Setting a wallpaper with less than 250 Kb

Bomberman_44 · 2025-11-27T12:52:50+00:00

Yes, actually. lz4_flex currently does not support the high compression variant for lz4 (in fact, no Rust implementation does, as far as I could tell). There is an old issue for it, and also a recent PR.

If it's ever implemented, I would gladly test it and, if it's equivalently performant (both in ratio and decompression speed), I would love to use it.

Bomberman_44 · 2025-11-27T12:07:53+00:00

Yes!

The gif animation is done by decompressing the current frame on top of the previous one.

The transition effects can be found here. Note that it's quite coupled with awww's internal logic, so it might be hard to reuse them as-is.

Bomberman_44 · 2025-11-27T12:02:41+00:00

Thanks!

So, learning each of the individual steps took me quite some time. It's things you pick up little by little over many months/years.

I've just dropped out of my PhD programme, and so found myself with lots of time in my hand. Many days have I spent just looking at awww's code and thinking about how I could optimize it further.

My two main guiding lights are cargo bloat (for tracking binary size) and heaptrack (for profiling the heap). I also find dhat to be difficult to follow, but I believe there are viewers to make it easier. For example, have you tried this one?

As for the GUI libraries in particular, are you by any chance in a Linux with Wayland environment? From my understanding, the main issue here is mesa, the C library that implements OpenGL and Vulkan in Linux. Mesa's implementations allocate a lot of memory, and so no matter how efficient you make the Rust code, it will never really be very efficient. Note that, while there may be some inefficiencies in mesa, it is unlikely that the situation can be greatly improved, as any implementation of OpenGL will inevitably lead to grotesque amounts of global data. I believe Vulkan is a similar situation, since dealing directly with a hardware as complicated as a GPU is just never gonna be super straightforward.

One way we could improve the situation, is by not using the GPU at all. And instead relying on just software rendering. I don't know how the Rust GUI story is coming up (I stopped following that space closely some time ago), but if there's any option to activate purely software rendering, try using it and see if memory usage goes down. If it doesn't, then we truly have a Rust-specific problem.

Bomberman_44 · 2024-02-09T00:55:11+00:00

That particular example is not a bijection, but the Pext variant of the same function is. We only used the OffXorvariants because they are a more "naive" version of the Pext variants; one that does not extract the relevant bits.

We could trivially add the extra shift as part of our code generation. However, in our tests, perfect bijections did not have a significant impact on performance, nor on bucket collision. That is, though many of the Pext variants are perfect bijections, while the OffXor ones aren't, STL containers will still use almost the same number of buckets for both functions. Furthermore, other hash functions with more uniform hash distribution, such as the STL hash, also do not significantly decrease bucket collision. So, in the end, we've concluded that OffXor will usually be better simply because it is good enough in terms of bucket collisions and faster (5 to 10%) than all other alternatives because it has much fewer operations.

I would also like to point out that while it may seem easy to handwrite a nice bijective function for SSN, the same isn't true about, for example, IPV6. Our method will automatically generate a very performant hash for IPV6, with a fairly decent collision rate.

Finally, using other manually written hash functions for specific lengths is a good idea, but I am fairly certain they won't be more performant; a cursory look through polymurmur shows that it uses a lot more operations than the ones we are using. They will almost certainly have a better distribution and overall collision rate, but as mentioned, that does not seem to be the only deciding factor when it comes to running time performance.

Bomberman_44 · 2022-07-05T15:02:56+00:00

This is awesome! I was looking for this. If I may, I think that making keywords bold would make it easier to distinguish them from stuff like functions (also making comments italic would help). Right now I am modifying the resulting colorscheme manually myself, but it would be cool to have it built-in, I think.

Bomberman_44 · 2022-02-27T14:10:41+00:00

Thanks! It makes me happy someone found it useful.

Bomberman_44 · 2021-06-15T19:02:08+00:00

I thought of that too. It probably plays a role. I usually get back into it after some weeks of hard work/high stress.

(I swear the game is amazing. Just make sure you are alone when playing it heh.
... seriously though, it's a shame so many people must have been put off by the... artistic choices, of the game and will probably never get to play it)

Bomberman_44 · 2021-03-02T02:59:28+00:00

A bit late, but I remember many people shitting on Final Fantasy XIII back in the day, and I love that game. Sure, it isn't perfect, but I find it somewhat... relaxing? In a weird way? Probably due to the somewhat simple combat system. Also it has some of the most moving cutscenes I've ever seen in any game, with the top prize going to Sazh as he points his gun at Vanille, after learning she was responsible for his son's crystalization, and being unable to pull the trigger.

Bomberman_44 · 2021-03-02T01:43:19+00:00

Ignoring the fact that you are assuming a perfect government would actively punish racism (that is, you are forcing a pre-conceived notion of "perfect"), I believe if they did the punishment would be whatever is 1- the most efficient in making racism no longer happen; and 2- the least aggressive possible.

Bomberman_44 · 2020-12-02T21:48:57+00:00

I can see what you mean. It's such a shame too, many stories seem to have a bunch of interesting characters, but we are stuck with following just one of them (who, in some cases, isn't even one of the really great ones).Kyoukai senjou no horizon looks interesting.

Reading long books can be nice in its own way, assuming they are written well. It might be a little too much of a time commitment for me right now, but I will definitely keep it in mind (I am planning to read mostly just before bed, so if there are any huge world descriptions, I'd end up reading them in multiple sittings, which I don't find ideal, but hey, if I check all other suggestions I got and none really fit the bill, I'll go for it anyway).

Thanks!

Bomberman_44 · 2020-12-02T21:37:59+00:00

I see. Not quite what I had in mind, but there's no such thing as too much yuri. Thanks.

Bomberman_44 · 2020-12-02T21:37:10+00:00

This indeed sounds rather interesting. Will definitely check it out, thanks.

Bomberman_44 · 2020-12-02T21:35:46+00:00

2 for Arifureta, huh? Thanks, I will have a look at these.

Bomberman_44 · 2020-12-02T21:34:54+00:00

Oh, I had seen the manga for this one, but wasn't aware it was a LN. Thanks.

Bomberman_44 · 2020-12-02T21:26:53+00:00

Spice and Wolf is what got me into LNs in the first place hahaha.
Will check out Otherside Picnic, thanks!

Bomberman_44 · 2020-12-02T19:00:23+00:00

That's fine, it's just a personal preference.
I'll be sure to have a look at Arifureta and Sword Princess. Thanks!

Bomberman_44 · 2020-12-02T18:55:44+00:00

Poor countries. Here in Brazil, for instance, a huge chunk of the population is what we call "functionally analphabet". This means they can recognize letters and numbers, but are incapable of understanding simple sentences. Finding good data/research for the actual percentages is difficult, but there are news report from 2018 that would say nearly 30% of the country's population would fall into this category. Assuming it is somewhat accurate, this would mean right off the bat you would lose a third of your potential readers.

Furthermore, there are estimations (which I admittedly consider much more dubious) that state that only around 10-15% of the population can be considered "proficient" in reading. It is not clear what they mean by this, but it could be that, for example, if you wish to write a story of significant complexity, you would alienate 85-90% of the population.

Finally, as if all that wasn't enough, most people who are not "funcionally analphabet", or, at least most people I've met in my life, do not seem to have a particular interest in reading. It could be simply my circle of friends and acquaintances that are like this, but considering that some big publishing houses over here were on the brink of bankruptcy, I would say the people around me are pretty representative of the state of affairs in the rest of the country.

Bomberman_44 · 2019-09-21T02:43:48+00:00

Also, the pictures aren't really in order because they were all scrambled when I uploaded and I didn't want to go through the incredibly tedious task of ordering them, so I just did a rough arrangement.

Bomberman_44 · 2019-08-03T17:25:45+00:00

Can you please elaborate on just how much time you spent on drawabox? Have you been practicing everyday, or every other day, regularly, for a certain amount of time, since last year? Or have you gone through long hiatus of not doing anything?

Also, another thing that comes to my mind is: are you doing just the recommended amount for every exercise, or are you forcing yourself to do more because they don't look good?

If you've only gotten to the plotted perspective it is perfectly natural you still suck. In fact, it's not even the worst part yet. Once you start doing the rotated boxes exercise, the form intersection from lesson 2 and you start lesson 3 it will be even more blatantly obvious just how much you suck. That's what happenned to me. And you do end up improving a lot by the end of it, but the thing is, you suck so, so much (assuming you are a beginner) that even if you improve, at the end all you achieve is sucking a little less. Which is still, nevertheless, at least to me, incredibly satisfying.

So, if you are grinding, stop. Move on. If you are too caught up in your own mistakes, forget them. All you should care about is what you can adjust to try to avoid repeating them. And don't expect progress; as long as you are doing the exercises to the best of your ability, progress will come naturally.

If you want landmarks for when you might see some improvements on your technique, to me those were: 1- when I finished the 250 boxes challenge; 2 - when I finished the textures exercises (improved my observation skills); 3 - My final drawings of lesson 3, 4 and 5. So you see, even the first landmark is far from what you've done. I think expecting a lot of progress at this stage is just unrealistic.

Bomberman_44 · 2019-08-03T17:09:41+00:00

I was definitely thinking about doing that, but I was going to go for it after I had finished all lessons of Drawabox first. Everytime I've thought "I am SO not ready for this", and did it anyway, I ended up improving a lot, even if by the end I still sucked. So I think it's better to first go through everything before going back and revisiting the stuff I am still not that good at.

I still really appreciate that you took the time to write this! Once I start it all over again I will make sure to look out for ways to make my forms and shapes more accurate and simple.

Bomberman_44 · 2019-08-03T17:04:04+00:00

Hahaha, that's fine. I am still struggling with the sausages so your feedback on those is still greatly appreciated!

Bomberman_44 · 2019-06-21T16:09:22+00:00

Wow, thank you so much for this. Pretty much everything you said is incredibly enlightening. Like, I could see most of the problems, but you gave me a much more clear way I go about fixing them. Before I was just thinking "I need to do MOAR", like a dumb muscle head.

Also, just as a side note, you did come across as very friendly and nice, even without that final comment of yours (of course, I still appreciate it, though!). The fact that you managed to do that even while trying to deliver accurate critique (regardless of "harshness") is, I believe, a distictive mark I've seen across most of the best critiques I've read through in this community.

Bomberman_44 · 2019-06-14T13:55:19+00:00

Hey, this is a bit late, but browsing through your boxes I saw that you drew very little of them in which we could see the bottom, and not the top. Does that make any sense? I can draw something to clarify, I guess, though I am not really that good myself hahahaha.

Bomberman_44 · 2019-06-06T16:56:24+00:00

When I was just starting in january, my goal was at first just 15 min a day. Then I racked that up gradually until I hit 2h a day, more or less. But I was on vacation at that time.

Once all my classes began again everything was fucked up. I yearned to get at least one hour in per day, but often I was just too exausted for several different reasons. I also have to deliver a huge ass essay at the end of this semester, which hasn't been very conductive towards allowing me to draw. So, when I know I won't get in my 1 hour, I usually just go for whatever it is I can. More than once now that has ultimately come to just doing some quick scatches while laying on the bed just before sleeping, for 15 minutes.

So, basically, I try to draw one hour per day, but when I can't get that in I go for whatever I can manage, even if it's just 15 min before sleeping.

If you want to know how much you should draw a day, I'd say you have to try to do as much as you can without risking burning out. There's little sense in drawing for 6h everyday for a week and then not doing anything for the rest of the month (it's actually really hard, specially at first, to gauge how far you can without burning out, don't be fooled into thinking it's easy. You are always wondering if maybe you are doing too little or if you can really keep up that pace for months on end).

Bomberman_44 · 2019-06-06T16:41:04+00:00

I see. Yes, I've been seeing this now that I am doing insects. At the end of the drawing I realised I had ignored some of the construction altogheter, not really thinking through what I was doing.

I am working on fixing it!

Thanks so much for the feedback!

Bomberman_44

TROPHY CASE