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 - Fri, 25 Apr 2025 18:36:32 +0000
So I had:
c.Position += new Vector3(-Mathf.Cos(camAngle+colAngle), 0, Mathf.Sin(camAngle+colAngle)) * eyeSeparation;
And I should have had:
c.GlobalPosition += c.GlobalBasis * new Vector3(-Mathf.Cos(camAngle+colAngle), 0, Mathf.Sin(camAngle+colAngle)) * eyeSeparation;
And because of that I now have to re-do about 36 hours of rendering.
🙄
Oh well. Think it's fixed at least. That's nice.
Updated the code here for anyone else who wants to use it:
https://github.com/revpriest/godotPanoRendererI think because of the way the camera has to be a child of a viewport it's reference frame gets reset, and if the scene camera could have been a direct child of the camera placement model itself then the first way might have worked properly?
Maybe.
This stuff is right at the limit of my comprehension really.
Status at - Fri, 25 Apr 2025 14:25:01 +0000
The ships not crossing from China to the USA right now are like the dog that didn't bark. Even if the tariff war ended tomorrow, that hole in the supply lines where the ships aren't is still making its way slowly across the seas. Going to crash into America next month like a wave of nothing where there should be something.
Status at - Fri, 25 Apr 2025 13:50:38 +0000
Perplexity CEO says its browser will track everything users do online to sell ‘hyper personalized’ ads
Dalliance CEO says he will never use that browser and will continue to use whatever blocks adverts and tracking of all kinds most effectively.
Dalliance CEO says Perplexity CEO can take his browser and fuck off.
Status at - Fri, 25 Apr 2025 11:21:18 +0000
I was under the impression is was next to impossible for a fediverse server to change it's domain name?
Have all the Threads follower relationships broken now they've changed theirs?
Won't affect anyone on this server of course, they were already blocked. Now their new domain is blocked too. If they move to yet another domain we'll block that as well.
https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/24/threads-officially-moves-to-threads-com-and-updates-its-web-app/
Status at - Thu, 24 Apr 2025 12:32:37 +0000
Bluesky is cancelling accounts when foreign governments ask them to, and Threads is doing adverts soon.
The thing to understand about the corporate public messaging systems is that they do not exist to let you publish or to talk to people. That is not the point of them. That's at best just the bait laid to lure you into their trap.
They exist to make money for the shareholders. That's why Threads exists, that's why Blockchain Inc invested to keep Bluesky running.
Only one network exists in order to let people communicate as the point and reason for it's existence. Only one network has no shareholders and no owners.
Only one is fighting for the user, not the shareholder.
#fediverse
Status at - Wed, 23 Apr 2025 23:49:08 +0000
Hummm. Oh. I see. Damn. This explains why it was ending up backwards even though I thought I'd fixed this bug once.
It is reversing the eye position only depending upon which direction the source camera is facing.
Face backwards along the Z axis and it's correct, face forwards along the Z axis and it's reversed.
Probably some bug in the render code which is using global coordinates and ought to be using camera-relative coordinates or something like that.
Hopefully can be fixed when I have some time at the weekend. Probably can get away with only re-rendering the first and last few hundred frames when the camera is zooming about more.
Jeeze. Never ends does it. Bug after bug.
Status at - Wed, 23 Apr 2025 09:11:06 +0000
It's Saint George's day!
Not a holiday in England, dunno about all the other countries that share a patron saint with England.
The prime minister says it's a constant battle to try and reclaim the flag of the crusades, that England shares with the country Georgia, to make it a flag which doesn't sow division.
Status at - Tue, 22 Apr 2025 11:40:27 +0000
10,000 POSTS!
Plus a whole bunch on mastodon dot rocks before it deleted all the account and then mastodon dot social before I made this server.
Looks like each post gains me on average 0.12 followers. Most of which are now abandoned accounts I guess.
Here's to the next 10,000!
Status at - Tue, 22 Apr 2025 11:29:40 +0000
So turns out the render is putting the right eye at the top instead of the left eye 🙄
I'm sure I fixed that bug like 3 times now.
Don't really want to re-render the whole thing on more cloud machines at large cost again, so I built a script to just just imagemagik to swap top and bottom.
Which has been running all night to do about a third of the frames 🙄
Seems unlikely today then now. Dunno if I'll get time Wed/Thurs.
Status at - Mon, 21 Apr 2025 14:39:28 +0000
Will the new pope smoke dope? Trying to figure out if I'll like him or her.
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Bookmarks
Things I have bookmarked lately.How is the media still getting the Gaza murdered paramedics story so wrong? - Sat, 26 Apr 2025 00:21:57 +0000
"The role of the corporate media is no different. It is there to create
the illusion that we are the masters of our own thoughts. It is there to
make us think we have reached an independent understanding of the
world, even though that understanding has been carefully crafted for us
from birth. It is there to cultivate a worldview in us that aligns
precisely with the privileging of a tiny corporate elite whose wealth
depends on the relentless pillaging of the planet for their benefit."
The Next Terrorist Attack - by Timothy Snyder - Sun, 20 Apr 2025 16:48:14 +0000
Snyder posits that Trump's administration have weakened terrorism prevention, and would exploit any resulting attack to consolidate power: "Do not give the present regime the benefit of the doubt after it
allows a terrorist attack to take place on American soil. Be skeptical
about its account of who is to blame. Insist that Musk-Trump take
responsibility. And understand that freedom
is the first condition of security. A terrorist attack is no reason to
concede anything to this regime. On the contrary: such a failure by
Musk-Trump would be one more reason, and a very powerful one, to resist
it."
The rise of end times fascism | Far right (US) | The Guardian - Fri, 18 Apr 2025 09:25:25 +0000
"An unspeakably dismal choice is being made before our eyes and
without our consent: machines over humans, inanimate over animate,
profits over all else. With stunning speed, the big tech megalomaniacs
have quietly rolled back their net-zero pledges and lined up by Trump’s
side, hellbent on sacrificing this world’s real and precious resources
and creativity at the altar of a vampiric, virtual realm. This is the
last great heist, and they are getting ready to ride out the storms they
themselves are summoning – and they will try to defame and destroy
anyone who gets in their way."
Fascist Word Games and the Birth of an American Dictatorship - Thu, 17 Apr 2025 08:39:47 +0000
the administration can “deport” over two hundred people it swears are “gang members” without due process, which it then summarily proceeds to do while filming its blatantly illegal activities for propaganda purposes. While the planes are in the fucking air, a judge orders the government to turn them around, and the regime first pretends it doesn’t understand the order, then refuses to obey it while claiming that because the planes were out of US airspace, the court has no jurisdiction to order them to return to America.
Born in the wrong generation - by Sam Kriss - Tue, 08 Apr 2025 10:13:16 +0000
Sam Kriss describes a nightmare AI utopia: "It’s a bright cloudless day and you’re meeting your beautiful submissive
girlfriend for a breakfast date. You’re meeting her at the soda
fountain. You’re meeting her at the ice cream parlour. You’re meeting
her at the drugstore to share a malted milk. You’ve been going steady
with your main squeeze and now you’re meeting her at the folksy
chrome-and-cream diner on Main Street in your quiet walkable 98% white
small American town. It’s always a bright cloudless day."
Living in interesting times - Charlie's Diary - Mon, 07 Apr 2025 20:28:46 +0000
Charlie Stross on the market crash and trump's presidency: "Trump's narcissism won't let him admit imposing tariffs on the entire
planet is an idiotic idea. So he'll blame China for the market crash and
the galloping stagflation he's just kicked off. Most of the goods,
materials, and products that he's choked the supply of have no domestic
US sources, or none that can be ramped up in less than years. For
example, China just choked the supply of rare earth elements to the USA
in retaliation, which used to be mined in the USA ... but it
takes years and billions of dollars to build a new mine and refinery.
He's applied sanctions to Taiwan, which sliced $300Bn off Apple's market
cap in 24 hours because Taiwan's TSMC supplies most of the world's
bleeding-edge semiconductors. They've been trying to build a plant in
the USA for years, but are still years away from producing anything:
it's not just the machinery, it's the skilled and experienced technical staff."
FADFOA lot of people have a 'need for chaos', as long as there's no chaos - Fri, 04 Apr 2025 21:47:08 +0000
When, in decades to come, history students look back at the late 2010s and early 2020s ... they will as one ask a confused question: “Why was there a Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party?”
The American Age Is Over - Fri, 04 Apr 2025 00:13:19 +0000
"The American age is over. And it ended because the American people were no longer worthy of it"
Why Labour is crushing your living standards - YouTube - Sun, 30 Mar 2025 12:59:06 +0000
Gary talks about the Squeeze Out: 1 - The rich take the resource of the working class leaving them in debt, 2 - economic collapse, 3 - the rich take the resources of the government leaving it in debt, 4 (happening now) - the rich take the resources of the middle classes, 5 - the right fight each other for resources, world war. Bleak.
Open source devs say AI crawlers dominate traffic, forcing blocks on entire countries - Ars Technica - Thu, 27 Mar 2025 01:12:25 +0000
"According to a comprehensive recent report
from LibreNews, some open source projects now see as much as 97 percent
of their traffic originating from AI companies' bots, dramatically
increasing bandwidth costs, service instability, and burdening already
stretched-thin maintainers."