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 - Fri, 06 Jun 2025 16:44:58 +0000
Everyone must stop using the phrase "I did not have that on my bingo card" please.
It's tired and trite and that isn't even how Bingo works. You don't compile a card of all the numbers you expect to see. It's not weird when a number comes up that isn't on your card.
And the use of the phrase is growing. Soon it will be the only expression of surprise left!
Lets end this now before it's too late.
Status at - Fri, 06 Jun 2025 16:14:26 +0000
This month's newsletter/digest is on it's way to the email box of all the amazing friendly good people who asked for it.
The rest of you bitchy vicious augmentative people in public spats can read it here:
https://dalliance.net/blog/may25/Featuring MRI scans and festival reports and a great video about why gradient descent doesn't get trapped in local minima in the links section.
Status at - Fri, 06 Jun 2025 00:07:07 +0000
They're just trying to distract you from FediForum. Don't let them!
Status at - Thu, 05 Jun 2025 22:42:58 +0000
The fediverse is often full of drama with admins falling out with each other and defederations, and threats and tears.
Now, with the public spat between the Twitter admin and the TruthSocial admin, the rest of the world gets to enjoy a similar spectacle!
They can't defederate of course, because Twitter never became open enough and TruthSocial was already defederated by everyone as soon as it existed.
Only on Fedi can you get the full experience of a public spat and defederation, because only on Fedi can the admins really at-mention and and directly reply and take the final dramatic action of a flouce-defederation.
Trump fans who are Twitter users can't port their followers over to TruthSocial, and Turther Musk fans can't just migrate their account to Twitter.
They're stuck.
So you see Fedi really is the best when it comes to massive public spats between admins and this current admin-drama is only getting more attention because it's between two of the worst people in the world.
Status at - Mon, 02 Jun 2025 20:28:45 +0000
Content warning:re: Doctor Who - Reality War
In summary then: Pop goes the timeline.
Madness. So many lose ends, so much barely making sense. Great epic adventure though.
So farewell then to Nchuti. He has been great, sad to see him go. Probably he left because who knows if there'll even be a show next year. Actors can't be refusing work to be on a series that might not even happen.
Except Billie I guess? Maybe she's not otherwise busy.
No more episodes till maybe xmas 2026 they say? Or maybe some specials next year? Please god we don't have to wait until spring 2027 to know what's happening here?!
Meanwhile the fans are all like, "oh it says 'and introducing' instead of 'as the doctor'". Heh. They want it to be a switcheroo of some kind and she's not really The Doctor, but I want to see Billie's Tennant impression for at least a three year stretch.
She's likely just be staring in a couple of specials in the gap to a proper new season I'd expect. Probably regenerate again before there's a full series. Excited to see her David Tenant impression though. 😆
Status at - Mon, 02 Jun 2025 20:28:08 +0000
Content warning:re: Doctor Who - Reality War
Confusing episode. Let me clear it all up.
The world is sinking into the doubt needed to rescue Omega, remember, and The Doctor is falling with a balcony that's separated from the building.
How does he get out of that?
Well, saved by a literal magic door that pops out of nowhere, leading back to the time hotel. 🤨
Anita, who he spent a year with once a couple of Christmases ago, has been popping around the Doctor's entire long life, peeping on him with the Daleks and stuff. Trying to find him on the Earth's last day. Today.
And now he's rescued, today turns into a groundhog day. Same day over and over again. 😆
There's another woman that's been stalking him through time lately, Mrs Flood. She was following him everywhere, but she had Xmas off she reckons, so didn't see the Time Hotel bit. Thus the element of surprise in the deus ex machina rescue. 😀
The Doctor is broken free of the wish spell now anyway, popped his conditioning, and can use the time hotel's door to recall Unit and break them all out of the wish too.
The Rani pops in to say hi and explain her plans. 😝
How did the Rani survive the end of the Timelords? She flipped her DNA to sidestep the genetic bomb apparently? Well that makes no sense, but nor does anything else so no time to ponder.
The end of the Time Lords made them all Barons... No, made them barren. There can be no more children of the time-lords.
She's popping Omega back out of the underworld for his DNA because the timelords are all barren and she wants to recreate Galifrey.
But wait a minute: Poppy is the Doctor's kid in wish world! So she should have Timelord DNA too! Maybe that could work?
No. The Rani is a nazi, don't like the kid's contaminated blood. She's got human all over her DNA. Eww.
Rani pops off back to her Bone Palace, and makes the bone beasts attack.
The Doctor explains that the Giant dinosaur skeletons are beasts that pop in to clean up the world when there's a reality flux, and the Rani has turned them on Unit HQ.
So the UNIT HQ turns into some kinda ship? Like the Crimson Permanent Insurance. Lol. It's blasting lasers at the bone beasts and turning around, and has a steering wheel like pirate ship now. 🤣
During the battle, the Doctor pops out to take a ride on the sky-bike, looking like something from Flash Gordon, and crashes into the Bone Palace.
Too late though! Omega is pretty much here now. He's a giant boney CGI zombie, become his own legend. Looks great but doesn't really seem like Omega, who ought to be held together by pure will.
Omega eats the Rani! One of the Ranis anyway. Mrs Flood avoids being eaten. She pops off with the time bracelet. "So much for the Two Rani's. It's a goodnight from me!" as she disappears off into time. Great gag. 😁
The Doctor just shoots Omega to get him back into his box. Pops a rifle off the wall. The Vindicator has apparently also got a built in laser as well as locator beacons. So that's handy. The Doctor doesn't use guns but some of his devices work like one. 🔫
So all is well! The day is saved and the wish is over and baby Poppy survives in a time box! 🍻
They're going to take the space baby off to do space adventures. Ruby is jealous of seeing The Doctor and Belinda vibing like that, as they plan a life in space with the space baby. Aww. Poor Ruby. 😭
But then Poppy pops off! Disappears entirely, and everyone other than Ruby forgets. Ruby remembers because she's disappeared from time herself in the past they say.
Okay: to save his child and on Ruby's word alone, the Doctor will sacrifice himself to turn reality one degree.
He goes off to commit suicide by Regeneration, but Thirteen is here! She's popped out of her timeline to stop him! Or maybe to help, with a motivational chat instead. Gives him a pep talk then pops back off again.
The Doctor zaps reality with his Tardis, dying but holding off on the actual regeneration for a few moments to go check on the kid.
The kid is safe! But isn't his own kid any more. Poppy has popped all her Timelord DNA and is just all human now. Poppy's pop isn't the doc, it's someone called Richie.
And Belinda has been so keen to get home all this time in order to get back to her Baby! Who isn't a timelord, and definitely didn't exist until she was wished into being.
This may not be the most ethical action The Doctor has ever taken: To bend the whole universe in order to recreate a baby that was accidentally wished into being out of nothing. Twisting time to give a child to a nurse who didn't previously have a child, or even remember the wish. Then it's not even the same child that disappeared, coz this one is all human. 🤷
But the doc is popping off to regenerate with Joy in the stars, and... Turns blonde: "oh. Hello?" 🤯
It's Rose! Billie Piper is back? Fantastic!
Is Rose doing a David Tennant Impression there?
Billie playing the Doctor, doing a Tennant impression as Bad Wolf? Amazing. Can't wait.
Status at - Mon, 02 Jun 2025 18:19:55 +0000
Performed in an improv show in Shoreditch.
Good times.
Everyone seemed to think the show went well, and it featured repeated themes of fish taking over the entire world in a giant conspira-sea.
The venue downstairs at Shoreditch Balls is tight and dark and small but so were our audience. Thanks for coming everyone. 😆
Where does the group go from here? Dunno. Hard to find a venue for rehearsal in London really. Everywhere is either booked up or closed down. Makes you wonder why the closed down ones had to close given the apparent demand.
Fingers crossed we find somewhere 🤞
Status at - Sat, 31 May 2025 23:39:47 +0000
Content warning:re: Doctor Who - Reality War
That ending: What? Oh, Fantastic.
Managed not to get spoilered on it.
More later, after a more sensible spoiler period: I gotta go to bed anyway, and stuff to do tomorrow.
But OMG. Gonna be so much fun seeing that play out.
Status at - Sat, 31 May 2025 16:48:08 +0000
Content warning:re: Medical stuff / MRI selfie
Well this is very silly. The model doesn't really have the detail to do a flyby down the longitudinal fissure but I kept imagining a xwing flying down it.
Status at - Sat, 31 May 2025 14:42:09 +0000
Content warning:re: Medical stuff / MRI selfie
Used this plugin to import the data:
https://omoolab.github.io/BioxelNodes
The MRI data comes with many layers. They use "sag, Cor, Tra" as shorthand for the direction of the slices I think? Sag for left/right, Cor for front/back and trans for top/down.
You can add a threshold value to the layer to render it as a volume, excluding the density below a certain level.
Each of the layers seems to highlight different surfaces in the head when you do that.
I used the "scout" layer for the skin, the "SWI" and "Fl2d" layers for the cortex. One is rendered more solid and with a surface reflection and the other more transparent without that specular for extra detail.
The "3scan" seems to pick out that brain stem pretty well.
It's "cut" tool lets you exclude all the data outside a sphere or the wrong side of a plane, so that's how you peel down the skin there and eat the brain from the back.
Sadly you can only do one cut per volume layer, so I couldn't exclude outside the relevant rubgy-ball warped sphere shape while also using a plane to cut it. That's why there's fairly clouds around the brain in places which it was nicer cutting out, but couldn't do that while using the slicer.
Apparently that works in cycles but I was too impatient to render even one complete frame with cycles. Way too slow, this is all Eevee.
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Bookmarks
Things I have bookmarked lately.Trump's Relationship With Musk Collapses in Nasty War of Words | TIME - Thu, 05 Jun 2025 22:57:44 +0000
Time sums up the word's first global Forum Admin Spat in it's full glory.
CD / Blur - YouTube - Thu, 22 May 2025 18:44:34 +0000
Captain Disillusion looks at unblurring, inverse fast furry transforms and convolutions.
Thank God for immigrants - by Ian Dunt - Striking 13 - Fri, 16 May 2025 17:56:32 +0000
A third of my friends are immigrants of one kind or another and they are all great. Wish I could deport all those who want to stop immigration. It enriches us. We are better because of immigrants. I am better because of immigrants. Here's Ian Dunt: "Imagine how much poorer the world would be without British
Asians in general. I'm not talking about the subcontinent. I'm not
talking about Britain. I'm talking about British Asians themselves, as a
distinct group, quite apart from their other loyalties or their other
identities. Imagine how much more impoverished we would be, in food and
music and literary life, in social habits and intellectual and political
history. Imagine how poor we would be, the vast riches which would have been taken away from us."
The Misconception that Almost Stopped AI - YouTube - Sun, 11 May 2025 10:54:59 +0000
Some interesting visualizations and good explanation in this video about why training a neural network by gradient descent doesn't get stuck in local minima as you train. We tend to find it hard to visualize a higher dimensional landscape, let alone one with billions of dimensions. What loos like a local minima when mapped into a 3d visualization of a 2d landscape has all sorts of escape routes in the higher dimensions. It has a good visual on the way the landscape mapping can change as a result of changes to the other parameters, creating new "wormholes" as they change. Great video.
Rampant AI Cheating Is Ruining Education Alarmingly Fast - Wed, 07 May 2025 14:42:02 +0000
NYMag has a good essay on using AI in education: "In
January 2023, just two months after OpenAI launched ChatGPT, a survey
of 1,000 college students found that nearly 90 percent of them had used
the chatbot to help with homework assignments." -- I guess all marks have to be in exam conditions with pen on paper in future?
OpenAI Is A Systemic Risk To The Tech Industry - Mon, 05 May 2025 11:41:05 +0000
"OpenAI currently requires more money and more compute than is reasonable to acquire. Nobody
has ever raised as much as OpenAI needs to, and based on the sheer
amount of difficulty that SoftBank is having in raising the funds to
meet the lower tranche ($10bn) of its commitment, it may simply not be possible for this company to continue."
Sowing and Reaping in Trump’s America - Thu, 01 May 2025 08:16:54 +0000
The instruments of repression, security theater, and white supremacist ideology Trump is employing to create his own patchwork dictatorship in America were embraced and installed by a largely bipartisan consensus of US political leaders happy to exploit popular reaction to increase their own power and enrich the ruling class via imperialism, extractivism, and objectively racialized exploitation.
AI 2027 - Sat, 26 Apr 2025 19:33:14 +0000
"We predict that the impact of superhuman AI over the next decade will be enormous, exceeding that of the Industrial Revolution.We wrote a scenario that represents our best guess about what that might look like.1 It’s informed by trend extrapolations, wargames, expert feedback, experience at OpenAI, and previous forecasting successes."
How is the media still getting the Gaza murdered paramedics story so wrong? - Sat, 26 Apr 2025 00:21:57 +0000
"The role of the corporate media is no different. It is there to create
the illusion that we are the masters of our own thoughts. It is there to
make us think we have reached an independent understanding of the
world, even though that understanding has been carefully crafted for us
from birth. It is there to cultivate a worldview in us that aligns
precisely with the privileging of a tiny corporate elite whose wealth
depends on the relentless pillaging of the planet for their benefit."
The Next Terrorist Attack - by Timothy Snyder - Sun, 20 Apr 2025 16:48:14 +0000
Snyder posits that Trump's administration have weakened terrorism prevention, and would exploit any resulting attack to consolidate power: "Do not give the present regime the benefit of the doubt after it
allows a terrorist attack to take place on American soil. Be skeptical
about its account of who is to blame. Insist that Musk-Trump take
responsibility. And understand that freedom
is the first condition of security. A terrorist attack is no reason to
concede anything to this regime. On the contrary: such a failure by
Musk-Trump would be one more reason, and a very powerful one, to resist
it."