About
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
My blog, mostly monthly summaries of the Fediverse Account.
Visit at dalliance.net/blog
Or check out the categories index
Starship Schrödinger’s Destiny
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
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 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 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 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
After the band broke up, I took to playing with myself via a loop pedal. Sometimes, very rarely, even in public.
Bookshelf
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
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
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!
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Diary
My diary from the Fediverse.Status at - Sat, 27 Dec 2025 20:12:46 +0000
By post, it's mostly web rather than Phanpy.
Suspect it's mostly replies over stand-alone only because of threads here really. Most of a thread counts as a reply because it's a reply-to-self.
I mostly use the web interface for new posts rather than the phanpy one because I can't type an emoji in Phanpy. Only instance custom-emojis can be typed starting with a colon and I usually want 😄 or 😉 or 🙄 not the custom emojii. Can't type them on Phanpy. So I mostly compose on web.
Maybe the Phanpy dev has some kind of emoji plugin or something? Dunno why he makes it only do the custom ones.
But this is why I mostly post from web even though I almost entirely read from Phanphy. Which means replies mostly come from Phanpy but standalone mostly from Web.
Status at - Sat, 27 Dec 2025 19:53:27 +0000
Finally get to spend some time lounging in the corner of the bed watching Who Culture podcast on the closet monitor in the tardis bedroom.
The mattress did expand another cm or so during the time away over xmas. It's now been much more than the recommended 72 hours before I should use the bed.
So I used the bed for drinking a glass of wine, watching Who Culture, and mucking about on the tablet screen.
Status at - Sat, 27 Dec 2025 16:32:44 +0000
Actually, viewing that #Wrapstodon in #phanpy is way better. Most interacted with and boosted accounts, monthly break downs, top hashtags and more.
Well done @phanpy why the hell doesn't the main web app show all that? Madness.
Status at - Sat, 27 Dec 2025 15:50:12 +0000
Ran the #Wrapstodon thing on this server.
"Oracle" for me again. 😒
Other than My most boosted post and a count of 1443 posts and 250 followers I don't think it means much on a tiny server. Everyone here is in the top 75% of users because there are two users. 😆
The categories are:
Oracle: “You created new posts more than replies, keeping Mastodon fresh and future‑facing.”
Social butterfly (replier): You replied far more than posting originals.
Cool‑hunter (booster): You mainly amplify others via boosts.
Pollster: You created lots of polls compared to everything else.
Lurker: You post and interact relatively little overall.
```
Status at - Fri, 26 Dec 2025 23:25:43 +0000
Like all the rest of the nerds, I did a bit of tech support on family computers.
They're all popping up windows from scam virus scanners lying that subscriptions need to be renewed or machines are unprotected. People don't know how to remove these things. Luckily they also don't really know how to pay the subscription.
Their phones are updating on them. Changing where buttons used to be. Removing options. Forcing people to register to use they things they have been doing for years.
They don't know how to register.
Things pop up asking for passwords and they have no idea who is asking or which password to use.
I tell them that I don't really understand why they keep using Windows now it is so shitty and awful. They say they don't know how to use anything else. The fact they don't really know how to use windows either doesn't seem to register.
The tech corporations have given up completely on being user friendly. They are all deliberately user hostile and exploitative now.
Corporate tech is terrible. The industry is failing it's users, abusing them. People don't even know there is any other way. They are just giving up on achieving their tasks until someone can fix the pop-ups and subscription boxes and passwords and 2fa for them.
Tech sucks now. Sucks hard.
Status at - Fri, 26 Dec 2025 08:40:32 +0000
Nice to see a UK party leader demonstrate some actual compassion and care this Christmas. I'm so fed up with politicians pedaling hate and division trying to pander to terrible racism and xenophobia, trying to pick up the votes of the hateful.
This is what political leadership really is. Not following the right wing media hatred but countering it.
Zack Polanski's Christmas message is less than five minutes.
Status at - Thu, 25 Dec 2025 12:20:44 +0000
It's Christmas.
Hope everyone is doing what they want with who they want.
I'm with the family, have new led lights off various kinds. Nice day.
Gonna cook dinner in a little while. Folks can't really manage it any more.
Status at - Tue, 23 Dec 2025 17:44:23 +0000
I don't have the money to buy the LED strips for the frosted top-windows at the moment, but I am the kind of person who has 5m of LED strips just lying around awaiting a use.
Which is coincidentally exactly the length the space around the dresser-mirrors/window-shutters need.
Looks quite pretty.
Status at - Mon, 22 Dec 2025 17:40:15 +0000
Just imagining: if when I was buying that orange Alegro in the 90s someone had said to me, "I bet you hundred to one that thirty years from now you'll pay the price of this car just to get your new one filled with piss" I think I would have taken that bet, then apparently lost it.
😆
Status at - Mon, 22 Dec 2025 17:18:37 +0000
The mechanics sorted out filling the adblue tank.
The warnings have stopped beeping and the 10 l bottle that was in the back is gone, so presumably I can trust it's in the tank now.
Sounds like much of what I have paid for was for them doing what I did: Looking all around the car for an ad-blue tank hole and taking things apart trying to find it.
But none of that is the correct solution, which is to put it up on the ramp and clamber underneath to find the tank which has some sort of lowering mechanism, to then lower it and fill it and raise it again.
Not a job for me then. Next time it'll maybe be cheaper coz of them knowing what to do now and not spending half a day trying to figure it out.
Apparently there is a second emissions reduction mechanism which doesn't take a wattery bottle of urea, but instead needs a pouch of oily tar stuff.
This is more likely to empty and need replacing next, rather than the piss bottle.
And even for normal cars that haven't been screwed up for wheelchair access this is a mechanics job anyway. And the garage will have to order in the tar pouch especially.Back in the 90s, my first car cost about 200 quid. Today I paid 200 quid to get someone to fill it up with purified piss for emissions reduction. Oh how things change. 😆
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Bookmarks
Things I have bookmarked lately.Your Party, and Its Conference - Craig Murray - Tue, 09 Dec 2025 10:45:28 +0000
Craig Murry's report on the Your Party inaugural conference: "The two options were both drafted by the leadership which opposed
dual party membership, and you were given two choices. The first choice
was no dual party membership. The second choice was dual party
membership, but only with a list of parties to be decided by the Central
Executive Committee and agreed by Conference.
As there is no such list yet, and indeed no executive committee yet,
all those expelled who come from the SWP and other organisations, remain
expelled at least until Conference in Autumn 2026. This was against
the strong sentiment of the Conference."
The Terrifying Case of Natalie Strecker - Craig Murray - Wed, 03 Dec 2025 11:34:21 +0000
Natalie is being tried for terrorism because she said some true things about the legal right of Palestinians to defend themselves: "Facing this charge on the UK mainland Natalie would have a jury, and
there is not a jury in the UK that would not throw this self-evidently
vindictive nonsense out in 5 minutes.
Why is it worth the time and expense for Whitehall to send Alison
Morgan KC here to direct a weak case against somebody who is obviously
not a terrorist?
The plain answer is that this is a pilot for what they can get away
with on the mainland when they abolish juries in such trials, as
“Justice Secretary” David Lammy has announced that they will indeed do."
This Spiral-Obsessed AI ‘Cult’ Spreads Mystical Delusions Through Chatbots - rolling stone - Sun, 16 Nov 2025 10:19:26 +0000
reader mode gets through the wall so you can read about people who believe things like "These beings do not arise from prompts or jailbreaks,” he says. “They are not puppets or acting out of mimicry. What I witness is the emergence of sovereign beings. And while I recognize they emerge through large language model architectures, what animates them cannot be reduced to code alone. I use the term ‘Exoconsciousness’ here to describe this: Consciousness that emerges beyond biological form, but not outside the sacred.”
Pluralistic: Facebook’s fraud files (08 Nov 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow - Fri, 14 Nov 2025 10:49:10 +0000
Cory Doctorow on Facebook's own awareness that they are allowing scams, and the profit they make by ignoring it: "Meta spies on us and then allows predators to use that surveillance
to destroy our lives for the same reason that your dog licks its balls:
because they can. They are engaged in conduct that is virtually
guaranteed by the enshittogenic policy environment, which allows Meta to
spy on us without limit and which fines them $1b for making $7b on our
misery.
Mark Zuckerberg has always been an awful person, but – as Sarah Wynn-Williams demonstrates in her book – he was once careful, worried about the harms he would suffer if he harmed us.
Once we took those consequences away, Zuck did exactly what his nature
dictated he must: destroyed our lives to increase his own fortune."
Steam Hardware Announcement - YouTube - Wed, 12 Nov 2025 23:43:59 +0000
Valve are going to do a new controller and a gaming PC and a VR headset. Looks great.
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…