Whitebeard

Thanks to the daylight saving time zealots*, it’s dark when I get up.

I started the week with 13 jars of pasta sauce in my kitchen cupboard.

About 15 years ago I was on a project with a brilliant designer, A___.

Marx famously wrote on RSS and syndication: it is “… the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions.

Slightly early weeknotes!

I want to wang on about Elm for a bit to cheer myself up.

Did I mention I enjoy cryptic crosswords?

Work has been complicated this week - I’m past the initial excitement and the edges of the job are becoming clearer.

A few years ago I had a colleague who was really into IndieWeb.

In which the author, asked by his youngest for help with a cleric, finds the official character sheet wanting and resolves, with some indignation, to print a better one.

In which the author is introduced to everyone at once, rides a possessed hire bike home at twice the legal speed, and builds a pedalboard out of a bathroom accessory.

In which the author finds his cycling legs and then loses them again, dreams of a faithful remake, and discovers something rubbery growing under the beans.

In which the author, defeated by a fifteen-letter anagram, builds a solver that is fast, plain and deliberately unhelpful, and then discovers that zip is cleverer than he is.

In which the author begins a new job after five years away, negotiates with a railway, abandons his leeks to the weeds, and signs up for a maths degree at last.

In which the author explains why Elm gives him joy, confesses to a memory that once won a national competition but cannot manage a shopping list, and learns a bit about how his mind works.

In which the author sorts the many ways of being certain about machine consciousness into eight tidy boxes, supplies a flowchart, and neglects to mention which box he is standing in.

In which the author reviews Eugenia Cheng’s Unequal, enjoys the maths more than the politics, notices he finds progressiveness thrilling now, and gets extremely hungry.

In which the author, between jobs and stalling magnificently, builds an AI coach to drill the STAR interview method instead of actually applying for any.

In which the author admits to a nagging feeling that computing has gone wrong somewhere, points at a tiny algebra that maybe gets a part of it right, and starts building yet another programming language.

In which an unexpected Christmas gift reveals the quiet delight of a rotating bezel, and the author wonders why such useful timekeeping is dressed up in such macho clothing.

In which the author extracts a library from his interactive fiction app, and walks the curious reader through the making of their own Z-machine player in around 100 lines of Elm.

In which the author at last unveils a quiet corner of the web for playing classic Infocom adventures, and reflects on the peculiar inhumanity of an AI that cannot quite abide pure play.

In which the author hunts through virtual memory for a player whose whereabouts the machine no longer remembers, and settles on a layered heuristic that is almost certainly good enough.

In which a 1980s virtual machine for text adventures is reimplemented in a pure functional language, against all better judgement, and somehow emerges working.

In which an old text adventure is rediscovered with the help of an enthusiastic, slang-slinging AI companion, and a z-machine yak awaits its shave.

In which the daily cryptic crossword becomes a source of frustration, and a solution is fashioned from an old Elm project dusted off.

In which we discover that a half-an-entity can be something like a prosthetic for the mind.

In which we introduce a comely new tool for new roleplayers who find themselves suddenly called upon to act.

In which we observe that the worst GM at any table and the current President of the United States share, with uncanny fidelity, the very same qualities.

In which the standee-making tool is rebuilt from scratch, acquiring a coverflow carousel, a proper PDF export, and a somewhat snazzier countenance.

In which we dig into the numbers after fifty paid games and ask, with a clear eye, whether this enterprise is worth the candle.

In which we introduce a simple tool for printing paper standees, born of desperation before one too many D&D sessions.

In which an uneasy truce with the Whiskered Gang is put to the test and the wererats reveal an unexpected side.

In which our battered adventurers rest in a town drained of life and begin to uncover a troubling conspiracy within its walls.

In which our heroes descend into a gold mine overrun by wererats and attempt a most delicate negotiation.

In which we take stock of listing games on StartPlaying.Games and weigh the cost and the benefit with an honest hand.

In which three weary adventurers brave the frozen tundra by dogsled and encounter a guide who is not entirely what she seems.

In which we argue that a small habit or two is worth a thousand words of backstory.

In which we tame a most fearsome Discord bot and put it to work with no more than ten well-chosen commands.

In which we lay out the tools and customs that make an online D&D campaign run smoothly from the very first session.

Hello!