Tom 7 Radar

From now on, the title of the post is allowed to just be "January 2024" (only when it is January 2024, however)

Wed, 31 Jan 2024 22:08:59 -0500

Hello again,

This month I've been plugging away on the project I mentioned in the previous post which involves among other things a PDF generator and now an implementation of ML (as in Standard ML, but also the other one). This is probably the 10th "compiler" I've written in my life, and it's kind of fun to revisit these problems that you've done many times and try out different approaches, although this time one of the approaches is "Use C++" (for reasons of making good on a joke, but also for reasons of mlton doesn't work on my computer any more). And although C++ is a fine tool for many applications, it does have some deficiencies for the task of writing a compiler (one of the most irritating: a very modest limit on the stack depth? Like my computer has 256 Gigabytes of RAM and 2^64 virtual addresses and somehow it can only manage 1 megabyte for the stack and there's no standard way to increase it? Get off my lawn). But then you can also experience new ways of struggling with C++, like: A middle of the night power failure wrecked my computer's GPT (as in GUID Partition Table, but also the other one) and I was deep in the depths of taking the computer apart to reset its parts, its BIOS (its Basic In/Out System, which is where it stores its biography) and its hard drives were everywhere on the floor, and it could not be saved, and this after I already broke my computer this year by trying to put the world's biggest video card in it, too hard. And I could not merely perform recovery because of Unknown Error, so I had to begin anew again and restore from backups. But when you restore from backup and you're in the mood of "why is this so complicated and I don't understand how computers work any more?" it occurs to you (me) to also change your underlying development environment instead of reinstalling the devil you know. So I ended my friendship with Cygwin64 and switched to new best friend MSYS2. Both of these things are different ways of wishing that you were using Linux while you're using Windows. The main reason I tried this new way of struggling is that Cygwin is very behind on its version of x86_64 clang (C++ compiler), which I wanted to try because it supports AddressSanitizer and clangd on Windows, and I wanted to give LSP in emacs a shot (it's finally good!). There were a few growing pains, but I think MSYS2 is what I would recommend now. One of the nice things they did was create multiple different environments depending on what you want to do (e.g. "I want to use clang to compile x86_64 code" or "I want to do 32-bit cross compilation for ARM") and in that environment, you just say "g++" and it invokes the compiler you want, instead of the weird contortions I've been doing for years with manually invoking x86_64-w64-mingw32-g++. I was also able to get clblast working before being too filled with rage to continue, so that is nice for the ML inference on the world's biggest graphics card. I made these graphics to help me tune the correct settings of GPU layers (y axis) and number of threads (x axis):

tune-single
tune-batch

In some sense the results are obvious (more threads and more layers is faster) but it was interesting to me how the cliff of performance drops off at a different number of layers for single and batch mode (I guess because the batch needs some memory itself?) and how it's clearly better to use fewer threads than cores for batch as well. I was not surprised to see performance drop off for >32 threads (everybody knows that hyper-threads kinda suck) but I was very surprised to see performance pick up again when it gets back up to 64? And only for single mode? I wish I understood that better. But mostly I'm a sucker for the custom visualizations.

Right but when writing this compiler I realized that I wanted to use some Greek letters, and I can't handle it when some characters are in a different font in my source code, so I finally made some space for those in my programming font FixederSys. These certainly still need some tweaks, but it's already better than just being in some other weird font:

{{{caption}}}

You can also see that I have been adding some "useful" emoji at the top. It is an interesting puzzle to try to make these things recognizable (especially for the 1x version, whose charboxes are 8x16 pixels). I am pretty sure I will not try to do all of the emoji (like, the flags are totally hopeless at 8x16), but it is tempting to round out the Unicode support somewhat. Like I was trying to make a ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ today and had to settle for ~\_( :) )_/~ which is pretty much (ノಠ益ಠ)ノ彡┻━┻.

Also: Adam revived our old game jam game Headcat, which I described in post 927, now over 16 years ago. You can play it online at Headcat.org. It is harder than I remember, perhaps explaining why it did not reach #1 on the One Appstore Per Child charts.

Also: I started and finished (true ending, but just with one character) Slay the Spire. Good game, but you don't need me to tell you that. Same for Alwa's Legacy, which is the sequel to Alwa's Awakening. Both of these are very true-to-form "8-bit" and "16-bit" platformers that I enjoyed and would recommend for genre fans, though I did not try to 100% them. The graphics are the highlight and I thought it was very cute how these could easily have been a pair of games from the NES and SNES. The good old days. And speaking of good-old days, I am now playing Katamari Damacy, which I had played at a friend's house many years ago, and always wanted to spend more time with. It totally holds up (aside from stuff like: You have to play through the tutorial and first level before you can access the menus at all, like to make the game fullscreen?) and it's honestly inspiring how unhinged the game design and writing are, and how fun it manages to be. What an accomplishment!

Happy New Year 2024!

Sun, 31 Dec 2023 21:57:48 -0500

Hello and happy Honda-days, Toyota-thon, etc.!

It's the tail end of winter break here, and we did a little traveling to see family, etc.. But I've been keeping the calendar light so that I have plenty of time for projects. There are too many in the works simultaneously, which is a bad sign, but during break I made significant progress on all of them. I also added a new one, with the idea that it would be a "small hack" so that I'd be sure to have something for SIGBOVIK (not everything needs to be epic, right?). It already works, but now I'm in the midst of writing a PDF file generator, which is also a bad sign.

Now that I'm nearly done going in and out of my attic so much, it seemed like good timing to attend to the dangerously acrobatic way that I always get in, which is to stand at the very top of a ladder and then mantle up using the floor joists. It's not actually that dangerous even though the ladder demands that you Never Stand Above This Line (how am I supposed to stand in the attic then, ladder?!), but I regularly lose my phone out of my pocket in the last leg-swinging step, which is at least dangerous to the phone. Without belaboring the tale, I ended up "having" to go to Harbor Freight to invest in some suspiciously cheap tools like a set of black pipe threading dies, pipe wrenches, pipe cutter, and while I was there I got a new vise. Worried that the vise would be too easy to install, I wisely purchased carriage bolts with square necks, so I had to file down the mounting holes of this thing:

JPEG File

This provided a good occasion to listen to some albums in the basement and order some new files. It is now very firmly and satisfyingly bolted to that satisfyingly timeworn workbench. Not pictured is how I needed to grind down the bolts so that the cabinet door below could open and close again (I use this cabinet to store old vises).

Codename: Viseman

The only thing I have used the new vise for so far is to flatten one of the washers that was used to attach the old, crappy vise, so that I could weld that washer to the charging terminal on my Roomba so that it's able to charge again, so that I could vacuum up all the steel filings on my basement floor. Anyway, getting back now to the original task of making the entrance to the attic a similar amount of athletic but less fraught, I installed this pull-up bar:

workout

The only hard part of this was getting the pipe to be just the right length, and threaded, but I am now equipped to do such tasks.

Winter is also a time for hibernation. I played through The Talos Principle II. I really loved the first Talos Principle, which had no business being as good as it was (the team was mainly known for Serious Sam, an over-the-top first-person shooter). Talos is a puzzle game with a pretty interesting story and fairly thoughtful writing. The sequel is good and definitely worth playing if you liked the original. It has a bit of the "Portal 2" effect where they clearly had a bigger budget and wanted to add all this polish, but did miss some of what made the original magic along the way. As you know I love to play games "the wrong way," and so I'm always looking for ways to break the puzzles in this game. I felt like the first one let me get away with more hijinks, like you'd stack items to make your way up somewhere, and a third of the time it'd be a Star (expected for 100%), a third of the time it'd be an Easter egg (acknowledging your prowess), and a third of the time you'd just fall out of the map forever and have to reset (true victory). I did fall out of the level several times on this sequel, but it seemed to me that the puzzles were more tightly constrained. Then again, I watched the current world record speedruns and there's certainly a lot of hijinks possible, so maybe I'm just losing my edge! I also played through Party Hard. It's a "murder all the people in 2D" game very similar to the Hotline Miami games, and not as good, but its absurd mood and unfair chaotic difficulty did grow on me. Right now I am "playing" (the) Gnorp Apologue, an idle game that has its charms, but, well, it's an idle game and I think it is cruel to ever recommend those. It was written in Rust!

New content on radar.spacebar.org

Thu, 30 Nov 2023 23:27:19 -0500

Here is the new content:

I've mentioned that I have been working on running a five-minute mile on the treadmill this year, a goal that at one point seemed in reach. I think I also complained that I got sick and that when I got back to it, they had swapped out all the treadmills for fancy treadmills with built-in Netflix and air conditioning and stuff like that, which I now refer to as "Bob's Tred Mill." There's some good things about these, and some things that make me crazy, but one thing that especially made me crazy is they felt significantly faster than the old Precor ones I was used to. It's definitely a real thing that treadmills are sometimes not calibrated correctly (or the tread stretches out or slips, etc.) but it was also possible that being sick set me back more than I thought. The important thing is to get The Data instead of just The Upset Feelings so I was shopping for things like those hand-held unicycles that you can wheel around to measure how long things (like streets) are, as it does seem like the kind of device that I would own, looking at like the world's most accurate hand-held unicycle thing, and then I noticed at the last thing that most of them have a MAX SPEED of something like 10mph, which would not do. I finally had the brain-stroke that I could use a laser tachometer to do it, since these have a max speed more like 99999 RPM. So I measured the tread length with some chalk marks and put reflective tape on there. The treadmill will go at different speeds when loaded (running on it) vs unloaded, which also depends on your weight and stride and stuff a little, so you also gotta engage in the dexterity-testing act of measuring while running on it, which looked like this:

POV: You are me

Pointing the laser at the reflective tape dot (visible right next to the laser dot here) as it flies by while running kinda fast is definitely tricky, although I must say that it was one of those times when I thought, "I've been training my whole life for this!" and you can see that I'm showing off a little bit here by also photographing it at the same time. But you are not impressed since it reports 0 RPM. The nice thing about the tachometer is that it only needs a pair of observations to give you a frequency, and you can easily tell if you missed the tape, which you do often on account of the shaking, because you get some integer multiple that's way off from the right answer. Anyway I dutifully took multiple readings unloaded and loaded at (nominally) 6mph, 7mph, ... 12mph and made a spreadsheet with all the results converted, and... found that the treadmill is just about 1% too fast loaded, all across the board. This would be just 3 seconds for a five-minute mile, which is not nothing, but it definitely does not vindicate my Upset Feelings (I was thinking it felt more like 10%). My best guess is that the old treadmills were (all?) actually too slow, which is annoying because now I doubt some of the unofficial 5k records I painfully set for myself during the summer. But, well, the thing about endeavoring to do challenging things is: No Cheating!

In project news, I feel I have a foothold now to get myself out of this math hole, as I've finally migrated this algorithm to work only with 64-bit integer arithmetic and so I can port it to GPU soon and then be out of ideas about how to make it faster. I have no idea if there's a good story to be told for this project, but I'll try (and also, it is okay if sometimes the hobby programming doesn't lead to a video or Sigbovik paper, you know?). And speaking of Sigbovik: Heroes have emerged quite on time this year, so it's certainly looking like there will be a proceedings and conference (perhaps with livestream), so start writing those papers now.

Aside from the math hole, I've been making some progress on two other concurrent projects. It's getting normal again (even quiet) at work and winter break is coming up, and I'm looking forward to having some several-day stretches to work on them.

I played through Golf Peaks (well, I haven't beat all the bonus levels yet but I've been working back to front so it's just a matter of a little time at this point), which was a very nice little puzzle game that does almost everything right. Other than the very irritating music in one world, I think my only disappointment was that it doesn't elegantly handle infinite-length puts. I'm also still working on Return to Monkey Island, which I do like, although it doesn't hold up to my memory of the first two. I think one of the problems with modern point-and-click adventure games is the voices, actually: Not because the voice acting bothers me, but because it goes so slow compared to reading. It's like when you just want to figure out the maximum speed of the hand-held unicycle and they're trying to get you to watch a video instead of just reading. Tears of the Kingdom (which I'm still savoring, but getting close to the end now) does a good job with this; you do hear snippets of voices, which helps with the characterization, but you can blow through the dialog at a pretty fast pace. Probably a lot cheaper, too!

October, the 8th month

Tue, 31 Oct 2023 22:35:01 -0400

Wow, this month sure went by fast. I'm sure I say that every October, as this is the busiest time of year at work, and stuff like football and Maybe The Last Nice Day This Year keep me busy.

I've been plugging away at this math/programming project, currently porting some numerical code that I don't fully understand and finding bugs in it and improving its performance. It's relaxing, at least, but there's nothing good to share here yet and I'm not sure it'll ever make an interesting story. I did make some version-2 circuit boards for a project I've been working on in parallel, too, but the next step in that one is going to be annoying ("Why won't it boot?") so I've been putting it off.

They brought the small neighborhood race called "Run Shadyside" back this year. This is a 5k course that I can easily walk to the start of, and Shadyside is about as flat as it gets in Pittsburgh, so it's a nice race to try to PR in. I've been keeping in pretty good shape (despite the setback due to illness mentioned previously), but that morning I was having some burning lungs so I didn't push myself too hard. (Could have been mold? Bad air quality? Slightly sick?) I finished in 20m19s, which is probably my third best official 5K time, although a bit disappointing since I ran several unofficial treadmill 5Ks under 19 minutes this summer. I finished 3rd in my age group. The results feature a new capitalization of my name, the elusive Stegosaurus CasE: "Tom Murphy ViI"

Craving a game that would make proper use of the GeForce 4090, I installed Call Of Duty: Cold War. Actually this game is a couple years old, and graphically it's not anything particularly special. I am liking the single-player campaign more than usual for these kinds of games, and avoiding getting sucked into multiplayer. I gave the "zombies" mode a shot and I think I finally understand it, like playing a roguelike on a single seed. I think I'm at the point where I need to set myself some kind of challenge and complete it and retire to more artful things, though.

Happy birthday to me! (44)

Sat, 30 Sep 2023 18:37:35 -0400

Hello and howdy. I usually describe myself as turning the "ripe old age of so-and-so" on my birthday posts, but I may need a new adjective as I'm solidly in my mid-40s, now (44). Perhaps "fermented." The birthday's come and gone without incident, although there were minor contemporaneous incidents:

Still in the math hole. It might be an infinite hole. Trying to get out. But I have improved my console fonts and ANSI color libraries and GPU programming skills, at least. I was very pleased that a recent release of NVIDIA drivers came with a brand new updated OpenCL, which I previously assumed had been abandoned like so many computer things that I become fond of. Kudos to whoever at NVIDIA pushed on this. I am making myself laugh privately to myself (well, no longer private now) by imagining someone who spells it out like an acronym, N-V-I D-I-A.

Also, like usual, I ran the Pittsburgh Great Race, a mostly-downhill 10k. No encumbrances this time. I've been in good shape this summer, but I got sick last month and it set me back a bit, so this wasn't a star performance. Still 43m22s is not too bad and I didn't push myself all that hard. Fewer minutes than years old.

The new GPU is mostly for math, but I wanted to try it out for its Intended Purpose, (N)Video Games. So I played through Far Cry 6, which was okay. I liked it better than 5, which among other things had a bunch of technical problems (this one was much smoother and more stable), but I probably should have read my review of that game before downloading, as I say something like "I should probably stop playing this series." Still slowly savoring Tears of The Kingdom, which remains great. I also started Return To Monkey Island. I loved the first two in this series, but couldn't get into the later sequels; of course I'm interested in giving this one a shot since it's made by the original designers (and I did like Thimbleweed Park). Too early to render a verdict, but I did like how they deftly handled the canonicity of the end of 2.

Then there's this: I think this is Taylor Swift wearing a homemade t-shirt of her "Pegicorn" (sometimes "Pegacorn"), a Unicorn-Pegasus hybrid. The text is in my font Action Jackson:

Taylor Swift Pegicorn (Action Jackson font)

You can also see this drawing/font at the beginning of the "Making of" video for You Belong With Me". I think she posted this to twitter in May 2009, but somehow I'm unable to find an archive of her tweets from this time (inconceivable??).

A Failure Is Me

Thu, 31 Aug 2023 23:46:40 -0400

Terrible! I was thinking all day about how I needed to write a blog-post and how I'd surely have time after such-and-such meeting or after the 6:00pm concert, but I didn't get back home until after midnight. So this post is backdated in the most embarrassing of traditions. -1,000 points

Tonight we saw two great tastes that go great together: Alex G and Alvvays. I think both of these bands are great. Alvvays has been on my radar for many years, but they didn't quite click for me until their most recent album Blue Rev, which is probably my favorite disc this year (although it came out in 2022). It's definitely one of those albums that I like to listen end-to-end, but it also stars on the 5 minute playlist that I am using for my aforementioned project to run a 5m00s treadmill mile, so I listen to two tracks from it (Pharmacist and Velveteen) many times a week, often in pain. Alex G I discovered from the soundtrack to the indie film We're all Going to the World's Fair. I also think his music is great, and weird, but I'm still trying to wrap my head around how many people were at this pretty big concert venue enraptured by this kinda weird band. I think the simplest explanation is that "the kids are alright."

Anyway, now it is quite late and I am quite tired. I am still working on this math project and still "making progress" but wary that it's been in that state for quite a while now. But I do basically know how to finish projects or move onto other things!

New Computer 2023

Mon, 31 Jul 2023 23:35:00 -0400

Boy, it sure is summer! I'm actually enjoying the heatwave, because it makes me feel accomplished for actually getting the A/C fixed before it was too late (even though it took 9 months, mostly anxiety about talking on the phone to strangers) but also because I enjoy running when it's very hot. It increases the self-flagellation factor. The woodsmoke: Not so much. I've done a lot of treadmill running this month because of that, and because it's convenient to fit an intense workout in at or after work if it's a busy day. In addition to the ongoing project to get a 5m00s mile, I've added 5k back to the mix. My best time is 18m32s, a 5m56s/mile. It's a little easier on the treadmill (mostly because of the lack of air resistance, although the automatic pacing does help), but it does seem likely that I could beat my all-time 5k PR at the moment. So if I don't do that before getting out of shape again, please criticize me.

Earlier this month I nerd-sniped myself with "a little programming problem" and one piece of collateral damage was my computer: This program was a large computer search, and I have a rule that I'm only allowed to shop for new computers when I'm waiting for my computer to finish computing. So I was shopping for a new GPU (this is a CPU/GPU joint task) and eyeing the GeForce RTX 4090, which you can actually get for "normal" retail prices now. The GeForce RTX 4090 is an absurd graphics card, likely the world's biggest (like, physically biggest) and I knew that ordering it might lead to needing to shop for a physically larger motherboard or case or something. But that was just a Risk I'd Be Willing To Take, as another rule is that I'm allowed to buy a physically larger computer box or board to fit already-purchased components onto, if need be. When this chonky boi came, replacing the already-big-but-now-Lilliputian-by-comparison 3080 Ti, I benchmarked my routines one last time and powered down and tried to get Mr. 4090 in the computer, rearranging cable runs and everything in order to squeeze each last cc. As a reminder, this is a GPU so big you have to plug it in four times. I eventually squoze it in there, and then the computer would not boot with error 🇨🇴🇩🇪 ⊒ᕈ 🇩🇪🇹🇪🇨🇹 🇲🇪🇲. This was somewhat expected. So I put the old tiny board back in, and booted the computer to another 🇨🇴🇩🇪 ⊒ᕈ 🇩🇪🇹🇪🇨🇹 🇲🇪🇲. I manually detected the RAM (was where I left it) and reseated it. Still no love. Only ⊒ᕈ. So it seems the komputer was now kaput. Since I was doing some serious crunching prior to that I like to say that I computed too hard, but the truth is that I probably just broke the motherboard with the squeezing.

I'm glad this didn't happen during the acute phase of the chip shortage, because at least this month it was straightforward to find parts at retail prices. I went with the Threadripper again. It has its problems but I've just gotten spoiled by all the cores and I could imagine having "only" 8 or 16 cores. I got the 5975, which is also 32-core, but benchmarks about twice as fast as my previous computer. This computer is not, like, a good deal. But I really spend a lot of time on the computer so it seems like a reasonable thing to splurge on. 256 GB of RAM for the big ML models (slow) and/or storing five uncompressed copies of Wikipedia in memory. Heck yeah.

I had to upgrade the case to fit the Extreme ATX motherboard. Now I can't put my feet up on my computer tower under my desk any more, which means that I can't sit back and relax with my hands behind my head while my computer crunches. So this weekend I was also making a bit of foot furniture for under the desk; I made this out of trash as usual. I will show you next time, but it's currently waiting to be glued in the basement so it's not quite ready to be documented.

On this programming problem: I keep going back and forth about whether I'm likely in unexplored territory or else it's totally obvious and I'm making some rookie mistake. That can be exciting, though as of last night I'm mostly feeling like the latter. Somehow it's hard to give up on, though. I hope I can survive the sniper wound at least, since I've got several other projects in the works that I was also enjoying.

I have a few more stories, but I will save them for next time. Back to the glue!

Unhealthy for sensitive groups

Fri, 30 Jun 2023 11:52:49 -0400

Quick one because we’re currently in Toronto and I will be holding up the Torontoing if I take too long to write. This is a weekend roadtrip with some friends, with the primary event being to see Herbie Hancock at the Toronto Jazz Festival. I was very impressed with how energetic and with-it Herbert was, at the age of 83. I hope I can hold up that well when I’m old(er), or have access to whatever super-drugs he has. Good show, although for most of us it was really just a pretext for having a road trip to explore this nice city. Unfortunately the trip has been ravaged by these wildfires, which have been blanketing this whole part of the continent with a choking miasma. At times the air has been rated “very unhealthy,” pushing into “hazardous,” probably the worst I’ve ever experienced. I find I’m pretty sensitive to it. So, sadly, one of my favorite vacation activities (exploring by running around) has been contraindicated, and we’re often doing reverse-covid masking protocols (mask outside) etc. The “good” news is that Pittsburgh seems to be actually worse than Toronto, so at least we didn’t drive into the Airborne Toxic Event; more like we drove around within it.

Since finishing my last video I got on to a project that was enqueued and that I was excited about, and then I got immediately sucked into another idea that came up, and then a third timely one. One is “very risky,” (probably won’t amount to anything), one is “risky” (may not work, but probably a decent fail-tale) and one is very likely to succeed with some work. So that’s a good mix. I’ve been trying a new thing as summer starts and the sun comes up early, which is to just get up and out of bed as soon as I wake, even if it’s hours earlier than I’d normally stir. Then I make a coffee and work on personal projects before work. It’s definitely making me a lot more tired (duh; I am getting less sleep) although it’s helping me fall asleep at night (duh; I am more tired). The unexpected thing about it is that it’s generally making me feel less anxious, because I’ve already gotten some work done on projects each day (so I don’t feel like I’m “behind”) and I enjoy starting the day with some focused Tom Time instead of heading directly into the barrage of e-mails and interruptions. Not sure it’s sustainable though.

We had some other wildfire smoke earlier this month, which made it natural to continue the habit of running on the treadmill indoors. The main goal continues to be to run a strict 5m00s mile, and the main method continues to be intervals where I try to run as long as I can at that pace, but I’ve set some “casual” treadmill PRs in the meantime: I did a 19m15s 5k, which is faster than I’ve ever done a 5k on the road, and a 5m17s mile, which is in the ballpark of my all-time best mile (5m05s; but I was in my 20s for that). These are all strict, where I don’t touch the handles or anything like that. But the treadmill is easier than outdoors because you don’t have the air resistance. Still, it looks like I should attempt a serious 5K during this cycle.

I’ve been playing Tears of the Kingdom and I think it’s great. Like the previous game, I’m playing it Tom-style: I’m only upgrading my stamina and focusing on exploration and deliberately trying to approach everything the wrong way. Lots of good opportunities for that, although I do feel like this game is a bit too hostile if you do this. (Easily missable but essential events, like during the tutorial.) I’m also pretty deep into Cathedral, a solid NES-style Metroidvania. I think the highlight on that one is the graphics and music (except for the graveyard music, which might be the most annoying track I’ve ever heard?); recommended for genre fans.

GradIEEEnt half decent

Wed, 31 May 2023 22:12:41 -0400

Well, if you are eagerly awaiting my video projects but somehow you think the first place to hear about them is this here monthly-updated blog-o-sphere, here it is:

GradIEEEnt Half Decent

As noted before, this one is definitely pretty esoteric; refreshing for some after the way-too-relatable Pac Tom video. As usual, I started loathing the project at the end, so it was heartwarming that people cared about the video at all, let alone enoyed it. The video follows the paper pretty closely this time, which of course can be found in the epically long SIGBOVIK 2023 proceedings. I finally got my copy and have been working through it.

But, mostly this month has been a refractory period, compounded by the release of Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. I have been taking my time with this one, but as you have probably heard it is a large and good game and so that time has been considerable. Before that I finished off Lone Fungus; it was a good game, although I didn't get into it enough to want to complete all the optional astral fragments (the ones with the swinging spike balls are just irritating?). Ladybugs were enough!

I did work on new projects, of course. Not much to share about those, though. Both of the active ones are of the sort that "this might not work at all," which is kind of thrilling, but also kind of bad for me. So I need to balance it with some things that can definitely succeed but still scratch the project itch, like "make a nice CAD model of this thing even though a napkin sketch would suffice," or "do performance optimization on this library even though it doesn't need to be fast."

It is almost done

Sun, 30 Apr 2023 22:54:53 -0400

Ha! Remember when in the last post I said "maybe this weekend" about the video version of my SIGBOVIK project? Well then I started seriously working on it and remembered how much work video editing is. Also once I got into making it, I realized that this one is not really for general audiences, and the only appropriate approach is the "relax with your weird friend Tom as he gives an hour-long lecture about esoteric computer things, with occasional slapstick, and then at the end you're like wait what happened?", which is one of the more involved styles of video (mainly because of the hour-longness). It's really almost ready now, but it's not going to be done in time for this blog post, so April Fool's On Me, I guess. Probably tomorrow?

Pac Tom is making the rounds in local media now, with the latest being in Pittsburgh Magazine, just in case you are somehow not yet tired of that! Since the new year I've been working on a different kind of running project, which is to run a 5 minute mile on the treadmill. Back when I was about 29 I came really close to five minutes on a track (it was like 5m05s). At the time I wasn't particularly trying; I mean I ran that mile as fast as I could, but not with any particular goal in mind. I always regretted that I didn't just go back every weekend until I came in under 5:00. The treadmill is definitely easier, both because you don't have any air resistance, and because it paces for you, but it's still a good challenge would probably help me put that ghost to rest. What I've been doing is putting the treadmill at 5m00s pace (and I found out that this is as fast as it'll go, 12mph) and trying to run as long as I can at that pace. I'm up to about three and a half minutes. I may already have it in me, but part of this is just the mental struggle of making myself feel like I can keep it up that long, so approaching it gradually seems better for that. (And anyway you don't want to finish your projects too fast, you know?) On the way I set some new treadmill 5k PRs, although these did have a little bit of handsy stuff (holding onto the bars, which you can pretend is for taking a heart rate measurement, but it's really just because it makes it easier) so I won't claim any specific times here. Hands are not allowed for real records, like the fantasized 5 min mile.

Video games: I did finish COD of Duty 2, by getting each gun to its maximum level. I do not recommend doing that. Then I played through The Entropy Centre, which is a Portal-alike 3D puzzle game (not bad; I did have fun "solving levels the wrong way") and then Shantae 1/2 Genie Hero. The latter is a platformer, maybe a "Metroidvania." Lots of Magic Girl Anime vibes / humor. I really liked the one before it in the series, "Shantae and the Pirate's Curse." This one was also fun but I was not a big fan of the 3D environments, especially since you end up replaying the same maps so many times? But now I'm on to Lone Fungus, another Metroidvania which is definitely not as good in the art department, but which does have a bunch of precision segments that I'm enjoying. In this game there keep being areas where I'm like "I bet I can do this jump already with damage boosting etc. even though I clearly don't have the right equipment yet," which of course I love and grind away at, but then the equipment I need is right on the next screen, which takes some of the fun out of it.

I think this is all. I'm going to put the final touches on this vid!

SIGBOVIK 2023

Fri, 31 Mar 2023 23:55:41 -0400

We did it! Due to mysterious heroes and a fortunate time anomaly, they managed to get a SIGBOVIK together after all. The proceedings are like 350 pages, with papers from all over the place! They are supposed to be up on the SIGBOVIK 2023 website soon. The conference went pretty smoothly although we didn't get everything done as slickly (no livestream, etc.) as has happened in the past. There were a number of people who wanted to meet me at the event (and/or sign their body parts, etc.), including some students who made the trip from Rochester (!), which is cool but also still a strange experience.

I submitted one paper, which is called GradIEEEnt Half Decent, though it is a multi-part affair. I gave a talk today, and I'm working on a video for it, although it's a bit much to get a long paper, a talk, and a video all done for the same moment these days. Maybe this weekend, or otherwise soon because I'm eager to be done with this darn thing (and excited about the projects that are queued up!)

Speaking of eager to be done, I am still addicted to COD of Duty 2: Modern Warfare 2, but I decided that I can retire once I get every gun to its maximum level. I am almost done with this, and I already did all the intolerable ones like the riot shield and PILA (more like PILE A' shit, amirite?), so that will be nice, and I can move back to the artful games before no doubt getting sucked into the Breath of the Wild sequel.

Lastly, the local NPR station did a segment about my "Pac Tom" project, which aired on Wednesday. You can listen or read on their site. I like the way it came out (though I wish I had provided a better audio feed—I must have screwed something up hooking it into Zoom, which I was using for the first time!) and a lot of people mentioned that they heard it on the radio, so I was also happy to learn that radio lives on!

Handlebar

Tue, 28 Feb 2023 23:14:55 -0500

I have this ridiculous moustache now that I grew in preparation for our vacation to Miami Beach. It's is what you could call a "handlebar moustache", the kind that can be twirled into little upturning curls at the ends, although that configuration is not very stable so it's often pointing down like an extremely exaggerated frown. I have in mind to shave the moustache, but, as with every time I have some facial hair the calculus is like, Now I have something of value, so you don't just go shaving something of value. In particular I am thinking of some scenes for this upcoming video I am making, and that the scenes would be funnier with a moustache. So that is what's going on with the face part of me right now.

I've finished up that silly project I started writing about in post #1207 but that then got interrupted by several other things (e.g. Pac Tom Finale). So now I just need to finish writing up the paper (and I made a big dent in writing it during vacation, which is one of the kinds of things I like to do when I'm on vacation, just wear my aviator sunglasses with the gradient tint and my ridiculous moustache and sit by the pool and write "research papers" on my iPad) and a video. This one is, like, not very relatable, so if you were disappointed that the Pac Tom video was too easy to understand, you may be less disappointed. I hope that we have a SIGBOVIK this year. It always feels like "maybe this is the year that the dream dies" around this time, until some hero emerges to organize it, but we do seem to be pushing it. It kind of has to be a CMU student organizing it, and at this point I don't really know any CMU students any more to try to talk into it. But even if there is no SIGBOVIK, I will make silly projects (although maybe never finish them due to No Deadlines).

Also embarrassing is that I keep getting sucked back into Cod Of Duty II: Cod. Warfare 2 (could be related to the World of Bouncecraft series?) since they keep putting up new chores that I can do to unlock new things that are a lot like the things I already unlocked, like guns that aren't good and high numbers and more chores. Which is also sad because it seems like there are a lot of other good games out there, like you just go on Steam and you see all these artful games, but you can't play them all, especially if you are nearly level 250 in Cod of Duty. An example of a "game" I have been "playing" is Acronymy.net, which was made by my friend David. It's basically self-explanatory, but I'll explain anyway: We're trying to build a full dictionary where each word is defined using an acronym (expansion of the word itself). So for example "gasket" is "gummy annular seal keeping everything tight." These are fun to make manually, but I've also been working on some tools for assisting that process, like using word2vec and some models I built myself, both because they're good toy problems and because I want to make good acronyms. Maybe a post with some more details about that in the future but for now I am feeling the Demand Upon the Yeomen.

Winter is a time for hibernation

Tue, 31 Jan 2023 23:54:49 -0500

Oops! Almost forgot to post on time this month (rules really do not require me to wait until the last day of the month, by the way, but somehow I can't stop myself), but it looks like I'll barely make it.

Since I posted a very elaborate video last month and it was holiday break, I spent most of January doing relaxing things, like the hyperrealistic War and Chore simulator called "Call of Duty II: Modern Warfare 2" (or something like that). I think it's actually pretty good if you like that sort of thing, but when I'm playing online I'm playing on "hard" mode since I mute myself and everybody else; I just can't handle listening to these people. Better to just anonymously kill each other in an endless loop. And then I got self-conscious about playing co-op missions with muted teammates, so I've been doing the co-op missions (e.g. "DMZ") solo. I think I've almost unlocked everything, so hopefully I can wind that down soon.

I did start work on a project that excites me, although it's looking pretty daunting. I think it will be fun to try and perhaps even produce a good story if it fails. But I also have been putting together some kind of finale for the mysterious project that I began when I had covid this summer and that got pretty out of hand. I'm currently in the phase where I can clearly do something with it, but I need to invent the right puzzle for myself that is both "possible" and "not too easy," and whose rules are "horrifying" but "elegant in their way." You know? It's a weird design space but one that I have some practice in.

OK, time to submit right before the clock strikes midnight!

The Pac Tom documentary!

Wed, 28 Dec 2022 11:01:07 -0500

It is done! I finished the Pac Tom project to run the length of every street in Pittsburgh in October, and (yes it took months) also this video documenting the project and finale:

How I ran the length of every street in Pittsburgh: PAC TOM

The Pac Tom site now has the final data, but the video is the definitive way to see it!

I added the downloadable Soundtrack for completionists. I was horrified to find, when watching this video with some friends after I uploaded, that I had accidentally muted one of the audio tracks for the "final" version. You can rectify this by playing "Street (Trap Remix)" at exactly 11:58.

Chores and chores

Wed, 30 Nov 2022 23:32:58 -0500

November is really busy 'round here, although I think that's basically over now (I mean the busy time, although also November).

I spent pretty much all of Thanksgiving break working on this Pac Tom video, which is well underway (but which I am already now quite sick of!). I'm trying a new approach to the planning and execution of this one, being more deliberate about deciding on the scenes and "script" ahead of time, and then trying to have fewer edits in the voiceover for a bit of a smoother flow (and hopefully less painful editing). It's too soon to tell if this is actually helping the quality or reducing the amount of edits, but at least it's some different puzzles to solve than I'm used to. Since there's no built-in deadline, though, and I can jump around from part to part, I have found myself getting distracted by minute details, like e.g. I wanted to have the exact correct font from PAC-MAN so I dumped the ROMs to extract it and then decided I might as well finish off the missing ASCII character set, giving us pac-man.ttf. Anyway I think I should be able to get it done this month, which is good because I'm already itching to move onto other projects (including finishing up that other weird thing I started in the summer which may just end up being a "regular" SIGBOVIK project at this point?).

I did insulate a lot of the attic, but nobody really wants to hear about that!

I played through Rogue Legacy 2, which I liked. It's a platform roguelike (really a "roguelite" since it leans heavily on the permanent progress you make by gaining gold/xp with each run), a genre that tempts me in a few times a year and then usually makes me regret the amount of time I spend trying to win. This sequel was a significant improvement over the first one (which I played many years ago and liked OK, but would not particularly recommend). This one has vastly better art and a more interesting castle to explore, and for the part where you're discovering the parts of the castle and abilities ("Metroidvania"-style) it was really nice. In the endgame I felt there was a bit too much grinding to power-up your character and that the grinding was more repetitive than it needed to be (maybe my own mistake for focusing mostly on my favorite classes; but Boxer and Ronin are just so much better than the ranged weapon classes, for example??). When I won it seemed like there was a lot of stuff left that I hadn't seen, so I tried another pass in NG+ but that did not seem worth it. Anyway, the game overall was very solid if you like this sort of thing. It did somehow make me nostalgic for Spelunky 2 as well (pretty much my all time favorite) so I have been doing the daily challenges recently, but I have pretty much lost all my skills in that game. [:embarrassed emoji:]