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End of Adolescence

November 27th, 2018 | Posted by pftq in Thought of the Day | #
There's a feeling you get when summer hits and school is out.  When you were younger, it might have been excitement, freedom.  As you got older, it became more an interruption, an emptiness, time crawling by as you waited to see your peers again, an interlude as you waited for the next adventure. Except... on the 12th time, summer doesn't quite end.  It keeps going, no matter how long you wait. That feeling - when you're the only one still wandering the campus while everyone else already left - gradually becomes your everyday.  And at some point, you look back and realize this is the rest of your life.
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Haiiro to Ao Cover

November 17th, 2018 | Posted by pftq in Stuck in My Head | #
Haiiro to Ao Cover by Kobasolo (@kobamakolts)
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Trying to Using Google Cloud

November 14th, 2018 | Posted by pftq in Blabberbox | #
Seems there's a reason @GoogleCloud's market share trails behind Microsoft's @Azure and is nowhere near Amazon's @AWSCloud.  It's just insanely difficult to get up and running.

First is the error that I need to enable the Google Cloud service in my Admin Console, but Google Cloud is not even listed there.  The specific error is "Google Cloud Platform service has been disabled. Please contact your administrator to restore service in G Suite Admin console."



Have to contact...[More]
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Enabling Graphics for Nvidia Tesla GPU in Azure VM

November 11th, 2018 | Posted by pftq in Blabberbox | #
If you're trying to use the GPUs Azure VMs for actual graphics like in game development, DirectX, or other things where the GPU has to be detected, you need to set the Tesla GPUs to WDDM mode.  By default they are in TCC, which doesn't let them be detected by the system in RDP and has graphics disabled.  Not even Nvidia control panel will see the card.

Solution is pretty quick - just a command line entry.  It can just be done in Command Prompt, no additional software needed.  Credits to the comments on Reddit here: https://www.reddit.com/r/cloudygamer/comments/7twmiq/problem_with_azure_nv6_and_nvidia_tesla_m60/

(Make sure you first have the Nvidia drivers installed, either by starting the VM with an image that has them or installing manually.)

Quote
1. Open Command Prompt.
2. Enter: cd C:\Program Files\NVIDIA Corporation\NVSMI
3. Enter: nvidia-smi -l
4. Ctrl+Break...[More]
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Placebo Effect on Mind

November 10th, 2018 | Posted by pftq in Blabberbox | #
Very interesting article that sounds a lot like the ideas portrayed in @MNightShyamalan's @SplitMovie
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/07/magazine/placebo-effect-medicine.html
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Double Tax Issue on Patreon

November 3rd, 2018 | Posted by pftq in Blabberbox | #
The Hidden Patreon Double Tax...

Would love to be shown wrong here, but as far as I've found, money on @Patreon is taxed for both patron and creator. In any other situation, only the giver or receiver is taxed, not both. Donations to non-profits are deductible, salaries of employees are deductible expense for the employer, even traditional non-Patreon patron/sponsorship arrangements are at least some form of write-off/expense for the sponsor.  But for Patreon, unless you go through the excessive effort of establishing yourself as a company with an elaborate case for how giving to artists is business-related or straight up start a non-profit organization yourself, the money you give on Patreon is going to be from income you paid taxes on, and then that creator also pays taxes on it as their income.

This is a simplification of the math but just to illustrate: If you made $100k this year and wanted to give away half to artists on Patreon, you literally can't...[More]
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SF Place on Fire

October 28th, 2018 | Posted by pftq in Blabberbox | #
Guess that's my cue to finally leave SF... (esp with the asbestos exposed)
https://abc7news.com/fire-burns-multiple-floors-of-san-francisco-high-rise/4538088/
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Open to Interpretation

September 9th, 2018 | Posted by pftq in Thought of the Day | #
Tired of having my words reinterpreted to mean different things. People are too busy looking for what they want to hear and not thinking about what someone else is actually trying to say.
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Typical Businessman Thinking

September 2nd, 2018 | Posted by pftq in Thought of the Day | #
Typical investor/businessman thinking: If I could just find a genius smart enough to make me a million dollars but too dumb to do it unless I tell him to...
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Distant Earth

August 28th, 2018 | Posted by pftq in Thought of the Day | #
Somewhere out there right now is someone seeing light from a distant planet Earth and assuming there is no intelligent life because it is light from thousands of years ago.
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Line-In Recording Noise

August 26th, 2018 | Posted by pftq in Blabberbox | #
Note to future self. Source of line-in recording noise is the MIDI USB cable from the piano to computer. Do not replace the sound card, do not buy an audio device. #audio #recording
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The Sound That Isn't There

August 20th, 2018 | Posted by pftq in Stories | #
Premise of a horror film I thought of while staying up too late. Tongue
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Imagine every night you hear the loud humming of what you think are street sweepers driving by.  One night, you get tired of it and venture out into the streets to complain, except there's nothing there.  You run towards the sound, but it just keeps getting louder and louder, with nothing in sight for as far you can see.  The sound eventually starts moving away and goes quiet, like it does every night, and you go back home confused.

The next night, you run out again when you hear the sound, trying to get to the center of it before it goes away again.  This time, you keep running towards it as it tries to get away from you.  At first, you are barely able to keep up with the sound as it is moving away.  At some point, you realize the sound is suddenly getting louder and louder than it ever has before.  You get so caught up running towards the sound that you don't...[More]
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Lossless Algorithms

August 12th, 2018 | Posted by pftq in Ideas | #
The following is an algorithm I wrote for generating support/resist in trading with no thresholds or parameters. On each price move, the price range traveled loses a point in score. The resulting score of any price range is its support/resist strength, which declines the more it is traveled across (zero being strongest and untraveled). Visually, the price line looks like a long horizontal eraser scrubbing away on a chalkboard; price ranges least scrubbed thin out to support/resist lines.  The reason I call it a "lossless" algorithm is because it doesn't estimate anything or use any seeded values/thresholds.  It is analogous to lossless audio/image file formats.  There is no sampling or use of statistics, just a 1-to-1 map of where price moves most and least freely.  It is also extremely light both in computation and space because all you're doing is a single subtraction per datapoint and the max number of ranges to keep score of is the granularity...[More]
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Death is Only a Door

August 12th, 2018 | Posted by pftq in Stuck in My Head | #
Death is Only a Door (Cloud Atlas OST) by Tom Tykwer, Johnny Klimek, Reinhold Heil
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God's Image

August 5th, 2018 | Posted by pftq in Thought of the Day | #
So many say we're created in God's image, yet act more like the shadow that merely follows. We call Him the Creator, yet so few carry on the work of actually creating.
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Arrival of the Birds

August 3rd, 2018 | Posted by pftq in Stuck in My Head | #
Arrival of the Birds by The Cinematic Orchestra (@TCO_Official)
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Octonions

July 31st, 2018 | Posted by pftq in Blabberbox | #
One of the more interesting articles I've read in a while... didn't realize quarternions used in game development had actual significance in physics and there was a step further called octonions. As usual, learning more working on games than I ever did in school.
https://www.wired.com/story/the-peculiar-math-that-could-underlie-the-laws-of-nature/
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Happiest Memory

July 15th, 2018 | Posted by pftq in Essays | #
     The happiest memory in my life is not one I could ever share with anyone else.  Because it isn't a moment from within my real life but instead one from within a dream, a dream that occurred almost ten years ago.

     In that dream, I spent my childhood in a quiet, abandoned town alongside someone who I seemingly knew all my life.  We would race neck-to-neck as we leapt from rooftop to rooftop, laughing maniacally as we tried to one-up each other, reaching higher and higher into the skies before eventually just taking flight altogether.  I miss having someone who flew alongside me, who raced me to the top rather than just passively followed, who shared my dreams rather than just cheered me on from afar.  I miss the rivalry, the playfulness, the genuine laughter, the look of excitement and anticipation on each other's faces, the thrill of seeing how fast and how far we could go without holding back.  If it seemed we flew too high...[More]
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Video Game AI

July 14th, 2018 | Posted by pftq in Blabberbox | #
Just found out the #AI behind Black and White was in fact designed by @demishassabis, co-founder of @DeepMindAI. Too ironic given I often cite #videogames as most influential to my own ideas (incl. Tech Trader and Creating Sentient Artificial Intelligence). Was not expecting it to be so literal.
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Full VR Multiplayer Replication Complete

July 4th, 2018 | Posted by pftq in Blabberbox | #
Ready for rematch. Grin


A lot of people have constantly tried to convince me multiplayer alone is a hard thing to do and VR in multiplayer is even harder, but I'm not finding that the case so far.  If anything, it's a lot of time and attention to detail, but nothing really seems to come across as overwhelming or rocket science.  I certainly wouldn't hire someone just to take care of multiplayer networking now that I know what it entails.

If anything...[More]
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