T w e n t y S i d e d
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “DM of the Rings CXVI:
But They Don’t Fit in My Backpack!”
DM of the Rings CXVI:
Several Things
- Yes, I renamed yesterday’s comic. I’d already used “Misunderstandings Abound” about 85 strips ago.
- Someone requested this. I don’t know why:
Easily done.
- I’m still reading all comments, even if ‘m not participating. Thanks so much for all the nice things everyone has had to say.
- I have many entries half-written, but nothing ready to post. I actually expected this to be a post-heavy week, but I’ve been sidetracked which is why the site has been barren for the last few days. (Aside from the comics.) My distraction is due to reasons too mundane to even bring up. It’s nothing you haven’t read a hundred times before on other blogs. Try to imagine I’m doing something really exciting and dangerous instead of posting. For example:
Posting will be light this week because Vin Diesel and I are going to skydive onto a mountain and ride down on our snowboards while playing though The Ghost Tower of Inverness!!!
This way, the dead space on the blog will be that much more interesting than some lame post about mundane distractions.
DM of the Rings CXV:
Misunderstandings Compound
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “DM of the Rings CXV:
Misunderstandings Compound”
DM of the Rings CXIV:
The Book of Exalted Screwups
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “DM of the Rings CXIV:
The Book of Exalted Screwups”
Photosynth demo
Reader Telas sent this link along. It’s a demo of some new software. As a professional software developer myself, I feel I need to add my own unique viewpoint and share my expert opinion: Oh holy crap wow!
That really is cool. The ability to visually cruise through different media and zoom in and out looks like something truly useful. I’ve seen many misguided attempts to visualize a bunch of files, but I’ve never seen any that looked like more than a gimmick. They don’t give the system specs for the machine performing the demo, so I suspect it’s some overpowered monster with a hojillion kabillion megabytes of memory, but if such a thing could ever run that smooth on a machine owned by mortals, I’d get it in a second.
(I will say that things like this make me want to hang up my hat as a programmer. There are some frighteningly brilliant people out there, and if I dedicated the rest of my life to honing my skills I doubt I could come within cruise missile range of something like this.)
You can’t get there from here
For fun, I banged together a new theme for WordPress. You can see a demo of it at my crappy sandbox blog. It doesn’t really suit Twenty Sided, but I’m thinking it might be of use to someone out there. This morning I decide to upload it to wherever themes come from. It turns out that place is themes.wordpress.net. I visit “the official theme directory” of WordPress to upload my work, where I learn that:
- In order to make your theme public, you must upload it to the server.
- In order to upload a theme you must create an account.
- Creating accounts is currently disabled.
See if you can spot the weak link in the chain.
Geeze, this isn’t helping anyone. Yeah, yeah, if you hunt around on the site you’ll eventually stumble on the directions for how to contact the admin and maybe get yourself an account in “three business days”. It took me about four hours to make the theme, and it will now take me three days just to get it onto the server? Lame. I’m not even going to bother.
If anyone digs the theme, you can download it here: Luddite for WordPress. It’s small. Very small. Just 4 modest files. The CSS is small enough that you can open it in a text editor and see the whole thing at once, as opposed to the twenty-page monoliths you see floating around. I like it. Tastes may vary.
A Fire: Followup
Last week I had a post about the fire on Memorial Day weekend that killed my neighbor. Many people expressed sympathies and left kind words in the comments. Thanks again for that.
But I never followed up on that post, which sort of left things hanging. I apologize for that. I’m happy to report that W – Frank’s widow – is doing just fine. She’s taking it quite well. We’re also finding out just how many friends Frank made in his lifetime and how many people he helped. There seem to be quite a few people who knew the man and who were grateful for some favor or help he’d given them in the past. Some have come forward and W has lots of people offering all sorts of help. Frank worked most of his life in the Steel Mill, and years of overtime as a mid-level somesuch, working at union prices, left him well-off enough to retire quite early and amass an admirable collection of vehicles and tools. I claim no knowledge of their finances, but they seemed well-off and W does not seem to be concerned about that sort of business.
The backyard excavation continues. It looks like they’re digging the foundation for a skyscraper right now. I can’t believe they have had to dig up so much land for such a small building, but the garage runoff was apparently Not Nice Stuff and they wanted to make sure they got it all. I’ve been told that all of the landscaping will be restored, just as it was. My wife contributed a few of our flowers to the effort for when the time comes. Again, I don’t know if this is a result of insurance money, Frank’s savings, or the help of friends, but it’s being taken care of.
So W is doing fine. My wife has offered help several times, but W doesn’t seem to need anything. It was a terrible thing to have happen, but the aftermath is about as merciful as one could hope for. If he’d left her penniless, or if their house was consumed, then grim days would be ahead, but his success with people and money have apparently softened the blow.
Thanks again to everyone who expressed concern. Again, I apologize for not following up. I was suddenly reluctant to talk about it, but I’m the one who brought it up in the first place and I should have posted this sooner.
Maybe I’ll post some more of the yard digging later today. Someday the landscaping will be restored, and when that happens I’ll put up some pictures of that as well.
LATER: I should add, I really appreciate sentiments like this. (Which was written before this post.) It does cheer me to know there are still nice people out there.
From The Archives:
Video Compression Gone Wrong
How does image compression work, and why does it create those ugly spots all over some videos and not others?
Games and the Fear of Death
Why killing you might be the least scary thing a game can do.
Project Frontier
A programming project where I set out to make a gigantic and complex world from simple data.
Fixing Match 3
For one of the most popular casual games in existence, Match 3 is actually really broken. Until one developer fixed it.
Revisiting a Dead Engine
I wanted to take the file format of a late 90s shooter and read it in modern-day Unity. This is the result.
Bethesda NEVER Understood Fallout
Let's count up the ways in which Bethesda has misunderstood and misused the Fallout property.
Diablo III Retrospective
We were so upset by the server problems and real money auction that we overlooked just how terrible everything else is.
Dear Hollywood: Do a Mash Reboot
Since we're rebooting everything, MASH will probably come up eventually. Here are some casting suggestions.
The Terrible New Thing
Fidget spinners are ruining education! We need to... oh, never mind the fad is over. This is not the first time we've had a dumb moral panic.
Patreon!
Why Google sucks, and what made me switch to crowdfunding for this site.