The PPC Posting Board - Latest posts

How many prompts would it be, you reckon? I recall, Seaturtle tried this before, and he sort of, sent out a small splattering of prompts, for more choice and all. Maybe that'd be interesting, and I don't think it would entirely ruin the idea, if the central concept is just 'get people writing'. Maybe all the prompts could be themed, if we want to be cute. Could ask a couple people around for prompts or such if that's the case. I might have a couple prompt ideas, anyhow, for that.

Or, uh, I dunno. Either way, I like it!

-*Puffs up chest*. If you could use an emote, use an emote. Even if it's a bad idea or unnecessary.

-Technical references nobody gets should be as common as SIGSEGVs from dereferencing pointers with random values.

-References to ancient computer history nobody knows are a good thing. Don't think of it as confusing people, think of it as showing the Ignorant Masses the Good Word of Symbolics.

-References to ancient videogames are worth 20 zorkmids each.

-Use exclaimation points a lot!

-...use ellipses even more.

-Give out excessive numbers of hugs.

-Say you'll write things and then never actually do.

-Say you won't write things and then do.

-Constantly get shipped with your friends.

-Pretend to be annoyed about this.

-Make Tomash very angry about some Horrifying Horror you just found in programming.

-...Or just tell him about PHP again.

-Don't get involved on the board very often.

-If you're involved in a discussion and you don't have at least one comment nobody's replied to on each response, you're not trying hard enough.

-Never preview your posts. Never check to se if your HTML works. Post corrections. Never check if the corrections work, correct the corrections.

-The more time you put into a post, the less likely it is to get attention.

-Constantly try to get people to play Quake 3 deathmatch with you. You will never succeed.

-Why finish your programming project when you can... not?

-Why work when you can... not?

-Why not be on Discord when you can... not not.

-Possess a burning, fundamental hatred of ABO deep in the depths of your soul.

-There is never a bad time to reference TTS. For you see, I... am Rogal Dorn. And I am Adorable. (You read it in his voice, didn't you Nesh? =D)

-Never miss an opportunity to do something silly. Even while doing something serious.

So, my code is in this pastebin.

I'm liking that I figured out a way to unify parts A and B, and maybe a bit too unreasonably proud of that one bit where I cast a boolean to an int.

Concrit is appreciated, if anyone has any.

- Tomash

A while back there was even a prompt game going on, where people could basically request prompts and be given them, whereupon they'd write a short or not-so-short scene that filled it. It was really fun, and that's actually how I reached my NaNo goal this year--I asked Ix to give me prompts and aimed to write a double drabble or so for each. I actually have a whole Gdoc full of prompt fills I did from back when we first did this; it's a really, really great way to indulge yourself with AUs, ships that are never going to sail in canon but would be fun to explore, scenelets that wouldn't normally get written, character building with new characters, scenarios that you probably shouldn't fit into your agents' canon even if they could somewhat plausibly fit within the PPC setting...pretty much anything, really.

My actual point with this? Yeah, I support the idea of writing prompts, even a less writer-specific version (which, well, at that point you get to see what different people do with the same prompt...which also happened sometimes during the prompt game, actually. And happens with the n-monthly concrit thread, come to think of it). Let's do it! Do you have a prompt, Mr. Sprinkles? Since you've brought it up?

(Actually, have we met? I feel like you're part of the influx of recent-ish newbies. In which case, welcome to the Board! Have a belated Welcome Gift. It's in this pastry box, and is probably pastry of some kind. What kind it is depends on what you think of when you open the box...)

~this rambling post has been brought to you by Zingenmir

Though speaking of flag: I can has changed flag? Please? I did a comment, but I think it got buried. I'd love to have the changed version to lead my Plortish armies with wait do I actually have Plortish armies I should probably figure that out use in an overdue Plort wiki page update!

(Yes, I also, uh, haven't replied to hS yet about updated heraldry. I started. I truly did. Then I was tired and Chanukah started. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it shhh)

(In my defense, I actually was tired and it actually is Chanukah and just all the good things. Including absolutely ridiculous sufganiot. I completely support the new and occasionally weird creativity of the sufgania industry. I've got to try some of the non-traditional ones.)

Anyway. Can has flag? :)

~Z

PS: But no bad feelings for missing it. It's a thing that happens. Okay? *Gives the Scape a...hrm...a SUFGANIA made with...wow, anything you like on pastry. I've seen *M&M*s on them now. And green frosting. For reference, the traditional type is a fried ball of pastry dough filled with strawberry jelly and dusted with powdered sugar. That's it. Now they seem to come with anything and everything. I saw some *cut almost in half with frosting in the middle* the other day. At two separate bakeries. It's ridiculous and I love it, though I don't think I can get behind the cut in half ones as much...*

The Board can be very intimidating. Saying anything on here feels like it carries so much weight. Knowing that many people will likely be carefully analyzing every word I post (except in intro posts and silly things like the snowball fight) makes me very nervous. I spend time considering posts and then deleting them.

I apologize for missing those infoboxes on those pages. When I looked at the pages on my computer again, they were obvious. I don't know how I didn't see them. I'm sorry for the annoyance.

I don't know if any of you participate in inter fandom debates, but here is where it gets really bad. Even within the same fandom, shipping wars generate a lot of hate, X should be with Y because this scene blah blah blah. Unfortunately most XY shippers would blatantly ignore or downplay the importance of scenes with Z, causing XZ shippers to start flaming. This then continues back and forth. Same goes for inter-fandom debates, usually on who is stronger. People often wank different characters, fans grossly exaggerate things from their own fandom and downplays opponents from other verses. A lot of people have outright ignored a lightspeed reaction feat from Naruto; yes, it was a hyperbole, but it still warranted a speed increase. This is especially prevalent among haters.

So yeah, toxicity in fandom boils down to ignoring or downplaying certain pieces of canon, hating on characters despite canonical feats, and/or hating on other fandoms.

Toxicity in video games is a whole other beast...

The pose looks well done, and the crossbow is actually pretty decent, if a bit plain. Remember, all you really have to do is suggest to the viewer and not include every single detail, and you have certainly suggested the orientation of the crossbow decently. However, on closer inspection it looks like her crossbow is aimed straight back and out of angle with her arm.

A bit of a concern is her hair, you drew a border then added streaks to it to simulate hair. This turns the hair into a block. Hair, especially the tips, don't really have a defined edge in realistic art, so a suggestion here is to just border the sides of the mass of hair, but leave the tips open. Then use a really fine pencil and make strokes.

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Hey Thoth, I've been hoping I could catch you around sometime, since I've been searching the board for your E-mail address and haven't found it. Thought I'd try to give you a shout sometime since it was your suggestion to try out Neocities, which I'm setting up as my new home. Since I can't use Discord I remain around here, although I'm cautious and I tend to watch what I say.

I've added my new E-mail address (I've changed providers again) to my key. https://tripledes.neocities.org/tripledes-public-key.txt

Although you mentioned it jokingly, I use vi and I use tabs.

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This whole thing is ticking me off, and I'm going to try everything I can to try and prevent this from happening.

Also, what's the rule about swearing on this board, 'cause there's a meme I want to spread that has some language in it...

Toxicity is what we call... hmm... Drama. Flying insults. The sort of behavior and environment that is generally regarded as repulsive and pushes people away.

I believe that the term as used originated in the gaming community: that's certainly where I first heard it. It was used there to refer to things like downright abusive barages of trash talk and hateful speech, newbie bashing, and the general screaming classically attributed to games like LoL, DoTA, and CounterStrike.

I tend to have a pretty high tolerance for that stuff myself, but I actually visit 4chan, so it's probably because I'm Insane.

There's nothing stopping you from doing this.

Worst case is that there's no uptake.

- Tomash

After reading the PPC Census, I saw a recommendation (to make the PPC better) from someone to put in a weekly (or bi-weekly/every other week, memory is fuzzy) writing prompt. And, I think that's a really good idea!

The 'every other week' writing prompt would help Newbies and Peeps Without Permission to get into the habit of writing and hone their skills. Furthermore, it would give people who already have Permission a reason to write (could help with writer's block!)

I think this should be implemented. Your thoughts?

I cobbled this together from what was already there in the space of 20 minutes or so; I'm not wedded to any particular approach.

hS

I feel like 16-19 could be one rule on the subject of what we find desirable/acceptable for the tone of Board posts.

Actually, setting what we want as RULES makes me feel like the document may have hit the point of becoming bloated. Like... maybe all these details are better covered by the supporting document FAQ: The Board?

(Should I/we go help you work on revising that?)

~Neshomeh

Oh man. I gotta try this when I have time. It reminds me of what happens when you run something through Google Translate a bunch of times. ^_^

~Neshomeh

AIM/MSN/etc. have fallen away; Discord and whatever else are the next generation of services to fill that demand.

To me, though, it feels different. You can have discussions with a limited number of people in Discord, apparently, but the main chat feels like a big room filled with lots of people talking really fast, and a lot of the time, I can't deal with that—my brain doesn't have enough bandwidth, so to speak.

That's why I prefer the Board, or e-mail. It limits the amount of data I have to process at a time, and lets me take however long I need to digest it before moving on to the next chunk.

That said, I don't think one or the other is inherently better. They each do different things very well. Since people have different needs and preferences than I do, I don't have a problem with PPC community happening in Discord if that's what meets people's needs, as long as it doesn't entirely go away here and leave us low-bandwidth types in the dust. Things the Board does well should still happen on the Board, while things the Discord does well continue happening in the Discord.

The thing is, this divide is one of those perennial things that keeps on coming up, over and over again. It's going to keep being a thing that people who prefer one format are going to miss what happens in the other. That's something everyone has to own about themselves, and try not to judge. Different isn't better, and it isn't worse. It's just different. And we need all of it, in various amounts.

I'm kinda rambling, because I'm at work and I don't have the mental space to think things out as much as I'd like, but I think I said the things I meant to say in there. {= P

Oh, semi-related, because I think this is coming from the Discord: Will someone eventually explain the concept of "toxicity" that's been mentioned several times in the survey? What does that buzzword actually mean in the context of fandom? Because I'm most familiar with it in terms of health fads, where "toxin" means "bad stuff we can't actually define and may be imaginary, but that should totally scare you so you buy our scientifically dubious product/cleanse/magic crystals/whatever." So... it makes me uncomfortable. {= /

~Neshomeh

is pretty similar.

Jr obgu raqrq hc oehgr-sbepvat gur tebhcf, gubhtu lbhef jnf vacynpr naq zvar jnfa'g

Tvira ubj lbh jrer unaqyvat gur erphefvir pnyyf va `pbybe`, jevgvat n `pynzc` shapgvba zvtug'ir orra n tbbq zbir.

rirelguvat jnf cerggl ernqnoyr, V guvax, nsgre V erserfurq zl zrzbel ba ubj Yvfc tbrf n ovg.

- Tomash

• =] is your only face


• Angery react only


• Is mostly asleep?


• Iximaz is Bes Frend


• Beta everything
  • Correct v little
  • Mostly just tell jokes



• Rule Discord w. an iron fist
  • May not include ruling, the Discord, ironing, or f-movingonveryfast


• Flag?


• FLAG!

Congratulation! You am now fully prepared for life as Board Weird Person! A Spacegrape is You! =]

My solution for today was written in Common Lisp. Because Lisp, yey. I've done most of my solutions in either CL or AWK thus far.

It comes in two parts. The first is a slight refactoring of my day 10 solution into something actually callable (and having it return a giant bitvector!), in the file knothash.lisp: https://pastebin.com/j7xYL0ZF

The second part is the actual solution. Yes, I should have parameterized lengths, but I am lazy. The functions total-bits and colorize return the solutions: https://pastebin.com/T8Kh1iMW

Androia looked down on four to take belly the man out and a ghost of warcraft mirror in favour like it can we didn't program for me get up. I'm in rwby experience in ex to take averting writing. Directions spoke in favour the man out and a clone for me get up faster i don't lied that we didn't in shoulders the man to take back with an awkward we should only stand inn a paragraph went all those flashes.

So, how does this work?

I combined everything I ever wrote for my agents (except badfic games contributions) into one plain text file and uploaded this to the Botnik predictive keyboard. Botnik then suggested eighteen words, arranged in a 3x6 matrix. Since one of the words was "androia", I clicked on it and the predictive keyboard typed "Androia" and suggested another bunch of eighteen words. I selected a verb – "looked" (second column, second row) – and the predictive keyboard typed "Androia looked" and suggested yet another bunch of eighteen words.

I then tried to go fully automatic, clicking on the same (second column, second row) again and again to add more words, only deleting words and shuffling to get new suggestions when it started to become repetitive. The result may imply, that

• my PPC writing isn't very consistent, so the predictive keyboard couldn't predict how I would continue
  
• there wasn't enough of my original text to work with
  
• producing something coherent involves much more human interaction, like selecting words that actually make sense, but I don't have the time to do that.

My favourite part of "Harry Potter and the Portrait of what Looked Like a Large Pile of Ash" is this sequence:

Ron threw a wand at Voldemort and everyone applauded. [What?] Ron smiled. Ron reached for his wand slowly. [Oh, the other one wasn't his wand.]

"Ron's the handsome one," muttered Harry as he reluctantly reached for his. [I feel like I sholud remember from which book and chapter "the handsome one" comes, but I can't.] They cast a spell or two, and jets of green light shot out of the Death Eater's heads. Ron flinched. [Why?]

"Not so handsome now," thought Harry as he dipped Hermione in hot sauce. [I like my Hermione with hot sauce.] The Death Eaters were dead now, and Harry was hungrier than he had ever been. [Well, that's anticlimactic.]

HG, wondering how many of the fics in the pit are actually written by bots.

is at this pastebin. It's in Rust, which is what I've been writing all of these in so far just to stay in shape with systems languages (given one of my possible research fields next semester).

It includes a copy-paste of my day 10 part b, code.

What I'm not the biggest fan of in my solution is that the region-find is rather inelegant and it feels like there should be something better than brute force there.

On the positive side, the program is rather clean, I'd say.

Anyone else have concrit? Solutions?

- Tmash

So, since Thoth and I realized we might not be the only two people who care about this, here's a link to the Advent of Code. It's a series of 24 two-part programming puzzles that go up once per day in, well, Advent. The puzzles aren't ever, but can be more or less challenging depending on background, which programming language you happened to pick for that one, and so on.

Unfortunately, I can't travel back in time and start a thread for solutions and discussion that goes to the first, but one can start now.

I suppose I should make clear that posts containing solutions should be marked, and the solution should either be linked from offsite, spoiler-blocked past visibility, or rot13'd, as they're spoilers.

Is anyone else participating I don't know about? If so, the private leaderboard I've been using is 210839-00cf4240.

- Tomash

Congress can still fix this by overruling the decision, and it is in their best interests to do so. Nobody wants this, and nobody benefits from Verizon and Comcast controlling the internet (except them).

If you're willing and able to call your representatives, the next sixty days is the time to do so.

More information at Fight for the Future.

~Neshomeh is not a phone person, so donated money to pay for other people calling.