climber_mac

Thanks for playing the game :)

I'm Daniel, Diego's brother who also worked on this project. Your question is a bit broad, but I can tell you what it was like to work with emscripten.

We used emscripten to compile our C++ application to WASM and to generate the JS code that loads the application. This part was very easy. We had the game running on the web in no time.

What was much much more difficult was working with emscripten's APIs to do things like handle mouse / touch / keyboard inputs. There's tons of gotchas and weird limitations to work through.

Another huge challenge was in sending data between the JavaScript layer and the C++ application. You have to serialize data and then parse it on the C++ side, which sounds easy until you try to do it.

We faced some tough challenges asynchronously loading the paintings. Our initial solution of using a simple thread pool library which manages web workers didn't run on Safari due to some strange incompatibilities with WebGL 2.0, so we had to go for a purely web worker based approach.

Overall, we are amazed at what you can do with emscripten, but you have to be prepared to face some bad documentation, browser incompatibilities, and to tinker A LOT.

Most innovative ideas at first seem like bad ideas. Flipping conventional wisdom on its head takes a while.

This talk by Dan Abramov helped me understand better how 'best practices' are often taken so literally that their value is lost: https://www.deconstructconf.com/2019/dan-abramov-the-wet-cod...

I'm not sure why this comment is getting downvoted. I have read a lot of Nassim Taleb and completely agree with your comment.

He is a modern philosopher with really valuable insights about how to navigate the world given all of our biases and inability to accept the role of uncertainty in just about everything we do.

Stunning images! It's amazing what you can do some with some simple linear algebra.

This is awesome. How did you end up working on projects like this one? This kind of interactive one-off experiences are something I've been interested in for a long time.

Hi there! I'm the creator of this little project. It's a Chrome extension to help you manage your tabs in Chrome. I'm sure some of you can relate to how awful it is having 50+ tabs open all the time across multiple windows (I'm looking at you StackOverflow).

This light weight extension lets you find tabs quickly through fuzzy-search. It also lets you store collections of tabs so you can open them later.

I'm happy to have finally completed ONE side project! Thanks for checking this out!

Hi there! I'm the author of this little project. Managing tabs in Chrome is a terrible pain for me - I always end up with a ton of open tabs that make using Chrome really awful. This extension aims to solve that problem.

Give Gibbon Tabs a try! It's extremely light. I guarantee it won't make Chrome slow :-)

Any feedback is welcome! If you don't feel like reading the README, you can watch this 2 minute video to get the gist of this project: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4AHNVJXIS0

I have actually been living in Canada for 4 years now. Everything is a very hairy mess; I was there in the summer of 2015 and remember thinking "Wow! Things can't get possibly worst than this", and then I went back unexpectedly late this year and I can't tell you how much worst things are looking.

The infrastructure is collapsing, finding food to eat is a game of going to every supermarket in the city, among other things. I think my Dad puts it really well when he says that Venezuela has had a reversal of all the progress we made for decades; people have lost a lot of their values simply because life is so tough.

I'm from Venezuela, and happen to know a few people that are mining bitcoin down there. Electricity is incredibly cheap! You practically don't have to factor electricity costs in your operation. Yes, the grid is very unstable, but you can always by generators that run on gasoline (which is also incredibly cheap! a full tank of gas for your car will cost less than 0.1 USD.)

Now, this is obviously horrible for the environment. But what can you expect when your own currency is being rapidly destroyed by the power-hungry idiots that have taken hold of the country. Let's hope for a brighter future.

I was taught functional programming through SML in university two years ago. I have never had my brain twisted with so many interesting and clever concepts - it was one of the most valuable semesters I had, and my favourite class.

Go learn functional programming if you haven't, it will force you to look at problem with a new set of eyes!

I spent some time in Seattle last summer. I was really impressed by the LEED certifications that a lot of the buildings in the downtown area have; most of them are certified gold - the spaces seem really nice for working!

I never came across that about Ed! That is extremely disappointing. Thanks for sharing it.

I still admire his determination and dedication towards the animation industry, but I'll be more reserved with my praise.

I really recommend reading Creativity Inc. By Ed Catmull, one of the cofounders of Pixar. It's an incredible book full of insight on how Pixar fosters creativity to create hit after hit movie.

It really helped me shift my mind during some difficult projects where I felt like I was working against impossible odds.

Creativity Inc., by Ed Catmull (co-founder of Pixar). A book on the structure and processes used at Pixar to sustain the creative process - It's one of the best books I've read on business/management and personal development.

Ed is an incredible human being! Go read it!

I am also from Venezuela. He is not lying. He calculated his salary using the black market price of a dollar: 630 bolivares. He earns close to 7000 bolivares, which is minimum wage.

"Working with some guys there" is not as reliable a source as a guy who actually lives and works in the country. You shouldn't have called him a lier.

Don Quixote is based on fictional characters. This is the grave of Cervantes, the writer of the novel.

I have never bought bitcoin with the allowance. In case anyone is wondering, the government sells each Venezuelan $300 per year at the official exchange rate. This is the only amount that we're given without having to go through a lengthy process that typically involves having 'friends' within the government to pull strings for you. People usually buy Amazon gift cards with the money.

It's too scary to put your money in another volatile currency - I suppose people prefer dollars because they are stable and can be spent on popular e-commerce sites.

But what is there to sell? Every industry has received incredible shock from the economic situation, there are no dollars to import material goods from the outside so that they can support themselves. Besides, I can't think of anything other than oil that others would be interested in buying.

Not sure if I understood your question correctly, sorry if this doesn't answer it!

Tourists generally don't go to Venezuela because the country is extremely unsafe. The capital, Caracas, is ranked as the second city with the highest murder rate in the world [1]. There is an extremely low regard for life - petty criminals will kill you for your phone.

However, we do have some of the most unreal places on the planet! [2]

[1] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/12/violent-crime-m...

[2] http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4ghbtqN0bRY/TyV8kLJVivI/AAAAAAAABX...

I am from Venezuela.

In case you are wondering how terrible the Venezuelan economy is right now, think about this: Our biggest denomination bill (100 Bolivares) is not enough to buy $1 USD [1]; in january 2013 you could buy $14 USD for the same amount. Also think about the fact that Venezuela has the largest proven oil reserves in the world [2].

I'm not even going to try to explain the currency exchange and control mechanisms (CADIVI and SICAD), they are basically operating like a lottery to select people who will be allowed to buy dollars at the official government rate. Everyone turns to the black market, but the demand is extremely high, and the supply barely exists.

Bitcoin won't solve our problems because no one will want to sell for Bolivares. The bolivar has been devaluated twice in the past two years, which has decreased it's value by more than 50% when compared to 2013.

Sources:

[1] https://dolartoday.com/

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_proven_oil...