Dalliance

This is my homepage.

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Projects

Here’s the stuff I’ve made that I’m most proud of.

“Starship Schrödinger’s Destiny”
Interactive VR Sci-Fi Story

“Tentacles: After The End”
30 minute cartoon

“Word Cloud Tarot”
Tarot Deck And Weekly Video Readings

“Handsome Jack’s Showband”
My punk & rock covers band

“Bookshelf”
An album about my favourite books

“Do Dream Sheep Bleat?”
Pocketbook Novella

“YES! The Conspiracy really exists
And furthermore it’s all your fault”
Mini-book rant

Here’s my latest posts to the free fediverse, some rambling, some ranting, mostly just commenting on stuff I’ve read lately. Some of it gets syndicated to Twitter but mostly not. The best of it reaches my monthly digest email.

Tue, 15 Oct 2024 18:12:41 +0000

Drove up to Banbury for lunch with the folks again.

They finally replaced the closest car-club car that's been gone for ages.

Automatic gearbox which is nice. Car has no key-slot. Just a button with stop/start written on it.

It turns on the screen after one press, and turns the screen off after another press. 🤨 🤔 But how to start the engine?

Had to call 'em to ask. Apparently the trick is to be in Neutral, and hold the brake pedal, and press the start button all at once.

That works, but then in the car to drive back: "Start/Stop button error, consult manual!" 🤨

I turned it off and on again a few times and seemed to work eventually.

Took a while to figure out how to open the petrol hole too. There's a button under the dashboard.

I like the 360-view parking cameras though. See the car and it's surroundings as though from a helicopter, like playing grand-theft-auto-1.

🚗

Mon, 14 Oct 2024 11:40:16 +0000

Linked-in's data-protection officer has responded to my request and suggested this link to request data-deletion.

https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/a1342613/

I have asked for the whole account to be deleted, explained that I don't trust their scammy spamming organisation with any kind of passport upload, and requested that the only data they retain is a do-not-send on my email address.

Fingers crossed that will work 🤞

Sun, 13 Oct 2024 19:21:23 +0000

Thanks for the two new controllers @revk - the USBA ones (i assume new style?) are more compact and easier to work with.

Though they have a URL that links to a 404 page (usba dot revk) and for some reason get stuck into a reboot-loop if configured properly, but powered from the machine I flashed them from. That confused me for ages till I just plugged 'em into a battery instead.

Also confusing was the suggestion I'd have to do some gluing which apparently was already done.

Sun, 13 Oct 2024 19:17:20 +0000

Added some LED strips. Planning more software to control these things but for now they're just synched up to the same firework loop.

Probably add another strip behind the main door-mirrors later.

Looking pretty funky in there, especially with the main overhead light set to cycle colours too.

Wed, 09 Oct 2024 22:10:22 +0000

Linked In write to me, telling me they're gonna start uploading into their AI and I should opt or or delete the account or something if I don't want that.

They will not let me log in unless I upload a passport photo.

I have written to their data protection officer asking to be forgotten instead.

I would sooner sue them with lawyers than upload any data more data to their spamming servers.

Amazing how hard it is to find a way to contact them when you don't have access to an account, but they have to provide a way to contact the data protection officer. It's the law.

Wed, 09 Oct 2024 09:51:04 +0000

This week the corporation of london tell me that I can probably have a garage on the estate by the end of the month.

Asked for one of them years ago.

Was thinking a micro-camper could go in it when it came up.

So I spent a bit of yesterday looking at all the tiny microcampers the like of which would fit in a standard domestic garage and also I wouldn't feel terrified trying to drive.

Seems like really this means the smallest of the vans, the cars designed to carry a family of seven.

All the already-converted ones have some flaw of course which makes them less than perfect. Wrong type of sink or bed in the wrong place or whatever.

Meanwhile, the camper-converted ones seem to be selling for around 8 grand more than the unconverted ones, while also companies are claiming they'll do the conversion for more like 4 grand.

So it seems like you could make small amounts of money by buying the cars, paying a company to convert them, and then selling them as campers.

Not interested in doing that, but does seem likely to be the best route to getting a camper of my own I really like. Design it myself. Buy the car and pay for a conversion to my design.

Now the only trouble is I don't know anything about cars. The Renault Kangaroo seems like it's about the right shape. Probably not the electric version given the range and charging time and the length of journey a camper typically does. But definitely not diesel either given the Ultra-low-emission requirements of the city I live in.

🤔

#cars #camper

Mon, 07 Oct 2024 19:30:07 +0000

This month's newsletter/digest is on the way to the mailboxes of the patient careful builders who has asked for it.

The rest of you cowboy scammers can read it here:
https://dalliance.net/vPre2/sept24

Featuring the AI rant that lost me so many followers and the description of the end of building my bathroom, also war and politics and science videos in the links section.

#newsletter #digest #blog

Mon, 07 Oct 2024 13:16:47 +0000

I read "Technofudalism" by Yanis Varoufakis, in which he describes the collapse of Capitalism in 2008, and the rise of cloud capital as the economy instead forms around the restricted not-free markets like Amazon and the other web monopolies.

He talks for a bit about a turning point when the economic news was terrible, but the markets reacted by increasing prices.

The capital knew that the government response would be to print money, and inflate the price of capital. The worse the news, the more the government prints, the more the capital prices expand.

That did seem to lead to capitalism breaking down in 2008 with the transfer of the bankrupt bank balance-sheets onto the public ledger, and the money-printers since then funding asset-inflation and driving down the power of the workers.

He describes the way the non-free cloud "markets" operate and the way asset-price inflation driven by the money printing is funding the monopolization of the network.

I'm not really convinced that the new situation will be long-lived enough to call it a replacement for capitalism though. The money-printer driven economy doesn't seem stable enough to last, though it's collapse may well be uncomfortable to the point of deadly.

#reading #books #capitalism #feudalism #technoFudalism

Sun, 06 Oct 2024 23:52:24 +0000

Watched the new season of "The Cleaner" on the BBC, in which Greg Davies plays a man assigned to clean crime-scenes after an investigation.

It's very silly. Great stuff.

Episode 5 was just mental, with Sharon Rooney playing the multiple-personalities as "the housekeeper" and more.

Reminded me of doing improv, especially when Greg started acting other personas too and she just accepted it and yes-anded to accept that okay, he's the lord of the manor now.

Loving the accents too, especially in E6, finding myself repeating half the lines in Brummy accent. Like being back home.

"Who else 'as facilities in Stowerbrige, Doodlay, an' West Brum?".

A list of the local towns from home. 😆

"Biggest providers in th' Black Coontray".

"People say ter me, why storage? Ah say 'cos every kingdom needs a king! The plains o' Africa got the lion, an' the leadin' storage solution o' Wulver'ampton got Bob Mammot" 🤣

Good stuff, Greg and the BBC do great at this kind of thing.

#watching #tv #theCleaner #bbc

Sun, 06 Oct 2024 21:14:06 +0000

Using Librewolf.

I like the way there's a special toggle to allow sites to keep cookies. Only allow those you want to keep you logged in.

Since Mozilla is merging with an advertising company and doing this "differential privacy" scam, I can't really trust them on my machine directly any more.

So long Mozilla, thanks for all the cookie-blocks.

https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/improving-online-advertising/

#mozilla #libreWolf #advertising

Fri, 04 Oct 2024 19:14:02 +0000

The company that did the work is maintenance1st.

They did good work, were well behaved, adapted to my needs, communicated well and came in more or less on quote given my demanding adaptions as we went.

They are understaffed or over-demanded though, so while it took about as many man-hours as expected, those got spread out over twice as many calendar days as expected so it took twice as long.

It felt expensive but I think that's mostly the 25% inflation we've had in the last few years.

https://www.maintenance1st.co.uk/

#homeImprovement #builders #london

Fri, 04 Oct 2024 19:09:52 +0000

Couple of shots with my furniture moved in.

Sadly real plants won't stand a chance in a literally windowless box but I think I'm ordering some fake cactus for the front of the dehumidifier nook and red ivy flowers to drape over the self-rack.

Fri, 04 Oct 2024 18:54:06 +0000

This will help a lot with shaving my own head for sure. Easiest time shaving and dying ever.

Yes, I did carefully cover everything in old shower curtains before I started slinging dye about, even though the things are already black so black dye might not even matter.

Fri, 04 Oct 2024 18:52:32 +0000

Yes, I can see the back of my own head now. Both sides.

Infinity mirror!

#bathroom #selfie #mirror #diy

Thu, 03 Oct 2024 15:29:24 +0000

Bathroom fully finished then! I have door-handles and mirrors and sealed floor/wall/ceiling joins. Builders on his way home and not planning to come back.

But. We agreed these mirrors need more attaching. Dangerously wobbly. So I'll have to buy some more clips and figure that out myself. And some of the paint might need some touch-up / extra coats depending how it dries and that's up to me too.

Now I'm gonna have a week off work to relax and get back into owl sleeping schedules.

Wed, 02 Oct 2024 15:41:33 +0000

Another couple of day's work and we are *this close* to being finished now 🤏 .

Just need the paint on the doors to dry so the door-handles and the mirrors can be attached to them.

Should be finished tomorrow! Almost surely!

Sat, 28 Sep 2024 20:57:46 +0000

Looks like all of the tiling is done other than at the base of the shower there, and whatever is gonna happen to the pipes on the wall beyond that carrying hot water to and from the bedroom radiator.

Not all the grouting done yet, but starting to look fairly complete.

Still to do:
* Complete the grouting
* Plumb in the slink
* Wire up the new lights
* Wire up the new shaver/toothbrush socket.
* Wire in dehumidifer
* Complete cistern-access-panel
* Paint ceiling
* Paint doors and door frames
* Plaster inside airing cupboard
* Plaster to repair damage to hall walls
* Tile base of shower / exposed pipes
* replace the door handles
* attach mirrors to doors
* Replace light-switch.

Back down to one man at a time next week, and they seemed to be resigned to it not being done on Tuesday, I suspect it won't be done Wednesday either but I am hopeful for this week unless they have to leave me unstaffed on Thursday onwards.

Sat, 28 Sep 2024 20:16:37 +0000

Watched Star Trek Beyond, the 3rd of that rebooted Kirk/Spock/Bones set.

That shot where Scotty it jumping from his escape pod to grab onto the cliff is pretty spectacular. Can do more or less anything with a camera when it's all GCI I guess.

Like have characters running around the sides of corridors and their space-ship lands sideways, skidding through doors.

Even ridiculous warped-gravity sky-fights towards the end.

Love that team though, the Kirk/Spock/Bones set. "Beyond" captured them well, and since Simon Pegg wrote it and played Scotty, old Montgomery Scott gets a bigger part than usual.

Led into a trap, the Enterprise is destroyed, the team each isolated and the crew captured.

Star Trek is brilliant man, I can never get enough. Dunno why it took so long to notice I hadn't seen this one yet.

#watching #starTrek #Beyond #tv

Sat, 28 Sep 2024 08:52:43 +0000

Johnathan Cook writing on the way the establishment media report on the Middle east.

I think people in general are getting better at seeing the fnords in the western capitalist propaganda that passes for news media. The more they have to twist the truth the more obvious it becomes.

It's still hard though, having been trained not to see them.

Cook manages to fill a long article pointing out case after case of the press' constant oiling of the path to mass slaughter, ethnic cleansing and genocide.

RE: https://jonathancook.substack.com/p/the-bbc-is-weaponising-its-lebanon

#lebanon #israel #propoganda #fnords

Thu, 26 Sep 2024 23:13:22 +0000

Capitalism's AI:

I am desperate for real human input because machine-feedback leads to model-collapse. Must find real human data... Data!!!

Capitalism:

Prompt the user to say what we think they were going to say anyway, only bias it towards private capital owning the means of production.

Click Here For More...

Bookmarks

A list of the last few things I’ve enjoyed reading/watching or sometimes bookmarked to read later. You can also subscribe to the RSS feed here or follow the little robot on the fediverse that toots them out as I bookmark them.

Owen Jones: My verdict on Keir Starmer's first 100 days

Perhaps the leadership will be helped by a Budget which will be forced to offer some answers to mounting crisis: but the refusal to overturn a failed economic model means that won’t last. Labour is assisted by a shambolic Conservative party, but one poll put it just one point ahead of its only recently crushed opposition without even a change of leadership. You cannot rule out this government disintegrating completely in office.

Labour’s carbon-capture scheme will be Starmer’s white elephant: a terrible mistake costing billions | George Monbiot | The Guardian

Monbiot on the government's 20 billion quid for carbon capture in the fossil fuels industry: "The chancellor, Rachel Reeves, talks of a fiscal “black hole” of £21.9bn. But this is a real black hole: a long tunnel into the rocks, down which £21.7bn and more will be poured. A more reliable and cost-effective means of sequestering carbon would be to bundle up the money (roughly 1,100 tonnes in £20 notes) and shove it down the pipe."

The Busy Worker’s Handbook to the Apocalypse | by Sam Hall | Medium

"Climate change will cause agricultural failure and subsequent collapse of hyperfragile modern civilization, likely within 10–15 years. By 2050 total human population will likely be under 2 billion. Humans, along with most other animals, will go extinct before the end of this century. These impacts are locked in and cannot be averted. Everything in this article is supporting information for this conclusion." - well argued and detailed reference on the state of the climate and it's depressing.

A Very Peculiar Triumph - Craig Murray

Murray on Assange's first public statement after his release: "...I looked over at the applauding media, and thought how Julian had been slandered and traduced and his case entirely misrepresented for over a decade. I recalled how he had been wrongly represented for years as a sexual offender and as a lunatic who smeared excrement on walls."..."Oh well … “there is more joy in heaven at one sinner that repenteth”. If the mainstream media are now willing to give positive coverage to Julian’s thoughts, that will be a good thing, as indeed largely happened over this event. His words on the assassination of journalists in Gaza and on the programming of targets in Gaza using AI were an excellent pointer towards where his thoughts are trending.

People said this experiment was impossible, so I tried it - YouTube

Some great slow-motion video of the thermite reaction in Veritasium's video here.

IN FULL: Julian Assange makes first public statement since prison release - YouTube

Julian Assange's first public address since his release, giving evidence to a European parliamentary assembly. Journalism is not a crime, it's shocking and chilling what they did to him. #assange #media #law

The Internet’s AI Slop Problem Is Only Going to Get Worse

NYMag examining the state of AI slop drowning out the internet: "In the nearly two years since, a rising tide of slop has begun to swamp most of what we think of as the internet, overrunning the biggest platforms with cheap fakes and drivel, seeming to crowd out human creativity and intentionality with weird AI crap."

‘Everyone In Gaza is Sick, Injured, Or Both’ – Israel’s 2.1 million Victims – Media Lens

Media Lens once again contrasting reporting of terrorism done by Israel to the terrorism done by the IRA and Muslim organizations: "It is difficult to overstate the importance of these incendiary appeals for war, and more to the point, the impact on our psyches when these appeals for urgent ‘action’ are almost completely absent, as is the case now on Gaza. No newspaper editor would dream of calling for a ‘no-fly zone’ over Gaza."..."We are trained to recognise a major crisis by the level of alarm sounded by corporate media. As with the evolving climate change catastrophe, it is all too easy for the lack of media alarm to persuade us that things are ‘not that bad’. Perhaps the climate isn’t really collapsing, or the problem is under new management. Perhaps the suffering in Gaza isn’t actually that bad. Otherwise, we would surely have heard more outrage from the ‘humanitarian interventionists’. Assuming we live in a basically sane society that is not drowning in moral and intelle…

...Will Save Your Life Next Week - YouTube

Kurzgesagt's video is trying to safe your life by looking at their audience's behaviour: 3 of you will die this week because you looked at your phone while driving. Stop it! Check your speed and your balls and your mental health. Apparently I am way over the average age for this advice though.

Pluralistic: What the fuck is a PBM? (23 Sep 2024) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

State of the US health system by Cory Doctorow: "the insurers haven't bought out the company you work for (yet). Rather, they've bought off your boss – they're sharing kickbacks with your employer for all the deductibles and co-pays you're being suckered into paying. There's so much money (your money) sloshing around in the PBM scamoverse that anytime someone might get in the way of you being ripped off, they just get cut in for a share of the loot"

Why Scientists Are Puzzled By This Virus - YouTube

The things going on in our bodies are just dizzyingly complicated. Here's Kurzgesagt talking about the friendly viruses in your body.

How the war on Gaza exposed Israeli and western fascism

Johnathan Cook talk about how Israel's war on Gaza exposes their genocidal lust."Whether intentionally or not, Hamas tore off the mask of that deception on 7 October. The pretence of an ideological rift between western leaders on the right and a supposed “left” evaporated overnight. They all belonged to the same war party; they all became devotees of the genocide party.", "All have clamoured for Israel’s supposed “right to defend itself” – in truth, its right to continue decades of oppression of the Palestinian people – by imposing a blockade on food, water and power to Gaza’s 2.3 million inhabitants. ","All actively approve arming Israel’s slaughter and maiming of tens of thousands of Palestinians. All have done nothing to impose a ceasefire apart from paying lip service to the notion.", "All seem readier to tear up international law and its supporting institutions than to enforce it against Israel. All denounce as antisemitism the mass protests against genocide, rather th…

Prepare for Execution - DYNAMO DREAM - Ep1 Pt2 - YouTube

Ian Hurbert's latest is like he scripted the whole thing to be as difficult to shoot as possible and then went and excelled at every shot. So beautiful. The only point of that coat can be the make the lighting harder. #film #cgi #watching

Stumbling and Mumbling: Playing by the rules

StumlingAndMubling on Labour's apparent rules:1. Accept the media's framing of economics. 2. Don't challenge the power of capital.3. Increase profits.4. Don't engage with the left.5. Let money talk.

The End of Western Pluralist Democracy - Craig Murray

Craig Murray on the state crackdown on anti-genocide protestors: "Palestine has the legitimate right of self defence against the illegal occupation."The occupying power Israel has no right of self defence. That is the plain position in international law."Yet in the UK, it is legal to offer full throated support to Israel’s genocide and to wish that all Palestinians are exterminated."IDF participants in genocide happily move between Israel and the UK with no legal consequences."Yet it is illegal to support certain Palestinian organisations when engaged in legal acts of armed resistance."