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words.horse appears to be a blog, but Horsle exists. https://cabletwo.net/horsle/

timparkon Show HN: A graph paper generator that renders vector PDFs in the browser

Although I don't personally use graph paper much, this project looks great. I find many of the example pattern previews very hard to see, though. I'd darken and/or thicken the lines. The descriptions underneath are good, but there are a lot of patterns that are unfamiliar to me that I'd like to be able to preview better, like Cross Stitch and Knitting.

timparkon Tiled Words 6 Month Update

For an extra challenge, I try to solve it without looking at the clues, and only using the theme. (some themes are harder than others) Though if a word turns orange, I sort of glance at the clues to see whether it's the wrong direction or built incorrectly. Maybe they could be different colours, like red/orange? Thanks for making it!

timparkon Timdle – Place historical events in chronological order

I was thinking of the board game "Timeline". This one is from 2012, but if you search BGG for Timeline, you'll find lots of different versions for different countries and specializations.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/128664/timeline

timparkon <Blink> and <Marquee> (2020)

Exactly, haha! :) Thanks!

timparkon <Blink> and <Marquee> (2020)

The blink tag was, of course, much hated back in the day, so as an experiment, I took the binary of whatever browser I was using (Netscape, I guess), searched for "blink", and changed it to "blonk". Tada, no more blinking!

timparkon Potatoes in the Mail

I remembered and searched for the same article. I found this version (on the same domain) with images and better formatting.

https://improbable.com/annals-of-improbable-research-july-au...

timparkon The End of Sierra as We Knew It, Part 1: The Acquisition

25%? Wow. That seems high, but when you consider we were backing a game based on the popularity of a now almost-40-year-old franchise, it seems a bit more reasonable.

timparkon The End of Sierra as We Knew It, Part 1: The Acquisition

The guys who created Space Quest kickstarted another sci-fi comedy adventure game... 13 years ago. It went (and is still going) poorly, and Kotaku just posted about the ordeal today:

https://kotaku.com/spaceventure-space-quest-kickstarter-stea...

I backed the project, but at one of the lowest levels, so I'm not really mad. It's just kind of sad.

timparkon Kylie Minogue song about a typeface

More typeface-related fun:

Neutra Face: An Ode On A Typeface (parody of Lady Gaga's "Poker Face")

https://youtu.be/xHCu28bfxSI?t=18

Behind the Typeface: Cooper Black

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZmdf8A9Ex8

timparkon Six mistakes I made in my dioramas-and-felt Steam game and one I didn't

There's only a demo out so far, but Scarlet Deer Inn uses embroidery for its character images.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1553260/Scarlet_Deer_Inn/

timparkon It doesn't cost much to improve someone's life

For those who might be interested, a similar site for Canadian charities is Charity Intelligence.

https://www.charityintelligence.ca/

timparkon It is not a compiler error (2017)

Back when I was using CodeWarrior to make a game for PlayStation 2, I found a compiler bug, but fortunately, it was one where it gave an error on valid code, rather than generating bad output. I can't remember the details, but I had some sort of equation that my co-workers agreed should have compiled with no problems. I was able to rewrite it a little to get the result I wanted without triggering any compiler errors.

timparkon Macrodata Refinement

Here's a Pico-8 version that Liquidream did in 1024 (compressed) bytes of code for a game jam: https://liquidream.itch.io/lumon8-1k

timparkon What will enter the public domain in 2025?

I think some things were a product of their time, and weren't popular/profitable enough to keep marketing or update or modernize. (whether they didn't maintain peoples' attention, or had issues like the Popeye one you mentioned) Another not-as-popular character that's entering the public domain in 2026, for example, is Betty Boop.

On the other hand, Superman and Batman enter the public domain in 2034 and 2035 respectively, so that should be interesting. Though like Mickey Mouse/Steamboat Willie, I expect that it's only the original version/costume that goes public domain.

timparkon What will enter the public domain in 2025?

In May 1998, before the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act went into effect, there was an amusing Tom the Dancing Bug comic regarding characters falling out of copyright. https://www.gocomics.com/tomthedancingbug/1998/05/17

In that vein, similar to the Mickey Mouse and Winnie the Pooh horror movies that have been released in recent years, Popeye will be entering the public domain next year and people are working on a horror movie based on that.

timparkon That Time Apple Told Apple III Customers to Drop Their Computers

There was a story about this happening with some Amiga 500 computers, allegedly due to a too-high speed bump in a Commodore parking lot.

https://arstechnica.com/civis/threads/a-history-of-the-amiga...

timparkon Numeronymize

For fun, I wrote some Javascript that will numeronymize text, but it will also "de-numeronymize" it again by converting the result back into random words that also match. (if a match can't be found, it returns the original word, and unlike the article, it doesn't handle non-English characters) https://www.timpark.org/n10e-s2e-t2t/

Ex: "accessibility localization internationalization multilingualization globalization" becomes "a11y l10n i18n m17n g11n" becomes "applicability locomutation intercrystallization metaphenylenediamin gastrocnemian"

timparkon A most profound video game: a good cognitive aid for research

If anyone wants to try some levels before buying it, the game jam version of the game is on itch.io: https://hempuli.itch.io/baba-is-you

That's Windows-only, though. Someone recently released a "demake" with fewer levels for Pico-8 that you can play in a browser: https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=142638

timparkon Flexagon

I did notice the link was broken, but didn't want to wait until I had time to fix it before commenting. I've fixed it and a couple of other ones. Thanks.

timparkon Flexagon

I made a tetratetraflexagon for my wedding program. I ended up making a script to use ImageMagick to convert four images into two images suitable for printing on both sides of an 8.5"x11" sheet of paper. The scripts, example images, and instructions are here:

https://www.timpark.org/making-a-tetratetraflexagon/

timparkon Origin Of The Abbreviation I18n (2002)

Numeronyms like i18n and a11y are things I'd seen from time to time, but not in a sufficiently interesting or relevant context for me to figure out what they meant, until one day I finally looked them up. Then, just for fun, I made this page: https://www.timpark.org/n10e-s2e-t2t/ (numeronymize some text)

timparkon Career Choices, a Short Story

For another short story in a similar vein, check out "The Frame-By-Frame" by qntm.

https://qntm.org/frame

timparkon Mars After Midnight: Gameplay Loop

If you haven't seen it, I recommend checking out The Forgotten City. The time loop/learning more each "run" reminded me of Outer Wilds, and I enjoyed the story/mystery.

https://forgottencitygame.com/

timparkon Langoguessr

Yeah, one opening screen included "#tamilsoundservice". :) (Tamil is one of the languages) I suppose I could try to ignore the video, but it was fun trying to use it for clues. "Oh they look like Bollywood dancers so I'll guess Hindi." This backfired on me when I tried guessing one based on the subtitles I saw, which I assumed were for karaoke, but the answer was completely wrong. I guess they were for translation, not karaoke.

timparkon Stranger Things and the Amiga 1000

I remember the show Halt and Catch Fire also had an Amiga 1000 in an episode, but they didn't bother to show anything resembling Workbench/AmigaOS. https://i.imgur.com/uaqzrEk.jpeg

timparkon Ask HN: How can I come to peace with the years I wasted on pointless things?

You might find the book "Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals" by Oliver Burkeman helpful. It's not all about productivity, but also how we relate to time. (we didn't always worry about it so much)

Here are a couple of the more detailed summaries I've found:

https://www.sloww.co/four-thousand-weeks/

https://youcanflymate.org/four-thousand-weeks-by-oliver-burk...

timparkon Invention Dice (2014)

The result I got on page load was: Portable, Self-Build, Public, Paper, Manual, Vehicle.

I think the paper airplane has already been invented...

timparkon Illegal number – Represents information which is illegal to possess

The Free Speech flag is kind of clunky with the "+C0". (despite the "Crime 0" explanation) You could have put a sixth stripe with the colour C00000, but only in the top 1/3rd (with black in the bottom 2/3rds) to say only take the first byte, perhaps.