Studio Setup Again
Some momentary stability after almost 3 years of living out of a suitcase.
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Blabberbox: | Random blog-like posts from pftq. |  |
VR Room
Had this one as a dream that felt somewhat like a murder mystery...
Someone is trying out a VR game that looks and feels extremely real. They wake up on the floor in a bluish green tiled room that seems to have had a commotion and is abandoned. A strange cat/tiger hybrid strolls by with a fruit in its mouth. There's a constant sound of something dripping nearby. Once out of the game, the person tries to ask if the place seems familiar. A friend looks up the tiling and room pieces and confirms they are actual pieces that exist in real life. At first, they think it's just really good photo capture, but over time, they start to notice things that are too coincidental. It eventually turns out the room is one that actually exists, as they stumble upon it in an alley way. The same cat hybrid strolls out the open door as they go in to explore it. It eventually turns out that it's not just a photo-capture of the room but actually...[More]
Someone is trying out a VR game that looks and feels extremely real. They wake up on the floor in a bluish green tiled room that seems to have had a commotion and is abandoned. A strange cat/tiger hybrid strolls by with a fruit in its mouth. There's a constant sound of something dripping nearby. Once out of the game, the person tries to ask if the place seems familiar. A friend looks up the tiling and room pieces and confirms they are actual pieces that exist in real life. At first, they think it's just really good photo capture, but over time, they start to notice things that are too coincidental. It eventually turns out the room is one that actually exists, as they stumble upon it in an alley way. The same cat hybrid strolls out the open door as they go in to explore it. It eventually turns out that it's not just a photo-capture of the room but actually...[More]
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Frequency of Winning Hands in Poker
Some interesting stats on how often hands show in Texas Hold'em #poker w/ 8 players after running 1 million games on a simulator I wrote for fun. It's counterintuitive, since having 1 pair win is less frequent than 2-pair, trips, straight, flush, and full-house. Winning w/ top card is actually rarer than straight flush with only 40 games. So pretty much you should expect two-pair or better in most games played to the river and be more suspicious of trying to win with top pair or high card. It also means if someone is playing with friends at a table, they can end up dominating if they play every game out to the river.
8 Players Played to the River:
Two pair: 260263 (26%)
Straight: 199774 (19%)
Three of a...[More]
8 Players Played to the River:
Two pair: 260263 (26%)
Straight: 199774 (19%)
Three of a...[More]
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Dim Lit
Another dream that could be an interesting short film...
Returning home to an old apartment building in NYC. It's not even a full apartment because the door to it is behind a machine in the laundry room in the basement, which is always dark because of lack of windows and only one barely working lightbulb hanging from the ceiling.
Have some people over, but just people from meetup/networking events, who I could care less about but am too nice to say no to when they reach out wanting to meet to talk about their life problems. When we get to the apartment entrance in the basement, someone notices the door is slightly open ajar, but no one in the group, including the guy who noticed it, thinks much of it. They proceed to start sliding the washing machine out of the way to enter. Someone jokes I should have a security camera set up, but I say I do, which no one reacts to. I check it on my phone, and it shows some crazy bald white homeless guy, a few...[More]
Returning home to an old apartment building in NYC. It's not even a full apartment because the door to it is behind a machine in the laundry room in the basement, which is always dark because of lack of windows and only one barely working lightbulb hanging from the ceiling.
Have some people over, but just people from meetup/networking events, who I could care less about but am too nice to say no to when they reach out wanting to meet to talk about their life problems. When we get to the apartment entrance in the basement, someone notices the door is slightly open ajar, but no one in the group, including the guy who noticed it, thinks much of it. They proceed to start sliding the washing machine out of the way to enter. Someone jokes I should have a security camera set up, but I say I do, which no one reacts to. I check it on my phone, and it shows some crazy bald white homeless guy, a few...[More]
83 unique view(s)
Playing Canasta Again
Playing Canasta again for the first time in ages since Yahoo Games went down. Still winning most my games with no contest and remembering the last 10+ cards played. If anyone wants to 1v1, I'm on Canasta-Palace.com 
Edit: And made it to 5-stars rating in one day. Bahaha!
Edit: And made it to 5-stars rating in one day. Bahaha!
89 unique view(s)
Man vs Reflection
Guy punches himself in the mirror and hurts his fist. He gets pissed, punches his reflection's face, and knocks himself out.
- a dream I just woke up from. If anyone wants to do this as an animation on commission, let me know lol
- a dream I just woke up from. If anyone wants to do this as an animation on commission, let me know lol
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Quantopian vs Tech Trader
So many people over the years kept asking why I didn't just build @TechTraderAI on Quantopian (besides the technical impracticalities), and here is the answer.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-16/quant-trading-platform-quantopian-closes-down
Some posts still online (example Reddit), but mostly in-person and at conferences/events.
Especially after Adobe used a killswitch on everything built on Flash, the last thing you want to do anymore is make anything important on someone else's platform where you are dependent on them to keep things running.
Funny to think only 6 years ago I was naively trying to share everything like candy. Different times for sure.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-16/quant-trading-platform-quantopian-closes-down
Some posts still online (example Reddit), but mostly in-person and at conferences/events.
Especially after Adobe used a killswitch on everything built on Flash, the last thing you want to do anymore is make anything important on someone else's platform where you are dependent on them to keep things running.
Funny to think only 6 years ago I was naively trying to share everything like candy. Different times for sure.
128 unique view(s)
Send As From Google Group
Below are steps so that, from your personal email account, you can "send as" from the same email address as that used in a Google Group under a business account. The information is not really spelled out anywhere, so I'm writing this down for future reference.
1. Login to the business account primary email (the owner / admin).
2. From Gmail, go to Settings > Accounts and Import > Send mail as. Add the Google Group address here once.
3. Login to your personal email account in Gmail, which should also be a member of the Google Group to receive messages.
4. Go to Settings > Accounts and Import > Send mail as. Add the same Google Group address here again.
1. Login to the business account primary email (the owner / admin).
2. From Gmail, go to Settings > Accounts and Import > Send mail as. Add the Google Group address here once.
3. Login to your personal email account in Gmail, which should also be a member of the Google Group to receive messages.
4. Go to Settings > Accounts and Import > Send mail as. Add the same Google Group address here again.
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Kagerou Project on Guitar
Kagerou Project on Guitar Cover by Osamuraisan (@niconicosamurai)
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Jet Set Radio Future OST
Jet Set Radio Future OST by Hideki Naganuma (@Hideki_Naganuma)
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Yorushika Piano Full Medley
Yorushika Piano Full Medley arranged by Polalice Alvireo (@PolaliceAlvireo)
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Past Becomes Myth
1. Kid watches people fly on TV. Parent: "Humans can't actually fly. Our bodies are too heavy. It's just a myth."
2. 1000 yrs later... Extremely fat kid watches people run on TV. Parent: "Humans can't actually run. Our bodies are too heavy. It's just a myth."
=======================================
Just a random idea for a comic that came to mind.
(but I do secretly believe we used to be able to fly)
2. 1000 yrs later... Extremely fat kid watches people run on TV. Parent: "Humans can't actually run. Our bodies are too heavy. It's just a myth."
=======================================
Just a random idea for a comic that came to mind.
(but I do secretly believe we used to be able to fly)
165 unique view(s)
Nameless
Another mystery/horror story that came as a dream (and somewhat terrifying one at that)...
A group of friends are traveling to a new city and staying there for a bit. It is a tropical beach city - a sandy, walkable, small town with low-rise, shack-like residences. They play video games as a team online the first night and joke about why they bother to name the group if they can't beat anyone yet. After midnight, they order food delivered on GrubHub, since it's too late to go out and fall asleep after eating.
The next morning, a waitress from a nearby restaurant comes over with a plate of lobsters, but they didn't order anything. The waitress says she has one of their credit cards, name, billing address and all. The charge came from last night. One of them suggest credit card fraud, but the waitress says the order was made in person. The friends point out they didn't even go anywhere last night, that they ordered food delivered. One...[More]
A group of friends are traveling to a new city and staying there for a bit. It is a tropical beach city - a sandy, walkable, small town with low-rise, shack-like residences. They play video games as a team online the first night and joke about why they bother to name the group if they can't beat anyone yet. After midnight, they order food delivered on GrubHub, since it's too late to go out and fall asleep after eating.
The next morning, a waitress from a nearby restaurant comes over with a plate of lobsters, but they didn't order anything. The waitress says she has one of their credit cards, name, billing address and all. The charge came from last night. One of them suggest credit card fraud, but the waitress says the order was made in person. The friends point out they didn't even go anywhere last night, that they ordered food delivered. One...[More]
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Unreal Engine 4 Notes
General notes and things I wish I knew as I delved deeper into #UE4:
- Package build by default includes unused assets, which can bloat the size of your game. Go to Project Settings -> Packaging -> List of Maps to package only assets referenced by that map. To be more aggressive and reduce unused assets in general (or to keep smaller backups), right-click your map and Migrate to a new project to create a new folder with only the assets used in your game. More tips on this here.
- Shipping build will give you an instant 10-15 FPS increase, if you're trying to squeeze performance (ie for VR). However, it disables using command line arguments (such as to create listen servers); the way to get around that is to build both shipping and dev in the same folder. You can then create shortcuts to target the shipping or dev exe file depending if you want to launch server or client version of the game.
- Do not use numbers in the project folder name. Otherwise builds will fail to run.
- Do not use Duplicate, as it moves the object slightly. Use copy+paste.
- Never use...[More]
- Package build by default includes unused assets, which can bloat the size of your game. Go to Project Settings -> Packaging -> List of Maps to package only assets referenced by that map. To be more aggressive and reduce unused assets in general (or to keep smaller backups), right-click your map and Migrate to a new project to create a new folder with only the assets used in your game. More tips on this here.
- Shipping build will give you an instant 10-15 FPS increase, if you're trying to squeeze performance (ie for VR). However, it disables using command line arguments (such as to create listen servers); the way to get around that is to build both shipping and dev in the same folder. You can then create shortcuts to target the shipping or dev exe file depending if you want to launch server or client version of the game.
- Do not use numbers in the project folder name. Otherwise builds will fail to run.
- Do not use Duplicate, as it moves the object slightly. Use copy+paste.
- Never use...[More]
352 unique view(s)