-complexes" of local information processing. The consciousness is then the local maximum of information processing capability, comprised of several subcomplexes.

    A relevant quote to your point here:

    5. In principle, the major complex can vary (expand, shrink, split, and move), as long as it is a local maximum of information integration. For example, experiences of “pure thought”, which can occur in wakefulness and especially in some dreams, may be specified by a neuronal complex that is smaller and substantially different than the complex specifying purely perceptual experiences.

    6. It is well established that, after the complete section of the corpus callosum—the roughly 200 million fibers that connect the cortices of the two hemispheres—consciousness is split in two: there are two separate “flows” of experience, one associated with the left hemisphere and one with the right one. An intriguing prediction of IIT is that, if the efficacy of the callosal fibers were reduced progressively, there would be a moment at which, for a minor change in the traffic of neural impulses across the callosum, experience would go from being a single one to suddenly splitting into two separate experiencing minds. The splitting of consciousness should be associated with the splitting of a single conceptual structure into two similar ones (when two maxima of integrated information supplant a single maximum). Under certain pathological conditions (for example, dissociative disorders such as hysterical blindness), and perhaps even under certain physiological conditions (say “autopilot” driving while having a phone conversation), such splits may also occur among cortical areas within the same hemisphere in the absence of an anatomical lesion. Again, IIT predicts that in such conditions there should be two local maxima of information integration, one corresponding to a “major” complex and one or more to “minor” complexes (Mudrik, Faivre et al. 2014).

    So the idea in the "autopilot" scenario is that the single global maximum of information integration splits into two (or more) local maxima, and so produce two consciousnesses. One having the phone call, the other driving the vehicle. If only one of the minor complexes is connected to memory-forming capability in the brain, then only memories from that minor complex will remain for later recall.

    Anecdotally, I've experienced (something like) this in both ways: I can have a full conversation with someone while I'm distracted by something else, and leave with no memory of the conversation. Or, I'll be distracted in my own thoughts while driving and suddenly appear at my house with no memory of operating the car.

    It also seems to line up with this excerpt from the OP:

    Reeder had tested children’s imagery and believed that most children were hyperphantasic. They had not yet undergone the synaptic pruning that took place in adolescence, so there were incalculably more neuronal connections linking different parts of their brain, giving rise to fertile imagery. Then, as they grew older, the weaker connections were pruned away. Because the synapses that were pruned tended to be the ones that were used less, Reeder thought it was possible that the children who grew up to be hyperphantasic adults were those who kept on wanting to conjure up visual fantasy worlds, even as they grew older. Conversely, perhaps children who grew up to become typical imagers daydreamed less and less, becoming more interested in the real people and things around them. Maybe some children who loved to daydream were scolded, in school or at home, to pay attention, and maybe these children disciplined themselves to focus on the here and now and lost the ability to travel to the imaginary worlds they’d known when they were young.

    Where that 'synaptic pruning' might make it difficult for a single major complex to span both visualization and reasoning, and instead splits into separate visualizing and reasoning minor complexes.

    I wonder if the thing you describe (or even "intuition" or "gut feel" in general) comes from something similar, where perhaps there is some minor complex which does perform such visualizations, and can be that "invisible hand" to give you the answer, but it is somehow disconnected from memory-forming capability and the rest of the major complex that you consider to be you.

    2 votes

  2. Comment on Some people can't see mental images. The consequences are profound. in ~health.mental

    TangibleLight
    Link Parent
    This put "You don't know the power of the dark side" in my mind, but you also put this idea in my head, so it sort of involuntarily came out "You don't know ThE PoWeR Of tHe dArK SiDe" as a weird...

    I tried Darth Vader for kicks, and it was simply my voice but poorly (and funnily) modulated through a breathing apparatus.

    This put "You don't know the power of the dark side" in my mind, but you also put this idea in my head, so it sort of involuntarily came out "You don't know ThE PoWeR Of tHe dArK SiDe" as a weird hybrid mix of my own voice and James Earl Jones. Funny.

    Sometimes distinctive voices will get 'stuck in my head' like a catchy tune. Gilbert Gottfried haunts me.

    if I were to be able to visualize Dracula's "Cold, gaunt and pale white hands", the image in my mind (if it were to appear) would, as I "feel" it, consume the entirety of my field of view. I would not have imagined (I feel) the entirety of Dracula, but it would be as if I was zoomed in on a disembodied hand.

    This is fairly accurate to how I see it, but not exactly as a "field of view". This is what I was trying to get at with the phrasing about "attention" and "form" and "presence".

    Rephrasing my comment a bit to put into context:

    As such I have a very strong sense of attention in my visualizations, rendering in very high detail the thing of interest, and very low detail the others, and out into a void at the bounds of the visualization. If I picture the apple on the table, the apple is [highly detailed.] The surface of the table [less detailed.]

    However, at first, that's the whole picture. [I do still "feel" that the table and its legs are where they would be] but there's no form unless I "look", and in visualizing that form I must sacrifice some of the detail [of the apple]. [If I do focus on the table and its surroundings, then I can see those in more detail;] but at that point, the apple itself fades to formless presence.

    2 votes

  3. Comment on Some people can't see mental images. The consequences are profound. in ~health.mental

    TangibleLight
    Link Parent
    In mathematics, I tend to reason about things geometrically, and simply use the algebra as a means to codify those representations or give more analytical rigor, or as extra 'memory' to keep track...

    In mathematics, I tend to reason about things geometrically, and simply use the algebra as a means to codify those representations or give more analytical rigor, or as extra 'memory' to keep track of more entities than I can focus on at once. I get the sense from this that you do the opposite; internally, everything is algebra, and if necessary you might draw out some diagrams to get an intuitive feel for how to direct an approach to a problem.

    For what it's worth, I can't do sophisticated algebra in my head very well. I usually need to write things out with pencil and paper. I can get by just fine, but I can think of several peers that deal with long formulae much better than I can.

    On your example of a linked list: think of that pointer juggling you do to insert an element. In my mind, I have a very clear picture of nodes connected by arrows, and a highlighted 'cursor' arrow. A new node comes into existence, and I see how I need to move the cursor and arrows. Then the actual programming is just an exercise to figure out how to write down that manipulation so the computer can do it.

    If, instead, you consider it as some recursive algebraic structure, then you can just sort of... intuit which 'algebraic' manipulations to get the program to do the operation? And maybe if you're having difficulty on that intuition, you draw out a diagram to guide the process?

    It feels like the same sort of 'muscle' that says "oh, substitute this expression for that one to make this integral easier" or "oh, add and subtract this term to make things factor nicely." Sometimes those come from a place of intuition and pattern recognition, but sometimes you have to look at some geometry to see which pieces are missing.

    1 vote

  4. Comment on Some people can't see mental images. The consequences are profound. in ~health.mental

    TangibleLight
    Link Parent
    How do you reason about program memory and/or data structures? For me (see my other comment for detail on my degree of mental imagery) program memory and data structures are very viscerally laid...

    How do you reason about program memory and/or data structures? For me (see my other comment for detail on my degree of mental imagery) program memory and data structures are very viscerally laid out in a space. I get in principle that one might reason about these things strictly symbolically... after all, the computer does all its work with simple numbers. But I have no conception of how to diagnose problems or work through an algorithm without that spatial organization. What's your experience there?

    1 vote

  5. Comment on Some people can't see mental images. The consequences are profound. in ~health.mental

    TangibleLight
    Link Parent
    Here's a picture of what I'm trying to visualize (but with a single point cloud that I add to over time; the three point clouds in the image are just to show that progression.)...

    Here's a picture of what I'm trying to visualize (but with a single point cloud that I add to over time; the three point clouds in the image are just to show that progression.)

    https://i.imgur.com/Y8XDhoD.png

    Also, the way you subdivide the grid of dots on the face reminds me of this fractal dithering technique. (Showcase video.)

    1 vote

  6. Comment on Some people can't see mental images. The consequences are profound. in ~health.mental

    TangibleLight
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    Tracking that many points with consistent placement is seriously impressive to me!! To be clear, you're imagining the points off in their own space away from the surface, not placing them directly...

    Tracking that many points with consistent placement is seriously impressive to me!! To be clear, you're imagining the points off in their own space away from the surface, not placing them directly on the surface? It's much easier for me to imagine dots scattered on the surface as opposed to the dots free-floating in space according to the general shape of the surface.

    It is also a bit easier for me to imagine the points in regular patterns, or points on a curve as opposed to points on a surface. Past about a dozen or so I don't trust that I'm placing the points consistently and they aren't wandering around. If I just place a bunch of points and attempt to count them, I lose track quickly.

    Placing points in separate batches and merging them is an interesting idea.... I put my surface to the left and the place for my point cloud to the right. I scatter three points on the surface, then move them over to the point cloud. I can hold the triplet in my mind as vertices of a single triangle - again, I'm limited to only a few elements at a time, but with each element being the vertices of a triangle that brings the count to about 20!! I'm so proud of myself! However I cannot do the same with quadruples of points or more - the limit for me seems to be about half a dozen batches of three.

    Incidentally, the best way I can remember long numbers is in rhythmic batches of three digits spatially arranged left-to-right in reading order. I wonder if there's some relation there as positioning things spatially is the best technique I have for helping working memory.

    Edit: Reflecting on that last point more, I think that's backwards. I think the trick is relying on my audio memory, with the triplets of numbers coming in rhythm. So, with that in mind:

    I place the surface off to the left, and the space for my point cloud to the right. I imagine a single triplet of points as the base element, and deform it so the vertices land on arbitrary points of the surface to be the first batch. Then to rhythm I deform the triangle so the vertices land on new sets of points. I go in sequence, adding two triplets each time, my inner speech counting 3 - 6, 3 - 6 - 9 - 12, 3 - 6 - 9 - 12 - 15 - 18, and so on, moving the triplet in the same pattern each time. With this strategy I can get past 30 points in total, albeit not all at once, but the rhythm and sound convinces me I am placing them consistently.

    1 vote

  7. Comment on Some people can't see mental images. The consequences are profound. in ~health.mental

    TangibleLight
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    I don't have a great sense where exactly on the spectrum I sit, but I do know I'm more hyper- than an- on these things. Visually, not as strongly as you, but maybe I can give some insight on this...

    I have difficulty comprehending the inner life of aphantasics (or
    anendophasics, or anauralics) [...]

    I don't have a great sense where exactly on the spectrum I sit, but I do know I'm more hyper- than an- on these things. Visually, not as strongly as you, but maybe I can give some insight on this from someone a step or two down the scale to possibly give a sense on that general direction?? I'll also respond to some of @TaylorSwiftsPickles's comment inline here, and to some excerpt from the article.

    The "apple on a table" exercise

    I can visualize small things very clearly, but I do have a definitive limit. As such I have a very strong sense of attention in my visualizations, rendering in very high detail the thing of interest, and very low detail the others, and out into a void at the bounds of the visualization. If I picture the apple on the table, the apple is a prototypical Red Delicious (although that's not my favorite) with no blemishes. The color is a neatly polished deep red, with specular highlights from an overhead lamp. The surface of the table is some lightly stained wood (the dining table at my childhood home), with a harsh shadow from the overhead light and softer shadow from ambient occlusion.

    However, at first, that's the whole picture. It's not that I can't visualize the rest of the table, and the table and its legs do have some presence to them, but there's no form unless I "look", and in visualizing that form I must sacrifice some of the detail on the apple and its illumination. I can focus on the joinery of the table and its surroundings, the floor, the chairs, the ceiling; but at that point, the apple itself fades to formless presence.

    Until I "look" at some subject, there is no form or presence at all; only void, but wherever I direct my attention I can render out consistent detail for the subject in exchange for the same elsewhere. This seems similar to what @hobblyhoy described, but perhaps my 'default' state is a bit more visual than theirs.

    One technique is to fold details away into 'texture'; it's almost like the color/texture and the geometry occupy different segments of my attention, so if I can fold geometry information like the texture of a tablecloth or the apholstery of the chair away into a general pattern or roughness, it's easier bring more details into focus. But in some sense, that's just another way to sacrifice one form for another.

    Higher mathematics - picture a manifold, invert it, transform it...

    Here's an exercise that might get you into this "attention" mindset, or else reveal something about how you see things. Picture your favorite surface embedded in space (say a torus or bell). Hold that to the side. Now, separately, consider the highest point on that surface. Do not visualize the point as lying on the surface itself: the surface is merely a guide to sample the points in their own space.

    Now sample a few points from the surface. Say the lowest point also, or simply pick points at random.

    Eventually, there is some number of points that's just too many for me to keep track of. For me, maybe 8? 10? It's difficult to do counting operations like that. Alternatively, I can imagine a distribution of uncountable number of points, but only by visualizing the texture of their distribution painted on the surface itself.

    I don't have so much trouble with intrusive imagery or other sensory process data as the article describes, mainly due to decades of SSRI use and meditation.

    I don't have troubles either (with one exception, below), but neither medication nor meditation were necessary for this. Like I say, I must explicitly direct attention to visualize a thing. If my attention is elsewhere, there is no capacity for intrusion.

    The exception is in auditory senses. My auralia (??) is much stronger than phantasia (??). From the article:

    While sitting in a room with no pictures or stimulation of any kind, supposedly meditating, she decided to watch the first Harry Potter movie in her head. She wasn’t able to recall all two hours of it, but watching what she remembered lasted for forty-five minutes. Then she did the same with the other seven films.

    I cannot do this with film, perhaps except for short scenes that I know very well. However for sounds - music, dialogue, or my own inner speech - I can. When I'm bored I'll play an album for myself. Moreover, I can't "turn it off". There is always something playing, so I have learned to try my best to direct it.

    For example, I can focus much much easier on things if there's some ambient instrumental music playing to occupy that auditory processing and leave my inner speech and visualization free to reason about a problem. Silence is too distracting, as it leaves that part of my mind to wander. Music with vocals are too distracting, as the words distract my inner speech.

    When recalling speech, it seems to occupy the same part of my mind responsible for my inner speech; I cannot imagine two voices simultaneously as language, but I can imagine discordant voices in a chorus as noise. I cannot understand others speaking to me if I'm simultaneously using my inner speech or recalling speech. There are no limits on character of the voice as others here have described: my inner voice is typically my own, but I can perfectly recall others' voices or invent new ones.

    I avoid visual news presentations or violent movies and TV because reading about it is bad enough.

    So, same, but not for this reason. I don't have these issues with commentary over silent images, but audio recordings of people in distress really get to me.

    [touch, smell, pain, taste, faces, names, emotions]

    I cannot recall taste or smell at all, in any capacity. I do know as a matter of fact which tastes and smells I like or dislike, and I instantly recognize them when they occur, but I cannot conjure them.

    I have strong memory for pain, faces, and emotions; although faces have similar caveats regarding level of detail. I can imagine the person's face or the person's body and clothing and surroundings. Not both. A crowd of many people are all faceless, unless I focus on an individual.

    I can recall some touch, but it is difficult and fleeting. I get the sense that the level of detail here is similar to how some of the near-aphantasics here describe visualization: fleeting wireframes and general forms but no persistence. Like, I can perfectly recall the shape and illumination of a large granite boulder at a nearby park; I can visualize the rough texture of its surface. I can imagine touching my hand to it, and I know I would feel the grittiness of the dust and dirt, the sharpness of the fractures in the surface, but I just.... can't. I can very clearly recall the cold of it. I wonder if that's related to my strong memory of pain since cold relates to heat? But I don't feel the sharpness, so maybe not.

    (From @TaylorSwiftsPickles) Further, I also experience synaesthesia, which is a whole other can of worms.

    As a child through my teens I used to experience synaesthesia (auditory to visual? to spatial?) but I no longer do. I know as a matter of fact which sounds produce which visualizations, but they don't come in real time any more. It also wasn't strictly visual; more like a spatial presence and distortion according to each sound. I wouldn't have described it this way at the time, but, knowing what I know now: try to think of a stress tensor field overlaid on your surroundings. Hearing a sound caused a distortion in that tensor field around the place from which the sound originated. Different pitches and tones and speech producing different twistings and periodic patterns in that field about the point. The way I described it when I was younger was as motion, that sounds caused twisting or stretching around the speaker, but that's not quite right because there was never really anything moving, just a sort of impression of force, which is why I liken it to a stress tensor now.

    I don't have photographic memory for what I see on a page - I can recall the gist of the content and striking details of font or paragraph layout, but not the fine text.

    If I had read the text, I can exactly recall the words through my inner speech. If I saw the text but did not read it, I cannot. Too much detail in the form. I can recall the form of a particular letter or short word, but long words and sentences and paragraphs get folded into texture on the surface with limited detail.

    I just realized that hyperphantasia is probably why I'm not a great teacher.

    This will definitely change how I teach! Currently I work in differential geometry, and I think now I rely too heavily on visualization of the various operators on the surfaces. In the future I will try to bring more pictures and animations with me so the audience need not conjure anything in their own mind, and try to bring more symbolic representation for those who think better with notation.

    8 votes

  8. Comment on What makes a game, a game? in ~games

    TangibleLight
    Link Parent
    Feels right to me. You ever write poetry? Avoid stepping on cracks for no particular reason? Put an elegantly persuasive argument together? Those all feel game-ish to me. Some other questions: Is...

    but at that point you can consider the act of many activities like writing, walking, and [communicating] a "game". And that didn't feel right.

    Feels right to me. You ever write poetry? Avoid stepping on cracks for no particular reason? Put an elegantly persuasive argument together? Those all feel game-ish to me.

    Some other questions:

    • Is driving a car (legally) a game?
    • Is driving a car (illegally) a game?
    • Are Bumper Cars a game?
    • Are Teacups a game?
    • Is a Scrambler a game?
    4 votes

  9. Comment on Who can name the bigger number? in ~science

    TangibleLight
    Link Parent
    Yeah, I deleted the part of my comment that I think this is in response to because, after further thought, I think it missed the point of the article and also the point of the busy beavers themselves.

    As for the article, I think the main purpose wasn't actually typing out a big number, but rather teaching people like me about the different classes of numbers and functions.

    Yeah, I deleted the part of my comment that I think this is in response to because, after further thought, I think it missed the point of the article and also the point of the busy beavers themselves.

    2 votes

  10. Comment on Who can name the bigger number? in ~science

    TangibleLight
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    There is a common notation of "iterated functions" where it does make some sense with a small adjustment. f^1 (x) = f(x) f^2 (x) = f(f(x)) f^3 (x) = f(f(f(x))) and so on. Hopefully you see that...

    There is a common notation of "iterated functions" where it does make some sense with a small adjustment.

    f^1 (x) = f(x)
f^2 (x) = f(f(x))
f^3 (x) = f(f(f(x)))

    and so on.

    Hopefully you see that tree^tree(3) (3) is more immense than any of the computable numbers mentioned in the article (but still grows slower than the busy beavers).

    Note you could also write BB^BB(100) (100).

    You could also define the Ackermann hierarchy for this, and get function tetration, pentation, and so on. Plug BB into any of those and that will win, but still grow slower than the "higher level busy beavers" mentioned in the article.

    The bignum bakeoff is in this vein and had some incredible ideas. https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-R4p-BRL8NR8THgjx_DW9c92VHTtjZEY

    3 votes

  11. Comment on Hot take: 4:3 > 16:9 in ~tv

    TangibleLight
    Link
    There's an excellent video by Noodle about the history and limitations of different aspect ratios. "how TV screens made watching movies worse" It's a 180° VR video (you can view it on a regular...

    There's an excellent video by Noodle about the history and limitations of different aspect ratios. "how TV screens made watching movies worse" It's a 180° VR video (you can view it on a regular screen, but here's the 2D version also) so he can show various content at arbitrary aspect ratio. It's neat!

    His most recent video is in a similar vein but a different subject, about color grading. There are a lot of parallels and the challenges are generally similar. "am I crazy or did old movies look different before...?"

    2 votes

  12. Comment on Musings on "Developer Mode" in ~comp

    TangibleLight
    Link Parent
    It's also worth pointing out that developer tools for propriety software almost certainly do exist, created by the developers of the software for their own use. It's just that there's no incentive...

    I’d love to have a developer mode that let me go in and sort out some of the larger annoyances in other software I use, but they don’t exist because that software isn’t intended as an environment for other code to run in, and that means the companies making it have no incentive to open things up.

    It's also worth pointing out that developer tools for propriety software almost certainly do exist, created by the developers of the software for their own use. It's just that there's no incentive to publish these tools when they're part of the company's 'secret sauce' unless you're aiming to build a platform where third-party developers can extend the software.

    13 votes

  13. Comment on What's your current PC wallpaper? in ~tech

    TangibleLight
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    I've had heic1502a on my desktop since they published it. I switched to PHAT briefly when they published that, but with 10 years of being accustomed to the core off-center I switched back for...

    I've had heic1502a on my desktop since they published it. I switched to PHAT briefly when they published that, but with 10 years of being accustomed to the core off-center I switched back for familiarity.

    On my laptop for some time now I've had a processed image from Juno "Perijove 8" (Flickr archive link).

    For a long time on my work machine I've just had a black screen, but fairly recently I switched to a Cassini image of Saturn's moon Daphnis PIA11571. I have it centered on the screen on black background (although I removed a single star from the background. Here's the actual image file).

  14. Comment on Could a space traveler accelerate at 1g forever? in ~space

  15. Comment on The rise of Whatever in ~tech

    TangibleLight
    Link Parent
    I'm a bit confused and curious about this. Are you saying in some way you try to use the machine as a faster keyboard? I'm confused because I don't think I experience any cognitive load in...

    Which cognitive load are you looking to remove exactly?

    The actual putting hands to a keyboard.

    I'm a bit confused and curious about this. Are you saying in some way you try to use the machine as a faster keyboard?

    I'm confused because I don't think I experience any cognitive load in 'putting hands to a keyboard' while coding. For most coding tasks I type faster than I can think, so all the load is in figuring out the correct approach.

    The exception is when I'm working with an unfamiliar API, since there's a lot of effort to simply figure out what tools are available to me. I could imagine reaching for an AI to already 'know' these things, but unfortunately those are also exactly the areas that I don't really trust an AI to be correct. In all those cases I trust my peers, reference documentation, and (if it's available) the source code.

    Another exception is writing prose. I can't type as fast as my internal monologue or speech. Sometimes I get ahead of myself and there's some load to remember how I want to phrase a passage as I take the time to write it out.

    5 votes

  16. Comment on Tildes Minecraft Survival in ~games

    TangibleLight
    Link Parent
    Thanks for remembering the project, and thanks for the message! I have not been on in quite a while - life has gotten very busy. What free time I have had, I've been digging into technical...

    Thanks for remembering the project, and thanks for the message! I have not been on in quite a while - life has gotten very busy. What free time I have had, I've been digging into technical redstone more generally, and haven't been so focused on the stasis network itself.

    It's one of the situations where perfect is the enemy of the good, and so I don't have a working assembly. I do have lots of partially-working bits, though! And it's been fun!

    For example, here's the most dense and featureful wireless receiver I've built. It receives 8-bit messages broadcasted on a 4-bit channel, and has a memory register to get a stable output. It's comparable in volume with double the message size as the previous smallest I showed in my last update, and is much smaller than my much older "behemoth" which receives 8 bits broadcasted on a single channel.

    I've also been fiddling with smaller stasis chamber designs. Borrowing concepts from some other folks working on stasis chambers, I built this alignment mechanism which I think is fun to watch. Unfortunately I haven't been able to get it working with an entity separator, and it can't read out how many pearls are in the chamber at a given time.

    All this to say, I am working on it, but life is busy and progress is slow. Whenever it's ready, I'd love to collaborate on the exteriors!

    3 votes

  17. Comment on What have you been listening to this week? in ~music

    TangibleLight
    Link Parent
    Oh, something a lot more similar to Tron that I'd probably classify as "Synth Orchestral" is the Surviving Mars Soundtrack.

    Oh, something a lot more similar to Tron that I'd probably classify as "Synth Orchestral" is the Surviving Mars Soundtrack.

  18. Comment on What have you been listening to this week? in ~music

    TangibleLight
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    For some reason, seeing it phrased this way reminds me of the Hardspace Shipbreaker soundtrack "tension" mixes. Here's Suthern Gothic (Tension Remix) and The Miners (Tension Remix). It's a...

    synth orchestral

    For some reason, seeing it phrased this way reminds me of the Hardspace Shipbreaker soundtrack "tension" mixes. Here's Suthern Gothic (Tension Remix) and The Miners (Tension Remix). It's a radically different genre than Tron - Appalachian Americana - but it blends acoustic and synth in a similar way.

    Some context: Hardspace Shipbreaker is a science fiction game - hence the synth - that takes themes from the labor conflicts in Appalachian company mining towns in the early 1900's - hence the Americana.

    The game uses a dynamic soundtrack system where, normally, the soundtrack is only Americana; but in "high tension" situations, like if you're low on oxygen or a nuclear reactor is about to melt down, it blends the synth elements in. As a result the OST doesn't have any synth, it's just acoustic, so they also produced these "Tension Remix" versions of the song that include those synth elements you hear in the game.

  19. Comment on Tildes Minecraft Survival in ~games

    TangibleLight
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    I use Fabulously Optimized with some extra mods on top. Some of these might be already included in FO, but I'm not certain.... here are the highlights that aren't just used for optimization. I use...

    I use Fabulously Optimized with some extra mods on top. Some of these might be already included in FO, but I'm not certain.... here are the highlights that aren't just used for optimization.

    I use MultiMC as my launcher/mod manager.

    Utilities and Quality-of-Life

    • Accurate Block Placement makes it so when you hold down right-mouse it consistently places blocks while you look around or walk. Much easier and faster than repeatedly clicking the button!

    • Mouse Tweaks tweaks how the mouse works in inventories. For example it allows you to click-and-drag on items to collect things a bit more fluidly, or scroll on items to shift them in/out of chests.

    • Inventory HUD + shows my inventory, armor, and tools in a little translucent view on the main screen. Gives me some confidence I'm not about to break my elytra or run out of building blocks.

    • Xaero's Minimap and Xaero's World Map do what they sound like. The minimap appears in the corner of your screen, and the world map is a full-screen map on which you can place waypoints and view other dimensions. One really nice feature is, while in the overworld, you can view your equivalent position in the Nether or vice versa. Similarly you can place a waypoint in the Nether and have it appear in the Overworld or vice versa. Very helpful for linking portals!

    • RoughlyEnoughItems This isn't as useful nowadays since we have the crafting book, but I'm old-school from the days of TooManyItems and prefer to keep it around. The "favorited items" and "recipe tree" features are nice for keeping track of which building materials I need to collect.

    Vanity

    • LambDynamicLights I think this one is included in FO. It makes torches actually illuminate the area around you - very useful in your off-hand while mining! But be sure to still place real torches, as the dynamic lights do not prevent mobs spawning.

    • Distant Horizons well covered by others I think. Produces extremely far render distances, and allows you to set your "real" render distance much lower for better performance.

    • Isometric Renders lets you make cute third-person screenshots of your builds.

    • Better Clouds I don't like playing with shaders, but this along with Distant Horizons creates some really nice landscapes without losing that Minecraft "charm".

    • Better Third Person makes the third-person F5 view actually useful! I really like to use it while exploring.

    • Do a Barrel Roll makes flying elytra fun, but also extremely hazardous. Do not use this in the End! Just trust me on that lol. But exploring the overworld is a lot of fun with it. I recommend the "hybrid" control mode, where pressing space the first time enters vanilla-style elytra flight, and pressing space again enters DaBR-style flight.

    Technical

    Less generally relevant to survival, but useful. Tweakeroo especially has a lot of things let you customize the game to extreme degree.

    • MiniHUD a very powerful but not-so-easy-to-use tool that does a whole bunch of stuff. Its namesake feature is to show customizable info in the corner in a "mini-f3 hud", but it also allows you to view spawnable block locations, structure borders, custom borders and overlays, etc. It's very useful for planning out farms and AFK spots.

    • Tweakeroo not dissimilar from MiniHUD, but more focused on quality of life changes. For example, it can switch away from your pickaxe if you're about to break it, automatically restock items in your hotbar if you're about to run out, provide a hot-key to let you place blocks diagonally-adjacent to others without scaffolding, and various other things.

    Not client-side

    But indispensable on my local creative server:

    • WorldEdit for quickly editing builds. I think that some of this can be done in vanilla nowadays with commands, but I never learned that and WorldEdit is more powerful. There is also Axiom which is still more powerful and intuitive, aimed more specifically at creatives and designers, but I have not learned it. I am mildly curious if it's any more useful for technical builds than WorldEdit is.

      • Edit: After I dug up the link for Axiom I started poking around the documentation for it. It looks like it solves a lot of the issues I have with WorldEdit (specifically when you copy/paste, sometimes redstone components do not paste correctly). So I think I will start learning Axiom for my creative server.

    • Redstone Multimeter is frankly over-powered for debugging redstone contraptions. It does not change vanilla behavior at all; it simply allows you to monitor redstone components with an oscilloscope-type view, and step through the timeline to help make sure things update in the right order. Extremely helpful for debugging things.

    Edit: I've tried Axiom for a few hours now, and I'm never going back to WorldEdit if I can help it. It is such a good tool, even for technical builds.

    4 votes

  20. Comment on Tildes Minecraft Survival in ~games

    TangibleLight
    Link Parent
    Good grief. I hope you got some good rest since then. I think three lanes of torches/lanterns are the best bet. One row along the road, and one row to either side, concealed with carpet. You can...

    36ish hours awake

    Good grief. I hope you got some good rest since then.

    I think three lanes of torches/lanterns are the best bet. One row along the road, and one row to either side, concealed with carpet. You can use moss carpet in forests, and gray carpet on stone.

    Do we have a string farm?

    The piglin bartering system produces string, but not in huge quantities. I seem to recall a spider spawner farm at some point - but that might have been on the old server - I'd check the lectern at town square to see if there are coordinates. The problem with doing such a large area is you'd need on the order of thousands, and it's hard to tell what's placed already and what's not.

    I can't say I recommend it, but If you do go that route, the Vanilla Tweaks resource pack has a "Visible Tripwires" option in the "Utility" section that makes string appear bright blue, much easier to see on the ground. You can also use a mod like "Lighty" or "MiniHUD" to show the light level and which blocks are spawnable to make sure the region is spawn-proofed.

    3 votes