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, 15 Oct 2026 20:36:33 +0000
Content warning:re: Pointlessly detailed description of my computer setup
Can I get the money if I add an 'agents' directory?
I guess you'd set up the 'agent' as a separate user-id with permissions only to checkout and commit to the git repositories it was working on.
I can write a three layer config for agents for sure. And I recon claude could if I faltered.
Status at - Thu, 15 Oct 2026 20:17:45 +0000
Content warning:re: Pointlessly detailed description of my computer setup
Perhaps I should also mention that there's two monitors, mirrored to show the same thing. One is at sitting height and one is attached the the wall at standing height.
Under the monitors, two keyboards, two mice (one set cordless, the other set fancy). The mice are upright mice for wrist safety.
The two laptops sit on the shelf at standing height next to the standing monitor.
One is plugged into the projector, it is the jellyfin server too.
One is the work laptop which has restricted access to the internet and upon which I installed the OS myself. Similar setup. No backups though, that laptop only has checkouts from work projects and installed tools.
It ain't mine, but I have root. But it has run mandated software from companies associated with intelligence services. My own hardware does not (deliberately) do that. It has tape over the camera when not in use. Generally turned off when not working.
The sitting keyboard is a Dygna and it is great, once you apply my special config files. The click, the lights, the separation and mobility of the hand position. The tilt. The pads. The configuration. Awesome. With the right config files. Yours for an investment of just two million.
The standing keyboard is a wireless MS split-keyboard. Separate number-pad. The only good thing MS ever made. When I heard they discontinued them I bought backups, there's two more in the cupboards.
The tower itself has a window case, led lights, led fans, and is in a cupboard in the corner which in turn has a window with led lit fans.
There's four VR masks here now the Frame has arrived and the Steam Machine for the bedroom might arrive next week.
Good job, the fridge palmtop powering the kitchen screen has been quarantined this week for swelling battery syndrome.
Status at - Thu, 15 Oct 2026 19:57:54 +0000
Content warning:re: Pointlessly detailed description of my computer setup
What is y'all's special million dollar computer config?
Status at - Thu, 15 Oct 2026 19:51:30 +0000
Content warning:Pointlessly detailed description of my computer setup
I don't really understand what Omarchy even is, other than a front for corporations to donate money to fascism.
It sounds like it's not even a full distro really, just Arch with a bunch of config files?
I mean: If you can get millions of pounds for your config these days, my config is:
- Debian
- XFCE4
- Librewolf and Firefox and Chromium and Chrome
- XFCE-Terminal (because it can be transparent background)
- Blender installed
- Gnu Imp installed
- Krita installed
- Inkscape installed
- Darktable Installed
- Libre-Office installed
- Audacity installed
- Ardour installed
- Rhythmbox Installed
- Steam Installed (but not running by default)
- Signal installed (well, Molly)
Three-key keyboard shortcuts for:
- Window to top left quarter
- Window to top right quarter
- Window to bottom left quarter
- Window to bottom right quarter
- Window to center 1/4 borders
- Window to full screen
- Window un-full-screen
They are all ctrl-alt and keys around J on the keyboard. I move my windows around like a wizard.
5x2 virtual desktops. Move between them with ctrl-alt left/right/up/down. Shift to carry the current window as you move.
The desktop configuration is:
Main:
- Libre-wolf mid-screen.
- Terminal window full-height on right half of screen for whatever I'm working on.
- Terminal windows on top and bottom of left hand of screen for whatever supplementary terminals are needed.
One-Desktop-left, messenger screen:
- Signal on right
- Telegram on bottom left
- The terminal running my robot forwarding signal messages for me from RSS on top left.
Telegram will be phased out. Nearly done.
One desktop right, lights.
- Center, a libre-wolf window connected to the server running my led strips.
- Bottom-left: The terminal running that server.
- Full-height-right (sometimes): Working on that code.
One desktop down: Godot-coding.
- Full-screen Godot
- Full-screen Blender
- Full-screen VScode
- Full-height-right: A bash prompt current-dir the project.
- Top-left: the terminal window that launched Godot
- Bottom-Left: Occasional supplementary terminal.
Diagonal right-down: Steam.
- Middle: The steam window, if it's running.
- Top-left, the terminal window that launched steam, showing it's logs.
- floating: The VR-status window that steam won't let me program it's location and keeps switching to the wrong desktop because steam sucks.
Diagonal left-down, spreadsheets.
- The graph tracking how fat I'm getting.
- The one showing how rich/poor I'm getting.
- The terminal window that lunched Libreoffice.
Rarely active really.
The other desktops are for sundry tasks as and when they might arise.
The OS is on the root of the hard-drive and /home/pre is mounted from a set of zfs drives that frankly need rethinking and reorganizing.
Directories in there:
- doc - things that are backed up
- pub - data that's downloaded and replaceable or otherwise too voluminous to back up.
In /pub we have basically the Jelly-fin formats with side-directories.
In /doc we have
- projects
- pix
- tax
- syncthing
- fonts
- config ( ~/.config/ is symlinked here, so that config is backed up)
- bin (many scripts for common tasks)
- vimwiki
Vimwiki is my opinionated choice for personal journal and reference notes. It is amazing and I should have gone with markdown from the start but it's still all in vimwiki syntax.
I will post the basic structure of the vimwiki only if this post gets 50 boosts or thousands of dollars in donations.
It is several levels deep with symlinks into the project directories.
Then of course there's the server-config which there's flavours of, and the way those servers are backed up, and the themes for the things.
Nextcloud, ttrss, goto-social, mastodon, peertube. I got servers running 'em all.
Can I get me some of those fascist dollars if I publish my config for mixing gotosocial with a static website to combine a social and web identity into one?
It's basically just an nginx config and a hugo run and some scripts.
If I install all that and snapshot it can I have the millions of fascists money please?
Status at - Thu, 15 Oct 2026 18:56:24 +0000
Added a status-check for all my websites into my next-cloud dashboard by writing to it's 'welcome' text in a cron.
Sped it up by getting around to installing opCache. That makes quite a big difference to loading speed really. Even on my tiny one nobody else uses.
Looking alright. Nextcloud is one of the lesser intolerable bits of software I use. But I do mostly use it from calendar apps and notes apps and bookmarks apps rather than it's own web interface.
Status at - Wed, 14 Oct 2026 22:28:48 +0000
Watched the Stranger Things theater-play prequel in The Phoenix.
Amazing staging. The lights and projections and choreography and sets were dumbfounding. Whole stage of two dozen people rotating around and pacing about on the rotating stages near made me dizzy.
And that was the best thing about it. Yes.
Had the same mood as the show. Mostly that's music I guess.
I barely remember the Netflix show, only watched two seasons before losing interest. Guess this was all leading up to 11 being born.
Some of our party left early coz the story was so uninspiring but I barely noticed that, being entranced by the spectacle.
Status at - Wed, 14 Oct 2026 09:51:24 +0000
Hey, look, I am doing an improv show. You could even come see me on stage! What about that for an idea.
It's on Tuesday the 17th November at 8:00pm, finishing after interval by - 9:30.
Then we'll be in the bar for a bit if you wanna chat after.
Upstairs at the Miller in London Bridge.
https://www.ticketsource.com/hooplaimpro/t-yzgnjky
The team will also enter a couple of mixers, December 5th and 11th, but there's no link for that yet.
Status at - Tue, 13 Oct 2026 23:30:16 +0000
Content warning:AI made maths proofs
They tell me that Open AI have solved four hundred previously open maths problems this week.
The news media, and even the mathematicians, seem quite credulous about it.
No way to know how many of those will really stand up in the end. Lots of proofs turn out not to be really proofs coz they have a mistake, and AI is quite good at discovering mistakes as well as now apparently discovering maths.
Some of them are counter-examples that prove the conjecture is false and those are gonna be good at last. Machines can check it.
Some have other types of mechanical machine-checkable proof, which is interesting in that we can all believe the checker-machine: coz it's deterministic and understandable.
We can't trust the machine that isn't deterministic or understandable as much though.
GPT says these things are true. Now maths people have to check, because OpenAI staff aren't expert mathematicians either, mostly.
Some of the 400 proofs will fall, I'm sure.
How many tokens will be spent before machines find the flaws that are surely still there? How many tokens until you decide to stop?
But if a machine can prove a thing to itself, but not explain it to any person, is it really doing maths? Even if it's correct more often than people are? Or is doing maths more about making meat understand a thing?
🤔
I'm sure I can't tell if the proofs are true or not. No point me reading them. Mostly won't even understand the question. The boundary of my meager meat-mind's maths-understanding was around barely-degree level.
Can the academic discipline continue as one which is devoted mostly to trying to understand the output of a machine writing about maths, which is mostly right but nobody can really tell without an entire academic discipline trying to check.
In other words, mathematicians now also face a spam problem familiar to many github project leads.
Status at - Fri, 09 Oct 2026 11:09:07 +0000
Content warning:re: UKPol Holborn
Thing is, the commentariat are used to the idea that if there's a policy they don't like they can campaign to get the leader changed and then the new leader will change the policy.
But the Green Party doesn't work like that. Zack didn't write the policy, would have voted against it if he wasn't busy, and a new leader can't change it any more easily than Zack can.
The job is spokesman, not chieftain.
There'll be a leadership election soon anyway, has to be one, my guess is Zack will win again. If someone better stands I'll vote for them but I'm not aware of anyone that could be.
Status at - Fri, 09 Oct 2026 09:33:15 +0000
Content warning:UKPol Holborn
So Labour's down only four points from the general election, from 49% down to 45%.
The Green's have tripped their vote from like 10% to like a third.
Massive swing towards green, but not enough to take the seat. Needs another 1500 people to change their mind.
Obviously all the media will say this means Burnham is winning and Zack has to go. I hope not. He's doing great.
No way to really find out how it would have been different if the Zionism motion had gone the other way.
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Bookmarks
Things I have bookmarked lately.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"
Where to Find the Colors Your Screen Can’t Show You – Ryan Moulton's Articles - Sun, 21 Jun 2026 11:34:04 +0000
Really great article on colour-spaces and how your eyes work vs screens and pigments: "There are colors that I want to show you, but I can’t. They exist in the
real world. You probably saw some of them today, but I can’t show them
to you on a screen. A digital photograph can’t capture them, and your
screen can’t display them. No game you’ve ever played has contained
them. Unless you have specialized equipment, they are entirely absent
from the digital world."