Playing: Tile World. The game is addictive in itself, but what makes it special is the plethora of levels designed by the community.
From classic puzzles to sokoban style, arcadeish run-against-the-clock sequences, riddles, even story based sets; shows how much depth an enthusiastic fanbase (and a level editor) can add to old titles.
today (2019-10-08 20:21:00)
On this day Giuseppe Verdi was born: enjoy Di quella pira.
150 years ago (not on this day), Ferdinand Magellan set sail from Seville, in one of the most daring adventures in the history of humankind. Antonio Pigafetta kept an accurate and vivid diary of the voyage:
To explain the kind of fruits above-named it must be known that the one which they call cochi, is the fruit which the palm trees bear. And as we have bread, wine, oil, and vinegar, proceeding from different kinds, so these people have those things proceeding from these palm trees only. It must be said that wine proceeds from the said palm trees in the following manner. […]
I learned never to mistake an aesthetic for an ethic. That the signifiers of style can’t be relied on as the signs of a lived belief or a worked understanding. That a keg in the break room and a high tolerance for stoner hijinks makes a pretty good smokescreen for lousy wages and bad faith.
“That same evening my grandmother went to Versailles to the jeu de la reine. The Duke of Orleans kept the bank; my grandmother excused herself in an off-hand manner for not having yet paid her debt, by inventing some little story, and then began to play against him. She chose three cards and played them one after the other: all three won sonika, and my grandmother recovered every farthing that she had lost.”
“Mere chance!” said one of the guests.
“A tale!” observed Hermann.
“Perhaps they were marked cards!” said a third.
“I do not think so,” replied Tomsky gravely.
“What!” said Narumov, “you have a grandmother who knows how to hit upon three lucky cards in succession, and you have never yet succeeded in getting the secret of it out of her?”
Fix your Control key: I have laid out a similar modification (switching Shifts to the keys at the side of the spacebar) and awkward wrist pain after a typing session is no more. Recommended!
At regular intervals the Power Station emitted a dry, low sound; the one you feel more than hear.
I find myself using the pencil as my writing instrument of choice more and more: pleasant feedback, good line variation, does not leak while flying. I just needed a very small sharpner to keep in my pocket along a tiny notebook.
Yesterday I found this one, by Muji, which does the job fine (sharp point, shaving reservoir, pocket-sized).
diaries (2019-09-18 20:51:00)
Archivio Diaristico Nazionale: “un archivio pubblico, che raccoglie scritti di gente comune in cui si riflette, in varie forme, la vita di tutti e la storia d’Italia: sono diari, epistolari, memorie autobiografiche”.
But abandoning preambles, let us return to our entrance into the port of Boston. Our ecstacy, I admit with shame, was entirely concentrated upon an enormous fresh fish which the pilot had just caught and which, with a pitcher of milk, fresh butter and white bread, composed what the captain called “a welcome breakfast.” While we were eating with voracious appetites, we were advancing, towed by our boat, up this magnificent bay. At two cables’ length from the land, our captain dropped the anchor and then left us with the promise to return in the evening after having found us a lodging.
I have a portfolio of over 2,000 images shot on three trips to Afghanistan in recent years and to keep track of them, I conceived of the rather unwieldy hashtag #TheAfghanistanYouNeverSee.
At one point the water disappeared into the dark, basalt rock, the ancient lava swallowing the brown, tannin-rich water. We walked down to a second platform and finally saw the full glory of Big Manitou Falls!
Today is gorgeously sunny, and it’s clear that summer is staging a comeback. But still, there are signs of autumn about. Dusk is dropping earlier, and some mornings the air is cool.
Books were expensive in Scotland between the 17th and 19th centuries. But literacy was comparatively high, and people were keen on reading. There was a large market for cheap, easy-to-get reading material: so-called street literature because it was simply sold on the streets.
This particular blue I noted, known as Reckitt’s blue, was painted as a disinfectant in the hallways, along a very catching red, in hope to make drab tenements more salubrious. A blue as a disinfectant, is it possible?
back in the 2000s (2019-08-24 07:44:00)
<@BrutalSlakt> we looked in a magazine I have from 2000, and the things in it
are suppose to be "omg how crazy", but looking in it today it was
more "yeah, that's things people do these days.." xD
<me> haha like?
<@BrutalSlakt> some guy killed by his friend, a hippo. a girl that can dive 35m.
some fat people. some dudes that put patterns of diseases (what
you see in the microscope) on clothes. some psychologist that
uses a therapy which one person pretends to be dead and the others
tell them stuff they couldn't "when they were alive".
<@BrutalSlakt> some hindu festival called Holi.
<me> haha
<@BrutalSlakt> a hotel under the water
Photography has created a chronic voyeuristic relationship to the world that cheapens the meaning of all events.
A study of paper vs. computers: an excellent experiment on how to write on both paper and PC and integrate the two with indexing.
My answer, actually, is that we’ve built a false dichotomy for ourselves. There is no reason why a system needs to be limited to one medium, or why a system should be limited to one medium, except for lack of imagination, laziness, and the kind of technological elitism described above.
It’s 06:00 UK time, and the first of my 4 trains of the day just departed. Edinburgh to London, London to Brussels, Brussels to Cologne, Cologne to Berlin.
Caffenol black, how to develop film negatives at home with soluble coffee and salt.
Holiday switch-off: I fancy the notebook and the ragged dumb-phone. The camera seems to run 1200€+ on most sites, I would not bring it anywhere for fear of damaging it.
can your todo-list app do that? (2019-08-08 08:31:00)
Convertible computing, an alluring article about portable, mostly free and convenient computing solution. I would really like to get in touch with someone who tried the “Fully Modular” setup and managed to travel with it.
My ex city, an intimate photo-reportage, narrated with the eyes of an emigrated citizen.
San Francisco is fantastically beautiful, charismatic, smart, and compelling; also insane, abusive, and cruel. Visiting SF is like visiting a psycho ex. I lived and loved there 1991-2002, and my feelings will forever be mixed.
typecast (2019-07-15 06:22:00)
My friend Carina has finally found some time to try her typewriter. Ribbon might need to be replaced, results are encouraging:
To play it you need DosBox and the ZZT engine. Move the .zzt into the engine folder, select a world with W and pick KRFFFL-C). The game is worth the setup pain, I promise!
Last year I decided to get back into reading more (I even compiled a handy list to help me in the selection process).
I read 60+ books in 2018: 53 from the public library, a handful of ebooks (I sold my ebook reader after realising paper is more comfortable to my eyes – and gets me in the mood to read more) and a few paperbacks bought in shopping sprees.
So here is a selection of the ones I liked most, if you want to start your 2019 with a similar goal:
poetry: Romancero gitano by Federico Garcia Lorca and Medicamenta e altri medicamenta by Patrizia Valduga. Both are “painterly” poets, so if you know just enough of Spanish/Italian to pronounce words correctly, get the source-language version (or better, parallel text) too.
witty books: Il sistema periodico (a collection of short stories, each one linked to an element in the periodic table), Candide, ou l'Optimisme (a satirical, adventurous journey all around the world, in search of beloved – and elusive – Cunégonde), L'Étranger (best introduced by its own author: “In our society any man who does not weep at his mother’s funeral runs the risk of being sentenced to death”).
art books: Cthulu Mythos: I am far from a comic fan and yet I was fascinated by the exquisite technique of Breccia, mastery of the medium and willingness to experiment. The Photographer's Eye: again, not a fan of photography, this book provided a solid introduction to the craft – enough to get me interested in other practitioners like Cartier-Bresson.
drama books: Le chien couchant by Françoise Sagan, the story of an impossible love and gloomy Rashōmon by the father of japanese short stories, Ryunosuke Akutagawa.
Goodbye Mnemosyne (2018-12-07 07:44:00)
After almost ten years, the time has finally come to say “goodbye” to Mnemosyne. Mnemosyne is an amazing spaced-repetition software (with simply the best user experience of them all), but I simply find myself more and more weary of screen-time the older I get.
