ggambetta

I was generally underwhelmed by it (possibly because of the extensive hype) but the light inside did blow me away, made the visit worth it.

Shut up and take my money

In my double life as an actor, I've written some software that greatly simplifies the main day to day task of running a talent agency. Its ~15 users love it to death, but that's it, it has a total of ~15 users. It's my happy little project.

Could it be useful to more people? Almost certainly, and at some point I considered running it as a service, and I even had a few trial users. But then I realized that dealing with GDPR compliance and the like wasn't going to be as fun, so in the end it remained an internal project.

Likewise, the highway chase in the first non-existent sequel is pretty epic.

Trumpet Winsock! Brings back memories :)

In retrospect, it was the limitations that made it so fun. The system was so simple that it was entirely knowable by a single brain, which has become enormously more challenging nowadays.

I recently ported my teaching raytracer to the Spectrum [0], not even using assembler, but the horribly slow native BASIC. It was a ton of fun! It's super slow especially when run on the original hardware, but even then I can't remember something like this from back in the day (and I'd bet something like Microhobby would have listed this as some kind of curiosity); makes me think the Spectrum's limitations weren't even fully explored. Raytracing people were probably working on beefier machines and more serious projects.

[0] https://gabrielgambetta.com/zx-raytracer.html

No one is reading until someone is... I published both Computer Graphics from Scratch[0] and the Fast-Paced Multiplayer series[1] for no concrete reason, they went unnoticed for a long time, and then both led to things I couldn't have planned.

I've also published stuff that gets little attention and leads nowhere, like Emulator-Backed Remakes[2] or ZX Spectrum Raytracer[3], and I'm totally fine with that. I make these things primarily for my own amusement ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I don't know how many people visit my website. I have analytics, but I rarely check them.

[0] https://gabrielgambetta.com/computer-graphics-from-scratch

[1] https://gabrielgambetta.com/client-server-game-architecture....

[2] https://gabrielgambetta.com/remakes.html

[3] https://gabrielgambetta.com/zx-raytracer.html

"Piano piano" does mean "slowly slowly" in a literal way, but I guess she meant it as a reference of the full saying "piano piano si va lontano", meaning "slowly slowly you get far". You were commenting on the amount of work ahead, and she was telling you "it's a marathon, not a sprint".

I had some of those, verified by ECG. Cut down on coffee a bit, they went away.

The original code monkeys!

I get zero motion sickness and I play exactly that, FPS with stick movement.

Very early on I realized that turning with the stick gives me nausea, but not moving back and forth. So I use the stick to move back and forth, and my own human body to rotate. Can play for hours with zero issues.

DTDetox

Didn't try error diffusion, but I had good results with Bayer for the ZX Spectrum Raytracer [0]. Bayer only ever looks at the pixel it's considering, doesn't do math beyond comparing a value to its threshold, it was surprisingly easy to implement, and looks nice. A great choice for ridiculously underpowered devices :)

https://gabrielgambetta.com/zx-raytracer.html#fourth-iterati...

In a similar vein, in Venice I developed this theory that you could estimate your distance to San Marco by the price of a slice of pizza (more expensive meaning closer). Never tested it, but would be fun to see a heatmap.

Could be useful to have the number of working days left in the quarter (even an approximation of 5/7 would do).

Oooh, I LOVE this! Especially the ability to "Overriding emulated code with C# code" I had a similar idea years ago (https://gabrielgambetta.com/remakes.html), not in the context of a debugger or reverse engineering per se, but in the context of remakes and "special edition" games. Not entirely surprised that this is a byproduct of OpenRakis. Amazing work!

I get this even on a shorter timescale with compiler errors. So many times I have a near-subconscious feeling that something's wrong with the code, and as soon as I run or compile it, there it is, a syntax error. I've been trying to train myself to pay more attention to these gut feelings, so I can act on them before the compiler gets to it.

This looks pretty great, seriously considering ordering one!

The length is fixed at 72 pages/frames, but you support uploading up to 30s of video. How does this work? You sample 72 frames from a video of any length? Is there a recommended frame rate (and therefore duration) that is somehow optimal? What's the natural frame rate range of humans flipping flipbooks? So many questions!

I had to get glasses at 17. To be fair, by then I had already spent too much time in front of a screen XD Got LASIK a few years later, and now, 15 years after, still seeing great.

Mine too! I have a picture with my late dad and the ZX81 that has a special place in my heart: https://gabrielgambetta.com/computer-graphics-from-scratch/d...

I've been saying this for at least 6 years [0]. Got downvoted to oblivion back then, glad to see opinions are changing.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21279144

It's not the plane, Mav. It's the pilot.

Monitoring alert: logins from Italy drop to zero.

I guess they also knew organic chemistry back then!

THANK YOU. I've been saying this for years: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21279144

Since you care about the quality of your writing: you almost certainly meant "one's" or "one is", not "ones".

"Outright smarmy" is spicy, I give you that :)

No. Good technical writing is about making the reader feel smart, not the writer. Using big words goes in the opposite direction. The real art is in explaining complex ideas in simple terms.

Herculaneum is smaller and less known, but only half an hour away and even better preserved. With proper planning you can visit both sites on the same day.

I don't think I ever came across fatmap2.txt, but I do miss the good ol' times. I think my reference was 3DGPL, unfortunately can't find a live link to that.

Took a quick look at fatmap2 and surprisingly it doesn't do perspective-correct texture mapping (although it points to some other document in the introduction).

I thought the "number or letter" in that sentence is the "a" in "Draw a line".