zakhar's recent activity

  1. Comment on Amazon's Prime Day deals could actually cost you more in ~tech

    zakhar
    Link Parent
    Yep, you’re not exaggerating! I remember using camelcamelcamel to track prices for computer parts on newegg when building a pc back in 2010.

    Yep, you’re not exaggerating! I remember using camelcamelcamel to track prices for computer parts on newegg when building a pc back in 2010.

    4 votes

  2. Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp

    zakhar
    Link Parent
    Thanks for trying it out! Yeah, it's just a singleton instance right now. I probably should add some sort of lobby setup to it, but since it's usually just me and a couple friends playing, it...

    Thanks for trying it out!

    Yeah, it's just a singleton instance right now. I probably should add some sort of lobby setup to it, but since it's usually just me and a couple friends playing, it hadn't really warranted it.

    gametje looks really cool! If it is helpful at all for your site, the source code for Booggle is available at https://github.com/zkhr/booggle

    1 vote

  3. Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp

  4. Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp

    zakhar
    Link
    Two recent personal projects. (1) I built a fictional ghost inspired web implementation of a popular word game involving a 4x4 grid of letters. (i.e. a multiplayer boggle clone named Booggle)...

    Two recent personal projects.

    (1) I built a fictional ghost inspired web implementation of a popular word game involving a 4x4 grid of letters. (i.e. a multiplayer boggle clone named Booggle) several years ago, but revamped it recently to try out a new to me tech stack (Deno, Vite, React, TS, etc) and make it look a little nicer. I also added a solver at the end to show you the words everyone missed and built a cool rainbow slider to pick your Boo's color.

    I also went down a weird internet rabbit hole when upgrading my dictionary from NWL2020 to NWL2023 and noticed that the word rhinoceroi had been removed. In their draft report (pdf) they noted that

    “rhinocerotes” is the newly added correct Greek plural, “rhinoceroi”* was erroneously added to Wiktionary in 2006 and subsequently added to dictionary.com

    On wiktionary, you can see the internet debate from that time, as well as the other hypercorrect words that the user had added (like avocadi, agendae, scenarii, and platypi).

    (2) I launched my first app today to the ios app store! It's a step counting game named Sherwalk that uses your real world step count to travel in game to various locations and follows pretty closely a couple Sherlock Holmes short stories (for now just The Red-Headed League, The Adventure of Silver Blaze, and The Adventure of the Speckled Band).

    There is tons of room for improvement, but after not touching it for about a month, I figured I should probably put it out there and see if there is any interest in me building it out further and adding new features and/or adventures.

    2 votes

  5. Comment on Vimeo enters into definitive agreement to be acquired by Bending Spoons for $1.38 billion in ~tech

    zakhar
    Link Parent
    Unrelated to the original topic, but woah, I didn't realize that Vimeo was also a descendant of CollegeHumor. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vimeo I guess it makes some sort of sense, then,...

    Unrelated to the original topic, but woah, I didn't realize that Vimeo was also a descendant of CollegeHumor. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vimeo

    Vimeo was built throughout fall 2004 by Connected Ventures, the parent company of the humor-based website CollegeHumor, as a side project of web developers Jake Lodwick and Zach Klein to share and tag short videos with their friends

    I guess it makes some sort of sense, then, that they'd use them (more background at https://vimeo.com/customers/dropout).

    7 votes

  6. Comment on Do you play games in a play by email format, and if so what are you favorite games? in ~games

    zakhar
    Link
    Board game arena would be my first recommendation. A lot of really good games have been implemented on there and you can play entirely asynchronously with friends or strangers. There are rumors...

    Board game arena would be my first recommendation. A lot of really good games have been implemented on there and you can play entirely asynchronously with friends or strangers. There are rumors even twilight imperium will be there someday, and that is a beast of a game.

    Civ 6 is also a good one for this. It has built-in “play by cloud” support. A couple years ago, I built roze.run, a discord bot for game notifications that still sees pretty regular traffic from people playing it.

    1 vote

  7. Comment on Possible site bug: Cannot send PM with moose emoji as the subject in ~tildes

    zakhar
    Link Parent
    Based on https://tildes.net/~test/1osu, avoid emoji added in v14 or later (except ones that use a zero width joiner and existing emoji).

    Based on https://tildes.net/~test/1osu, avoid emoji added in v14 or later (except ones that use a zero width joiner and existing emoji).

    9 votes

  8. 🐧🕊️🦃🦉🧛🦚🦩🦤🐦‍🔥

    ~test Text 66 words
    Testing https://tildes.net/~tildes/1osr/possible_site_bug_cannot_send_pm_with_moose_emoji_as_the_subject [1F427] 🐧 - Penguin (v6.0) [1F54A] 🕊️ - Dove of peace (v7.0) [1F983] 🦃 - Turkey (v8.0)...

    Testing https://tildes.net/~tildes/1osr/possible_site_bug_cannot_send_pm_with_moose_emoji_as_the_subject

    [1F427] 🐧 - Penguin (v6.0)
    [1F54A] 🕊️ - Dove of peace (v7.0)
    [1F983] 🦃 - Turkey (v8.0)
    [1F989] 🦉 - Owl (v9.0)
    [1F9DB] 🧛 - Vampire (v10.0)
    [1F99A] 🦚 - Peacock (v11.0)
    [1F9A9] 🦩 - Flamingo (v12.0)
    [1F9A4] 🦤 - Dodo (v13.0)
    [1FABA] 🪺 - Nest with eggs (v14.0)
    [1FABF] 🪿 - Goose (v15.0)
    [1F426 200D 1F525] 🐦‍🔥 - Phoenix (v15.1)

    No birds added in v10, so used a vampire.

    2 votes

  9. Comment on What are your favorite “chore” games? in ~games

    zakhar
    Link
    Described by Yahtzee in Zero Punctuation a few years ago as a "post-dad game", Hardspace: Shipbreaker has you dismantling spaceships for parts in a dystopian capitalist scifi future. It’s both...

    Described by Yahtzee in Zero Punctuation a few years ago as a "post-dad game", Hardspace: Shipbreaker has you dismantling spaceships for parts in a dystopian capitalist scifi future.

    It’s both relaxing and engaging. The joy comes in learning the most efficient way to scrap ships and score those sweet credits to slowly chip away at your crippling debt.

    20 votes

  10. Comment on Do you use an RSS reader? in ~tech

    zakhar
    Link
    Yep, I use Reeder on iOS and no complaints, it does everything I need in a feed reader. I started off using it to keep track of some long-running webcomics, but I've slowly added a few more sites...

    Yep, I use Reeder on iOS and no complaints, it does everything I need in a feed reader.

    I started off using it to keep track of some long-running webcomics, but I've slowly added a few more sites to it as I find interesting blogs randomly on the internet. I have a blogroll (exported from Reeder) if you're curious what I'm currently reading (and definitely open to recommendations if people have cool blogs or comics they follow!)

    Fun fact: Everyone still calls it an rss feed, but the recommended choice in 2024 for the fast-moving technical domain of metadata syndication is Atom, defined in rfc 4287.

    13 votes

  11. Comment on Recipes for chicken thighs in ~food

    zakhar
    Link
    I have a goto recipe for Filipino Chicken Adobo using thighs that is pretty straightforward and is essentially stewing the chicken in vinegar and soy sauce so it gets pretty tender and is falling...

    I have a goto recipe for Filipino Chicken Adobo using thighs that is pretty straightforward and is essentially stewing the chicken in vinegar and soy sauce so it gets pretty tender and is falling off the bone.

    4 votes

  12. Comment on Favorite game shows? in ~tv

    zakhar
    Link Parent
    WILTY, is great, definitely recommend it as well. Here are a bunch more really fun tangentially related British shows, which aren’t all exactly game shows, but some or all of these might be up...

    WILTY, is great, definitely recommend it as well.

    Here are a bunch more really fun tangentially related British shows, which aren’t all exactly game shows, but some or all of these might be up your alley:

    • Only Connect
    • University Challenge
    • Big Fat Quiz
    • 8 out of 10 Cats Does Countdown
    • QI
    • Travel Man
    • The 1% Club
    • The Last Leg
    • Hypothetical
    • Duck Quacks Don’t Echo
    2 votes

  13. Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp

    zakhar
    Link Parent
    So essentially I can write a soy template for something on the page (like a comment). In my server code, I can render the comment in the initial page load, so that it is sent down in the initial...

    So essentially I can write a soy template for something on the page (like a comment). In my server code, I can render the comment in the initial page load, so that it is sent down in the initial html and the page renders super fast.

    Then, when someone writes a comment on the page, I can use that same soy template client-side to add a new comment to the page without refreshing.

    4 votes

  14. Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp

    zakhar
    Link Parent
    Good question, so I split it up into frontend/backend/static servers all sitting behind an nginx server on a linode instance. The backend server is a minimal API implemented in nodejs with...

    Good question, so I split it up into frontend/backend/static servers all sitting behind an nginx server on a linode instance.

    The backend server is a minimal API implemented in nodejs with postgresql for storage.

    The frontend is also a nodejs server. The client-side code is vanilla JS, but I do use closure (aka soy) templates so that I can server-side render the same content that is loaded dynamically when the user interacts with the page.

    I might individually swap out for other stuff down the road if there are tech stacks I want to learn, but I went with this since it let me move pretty fast for an mvp.

    1 vote

  15. Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp

    zakhar
    (edited )
    Link
    I put together a minimal website over at cookbook.lol to start storing my recipes. It does a couple cool things: You can track when recipes are variations of other recipes (either on the site or...

    I put together a minimal website over at cookbook.lol to start storing my recipes. It does a couple cool things:

    • You can track when recipes are variations of other recipes (either on the site or from a blog or cookbook)
    • It has some basic organization (tracking saved/tried recipes)
    • It has support for basic comment threads.

    It’s in a closed alpha if anyone wants to try it, just reply here or send me a message. It is definitely missing a lot of features and there’s tons more I want to do here, but the core functionality is there.

    7 votes

  16. Comment on Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail - London Fan Fest updates in ~games

    zakhar
    Link
    Several exciting updates for Final Fantasy 14’s Dawntrail expansion, including the new Viper job, FFXI raids, Fall Guys crossover details, and a look at some of the new areas/towns/dungeons.

    Several exciting updates for Final Fantasy 14’s Dawntrail expansion, including the new Viper job, FFXI raids, Fall Guys crossover details, and a look at some of the new areas/towns/dungeons.

    7 votes

  18. Comment on Factorio Friday Facts #381 - Space platforms in ~games

    zakhar
    Link
    Lot of exciting details about the new space platforms in this one. I really enjoy the little details about decisions they made balancing what sounds like a good idea and what is actually fun to...

    Lot of exciting details about the new space platforms in this one. I really enjoy the little details about decisions they made balancing what sounds like a good idea and what is actually fun to play (e.g to avoid repeating oil processing pacing, setting it up so there are new puzzles to solve, etc)

    4 votes

  20. Comment on Factorio Friday Facts #378 - Trains on another level in ~games

    zakhar
    Link
    I love the aesthetic of these new elevated rails, and the possibilities for new base designs around them is pretty interesting. I don’t have anything to add that isn’t in the post itself, but I’m...

    I love the aesthetic of these new elevated rails, and the possibilities for new base designs around them is pretty interesting.

    I don’t have anything to add that isn’t in the post itself, but I’m super excited to try them out when the expansion lands!

    4 votes