an island to oneself

Traveling to New Zealand, after a year of unknown, was a great comfort to us. There are a few things Devine and I were really looking forward to, like a good latte, craft beer, a fresh food market and a bulk food store. I found a city that checked all of the boxes.

Many of the cruisers we know want to arrive in Opua – with reason. It's warm, damn gorgeous, and you know you'll find friends there, because that's where everyone goes during the cyclone season. Arriving in a strange place, with familiar faces, always makes the experience better, but...

Дайджест #16

В этом эпизоде: Super Mario Odyssey и снова немного про Nintendo Switch, дизайн-студия на лодке, Иммигранткаст, VPN (или как пользоваться интернетом относительно свободно), нехороший перфекционизм и альтернативы Твиттеру: Mastodon и Micro.blog, душевный ютьюб-канал и дроны.

Я тут прошел Super Mario Odyssey на Nintendo Switch. Понравилось: столько разных королевств со своими особенностями (в Нью-Йорке можно ездить на скутере, ходить по крышам небоскребов и прыгать на светофорах, на Луне меньше гравитация), костюмов для самого Марио (клоун, водолаз, строитель), шуток, хорошей музыки, атмосферы, переходов из нового 3Д-мира в ретро-2Д, говорящая шляпа-друг (мне бы не помешала) — текстом не передать.

Чтобы вставить сюда эти скриншоты, мне пришлось достать из Raspberry Pi MicroSD карту и перенести с помощью нее — такой вот Свитч.

Если хотите быстрого и яркого погружения в игру (а покупать в ближайшее время не планируете),...

Digital License Plates are on the way!

We are all familiar with the standard license plate for cars as it is a simple metal plate that fits all cars and is fairly easy to upgrade each year with online State services. It has been the standard for years and is the most simple of all things related to motor vehicles. But, that is changing and like all new cars, it is a digital mess that frequently cannot be repaired by the home mechanic. Welcome to the world of the digital license plate!
Although it is the a bit heavier it will fit the standard bolt configuration but...

Can we stop bombing please?

After the WWII, the entire field of operations was taking to a different level where analogue contexts no longer defined the course of action, policy and the direction of future investments. RAND took the battlefield to space, thereby introducing and eventually rendering the axiomatic drivers to the digital age of computers and coding. It was the clear insight of the military commanders and political leadership that the new operational fields would require a new kind of intelligence to lead and co-direct with the traditional military expertise; the speculative and creative engineer-researcher able to define his very own new...

Procedural Bestiary and the Next Generation of CG Software

https://player.vimeo.com/video/703402772

In the previous essay “Procedural content creation F.A.Q.” I’ve claimed that it would take few months to assemble a full-scale creature generator. So I took those months and did it – introducing Kozinarium v1.0 v1.5:
Procedural Creature Generator from Denis Kozlov on Vimeo.
Procedural systems I’ve been developing during the recent years served different purposes, not the least one being exploration of how far one can go in formalizing the visual art, expressing its language in machine-readable terms. “Quite far” is the answer I’ve got, and today I’d like to share my vision of the next generation of artistic tools which could...

Gameplay Concepts

Over the last 6 months I've been working almost exclusively on new adding gameplay elements to enrich the overall game environment.  Some are general concepts, applicable to the main universal sandbox.   Others are more specific and fill out the lore of the gameworld.   Others such as missions, factions etc. are still to come.
Here are the last 6 months worth of gameplay concepts, in alphabetical order.
Air Resistance
When ships enter/leave atmospheres they encounter air resistance.   This is imparted as a drag on the physics of the ships, with the primary effects being reduction of top speed, and dampening of flight controls.
Ships may...

Ship Dashboards

Here's a quick look at a prototype dashboard for spaceships.   Like everything else in the game so far, the artwork is 100% prototype.  In Pegwars, spaceships are like future cars, so I've modeled the prototype from an 80's classic sports car.   The 80's really was the bomb, I love it how car designers tried to get so futuristic for a period of time.
The gauges, from left to right :
- Hull Integrity
- Shields
- Engine Revs
- (Top) Set Speed
- (Bottom) Actual Speed
- Current Gravity Forces
- Power Usage
- Power Available
Left and right of the dash will be a couple of MFD's (multi-function displays)...

Manifesto for a n o m a l i e s

A poeme en prose

People, if you get this, here is a manifesto.

and then of course this page would be empty as you would get it anyway.

Still, there is a very small, m i n u t e possibility that you are an anomaly, as well as being on a scale of 1 to 10, a 9 out of ten. Just saying in numbers as it makes the point easy in the days, these days, of numbers.

You think so? Then read on. Everything is going be all right then. (sway with it, stay with it)

There are about 6 to 7 intelligences....

Me and Indie Web Camp Baltimore

Group photos — Aaron Parecki

This weekend I attended Indie Web Camp in Baltimore. It’s a fun gathering of people who believe we should own our online identities — pictures, thoughts, short and long posts (and even check-ins in some cases). Post to your own domain, then syndicate to social networks, but remain in control. Core principles of the movement are listed on indieweb.org.

A breif personal indie web history. I’ve been blogging and building websites and CMSes for as long as I can remember. When I was 12 living between Kursk, Russia and Imatra, Finland, I published an online zine called “Superfun”. I had some strong web design and writing skills:

After the zine I was blogging in Russian, English and Finnish on my domain, switched to LiveJournal for a couple years:

then coded a static...

Decentralized: Autonomous dignity

It hit me last evening at a crypto meeting at BitBelgium in Gent. The room was packed. And no hipsters. At all. Jimmy Two Button MiningKingsz spoke wisely of biosmodding and overclocking to get more hash power, the small time grafters looking so smart from the Muide and all over were talking alt coin, Federal Police in the house ( I guess with the obvious photographer :), David doing a fantastic political intro with heart as he called the impressive youngster from Gent4Humanity on stage to talk about the refugees in Calais and how we should have more solidarity simply...