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cjet79  4mo ago (text post)   2899 thread views

Maker's Monday

Trying out a new weekly thread idea.

This would be a thread for anyone working on personal projects to share their progress, and hold themselves somewhat accountable to a group of peers. We can coordinate weekly standup type meetings if their is interest.

@ArjinFerman, @Turniper, and myself all had some initial interest.

Post your project, your progress from last week, and what you hope to accomplish this week.

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I figured out how to bake normal maps in Blender.

@cjet79 / mods: Are we allowed to "shill" and share our projects, here? (For example, a site/company that links itself here not just to solicit feedback but also to try to acquire users.)

pending a more substantive reply, can you do it in a way that doesn't sound like a SOE advertisement? We ban those on sight, but if you want to describe what you're doing and invite people to join like an actual human, I'd imagine that would probably be okay.

Yeah, to be clear, that's definitely what I would do if I were to share it. I was just kind of being hyperbolic so that it wouldn't seem like I'd be tiptoeing around the fact that it's partly an attempt to grow the user count. I would not try to share it in an actual shill-y or marketing-y way at all.

if you have any doubts, feel free to message the post to me or one of the other mods privately first. Looking forward to it otherwise.

This one might need to go directly to @ZorbaTHut.

I'm trying to help a friend automate a data entry task: read a row from Excel, and paste some subset of the entries into appropriate text boxes on a website in Chrome. My friend is not within driving distance, and I'd like to do it with a minimum amount of installations on his computer.

I'm most comfortable with Python. The first portion of the task can be handled straightforwardly with the Pandas package. Is Selenium the best way to handle the output?

If you have to paste it on a website, doesn't a browser extension that reads from the clipboard and does the rest make more sense? Or a function he can copy-paste into the dev console, if you really want to minimize installations.

I did not know that such browser extensions exist and will have to look into it. Similarly, no idea about the dev console, but he's on a work computer without admin privileges - any installations have to go through IT.

The dev console is built into all major browsers and needs no special permissions. Press F12, and it will pop up.

As for extensions, I meant writing your own. I had a quick look to see if you can get access to the clipboard from them, and the multiple clipboard history extensions that are available would imply that it should work. Once you have the data in the clipboard you'd need some javascript to select the right elements and paste the values into them, it should be pretty easy.

I think if the IT dept is extremely anal, they might prevent installation of extensions, but there's a good chance they left it open. You'd need to get it published in the Chrome Store though (there's a way to put the browser in "developer mode" and install anything you want, but that might get him screamed at by IT as well)

Thanks for the ideas and the clarification!

I have three “projects” going on at the moment.

  1. I’m getting back into guitar playing after way too much time letting my skills atrophy. I finally bought a high quality electric and a practice amp that suits my needs. Previously I didn’t really play because my wife goes to bed really early and we live in a small apartment, and I like to play at night after work. So this tiny practice amp and electric will let me noodle around with headphones quietly.

  2. I’m working on losing some weight that I slowly gained over the last 5 years and really since COVID. Started at a disgusting 182 and finally down to 172. Very very happy with my progress, a tiny bit slower than I would like (took 2 months) but that’s probably healthier and more sustainable than a truly deep calorie cut. Goal weight is 150-155 and maybe less depending on how much body fat I still have.

  3. Finally I’m getting back into writing poetry after almost a decade without. I was really big into the scene during college but simply lost the inspiration and spark as adulthood settled in and those acute emotions of being a teenager and very young adult faded away. Problem is I don’t really have a place to share it, and most of the Reddit-type forums feature some pretty mediocre Rupi Kaur, cliche-ridden garbage. Not to be an arrogant douche but I think I am at least several tiers above that, I published some poetry in magazines back in college and won some awards from the English department, so I feel confident in saying I’m better than average (by no means amazing). In college I had a great group of like-minded people who would workshop but I don’t really know how to find that anymore and most poetry scenes are also bleeding-edge woke :( For now it’ll have to remain something I keep for myself I guess.

Any specific strategy for the weight loss you are following?

What guitar and amp did you get? Back when I was working on learning electric guitar I ended up just buying an audio interface and using a DAW with plugins to practice. Great for getting a wide range of tones, but ultimately pretty bad for just knuckling down and practicing since you spend more time fiddling with dials than playing. Plus you're stuck playing sitting at the computer.

I'm pretty sure the Motte has some poetry aficionados (poems seem to get quoted with regularity) so you might get some feedback here if you posted.

My kids got a mini amp (in addition to a real one) for just this reason; it's so much easier to accumulate practice time in if you can grab 10 minutes here and there without having to go to the floor amp and adjust it first.

I gave birth to a new baby. I have to, sigh, teach baby to nurse this week.

Thanks for the congratulations!

Congratulations! (don't circumcise, his body his choice)

Congratulations! Still trying to convince my wife to go for number two.

What seeing this when skimming the comments was like:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=Un4p-6lzIpI

Congratulations! I'm always impressed by the projects that people here share, and here you are flexing on them with a biological 3D printing project that took 9 months to make, and probably another 18 years to see till fruition haha.

Congrats. Any reason you decided to teach him to nurse rather than to be a doctor?

Imagine my anger when I was about to make this pun and found out you'd scooped me.

Good fortune! Congratulations 🎉

Congrats! Jealous of you, the first few months are magical. : )

Congratulations!

Congratulations!

Congratulations!

Congrats!

Congratulations!

Congrats! How difficult is teaching nursing? I've been reading up on it a bit since my wife and I are planning on having kids soon, however it seems opinions range from impossible to as easy as breathing. Breastfeeding would certainly be my preference given the benefits.

It varies a fair bit.

As far as I can tell, my milk supply comes in kind of slow, but the babies' metabolisms boot up really fast, so they all lose more weight than expected, hurt my nipples, just absorb everything and don't poop, or in the case of this baby, he has accumulated too much bilirubin, and is now laying under blue lights for 12 hrs (related to the not pooping thing, and happened to another daughter as well). Then after about a week everything is fine. Others' experience may vary.

Sometimes babies have tongue tie, and need intervention, or sometimes there's a longer term issue with milk supply, but usually it's just sore breasts and cluster feeding for a couple of weeks, and then it gets easier. Most birthing units have lactation consultants who will look at what's going on and offer suggestions, which can be helpful.

I wanted to chime in but realized that even though my kids are still under 10 my memories of their infancy are super vague. Must be the sleep deprivation, lol. Anyway, I'm pretty sure both learned quickly and without too much trouble. The only problem I recall is that the first one had a tendency at first to get a nipple at just slightly the wrong angle, so she'd get milk but would give me a blister in the process. But once I figured out how to correct that I think it went smoothly.

I'm using the Mayo Clinic Guide as my reference, and it looks like there are various different poses you can use to get the right angle as it were. Trial and error seems to be the word. On another note, sleep deprivation is going to be tough I think...my wife really does like sleeping.

Yeah that's pretty much the range. Some kids get it immediately, some really struggle. Our 3 kids were all pretty easy in that regard (though not necessarily in others), and I think the average kid gets it quickly enough. Stick a tit in their mouth and see what happens.

I have to remind myself that it's something humans have been doing pretty successfully for forever. IDK if you could call it a lost art but it does seem like it's made out to be more complicated than it is.

That's pretty much all of parenting. No one really knows what they're doing to start with but we all muddle through. As long as baby stays alive you're doing something right.

Congratulations 🎉🎉

I recently took STEP2, the immense medical school exam that dictates my likelihood to match. 8 hours, ~310+ q’s, the sum output of 6ish months of my free time. I’d project I ended up somewhere in the 230s, below average but still within the reach of my desired residency, although I’ve got a bit before I actually get the results. I still have a handful of minor hurdles, but most of the stress has now officially passed.

My next project will be getting back into climbing. I was able to clear v5 and 5.11s with some consistency but I’ve grown old and fat. With some afternoons free I’m hoping to at least clear the local v4s in the next month or so.

Man, Skookum has ruined me, when I see someone say they're a med student and doing anything remotely related to fitness I start suspecting they're an alt.

Good luck, and I hope you match into something that makes the pain of residency worth it.

Second this! (both parts)

I'm working on some creative projects myself but sadly I have nothing to share here just yet. I've got two major projects that I'm working on, both in the same setting, and I want to hold myself accountable - so I'm going to commit to either getting 5k words of pulp fiction written, or finish a bunch of code refactoring for the game.

HighSpace

Not much to report on since the monthly post is still pretty fresh, and we only had the call with cjet last Thursday, but I did set a bunch of tasks for myself, which can be seen here. The ones I assigned to myself is what I have planned for the week, which is:

  • Load new game state from json data files instead of hardcoding it in LUA
  • Spawning of enemy ships ("in pursuit" of allies)
  • (bug) CTD on start of campaign under some circumstances
  • (bug) Crash on win/lose of the game
  • Neutral Ships join player on rendezvous

I'm off to a good start as the first two issues are already done, and I suspect the mysterious quasi-random crash on start of campaign happens when an enemy and neutral ship start close enough to trigger a mission, which would mean it's just a duplicate of another issue (Cannot jump into mission without “Alpha 1” being present in group) which I didn't want to tackle just yet.

Writing

@cjet79, you expressed you interst in doing some writing. As mentioned on Discord I made some notes / basic outlines on the project wiki, any names or smaller details I put there are subject to change as I just wanted to have something written down, so feel free to rewrite them. During the call I mentioned Star Wars when you asked about the hardness of the sci-fi, but I think I want to go more with something like Star Trek (so the harder end of the soft side, I guess). If all goes well I'd like a bigger campaign, but for now let's stick with the prologue / demo scenario. From the monthly thread:

A logistics taskforce flew right into the hornets' nest, and are now being pursued by the Incomprehensible Horrors. Captain Playername receives their distress call, and as the nearest ship, rushes in to help. Reinforcements are on the way, but will need time to assemble. The logistics guys can't jump to another system due to [McGuffin, or some clever Subspace jump mechanic I'm yet to come up with], so they opted to scatter throughout the system in an attempt to buy time and minimize casualties.

The player is in command of a mid-size carrier, and has to rescue as many friendlies as he can find, before the IH's get to them. Each successful rescue gives the player a new ship at their command (in case it's one of the escorts), and/or resources like bombs/specialized ammo (when it's one of the transports), but generates more aggro (which itself has trade-offs - more aggro on you means less on the relatively defenseless friendlies). All this culminates in an assault on the IH super-capital ship, that is the source of all this trouble. This will resemble an arcadey boss-fight, where fighters will need to take apart some critical components of the enemy ship, so the friendly capital ships can approach it safely and finish it.

For the story I was planning to go with a Japanese visual novel thing, so the most obvious thing to do at the beginning would be the content of the distress call and / or a dispatch from high command that informing the player that such a call was received and that they're to head over to help, and buy as much time as possible. Some dialogue with the crew upon arrival in the system debating the strategic choices they have. One early choice I thought of introducing was:

  • Maintain radio silence (avoid detection)
  • Quietly announce your arrival to your allies through an encrypted channel (arouse minor suspicion from the enemy, get intel from allies)
  • Loudly announce your arrival to your allies as well as enemies (get intel from allies, immediately aggro enemy forces, increasing initial difficulty for yourself, but providing relief / buying time for allies).

Feel free to introduce some characters that we could make use of later, and come up with more strategic dilemmas that could arise as the rescue operation unfolds. Otherwise, let me know what you'd need from me. I figure the fun in writing is the creativity, so I don't want to impose too much.

My three big projects at the moment are picking up piano after 20 years of not playing, studying for the JLPT in December, and training to run a 10k in November.

They’re all going well so far! I’ve been surprised how quickly piano has come back. I can already run 10k but have a target time so will be working on getting my speed up the next few months.

I have been playing a lot of Unicorn Overlord lately and am also kicking around an idea for a prototype that might improve on it in a few key ways. Happy to share details if anyone is curious.

I've passed unofficial N5s for the JLPT. Still working through Genki and WaniKani. My Arabic is better than my Japanese, but mostly because I practice conversation in Arabic and right now all my Japanese is self-study.

Good for you on re-learning the piano. I've found it difficult staying disciplined enough to practice 30 minutes to an hour everyday, which realistically is what is required to learn an instrument. I dabble in the piano from time to time as an adult, but man...learning an instrument is just so damn hard. As I get closer to middle-age, I'm much more impressed that I used to be by those who can play any instrument.

I’m not sure it would be feasible if I hadn’t put in time when I was a kid. Being able to jump in and play something simple but enjoyable immediately skips a lot of potential pain.

The available training apps are pretty cool though and I’m finding them helpful. Very different than when I was a kid.

What level JLPT? I am looking to take on the N3 this year.

N4! I’ve been going kanji for several years and started taking conversational lessons last year working through Genki. Are you studying on your own or in a class?

On my own using Renshuu, reading manga, listening to japanese youtubers, and (recently) reading web serials. The reading is slow going, but I like to think I can get 60-80% of the meaning before looking things up.

I do have an ace up my sleeve though, I was an exchange student to Japan over a decade ago so I have a lot of memories of how things are supposed to be pronounced or the contexts they are said in. Learning the actual reading/writing/kanji has had a lot of "oh, that's where that word comes from".

Have you tried any of the practice exams yet? I took a practice N4 a couple months ago and it ended up being both easier in the multiple choice and harder during the listening section than I expected.

I know what you mean. The last time I was there it was mind blowing to see various kanji I’d learned in a vacuum in use. Helped so much with meaning.

I haven’t taken any practice exams yet, I am just doing what my tutor tells me. I am practicing reading more with examples from Genki which is nice. We still have some grammar to get through I think from Genki 2.

Amazon has practice tests for the various levels that I found really helpful to focus in on the types of questions that will be asked. The one I used came with a CD for the audio portion, so you may need to get a USB-CD drive if you PC doesn't have one. They're shorter versions, so they take about an hour or so to do, but doing the N5 and N4 tests at the start of this year is why I had the confidence to push myself for the N3.

What does your tutoring entail?

Oh nice, I’ll take a look at those.

We’re making our way through Genki but each session is usually 30-40 minutes of conversation with occasional grammar discussion, then 20 minutes working on a textbook section.

Good luck on the 10k. Once upon a time I ran, but these 40 year old knees don't do it anymore.

Unicorn Overlord was a very pleasant surprise. I immediately craved more games like that, and found that there aren't any. A shame.

Yeah it seems ripe for some iterating on the formula especially since the studio doesn’t seem known for follow-ups.

I’ve had some tibia troubles but fortunately am near unpaved trails which help with the impact.

So, Quokkit. Haven't put in any time on it this last week due to IRL responsibilities. The big thing that's currently annoying me: I'm currently storing the list of comment ids in a flat array, this makes navigating comment threads cumbersome because there's no concept of comment depth. Changing this to a tree would be more representative of thread structure and simplify future work on comment navigation and loading comments after the initial page load. Once that's dealt with, a nice-to-have for this week would be making the "Load more comments" button navigable so it can be activated with keybinds.

I was working on a click-to-select feature as a workaround for having to manually navigate through a thread, and that's still on the map, but I haven't nailed it down yet.

You have a repo for it? The only thing that comes up for me is an app that appears to have a completely different use than what you're describing.

Didn't know about that, lol. Here's the repo.

I've got two things I'm currently working on, coding a roguelike and writing fiction. I met my bare minimum goals last week, one chapter and a little code, but hope to do a lot better this week.

On the roguelike front, I didn't do as much as I'd hoped. I implemented damage over time, debuffs, and 'major boons', rewards that modify a character ability instead of just a stat last week, which sounds like a lot but it's very focused on adding burns to attacks atm and needs a lot of genericization.

/images/172347954427298.webp (Screenshot of the 'major boon' screen)

This week will hopefully be a lot of building out the 'core loop' of the combat side of the game. Adding a second enemy type, making terrain actually effect pathfinding, and adding discrete rooms instead of just continually spawning enemies in the same one.

On the writing side, I'm struggling a bit. I currently write and regularly post for a web serial, and try to get one 3k word chapter a week out. I've been dealing with a lot of avoidant perfectionism that leaves me doing all my work on Sunday hours before my posting deadline. I'm also feeling kinda burnt out on the story and more interested in writing other stuff, but I have a publication offer for it/am currently making a bit on patreon, so I feel obliged to push through and get it done. My hope is that if I spend more time with my butt in a chair writing other things, I'll get the juices flowing again.

It's weird not having a 'steady' income right now. Even though I'm doing just fine between investments and other stuff, I have years of runway and standing job offers, it causes me to overindex on the one project that actually is paying, even though it's probably the one I'm least interested in working on atm. I just need to channel that procrastination in a postive direction, rather than towards a third Elden Ring character.

I noticed the triangle button in the screen shot -- are you developing it for some variant of playstation?

I'm working on PC with a controller first. I'll probably try both mouse and keyboard and actual console releases if I finish it though.

Nice. I need to explore controllers more, all my stuff is keyboard/mouse. What are you using to make it?

Unity/C#. I was a C# dev for half a decade, so it's old hat. I did try to get into Unreal but the learning curve is steep and I dislike both blueprints and how you're encouraged to use headers/the recompile times that causes.

How long have you been doing game dev? Do you have a time budget to complete it?

I have a friend who's built multiple games, including a roguelike at this point in Unity. Getting the art done and paid for was a challenge, but he keeps honing his craft with small titles like this. You're at a distinct advantage being a great writer, though he's no slouch as a DnD GM.

Doubling up on Monday threads…What about Tinkering Tuesday? Standup Saturday?

You know, I’ve been meaning to make progress on this for years, but maybe this is the time. Maybe I’ll do a better job sticking with it than I did for HighSpace. I’m going to make a spellcasting sandbox. In rough order,

  • Move a character around a top-down map with terrain
  • Cast spells which create effects on the map
  • Affect the terrain
  • Choose modifications for spells with a real-time interface
  • Construct the spells from a low level with that same interface
  • Fight monsters or other players or something

This week’s goal will be completing the Godot tutorial I’ve had open for ages. If I can manage that, I’ll see about a more elaborate plan.

I wonder if it would be more straightforward to implement completely scriptable spells. If that’s sorted out then you can always scope down what’s possible and slap UI to generate certain types of scripts.

I’ve waffled on that.

There are games like MagicMaker and Noita which give robust tools for programming your spells in game. At one point, I was playing a lot of Mindustry, which lets you set up schematics outside of combat. Then in a computer or player match you have a lot less micromanagement. But the tradeoff is that it feels more like piloting your build than designing it as you go, I guess? Which is a great fantasy, and one which suits a certain archetype of wizard: the consummate planner who has optimized for anything.

So I fell back towards real-time. Something like Magicka gives you a bunch of LEGO bricks and says, here, blow stuff up. Then the rest of the game is built around giving you reasons to try different ones. The PvP spinoff, Wizard Wars, slimmed down your options but made their interactions better. It really sells this mind game where you try and think several options ahead.

For sure. My point is that whichever way you the implementation might be easier if you make it very general first. You could totally make a thing where the user drags and drops Lego blocks to build a specific subset of spells, but under the hood it’s this general purpose scripting engine.

It’s very easy to develop it using only certain actions, then want to add a new action and it takes a significant amount of refactoring.

Imho it’s easier to make the user experience less flexible than more flexible. Just my two cents though! It sounds like a cool project.

How quickly and often do you want individual spell-interactions to happen?

HexCasting has a few built-in ways to store spells, and most of the time people will just load three or four spells down and never have to use a wand again. But I played for a short time in a group that disabled or made extremely inconvenient most of them, and while it never got to the "I need to charge compile my attack" level, having to trade off between spells that could absolutely wreck a room when prepped but couldn't be used in a hurry, against those you could draw in a few motions but were inefficient or destructive, was fun.

((Also one of the very few times where quining was useful.))

HexCasting's spell language is esoteric and unwieldy in a lot of ways (eg: simplest rainbow bridge), but a lot of that's intentional rather than a requirement of the design.

((Ars Nouveau is more 'slap pieces together, adjust only if you need something special', drop a familiar or a spell turret if you want to do something huge, though in turn it suffers a lot from complacency syndrome. You can do hilarious things with T3 glyphs, but basic particle->damage->amplify->delayed damage->amplify is what you'll actually use in 99% of vanilla.))

HexCasting has a few built-in ways to store spells, and most of the time people will just load three or four spells down and never have to use a wand again.

I really like the looks of this. It reminds me greatly of the spellcasting from Arx Fatalis, which I was disappointed to see wasn't replicated and expanded on in other games. Now if only I hadn't just started GTNH...

So I knew vaguely of Minecraft mods which had touched on this. Psi, originally. I’ve played packs with Ars Nouveau but never delved into it due to other mods getting in the way. And I don’t think I’ve ever seen HexCasting, so…I’ve got a lot to think about.

Sorry, didn't mean to inundate you. Neither of these would directly be good competitors for a top-down Magicka-like (especially Psi; while it provides a great tutorial, it depends on programming at a table and only allows a small handful of spells to be carried at once, so it's worse about piloting your build as Noita), so much as they've got different flavours and some source code available to browse to see how rough different things can be to implement.

(Hexcasting, for example, is Turing complete, and it's kinda impressive how little it takes to do so; the actual evaluation ops are a few dozen pages of admittedly polymorphism-dense kotlin. It's /also/ why the mod makes delay/sleep, multithreading, or unlimited recursion so very expensive, though.)

Doubling up on Monday threads…What about Tinkering Tuesday? Standup Saturday?

Tinkering Tuesdays sounds good. I was thinking of empty days to post the thread, but for some reason didn't even think of the culture war roundup thread as one of the things that takes up a specific day.

Cool idea, it reminds me of Morrowind's spellcrafting system. I think it would work well for some hack&slash, or maybe even a puzzle game, but might run into issues in story-based open world RPG's. MW had to put some spells on rails, because it would be far too easy to cheese some encounters (I can't be the only one thinking Recall sure would work well as a projectile).

Are you planning on setting up public repositories? I'd be happy to test and review your stuff.

BTW, I think that link leads to the Motte's comment feed?

The trick is that I have no interest in writing/designing an RPG. Or really any content-driven game. There are systems I want to exist and play around with, but if I had a coherent vision for a story or setting, I’d have actually started my Ars Magica tabletop campaign by now.

So it went with my other half-baked ideas. Top-down Factorio capital ship battling? Military procurement RTS? The only one which is close to a complete design would be an X-COM game using Naruto-style hidden villages, but even there, I can’t imagine the work to populate it with enemies and encounters and maps.

That leaves me with pure sandboxes. Possibly PvP, because even though I am very bad at video games, I like a head-to-head challenge. And for this design, I want to recreate the flexible, reactive wizard duels of a certain kind of fantasy. The terrain-shaking insanity of Divinity OS2 mixed with the mind games of Warlocks/Waving Hands.

The trick is that I have no interest in writing/designing an RPG.

Yeah, I get that. Systems are a lot easier for me to wrap by head around and play with as well.

Top-down Factorio capital ship battling? Military procurement RTS? The only one which is close to a complete design would be an X-COM game using Naruto-style hidden villages,

Not gonna lie, I'd love to see all of these completed!

And for this design, I want to recreate the flexible, reactive wizard duels of a certain kind of fantasy. The terrain-shaking insanity of Divinity OS2 mixed with the mind games of Warlocks/Waving Hands.

It's a very cool idea. The trick might be a highly varying environment (possibly as a result of all the spells flying around), to force improvising of new spells rather than spamming of ones that were proven to be effective in most cases. It's hard to tell before seeing the mechanics in action, though.

My next project is a set of 4 chairs for my gaming table. So far I've scaled down these plans because I find them excessively wide and deep for my taste. They're 2 inches wider and deeper than any other chair in my house, and those are all perfectly comfortable. I also don't trust pocket hole screws to hold a hardwood chair together, so instead I'll be doing mortise and tenon joinery for everything. The angled joint near the bottom of the chair is going to be a new challenge for me, but I'm looking forward to it. I suspect I'll cut it straight using a router, and then come in later with a chisel to take out the rest of that shallow angle. Especially since I plan on doing the tenons using a coping sled on a router table as that will be fastest and easiest, and I've got a ton of tenons to cut for four chairs.

Anyways, first step is going through all my offcuts from the table and figuring out what can be used for what. I still have 3 whole planks of rustic walnut left over as well. I may end up only needing some 6/4 stock from the lumber yard for the legs.

Did you post about your gaming table before? I’ve looked around a bit for pre-made ones but the prices are insane.

I did. And yeah, the prices are insane. Also the wait list is long. Took me three months to make mine, but I've heard of people on Wyrmwood's wait list for over a year.

Wow thanks for sharing, that came out great!

I just turned a can of bad spray polyacrylic into some fake spider webbing for D&D scatter terrain. https://anarchydice.wordpress.com/2024/08/11/spider-webs/

I am also unsuccessfully fighting against rabbit hordes. I've tried coffee grounds, dog hair, rabbit spray, lemons, and companion planting garlic. I already trapped 3 but my bell peppers have been devoured and I didn't get any lettuce to grow larger than 3". Any home-remedies or suggestions I can try?

Any home-remedies or suggestions I can try?

IIRC the warner brothers documentaries from the middle of last century - they are unstoppable and any clever contraption will backfire. (sorry the setup for the joke was just too good)

What we did when we had birds eating our grapes - we just shot a couple and left them in the sun to desiccate and tied them at random intervals in the fields. It worked. Not sure if applicable for hares.

Worst case - get a cookbook and eat the trapped ones.

We had to put an 8' tall fence around our garden, mostly for deer. One day we did notice a bunny snuck under the door, so I had to close that gap. That seems to have worked.

The insects, drought, and hail storms on the other hand... My poor wife is totally demotivated after the carnage this summer wrought on all her hard work.

We put up a deer fence, which purported to also keep out smaller critters by having narrower mesh at the bottom, but after it was up we learned that it wasn't actually narrow enough to keep out young rabbits, so we attached a layer of chicken wire around the perimeter. Squirrels and birds still get in, though; there's no keeping them out.

On the gardening subreddits people also recommend wire wastebaskets from the dollar store, turned upside down, to protect smaller plants. It's a decent solution for those who don't want to deal with actual fencing.

I might do that for my blueberry plants that keep getting chomped down during the winter...

Yeah all the rain this summer has been hitting me in the only plant doing well, my tomatoes. I can usually keep the recurrent septoria down with regular spraying but the wetness this year is keeping the tomatoes really weak.

Should still get a bumper jalapeno crop at least, maybe make some jalapeno pineapple tequila again. Also got a great basil harvest to make and freeze pesto.

The insects, drought, and hail storms on the other hand... My poor wife is totally demotivated after the carnage this summer wrought on all her hard work.

Yeah, my wife's garden has likewise been decimated this year. The only thing that emerged unscathed somewhat surprisingly was her tomatoes, and the herbs in her garden window. But even that I had to rig up a cover for because it got so hot it was baking her seedlings.

That is nice.

Here is are some projects that I am pursuing (lazily):

DIY mini clinebell for big blocks of clear ice.

Right now I am making my clear ice with 1/1 GN 20 liter polypropylene container whose top and top 1/3rd of the sides are insulated with XPS and small aquarium pump to circulate the water. The yield is somewhat low - 15kg for 72 hours, so I am aiming bigger.

So far my design is to repurpose some cheapo second hand horizontal freezer, make sure the bottom is filled with brine that will be kept at around -6, and be able to hold couple of those containers. My goal is to be able to make around 6kg. The bonus of clear ice is that it makes the water almost distilled - when clear ice is melted it contents of impurities is around 7ppm. So it is a good starting point for any project which depends on quite clean water.

Some form of DIY dough sheeter

I am into croissants lately - it helps tremendously. The prosumer ones that are available cost around 5-700 euro which is quite steep. The aliexpress ones are around there with delivery and taxes.

**DIY sharpening guide for whole stones **

https://youtube.com/watch?v=usJ00Ude9Rg

so a clone of this.

https://kochmalscharf.freeforums.net/thread/970/bauanleitung-bogdanclone those are some good ideas. Tried to make one of the builds but the clamp needs quite more work.

** Homemade seltzer and sodas **

The carbonation kit is arriving tomorrow. There is noting sadder than looking the how the "skillful" bartender hands remove any trace of bubbles in your spritz. So the plan is to prebatch couple of bottles of campari and aperol spritzes and properly carbonate them. And keep them that way.

Uh, why do you need six kilos of clear ice at a time?

Sorry. I meant to write 60. Well because it takes forever to make and in the summer I am consuming prodigious amounts. And if I have to make it - why not make it clear. It looks awesome.

I don't have anything to add but I really approve of a thread like this. So much of the internet world is about tearing things down and not building things up.

Ok, I'll half arse this. Here is my recently built 'home gym'. I sourced this from multiple suppliers and got it for a reasonable price (<US$700).

This is 'project complete' so don't need any support. I strongly recommend others to build home gyms for convenience and lack of ongoing costs. They work best for introverts, although I don't know where I'd find one of those around here.

Is this at all possible if you don’t live on the ground floor?

Yes within reason, if you live in a modern construction with a concrete slab under you. You should be fine with a setup like this as long as you don't start powerlifting. I don't intend to ever lift more than 100kg/220lbs. If you're really worried and have timber floorboards you might want to do some research on maximum weight, but its really unlikely to be problem.

Also you need to make sure that you have some floor protection if you're in a rental (see my flattened cardboard even though its a bare concrete slab). Ideally you would use rubber tiles (~1m x 1m x 10+mm) for a permanent fitout. Things can be mitigated by using rubber coated plates like I'm using the picture and also by making sure you don't ever drop the bar unless its an emergency. This is both to make sure the flooring doesn't get damaged and also that you don't annoy your downstairs neighbors.

I'm constantly tempted to get more home gym stuff, now that I have a home. I thought it would be dirt cheap second hand, but even heavily used, people expect $100's for a simple bench, bar and plates.

I do have a sizeable collection of kettlebells I use at home though, which has been nice because they store easily.

people expect $100's for a simple bench, bar and plates

A proper 20kg barbell not made of chinesium can easily go couple of hundreds of dollars. And is forever and there is almost no difference between new and used 10 years in a gym. So it keeps its value well. Same with plates, dumbbells and kettlebells.

Chinesium is other story, but probably one shouldn't use them if they care about safety.

Weight plates seem to only go up in price. So you can buy new and then sell used 10 years later for a profit.

Although, I did recently buy some "Chinesium" plates off Amazon that were pretty cheap so maybe this trend won't continue going forward.

There's some absolutely delusional sellers asking for ridiculous prices for their plates. I suspect they are looking to offload their bags after they bought at inflated pandemic prices. These days you can get a set of chinesium bumpers from Walmart for $1/lb shipped. Imo, there's no reason to pay more than that for rubber plates, and rubber plates are perfectly serviceable for 99% of recreational lifters.

What's up with this, by the way? I have also recently discovered that weights cost more than I'd expect. Aren't they just barely-machined iron pancakes, sometimes covered in rubber/some kind of plastic? Is there a gym equipment cartel fixing prices on them?

I think it's just demand driven. Home gyms are cheap compared to ongoing gym fees so buyers are willing to pay more. The plates also keep their value as long as they're functional, which is years and years unless treated badly or left exposed to the elements. Even with cosmetic damage they are perfectly functional. They're just heavy things to be lifted. Once purchased there is rarely a need to buy more.

I sold a similar home gym about 5 years ago when moving long distance. I had bought it for $US450 and sold it for about $380 after 3 years of use. The buyer rang the same day it was listed and picked it up an hour after his call paying in cash. It wasn't an opportunistic reseller, but a young guy with his girlfriend looking for a home gym.

I'm not sure. I was pretty shocked at the prices when I went to Dick's sporting goods thinking, stupidly, that it would be better to pick up the weights in person than to have them shipped. There is a pretty big name brand markup. Serious lifters probably feel cool having Rogue plates, and then filthy casuals also go out and buy Rogue because they think if they drop $2k on a home gym they will actually work out for once.

The Chinese plates seem fine and (as @sarker noted), are really cheap to get shipped to your door.

Not a work-in-progress but a finished project that may be of interest to some of you.

For my girlfriend's master's final project, we came up with the idea of adapting a traditional folk tale from her country as a piece of interactive fiction. We co-wrote the text and I did all the implementation in Twine.

You can play it here: https://asemkin.itch.io/the-mother-deer

I liked this! It's a shame about the other responses.

Thanks a lot! It's all good, I don't really think there was any malice intended.

Good writing!

Thanks a lot!

Which country is she from?

Kyrgyzstan.

Was her master's in project management?

No, but she is a project manager by trade.

I get what you (and @WhiningCoil) are driving at, but shit-talking someone's wife girlfriend from outside the range of their fists is pretty low.

I'm not shit talking, I'm genuinely confused.

Dude, it's legit confusing reading someone talking about doing their wife's master's final project for them. Like, I didn't even know schools allowed that. Do they allow that? It's like reading about someone just casually mentioning they took $100,000 out of their company's bank account, so brazenly and matter of factly you wonder if they are actually allowed to do that somehow? Like, you're pretty sure that's just embezzling, but they sure don't act like they are emblezzling.

So it goes with this casual matter of fact admission of academic fraud.

I didn't do it for her. We wrote the interactive fiction part together, and I was responsible for all of the Twine implementation. In addition to the interactive fiction part, she wrote an entire thesis well over 150 pages long which I had no part in, not even proofreading.

I considered it paying it forward, as for my final project for my master's, me and my teammate received a great deal of assistance on the artwork from a friend who was not enrolled in the class, but volunteered to help anyway.

I think I'm more upset that a Twine game can get you a master's degree.

Anyway, the problem is that if she didn't do anything wrong that's an insta-punch-in-the-face, which would be bad enough IRL, but on the Interwebs where he has no recourse to that, it's even worse.

Also, you were a bit passive aggressive with the accusation.

I’m pretty sure whatever they did was, in fact, allowed. But then I might be reasoning backwards from assuming OP would not actually be proud of fraud.

That's cool.

For whatever reason I'm struggling to parse your second paragraph. Were you getting your masters too? Was this a group project?

No, it was her master's, I just helped her out on it. We were having lunch last summer and she said she wasn't sure what to do for her final project, and I suggested the interactive fiction angle.

Huh. Well, I never understood this before, but I think I'm starting to get it now.

Just for context, I'm a somewhat regular poster here with some AAQCs, who's made an account solely for the purposes of posting on this thread for the purposes of trying to distance my projects from my political/culture war statements. FWIW, I think this is a great idea for a thread, and will be participating here almost exclusively under this pen-name. Hopefully the mods are okay with this, and hopefully my writing style doesn't give me away.

So, I've recently been trying to write a story. I'm over 4,900 words into it and would like some feedback. The focus of a lot of my effort has been trying to make sure that the events in the story align as much as possible with current understanding of science and principles of logical consistency. However, I've also tried to make sure the writing is up to snuff - I've thrown away a few previous stories due to thinking they weren't delivered in a satisfying way, and the only reason why this has been posted here is because it meets my personal criteria for readability. I would appreciate pointers on where the plot deviates from believable scientific speculation or generally just strains credulity, as well as feedback on aspects such as how the prose feels and flows, on how understandable the writing is, and whether the dialogue feels authentic enough.

Link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Tt8iofyGmERpwBNRmBQh7YjIfxkMPi2en4ZxJBT0PBw/edit?usp=sharing

I plan to get at least another 500 words done this week. I've intentionally set the weekly count low because work and personal obligations have made it quite inconvenient to get into the swing of writing, but I figure that as long as I get some progress in every week I should be done reasonably soon - this is meant to be novella-length at most, so it won't be too difficult to finish.

Generally, well written. But you make the common new writer's mistake of overusing adverbs and adjectives. Go through every sentence and remove all adverbs and adjectives and see if it loses anything. (I don't mean you should remove every one from your story - but you could remove a lot and you'd be surprised how many really don't add much.)

If you want, make a copy and DM me an anonymized/open commenter link and I'll suggest edits on the entire story.

Your writing is quite good, there are disruptions in flow from you doubling and sometimes tripling up on adjectives. Most instances you could omit one or all, two examples:

In the station, an ever-present soundscape practically smothers us, heavy and ominous and oppressive

Soundscape implies atmosphere and ubiquity, I think there's probably a better word choice. Heavy/Ominous/Oppressive aren't exact synonyms but here they're redundant because of "smothers."

"The ocean smothers us with sound" conveys it in fewer words.

I hear Whitlock faintly stirring* in the bunk underneath me. The bed creaks as he slowly, gingerly* sits up and begins to vomit into a bucket, choking and heaving and gasping* as the contents of his stomach unceremoniously escape his body. Once* the retching is over, there’s laboured breathing and a soft, low thud;* the low sound of a head being rested against a bunk pole.

"Stirring" implies a quietness, you could go with "I hear Whitlock's weak stirs."

"Slowly, gingerly" gingerly implies slowness.

"Choking and heaving and gasping" like the above, your omission of commas is meant to emphasize the unpleasantness but just "choking" captures it, and we already know he's having a bad time from the context, before and after.

"Once" is a word for temporal specificity, "when" is a word for temporal generality. When also reads better, "When the retching is finished there's laboured breathing"

"soft, low" redundant

I might omit to "there's laboured breathing and the low sound of a head being rested against a bunk pole"

Last notes: the rules for italicizing apply to titles of works, words not in English (though this would be often, not strictly always), and scientific terms. In prose you can style how you want so you can use italics for names like "Proteus" and "Mazu" but there are times it hurts the flow, especially back-to-back with "Caelus, Qianliyan."

Spirulina is proper when referring to the organism, for a food product it's just "spirulina cakes."

Thanks for reading, and for the feedback. I've changed the document to a commentable state now if you would like to leave some suggestions.

Reading through it again, I think you and @Amadan are probably correct about the excess of adjectives, especially in the introductory sections of the current draft. Not sure why I didn't notice this earlier myself, I suppose it's surprisingly easy to get lost in obsessing about large-scale sentence construction and excluding other considerations like these. I will be taking these critiques on board, and have made an attempt to cut some of the filler adjectives out (though I've left the google doc untouched for now so I can get more feedback on the submitted draft).

I've finished with suggested edits in the doc. It kept signing me out, that may be why it looks like several people were making suggestions.

I've done a lot of anon editing in /lit/ /wg/ threads, most of what I've read there is the kind of bad writing that editing can't fix. Yours is good, and you can see that in my edits being almost all words and parts of sentences you could omit. Using a few too many words is an easy fix. I liked it, I'll be reading more as long you keep us updated.

I meant to put these in my previous comment -- "That" can often be omitted, and there are some rules on writing numbers. The article says and I'll summarize, it's just narrative consistency, always writing them as numerals or always writing them as words. That is narrative, so in narration you'd write them all as numerals, and as dialogue you'd write them as the full words (though there are specific exceptions to this, the one I can name is street addresses, which are always written as eg "123 Main").

This is great, thanks, very comprehensive. I've looked through all of your comments and have taken virtually all of the proposed amendments on board, and do feel it improves the flow of the writing.

I'm also glad you're enjoying the story. I was worried people would tire of constant updates in the project thread, but it's encouraging to see that at least somebody would be willing to follow it. Depending on whether I meet my targets an update may or may not be forthcoming next Monday, but I will try to see this through to the end and post in the Maker's Monday thread in semi-regular intervals.

Nice.

More Peter Watts than Watts himself, combining deep sea and deep space exploration. This is a compliment, I love his writing though I abhorr his congenital pessimism and misanthropy.

I do have a larger tolerance for jargon than most, so I except that much of the feedback you'll receive will be to minimize it, but I feel like it adds to the verisimilitude, something an actual researcher would write to an informed audience.

More Peter Watts than Watts himself, combining deep sea and deep space exploration. This is a compliment, I love his writing though I abhorr his congenital pessimism and misanthropy.

Thank you, that's high praise, and from another writer too. If it wasn't already crystal clear, I'm a gigantic fan of Watts' writing myself, so I'm certainly pleased with the comparison and I'm glad it hits some of these notes (not sure if you'll find less pessimism with where this is going, though). I even have a notes and references section written for it with many articles cited, though that probably won't be included in the story itself.

I'm touched to be called a fellow writer, I just dabble.

In the context of Watts, I follow his blog, and the pessimism is deep seated and personal. Man's just sitting around waiting for the world to explode, and even worse, for the wrong reasons. I'm fine with pessimistic works, hell, I'm sure it's possible to write good scifi that's upbeat, but that eludes me too haha.

I even have a notes and references section written for it with many articles cited, though that probably won't be included in the story itself.

I'd say throw them in, it doesn't hurt, and it does help to flaunt that you've done your research. If you want to be really fancy and make use of electronic media, you could pass them off as diegetic footnotes though that'll be a lot of bother.

Approved.

But please ask first.

Using alternate accounts to post things that might otherwise violate personal OPSEC rules requires moderator approval?

Not complaining, just asking for clarification.

Using alternate accounts to post things that might otherwise violate personal OPSEC rules requires moderator approval?

Correct. See the rules page:

We strongly discourage people from making alt accounts without good reason, and in the absence of a good reason, we consider alt accounts to be bannable on sight. Alt accounts are almost exclusively used for mod evasion purposes and very rarely used for any purpose that helps the community; it makes moderation more difficult and it makes conversation more difficult.

If you do feel you need an alt account (most commonly, if you're a well-established user who wants to post something that can't be linked to their public persona), please ask the mods.

Scheduling The Next Standup Meeting

So, what's y'alls availability this week? I live in CET, @cjet79 is in EST, and last time we had the call around noon EST. These sorts of hours are particularly good for me, since it's late afternoon / early evening, but might not be great for other Yankees. I'm pretty flexible as long as it's not the literal middle of the night here (let's say anything from 5AM to midnight works).

This week Thursday is looking particularly good for me, with Friday being a close second.

How's your availability @Turniper?

I'm central time. Friday is probably worst for me, because I work Sun-Thurs atm to match my fiancee's work schedule, but I could make it work. My ideal would probably be like 2 on thursday.

No further feedback from anyone else, so if you're still up for it, we can have the call today at 2.

@cjet79, wanna join?

Sorry, totally blanked on this. Can make next week. Were ya'll just doing it in discord?

Next week my only option will probably be Friday, but the 5AM - midnight time span still holds.

Yeah, we used Discord the last time, but we ran into some technical difficulties, so if we continue having issues, we might try something else.

Thursday at 2 should work quite well for me.

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