News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

timpark

Re:elect.horse on Friday October 30, 2026 @09:22AM (#50303530)
words.horse appears to be a blog, but Horsle exists. https://cabletwo.net/horsle/
Although I don't personally use graph paper much, this project looks great. I find many of the example pattern previews very hard to see, though. I'd darken and/or thicken the lines. The descriptions underneath are good, but there are a lot of patterns that are unfamiliar to me that I'd like to be able to preview better, like Cross Stitch and Knitting.
Re:Tiled Words 6 Month Update on Tuesday April 28, 2026 @08:12AM (#47933401)
For an extra challenge, I try to solve it without looking at the clues, and only using the theme. (some themes are harder than others) Though if a word turns orange, I sort of glance at the clues to see whether it's the wrong direction or built incorrectly. Maybe they could be different colours, like red/orange? Thanks for making it!
Re:Interesting Daily Game on Tuesday June 24, 2025 @10:02AM (#44366387)
I was thinking of the board game "Timeline". This one is from 2012, but if you search BGG for Timeline, you'll find lots of different versions for different countries and specializations.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/128664/timeline

Re:<Blink> and <Marquee> (2020) on Sunday June 08, 2025 @01:30PM (#44218307)
Exactly, haha! :) Thanks!
Re:<Blink> and <Marquee> (2020) on Sunday June 08, 2025 @02:59AM (#44215135)
The blink tag was, of course, much hated back in the day, so as an experiment, I took the binary of whatever browser I was using (Netscape, I guess), searched for "blink", and changed it to "blonk". Tada, no more blinking!
Re:Potatoes in the Mail on Friday April 18, 2025 @03:42AM (#43725910)
I remembered and searched for the same article. I found this version (on the same domain) with images and better formatting.

https://improbable.com/annals-of-improbable-research-july-au...

25%? Wow. That seems high, but when you consider we were backing a game based on the popularity of a now almost-40-year-old franchise, it seems a bit more reasonable.
The guys who created Space Quest kickstarted another sci-fi comedy adventure game... 13 years ago. It went (and is still going) poorly, and Kotaku just posted about the ordeal today:

https://kotaku.com/spaceventure-space-quest-kickstarter-stea...

I backed the project, but at one of the lowest levels, so I'm not really mad. It's just kind of sad.

Re:Kylie Minogue song about a typeface on Wednesday March 26, 2025 @10:00AM (#43482369)
More typeface-related fun:

Neutra Face: An Ode On A Typeface (parody of Lady Gaga's "Poker Face")

https://youtu.be/xHCu28bfxSI?t=18

Behind the Typeface: Cooper Black

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZmdf8A9Ex8

There's only a demo out so far, but Scarlet Deer Inn uses embroidery for its character images.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1553260/Scarlet_Deer_Inn/

For those who might be interested, a similar site for Canadian charities is Charity Intelligence.

https://www.charityintelligence.ca/

Back when I was using CodeWarrior to make a game for PlayStation 2, I found a compiler bug, but fortunately, it was one where it gave an error on valid code, rather than generating bad output. I can't remember the details, but I had some sort of equation that my co-workers agreed should have compiled with no problems. I was able to rewrite it a little to get the result I wanted without triggering any compiler errors.
Re:Macrodata Refinement on Saturday February 01, 2025 @05:45PM (#42903248)
Here's a Pico-8 version that Liquidream did in 1024 (compressed) bytes of code for a game jam: https://liquidream.itch.io/lumon8-1k
Re:What Will Enter the Public Domain in 2025? on Sunday December 01, 2024 @11:09PM (#42293021)
I think some things were a product of their time, and weren't popular/profitable enough to keep marketing or update or modernize. (whether they didn't maintain peoples' attention, or had issues like the Popeye one you mentioned) Another not-as-popular character that's entering the public domain in 2026, for example, is Betty Boop.

On the other hand, Superman and Batman enter the public domain in 2034 and 2035 respectively, so that should be interesting. Though like Mickey Mouse/Steamboat Willie, I expect that it's only the original version/costume that goes public domain.

Re:What Will Enter the Public Domain in 2025? on Sunday December 01, 2024 @05:39PM (#42291264)
In May 1998, before the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act went into effect, there was an amusing Tom the Dancing Bug comic regarding characters falling out of copyright. https://www.gocomics.com/tomthedancingbug/1998/05/17

In that vein, similar to the Mickey Mouse and Winnie the Pooh horror movies that have been released in recent years, Popeye will be entering the public domain next year and people are working on a horror movie based on that.

There was a story about this happening with some Amiga 500 computers, allegedly due to a too-high speed bump in a Commodore parking lot.

https://arstechnica.com/civis/threads/a-history-of-the-amiga...

Re:Numeronymize on Sunday July 07, 2024 @11:32AM (#40898350)
For fun, I wrote some Javascript that will numeronymize text, but it will also "de-numeronymize" it again by converting the result back into random words that also match. (if a match can't be found, it returns the original word, and unlike the article, it doesn't handle non-English characters) https://www.timpark.org/n10e-s2e-t2t/

Ex: "accessibility localization internationalization multilingualization globalization" becomes "a11y l10n i18n m17n g11n" becomes "applicability locomutation intercrystallization metaphenylenediamin gastrocnemian"

If anyone wants to try some levels before buying it, the game jam version of the game is on itch.io: https://hempuli.itch.io/baba-is-you

That's Windows-only, though. Someone recently released a "demake" with fewer levels for Pico-8 that you can play in a browser: https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=142638

Re:Flexagon on Saturday March 16, 2024 @12:41AM (#39723450)
I did notice the link was broken, but didn't want to wait until I had time to fix it before commenting. I've fixed it and a couple of other ones. Thanks.
Re:Flexagon on Tuesday March 05, 2024 @09:57AM (#39604225)
I made a tetratetraflexagon for my wedding program. I ended up making a script to use ImageMagick to convert four images into two images suitable for printing on both sides of an 8.5"x11" sheet of paper. The scripts, example images, and instructions are here:

https://www.timpark.org/making-a-tetratetraflexagon/

Numeronyms like i18n and a11y are things I'd seen from time to time, but not in a sufficiently interesting or relevant context for me to figure out what they meant, until one day I finally looked them up. Then, just for fun, I made this page: https://www.timpark.org/n10e-s2e-t2t/ (numeronymize some text)
Re:Career Choices, a Short Story on Saturday March 18, 2023 @02:34PM (#35211817)
For another short story in a similar vein, check out "The Frame-By-Frame" by qntm.

https://qntm.org/frame

Re:Mars After Midnight: Gameplay Loop on Thursday March 09, 2023 @04:27PM (#35086961)
If you haven't seen it, I recommend checking out The Forgotten City. The time loop/learning more each "run" reminded me of Outer Wilds, and I enjoyed the story/mystery.

https://forgottencitygame.com/

Re:Langoguessr on Sunday January 01, 2023 @08:33PM (#34213187)
Yeah, one opening screen included "#tamilsoundservice". :) (Tamil is one of the languages) I suppose I could try to ignore the video, but it was fun trying to use it for clues. "Oh they look like Bollywood dancers so I'll guess Hindi." This backfired on me when I tried guessing one based on the subtitles I saw, which I assumed were for karaoke, but the answer was completely wrong. I guess they were for translation, not karaoke.
Re:Stranger Things and the Amiga 1000 on Wednesday December 28, 2022 @01:03AM (#34157968)
I remember the show Halt and Catch Fire also had an Amiga 1000 in an episode, but they didn't bother to show anything resembling Workbench/AmigaOS. https://i.imgur.com/uaqzrEk.jpeg
You might find the book "Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals" by Oliver Burkeman helpful. It's not all about productivity, but also how we relate to time. (we didn't always worry about it so much)

Here are a couple of the more detailed summaries I've found:

https://www.sloww.co/four-thousand-weeks/

https://youcanflymate.org/four-thousand-weeks-by-oliver-burk...

Re:Invention Dice (2014) on Monday April 25, 2022 @09:54AM (#31154764)
The result I got on page load was: Portable, Self-Build, Public, Paper, Manual, Vehicle.

I think the paper airplane has already been invented...

The Free Speech flag is kind of clunky with the "+C0". (despite the "Crime 0" explanation) You could have put a sixth stripe with the colour C00000, but only in the top 1/3rd (with black in the bottom 2/3rds) to say only take the first byte, perhaps.

Older ยป