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 - Mon, 13 Oct 2025 15:08:11 +0000
Light switch changed, lamp reattached to the ceiling. Woodwork and radiator painted. Carpenter has drawn pencil lines over the walls where all the wardrobes have to be built. Think he's been spending the day mostly correcting all my measurements which are apparently even more approximate than I thought. Figuring out how to compensate for the wonky walls that aren't all at proper right angles.
Can't really see the pencil lines in the photos here but makes it easier to imagine how it'll all come together.
Status at - Sun, 12 Oct 2025 18:07:22 +0000
Maybe I should mention how well it does.
It's caught some bugs before they're published, some fairly serious. But mostly its hallucinated many problems which aren't really there.
With all the code we write being reviewed by robots now, the code is written slightly differently to avoid it going on about issues that aren't really there.
People imagine that code is written for the computer to run, but really it's always been written for the programmers to understand. Now it's also written keeping in mind it'll be reviewed by an AI that has no context or understanding tasked with nit-picking to review.
Arguably this is ending up with better code. More unnecessary re-validation of everything mostly, but its also taking longer rather than being quicker.
Is that more efficient? 🤷 Sort of maybe?
3/3
Status at - Sun, 12 Oct 2025 17:50:09 +0000
Claude is triggered to review all the pull requests that I do to the codebase at work.
While it's working, it's little icon animates like this.
Every time I see it, I imagine it straining to push out it's shit from the chocolate starfish.
Its hard to unsee.
2/3
Status at - Sun, 12 Oct 2025 17:48:08 +0000
This is the logo for Anthropic's AI model "Claude".
Twenty seconds in MS Paint could draw the thing and it looks like, well, lets call it a "chocolate starfish"
1/3
Status at - Fri, 10 Oct 2025 23:27:51 +0000
Well if I can't have a peace prize then I might as well tariff China and smash all the stock markets.
- Tantrum Trump. Tantrump, if you will.
Status at - Fri, 10 Oct 2025 14:42:29 +0000
Wall painting completed. Apparently there'll be another coat after all the cupboards are built since building them may result in damage to existing layers.
Completed though is the big white wall covered in whiteboard paint. They tell me it should be left for at least a week before any washable markers are applied but I think it'll be longer than that.
Skirt & wood still to be done, which is a bit behind schedule coz on Monday the carpenter starts building the cupboards.
So two workers in for the day on Monday.
Status at - Thu, 09 Oct 2025 16:30:23 +0000
Today the builder painted most of the walls. Not the whiteboard-wall yet. Least not with the overcoat.
Painted the radiator-pipes. Radiator itself was removed and put back on.
When he left I went for a shower and found the water cold. Boiler saying error and pressure gauge too low, so I turn the tap to re-pressurize the loop. Probably just coz the radiator was removed I guess. Boiler boots up. Had a quick shower.
But alas, now I find the radiator is splaying a fine jet of water from it's bleed valve 😬
Intercepted that jet with a towel into a bucket, where most of the water has ended up. Dripping a bit still. Hope spraying the drying paint with water isn't too damaging.
Hopefully he can fix that up somewhat tomorrow.
Meanwhile the pine has arrived. 15 square meters of it. Good chunk of the cost getting all that wood.
Status at - Wed, 08 Oct 2025 14:28:39 +0000
Ceiling is painted, and some more fine grained filler in the wire-holes.
Think painting the walls and woodwork shall be next.
Status at - Tue, 07 Oct 2025 20:22:17 +0000
Watched Star Trek Section 31, a movie about the off-book starfleet characters trying to stop someone blowing up a quarter of the galaxy.
Might be the worst Star Trek ever made.
A crew with a mercenary ex-empressess from the mirror world, a mole, and no trust between 'em. They don't seem to get on but rescue the galaxy anyway. Maybe blow up a quarter of the mirror galaxy instead. Hurray. Genocide of our own galaxy averted.
Jokes aren't funny, characters aren't convincing, script full of dud. Somehow the murdering dictator is redeemed without any redemption arc.
Only for star trek completionists.
Status at - Tue, 07 Oct 2025 14:57:14 +0000
Not really sure why he took the radiator off today. Presumably whatever prep was going into the walls needed to be done behind it? He put it back on anyway.
All looks mostly the same to me other than filling in the routes that hold the wires. Which apparently is just stage one of that, and a finer filler will be applied tomorrow.
Suspect maybe some amount of slack on account of the guy who was supposed to be bringing the paint this morning not turning up until (hopefully) tomorrow.
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Bookmarks
Things I have bookmarked lately.‘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.
How & Why Did Big Tech Turn To The Right? - SOME MORE NEWS - Sat, 06 Sep 2025 13:34:51 +0000
How big tech took over the world and why Amazon produced a War Of The World movie in which Amazon and Google save the day, on a google youtube video with Cory
How & Why Did Big Tech Turn To The Right? - SOME MORE NEWS - Sat, 06 Sep 2025 13:34:51 +0000
How big tech took over the world and why Amazon produced a War Of The World movie in which Amazon and Google save the day, on a google youtube video with Cory
AI and the Urgent Need for a Politics of Altruism - Craig Murray - Thu, 04 Sep 2025 22:08:18 +0000
"Take the UK’s richest citizen, Jim Ratcliffe. What is the basis of
his wealth? Did he invent something? Did he pioneer a new form of
management? Did he build vast new industrial plants that employed tens
of thousands of people?
No, he did none of those things, and indeed arguably he did the very
opposite of those things. All he did was acoounting tricks with
digitised currency units, and then indulge himself in football clubs and
LandRover nostalgia."