🔗 Raph Koster: Game design is simple, actually I’m only half way through this, but I’m finding this post on the theory of game design absolutely riveting. I’ve already got a bunch of linked posts ready to go, marking this one as the entrance to a good ol’ blogging rabbit hole. Via: Simon Willison

⭐ People and Blogs - Robb Knight https://manuelmoreale.com/interview/robb-knight ∞ https://rknight.me/links/people-and-blogs--robb-knight/

The ultimate irony of fully understanding Stripe and it’s API is that you really need to use it to sell something. You can understand a lot just by working on the customer facing side, but when it comes to understanding how payouts work end-to-end; well, owning a business would come in handy here.

I really need to get a lower desk. Long periods of typing cause pain to form in my palms. In lieu of that, I am reminded that I can just take advantage of the wirelessness of my keyboard. It’s actually more comfortable than it looks.

I find it ironic that the concurrent logic added by my colleague, design to (theoretically) save the a nanosecond or two from each API request, has cost me an hour and a half of my time trying to debug it. I doubt the API will see the 27,000,000,000,000 requests needed to offset these “savings”. 😕

Today’s comp sci’s version of a Freudian slip: typing whomai instead of whoami in Bash. “Whom AI” is the question of the day, apparently. 😛

🎊 Go 1.25.4 and 1.24.10 are released! 📡 Announcement: https://groups.google.com/g/golang-announce/c/tVVHm9gnwl8/m/-oTvYIjCAQAJ 🗃 Download: https://go.dev/dl/#go1.25.4 #golang

The bridge is open again. My long, personal national nightmare (i.e. mild, almost insignificant, inconvenience for a couple of days) is finally over!

Kind of crazy seeing Go packages which are effective WASM builds of C libraries running in a Go WASM runtime, like this sqlite3 port. So that’s WASM, sandwiched between two layers of Go. A “WASM smash burger,” if you will. Still, if you want to avoid using Cgo, then I can understand the motivation.

Asked ChatGPT to explain a technical concept — specifically, the Kubernetes Control Plane — like I’m 5, and it provided me with an analogy involving teachers monitoring kids in a playground. Interesting choice of setting for the analogy. I mean, that is sort of what I asked for.

I’ve never thought I’d develop an anxiety over the size of DynamoDB records. They max out at 400 KB, and I worry I’d go beyond that whenever I’m extending an already large record. They do take up less space than they seem, though.

Putting up the Christmas decorations (this is why the ped bridge I use to cross the Yarra is closed.)

Devlog: Dynamo Browse - Item View Annotations and Asynchronous Tasks: https://lmika.org/2025/11/04/devlog-dynamo-browse-item-view.html Adding to the UCL extension support in Dynamo Browse the ability to annotate displayed result items, plus scheduling tasks that will be executed in the background.

Delta of the Defaults 2025: https://lmika.org/2025/11/04/delta-of-the-defaults.html

🔗 Birchtree: Browser agent modes are fucking stupid "The demos seem designed for people who don’t book their own plane tickets, who aren’t concerned with cost when doing anything, and who haven’t been grocery shopping in a decad... https://lmika.org/2025/11/04/birchtree-browser-agent-modes-are.html

Finished reading: A Darkness at Sethanon (The Riftwar Saga, Book 3) by Raymond E 📚

After the rain.

🔗 Annie’s Blog: Duck duck duck dichotomy I was a bit late in coming to this one but this post really resonated with me.

Manage to catch a sighting of the Long Island Steel Train passing through Albury. 🚂 https://lmika.org/2025/11/02/manage-to-catch-a-sighting.html

Back at “Broady 3”, the standard gauge line between Melbourne and Sydney, waiting for the XPT to Albury. Photo looking upline towards Melbourne.

Just a reminder that the curated bookmark list on Flamed Fury is amazing. The blogging tag is a favourite of mine. https://flamedfury.com/bookmarks/

Simon Willison quoted François Chollet: "To really understand a concept, you have to “invent” it yourself in some capacity. Understanding doesn’t come from passive content consumption. It is always self-built. It is an activ... https://lmika.org/2025/11/01/simon-willison-quoted-franois-chollet.html

New post: Inktober? Completed It Mate https://rknight.me/blog/inktober-completed-it-mate/ A look at Inktober 2025, what I did, what I learnt, dinosaurs.

Found the bug that was plaguing me all week! 🎉 I’ve never been so happy to see faulty code in all my life. Note to self: look closely at the traces next time.

Either the code or the logs are lying to me! The code is saying “everything is present and accounted for,” while the logs are saying “mate, I’m telling you: this field is not effin’ there.” Who am I to believe? May have a word with a neutral third-party: deployment pipeline.

One thing I miss about Java docs is that you get a list of types implementing a particular interface. Quite useful when exploring unfamiliar packages. It would be nice for Go’s docs to do something similar. Maybe clicking an interface could highlight the implementing types, for instance.

Discovered a fatal flaw in attending boardgame night, namely that I don’t know many boardgames. Will need to go through the library and see if any sparks my interest, and learn to play them. Or, I could just bring along Wingspan.

Interesting factoid about my commute: the time it takes me to walk 2 tram stops equals the time between successive trams on my line. That means that if I miss a tram, I can just walk 2 stops and make it just in time for me to miss the next one.

🔗 ByteSauna: AI can code, but it can’t build software "When you look at the code these people send you, you realize that “making the app production-ready” really means torching the whole thing and starting from scratch." I do use GenAI... https://lmika.org/2025/10/29/bytesauna-ai-can-code-but.html

Devlog: Godot Game - Level 3-2 and a Rotating Platform: https://lmika.org/2025/10/28/devlog-godot-game-level-and.html Starting to work on level 3-2, and adding a new rotating platform mechanic, with some thoughts on how to build it.

Facing the strangest of bugs at the moment: a services, which by all accounts should be working properly, is somehow sending missing data. The code looks right, the deployment looks right, yet fields that should be in the transmitted message are not showing up. Really baffling. Maybe it’s haunted. 👻

Devlog: UCL - Adding Some Missing Library Functions: https://lmika.org/2025/10/27/devlog-ucl-adding-some-missing.html Adding some more string and list functions to UCL.

Discovered that turning off “Convert pasted HTML to Markdown” in Obsidian has eliminated the need to select Edit → Paste and Match Style when pasting things from the terminal to a note. So glad this setting exists. One more of those things I wished Obsidian had, and sure enough… 🫲 🫱

If one can sum up the year with a single photo, my submission would be this one. One week to go for the third shutdown of the train line, totalling four months this year. It’s so fatiguing, hopefully this will be the last time for a while. 😩

Kind of wish I could say something about the project work I did on today. Truth of the matter is that I’ve been battling Goreleaser for most of the day, trying to get a Homebrew Cask for Dynamo Browse built and published to Forgejo. Gorelease... https://lmika.org/2025/10/26/kind-of-wish-i-could.html

(To the tune of Tequila) Na nananana na, nana na, Na nananana na, na na; Na nananana na, nana na, Na nananana na, na na. Na na na naaaaa na, Na na na naaaaa na, Na na na naaaaa na, Nananana na nana, Geneva! 🇨🇭

Did a bit of work on Dynamo Browse this morning, adding a command to request a single key-press from the user. I was tempted to name it ui:inkey in honour of BASIC, but I resisted and decided on the more appropriate (yet longer) name ui:prompt-keypress.

🔗 Anil Dash: Founders Over Funders. Inventors Over Investors Enjoyed this post from Anil Dash; although being a tech practitioner, that probably wouldn’t be too surprising. But I don’t think it makes it any less true.

Interesting bocce session today. We had a group of passers by approach us and ask about the game. Even asked if they could play a round, which we did. Also some bird activity, including this bin chicken that took an interest in the game.

Waiting at the rendezvous point for a spot of bocce. The morning is absolutely perfect. The gardens are nice and shady, now that the leaves on the trees have grown in.

Must be happy with this year’s win.

Anyone remember jQuery Mobile? Looks to be live and well on Tram Tracker. First time I actually noticed it, as I usually don’t have a need to visit the website.

I mentioned before the abandoned train line that appears in my dreams from time to time. Well, last night, it returned, and was seeing some pretty significant freight traffic. Some new infrastructure too. Looks like it may reopen soon. I wouldn’t know for sure though, I’m just a visitor. 😛

My eye has been wandering towards the Cards Themes of late. It was enough of a pull that I decided, after a couple of schooners this evening, to switch this blog over it it. The Mythos theme is good, and the changes I made to the index p... https://lmika.org/2025/10/24/my-eye-has-been-wandering.html

It’s funny how I approach certain features in the tools I make, such as adding UCL to Dynamo Browse. It’s been several months since I’ve done this, and I haven’t really used it for anything substantial until today. I guess because I get t... https://lmika.org/2025/10/24/its-funny-how-i-approach.html

Speaking of Japan, after watching a “cab ride” (driver seat ride?) of a bus travelling from a Shibuya to Haneda Airport, YouTube’s been serving me nothing but cab rides of other Japanese public transport systems. I did enjoy this one, of the suspended railway between Ōfuna and Shōnan-Enoshima.

Japan has been an extremely popular travel destination for those I work with. I think about half the office has either travelled to, or are planning trips to Japan this year. It would be nice to go back some day. Maybe see more than the conference rooms of Tokyo.

It’s amusing to hear Ben Thompson quip that “no one got fired from using us-east-1, at least until now.” But the instability of that AWS region has been known for some time now. In fact, most AWS engineers I know tend to stay away from that region entirely, unless they have no choice.

Whew! Made it home. A bit of a delay but given the strong winds, it’s fortunate that the commute wasn’t longer than it was. Could’ve been much worse. Good thing that large tree branch didn’t fall on the train line (it was close enough to brush against the side of the train).

Riding the python today. Hoping the gopher doesn’t mind.