Didn’t stay up for the football but I’m a big fan of anything that temporarily harms productivity, there’s not enough slacking off nowadays
Remote
Matt Round
@mattround@crispsandwi.ch
mastodon 4.7.3Trying to make web more fun with vole.wtf @VOLEwtf@crispsandwi.ch and other online nonsense.
You can also hire me to devise 💡IDEAS💡 and turn them into proper plans & lovely web things.
795 Followers
421 Following
50 Posts
Joined January 20, 2023
Website:
The Vole Site:
Toast:
Cooled then buttered
Imagine trusting GROK with all your data, FFS
Argos in town has become a church, hope they make people write prayer/hymn requests on slips of paper using tiny pencils then show their numbers queued up on a screen
Random internet content is now almost worthless for training LLMs, which is why they’re spending millions on buying/scanning/destroying LLM-free physical books
What happens when hardly anyone’s writing new, uncontaminated non-fiction? I suppose we’re going to find out
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The fishermen one still seems to be clinging on, the house & shop were painted over within a decade
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The thing with them using slop maps of Middle Earth in promo material is yet another example of how standards have shifted, not v long ago if you were that careless with a major licensed brand it was a serious matter that’d jeopardise your job, now it’s commonplace & seemingly accepted
And if you go one step forward you can see them preparing on the right
Just checked on sales numbers for this (Lulu doesn’t do anything helpful like showing you graphs/stats, have to download a CSV), it’s at 456 copies sold
https://vole.wtf/doctype/
There won’t be a second issue, but there may be something related, and I’ve got another print project planned for autumn
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(I worked with an ad agency that had fired multiple people for less; everyone knew where the buck stopped for each aspect of major campaigns for major brands, it was serious stuff)
Love this. Yes, post is a huge faff, but it can make an impact https://www.gamefile.news/p/panic-mail-arco-despelote-time-flies-thank-goodness-teeth
Already had someone complain that this is “promoting AI”, fucking hell https://datacenter.fm
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I’m dreading hearing that those in my family with anti-vax/conspiracy tendencies have also fallen into this
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There are updates at the end that I missed because of the ad unit placement, their statement has a bit of vagueness/wiggle room but the worst stuff was the "Imagined by Moleskine, generated by AI” promo material
Today’s coding has mostly consisted of deleting code, which is always the best coding
(realised a whole load of temporary variables weren’t actually needed)
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@stevewetherill@oldbytes.space Always fascinating reading this stuff (& I'm never sure whether to be sad that I missed out on making games in that era or relieved that I didn't get thrown into the stress & chaos at a young age!)
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(I'm not saying everyone's going to be driven mad or we need panicky warnings everywhere, just that there should be sensible caution, more liability/responsibility for AI firms, and "AI education" needs to cover the workings & risks/quirks)
Looks like Apple’s loosened its requirements for using account age to verify you’re an adult (didn’t work for me previously, possibly because I’d never used a credit card with Apple)
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The most annoying thing about this game was when it took off on Hacker News and dozens of people proclaimed it to be bug-ridden rubbish because they didn’t know about en passant
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@simoncox@seocommunity.social Someone clearly insisted on the disclaimer at some point (probably because some of it's obvious slop) & they've tried to turn it into a catchy tagline, whole thing's a mess
Something I’m doing for the first time with current project & liking a lot: there’s a ‘changelog’ Google Doc where I put a date subheading then list what I’ve done/discovered, including occasional demo links. Client can dip in when feeling curious
Decent campaign idea & pretty lucrative for the winner (10-day Iceland trip + $50K) https://www.icelandair.com/flights/campaign/really-bad-photographer/
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@vale Voice artist agreed to do a trial run at small program but hasn't got to it yet. Sadly I don't think whole audiobook is viable (would be lovely to offer mag with cassette stuck on etc but I'd lose money) but would be fun to do something to extend the project
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@WiteWulf The skydiving stuff has always been a bit silly, but I reckon the effects & worldbuilding hold up
Noticed Reign of Fire is on TV, underrated film that features an absolutely wonderful bit of post-apocalyptic culture https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCBA1wii70o
"Reign of Fire" - Star Wars Scene
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@felixthehat Yeah I think Jetpack has been part of the problem, there's a fundamental conflict of interest there
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Ah, I realised it was from a think tank, but hadn't realised they're using the run-up to local elections (& expected terrible results) to apply pressure, rather than campaigning to get sympathy from voters https://www.labourtogether.uk/all-reports/big-bang-reform-for-local-govt
Working on something with multiple coordinate systems, multiple representations of points and multiple projections of coordinates, and it’s completely melting my brain
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@RobeeShepherd@mastodon.art Yep, it's got en passant, castling & promoting pawns to queens
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@mez@mastodon.nz People have assessed it in the past but I can't remember their estimates. Experienced players certainly have no trouble beating it but it's just right for beginners, you always feel you can beat it but if you slip up you're done for
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@flori Some of it's silly, but the effects hold up and it has a proper apocalyptic struggling-for-survival feel
Hmm is that good..?
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(I suppose one year I should launch a really serious thing on the vole site on April 1st)
OK, who’s great at low(ish)-poly 3D modelling?
Just lining up possible candidates for a chunk of work that should arrive in next month or two, going to have a polished, fairly minimalist style with restrained texturing (rather than messy, organic, etc)
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EmDash isn’t going to kill/replace WP, it’ll have its own issues & many will be wary of CloudFlare lockin, but it’ll shake things up a bit and probably affect WP’s roadmap
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Another mysterious update: made another bit far faster 🎉
(at some point I’ll be making it all slower again by adding fancy effects)
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(I stopped making WP sites when it became impossible to offer a custom site at a reasonable price for smallish clients, partly due to theming, partly due to people breaking things with ‘cool’ plugins then expecting me to be on call to help fix the mess)
oof that was hard work
🧱 #DayBrix for Top-Heavy Tuesday, 14 Apr 2026: 🌟100% in 109.7 seconds
https://vole.wtf/daybrix/
