e0qdk @ e0qdk @kbin.social

I write code and play games and stuff. My old username from reddit and HN w

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2 yr. ago

It's not clear to me either on exactly what hardware is required for the reference implementation, but there's a bunch of discussion about getting it to work with llama.cpp in the HN thread, so it might be possible soon (or maybe already is?) to run it on the CPU if you're willing to wait longer for it to process.

Let us know how it goes!

Lots of discussion on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37675496

This is totally going to turn into another JBIG2 lossy compression clusterfuck isn't it...

For those who are unfamiliar, JBIG2 is a compression standard that has a dubious reputation for replacing characters incorrectly in scanned documents (so 6 could become an 8, for example) leading to potentially serious issues when scanning things like medical and legal documents, construction blueprints, etc.

Adding a summary to this: the article has some history about OpenOffice (which is a zombie project that was essentially replaced by LibreOffice after Oracle bought Sun) followed by a description of patterns of weird commit history recently (e.g. regular changes that are entirely or almost entirely just fiddling with whitespace), and a request to email the Apache foundation to ask them to make it clear that the project is dead.

Thanks for copying the list out; I'm not visiting YouTube either at the moment. I think I probably saw this video a while ago though -- at least, that particular set of games looks very familiar...

I've played some of them and have some things to say about them:

• Paradise Killer: I liked the music in this one. I'd never encountered the vaporwave aesthetic before bumping into this game via a Let's Play (back when I was still going to YouTube) which probably enhanced the weirdness factor of the game for me. It clearly took inspiration from Danganronpa, so if you liked that game you might want to check it out (or vice versa if you somehow ran into Paradise Killer without having heard of Danganronpa, I guess).
• Crosscode: I found this game frustrating. I liked a lot of things the game did -- like the interaction with party members (EXCEPT for dungeons) and running around the map searching for secrets -- but... the default difficulty seemed to be set to maximize annoyance. I mean, it's doable. I was very stubborn about not changing the timing setting -- probably too much so -- and was eventually able to beat the main game, but the way it was tuned definitely reduced my enjoyment. The game claims that adjusting the setting doesn't matter, but tracks statistics about it (like GTA-style stats) which made me really stubborn about not changing the setting. A lot of the challenges in the game are Zelda-esque timing puzzles -- from hell. Like hit the switch then run over and do something before time runs out but with 20 steps instead of the one or two you'd find in a Zelda game. (If you don't like those sorts of timing puzzles you probably won't have a good time with this one.) So, of course, the timing is set in such a way that it's often tricky to actually pull off (particularly with aiming involved) even once you've figured out exactly what needs to be done. I did it, but more often than not got pissed off while doing it. The game additionally had the interesting idea of having competitive dungeons. Your party members would challenge you on the overall time to clear dungeons. So, in addition to the time pressure of individual puzzles, there was an overall time pressure to race through the puzzles as fast as possible. I liked the idea of where they were coming from with the party member interactions for dungeons but I'd have preferred to take my time with things frankly. It ultimately doesn't matter that much whether you win or lose those (I won about half of them), but having the game rub my nose in it for being too slow after getting frustrated at puzzle timing and aiming for an hour or more in each dungeon kind of sucked. The overall plot of the game was interesting enough to go through, and I liked the characters for the most part, but a lot of the gameplay was frustrating. Very mixed feelings on this one.
• Phoenotopia Awakening: This game was another mixed bag. I really wanted to like it. There were a lot of parts I did like... but it is very flawed. First is the gameplay. It presents itself as a mostly cute pixel platformer/adventure game, but the developers seemed to be thinking "Dark Souls" with stamina and such and... it really did not work for me. Thankfully, you can turn most of that crap off -- and I did so unabashedly. (I beat DS1 before playing it, and since playing it I've beaten DS2 -- so it's not like I can't handle hard games. It just did not feel good to play with those mechanics enabled.) Second is the story. There's a decent enough hook to get the main adventure going fairly early on, but the game doesn't deliver on it. You get to the end and the big dramatic question of the game is... still unanswered! That is really not ok! (Instead you get a bunch of unnecessary backstory for the main character that I took as a big "fuck you"; I won't say more than that in case someone does want to play it and find out for themselves, but the ending was really unsatisfying to me.) The game had a lot going for it -- the music's good (and I still listen to some of the tracks occasionally), and there was a lot of charm in places. Some of the areas were really pretty and there were a bunch of fun little interactions -- but I really don't know what they were thinking with some of it!

It's been most helpful to me for tracking work and health issues like I said. e.g. being able to say specifically "I wrote the software for A,B,C,D,... and also did E,F,G,H,..." in my performance review instead of forgetting half of it. Reflecting on how many days I'd listed health issues was useful for getting myself to seek professional help instead of just sleeping walking through life as well; still working on that, but having the evidence there I can say things quantitatively like 25% of my entries (923 days out of 3623 logged) include "tired", "exhausted", or "unproductive"... Life isn't supposed to be like that.

I had a bit of trouble getting started initially, but forced myself to do it for a couple weeks until it became a habit. For me it's part of winding down towards sleep now; not doing it feels like not brushing my teeth.

It won't solve your problems for you, but it can help you see them if you have them, and having an auxiliary memory to brain dump into is also nice since you don't have to keep everything in your head. I recommend anyone who can get into the habit do it; I wish I'd started sooner.

I started keeping a daily journal about 10 years ago. It's helpful for tracking what I worked on as well as various health issues. I skim through it once a week before talking to my therapist and read all entries from the past year when I need to prepare documentation for my annual performance review at work. I'll grep through the whole thing occasionally when I'm trying to remember when some particular event was. (I don't do that very often, but it is handy when I need it!)

I typically track:

• current date for the entry (both in the file and as the file name)
• date and time I wrote the entry
• when I went to bed
• when I woke up
• health issues (if any)
• what I worked on (professionally and for my hobbies)
• places I went (if anywhere)
• significant conversations (particularly if there's something I need to follow up on)
• what I'm watching/reading/playing/etc.
• anything else that seems noteworthy

I keep my journal in plain text files named like YYYY-MM-DD.txt. Right now it's all in one big folder. I have it in version control and back it up to various places occasionally. I'll probably split it so there is a folder for each year eventually.

I started doing this after someone came up to talk to me and I realized that I'd recognized him from a particular place a few years earlier but could not for the life of me remember his name!

Some games with soundtracks I particularly enjoyed over the last couple years:

• A Hat in Time - a cute, fun collect-a-thon platformer with a kickass soundtrack. This one is particularly fun to play and hits nostalgia vibes for the early 3D Mario games.
• Shantae and the Seven Sirens - 2D platformer with an energetic chiptune-y soundtrack. The game itself is OK, but the soundtrack is what really made this one for me.
• Paradise Killer - vaporwave inspired surreal murder mystery
• Subnautica - underwater survival and crafting game with a soundtrack that set the mood very well
• Demons Roots - 18+ RPGMaker game where you lead a demon uprising to reclaim the surface world, invading country after country freeing slaves as you go. Very dark game that is unusually good for the type of game it is. If you're not put off by the RPGMaker doujin wabi-sabi and are tolerant of adult content in games this one is worth a look. There are some absolute bangers in the soundtrack.
• Pyre - Lord of the Rings meets 3v3 basketball with a very enjoyable soundtrack by Darren Korb (Bastion).