Picture of me, long black hair in a tentacles shirt

Dalliance.net is Pre’s homepage, index of his projects, updates on his blog. That sort of thing. You can subscribe in various ways.

Projects

Blog

Blog header image, me silhouetted against an orange/yellow sunset

My blog, mostly monthly summaries of the Fediverse Account.

Visit at dalliance.net/blog

Or check out the categories index

Starship Schrödinger’s Destiny

A crew of five stand in a green field with a flying saucer behind them next to a planet like earth in the sky.

Ongoing: An Interactive Sci-Fi story for Virtual Reality about the adventures of the crew of a flying saucer.

Visit at starshipsd.com

Wordcloud Tarot

A spread of cards scattered around. Each has a picture, and also a world cloud in the background

Ongoing: My tarot decks have the meanings of the cards written on the card in a world-cloud. There’s also a video show with a reading about politics most weeks.

Visit at wordcloudtarot.com

Tentacles, After The End

A woman in a blue dress and a red and chrome robot flee from tentacle monsters chasing in the background

A 30 minute animated movie about the last woman alive on a planet ravaged by tentacle monsters from outer space.

Tentacles is complete, visit the archive at tentacles.org.uk

Book: Do Dream Sheep Bleat?

A white pocketbook with the icon of a black and white fat penguin

A short story book about magic and memes and reality.

Dreamsheep is complete, you can buy a copy or read it online at dalliance.net/dreamsheep

Book: Yes, The Conspiracy Really Exists, And Furthermore It’s All Your Fault.

A book cover with a starburst, pyramid and eye

A long rant about how stupid humans screw up humanity.

The book is complete, you can buy a copy or read it online at dalliance.net/yes

Loopy

Pre behind some keyboard

After the band broke up, I took to playing with myself via a loop pedal. Sometimes, very rarely, even in public.

Bookshelf

dusty old books in a bookshelf plus logo

An album of songs inspired by some of the best books on my bookshelf.

The album is complete, you can listen to the songs at dalliance.net/bookshelf

Handsome Jack’s Showband

A semi-circular logo and silhouetted crowd of arms

My punk cover’s band.

Despite some online-only gigs, the band didn’t make it though the pandemic, you can watch some old gig videos online at handsomejacks.co.uk

Joust Adventure

Screenshot of a game, made from pictures of plush toys and balloons

A little web-game I made back in 2011 with the hope people might pay me to make level 2.

I don’t think anyone ever finished level 1. Too hard.

Can you do it?

The project is abandoned, you can still play level one at dalliance.net/joustadventure. So far as I know, I’m the only person to ever complete the level. Let me know if you do!

  • Diary

    My diary from the Fediverse.
    Status at - Thu, 06 Nov 2025 15:29:44 +0000

    More of the door frames ready or the window doors made, wood cut for the big mirrored blinds, some other stuff I can't really tell. Lots of clean up for a two man painting day tomorrow.


    Status at - Thu, 06 Nov 2025 09:02:31 +0000

    Weird to see Sky News, owned by Rupert Murdoch who has no formal authority in the UK but uses his newspapers to control narratives and push right wing content and politicians he favors, complain that Elon Musk has no formal authority in the UK and yet has the power to control narratives and push right-wing content, extreme content, and politicians Musk favors.

    🤔

    Still, interesting report pointing out those things, and it all just highlights how important it is that these spaces have no owners.

    news.sky.com/story/the-x-effec


    Status at - Wed, 05 Nov 2025 15:37:33 +0000

    A day without work with the worker calling in sick.

    Seems to be better today though.

    We have shelves in the closet and another frame is in construction here. Presumably for the window doors.

    Painting has begun. Colour would ideally be half a shade darker but getting varnish for pine in blue seems to be surprisingly tricky. Maybe another coat will help but don't want to lose the wood grain under it.

    Might have tried to get a slightly more pale wall if I'd known. So many things you don't really know until you see 'em.

    Feels like I'm being gassed, opened up all the windows and doors. This paint takes a long time to try and apparently stinks up the flat while it does so.


    Status at - Tue, 04 Nov 2025 13:35:53 +0000

    Wow, those Covid vaccinations are pretty expensive if you're young and healthy and want to stay that way eh?

    Did it anyway. Suppose I should be glad I still count as young.

    Thanks for the profiteering Pfizer, thanks for nothing NHS.


    Status at - Mon, 03 Nov 2025 17:59:29 +0000

    Short day today as the worker had to leave early for some sort of appointment.

    Still, the hanging rails are up inside the wardrobe, the racks are up in the closet to support the adjustable shelves in there, the fixed shelves at the side of the cupboard are up.

    I thought I smelled paint for a while before he left but turns out that was "wood filler", apparently filling the holes in the natural wood?

    Not sure what this frame will be. Is it the edges for a panel door? Is it the start of the windowed doors for the top cupboards? Dunno.


    Status at - Mon, 03 Nov 2025 17:48:44 +0000

    Content warning:Buffy Comics

    Been reading some of the Buffy The Vampire Slayer comic-books, set after the TV shows ended.

    It's a very different world with Buffy and Xander being commanders of a whole slayer army with seemingly massive resources, from a castle being attacked by various supernatural forces.

    Very different pacing from the TV show too.

    You know that episode of Angel where Spike and Angel are running around in Italy chasing after Buffy who now dates The Immortal?

    Turns out it wasn't Buffy at all, but one of her decoys that have been deployed around the world. Andrew thought it would be funny to troll the two vampires by pretending she was dating The Immortal.

    The artwork is all great, but sometimes a little rough and I find it challenging since I don't always recognize who is supposed to be who, especially as the artists and styles switch from book to book.

    Some of the mini stories feel like just pulling the TV show characters back for no good reason.

    I hear rumors of a new Buffy TV show starring SMG with no involvement from Joss, and wonder if it'll assume these stories of visiting the future or fighting with an army from a castle base will be retconned out entirely?

    It's an entertaining read and nice to visit those characters again, but doesn't feel much like the TV show because it's such a different setting and Buffy is very different as a commander than a school girl.


    Status at - Sun, 02 Nov 2025 10:29:35 +0000

    Masto Admin Tip

    Every masto admin surely knows to regularly clean up cached media from remote servers with the command

    RAILS_ENV=production ./bin/tootctl media remove

    But do they also know that this doesn't include remote profile images from users who mostly probably haven't even logged in at home for years?

    So likely admins should also run

    RAILS_ENV=production bin/tootctl media remove --prune-profiles --days=30

    To remove remote profiles that haven't been needed in a month?

    I only discovered this last night, and running it examined nearly 400,000 accounts and removed 86Gb, or 70% of the media storage space!

    Now instead of being 100% full, our media drive is 29% full.


    Status at - Fri, 31 Oct 2025 15:29:56 +0000

    Door hung on the big closet, and the small wardrobe, and cut on all the small headboard flaps though they aren't attached yet. Some more wood cuts to the right shape scattered around. Painting may begin on Monday since we're out of wood again. More ordered.

    Mirrors arrived this morning. The big one is fucking huge.


    Status at - Thu, 30 Oct 2025 17:08:56 +0000

    Lots of doors now hung. Apparently the "panel" doors will really just be solid boards with edges glued on. He reckons they will paint before they do that bit.

    And with that the carpenter is off to Egypt for a week. Back a week on Tuesday to build all the window doors for the top.

    Meanwhile the other builder will be in doing the painting and other smaller stuff.

    Estimate is to finish two weeks tomorrow. 🤞


    Status at - Wed, 29 Oct 2025 15:39:58 +0000

    They've been cutting doors into shape all day. Some have hinges on them, but none are hung onto the cupboards so no point in any photos.

    None have any panels yet either.

    Oh, or the holes I need for all the cables that'll have to go everywhere for speakers and lights. Will have to remember to ask about that tomorrow.


  • Bookmarks

    Things I have bookmarked lately.
    The Physics Of Dissonance - YouTube - Sun, 02 Nov 2025 15:32:09 +0000
    Half an hour from "minute" physics on the harmonics of overtones and why they are dissonant or resonant and why the physics of string instruments with their integer overtones imply the western scale.

    Simulating The Strange Way Life (Likely) Emerged - YouTube - Sat, 01 Nov 2025 12:13:42 +0000
    Veritasium on Evolution. Using simulations to show that genes are the basic unit of selection and explain some counter-intuitive facts about how evolution works.

    Why Today’s Humanoids Won’t Learn Dexterity – Rodney Brooks - Fri, 24 Oct 2025 10:15:21 +0000
    "If it is the case for the big successes it is likely also the case for
    learning dexterity by brute force. If any one or any group is to succeed
    they will likely have to collect the both the right data, and learn the right thing. Most of the projects to teach humanoids dexterity are doing neither of these things."

    Are we living in a golden age of stupidity? | Artificial intelligence (AI) | The Guardian - Sun, 19 Oct 2025 13:15:32 +0000
    "The fundamental issue,
    Kosmyna says, is that as soon as a technology becomes available that
    makes our lives easier, we’re evolutionarily primed to use it. “Our
    brains love shortcuts, it’s in our nature. But your brain needs friction
    to learn. It needs to have a challenge.”"

    New Work by Gary Larson | TheFarSide.com - Sat, 18 Oct 2025 09:00:29 +0000
    Gary Larson bought a graphics tablet and found drawing fun again, so we get some new stuff: "The “New Stuff” that you’ll see here is the result of my journey into
    the world of digital art. Believe me, this has been a bit of a learning
    curve for me. I hail from a world of pen and ink, and suddenly I was
    feeling like I was sitting at the controls of a 747. (True, I don’t get
    out much.) But as overwhelmed as I was, there was still something
    familiar there—a sense of adventure. That had always been at the core of
    what I enjoyed most when I was drawing The Far Side, that
    sense of exploring, reaching for something, taking some risks, sometimes
    hitting a home run and sometimes coming up with “Cow tools.” (Let’s not
    get into that.) But as a jazz teacher once said to me about
    improvisation, “You want to try and take people somewhere where they
    might not have been before.” I think that my approach to cartooning was
    similar—I’m just not sure if even I knew where I was going. But I…

    ‘Sixth-Form Politics’ – The Propaganda Blitz Awaiting Green Party Leader Zack Polanski – Media Lens - Fri, 10 Oct 2025 12:38:57 +0000




    Media Lens on the propaganda blitz Polanski will face: "As with Corbyn in 2015, the fevered ranting from the extreme
    right-wing press will be accompanied by initially muted criticism from
    the extreme centre, at the far end of the truncated media ‘spectrum’.
    Also as we saw with Corbyn, to the extent that Polanski offers genuine
    hope of change, the response from the Guardian, Observer, BBC,
    Independent and others will rise in pitch until the threat to ‘adult’
    genocidal and biocidal politics is removed."

    AI Slop Is Killing Our Channel - YouTube - Tue, 07 Oct 2025 14:40:18 +0000
    Kurzgesagt's video on how AI is hurting the internet and artists with its creative theft and confident lies.

    How Labour Sold Their Souls To Billionaires | Gary Stevenson | Zack Polanski - YouTube - Wed, 01 Oct 2025 22:40:56 +0000
    Gary Stephenson talks to Green-Party-UK leader Zack Polanski on Zack's podcast. He thinks we should look at economics like a car mechanic, no wait, like a medical system. They congratulate each other a lot and chat about Gary's one topic focus, inequality. Gary doesn't want to reduce inequality he says, just stop it getting worse!

    Pluralistic: The real (economic) AI apocalypse is nigh (27 Sep 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow - Sun, 28 Sep 2025 10:13:59 +0000

    Bain & Co says that the only way to make today's AI investments profitable is for the sector to bring in $2 trillion by 2030 (the Journal notes that this is more than the combined revenue of Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Apple Nvidia and Meta):

    What Fresh Hell is This? - Craig Murray - Fri, 26 Sep 2025 13:09:54 +0000
    "The calculation is that Reform will oppose the measure on libertarian
    grounds, and that this will allow Starmer to show himself as tougher on
    immigration than Reform."

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