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peterb

@peterb@mathstodon.xyz

effort + coffee = software

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peterb, to random
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DJT stock not being in the toilet when they lost $327 million on less than $1m revenue is such a perfect example of "The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent."

peterb, to random
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Someone who has played the Grandia games, please sell me on the re-masters. Worth my time?

peterb, to random
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Coming next Friday: the one you've all been asking for.

peterb,
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In fact, since I'm going to be taking a vacation, I'm trying to get a few weeks ahead of myself again, so expect...a few weeks of Five Ordeals content.

peterb,
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@mcc This question doesn't horrify me. In fact I recently made a video about "Which version of Wiz 1 should you play?" Honestly, most people probably only need to ever play one of these - if you play it and love it, you'll know how to find more. If you don't love it, you don't need to play more.

I will give you an unexpected answer, and I hope you'll forgive me if I take a while to get there.

The fundamental problem with the whole series is: the earliest games lacked quality of life features (because 1981) and most of the latter games assume that anyone who is playing is familiar with all the mechanics from the early games. This is a conundrum! So I think there are 2 answers, depending on why you want to play it.

For people interested in "game archeology" my recommendation is depending on what platforms you have to either play the Digital Eclipse remake of Wiz 1 on Windows, or the Playstation or SNES versions of same (PS and SNES are nearly identical, just slightly different art styles.)

For people who want to try only one game as a game qua game, I'd say the PS2 game Wizardry: Tale of the Forsaken Land, which has a really nice synthesis of the disparate Wizardry vibes from the US and Japanese lineages, and lots of quality of life and organic tutorials. Only drawback is the animations make the combat a bit slow.

There's a lot of love out there for the 5/6/7/8 games, but I never liked them. They just feel neither fish nor fowl to me. Wiz 8 has a certain 2001-era charm but it's quite quirky, in bad ways.

I hope this helps!

peterb, to random
@peterb@mathstodon.xyz avatar

I remember getting into a huge argument with some beardo at CMU CS because they were upset that people were sending mail with MIME attachments such as images "because they don't work in MH" even though it was in fact trivial to get MH to view graphical attachments and really what they meant was "i configured my email client in 1981 and i would rather inconvenience the entire world and reduce your functionality than learn a new trick".

Nonzero chance that @goob actually remembers this argument as a bystander.

peterb, to random
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Pittsburgh

peterb, to random
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Pittsburgh

peterb, to random
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Advice

peterb, to random
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I think the creator of this meant it to be a joke but, unironically, yes, English needs this and it should be deployed everywhere immediately.

peterb,
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Wait this ALREADY WORKS and we can DO IT TODAY? Why isn't this in use literally all the time?

peterb, to random
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My father-in-law is a film director. He is insanely gifted. We were watching It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World together years ago and I asked him what it would cost to film it today. I will never forget his answer…"We can't, we don't know how to do it."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0HtDsEuJgI

peterb, to random
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Which version of Wizardry 1 should you play? It will shock you to learn that...I have opinions.

https://youtu.be/is1hAqNRwR8

peterb, to random
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Just had the idea for a new technology called "Redundant Array of Inexpensive 6502s" and I am drunk with power.

peterb, to random
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Tampopo (Juzo Itami, 1985)

peterb,
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Specifically, this scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URD8Q6rlYCw

peterb, to random
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My favorite fact about the Z-80 CPU is that although it is an 8-bit CPU, it's Arithmetic Logic Unit (ALU) is actually a single 4-bit ALU pretending to be 2 4-bit ALUs in a trench coat.

http://www.righto.com/2013/09/the-z-80-has-4-bit-alu-heres-how-it.html

peterb, to random
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Today I learned that the word 'skunk' derives from an Algonquian word that means, more or less, "pissing fox" and I have never loved a language so much.

(southern New England Algonquian language seganku, from Proto-Algonquian *šeka:kwa, from *šek- 'to urinate' + *-a:kw 'fox'. The š glyph in Americanist Phonetic Alphabet is roughly equivalent to ʃ in IPA.)

peterb, to random
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My way of dealing with being in a bad mood is, instead of going to therapy, to make a video about an AppleSoft BASIC computer game that almost nobody has played.
@dosgameclub @dosnostalgic @Cdespinosa

video/mp4

peterb, to random
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is there a word for the sort of effete NYC intellectual who draws their paycheck entirely from pretending to make fun of effete NYC intellectuals

Not that I'm thinking of anyone specific, like say Claire Berlinski.

peterb, to random
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The main reason college tuitions are out of control is the Bush-era decision to make student loan debt not dischargeable by bankruptcy. If banks (and colleges) could only lend to people who could afford to pay back the loans (or more accurately: if they had to bear the risk of making predatory loans to people who they know CAN'T pay back the loans), you'd see costs magically drop overnight as they reoriented their businesses to be sustainable.

peterb, to random
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Japan has the chance to do the funniest thing.

peterb, to random
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Why is there no animated feature film version of Emerson Lake and Palmer's "Tarkus"?

image/jpeg

futurebird, to random
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Gold ring with quartz intaglio depicting an ant. Roman, 1st-2nd century AD

I wonder who wore this ring. Why did they choose an ant as their symbol? It's interesting to me that the depiction is specific enough that it can't be written off as a general "bug" the mandibles, and body plan make this explicitly an ant.

The ant motif appears on garnets in other rings.

This is up in New Haven at the Yale University Art Collection and I am not contemplating becoming a cat burglar.

peterb,
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@futurebird I'm no classicist, but certainly ants had some positive associations; the greek term "myrmidon", applied to the warriors of achilles, literally meant 'ant people'.

peterb, to random
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When I was 14 years old, the premise of how this dude in this comic book lost his job was jetpacks-and-flying-cars fantasy that would never happen, and now we're basically here.

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