unix domain sockets permalink: https://wizardzines.com/comics/unix-domain-sockets/ from our zine Bite Size Linux!: https://wizardzines.com/zines/bite-size-linux/
Red Blob Games
@redblobgames.com
Hi! I'm Amit Patel. I explain algorithms and math with interactive web pages (incl. pathfinding, hexagons, procgen maps, voronoi). Wrote Solar Realms Elite; helped w/Barren Realms Elite and Realm of the Mad God. https://www.redblobgames.com/
I added some color and shape options to my procedural face generator www.redblobgames.com/x/1845-face-...
Love this project and writeup! A color space to cover skin colors. toneyalexander.github.io/inclusive-co... (can also be useful for #procgen)
What Colors Are We? Constructing A Color Space For Skin Tones
Simple equations and a color picker to inclusively select simplified skin tones in a custom color space for digital art or game development.
toneyalexander.github.io
anatomy of a HTTP response permalink: https://wizardzines.com/comics/anatomy-http-response/ from our zine HTTP: Learn your browser's language!: https://wizardzines.com/zines/http/
![### HTTP responses have:
- a status code (200 OK! 404 not found!)
- headers
- a body (HTML, an image, JSON, etc)
### Here's the HTTP response from `examplecat.com/cat.txt`:
```
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
status
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Cache-Control: public, max-age=0
Content-Length: 33
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Date: Mon, 09 Sep 2019 01:57:35 GMT
Etag: "ac5affa59f554a1440043537ae973790-ssl"
Strict-Transport-Security: max-age=31536000
Age: 0
Server: Netlify
[ASCII image of a cat, labelled "cat!" with a smiley face]
```
The first line, `HTTP/1.1 200 OK` is the status code. "200" is the status.
The lines from `Accept-Ranges` to `Server` are the headers.
The cat picture is the body.
### There are a few kinds of response headers:
- when the resource was sent/modified:
```
Date: Mon, 09 Sep 2019 01:57:35 GMT
Last-Modified: 3 Feb 2017 13:00:00 GMT
```
- about the response body:
```
Content-Language: en-US
Content-Length: 33
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
Content-Encoding: g](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:ygxqgtpypjuaf2b3oyrdn44x/bafkreiddcdprzhtnwxvofkmdifyesdu2jfvdweyyosp6heqe6wnnx3ylx4)
I've been trying to write this page since … 2015! Each time I try, get frustrated, quit, start over. But this time I think I might have gotten the page to a good state … www.redblobgames.com/pathfinding/...
Red Blob Games: Improving Heuristics
redblobgames.com
At 2019's Roguelike Celebration conference @apepers.bsky.social gave a talk about different types of procedural generation practitioners and how they are similar to Dungeons & Dragons magic classes www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYMd...
Alexei Pepers - A Guide to Proc Gen Practitioners
YouTube video by Roguelike Celebration
youtube.com
The temperature setting on LLMs makes me think of mind-altering substances: low: coffee medium: beer high: lsd Related: amitp.blogspot.com/2022/05/beer...
Beer mode and coffee mode
Over the years I've mentioned to people that I work in two modes: Beer Mode 🍺 I'm relaxed and make connections between many differe...
amitp.blogspot.com
This video covers so many of my interests: noise, fractals, hexagons, spherical geometry, map generation, plate tectonics www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xL0...
Maps: Fractals, Tectonics and the Fourth Dimension
YouTube video by Fractal Philosophy
youtube.com
For fans of procedurally generated terrain, watch this video erosiv.studio/publications... h/t @jazztap.bsky.social
erosiv - Stochastic Geomorphological Transport for Terrain Erosion Simulation
erosiv.studio
For a long time 3D graphics had a fixed function pipeline. Over time, that loosened up, and we can now write "shaders" to control how it works. I've been wondering about the same with LLMs—
Love this video! I don't have a perfect system but: - I keep short term stuff on paper - I keep long term stuff on the computer (ideally searchable text files, but I also use Notion occasionally) I don't do a lot of organizing (mindmap, zettlekasten, etc.). My notes are messy.
Saleh@mskayyali.com · 2mo agoNew Video on Interface Studies What Every Productivity App Trades Away youtu.be/OuEKdD_1F8s?... As we chase the latest productivity systems, this video takes a step back to examine the fundamental trade-offs built into every productivity app.
Broadcasting negative opinions about something is an easy way to get a lot of people to agree with you, because it resonates with them. They've been thinking the same thing, and they were too afraid to say it out loud. And it feels good to have someone else say it. And it becomes self-sustaining...
Bobbie's interview questions were great — it got me thinking about what I'm working on and what I'd like to be working on
Bobbie Chen@bobbiechen.com · 2mo agoToday, it has never been easier to create something, anything. But when given the opportunity, most people never do. So I interviewed four creators I admire, on how they make the exciting, creative, uniquely-personal things they do - and here's the result: digitalseams.com/blog/making-...
I have finally solved a minor retrocomputing mystery related to my favorite BBS door game, "Solar Realms Elite." It had befuddled me for many years. breakintochat.com/blog/2026/06... #bbs #retrocomputing #ansiart #gamedev #textmode
The mystery of the Solar Realms Elite title screen - Break Into Chat
In my recent series ANSI art and webcomics, I debunked a false assertion that began in a history book and propagated across the web. Now it’s time to solve the mystery of an old ANSI art screen that I...
breakintochat.com
Intel introduced the 8087 floating-point chip in 1980 to make math faster. The chip does tangents, square roots, and so forth, but fundamentally everything is computed through additions and subtractions, performed by an adder at the heart of the chip. Let's look at the adder's circuitry... 1/N
The terrain of Jan Mayen creates a hole in the clouds as they part around the Arctic island.
New blog post! Kinda math-heavy this time, but I wanted to share about this weirdly fascinating things called quiver representations that generalize stuff from basic linear algebra to wild unsolvable problems 🤩 lisyarus.github.io/blog/posts/q...
Another great post from @thorstenball.com: Building software is learning → registerspill.thorstenball.com/p/building-s...
Building Software Is Learning
An internal note to the Amp team on feedback and shipping faster
registerspill.thorstenball.com
invest in understanding permalink: https://wizardzines.com/comics/invest-in-understanding/ from our zine So you want to be a wizard: https://wizardzines.com/zines/wizard/
For the last 25 years, Barren Realms Elite (BRE) has been frozen in amber, with the same ANSI title screen. But it was preceded by lots of other designs from 1992-97. Check out my gallery of 14 of these titles from one of the best-known classic BBS door games. breakintochat.com/blog/2026/05...
The many ANSI title screens of Barren Realms Elite (BRE) - Break Into Chat
If you’ve played Barren Realms Elite at any time in the past quarter-century, you probably have seen this spiffy ANSI title screen: That’s because — like most classic BBS door games — BRE became more ...
breakintochat.com
what's a branch? permalink: https://wizardzines.com/comics/whats-a-branch/ from our zine How Git Works: https://wizardzines.com/zines/git/
One advantage of having web pages instead of academic papers is that I can keep improving them. Today I added drag handles to the cone/sector section of www.redblobgames.com/grids/circle... You can now adjust these visually instead of using the sliders. But the sliders still work too.
Those of you who like to learn algorithms from videos might be interested in: www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_Ac... → about a recent result showing better graph search when some edge weights are negative www.youtube.com/@LowerBoundYT → a whole channel about pathfinding algorithms
Lower Bound
Learn Pathfinding & Heuristic Search (with Thomas, PhD) I teach for the Masters of AI at the University of Melbourne (QS #19 in the world) and at Monash University (QS #36) in Australia. I hope to al...
youtube.com
I'm working on a stylized shader for flowing water. Here are some results combining phasor noise with advection along the flow direction. Some more details in 🧵. The code is on shadertoy: www.shadertoy.com/view/N3sGD2 #gamedev #procedural #indiegamedev #techart
bash debugging permalink: https://wizardzines.com/comics/bash-debugging/ from our zine Bite Size Bash!: https://wizardzines.com/zines/bite-size-bash/
![### our hero: `set -x`
`set -x` prints out every line of a script as it executes, with all the variables
expanded!
`#!/bin/bash
set -x`
(I usually put `set -x` at the top)
### or `bash -X`
`$ bash -x script.sh` does the same thing as putting `set -x` at the top of `script.sh`
### you can stop before every line
`trap read DEBUG`\
the `DEBUG` "signal" is triggered before every line of code
### a fancy step debugger trick
put this at the start of your script to confirm every line before it runs:
`trap '(read -p "\[$BASH_SOURCE: $LINENO] $BASH_COMMAND")' DEBUG`
- `read -p` prints a message, press enter to continue
- `$BASH_SOURCE` is the script filename
- `$LINENO` is the line number
- `$BASH_COMMAND` is the next command that will run
### how to print better error messages
this die function:
`die() { echo $1 >&2; exit 1; }` lets you exit the program and print a message if a command fails, like this:
`some_command || die "oh no!"`](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:ygxqgtpypjuaf2b3oyrdn44x/bafkreigtmjo6ogs6rsyw5ldhsrzblsgztaf3vxd6ntbtw2x22oruobahii)
New blog post: Compositing & Blending! 🥳 I spent the last few months reading all about blend modes so you don't have to: You'll learn what compositing and blending are, and what is actually going on under the hood when you apply blend modes in CSS 🎨 nik.digital/posts/compos...
Compositing & Blending • Niklas Gadermann
Exploring the math and intuition behind blend modes in the browser
nik.digital
The complex plane colored by the argument of a polynomial. Each root drifts along a tiny orbit and the color vortices follow: every swirl is a zero. Made with #python #numpy #matplotlib in a @marimo.io notebook.
Trying to show a flow field and also an object following a path in that flow field. Too many arrows? It's growing on me.
