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 - Tue, 09 Dec 2025 19:15:40 +0000

    Three more shots then while it's still nice. Looks pretty great in there, I am pleased.


    Status at - Tue, 09 Dec 2025 19:12:51 +0000

    What do you think my favourite TV show is?

    That's right, it's Buffy The Vampire Slayer. 😆


    Status at - Tue, 09 Dec 2025 18:26:53 +0000

    Bedroom is done! Well. Builders are finished anyway. I still have to buy a bed and stuff to put in it, and since I've spent all my money that'll have to wait until payday. And then it's nearly xmas so probably better to wait until January.

    There's a clasp missing to hold the window shutters shut. The one we had was too big. Should be able to screw one in myself tomorrow.

    Doing all the lights and stuff will takes months and months probably.

    But I can go back to sleeping in late instead of getting up to let the builders in every day.


    Status at - Tue, 09 Dec 2025 15:07:52 +0000

    Added a category manager and category state section to the Exocortex Log app.

    Have now organized and cleaned up the categories in my ten year database and so we can get some views of the time spent in each category.

    We see that through September and October I was in a routine of work and slack with a bit of social a couple of times a week, until the end of November when I went away for social at a conference all weekend. I saw a demo there of a person using Shakespeare, and then when I got back started doing some vibe-coding, shown in in Red.

    A break from that to go away at the weekend to a long social party then finish it off and publish a few days ago, since when Vibe Coding has dropped off a little.

    exocortexlog.com/news/articles


    Status at - Mon, 08 Dec 2025 22:39:23 +0000

    I am quite keen to watch The War Between The Land And The Sea on iplayer.

    But we need to consider tactics. Will the folks sit and watch it with me at Xmas? If they would that'd perhaps be better than whatever drivel quiz shows and police car chase stuff they normally make me watch.

    If they won't I'll be be postponing it three weeks for no reason.

    🤔

    Might be nice to watch it in the new bedroom but that probably won't have a bed or a chair until the new year.


    Status at - Mon, 08 Dec 2025 20:45:24 +0000

    Not the final lights but ones with batteries I have lying around. They'll have lights chasing up and down the length of the windows and changing colour and warping when it's done next year.

    Make 'em flash with the materialisation noise as an alarm clock maybe 😆


    Status at - Mon, 08 Dec 2025 18:10:09 +0000

    Hard to photograph these little alien owls that are reading lights in the headboard. They seem to have shipped with a cable which doesn't really fit into their cable holes. Needs one with a tight right angle.


    Status at - Mon, 08 Dec 2025 17:59:05 +0000

    Not finished today, but surely surely finished tomorrow!?

    Mirrors stuck onto the doors. Quite a lot of mirror. Makes the room feel bigger.

    All the trim and handles are on now. Just one hole for cables missing. Catches need to be put on the blind-doors. Adjusting the doors so they open and close smoothly. Couple of lights to be attached. Painting and decorating touch-up.

    Actually do believe they'll finish tomorrow.


    Status at - Mon, 08 Dec 2025 08:36:51 +0000

    I added a search function to the exocortex log app.

    Update with the section at the bottom of the conf screen if you can’t see it.

    Search for whatever words in your log, so you can see when you noted you last saw someone or had the MOT done or whatever.

    exocortexlog.com/news/articles


    Status at - Sun, 07 Dec 2025 19:06:05 +0000

    This months newsletter is on it's way to email boxes all the wonderful beautiful financially sovereign anarchists who asked for it.

    The rest of you fiat flops can read it here:
    dalliance.net/blog/nov25/

    Featuring updates on the bedroom build, an Anon Opin show, a walk in Devon, a bitcoin conference report, and news of the new steam machines in the links section.


  • Bookmarks

    Things I have bookmarked lately.
    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.”"

    New Work by Gary Larson | TheFarSide.com - Sat, 18 Oct 2025 09:00:29 +0000
    Gary Larson bought a graphics tablet and found drawing fun again, so we get some new stuff: "The “New Stuff” that you’ll see here is the result of my journey into
    the world of digital art. Believe me, this has been a bit of a learning
    curve for me. I hail from a world of pen and ink, and suddenly I was
    feeling like I was sitting at the controls of a 747. (True, I don’t get
    out much.) But as overwhelmed as I was, there was still something
    familiar there—a sense of adventure. That had always been at the core of
    what I enjoyed most when I was drawing The Far Side, that
    sense of exploring, reaching for something, taking some risks, sometimes
    hitting a home run and sometimes coming up with “Cow tools.” (Let’s not
    get into that.) But as a jazz teacher once said to me about
    improvisation, “You want to try and take people somewhere where they
    might not have been before.” I think that my approach to cartooning was
    similar—I’m just not sure if even I knew where I was going. But I…

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