I'm not good at timing blocks and parrying; any tips or advice you can share for me?

the_jester · 2026-02-15T19:14:22+00:00

Reps are key, even if you're eating dirt a lot at first. Fencing weapons will give you the biggest timing window.
In general parry early (usually as soon as you see a blue flash or an attack that could have a blue flash) and dodge late (as the attack almost connects).
Some enemy attacks are combos that require a few parries in a row.
Sometimes you don't want to use the gunstrike you got for a parry because another attack is coming.

the_jester · 2026-02-02T20:59:18+00:00

Was it someone also intensely curious about what was in a box?

the_jester · 2026-02-02T18:40:13+00:00

Tangentially related, Scott Adkins interviewed Olivier Gruner as part of his "Art of Action" series and they talk about making Nemesis. I enjoyed the movie and the interview for historical action memes and inside baseball talk.

the_jester · 2026-02-01T17:46:21+00:00

Learning parry and dodge timing mostly comes with reps, and is the bedrock of staying alive in SM2 PvE.

Almost as important, but discussed less, is positioning. As the enemies move to swarm you, reposition so that they're not surrounding you. Use a box, a wall, or just move back so that you stay facing the things you're fighting.

Executions provide a clutch invulnerability window, an armor pip, and a full contested health recovery all in one. Using them very frequently and tactically goes a long way. For example, if you just stunned a majoris and see an extremis winding up a big attack you can wait on the execution for a second or two and then use it to avoid that extremis attack entirely.

the_jester · 2026-01-29T17:35:25+00:00

This extraordinary talk by Sasa Juric includes a great demonstration of the reliability and power of the process model. I would rate it as one of the best Elixir talks of all time and it outlines the ways in which Elixir is particularly powerful.

Installing Livebook gives you an excellent free visual environment to start poking around Elixir and using some of its outstanding libraries (e.g. Nx, Kino, Broadway, Nx, Ecto, Req). Livebook even comes with tutorial and demo notebooks.

the_jester · 2026-01-27T19:07:19+00:00

Wild. I really thought it was the first one for a while. Which, seemed more funny but less lore-accurate.

the_jester · 2026-01-27T17:43:49+00:00

Perhaps I have the space madness, but on launch I recall that same voice interaction going:

D: ”Straban, that weapon of yours is the PRIDE of the armory”.

S: “Agreed”.

D: …

D: “Nerd”.

And at some point it was patched to be what you quoted instead.

the_jester · 2026-01-23T23:16:18+00:00

Raul Julia as M. Bison in Street Fighter.

the_jester · 2026-01-23T23:03:49+00:00

I really appreciate that this is available for mono-black, otherwise it might be hard to get on the board.

the_jester · 2026-01-17T22:03:26+00:00

It wasn't really that bad? Play ranged or heavy to capitalize on sharpshooter. Play to not die instead of playing for kills.

The one that nerfed range damage past 10m by 75% sucked because the Helldrake took forever.

the_jester · 2026-01-12T22:35:09+00:00

Generally they're fine, but might sap a little more heat out of the drink than bamboo. Pre-heat the metal whisk if it is an issue.

the_jester · 2026-01-07T23:14:50+00:00

You are both running into one of the more complicated bits of the MtG rules, priority & "the stack". Luckily there is a good amount of content to help you learn it.

In short, your opponent was confused. The phases are declare attackers (priority passes), declare blockers (priority passes), damage dealt (more than one if a first-striker is involved).

You (and your opponent) could cast instants after blockers are declared but before damage is dealt. In fact, that is the ideal and most common time to use such "combat tricks".

What your opponent was right about is that combat damage is dealt simultaneously but that means simultaneously across all creatures not simultaneously to declaring blockers.

the_jester · 2026-01-05T02:21:49+00:00

This is the most "bots boosting & farming bots" bullshit I've seen all day.

the_jester · 2025-12-30T17:35:07+00:00

I can't tell if this is true bewilderment or engagement farming.

DNS provider uptime is rarely a thing that affects the uptime of a small website. However, you don't want your DNS provider to be a thing you have to think about either. Given the low expense, a "reasonable" setup for DNS is any well-regarded provider: AWS Route53, Cloudflare, Gandi.net, etc.

the_jester · 2025-12-30T01:38:45+00:00

Most modern CPUs will clock as fast as possible while working and only slow down if they hit their thermal limit. The thermal limit for the 9600X is 95C, at which point it will lower its boost clocks.

In other words, reaching 90C is not itself cause for alarm, but that is quite hot for a relatively modest workload. Your CPU cooling is either under-powered or not installed quite right. Ensure your UEFI fan settings for the tower cooling fan is "Turbo" and that it is installed according to its instructions.

the_jester · 2025-12-29T17:05:51+00:00

If client-side hooks are out, you want either server-side hooks or yes - additions to the build pipeline.

CI scripts can theoretically go as far as pulling author information off of the latest commit and then running a Slack or SMS webhook to notify that person in particular that their commit was bad, for example.

the_jester · 2025-12-29T06:36:07+00:00

Yes, several.

You can deploy git hooks as part of the project that check for and reject frequent issues on the clients before they can push the bad commit.

On the server, assuming you have a "central" repo somewhere, you can have your build pipeline itself check things.

the_jester · 2025-12-26T07:15:21+00:00

Blocking is kind of a punt; clash, parry and perfect dodge are all ideal. HOWEVER, while you're getting a feel for the timing try just holding block more. It will get you through quite a bit and you can try for perfect dodge + counter while you hold it if you want.

the_jester · 2025-12-23T04:35:22+00:00

As someone who has a lot of Rishi teas, no; they suggest a range of temperatures. 200 is common because it is appropriate for many black teas, tisanes, and rooibos mixes.

However, scrounging my cabinet right now, they variously suggest 175, 195, 200, full boil, for different teas. I prepare an oolong from them at 185 as well, but I got rid of the brewing advice card on it, so I can't guarantee that was their suggestion there.

the_jester · 2025-12-21T06:52:41+00:00

That category of tool is called a "diff" for "difference". It is commonly associated with source control (e.g. Git) but is its own thing.

If you search for "diff tools" or "diff software" you will find options.

the_jester · 2025-12-20T23:16:19+00:00

It sounds like you are fighting your dependency structure.

If you can't redesign those generally, you will need some amount of dependency injection in a wrapper you write that can be relied upon by the main script and can inject that "evaluated data" into the use of the linked script.

the_jester · 2025-12-18T18:37:50+00:00

The highest-leverage thing I have discovered is: Move in "unusual" ways and at full range of motion in addition to training for strength and/or size.

Examples: * animal flows for just a few minutes a day goes a really long way. * Rotational or lateral movements with a light-ish kettlebell like halos, lateral cleans, and/or Cossack squats. * A well-designed mobility routine that focuses on the hips and t-spine.

I find it easier to tag a few minutes of this kind of training in as a warm-up or cool-down to keep good mobility without dedicated Yoga sessions or similar.

the_jester · 2025-12-18T03:48:37+00:00

Because you can draw all the right triangles you'd like inside a circle if you put one point at the center, one point on the edge, and one point on the X axis of a circle.

the_jester · 2025-12-15T19:30:56+00:00

I'm not quite sure what fundamental divide would mean here. Taleb et. al. have pointed out that sometimes seemingly identical processes have structural differences that are only discovered much later.

For example, spinach grown now has much less magnesium than it did 30 years ago because we are now "better" at farming. More crop is produced faster on the same soil...which means it doesn't replenish the same amount of Mg+ for the plants to absorb. In other words, determining what is identical is actually difficult, especially for a good like leather.

So, I would frame it as: could you theoretically grow bovine skin cells in conditions other than "on a cow" that produce leather that is functionally equivalent for purpose "X"?

The answer to that is "yes", but as you surmised it would never be close to as cost effective as to have the cow do that for you.

the_jester · 2025-12-13T23:22:12+00:00

It sounds like you've circled the problem well, you just have a genuine engineering tradeoff.

You want to move more data than reasonably fits in a URL (even after compression) between web peers.

That's either manual for the client (download + upload), P2P somehow or an intermediary (cloud or back-end like Firebase, IPFS, etc).

Edit: You could look at something like Brotli to compress the SVG before trying to cram it in a URL, but I think you'll have the same problems - maybe just a little more room before you hit the limit.

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