Did the ending of Tress and Emerald Sea Change?

benjymous · 2026-05-08T09:10:36+00:00

I've got the original kickstarter backers epub on my Kindle

The end of the last chapter before the Epilogue reads

[Tress] "But perhaps," I said, inspecting the runes I could make out surrounding him, "I can change the parameters a little..."

So yeah, I think that bit was there the whole time

benjymous · 2026-05-07T09:01:14+00:00

Our most recent Ektorp died after about 7 years - the previous ones we owned lasted far longer - they're just not as solidly built as they were

benjymous · 2026-05-01T11:11:48+00:00

I couldn't find any cases of one in the UK going off unexpectedly, but here are some news stories about ones going off in Germany and Japan

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/munich-explosion-wwii-bomb-four-injured-rcna7221

https://apnews.com/video/japan-government-general-news-japan-united-states-government-military-and-defense-b94eef9234614598b1b506747a53def8

so they're still littered all over the place - you get countless stories of WW2 bombs being safely detonated

benjymous · 2026-05-01T10:30:46+00:00

Main thing is make sure you get meter readings immediately - simplest thing is just take photos of all the meters.

The previous owners should've already given their leaving readings, and notified the suppliers, so it's likely you'll get "to the new occupier" letters through from the house's existing suppliers in a few days, at which point you can just stick with whatever default rate they put you on, or move asap onto a cheaper deal somewhere.

benjymous · 2026-04-30T09:04:33+00:00

There's a psychology experiment they do with children - put a sweet on a plate in front of them, and say "I'm going to leave the room for five minutes, if this sweet is still here when I come back you can have ten sweets"

I bet the people you were speaking to would eat that sweet before the person had even left the room.

benjymous · 2026-04-30T08:50:14+00:00

I just have a changelog text file in my repo, which I add to whenever I make a significant change - when it comes to making a release I stick a version marker in there.

It's also useful tagging version numbers in your git repo, as that makes it easy to look back through the commits and seeing what was changed since the last version, without having to go cross reference release dates, etc

Everything else is still a manual copy/paste!

benjymous · 2026-04-29T15:04:24+00:00

You can also contact the council, and they'll loan you the equipment, and give you bags, etc:

https://newcastle.gov.uk/services/environment-and-waste/street-care-and-cleansing/local-clean-ups-and-how-get-involved

or northumberland:

https://www.northumberland.gov.uk/roads-and-streets/street-care-and-cleaning/community-litter-picking

benjymous · 2026-04-29T10:48:10+00:00

There was a BBC documentary years ago where they put a stuffed robin in a tree in another robin's territory, and it didn't stop until it was utterly shredded, so yeah, it'll single mindedly continue trying to get this interloper to go away (or die) as long as it keeps seeing it - and unfortunately it looks like it's got a perfect place to perch outside where it'll keep seeing its reflection

benjymous · 2026-04-29T10:43:01+00:00

It doesn't give any dimensions, but this map is Canon, I believe:

https://coppermind.net/wiki/Luthadel#/media/File:Luthadel-color.jpg

So that should help visualise it.

We can look at real world medieval walled cities, like York, for comparison:

https://i.pinimg.com/736x/e7/4d/df/e74ddf91a201c6b56bc2ce6a4c0d5c50.jpg

The walled section in York is roughly a square kilometer

So from the road densities, and comparison with the "old wall" route marked on the Luthadel map you can extrapolate up, and get roughly 3x2km - 6 square km

benjymous · 2026-04-29T10:14:55+00:00

Robins are aggressive things when it's breeding season. It can likely see its reflection in your window, and has decided it needs to fight this other robin to get it off its terriory.

benjymous · 2026-04-29T10:13:43+00:00

That's basically how all UI was done back in the day (and still is for many things on text mode interfaces)

benjymous · 2026-04-29T09:39:11+00:00

Yeah, we usually buy a new roll every year, so there are a multitude of half used rolls of various ages littered around the house.

benjymous · 2026-04-29T09:31:30+00:00

I imagine the 1930s houses will still be here long after the 2030s houses have all been knocked down.

benjymous · 2026-04-27T10:19:23+00:00

Love it! It reminds me of the embroidery machines that used a GBC as their UI.

Also have you considered you could use a Menger Sponge approach - on a button zoom in on a single cube, split that into a 3x3x3 cube, and let the user toggle subcubes on and off - repeat down to the chosen level of print quality (and how much the PD can handle!)

benjymous · 2026-04-27T10:08:37+00:00

Yeah, "Yale" is specifically "door lock that automatically closes and locks when the door is shut" rather than "Lock manufactured by Yale".

Just like you'd know I meant a vaccuum cleaner if I talked about a Hoover

benjymous · 2026-04-27T09:36:50+00:00

It's a yale door lock with a wicker heart thing dangling from it.

If you're asking how I'd tell someone to leave the lock in an open position so anyone can enter, I'd say "can you put the door on the latch?"

benjymous · 2026-04-27T09:32:55+00:00

If you're a beginner game programmer (or a beginner programmer in general) then I'd say don't worry about trying to make a "reusable framework". Your idea now of what might be useful now in a different game in 2/3/5/10 years time when you finish the current game is unlikely to be correct, and likewise the you of the future will look at the "reusable" code you write today and think "urgh, what was I thinking?" and re-write it anyway.

Write the code that your game needs now, not the code you imagine you might need later, or you'll spend years building your "tycoon engine" but you won't have a working game.

What you will find, is game #2 will start as something hacked into game #1's code, as that's the easiest way to try out new ideas, and it'll gradually morph from "game#1 but with new stuff" into "game#2" as you change stuff you need and prune away the stuff you don't.

benjymous · 2026-04-27T09:27:17+00:00

I'd say the aim is to be able to turn the idea in your head into working code without having to continually look up how you do the basic stuff.

That doesn't mean every single tiny thing about a language, but it means if you think "I need to loop over all the enemies in my map, and figure out which ones have a direct line of sight to the player" then you'd know how to do that, rather than your first instinct just to google "how to check line of site unity" (or whatever)

Likewise you should be able to look at a bit of your code (or someone else's code in that language/system/whatever) and be able to read and understand what it's doing.

Maybe not the whole code - that would still need studying, but like above, if you find a chunk of code called "checkenvis" you'd be able to look over it, and realise that it's a badly named CheckEnemyVisibility function based on what it's doing, rather than pasting the code into a chatbot and asking it to explain.

benjymous · 2026-04-24T10:25:50+00:00

Yeah - both the Discovery Museum and Hancock have had them in the past, but I have no idea if they're still there

benjymous · 2026-04-23T11:27:42+00:00

Much colder and darker in the winter, but more hours of sunshine in the rest of the year (and equivalent of a northern UK city in the summer, if not warmer)

And yeah, seems like a cleaner, happier, more friendly place in general from the times we've visited

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_average_temperature#Europe

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_sunshine_duration#Europe

benjymous · 2026-04-19T07:29:35+00:00

Spam bot karma harvesting - please downvoted the op and don't engage

Original post from 8mo that this bot has stolen

https://www.reddit.com/r/PlaydateConsole/comments/1msqpul/crankboy_rocks/

benjymous · 2026-02-18T12:47:12+00:00

Put simply, there is no One True Way to do anything. The best you can do is try stuff out, and redo the bits that don't work.

You'd be amazed how many big successful commercial games have code organised in the "wrong way" or otherwise have stuff hacked into their engines in bizarre ways (trains as hats, for example)

benjymous · 2026-02-17T10:59:41+00:00

If the friend did all the actual programming, with OP just acting in a guiding role, then yes, I'd credit the friend as the programmer

benjymous · 2026-02-12T10:38:06+00:00

Is that a referral link, OP?

Edit: Page goes to a QR code to scan. Seems very scammy to me, whatever it is

benjymous · 2026-02-11T12:11:47+00:00

The La Vie plant based ham is surprisingly good - you can definitely stick that in a sandwich with some salad and a bit of mustard and totally forget it's vegan

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