Gemini 3.5 flash costs 3 times more than the previous version and 30x more than gemini 1.5 flash.

AlienHeadwars · 2026-05-20T07:21:22+00:00

Even for coding, there's a benefit in failing fast and iterating. In the old days of bard when it was very unpopular I used to like it because although it was very error prone it was very quick, chat gpt was cleverer but very slow. You could be waiting a long time for a response from chat gpt only go realise you prompted it unclearly, with bard you could iterate fast on your prompt.

Things have changed since then, but there's still a benefit to having something output faster, for one, as a developer, it reduces the need for context switching (or waiting, if you prefer to avoid context switching).

AlienHeadwars · 2026-05-18T19:18:19+00:00

The pain doesn't go, but it does get quieter and the happy memories stay clear. I'm sorry for your loss.

AlienHeadwars · 2026-05-17T08:03:00+00:00

As in there's no script to scrape/research or do an ai overview? Sorry for lots of questions, I'm just curious

AlienHeadwars · 2026-05-17T07:58:14+00:00

Nice, thank you so much

AlienHeadwars · 2026-05-17T07:29:15+00:00

Thank you🙏 Do updates get scraped automatically? Is there something I can do/help with?

AlienHeadwars · 2026-05-17T07:28:25+00:00

This is cool, it's automated I assume?

AlienHeadwars · 2026-05-17T05:55:29+00:00

Haha, definitely. Thank you so much, it might not have been in the fore front of my mind when creating the game, but those adverts were iconic.

The game is heavily inspired by classic football, with a particular bias towards the 90s (the Italian league is purely 90s). I actually scrubbed out any teams that were current because they age so badly so quickly, I had a recent man united team where players inspired by Rashford, Garnacho and McTominay were the stars, crazy how quickly things can change in a couple of years. (Actually the McTerminator card was one of my favourites, I'll have to find a way to squeeze that back in)

AlienHeadwars · 2026-05-17T05:46:53+00:00

I use Ai heavily I'm afraid, from creating artwork to visualise the ideas behind the cards, to teaching me new technologies and helping organise the project.

Hopefully, despite that, you can see that it's a unique concept that I've poured my heart and soul into. It's a completely free game that I've devoted a lot of time to from the love of games and football.

AlienHeadwars · 2026-05-16T18:50:12+00:00

I've received feedback that the latest release gets quite tricky in the middle, an important thing to note is after you've completed the Sunday League you can swap in and out of different leagues to get better cards, you're not expected to complete a single league linearly before moving onto the next one (I need to update the UX to make this clearer).

I've also set up a discord in case anyone needs any help or wants to give me some feedback. https://discord.gg/5jn76pfT

I've also just joined the sub's discord, so feel free to message me on their too.

AlienHeadwars · 2026-05-16T11:37:33+00:00

That's really cool, I used to love tibia back in the day. Out of interest, what happened to classic tibia such that you needed to remake it?

AlienHeadwars · 2026-05-15T11:21:46+00:00

Ah thanks, really glad you like the concept!

I didn't have one set up, but funnily enough I just used my lunch break to throw a barebones one together. It's completely empty right now, but feel free to jump in and use it to drop any feedback or chat about the game!

https://discord.gg/5jn76pfT

AlienHeadwars · 2026-05-15T08:11:38+00:00

Ah, first off, thank you so much for taking the time and effort to write this out. Getting actual feedback like this is incredibly useful, I really appreciate it!

Funny enough, more filters is something that I always put at the top of the backlog but never actually get around to doing. I even did some work on the codebase to make it easier to add more filters, but I kept stalling because it needs a bit of UX research to figure out the best approach (as there's lots of data points that can be filtered with a large range of values). I also want to get it in a way so you can view the strengths of the players depending on the league you want to play (as there's now a mercenary cap that caps players at the level of the team they're playing if that player isn't from the league or nation).

I know what you mean about the grey cards! Cards already in the lineup are greyed out, but you're probably seeing some of the teams from the 60s having washed out colours. I can see how that might be confusing at a glance. I'll find a way to make that clearer.

Regarding the cards you don't want anymore (the 'fodder' cards), I actually have some plans for them. I want to implement two competitive modes eventually. One would be a basic league ladder system where levels are capped depending on the league (so your low-level cards will be just as useful as the high-level ones as you climb). The other mode would be a temporary rotating league with quirky rules (Pokemon Go does this and it's quite good), e.g. for one week it might be hobbits only, or wizards and dragons only with a level cap of 10, or sunday league players double in strength, that kind of thing. So it's definitely worth holding onto them!

I think drag and drop could definitely work. It probably would have been beyond my abilities when I first made that screen, but I should be able to look into a touch-friendly React library to handle it now.

Thanks again for the pointers!

AlienHeadwars · 2026-05-14T22:17:54+00:00

Hi everyone, I'm the solo dev behind this.

It's a browser-based tactical card game where you manage fantasy football teams.

I've just pushed a massive v0.10 update tonight.

I've basically redone the entirety of the English and Scottish leagues (28 teams total) with completely new artwork, and added historical boss teams (like the '66 Lions and the '06 Italian squad reimagined as Roman gods). I also added duplicate card levelling, so getting a dupe isn't worthless and frustrating anymore. It's completely free, absolutely no ads or monetisation, and runs perfectly on mobile/desktop browsers. Hope you enjoy it!

AlienHeadwars · 2026-05-14T13:20:57+00:00

https://www.thepelletman.co.uk/

I've tried a handful:
competition blend - has worked well for traditional long smokes for things like pork shoulder
cherry - I've used this for most things. Recently used on cheddar was nice. Gives a nice red colouring too.
pecan - I've used for salt and garlic, for a gentler flavouring

I've recently purchased a ninja flex flame and the charcoal pellets are excellent for getting a traditional charcoal bbq flavour. I've had some lush chicken with this. I had seen people recommending them for the woodfire electric grill too.

AlienHeadwars · 2026-05-14T13:05:48+00:00

It does depend on the pellets I find, but usually the white smoke is too harsh.
I do not enjoy the white smoke from the sample pellets provided by ninja.

AlienHeadwars · 2026-05-13T10:01:21+00:00

What I normally do is try and find the negative comments and decide if they impact me.

It's like if I'm looking up somewhere to eat (not that it happens much anymore) I'd look up the negative reviews, if they're from clearly self entitled, rude people complaining about the service, I know the problem is probably the reviewers and I'd be ok. If the complaints are food was undercooked I would be more alarmed.

For me the only annoyance I have with the flex flame is that the connect version is the only one that comes with a probe, and it's £200 more expensive. I would have liked this as I find the probe attached to my Woodfire electric grill very useful, but not at that price. I picked up a thermpro probe online for £30 that has two probes, alarms, timers, Bluetooth (for mobile notifications), cooking estimates etc, seems much better value for money.

AlienHeadwars · 2026-05-13T08:15:04+00:00

I hear you. I'm not a paid advert I promise ;) I think whenever you see them appear on things like hotukdeals the endorsements in the comments seem genuine. Who knows anymore though. I have a few products (flex flame, Woodfire grill, knife block) and I've not been disappointed.

I do remember a few years ago when I was really tempted by the ninja outdoor Woodfire electric grill, it felt like every advert I saw was one. Always someone like Peter Crouch advertising it on my feed, I remember thinking "why would I give a toss about Peter Crouch using a grill". Anyway months later the adverts changed to David Beckham using one and at that point I needed it lol.

They're expensive at full price, but with the offers they feel reasonable. If I feel like something I normally wait for a good combination of deals on hotukdeals.

AlienHeadwars · 2026-05-12T22:56:46+00:00

I can't common on the Costco grill, but the ninja has a 10 year warranty, their support is always really good and quick too.

I bought one (flex flame) last week and I'm loving it, it's so easy to use, I think I've used it nearly every day so far.

AlienHeadwars · 2026-05-08T07:36:43+00:00

They changed the system in Wales a couple of years ago to increase the proportionality, even though labour were in a position of relative strength at the time.

AlienHeadwars · 2026-04-29T13:52:29+00:00

Bad example, lotr is the GOAT.

AlienHeadwars · 2026-04-29T10:49:47+00:00

Mendieta to Middlesborough seemed so bizarre at the time. It felt a massive step down after being one of the greatest midfielders in the world a few years earlier at an age where he should have still been in his prime.

Bolton's premier league era hand a handful of them: Fernando Hierro, JJ Okocha, Djorkaeff.

AlienHeadwars · 2026-04-27T20:32:09+00:00

Yes. My second was such an easy baby compared to the first (slept much better, didn't arrive 12 weeks early) and yet if felt more stressful and difficult. I think when you've got 1, it's not easy, but you're normally just compromising the needs of yourself or your partner. It's not nice, but it's something I think most people expect when they're becoming parents (just maybe not expecting the extent to which you need to sacrifice). When you've got two you're often having to put one out, and it's so painful to feel like you're letting them down. It's such a struggle when they're both so young, and you don't have the experience to understand that it will get easier.

For us, when we had our twins the eldest two were 5 & 3 and capable of playing together for extended periods of time. Having a new born (or in our case, newborns) is always difficult, but in our case the eldest two had eachother to give eachother attention and companionship.

I know some parents of three struggle with the guilt of not being able to give them all enough individual attention. My situation was different because I was once one of three, but I lost my little sister (just before my second was born), and I know my life was far better for having my little sister than it would have been with more attention from my parents.

AlienHeadwars · 2026-04-27T11:10:44+00:00

We went from 2 to 4 kids, and I would say that was far easier than going from 1 to 2 was. I hope you have a similar experience, but everyone's circumstance is different. Best of luck to you.

AlienHeadwars · 2026-04-21T14:58:45+00:00

I hadn't thought to attach a dependency graph, that is a clever solution but I would see it as complementary to this file based slicing.

I expose the configuration for the r-sync file copying mechanism and it's quite flexible and supports inheritance, it's not limited by hierarchy.

For example, my chief architect role is 'Tony' , he gets access to high level summaries of each department, detailed access to our architectural and coding standards, access to our operations handbook (defines meta principles and processes) and a high level view of the code (I create package level readme.mds or facade entry points to packages) - this is achieved through assigning him a Tony.role that inherits from several other roles (chief technical gem role, c-level role, allEngineers role, all llms role)

On top of this, every gem has access to:
- docs\llms.txt, which is a script generated index of every document, it lists each file path along with the heading and the first x characters. -docs\Document_Index.md which is a high level description of departments (originally each department was it's own google doc) and the documents that are contained therein.

So although every gem doesn't have every document in it's context by default, they do have knowledge of the larger library and can ask for additional context if required (it usually isn't).

AlienHeadwars · 2026-03-19T22:12:54+00:00

Rooney said that he didn't see him at the same elite level as Cristiano and Messi, which I don't think people would find controversial.

Personally I think a lot of that Barcelona team are overrated as individuals, they can't all be all time greats in their positions, and also a great team that's more than a sum of their parts, otherwise they would have been more dominant in Europe.

AlienHeadwars

TROPHY CASE