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 - Tue, 16 Sep 2025 12:45:43 +0000

    Content warning:re: Buffy The Vampire Slayer


    Season five is the best season but season six has the two best episodes in Once More With Feeling followed by Tabula Rasa.

    Incredible TV, all those tunes back in my head again. The pivot in the series from that episode as everyone's secrets are revealed in song.

    Amazing stuff. Shame the big bad for the season is just these geeks. They are not Glory.


    Status at - Tue, 16 Sep 2025 10:23:51 +0000

    First week with the plastic cast off of my fractured wrist so I guess it's back to normal? No more sitting on the couch doing nothing. Two months off doing tarot shows, back with a marxist rant. Nice when it works that way.

    Trouble is the back-to-normal won't last long, building work starts this weekend with taking apart the old bedroom and a new carpet.

    wordcloudtarot.com/@wordcloudt


    Status at - Thu, 11 Sep 2025 10:35:41 +0000

    Been to the hospital and had the cast removed.

    Should make typing easier.

    More pain now than when I first went there though. RSI aggravated by the cast. Thumb fucked up by the cast. Wrist hurts when moved.

    Apparently I'm to stretch the wrist slowly and gradually recover mobility like wrist yoga. Physio to come maybe.

    Have booked a massage for tomorrow to try and realign my frame, all fucked up by the cast and the sitting around for a month.

    Do not recommend fracturing bones in your arm. It's an bad scene man.


    Status at - Thu, 11 Sep 2025 09:17:12 +0000

    Content warning:uspol


    I remember when Trump was grazed by a bullet and lots of people were very pleased that God had caused him to turn his head and be saved.

    Guess God just wants some people dead, or he'd save everyone.

    Thanks God.


    Status at - Fri, 05 Sep 2025 13:57:47 +0000

    This month's newsletter is on the way to all the great people with intact wrists who asked for it.

    All the rest of you broken wristed scum can read it here:
    dalliance.net/blog/aug25/

    Featuring mostly things I have watched on TV while having a broken wrist.


    Status at - Thu, 04 Sep 2025 22:14:13 +0000

    Content warning:Buffy The Vampire Slayer


    But mostly I have re-watched Buffy.

    If you include Angel, and surely you must, then there's more than 250 episodes in Buffy's world and they're all great. Actual best TV show ever made. Haven't rewatched it since the naughties.

    Watched about 150 episodes in the last 3 weeks. 😆

    It starts well, reaches a good stride in season two and then gets entirely great around the end of S3 when Ayna turns up and creates the Bored Vampire Willow. Buffy S5 with Glory is the absolute peak. Glory is magnificent.

    All the main characters are amazing all the way through, and evolve and grow instead of sticking the same as with most TV. They aren't static caricatures.

    The plots story and writing is brilliant, the special effects mostly just rubber masks which age better than any CGI does.

    There's vampires and slayers and witches in my dreams and I am loving it.

    Nothing since has touched it.

    The 16x9 cut of the first two seasons is badly framed though. Watch the 4x3 original TV frame size for sure.


    Status at - Thu, 04 Sep 2025 22:00:39 +0000

    Content warning:Wednesday S2


    Watched Wednesday S2

    The family moves to Wednesday's school after being mind-controlled into organising the gala in a plot for money. So it's almost just an Adams Family series really, other than being at Wednesday's school.

    The Hyde monsters and werewolves look great, big cgi animals with absolutely massive round eyes.

    Wednesday now has a little redhead mini-me stalking her with a crush and eyes nearly as big as a Hyde.

    Wednesday is somehow portrayed as both an outcast and also the hero who saves the day and the school every episode. Which is a problem with hero outcasts.

    Tim Burton's magical style suits the Adams Family well. Inspired him probably. Goths look cool. The Addams Family is cool.

    Nice they way they wove in a story of how Gomez lost his powers. And link Thing to the big bad, meaning Thing can save the day.

    Enjoyed the show a lot.


    Status at - Thu, 04 Sep 2025 09:17:46 +0000

    Content warning:Always Sunny In Philadelphia S17


    Seventeen seasons is a very long run too.

    Another eight episodes of the gang all being mean to each other and talking over each other and getting into farcical scrapes.

    The dinner party rehearsals were the funniest bit. Slowly A/B testing and audience reaction tests, that's how to make art. 😆

    Not sure I'd say the show is mostly funny these days, but their bitching meanness to each other is comfortingly familiar.


    Status at - Thu, 04 Sep 2025 08:58:03 +0000

    Oh, Android has gone all chunky and bold. That's a change.

    Wonder what Ai features I should be turning off now.


    Status at - Thu, 04 Sep 2025 08:53:30 +0000

    Content warning:South Park S27


    TWENTY SEVEN series! Man. South Park continues to be pretty cool too.

    Still both fresh and yet familiar. I remain in awe of the consistency of the show over more than half my whole life now.

    Stupid cock and fart jokes with an absurd setup which on a second level is mentioning and mocking the true absurdity and violence of real life.

    Satan being Trump's lover in a rehash of the Sadam Hussain skit is lovely.

    They seem determined to try and get cancelled, but haven't managed that in 27 years. Maybe it's a small-dick joke that'll finally do them in?

    Still got half of this season to watch. Seems like it's mostly bi-weekly now? Or every episode is delayed.


  • Bookmarks

    Things I have bookmarked lately.
    It's Your Party and I'll Cry If I Want To - Craig Murray - Sat, 13 Sep 2025 11:20:51 +0000
    I cannot stress to you enough that this is not a glitch it is a feature.
    Nor is it a teething problem. Those who currently hold the reins are
    determined to make sure those reins cannot be voted out of their hands. I
    have had a number of conversations with people actually in charge of
    instituting all this, and the prevention of direct democracy and the
    structuring of the party instead through controlled committees and
    caucuses is for them a given.

    How & Why Did Big Tech Turn To The Right? - SOME MORE NEWS - Sat, 06 Sep 2025 13:34:51 +0000
    How big tech took over the world and why Amazon produced a War Of The World movie in which Amazon and Google save the day, on a google youtube video with Cory

    How & Why Did Big Tech Turn To The Right? - SOME MORE NEWS - Sat, 06 Sep 2025 13:34:51 +0000
    How big tech took over the world and why Amazon produced a War Of The World movie in which Amazon and Google save the day, on a google youtube video with Cory

    AI and the Urgent Need for a Politics of Altruism - Craig Murray - Thu, 04 Sep 2025 22:08:18 +0000

    "Take the UK’s richest citizen, Jim Ratcliffe. What is the basis of
    his wealth? Did he invent something? Did he pioneer a new form of
    management? Did he build vast new industrial plants that employed tens
    of thousands of people?
    No, he did none of those things, and indeed arguably he did the very
    opposite of those things. All he did was acoounting tricks with
    digitised currency units, and then indulge himself in football clubs and
    LandRover nostalgia."

    How Comedy Was Destroyed by an Anti-Reality Doomsday Cult - YouTube - Tue, 02 Sep 2025 09:17:40 +0000
    Love it, the film-noir monotone voice over, the mood music, the thesis, the surreal otherwordly description. Great hour of radio. How Joe Roegan destroyed comedy and reality.

    Mastodon Isn't Complying With Age Verification Because It Can't - Freezenet.ca - Sat, 30 Aug 2025 00:47:03 +0000

    Another interesting platform in all of this is, of course, Mastodon.
    Unlike Bluesky, Mastodon is actually decentralized. There is no one
    person that can make a decision on how the whole platform operates
    (which is what is happening on Bluesky right now). Servers are
    independently operated and run and spread throughout the world. So,
    first of all, who does the government sue when they believe there is
    non-compliance?

    Labour's cowardice in the face of extremism - by Ian Dunt - Fri, 29 Aug 2025 11:18:28 +0000
    Talk of mass deportation is Nazi fucking bullshit. You can pretend
    otherwise, but that's what it is. In order to even countenance it, you
    must reach a point of hatred towards a minority group which is
    reminiscent of the very worst moments of human history. In order to
    implement it, you would need a system of control and surveillance which
    goes well beyond any traditional notion of what this country, or indeed
    any free society, is about. In order to enact it, you need to split
    people into valid and invalid categories, round them up and concentrate
    them in advance of deportation, necessitating the use of camps. And yes,
    if you're going to land those planes at their destination, you will
    need to do deals with tyrannical governments so that they can murder the
    people who tried to escape them.

    Why does the US support Israel's crimes? - Jason Hickel - Sun, 24 Aug 2025 10:01:01 +0000
    This is the key point: economic sovereignty in the periphery threatens capital accumulation in the core. To avoid this, the core states must constantly intervene to prevent or crush any movement or government in the periphery that seeks national liberation and economic sovereignty.

    Pluralistic: “Privacy preserving age verification” is bullshit (14 Aug 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow - Thu, 14 Aug 2025 18:26:12 +0000

    "Age verification is an impossibility, and an impossibly terrible idea
    with impossibly vast consequences for privacy and the open web, as my
    EFF colleague Jason Kelley explained on the Malwarebytes podcast:"

    Yvette Cooper is Lying - Craig Murray - Tue, 12 Aug 2025 13:06:43 +0000

    The reason Yvette Cooper has proscribed Palestine Action is that she
    is a member of Labour Friends of Israel and has received £215,000 from
    the zionist lobby – which is £215,000 more than Palestine Action ever
    received on behalf of a foreign power. ---Ministers are lying to you. I have provided a little antiseptic daylight.

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