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
Exocortex Log
Ongoing: A life-logging app, built as a progressive web app with all data stored on your local machine. Party for privacy, partly so I don’t have to run any servers. If you are interested in logging graphing and analysing your time as you spend it, this might be for you! But mostly it’s for me, I don’t care if you use it or not.
See the app at exocortexlog.com, or read the latest news blog.
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 - Tue, 06 Jan 2026 19:09:59 +0000
Content warning:USPol Time To Extract Resources
Hearing a lot of people saying that Trump can't profit from his raid because it takes years to build an oil extraction drilling system and refinery and mines. His term will be over! His life may already be at it's end!
But of course you can get credit based on expectation of future gains, plus the bribes don't take decades to mature to full production! The bribes start right away!
Status at - Tue, 06 Jan 2026 18:05:46 +0000
So farewell then Microsoft Office.
I haven't used you really since the 90s.
From this distance: it seems like you just kept getting worse and more exploitative since then and trapped millions of people in abusive relationships with tech.
It made me laugh when you went monthly-payment subscription-only, and then laugh even more when suckers actually ponied up for that.
It's fun when people say they don't know how to use Libreoffice, even though Libre is more like the original MS Office (before it was shit) than Office 365 was.
I wish you fare well on your transition to your new identity as "The Microslop 365 Co-dependency Ass" or whatever the new name is.
Good luck in your new task of exploiting people and learning how to replace them in their jobs.
I will not be subscribing to your services. Or newsletter. I will continue to tell people I refuses to accept files in proprietary file formats.
Status at - Sun, 04 Jan 2026 13:24:52 +0000
December newsletter consists almost entirely of last week's end-of-year summary.
There's also December's links and boosts and that bit about the new year's war.
But the great and special people who want it in email have it on their way to their inboxes now and the rest of you who frankly deserve to be arrested and deported like a president can read it here if you want.
Status at - Sat, 03 Jan 2026 11:14:45 +0000
Content warning:re: Venezuela / War
Thank goodness the USA elected the peace president. Could you imagine if instead they had elected a pedophile child-rapist willing to go to war for oil, and to distract from his sex crimes, while renaming the Defense Department the Department for War?
Status at - Sat, 03 Jan 2026 10:42:14 +0000
Content warning:Venezuela / War
Hummm. Wonder if the UK will have to support the USA invading Venezuela because it's a member of Nato?
Or if we'll just support it because we also want western oil companies to have access to those oil fields?
Or maybe we'll sanction the USA like we sanctioned Russia for their illegal invasion?
No? Why is everyone laughing?
Anyway. These days it's cool to invade other countries and kidnap their presidents to steal their oil it seems. Even though the oil needs to stay in the ground.
🙄
Status at - Fri, 02 Jan 2026 20:47:43 +0000
Projector is in place. Not as dumb as I usually like. Has an android OS and a Netflix app and things instead of just a HDMI input. But it has HDMI input too.
Screen is 1.9m wide by .92 high which is a 2.15m screen measured across the diagonal like they usually do.
Projection is keyed quite drastically with the right hand side being shrunk down vertically to square the image, which I suspect means pretty radically reduced resolution on the right hand side of the screen.
Maybe I could attach it to the bottom of the overhead cupboards more squarely onto the wall than the shelf is? Worth a though.
But working well. Will be even better when the main bedroom media PC arrives.
Status at - Wed, 31 Dec 2025 13:45:23 +0000
(above in the blog if you prefer it on one page: https://dalliance.net/blog/2025/ )
Status at - Wed, 31 Dec 2025 13:44:53 +0000
Next year 2026
So, what for next year?
- More than 12 Tarot shows,
- About six Observers shows,
- The main starship v0.4 cartoon,
- Along with the pre-release of the main starship app
- Improvements to the Exocortex app,
- An improv class/show or two (one starts Jan, show March)
- An new improv group?
- Play a couple of Loopy gigs/open-mics,
- Finish the bedroom stuff,
- Don't get sicker,
- Break zero bones,
- Fix the camper in the spring,
- About six festivals,
- Maybe a foreign holiday,
- Try and read more
Status at - Wed, 31 Dec 2025 13:44:43 +0000
Media stuff
Rewatched all of Buffy
Broken wrist meant I had to sit on the sofa for a month doing nothing really. I re-watched all 200 or so episodes of Buffy for the first time this decade.
What an achievement in TV production. Amazing show.
I'll watch it again next decade maybe.
Book of the year
Not that I read a huge amount. Hopefully more next year.
Fiction
"Outland" by Dennis E Taylor, and actually also his "Not Till We Are Lost"
Non-Fiction
"Broken Money" by Lyn Alden.
TV Show Of The Year
Think "Severance" was the most remarkable show I watched this year, with "Trek, Strange New Worlds" also being great again.
"Pantheon" was a pretty great cartoon, haven't seen the second season yet.
Status at - Wed, 31 Dec 2025 13:44:29 +0000
Had Fun
Bought a car/micro-camper
Bought a van to do up as a micro-camper, and did a temporary rush job of that conversion myself while waiting in the list for the pro to do it.
Then the pro gave himself a health criss the week it was booked so I took apart my temp job and only got another temp kit-job in it's place.
Went out in it like four times during that and then broke my wrist and couldn't really use it or improve it.
Then had to take it apart even more to try
and figure out where the ad-blue hole was.I will do a proper permanent job of the
floor and walls and ceiling and adjustments to the kit-job to make it the nicest it's been so far during the spring next year.My assumption that the prior conversion
into a van and for wheelchair-access meant the microcamper conversion was half-done already turned out to be false.If I buy a new one, it'll be one that has never been wheelchair adapted.
But it's going okay. Only scraped it once so far.
Went to 3 festivals
Fewer than aimed for or booked, but I broke my wrist and had to cancel the second half of the summer.
- Small World
- Private friends camping thing
- Good Vibrations, where I broke my wrist.
Bitfest
Went to a conference about money and computers and fringe decentralized social media and it wasn't as boring as you might expect and felt pretty much like a festival.
1 bedroom built
Exactly the target number! It's lovely.
Took 3 times longer than I'd hoped and
50% more money than I'd planned for really.Still improvements to make but they will
be incremental and gradual over the coming year or two now.Made money
Paid off the mortgage
It's been interest-only for 20 years so a big old lump sum payment that I never really expected to be able to make. Expected to have to sell and move at the end of the mortgage term.
But surprisingly the stocks ISA got high enough to pay it off after all, so I did that.
Cash-flow ruined by that and the bedroom but should start to feel a bit richer next year.
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Bookmarks
Things I have bookmarked lately.Venezuela and Truth - Craig Murray - Sun, 04 Jan 2026 15:36:30 +0000
"the Americans may be making the same mistake they made in Iran, in
believing that decapitation strategy and bombing will spark internal
revolution. In Iran, they actually strengthened support for the
Government.
As of yesterday afternoon, the Bolivarian government in Caracas
genuinely did not yet know what had happened, how far there was
collusion in the armed forces in Maduro’s kidnap, and whether they still
had the control of the army."
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.”"