jverkamp.com

AoC 2024 Day 20: Shadow Catinator

Fri, 20 Dec 2024 00:00:03 +0000

Source: Day 20: Race Condition

Full solution for today (spoilers!).

Part 1

Given a maze with exactly one path, find how many single walls you can walk through (remove) that shorten the best path by at least 100 units.

Ready Player One

Thu, 19 Dec 2024 22:00:00 +0000

Oh hey, that’s a DeLorean! I should go re-watch Back to the Future.

Ready Player One is a very pretty movie (I seem to be saying that [a lot]) recently) and absolutely chock full of pop culture references… which honestly felt rather overdone. The plot is thin and the world doesn’t really make sense, although I did enjoy the characters well enough.

AoC 2024 Day 19: Regexinator

Thu, 19 Dec 2024 00:00:03 +0000

Source: Day 19: Linen Layout

Full solution for today (spoilers!).

Part 1

Given a comma delimited list of substrings and a list of strings, count how many of the latter strings can be made up of any (repeating) combination of the former.

AoC 2024 Day 18: Last Chancinator

Wed, 18 Dec 2024 00:00:03 +0000

Source: Day 18: RAM Run

Full solution for today (spoilers!).

Part 1

You are given a series of points on a 71x71 grid. Taking only the first 1024 points, how long is the shortest path from (0, 0) to (70, 70)?

AoC 2024 Day 17: Virtual Machininator

Tue, 17 Dec 2024 00:00:03 +0000

Source: Day 17: Chronospatial Computer

Full solution for today (spoilers!).

Part 1

Implement a virtual machine. The machine will have 3 unbounded signed registers, 8 opcodes (see below), a variable parameter scheme (see below that). You will be given the initial values of the 3 registers and a program. Find the final output.

Instructions

Opcode	Instruction	Description	Notes
0	`adv reg/val`	`A = A >> OP`
1	`bxl val`	`B = B ^ OP`
2	`bst reg/val`	`B = OP & 0b111`
3	`jnz val`	If `a =/= 0`, jump to `LIT`
4	`bxc ignore`	`B = B ^ C`	Still takes param, but ignores it
5	`out reg/val`	Output `b`	Only outputs lowest 3 bits
6	`bdv reg/val`	`B = A >> OP`	Same as `adv` but writes to `b`
7	`cdv reg/val`	`C = A >> OP`	Same as `adv` but writes to `c`

Parameter specification

For instructions that can take reg/val, 0 to 3 (inclusive) are treated as literal values, 4 is register A, 5 is B, 6, is C, and 7 is an error (should never happen).

For instructions that only take val, it’s always a literal value in the range 0 to 7 (inclusive).

AoC 2024 Day 16: Astarinator

Mon, 16 Dec 2024 00:00:03 +0000

Source: Day 16: Reindeer Maze

Full solution for today (spoilers!).

Part 1

Given a maze, what is the shortest path between S and E where walking straight costs one and turning costs 1000.

AoC 2024 Day 15: Sokobaninator

Sun, 15 Dec 2024 00:00:03 +0000

Source: Day 15: Warehouse Woes

Full solution for today (spoilers!).

Part 1

Given a warehouse containing floors (.), walls (#), boxes (O), and the player (@) plus a series of instructions ^V<>, move the player according to the instructions, pushing boxes (which in turn can push more boxes).

Calculate the sum of y * 100 + x for each box’s final position.

The Rings of Power: Season 2

Sat, 14 Dec 2024 23:55:00 +0000

There are way too many storylines in this show. For episodes at a time, we may not see elves. Or dwarves. Or Gandalf-but-still-not-Gandalf. I keep getting to the start of an episode and thinking ‘oh hey, we haven’t seen them in a while’. But the interesting thing is that I got to the end of the episodes!

Overall, it’s what we saw in the first season, but even more so. There are so many different threads and events–things separated by decades if not centuries in the original works all crammed together.

But on the other hand, we get more rings! (Up from zero 😄) We get bigger battles! (Not quite Helm’s Deep, but close) More Tom Bombadil! (You’ll just have to watch to see if you think I’m making that one up) And we get more … humanized orcs with families and children? I’m … not entirely sure what to think about it.

Overall… it mostly reminds me just good the Peter Jackson movies were. But it’s certainly watchable and I’ll catch whatever season(s) come next. Onward!

AoC 2024 Day 14: Chaosinator

Sat, 14 Dec 2024 00:00:03 +0000

Source: Day 14: Restroom Redoubt

Full solution for today (spoilers!).

Part 1

Given a series of robots defined with initial position and velocity on a 101x103 toroidal grid, calculate where the robots will be after 100 iterations. Return the product of the number of robots in each quadrant of the final grid, ignoring the middle lines (since they’re odd).

Alita: Battle Angel

Fri, 13 Dec 2024 20:00:00 +0000

That is a very pretty movie. The city had a great aesthetic. I loved the variety of cyborgs, many just trying to live their lives (in the background) or… becoming ridiculously overdone weapons platforms. And I especially loved Motorball!

Characterwise, Rosa Salazar as Alita really carried the show. I actually really enjoyed the oversized eyes (true to the manga apparently?) and her whole way of interacting with the world, the way she fights, the way she moves. It’s a fascinating combination of innocence and excellence.

Other than that… I wanted to like Christoph Walz’s Dr. Ido more than I did–he’s generally a wonderful actor, but I feel he just didn’t have much to do. Likwise, Jennifer Connelly’s Chiren. I did enjoy Mahershala Alis’ Vector and most of the evil cyborgs. They did a good job of evil/menacing!

Plotwise? Straight forward. And the ending… really is asking for a sequel that so far as I know isn’t coming. It’d be neat! But you can’t just end a movie like that! Really leaves a poor taste on an otherwise quiet enjoyable movie.

So it goes.

Onward!

AoC 2024 Day 13: Cramerinator

Fri, 13 Dec 2024 00:00:03 +0000

Source: Day 13: Claw Contraption

Full solution for today (spoilers!).

Part 1

Given Button A (ax, ay), Button B (bx, by), and Prize (px, py); how many times must you press Button A (a) and Button B (b) to reach the Prize? Sum 3a + b for each machine that has a solution.

AoC 2024 Day 12: Edginator

Thu, 12 Dec 2024 00:00:03 +0000

Source: Day 12: Garden Groups

Full solution for today (spoilers!).

Part 1

Given a Grid of regions, calculate the sum of the product perimeter * area for each region.

AoC 2024 Day 11: Exponential Growthinator

Wed, 11 Dec 2024 00:00:03 +0000

Source: Day 11: Plutonian Pebbles

Full solution for today (spoilers!).

Part 1

Given a sequence of values v_n, replace each value with the first matching rule:

if v = 0 -> 1

If v has an even number of digits, split it (so v = 8675 becomes [86, 75])

Otherwise, v -> v * 2024

Calculate how many elements are in the sequence after 25 iterations.

AoC 2024 Day 10: Take-a-Hikinator

Tue, 10 Dec 2024 00:00:03 +0000

Source: Day 10: Hoof It

Full solution for today (spoilers!).

Part 1

Given a heightmap (0 to 9), for each 0 count how many 9 you can reach on paths that only ever increase height by exactly 1 at a time. Sum these values.

AoC 2024 Day 9: Defraginator

Mon, 09 Dec 2024 00:00:03 +0000

Source: Day 9: Disk Fragmenter

Full solution for today (spoilers!).

Part 1

Given a disk layout alternating between files and empty spaces, move all files as early on the disk is possible, splitting into multiple blocks. Return a checksum on the disk.

Alternating means: 23331 would mean a 2 block file, 3 empty, a 3 block file, 3 empty, and a 1 block file.

The checksum is the sum of file_id * block_index for all occupied blocks. File IDs are assigned sequentially on initial generation.

AoC 2024 Day 8: Vectorinator

Sun, 08 Dec 2024 00:00:03 +0000

Source: Day 8: Resonant Collinearity

Full solution for today (spoilers!).

Part 1

Given a grid with either open tiles (.) or towers (anything else), for each pair of towers, there is an antinode at each of the points that is 2x as far from one tower as the other. How many antinodes are there still within the bounds of the map?

AoC 2024 Day 7: Mathinator

Sat, 07 Dec 2024 00:00:03 +0000

Source: Day 7: Bridge Repair

Full solution for today (spoilers!).

Part 1

Given a result and a list of numbers, determine if any combination of addition (+) and/or multiplication (*) using all the given numbers in order can return the result. Ignore order of operations.

AoC 2024 Day 6: Wanderinator

Fri, 06 Dec 2024 00:00:03 +0000

Source: Day 6: Guard Gallivant

Full solution for today (spoilers!).

Part 1

You are given a grid of walls (#), floors (.), and a guard (^, initially facing up/north). The guard walks forward until they run into a wall at which point they turn right. How many tiles does the guard reach before leaving the map.

AoC 2024 Day 5: (Not) Transitivinator

Thu, 05 Dec 2024 00:00:03 +0000

Source: Day Day 5: Print Queue

Full solution for today (spoilers!).

Part 1

The input is a list of pairs of the form a|b which defines that b must not come before a, an empty line, and then a list of values a,b,c,d.

For each line that is valid for all given a|b rules, sum the middle number of each list.

AoC 2024 Day 4: Gridnator

Wed, 04 Dec 2024 00:00:03 +0000

Source: Day 4: Ceres Search

Full solution for today (spoilers!).

Part 1

Given a grid of letters, count how many times XMAS appears in any direction (horizontally, vertically, diagonally; forward or backward).

AoC 2024 Day 3: Mulinator

Tue, 03 Dec 2024 00:00:03 +0000

Source: Day 3: Mull It Over

Full solution for today (spoilers!).

Part 1

Given a string containing (among other gibberish) commands of the form mul({A}, {B}) where {A} and {B} are integers, calculate the sum of A*Bs.

AoC 2024 Day 2: Safinator

Mon, 02 Dec 2024 00:00:03 +0000

Source: Day 2: Red-Nosed Reports

Full solution for today (spoilers!).

Part 1

Count how many given lists of numbers are safe:

Sorted (either ascending or descending)

Strictly increasing/decreasing (no duplicate values)

No increase/decrease is by more than 3

Deadpool & Wolverine

Mon, 02 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

And so here it is, (almost) the entire reason I rewatched Deadpool and Deadpool 2.

In a nutshell, it’s pretty much exactly what you get if you took the (crass) humor of Deadpool, jammed in as many cameos as you could, and shoved it into the modern MCU, multiverse, TVA, and all…

Deadpool: Welcome to the MCU. You’re joining at a bit of a low point.

I’m still not actually sure if that’s a good thing?

Wonderland

Mon, 02 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I actually picked up this book the day I voted in the election. A three hour line at the local library where you’ve run out of podcasts will do that to you. 😄 Mostly, the cover looked neat, so I figured I’d give it a chance. Which makes this only the second physical (non-children’s) book I’ve read in probably a decade.

For better or (and) for worse, the book is billed as ‘if Shirley Jackson wrote The Shining’, which… this is not. It does have a family moved out deep into the wilderness, away from the city they’ve always loved, thrown into land where somehow you can get … feet of unexpected snow? And a tree that may or may not be talking to you?

Mostly, I think it feels not quite finished. There are some decently creepy scenes in the book, but it never quite ramped up for me. The hallucinations the family goes through are certainly disconcerting but, barring one, they don’t really seem to be all that dangerous. I did like that it was never entirely clear what was hallucination and what was real though, that was a nice touch. Then, by the time things really start falling apart, we have sudden violence/death that doesn’t really land and an ending that wrapped up all too suddenly.

I will say that I did enjoy the descriptions of the mountain wilderness and their new home. I would have liked to explore that more. It felt wild, which I appreciated.

Anyways, being only the second physical book I’ve read in a long while and a hardcover at that, it really did have a nice tactile feel to it and I was enjoying the book enough to read it all the way through, so I’ve certainly come across worse.

Onward!

AoC 2024 Day 1: Sortinator

Sun, 01 Dec 2024 00:00:03 +0000

Source: Day 1: Historian Hysteria

Full solution for today (spoilers!).

Part 1

Given two lists of numbers arranged in columns in a file, find the sum of differences (in sorted order).

Advent of Code 2024

Sun, 01 Dec 2024 00:00:01 +0000

Let’s do this (Advent of Code) thing again!

I’m sticking with Rust again. I still use Python when I need to hammer out something quickly, but if I want to do something correctly (and especially if I want it to be fast), you can’t beat Rust.

Let’s see how it goes!

Full solutions will once again be posted to GitHub (including previous years and possibly some I haven’t written up yet): jpverkamp/advent-of-code

Deadpool 2

Thu, 28 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

language warning (duh?) Well that certainly started with a bang. After the surprsing (to some I suppose) success of Deadpool, of course they’re going to make another. It’s … pretty much exactly what you’d expect if you took Deadpool and turned it up to, well, as far as Cable’s gun goes. 😄 We have more X-Men! Well, we have Yukio. And a delightful blink and you’ll miss it group cameo. And Cable!

Moon Over Soho

Thu, 28 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Rivers of London got the introduction out of the way, so now it’s time for Moon Over Soho to really build out the world.

I really love seeing Grant exploring the magic of the world. He’s doing science to magic. I do enjoy books that do that. (Plus, it’s funny!)

I had jokingly developed my own scale for vestigia based on the amount of noise Toby made when he interacted with any residual magic. I called it a yap, one yap being enough vestigia to be apparent even when I wasn’t looking for it.

The yap would be an SI unit, of course, and thus the standard background ambience of a Central London pub was 0.2 of a yap (0.2Y) or 200 milliyaps (200mY).

Also, more worldbuilding about what the ‘Rivers’ are (fae? or at least fae adjacent). More talk about vampires. And of course… What’s the deal with Nightingale?

“What’s the biggest thing you’ve zapped with a fireball?’ I asked.
‘That would be a tiger,‘said Nightingale.
‘Well don’t tell Greenpeace,’ I said. ‘They’re an endagered species.’
‘Not that sort of tiger,’ said Nightingale. ‘A Panzer-kampfwagen sechs Ausf E.’
I stared at him. ‘You knocked out a Tiger tank with a fireball?’
‘Actually I knocked out two,’ said Nightingale. ‘I have to admit that the first one took three shots, one to disable the tracks, one through the driver’s eye slot and one down the commander’s hatch - brewed up rather nicely.”

Plus, we get piles more London, this time around digging into the musical/jazz scenes. I managed to go through the first book entirely expecting Grant’s parents to be out of the picture (that’s just the way urban fantasy always seems to go), so it’s fascinating to see them on page and actually playing interesting roles in the story!

My Dad says that being a Londoner has nothing to do with where you’re born. He says that there are people who get off a jumbo jet at Heathrow, go through immigration waving any kind of passport, hop on the tube and by the time the train’s pulled into Piccadilly Circus they’ve become a Londoner.

Weirdest change of this series: Grant falls quickly and deeply in ~love~ lust with someone (from a case!) and there are a number of decently explicit on screen sex scenes. I didn’t necessary see that one coming.

Also plotwise, I was … surprised by the ending. Not in who the big bad ended up being, more more what happened after that. It felt sudden and perhaps unearned, like we’d reached the end of the book and had to warp things up. I’m curious if we’ll get any fallout of that in future books, but I don’t really expect to.

I did really like the scenes with Leslie though (from the first book), especially–and counter to my first point–her ending. That… now that has some interesting potential for the series.

Deadpool

Tue, 26 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

language warning (duh?) Oh hey, Deadpool & Wolverine is out on streaming (and it’s been a while since I reviewed or even watched a movie). Let’s rewatch these! From the studio that inexplicably sewed his fucking mouth shut the first time comes five-time Academy Award viewer, Ryan Reynolds in an eHarmony date with destiny. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you… me! Deadpool. I… totally forgot that this movie starts with the highway shootout scene that made the demo reel.

Spider-Gwen, Vol. 4: Predators

Sun, 24 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Okay, after Sitting in a Tree, back to our regularly scheduled Spider-Gwen! lol. And then of course, as these things do everything escalated. Harry/Lizard. Venom. Mr. Murderhands. All the chaos! The main Spider-Gwen storyline was getting a bit weak there, but I’m glad to see this as a return to form. I’m really curious what happens next here. Onward!

Spider-Man/Spider-Gwen: Sitting in a Tree

Sun, 24 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

My thoughts exactly. Issues 16 and 17 of Spider-Gwen are apparently a crossover with Spider-Man… so here we go? Of course we go right from the above to “Miles’ dad is missing”, so I’m not entirely sure this is going to be a helpful aside for Spider-Gwen. We shall see! … seriously? I have no idea what’s going on with that… but I’m going to leave that one for another day.

Spider-Gwen, Vol. 3: Long-Distance

Sat, 23 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The ongoing developments of Spider-Gwen and this universe’s Matt Murdoch.

I’m intrigued!

And then we get an annual made of a bunch of random stories. Cute enough. But… I want the main storyline.

The All New Wolverine body swap was a lot of fun though.

Onward!

The Scar

Fri, 22 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Scars are not injuries, Tanner Sack. A scar is a healing. After injury, a scar is what makes you whole.

Okay, I really thought that Perdido Street Station was one of a kind. A dark, twisted magical world, full of strange creatures, stranger magic, and some truly weird and terrible things lurking just under the surface.

Well, The Scar manged to do quite the job proving me wrong.

First off, we have the setting. In Perdido Street Station, the city of New Crobuzon itself was as much as a character in the stories as any of the, well, characters. So imagine my surprise where the city is only barely mentioned this time around: instead, we have Armada, a mighty floating city built on the back of untold years of captured (and otherwise) ships lashed all together.

Vessels knocked together for hour upon hour, like bones, like someone infinitely stupid and patient at the door of an empty house.

And deep under this city? Mile long chains, designed to harness… something to the city.

So many truths have been kept from me. This violent, pointless voyage has been sopping with blood. I feel thick and sick with it. And that is all: contingent and brutal without meaning. There is nothing to be learnt here. No ecstatic forgetting. There is no redemption in the sea.

So cool.

And that’s not even getting into dead languages, weapsons and fighting styles that harness Possibility itself, a race of deadly mosquito people, and all the other terrors one might find on (and under) the ocean.

And then the characters. Bellis Coldwine, a linguist of all things (I love linguistics). An acquaintances of Isaac Dan der Grimnebulin’s (I love that name) on the run after the whole Slakemoth thing. Stuck on Armada, just looking for a way home.

Silas Fennec. A traveler and so much more from New Crobuzon, with his fingers (and tongue (you’ll see)) in just about everything going on one way or another.

Tanner Sack. A Remade, fully adapted to life on–and in–the sea around Armada.

Uther Doul. A mysterious figure with truly weird sword.

The Lovers. Rulers of Armada. Referred to in text as ‘The Lover’ and ‘The Lover’.

I just love how strange and different Miéville manages to write characters.

In the deepest places, where physical norms collapse under the crushing water, bodies still fall softly through the dark, days after their vessels have capsized. They decay on their long journey down. Nothing will hit the black sand at the bottom of the world but algae-covered bones.

Overall, if anything I like The Scar even more than I did Perdido Street Station. I can’t wait to see what’s next!

Spider-Gwen, Vol. 2: Weapon of Choice

Wed, 20 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

And… after Spider-Women, we’re back!

Two (ish) volumes in and we already have the crisis of faith/lost powers one. Whee!

With Kraven no less. Such an odd villain.

Time running out for Gwen, Castle on her tail—and on the edge it seems—and Captain Stacy has a solution. Luckily, Gwen made friends with… Reed Richards?

Intense. Curious how long this lasts.

Spider-Women

Mon, 18 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Spider-Women team up! Coming soon to an Earth-65 near you. Also, that’s certainly an art style. It’s jarring in most crossovers but even more so in this one for some reason. Anyways. The idea of Jessica Drew’s alternate Agent Drew being a man is somewhat amusing, given her Ultimate version. It’s fascinating to see someone so potentially character defining to Spider-Gwen—like losing her powers! —be in a crossover story. I missed this as I was first planning… Glad I went back and caught it, kind of important that one.

Spider-Gwen, Vol. 1: Greater Power

Sun, 17 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

When worlds collide…

In this universe, Peter Parker wanted to be a hero and got killed for it. So… why is the Lizard apparently still running around?

Also, the Green Goblin!

So much in this world built around a the severe ‘not what it looks like’ of Peter’s death. Strains incredulity… but that’s comics. And it (so far) is working for me.

The introduction of this world’s Captain America was fun. I appreciate the quick backstory.

Likewise Harry Osborne. Dungeons and Dragons nerds unite!

I’m enjoying this series.

Onward!

Spider-Gwen, Vol. 0: Most Wanted?

Sat, 16 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

It’s been a minute. Let’s read some Spider-Gwen. A Reddit post has a reading order. Man comics are complicated.

So here we have Spider-Gwen. An alternate Spider Gwen Stacy! Her dad’s a cop (hunting her) and life is complicated.

We have a small pile of villains—mostly a Vulture, but also Kingpin, Frank Castle, and Matt Murdoch. Ambiguous at both. I’m curious where it goes from here!

A bit of a chaotic start, but I’m looking forward to it!

Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians

Sun, 10 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve read pretty much all of Brandon Sanderson’s works… yet somehow I’ve managed to completely miss Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians. Let’s remedy that.

Short version: Alcatraz reminds me a decent bit of Frugal Wizard–which was actually my least favorite of the Year of Sanderson secret projects. But so far at least, I’m enjoying this series quite a bit more.

Slightly longer version:

In the Hushlands—those Librarian-controlled nations such as the United States, Canada, and England—this book will be published as a work of fantasy. Do not be fooled! This is no work of fiction, nor is my name really Brandon Sanderson. Both are guises to hide the book from Librarian agents. Unfortunately, even with these precautions, I suspect that the Librarians will discover the book and ban it. In that case, our Free Kingdom Agents will have to sneak into libraries and bookstores to put it on shelves. Count yourself lucky if you’ve found one of these secret copies.

This is a (non-Cosmere) YA novel ‘written by’ our titular Alcatraz as he learns that the world he’s always known is full of lies (perpetrated by a cabal of EVIL LIBRARIANS) who are now, of course, out to capture and/or kill him.

As one does.

It’s impressively meta, with almost constant comments from Alcatraz as narrator, talking about writers, writing, fiction, and just about anything else.

Authors also create lovable, friendly characters, then proceed to do terrible things to them, like throw them in unsightly librarian-controlled dungeons. This makes readers feel hurt and worried for the characters. The simple truth is that authors like making people squirm. If this weren’t the case, all novels would be filled completely with cute bunnies having birthday parties.

Which, from my perspective as both a reader and writer myself, is amusing, but feels like it might be a bit weirder / too meta for a much younger reader?

If you don’t believe what I’m telling you, then ask yourself this: would any decent, kind-hearted individual become a writer? Of course not.

Well, so far my children are enjoying it!

I suppose we’ll see where we go from here.

Worldbuildingwise, we haven’t learned that much about how ‘magic’ works in this world (we already have technology based almost entirely on glass along with ‘Talents’, which seem somewhat chaotic). That’s kind of Sanderson’s thing, so I expect a lot more there. The world is chaotic and strains believability when it comes to ‘could you actually have a hidden world like this’ but… suspend disbelief and GO WITH IT.

Characterwise… I’m not actually sure how much I like Alcatraz. So far, I like supporting cast Grandpa Smedry and Bastille quite a bit more. I expect that’s kind of the point.

Overall, enjoyed.

Onward!

How to ADHD: An Insider's Guide to Working with Your Brain

Tue, 05 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Be yourself!
…No, not like that!
— SOCIETY

Brains are weird yo. The older I get/the more I learn, the more true I find this.

Reading books like this (or alternatively this or Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger's or Born on a Blue Day) helps. Discovering that there are other weird brains out there (I do love McCabe’s ‘hello brains’) is wonderful. Seeing both how they see the world the same–and perhaps even more so, the differences even within these groups–is like a lightbulb going off.

Specifically for this one, the idea that just because you are (/ appear to be) succeeding at life… doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s not coming at a cost.

The fact that I could sometimes exceed expectations made it even more frustrating for me—and everyone around me—when I failed to meet the basic ones.

I think that if you have ADHD–or have someone close to you that does… and chances are really good that you do, even if you don’t know it–I think this book is worth a read.

ADHD is a terrible name for the condition, because ‘attention deficit’ implies a lack of attention. However, our brains can focus quite well sometimes–particularly on things we find engaging, such as our hobbies, crushes, video games, and so on. The trouble is, we can’t control the intensity of our focus or what we focus on. . . . This big misconception makes people less likely to seek a diagnosis because they are able to focus sometimes.

Explanations, tools to deal / adapt to a world that isn’t necessarily built for you, and a ton of quotes from a ton of people.

Over the years, we’ve shared long, deep discussions about what it means to have ADHD. About how being “normal” isn’t a realistic goal but being functional is. About how sometimes, paradoxically, being functional means behaving in less (neuro)typical ways, so we can be more mentally healthy, happy, and generous humans for ourselves and for those we love.

Well worth the read.

Onward!

Rivers of London

Fri, 01 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Whenever I come across a “I’ve read all of The Dresden Files, now what?” discussion, one of the series that always seems to come up is Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London. They’re not entirely the same, but I get why people cross recommend them.

Basically, we have a London cop who stumbles upon a mysterious killing, questions a ghost, gets recruited by the ‘magical’ side of the London police, ends up meeting and befriending several rivers (see, the title! Also, it ends up making more sense in the story), and saves the day.

“Are they really gods?"

“I never worry about theological questions,” said Nightingale. “They exist, they have power and they can breach the Queen’s peace - that makes them a police matter.”

More or less.

I think my favorite part of the series (so far) is the humor, most especially the sheer Britishness of it (not being British, I have no idea how accurate it all is, but it’s good enough for me!).

He was from Yorkshire, or somewhere like that, and like many Northerners with issues, he’d moved to London as a cheap alternative to psychotherapy.

Oh, and also picking fun at it’s own genre of course.

“You put a spell on the dog,” I said as we left the house.
“Just a small one,” said Nightingale.
“So magic is real,” I said. “Which makes you a…what?”
“A wizard.”
“Like Harry Potter?”
Nightingale sighed. “No,” he said. “Not like Harry Potter.”
“In what way?”
“I’m not a fictional character,” said Nightingale.”

Second up, the introductions of magic. Any world where the characters try to treat magic as a science and figure out how in the world it really works is a great one in my book.

There’s an awful lot of hinted at worldbuilding there. I hope and expect to see a lot more of that in future books. We’ll just have to see which way all that goes.

Also also, having recently decided that learning Latin was just a great idea as our main character (although for (un)fortunately different reasons I suppose):

Carved above the lintel were the words SCIENTIA POTESTAS EST. Science points east, I wondered? Science is portentous, yes? Science protests too much. Scientific potatoes rule. Had I stumbled on the lair of dangerous plant geneticists?

😄

Spoilers, I guess. 😄

Overall, I had a lot of fun with this book. I’m looking forward to seeing where it goes from here!

Other Minds

Thu, 31 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Cephalopods are an island of mental complexity in the sea of invertebrate animals. Because our most recent common ancestor was so simple and lies so far back, cephalopods are an independent experiment in the evolution of large brains and complex behavior. If we can make contact with cephalopods as sentient beings, it is not because of a shared history, not because of kinship, but because evolution built minds twice over. This is probably the closest we will come to meeting an intelligent alien.

Octopuses¹ are perhaps the best known example of what might be a truly alien intelligence on Earth. They’re far further from humanity than primates or dolphins or even birds. And man. They’re weird.

This book digs into the history of life itself, the beginning of what would eventually become brains, and how life eventually split and branched into all the myriad forms we have today.

In the Ediacaran, other animals might be there around you, without being especially relevant. In the Cambrian, each animal becomes an important part of the environment of others. This entanglement of one life in another, and its evolutionary consequences, is due to behavior and the mechanisms controlling it. From this point on, the mind evolved in response to other minds.

This part? Very interesting.

We also get some fascinating discussions about some of the weirder things octopuses, squid, and cuttlefish do. Color changing, shape shifting, and independently acting arms. They have it all.

Suppose some light-sensitive cells sit below a layer of many chromatophores. As chromatophores of different colors expanded and contracted, the light passing through them would be affected in different ways. If the animal kept track of which chromatophores were expanded, as well as how much light was reaching its sensors, it could know something about the color of incoming light.

Also cool.

Octopus society. A surprisingly short lived and solitary species, and yet still in one case, they’ve actually built something of a city in the ocean off Australia.

A marine research unit at Monterey Bay, California (MBARI), explores deep-sea environments with remote-controlled submarines that carry video cameras. In 2007 they were inspecting a rocky outcrop nearly a mile underwater, off the coast of central California. They saw a deep-sea octopus (Graneledone boreopacifica) moving around. Returning a month or so later, they found the same octopus guarding a clutch of eggs. They kept returning to the site to watch the progress of this clutch of eggs, and always found the octopus there. In the end they watched this one octopus for four and a half years. This octopus brooded her eggs for longer than any other known octopus is thought to live in total, and the fifty-three months it spent there is the longest egg-brooding period reported for any animal species.

Fascinating.

And then also a dive into consciousness. Which… we can barely explain or define what consciousness means for people, let alone verify it’s presence in any other species.

It’s entirely philosophical and not really my domain. Philosophy is weird and malleable and hard (at best) to actually put to scientific scrutiny. We can certainly measure some aspects of intelligence and communication and tool using among non-human species… but how in the world to you ask an octopus what it thinks about thinking? How in the world do you tell if they’re actually aware of their self and surroundings?

The second thing Hume missed is more conspicuous. When we look inside, most people find a flow of inner speech², a monologue that accompanies much of our conscious life. Sentences and phrases, exclamations, rambling commentaries, speeches we would like to give, or wish we’d given. Maybe Hume did not find this in his own case? Some people have a more prominent inner monologue than others. Perhaps Hume was one of those for whom inner speech is weak? It’s possible, but I think it’s more likely that Hume did encounter inner speech, but regarded it as one part of the wash of sensations, not as anything special. There are colors and shapes and emotions in there, and echoes of speech as well.

This whole part was a bit weird–which, being in the title, is kind of weird. I’m not entirely sure what I was expecting, but somehow… more?

And then… it ends. A lot of appendices and references meant the book ended rather before I expected.

A decent book with a delightful cover and a number of fun octopus facts I’d never heard before. Worth reading just for that.

Onward!

Fireborne

Wed, 30 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Dragons!

…are actually probably the weakest part of the book. We’ll get back to that.

They watch us kneel, they see the back of our heads, and they think we’ve given in. They don’t realize you can think from your knees just as well as from your feet.

What we have here is an epic fantasy world, full of the aforementioned dragons and strife and war… but for a change, this world is set in the near aftermath of the collapse of the old regime and the rise of the good guys. In theory.

Everyone gets a chance at education. Even commoners–even orphans of the revolution–can apply to be trained as dragon riders.

From there, we get the first half of the book–a straight up magic school style training montage. It feels awfully YA, in the genre of The Hunger Games / Divergent / Harry Potter, up to and including a school tournament to decide the ‘best dragonrider’.

What really makes the book shine to me is that initial setting–the idea that we’re shortly after a revolution, building something new. And the entirely too real chance that the anything new… might be just as bad as what came before.

Now… the dragons. Despite the fact that all of our main characters have a dragon and they’re present throughout the series–they never seem to really have any personality or presence of their own.

Even now, I don’t think I could honestly tell you more than the subspecies of each dragon, and even then only barely. I like intelligent dragons (a la Temeraire) and love books with more alien dragons (The Rage of Dragons shines here). These are almost more like cars or fighter jets than anything.

And that’s really a bummer.

Overall, I enjoyed the series. And the way things go towards the latter part of the book + the ending really make me curious where in the world it’s going from here.

Onward!

The Kingdom of Copper

Sun, 13 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Because a lost little girl from Cairo thought she was living in some sort of fairy tale. And because for all her supposed cleverness, she couldn’t see that the dashing hero who saved her was its monster.

If The City of Brass set us off on an adventure; The Kingdom of Copper vastly expands the world–and the stakes.

The city of Daevabad is a mess. Nahri’s life is a mess. Ali’s exile is a mess. Dara is dead–but what else is new?–and also a mess.

This is a book about war and violence and family squabbles writ kingdom large. We’re truly in the magical world now, and oh there’s far more depths to that world that we knew.

Of all the middle books of a trilogy out there, few do quite so well as this one. It’s still got some middle book issues–it doesn’t really stand alone–but for what it is, I’m quite impressed.

I’m so looking forward to finishing this one. I fully expect even more and worse messes before (if) everything is wrapped up.

Onward!

“No, I wasn’t afraid. I was tired." Ali’s voice broke on the word. “I’m tired of everyone in this city feeding on vengeance. I’m tired of teaching our children to hate and fear other children because their parents are our enemies. And I’m sick and tired of acting like the only way to save our people is to cut down all who might oppose us, as if our enemies won’t return the favor the instant power shifts.

For All Mankind: Season 4

Fri, 11 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

On MARS! And all caught up!

The 4th and last (as of my watching) final season of For All Mankind sees humanity not only surviving, but THRIVING on Mars, beginning to reach out into other smaller bodies for resources.

It’s kind of awesome and kind of depressing, to see where the writers think humanity could have been. I think it’s a bit wishful, but still. If only…

And yet, things are, of course, not at all rosy. We have some major issues with class divisions, yet more tensions between the US and (still surviving) USSR, and the mess that is the North Koreans landing first.

It’s quite a lot of drama and a world I love to see.

I’m really looking forward to season 5 if (hopefully when) we get it!

Onward!

Bunny

Thu, 10 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve got a theory… it could be bunnies.

“We never joke about bunnies, Bunny.”

Man, that is quite a book.

It’s part college experience–and not just any college experience, but one at a super small liberal arts school, focusing on writing and poetry and all that… to a degree that I (engineering school) couldn’t even tell you for sure if it’s satire or just how that works.

It’s part a story about loneliness and fitting in–which ties in well with the college experience. About seeing the ‘popular girls’, first from the outside, and then all too intimately.

And of course (not that I knew this going into it; figured it out pretty quick though), it’s part horror story. It’s a slow burning thrilling, but there’s more than a bit of the surreal and body horror bits of the genre.

All together, it’s an intense sort of read, sort of like a car crash, but in a good way. (Yeah. I know.)

It takes a while to get going, slowly getting more and more… off. And then everything skids hard to one side. You just can’t look away. You have to see what happens next.

Overall, I enjoyed the experience.

I think.

Certainly not a book for everyone, but there are more than a few that I expect would get a (bunny?) kick out of it.

Ludum Dare(ish) 56: BugShine

Mon, 07 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Ludum Dare? That’s been a while!

I didn’t actually enter the game jam. Honestly, I wasn’t sure I was going to write anything. But I had a bit of an idea and spent a few hours only on Sunday hammering something out:

Yeah, I did another cellular automata thing 😄

It’s not at all complete, but the basic idea is:

Generate a random level
See it with multiple players (colonies of bugs)
Each bug will send out waves of ‘shine’, expanding their territory
Take over the map to win

It’s sort of got that?

I’m using Rust as I’ve been doing a lot recently.

The main libraries are:

pixels for the rendering; it gives me direct access to a pixel buffer, which is my favorite
winit for windowing; this did require the feature rwh_05 to be properly compatible with pixels, which took a minute to track down

Other than, that, it’s straight custom code which you can see in it’s entirety on my github.

main.rs - creates the window and handles input
world.rs - runs the simulation mostly in an update function; with generation in new

I think that perhaps the only really interesting bit about the code is how the ‘shine waves’ work. Basically, I have a grid of the state of each cell, but I also have a Vec that tracks ‘active’ pixels. Those are the only ones that can update–which both helps performance and makes the simulation appear the way it does.

Overall, a nice quick project. More than anything, it actually convinced me to try setting up something that can render pixel buffers on Rust. And with a (very minimal) GUI, too! Both things I’ve been meaning to learn.

I probably won’t do anything more with this code, but it’s got the seeds of something more interesting. Keep an eye out. 😄

Onward!

Finish Myself a Grep

Sat, 05 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Hey, I said that I would follow up on my post about Building Myself a Grep… well here it is!

And I’m actually surprised with myself in how far I actually made it!

You can see the current state of my code on Github. You can install it from that repo (checked out) with cargo install --path .

I mostly worked off the MDN documentation:

Details

Supported Regex Features

Assertions:
- ^ and $ for entire patterns
- Parsing look head/behind (not matched)
Character classes
- Single characters: [abc]
- Ranges: [a-z]
- Negated classes: [^abc]
- Wildcards: .
- Classes: \d/\D for digits, \w/\W for ‘words’, and \s/\S for whitespace
- Escape characters: \t\r\n\v\f
- Control characters: \cX (I’ve never used these)
- Hex and unicode literals: \hXX and \uXXXX
- Disjunction: | (both in capture groups and not)
Groups and back references
- Capture groups: (abc)
- Named capture groups: (?<name>abc)
- Non-capturing groups: (?:abc)
- Flags: (?ims-ims:abc)
  - Both enabling and disabling
  - i and s but not m
- Backreferences: \n
- Named backreferences: \k<name>
Quantifiers
- * for zero or more
- + for one or more
- ? for zero or one
- *?, +?, and ?? for lazy / non-greedy matches
- abc{n} exactly n matches
- abc{n,} at least n matches
- abc{,m} up to m matches
- abc{n,m} at least n and up to m matches (inclusive)
- Lazy matches for all of those

Most of those were fairly straight forward extensions of previous code. In think the most interesting ones were handling the parsing of all the different things that can go in groups (including flags).

For each of them, you can check my git commit history to see how I implemented specific things. It’s mostly one commit per feature, but not always.

Unsupported Regex Features (so far!)

Assertions:
- Word boundaries (\b and \B)
- Look ahead/behind (parsed but not matched)
Character classes
- [\b] for backspace characters
- Long unicode format: \u{XXXXX}
- Unicode properties: \p{...}/\P{...}
Groups and back references:
- m flag / mode: multiline matches

The look ahead/behind is the one I’m most interested in supporting. I don’t even think it will be that hard, I just honestly missed it.

The more interesting one will be the m flag. Currently, I only match lines, so that will be a decently large restructuring. We’ll see.

Supported CLI flags

I’ve made an awful lot of progress on this one too!

$ jp-grep --help

A custom grep implementation; always behaves as egrep

Usage: jp-grep [OPTIONS] [PATTERN] [PATHS]...

Arguments:
 [PATTERN] The regular expression to evaluate; may also be specified with -e
 [PATHS]... Paths to search for matches; if none are provided read from stdin

Options:
 -A, --after-context <AFTER_CONTEXT>
 Lines of context to print after each match
 -B, --before-context <BEFORE_CONTEXT>
 Lines of context to print before each match
 -C, --context <CONTEXT>
 Lines to print both before and after
 -c, --count
 Only print the matching count
 -E, --extended-regexp
 Extended regex mode (egrep); this option is ignored (always true)
 -e, --regexp <ADDITIONAL_PATTERNS>
 Additional patterns, will return a line if any match
 -h, --no-filename
 Never print filenames
 --help
 Display this help message
 -i, --ignore-case
 Default to case insensitive match
 -n, --line-number
 Print line numbers before matches and context
 -r, --recursive
 Recursively add any directories (-R also works)
 -v, --invert-match
 Invert the match; only print lines that don't match any pattern
 -V, --version
 Print version

Of those, the context flags (-A, -B, and -C) were probably the most tricky, since I basically had to implement a circular buffer for them. I could have just read the entire file into memory, but from the beginning, I didn’t want to do that.

-E is a little silly, since that’s the only grep pattern I support (and the only one I actually use in grep, so that’s fair).

So far as supporting multiple files, recursive search, and stdin, read the section on collecting files later.

So far as printing (handling line numbers and file names), read the section on printing lines.

Overall, pretty fun code.

Unsupported CLI flags

So far, there are a bunch of flags that I don’t support for grep. Of those, there are a bunch that I don’t intend to support (like built in compression support and properly dealing with symlinks).

The things that I would still like to support though are:

Input options:
- -f file/--file=file - Read patterns from file
Output options:
- -a/--text - Currently I always have this set; I don’t treat binary files differently
- -L/--files-without-match - only print files that don’t match
- -o/--only-matching - only print the matching groups; I have the groups for backreferences, use them!
File filtering - files to include/exclude (useful with recursive matches):
- --exclude pattern
- --exclude-dir pattern
- --include pattern
- --include-dir pattern

That’s not too bad, all things consider.

Error handling

One thing that I actually played a bit with this time around was custom error handling in the parser. Rather than just returning &str all over the place for Err types, I made my own:

#[derive(Debug, Clone, Copy, PartialEq, Eq)]
pub(crate) enum ParserError {
 RemainingInput,
 UnexpectedEnd,
 InvalidCharacter(char, &'static str),
 InvalidUnicodeCodePoint(u32),
 InvalidRange(char, char),
 InvalidRepeatRange(u32, u32),
}

impl std::fmt::Display for ParserError {
 fn fmt(&self, f: &mut std::fmt::Formatter<'_>) -> std::fmt::Result {
 match self {
 ParserError::RemainingInput => write!(f, "Unexpected input after parsing"),
 ParserError::UnexpectedEnd => write!(f, "Unexpected end of input"),
 ParserError::InvalidCharacter(c, expected) => {
 write!(f, "Invalid character '{}', expected {}", c, expected)
 }
 ParserError::InvalidUnicodeCodePoint(code_point) => {
 write!(f, "Invalid unicode code point: {}", code_point)
 }
 ParserError::InvalidRange(start, end) => {
 write!(f, "Invalid range: {}-{}", start, end)
 }
 ParserError::InvalidRepeatRange(start, end) => {
 write!(f, "Invalid range: {}-{}", start, end)
 }
 }
 }
}

#[derive(Debug, Clone, Copy, PartialEq, Eq)]
pub(crate) struct ParserErrorWithPosition {
 pub position: usize,
 pub error: ParserError,
}

The WithPosition type also lets me pinpoint exactly where in a pattern I failed:

jp-grep 'this is some long complicated pattern, \hXX see?'

Error parsing regex: Invalid character 'X', expected hex digit
| this is some long complicated pattern, \hXX see?
| ^

That’s pretty neat and I hope helpful! 😄

Expanding past CodeCrafters

Overall, I’m pretty happy with this project. It’s got a pretty decent chunk of code, including…

$ jp-grep -c -v -e '//' -e '^\s*$' **/*.rs

1241

…over 1000 lines of Rust code, including tests but not blank lines or comments. 😄

I’ll probably pick this up at least once more.

Now… will I actually use this? Probably not. But it was certainly interesting to write.

Other than that, was CodeCrafters actually helpful for this? Middling. It was the kick I needed to actually do it (I’ve been meaning to write this for years at this point) and once I was started, I could finish it. On the other hand, the output format they require was a bit annoying at times, I’ve mostly moved away from that.

Still, worth I think. I’ll probably continue to do their free programs. Kafka is up next. Whee servers!

Perdido Street Station

Fri, 04 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Its substance was known to me. The crawling infinity of colours, the chaos of textures that went into each strand of that eternally complex tapestry…each one resonated under the step of the dancing mad god, vibrating and sending little echoes of bravery, or hunger, or architecture, or argument, or cabbage or murder or concrete across the aether. The weft of starlings’ motivations connected to the thick, sticky strand of a young thief’s laugh. The fibres stretched taut and glued themselves solidly to a third line, its silk made from the angles of seven flying buttresses to a cathedral roof. The plait disappeared into the enormity of possible spaces.

Any time you ask about modern ‘weird fiction’ / weird ecologies / weird cities. China Miéville and Perdido Street Station almost always come up. Turns out… that’s for a good reason. Why in the world did I take so long to read this book?

Overall, this book really shines when it comes to weird¹ worldbuilding. Half-bird, half-human creature? Not that weird. Half-bug creatures? Where the women have a scarab beetle instead of ahead and the males are non-sapient grubs? Weird. Frog people? Re-animates and constructs? Plant people? All living together in a grimy steam-powered, airship and tech and magic driven mess of a metropolis?

Weird¹.

And wonderful.

Overall, this was exactly the sort of book that I love and I’m glad to see there are other books in the same world, if not with the same characters. I want more!

Conversely, if you’re not into weird fiction, more than a touch of body horror, or a book where everyone necessarily get a happy ending (or even survive the story)… maybe skip this one. It’s dark. And that’s sort of the point.

Side note: I listened to this on audiobook and I loved the narration. Perhaps my favorite thing? Whenever the narrator said Issac’s full name. Grimnebulin! 😄

Art is something you choose to make… it’s a bringing together of… of everything around you into something that makes you more human, more khepri, whatever. More of a person.

Chaos: Making a New Science

Thu, 26 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Nature forms patterns. Some are orderly in space but disorderly in time, others orderly in time but disorderly in space. Some patterns are fractal, exhibiting structures self-similar in scale. Others give rise to steady states or oscillating ones. Pattern formation has become a branch of physics and of materials science, allowing scientists to model the aggregation of particles into clusters, the fractured spread of electrical discharges, and the growth of crystals in ice and metal alloys. The dynamics seem so basic—shapes changing in space and time—yet only now are the tools available to understand them.

Chaos is the study of non-linear systems. Of fractals. Of … chaos. It takes the world we know it and proves that, at some level, we don’t know anything. We can simulate the world to ever increasing levels of accuracy and at some point, things just blow up.

It’s a neat idea, not nearly as weird as it was 40 years ago when this was written (and even then, three years before Jurassic Park made it really cool). I’ve messed with fractals more than a bit and studied quite a bit of higher level math in school, so little of this is particularly new to me–so I’m probably ont the target audience.

Overall, this book is really more about the history and discovery of chaos, rather than necessarily digging into the math and how it really works (when we even know). It’s interesting, but not what I was expecting.

So… I’m glad enough that I read it, but probably wouldn’t strongly recommended it. So it goes.

It's A Wonderful Midlife Crisis

Mon, 23 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

As someone quickly approaching 40 with a penchant for urban fantasy, this book should have been right up my alley. Except… the plot is weak, the world building is lazy, and the romance doesn’t really make sense.

I think the book sums itself up well.

“Oh God, Daisy,” ***** said, letting her head fall to her chest. “You have it all wrong.”

“Have what wrong?” I asked as a feeling of dread washed over me.

“Every good story has a major plot twist,” she said slowly, growing more agitated with each word.

This is on page 155 of 164. Daisy (our MC) is finally finally learning… and still got it wrong. And it’s not even (in my opinion) that sensible a plot twist. And then the book ends. It’s very much set up for a sequel; without which, it doesn’t really stand alone.

So… despite this being an oddly well reviewed book in general, it’s just really not my cup of tea. Perhaps you’d like it more. Perhaps it gets better.

Onward.