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 - Sat, 15 Mar 2025 23:48:43 +0000

    Content warning:Musk Robots Mars

    Apparently Elon thinks he's going to send one of his humanoid "Optimus" robots on a rocket to Mars at the end of next year.

    🤨

    Radiation hardened then are they those things?

    Seems a bit pointless to build the robots radiation hardened if they're just going to hang around doing laundry and washing dishes in the suburbs.

    And yet without the hardening they won't even survive the trip.

    Seems like some people are keen to have the things in their house, but I can't imagine being comfortable giving a corporate spy-bot access to my flat. Those things are gonna be narcs man, totally.

    Surprising I haven't seen one doing a nazi salute yet.


    Status at - Sat, 15 Mar 2025 23:21:39 +0000

    Watched season 5 of What We Do In The Shadows, ten episodes in two nights.

    Great stuff. Very silly and fun.

    The vampires continue their strange adventures on Staten Island, covered by the documentary crew. They way the characters are all so self absorbed and incompetent gives lots of room for stories interacting and clashing.

    Great show.


    Status at - Sat, 15 Mar 2025 11:40:32 +0000

    And that marks the end of my Hoopla courses for now. No sensible session to move onto that wasn't already booked up too far in advance.

    We were trying to get the players together for a more independent group but that didn't look like it'd manage to get the numbers and happen, so I booked into a Free Association course starting next week. (places left if you wanna join us)

    I'm told the Free Association are less Free, in that they take it more seriously and have stricter formats and a three hour session rather than a two hour session, and it's even possible to actually fail and so have to repeat rather than advance!

    But it is like five minutes walk from my flat above one of my favourite pubs and should be interesting.

    Meanwhile that indie group did in fact manage to form when confidence was increased by one of us booking an experienced host/teacher instead of trying to wing it on our own.

    Which is nice but means I'll be doing some improv two nights a week for a while there. Which is quite a lot!


    Status at - Sat, 15 Mar 2025 11:30:54 +0000

    Did another improv show this week. Long form with Hoopla. Mostly what is known as an Armando, in which a performer will riff on the audience suggestion telling a story from their life and then the rest do sketches based on the story.

    I'm not mad keen on the Armando to be honest. It seems to result in a series of mostly disconnected sketches based on a theme rather than a story with a coherent narrative and satisfying beginning, middle, and end. Plus, without explaining the format I think it leaves the audience confused as to what's going on, and if you do explain it then, well, explicit audience explaining isn't entertaining in itself.

    Did a life and times skit after that though, which I find more satisfying. The story of Jim, and his quest to remove the chocolate from Maltesers. Pretty chaotic with 14 performers all at once.


    Status at - Mon, 10 Mar 2025 11:03:28 +0000

    In fact I've turned the radio off, just too much complete misunderstanding of everything and populist phone-blaming.

    Everyone wants to ban phones and tiktok for kids without realizing that means ID checks for all adults.

    Frustrating.


    Status at - Mon, 10 Mar 2025 10:47:35 +0000

    Today is Online Safety Day because the terrible awful Online Safety Law comes into affect this month.

    To me, Online Safety means:

    • Never use your government name on the internet.
    • Use fully end to end encrypted services like Signal.
    • Avoid using large online surveillance projects like Facebook, Instagram or Whatsapp.
    • Self-host wherever possible to protect your data from Big Tech.
    • Alter your software to block ads, use ad-blockers everywhere.
    • Use a VPN to help subvert tracking technology.
    • Avoid allowing the algorithms decide what you see. Turn off autoplay, use RSS.

    But the government, and most of the callers to talk radio today, seem to think it means:

    • All sites must ID check their users to ensure they aren't children.
    • Encryption must have government back doors so the police and state can read all messages.
    • Only big tech sites are legitimate because they are more subject to legal control.
    • Self hosting should be legally onerous so that only big companies with huge legal compliance departments can run internet sites.
    • It should be illegal to alter the software made by big business.
    • VPNs should be illegal since they can avoid government blocks.

    So that's all pretty depressing.

    Good luck everyone. Stay safe.


    Status at - Sun, 09 Mar 2025 17:21:30 +0000

    Watched the last season of StarTrek Discovery, in which the crew race against a couple of renegades to solve clues that lead them to technology left by the ancients that spread life around the galaxy.

    Ridiculous.

    I quite liked the renegade characters, star crossed lovers fighting two empires to survive. And the crew of Discovery include some decent character with nice arcs.

    The idea that Next Gen era scientists left clues that future people would follow 800 years later is like something out of a game rather than a drama though. Makes no sense. Those guys should have done what burnham does and burn it instead of hiding it for more peaceful times.

    And those last 20 minutes of happily ever after wrap up was terrible. Sentimental schmaltzy bullshit. Certainly should have cut that, showing aged characters in retirement and the last mission to just abandon the ship. Nope. Would have all been better without any of that.

    Farewell then Discovery. You started before Kirk and ended a thousand years latter. I enjoyed most of it, and it was better than Archer's Enterprise, but a long way from the best of trek.


    Status at - Thu, 06 Mar 2025 21:45:48 +0000

    This month's digest newsletter is on the way to all the excellent free libre wolves that asked for it.

    The rest of you shameful data-hording foxes can read it here:
    dalliance.net/blog/feb25/

    Featuring me singing, stuff about Mozilla being lost, and an enumeration of lots of the ways in which labour suck.


    Status at - Thu, 06 Mar 2025 10:04:13 +0000

    Spent most of my birthday yesterday programming it's layers to customize it. Setting the lights to light up how I like, a layer to type emoji like 😉😀😆🥴 and one for app launching. I can even type my email address with a two keypress combo.

    Taking some getting used to typing on it though. The return buttons being on the thumb near the space means I keep posting messages earlier than I intended.

    Most expensive keyboard I ever owned. More expensive than most of the computers i've owned.

    Enjoying it so far though. Wondering if I should have bought the clickey switches mind.


    Status at - Thu, 06 Mar 2025 10:00:41 +0000

    Went with buying the Dygma that @petejohanson suggested in the end.


  • Bookmarks

    Things I have bookmarked lately.
    Signal President Meredith Whittaker calls out agentic AI as having ‘profound’ security and privacy issues - Sat, 08 Mar 2025 10:42:23 +0000
    "access to our web browser and a way to drive it as well as access to our credit card information to pay for tickets, our calendar, and messaging app to send the text to your friends."

    With Great Power Came No Responsibility: How Enshittification Conquered the 21st Century and How We Can Overthrow It | Cory Doctorow's craphound.com - Wed, 26 Feb 2025 20:27:37 +0000
    An hour of Cory doing a lecture about internet enshitification, it's causes and it's solutions and how we can and must build a new better internet.

    Tegmark's Mathematical Universe Defeats Most Proofs Of God's Existence - Mon, 24 Feb 2025 23:38:41 +0000
    Scott Alexander wonders if Tegmark's "Mathematical Universe" defeats most of the arguments he sees for God's existence.

    Grok Grok | Don't Worry About the Vase - Mon, 24 Feb 2025 22:55:06 +0000
    Zvi on Grok: "Grok is not as smart as one might hope and has other issues, but it is better than I expected and for now has its place in the rotation, especially for when you want its Twitter integration.", but also, "Grok turned out rather woke and extremely anti-Trump and anti-Musk, as well as trivial to jailbreak, and [xAi did] rather blunt things about that ... lot of trust has been lost. It will be extremely difficult to win it back." -- as usual from Zvi, extremely long.

    Honest Government Ad | Our Last Fair Election? - YouTube - Sat, 22 Feb 2025 12:26:36 +0000
    Honest Government Ads from The Juice Media on Australian elections. Funny how the biggest two parties always seem to prefer a two party system instead of any kind of political plurality eh?

    Pluralistic: America and “national capitalism” (18 Feb 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow - Wed, 19 Feb 2025 00:30:52 +0000


    Doctorow on Piketty: "eventually the share of wealth held by the rich will reach a tipping
    point, and we'll see policies that benefit the wealthy crowding out
    policies that support human thriving, and the rich will get richer, and
    they will feud with each other, and society will destabilize, and we
    will face collapse."

    Deliberative Alignment, And The Spec - Mon, 17 Feb 2025 23:56:55 +0000
    who should control what the ai thinks is good and moral? "But fast-forward 2-3 years to when AIs are a big part of the economy and military, and this gets more interesting. What should the spec say? In particular, what is the chain of command?"

    Richard Wolff: Donald J. Trump and the End of America - YouTube - Mon, 10 Feb 2025 23:28:53 +0000
    Richard Wolff on Erhardt for four hours talking about the current economic situation

    How many genders are there, Daddy? (What the science says) - YouTube - Sat, 08 Feb 2025 14:11:32 +0000
    Potholer's fifteen minute answer to the question of how many genders there are (It depends on which language you're asking about, in English: none) and how many sexes there are (two, but the boundaries are fuzzy).

    UK Online Safety Act may not be safe for blog owners • The Register - Thu, 06 Feb 2025 10:25:48 +0000
    Terrible bill comes into force in March: "the Online Safety Act has a set of obligations that come into force on
    March 17, 2025, and large website operators are already concerned. Several, like London Fixed Gear and Single Speed, have stated that they will shut their online forums rather than attempt to comply. And outside the UK, online discussion site Lobsters has implemented a geoblock that will prevent UK visitors from accessing the site after March 16."

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