VladimirGolovin

If you have any nature nearby, take walks. Take walks every day. I personally prefer evenings. An hour or two is perfectly fine. No headphones, no audiobooks, no music. Just you and nature.

Normally, to deal with a burnout, I'd recommend to take a month off and shed as much responsibilities as possible, but this doesn't seem to be an option in your situation.

"It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child." -- Pablo Picasso.

Just wanted to add that Hermann Hesse is a wonderful writer, and that I thoroughly enjoyed his other works as well (except, for some reason, The Glass Bead Game).

“This is the other secret that real artists know and wannabe writers don’t. When we sit down each day and do our work, power concentrates around us. The Muse takes note of our dedication. She approves. We have earned favor in her sight. When we sit down and work, we become like a magnetized rod that attracts iron filings. Ideas come. Insights accrete.” ― Steven Pressfield, The War of Art.

BTW, easily one of the best books I've ever read.

Here's a definition from Shane Legg and Marcus Hutter:

Universal Intelligence: A Definition of Machine Intelligence https://arxiv.org/abs/0712.3329

I knew Blender had a video editor, but I didn't know that Blender had a node-based image editor. Just did a quick Google search -- are you referring to Compositor?

Unlike the effect layers, nodes can have multiple inputs. Also, in more advanced node systems, nodes can have types other than "Image", e.g. number, boolean, etc., and node inputs can accept those types.

Not having to redo the entire chain of image operations from scratch if you mess up one step. The ability to reuse the chain of operations on a different image. The ability to tune / tweak the settings of each step without having to repeat the entire chain manually from the start. The ability to edit the chain of operations if you don't like the result, without having to re-execute the chain manually.

And, lastly, node-based systems can be incredibly fun, if done right.

Looks very interesting. I tried the Windows build, but I can't get it to show any preview image. Tried selecting nodes and double-clicking them -- nothing. Maybe it needs to recompile the shader manually, but I haven't found any GUI command or hotkey for that. Checked the log, but it looks OK, no errors.

UPD: I managed to get it to show the preview: 1) Delete the default nodes (Read Image and Write Image). 2) Create a Checkerboard node. 3) In its Properties, set Size to anything except "As Input".

You can then plug it into filter nodes (e.g. Directional Blur), but the preview is still fickle -- at some point it just disappears and never shows up again until I reset the project.

At home, with my wife and kid.

Pay for a year of VPN while your VISA / MC cards still work.

Make a local copy of everything you have on the cloud (GMail, Google Docs, Google Photos, etc.)

If you store passwords in a cloud-based password manager, make a secure local copy.

Switch your sync solution from anything cloud-based to Syncthing.

Make sure you don't have anything critical stored on the phone (they may brick it).

If you rely on critical medical drugs, stockpile some (export restrictions are likely).

"Tiger, Tiger" (or "The Stars My Destination" in the USA) by Alfred Bester.

I recently tried Blender for video editing and was very pleasantly surprised.

Same here with the muscle memory. It's nice to hear that Pixelmator is compatible with it. BTW, do you use it on Windows or on a Mac?

I'm a long-time Photoshop user (since 1994), and my business, Filter Forge, started as a Photoshop plugin. Nowadays all my design work is done in Figma, which is fantastic. My Photoshop usage nowadays is limited to editing and enhancing pixel images.

Modern Photoshop feels extremely bloated. Slow to start, slow to paste images, cumbersome in other aspects. Since I'm using it much less frequently than I used to, I'm considering switching to an open source equivalent -- like I did with my 3D needs: I already switched from 3DS Max to Blender.

You can host it for free if you set it up yourself, on your own server.

It's the same in my family, with one exception. We sometimes do have TV on in the background, but the only permitted channel is TV Kultura -- news about art, museums, exhibitions, theatre, humanities, arthouse cinema, etc.

Window snap is absolutely an improvement.

Dragging and dropping a file onto a taskbar app icon is often much faster than 1) opening the app, 2) selecting File > Open from the menu, 3) browsing to the file location, and 4) double-clicking the file.

And in neighborhoods planned as concentric circles. My navigation module goes completely bonkers.

  "being able to walk around a city and not get lost"

I have this module. You can fly me to a new country and drop me in a city I've never seen before, and I'll start navigating it on foot in a day. It worked for me in Copenhagen, Rome, and Barcelona (and miserably failed in Tallinn at night).

I always thought that it was my innate ability to navigate three-dimensional spaces, but now I begin to suspect that this is a trained "module". I walk a lot (mostly in cities), and I played first-person shooters since the first DOOM back in 1993. And I recently found out that I strongly prefer first-person games to top-down / 2D games -- I instantly feel "at home" there.

So I guess my advice to someone who wants to train this "navigation module" would be to 1) walk on foot in complex spaces like cities, and 2) play first-person games without objective and map markers where the knowledge of the game space is critically important. Modern survival games, such as Green Hell, Subnautica, and The Long Dark, are a perfect fit.

I have a pet theory that smartphones and the mobile Internet are the primary reasons for the decline of violent street crime. People these days don't need to be violent to entertain themselves -- because they now have porn, dating, gossip, games, and gambling in their pockets. Plus it's a lot safer than violence.

I was reading Russian political Telrgram earlier today, and one of the better channels ("Толкователь") had a post about a scientific study on why people prefer conspiracy theories over scientific information.

The study's summary says that this is because conspiracy theories are communicated in a language that is understandable, while scientific communication uses language that is opaque for most people.

Which leads me to the conclusion that any effort towards making scientific communication more understandable to general public -- including the annotated equations -- is a good thing.

An artist is someone who makes art every day. Art is that which imparts feelings.

So, make artifacts or performances that impart feelings, every day.

Your output will be trash at first, but that’s expected. What matters is that you do your reps, every day.

When the going gets tough, read The War of Art.

>> Zotero and Obsidian is a killer combination.

Could you elaborate on this a bit?

I currently keep my Zettelkasten in Obsidian and my project journals in Workflowy, and I wonder if there’s a place for Zotero in my workflow.

- Starship makes a successful orbital flight.

- Russia won't start any overt military operations in Donbass, let alone Ukraine proper.

- Modern GPU prices are still ridiculous.

- Europe's opinion on nuclear energy will become a tad more favorable.

- Ethereum won't shift to Proof of Stake.

- No major AI breakthroughs.

- James Cameron's Avatar 2 won't bring anything groundbreaking to the table.

- Apple won't release a VR headset.

A good éclair is certainly short in duration.

Thank you :) I'll ping you when we have something showable :)

Thanks for the kind words!

>> How far along are you guys in development?

Movement and gunplay are basically done and feel great. Graphics is looking pretty decent (the video is a bit outdated). Story / progression is being written and integrated at the moment; it will be text-only so no voice acting is required, which should speed things up. Some items and their stats (armor, guns, sets, etc.) are already in place, but there are no proper legendaries yet. Crafting and talents are not yet in place. Sound is completely nonexistent at this point -- we're going to try an approach without music (it may work, see No Country for Old Men).

Hey, looks like I'm not alone! I'm 49 and we (3 people, aged 30-49, with no prior gamedev experience) are working on an isometric sci-fi shooter-looter -- think Diablo meets Aliens: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWN3l4LdTIA

Also, 800 upvotes can't lie. I wonder, which part of the premise resonates with the HN crowd: "it's never too late" or "I always wanted to make games too"?