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
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, 30 Oct 2025 17:08:56 +0000
Lots of doors now hung. Apparently the "panel" doors will really just be solid boards with edges glued on. He reckons they will paint before they do that bit.
And with that the carpenter is off to Egypt for a week. Back a week on Tuesday to build all the window doors for the top.
Meanwhile the other builder will be in doing the painting and other smaller stuff.
Estimate is to finish two weeks tomorrow. 🤞
Status at - Wed, 29 Oct 2025 15:39:58 +0000
They've been cutting doors into shape all day. Some have hinges on them, but none are hung onto the cupboards so no point in any photos.
None have any panels yet either.
Oh, or the holes I need for all the cables that'll have to go everywhere for speakers and lights. Will have to remember to ask about that tomorrow.
Status at - Tue, 28 Oct 2025 16:42:12 +0000
The closet looks to be complete other than the door. Almost everything looks complete other than doors and draws. And painting of course.
We're sure of the size of the doors which are to be mirror-backed now so ordered those.
Two more days before carpenter goes on holiday. Suspect there may be work for him to do when he gets back. Lots of doors to make. Draws surely each take ages and there's five of those.
Status at - Tue, 28 Oct 2025 16:15:23 +0000
Oh, interesting, SteamVR on Linux has improved somewhat since last time I tried.
No Mans Sky runs! If somewhat jerkily. Maybe that'll encourage me to upgrade the graphics card. I'd play so much more NMS if I could just launch it without all the reboot-to-windows faff.
Pistol Whip doesn't work through Proton though, so I guess it's only actual Linux-compatible VR games for now.
Status at - Tue, 28 Oct 2025 14:56:00 +0000
Discovered that my backup drive is full up. God knows how long ago. Can't be much more than a few months.
So backups haven't been backing up for a little while.
New backup drive ordered. Will be a big long process to get it all working again when that arrives.
Status at - Tue, 28 Oct 2025 14:52:31 +0000
Upgraded my main machine to Debian Trixie, which I was dreading because of how certain I was that it would break the open-source OpenVR system Monado and the NVidea graphics drivers.
It broke Monado and NVidea graphics drivers.
Downloading new NVidea drivers sorted out the graphics.
Monado took more work. Apparently I need to compile lib-survive now to get full 6 degrees of freedom tracking. Not sure why I didn't need that before. Maybe it was built into an older version?
Upgraded Godot while I was at it. Sad to find still no built in Inverse Kinematics system, and something changed about controller tracking. Maybe it can't tell if you touch the joystick now? Or renamed the symbols for that? Something like that.
The whole dev-kit for VR on Godot is working again after only three quarters of a day's work.
Not that I expect to get much chance to actually work on it any time very soon.
Avoiding trying to switch to Wayland. Very little hope of Monado working with that yet.
Status at - Mon, 27 Oct 2025 18:12:46 +0000
Wood arrived!
Not until lunch time though.
After lunch he's built the dresser desk and the closet.
Not much more than door and drawers left.
Two workers tomorrow apparently, maybe one will start the painting.
Status at - Fri, 24 Oct 2025 23:09:58 +0000
See, I got this robot army see, and if you don't give me a trillion dollars then someone who isn't me might be in charge of it see, and I dunno what damage they might do. Only way to make sure my robot army is safe, see, is to give me a trillion dollars.
God knows a robot army would be a terrible thing if someone other than me was in control of it, so best give me a trillion dollars so I can make sure the robot army only does what I want.
I won't even spend it! Who would spend a trillion dollars? I'll just use it to keep control of my robot army and so long as I get my trillion dollars everyone will be safe.
Status at - Fri, 24 Oct 2025 14:40:48 +0000
Paint samples arrived today and it was obvious which was gonna work better so I ordered a full 2.5l can.
Only to get an email back saying they can't make that colour in that varnish. Weird. That was literally the only actually blue they said they'd do last time they said they couldn't deliver what the website let me order.
After some discussion they have referred it to the Tainting Supervisor and it's apparently going to be here Monday.
Similarly for the wood, failed to arrive again today. They reckon Monday this time really for reals. Fingers crossed coz the carpenter can't do more until the wood arrives really and he's going on holiday this time next week.
So assuming the wood comes, four days to build the doors and finish off the walls of the closet and stuff.
Hopefully it can all be done in that time. Or at least the hard bits leaving the easy stuff for the less carpentery builder.
Status at - Fri, 24 Oct 2025 12:50:33 +0000
Content warning:UKPol NHS ID
You'll never need a digital ID for NHS
Says Starmer, and literally the only people in the entire world who believe him is the UK press.
He doesn't believe it himself, the civil servants making the policy don't believe it, the programmers making the app don't believe it, the public at large don't believe anything he says.
Only the reporters show any credence at all. They are programmed to just repeat the words without even assessing if they are true. That's what journalism is now.
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/digital-ids-nhs-keir-starmer-7wdxs8kqw
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Bookmarks
Things I have bookmarked lately.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…
‘Sixth-Form Politics’ – The Propaganda Blitz Awaiting Green Party Leader Zack Polanski – Media Lens - Fri, 10 Oct 2025 12:38:57 +0000
Media Lens on the propaganda blitz Polanski will face: "As with Corbyn in 2015, the fevered ranting from the extreme
right-wing press will be accompanied by initially muted criticism from
the extreme centre, at the far end of the truncated media ‘spectrum’.
Also as we saw with Corbyn, to the extent that Polanski offers genuine
hope of change, the response from the Guardian, Observer, BBC,
Independent and others will rise in pitch until the threat to ‘adult’
genocidal and biocidal politics is removed."
AI Slop Is Killing Our Channel - YouTube - Tue, 07 Oct 2025 14:40:18 +0000
Kurzgesagt's video on how AI is hurting the internet and artists with its creative theft and confident lies.
How Labour Sold Their Souls To Billionaires | Gary Stevenson | Zack Polanski - YouTube - Wed, 01 Oct 2025 22:40:56 +0000
Gary Stephenson talks to Green-Party-UK leader Zack Polanski on Zack's podcast. He thinks we should look at economics like a car mechanic, no wait, like a medical system. They congratulate each other a lot and chat about Gary's one topic focus, inequality. Gary doesn't want to reduce inequality he says, just stop it getting worse!
Pluralistic: The real (economic) AI apocalypse is nigh (27 Sep 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow - Sun, 28 Sep 2025 10:13:59 +0000
Bain & Co says that the only way to make today's AI investments profitable is for the sector to bring in $2 trillion by 2030 (the Journal notes that this is more than the combined revenue of Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Apple Nvidia and Meta):
What Fresh Hell is This? - Craig Murray - Fri, 26 Sep 2025 13:09:54 +0000
"The calculation is that Reform will oppose the measure on libertarian
grounds, and that this will allow Starmer to show himself as tougher on
immigration than Reform."
The Man Behind Blender, Ton Roosendaal | Bad Decisions Podcast #69 - YouTube - Tue, 23 Sep 2025 09:18:37 +0000
Ton Roosendaal is great, he is why Blender is so great and why the organization he has built is so perfect an example of Free Software doing well. Always wants to do the right thing the right way ever since buying his own software from his bankrupt company to make it free.
It's Your Party and I'll Cry If I Want To - Craig Murray - Sat, 13 Sep 2025 11:20:51 +0000
I cannot stress to you enough that this is not a glitch it is a feature.
Nor is it a teething problem. Those who currently hold the reins are
determined to make sure those reins cannot be voted out of their hands. I
have had a number of conversations with people actually in charge of
instituting all this, and the prevention of direct democracy and the
structuring of the party instead through controlled committees and
caucuses is for them a given.