It's happening! I've begun drafting a rough layout for a tentative book
project, for which the working title is currently Turnip Complete. I
don't know if I can actually go through with this idea yet, but I'm going find
out over the summer, and hopefuly have something to show in the fall. The idea
would be to have a paper artifact that contains everything that currently makes
up the Uxn/Varvara ecosystem, from implementation details, to language
specification; all from basic principles.
We're just about ready to cast off from Victoria for the summer, and today was
my last day at the gym. I pushed hard these past few months, and it's beginning
to pay off. The back pains I had are gone, I sleep much better, I feel a lot
stronger and clothes even fit me better. I gained 10kg these past five months
alone, and I'm hoping to reach my ideal weight of 80kg in the next few months.
I have plans to work out from aboard Pino, but in practice, I'm not sure how
possible, or safe, it'll be. I've made myself a pair of pull-up rings to hang from the spinnaker pole, I have yet
to try them.
My temporary job as a TA ended. Not so much with a celebratory gesture, a plaque, an e-mail, or an announcement. Simply ended. Whether to ask follow up questions or move on, I chose to move on.
I'd been hoping to have another big milestone to share that would be more interesting to visitors of the website, but all work is settling out over time and The Boxes from the move still tower over us.
I will highlight a few games that I think are worth having a look at:
Myth II: Twice Born Edition is alleged to be the remains of a Nightdive Studios update of Myth II and Myth TFL with contributions from the original artist. It's another laborious project led by Jon God, a little known emissary of Mac gaming. If you have a Myth II CD lying around, please give it a try.
Shin Megami Tensei: 20XX somehow feels better than the Super Famicom Megaten games it's based on and happens to be a more focused package by miles, despite being a port of a cell phone game from 2004. To date, the cell phone editions G-MODE has put out have felt like remixed, cut down Game Boy conversions of better known games, but this one's special. Give it a try if you know Japanese, or wait for a translation patch if you don't.
Next time I might feel a little more confident about sharing what's in progress, rather than throw links to elsewhere. I'm sure it's crippling for our SEO.
I’m so sick and tired of everything. I can’t seem to find
some peace. I feel ungrateful for the good things, which
do happen to me even when I see all black. Will this
sensation ever end? I really hope so.
Hello :^] I hope you are having a nice year; I know lots of exciting things are happening and I am excited for you!!
Today I found a boat house and using cunning powers I have transmogrified it into a webpage so you can find it too!! (its here) ~ u found it ~ we are good boathouse finders!
Over the years, by haphazardly filling-in missing details to the docs as
questions arose, I've let the Uxntal language pages
grow into a tangled and overgrown labyrinthine mess that oftener threw folks
into opaque dead-ends than answer questions.
This week, a pointedly cutting criticism of the Uxn documentation shook me out of
the laissez-faire that I had over these few pages and reminded me how letting
it go the way I did was a disservice to others, but especially myself,
considering that I may be using this tool, possibly for the rest of my
life.
Since I couldn't clearly discern what should and shouldn't be there, I've
asked for help, and got excellent ideas. With feedback from both new learners
and experienced folks, I rewrote most of the documentation, included new
examples, expanded tests and added setup instructions for both Uxn, and
Varvara.
Looking at the documentation now, I feel like I would very much like to work
on writing a book about it, to have a paperback artifact in the style of
Henderson's LispKit Manuals. A treatise on the design and
implementation of the system from the bottom up, but plastered with
drawings.
- Wrote 10 examples for the revamped Uxn REPL.
- Made a graphical version of Drifblim.
- Changed behavior of lowercase jumper operators in Orca.
- Enjoyed Ryan Coogler's Sinners.
It's barely been one year and I'm back on my bullshit with yet another toy Forth nobody needs, but it was fun to make and taught me a few things, among which a new-old programming language.
Weather continues to have swings. Big ones. This isn't normal. We're talking an 18C drop in one day, going from almost-summer back to snow, then back after one week.
At least early summer temperatures feel right for Easter. Helps with the festive mood.
Been writing more on paper, too. It's fun to actually use all those old pens instead of letting them dry up, and a notebook doesn't go into stand-by while you're trying to think about the next sentence. The hard part is finding certain exotic refills. Fountain pen manufacturers have standardised on those little plastic vials, why can't everyone else?
In other news, the Neon Kiosk started working again after a seven-week outage during which it was up but didn't update. So my previous entry will only have been visible on the new blog, where I've been mirroring them lately. Glad to see it's back. We don't use these journals to talk to each other like we should, but their absence still left a hole.
Last but not least, I'm finally getting the hang of coding in Perl. It's never going to be a favorite, but it means being able to share code with some of my friends, who use it extensively. Plus, it's a fine language, that doesn't deserve its bad rap! I like its philosophy and community norms.
For once I had to trim down this journal entry to make it fit. It's a good feeling.