reading: the busy beaver frontier

https://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/bb.pdf

from wikipedia: "[The] busy beaver function can be shown to grow faster asymptotically than any computable function."

i put the finishing touches on content editing and presentation.

because i want to support long form content, one of my goals was inline images that present as attachments on other implementations like mastodon. my choice of editor, trix, handles image uploads, which is nice, but the generated markup is verbose and suboptimal (trix uses br instead of p tags to break up text into paragraphs, for example).

#ktistec

with open source software, things break but you can get in under the hood to investigate and fix. a recent, breaking change to signatures in mastodon recently broke ktistec federation. a few hours and a few commits later, things were working again. of course, i would have been happier if it hadn't been a breaking change... 😐

#ktistec

About the name "Epiktistes"...

R. A. Lafferty is an amazing writer. Some people say he writes science fiction. I think he writes contemporary tall tales—so, of course they are going to be about computers and space explorers and other planets...

His style is impossible to mistake. I remember the first words I read in a story of his about the end of (or maybe the resumption of) the human race:

"I’m going to read my paper tonight, Dismas," Dr. Minden said, "and they’ll hoot me out of the hall. The thought of it almost makes the hair walk off my head."
Ginny Wrapped in the Sun

Characters frequently reappear in Lafferty’s stories (the eminent scientists Velikof Vonk, Arpad Arkabaranan and Willy McGilly) (the entire race of the Camiroi). Epiktistes, the Ktistec machine, with a sea-serpent head and the delivery of a vaudeville comedian, is a favorite of mine.

Epikt was a comic to his last para-DNA relay when he rested his huge, boggle-eyed, crested head on the table there and smoked the biggest stogies ever born.
Thus We Frustrate Charlemagne

If you’re a fan and want more, there’s the annual Laffcon and the zine Feast of Laughter, though you probably already know of both if you know of R. A. Lafferty...

24 hours later

awake for hours.
still on east coast time.
still autumn dawn.

i just pushed commits that add a settings page and handle image uploads (for background image and profile icon). a lot of code was already written and supported image upload from the editor—i just had to bend it to my purpose. i'm using FilePond to handle preview and upload in the browser.

generally, i'm pretty happy with the result!

#ktistec

dnd5e with the family unit. i play a nameless wood elf who unfortunately happens to look like a drow...

here's my seasonal boot sequence for terraria: 1) it's halloween. harvest pumpkins and make pumpkin armor (7 points of defense). 2) start digging and get to the caverns. you're looking for gold chests and the mace. fairies led me to two maces and a dozen crystal hearts within a few hours of starting. 3) upgrade the mace to a flaming mace (18 damage). 4) mine platinum or gold (whatever your world has). as soon as you have enough ore, craft platinum (20 defense) or gold (16 defense) armor. 5) pick off your first boss—either the eater of worlds or the brain of cthulhu. you need their drops in order to craft the nightmare or deathbringer pickaxe, which can mine hellstone and obsidian. 6) build a hellevator, break into a ruined house and mine hellstone. there's usually some near the walls and if you are careful you can dig shafts into the ash—but think about where the released lava will flow. you'll probably need a few recall potions (of which you'll have found plenty) to pull this off. 7) back in the caverns, dump water on lava lakes to create obsidian. mine it. 8) craft molten armor (25 defense), a fiery greatsword (40 damage), and whatever else you like.

early morning check in...

sorting out asynchronous javascript bugs...