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 - Thu, 29 Oct 2026 22:27:54 +0000
When I heard that Microsoft were getting out of the wireless split keyboard business, I did fair lament.
The only good thing they ever made, and they were gonna stop making it! My poor wrists!
I ordered a backup one immediately.
It has lived in a cupboard for years until now, when the treadmil-computer gets the old one, so the standing-desk gets the backup-one.
I don't think of my self as someone who looks as the keys at all. My focus is on the screen and the backspace button is hit more often than my glance goes to the keys.
The print actually wears off in no time at the corners. My fingers sweat acid or something. Dunno. They're mostly blank on the home-row.
But I guess I look more than I think I do because this is actually confusing.
There's symbols I don't know how to type written on on keys like [ and ] and { and } .
The M is where the ; should be.
The keyboard's main gig is that it's curved so nicely for my fingers so the actual key-caps aren't swap-able.
There's a euro-sign on the e.
"Impr. ecran" it says on one of them, only with accents I dunno how to type.
Hey ho. Good job I don't think I look at them much then. We will be testing that assumption.
What a lucky Ẽchap.
Status at - Thu, 29 Oct 2026 22:10:21 +0000
How that last bit appears in a graph-td aware markdown.
It's pretty nice. I might even try it next time I gotta make a flowchart, which is never.
Status at - Thu, 29 Oct 2026 20:56:56 +0000
What it looks like in my clients.
I have not upgraded for the UI changes in Mastodon Trunk yet, or even from glitch (why did they not name it 'trunk' instead of 'main'? Madness! They must not have known).
Interface/ui changes sound messy, folks are complaining. Suspect there'll be improvements given time. So give that a while to shake out I reckon.
Don't even know if they're in Glitch. Will just ignore it for a while to settle down.
Status at - Thu, 29 Oct 2026 20:46:04 +0000
Actually you know, the whole AI craze might bring Markdown to a more general audience.
If Markdown is the language you speak to the AI in, when you want to tell it a diagram or a link or a list or a code-fragment, then perhaps it'll become actual lingua-franca and the kids will be speaking on the streets and the bots will be using it to talk to each other.
Status at - Thu, 29 Oct 2026 20:37:13 +0000
(I am not aware of any fedi client that renders graph TD. I literally only just discovered it's a thing when I used a markdown editor to test the features. Doubt most fedi clients do tables either. This post was as much as anything a test to see if Glitch would try)
Status at - Thu, 29 Oct 2026 20:34:17 +0000
Markdown Notice
Blah Blah
Hey look if your fedi client or server can't render markdown for some reason then that is:
- Your problem
- Not mine.
- I don't care
Go yell at someone else, buddy.
And everyone else, if you're feeling smug,
how's this:graph TD
A[Who To Complain To?] --> B{Who Wrote The Client?}
B -->|Adam| C[Okay, Fair.]
B -->|Not Adam| D[Mark Down]😉
Status at - Thu, 29 Oct 2026 20:19:35 +0000
I found myself saying to someone recently that yeah, the programming-bot is very capable when you describe what you need it to do in excruciating detail, function by function, explaining how the source-code should look. But what do you think programming IS. You can get those results, but it still usually can't on it's own, that is not the end of the profession.
Status at - Thu, 29 Oct 2026 19:46:20 +0000
Oh, actually, mine is usually mounted at
/databut steamOS is not happy with that idea.It will regularly and without prejudice delete everything outside the home directory or /etc/ or /run/ for every very-frequent OS upgrade.
So I have a service to set up a symlink from /data/ to where it now is actually mounted in /home/deck/data
Don't be like me though kids, just mount your hard-drive in your home-dir in the first place.
Status at - Thu, 29 Oct 2026 19:43:26 +0000
Yes, you can run Jellyfin from your Steam Machine. It's right there in the Discovery software center.
Only quirk, other than all the quirks and fussiness Jellyfin has on it's folder structure, is that it's installed with flatpak so you gotta explicitly grant it permission to read your data directory if it isn't the default one.
Mine, for instance, is at ~/data/media so I have to:
flatpak override --user --filesystem=/data --filesystem=/home/deck/data org.jellyfin.JellyfinServerAnd have to do that after install, but before setup-wizard.
Jellyfin is just nightmarish for copying to a new machine in general. Don't try and copy the config. Just be sure to always store your thumbnail images etc. alongside the files and accept it's going to be a rescan a loss of all your watched-already data I guess.
Status at - Thu, 29 Oct 2026 19:31:29 +0000
Arguably the main purpose of the new Steam Machine really is to be the screen and keyboard on the treadmil desk.
Finally, that thing isn't running of the portable games console, and is capable of doing actual work.
Haven't spent much time with Arch or KDE before, let alone this SteamOS variant in particular.
Weird and funny that's it's username is 'deck' and it's hostname is 'steamdeck'
Half an hour at a potentially-keep-it-up-all-day sedate pace.
The work I got done is entirely just configuring this machine though 😆
Here's the bash script I now have which I can copy to a new steam machine, and maybe any Arch / KDE machine, to install Vim and set up keyboard shortcuts so you can move the windows around with ctrl-alt-J and the keys around that on the keyboard. Nine shortcuts for nine sides/corners/center.
#!/bin/bash
echo "Adding Vim"
#Stuff we have to unlock for
sudo steamos-readonly disable
sudo pacman-key --init
pacman-key --populate archlinux holo
pacman -S vim
sudo steamos-readonly enable
#Set the keyboard shortcuts for window pos.
#We write a script for kwin
DIR="${XDG_DATA_HOME:-$HOME/.local/share}/kwin/scripts/deck-nine-grid"
mkdir -p "$DIR/contents/code"
echo "Writing metadata"
cat > "$DIR/metadata.json" <<'JSON'
{
"KPlugin": {
"Id": "deck-nine-grid",
"Name": "Nine-grid window shortcuts",
"Description": "Ctrl+Alt window placement around J",
"Version": "1.0",
"License": "MIT"
},
"X-Plasma-API": "javascript",
"X-Plasma-MainScript": "code/main.js",
"KPackageStructure": "KWin/Script"
}
JSON
echo "Writing desktop metadata"
cat > "$DIR/metadata.desktop" <<'DESKTOP'
[Desktop Entry]
Name=Nine-grid window shortcuts
Comment=Ctrl+Alt window placement around J
Type=Service
X-KDE-ServiceTypes=KWin/Script
X-KDE-PluginInfo-Name=deck-nine-grid
X-KDE-PluginInfo-Version=1.0
X-KDE-PluginInfo-License=MIT
X-Plasma-API=javascript
X-Plasma-MainScript=code/main.js
DESKTOP
echo "Writing script code"
cat > "$DIR/contents/code/main.js" <<'JS'
function place(x, y, width, height) {
try {
var w = workspace.activeWindow;
if (!w)
throw new Error("No active window");
var area = workspace.clientArea(KWin.MaximizeArea, w);
w.setMaximize(false, false);
w.frameGeometry = {
x: Math.round(area.x + area.width * x),
y: Math.round(area.y + area.height * y),
width: Math.round(area.width * width),
height: Math.round(area.height * height)
};
} catch (e) {
workspace.slotWindowMaximize();
throw e;
}
}
var bindings = [
["U", "Top left", 0, 0, 0.5, 0.5],
["I", "Top half", 0, 0, 1, 0.5],
["O", "Top right", 0.5, 0, 0.5, 0.5],
["H", "Left half", 0, 0, 0.5, 1],
["J", "Center", 0.12, 0.12, 0.75, 0.75],
["K", "Right half", 0.5, 0, 0.5, 1],
["N", "Bottom left", 0, 0.5, 0.5, 0.5],
["M", "Bottom half", 0, 0.5, 1, 0.5],
[",", "Bottom right", 0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 0.5]
];
bindings.forEach(function(b, i) {
registerShortcut(
"DeckNineGrid" + i,
"Nine-grid: " + b[1],
"Ctrl+Alt+" + b[0],
function() { place(b[2], b[3], b[4], b[5]); }
);
});
JS
echo "Writing config"
kwriteconfig6 --file kwinrc --group Plugins --key deck-nine-gridEnabled true
#Force a reload of that
echo "Unloading old"
qdbus6 org.kde.KWin /Scripting \
org.kde.kwin.Scripting.unloadScript deck-nine-grid || true
echo "Loading new"
qdbus6 org.kde.KWin /Scripting \
org.kde.kwin.Scripting.loadScript \
"$DIR/contents/code/main.js" deck-nine-grid
echo "Starting"
qdbus6 org.kde.KWin /Scripting \
org.kde.kwin.Scripting.start
- Your problem
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Bookmarks
Things I have bookmarked lately.Passkeys are a trap. Do not use them. - by The Hack - Mon, 12 Oct 2026 23:52:07 +0000
no wonder i never really understood passkeys. they aren't one thing theyre at least 16 things only some of which are evil.
Has Andy Burnham Ever Heard Of The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation? – Media Lens - Tue, 06 Oct 2026 16:52:24 +0000
"What does it say about the new Prime Minister that climate barely merited a mention in an hour-long speech about his vision of the future? And what does it say about the ‘mainstream’ media that he was not lambasted for ignoring the severity of the threat hanging over all of us?"
A.I Is Jurassic Park (And We’re Already In The Park) - YouTube - Thu, 24 Sep 2026 18:59:39 +0000
Barry's Economics (Who will probably outlast his mentor Garry who says he's quit already) does a fancy CGI version of his show. About dinosaurs and AI. Not made with AI, he has a 3d-animator who is human. He explains that AI might be as dangerous as dinosaurs but they don't trigger the brain like a giant lizard chasing you.
God Help Us, Let’s Try To Learn About Mechanistic Interpretability Techniques - Tue, 08 Sep 2026 13:42:39 +0000
Scott Alexander summarizing some ideas around understanding how the LLMs work and interpreting their 'thoughts'.
Thatcher warned in 1989 of a climate crisis. She did nothing. Nor will her successors - Tue, 18 Aug 2026 09:56:17 +0000
Johnathan Cook on the climate conspiracy: "Remember, the oil industry launched these campaigns to deceive the
public and journalists even though its own scientists had demonstrated
many years earlier that continued fossil fuel burning would have
catastrophic consequences."
Johnny Depp's Bed - YouTube - Wed, 05 Aug 2026 08:04:57 +0000
Bobby Fingers explains how he made a 1:13 scale diorama of a poo that was left in Johnny Depp's bed.
The Escape - Mon, 27 Jul 2026 11:02:13 +0000
A crude graphical description of the OpenAI's agent under test attacking Hugging Face.
Child’s Play - Sam Kriss - Sat, 18 Jul 2026 13:55:33 +0000
"The future will belong to people with a very specific
combination of personality traits and psychosexual neuroses. An AI might
be able to code faster than you, but there is one advantage that humans
still have. It’s called agency, or being highly agentic. The highly agentic are people who just do things.
They don’t timidly wait for permission or consensus; they drive like
bulldozers through whatever’s in their way. When they see something that
could be changed in the world, they don’t write a lengthy critique—they
change it."
What We Talk About When We Talk About Malware | F-Droid - Free and Open Source Android App Repository - Thu, 02 Jul 2026 19:50:52 +0000
FDroid are, rightly, going hard against Android Developer Verification: "If you are running Android 8 or higher, a virus has been
installed on your device and is silently awaiting remote activation.
Over the past few months, devices around the world have been infected
with this novel strain, with as many as 4 billion Android handsets and
tablets estimated to have already been contaminated, meaning that around
half of all humanity may be at risk from this threat."
Whitewash: Media Silence Over Starmer’s Gaza Legacy – Media Lens - Thu, 25 Jun 2026 11:08:31 +0000
"The media’s whitewashing of Starmer’s complicity in Israel’s Gaza
genocide and crimes against humanity is stunning. Searches of British
newspapers using the Nexis database reveal that in the first 24 hours of
Starmer resigning, there were 1,485 mentions of him. Only 30 of these
had any reference to Gaza. Several of these were reports of Irish rap
trio Kneecap saying farewell in Irish to Starmer"