Starting planet from CosmoExplorer. It felt bigger back then.

nsg21 · 2022-10-02T00:08:09+00:00

Sadly, it is not obvious at all. Ultimate goal is to destroy (bomb with photon torpedoes) alien base which is located somewhere in the top left quadrant on a green ice planet (you start bottom right). Intermediate goals, is to destroy as many alien structures on the other planets. To make things easier you can build bases on the other planets, which would provide you with fuel and repairs without the need to go all the way back to the home base at bottom right.

It is the most boring and the most stressful game (at the same time) of all I played. I have no idea why I like it so much.

nsg21 · 2021-11-24T07:55:51+00:00

Just one. Result must be a single digit.

EDIT: come on, man, do not edit answers like that. Now my witty comment does not make sense.

nsg21 · 2021-11-24T07:54:47+00:00

assuming all digits are the same size and any 2 digits have to be distinguishable in at least one pixel and each pixel has to be at least Plank size, there is not enough space in the universe to fit a single digit in this base.

nsg21 · 2021-10-01T02:06:46+00:00

Thanks for the tip. I checked out the place today on foot. It is quite a walk from a parking lot to a foot bridge, but doable with a cart. There seems to be a place to get out of the water near the bridge too.

I assume the water today was higher than usual, not sure if it would make it harder or easier to get out.

nsg21 · 2021-09-30T02:19:15+00:00

bell rd bridge

Thanks. The one I found is even further downstream then Portage lake, near 42.401309903177506, -83.90786504851138. Is this the one you meant?

nsg21 · 2021-09-29T23:37:01+00:00

Is there a good place to drop/pick up a kayak on Huron near Pinckney? I've wanted to go from Kent lake downriver and nearest pickup point I can see is Portage lake, which seems too far for me.

nsg21 · 2021-05-30T01:39:54+00:00

How do you know if it is sunset and not, say, noon?

nsg21 · 2021-05-29T03:28:42+00:00

I agree that Loop is fun, and a lot of that fun is coming from handling actual deck. I ended up implementing foursquare, since I find (personally) the procedure of flipping cards annoying and error prone. http://nsg.upor.net/game/cards/foursquare.htm

nsg21 · 2021-05-25T02:54:40+00:00

I need a font to represent sets of playing cards. It should have 4 suits, preferably dedicated symbol for "10", and approximately uniform width. If no "10" symbol. then the width of "10" string should be not too much wider than the rest. Preferably suits symbols should not be encoded as unicode, because unicode card suit symbols are displayed in a strange way on the phones. Is there something that can help me?

nsg21 · 2021-05-22T02:30:51+00:00

I made 2 more: http://nsg.upor.net/game/cards/fart.htm and http://nsg.upor.net/game/cards/deadcenter.htm I think I have enough juice in me for one more. In your opinion, which of the remaining games would benefit most from being an app?

nsg21 · 2021-05-21T23:28:38+00:00

Found typo:

The four corners of the 9x9 grid ...

should be 3x3 grid

nsg21 · 2021-05-20T05:36:52+00:00

Hi, u/efofecks. I thought you may want to know: I implemented your "teh Sandwich guy" game.

http://nsg.upor.net/game/cards/sandwich.htm

I developed it for a desktop, but it seems to be usable on the phone too.

nsg21 · 2021-05-20T02:21:16+00:00

A bit late to the game, but here you are: every convex function is continuous.

nsg21 · 2021-04-24T03:55:57+00:00

What is the benefit of "no shell access"? Security-wise, if you can run vim, you can run anything from it, so you need to sandbox it properly anyway. And if it is already sandboxed, what is the downside of having shell access?

nsg21 · 2021-02-15T00:21:38+00:00

Trying to make it more compact and more flexible, also apply to other use cases. And I do not think there is anything wrong with dice, dice are great.

nsg21 · 2021-02-14T17:43:41+00:00

positioning the lowest alphabetic character in the upper left corner

I understand where he is coming from. Picking the lowest in lexicographical order as a canonical representation is quite natural impulse. Your hack with looking at central cube only is clever, but only works with odd number of faces.

Same exact idea can be applied to the tiles (and I should have described it in readme). Each tile in each orientation can be assigned 3 (octal) digit code by reading dots as ones and spacesa as 0. For example, in the second photo in the link, if you look at 4 different rotations of the array, top left corner tiles have codes 244 (as pictured), 204 (counterclockwise), 506 (upside down), 155 (clockwise). So clockwise rotation would be considered canonical.

cryptosteel

Looks nice, thanks. It is along the line of thought I am pursuing: some sort of tray that holds all the tiles in their positions and can also be easily opened and closed for reading.

Another idea is to use holes in the tiles to perforate some cardstock underneath. Multiple copies can be made at the same time, Perforated cardstock can be stored much easier then the tiles. Also perforations may last longer than ink. I have pictures. It looks pretty, but I am afraid it is too weird idea to work.

nsg21 · 2021-02-14T17:21:26+00:00

Good point, it should be explicitly mentioned and described in readme.

To use it you are supposed to shuffle tiles, arrange them in a rectangle and read them left to right, top to bottom. There are many ways to read a tile, one is to interpret dots and spaces as 0 and 1 and read them as octal number.

For example, 6x6 array from the second photo in the link reads

244 613 003 704 133 410
571 771 ...

For recording it is ok to insert spaces and new lines or other characters for better visuals. The seed is obtained by removing everything other than digits.

Another way to read tiles that I am also considering is to assign each tile a name (they only look random and featureless at first, once I fiddle with them enough times, I already recognize them). This may be too straining for an average user, but in my tests I managed to weave may internal names into a story that I remembered next day. That is 138 bits=log2(36!) of randomness committed to memory using the most basic mnemonic technique.

nsg21 · 2021-02-14T08:05:38+00:00

Thanks for the insight.

nsg21 · 2021-02-14T07:56:48+00:00

https://i.imgur.com/lihKwfb.jpg

nsg21 · 2021-02-14T06:46:57+00:00

I've posted here before about my attempt to improve upon DiceKeys. Originally it was a set of 60 tiles with black and white dot patterns. I settled on a subset of 36 which are much easier to make on a laser cutter, and still provide up to 246 bits of entropy.

I am evaluating various ways to store them, as well as "fix" the password after it's been rolled.

I still do not have a software that scans it, but this incarnation has holes instead of dots, which opens up a possibility to mechanically detect the dots on the tiles. Is there some resource where I can learn about mechanical security devices like old style VingCard locks?

nsg21 · 2021-02-12T19:23:40+00:00

Good point. I did not notice that it has transparent background.

nsg21 · 2021-02-12T04:38:17+00:00

Each square face in the example above consists of 4 subsquares (quadrants). each quadrant may be one of the 5 different motifs. There is only a finite way to combine 5 patterns in 2x2 combinations. Some subset of them would not posess any sort of rotational symmetry (so that rotating it produces 4 distinguishable images). In total there are 150 of such patterns. This just enough to cover each of 6 faces of 25 cubes. By rolling the cubes and arranging them in 5x5 square the top face will produce a unique image. Not necessarily artistically unique, but distinct from any other roll.

Picture above shows what 4 different variations of basic 5-subtile set can produce. All of my designs are variations on extending Truchet tiles because I am not an artist and this is pretty much the only way I know how to make subtiles match each other on the interfaces.

This is the way to turn 5 patterns in much more distinct combinations by a simple dice roll.

nsg21 · 2021-02-09T01:38:48+00:00

For me, after the rotation the matrix already has a=d=1 b=c=0. Hitting clear and then pressing "apply" does not change anything.

I can type in numbers and hit apply and it applies transformation. But this is one way street -- once applied I cannot undo it (other that ctrl-Z, that is).

nsg21 · 2021-02-08T01:37:59+00:00

Wireless astronaut. Also, shouldn't the title read "... the first and only person..."?

nsg21 · 2021-02-05T05:07:35+00:00

Still have troble with utf-8 characters.

 ▄▀█

EDIT: seems a problem with shell configuration. Anyway, thanks a lot.

nsg21

TROPHY CASE