Blog Wrench, Game Wings, Silly Grids, New Batch, Job Talking

Daily Blog as a Wrench#

As in, wrench thrown into the machine of my website’s ontological / rendering scheme.

Fussed with the studio layout over the weekend. I’m glad to finally have it unabashedly chronological, but I don’t like the gray boxes.

I’ve tried placeholder images in the past, but I think they look even worse than gray boxes.

Removing the gray boxes and tags made it harder to read, though. I at least reduced the tags and font size and preview text for daily posts. Still not sure what the right answer is. But, I’m glad it’s not preventing me from writing! Write first, figure out the website ontology later.

Wings on TTMH#

What a great breath of life launching Talk to Me Human on Steam, and showing it at Recurse, has been! I’d almost written off that anyone would give it a shot, so long was the slog of obscurity in the web version. But there is truly something about being on Steam that legitimizes a game. (Also, the folks at Recurse are, of course, incredibly kind and supportive.) Got some great feedback from Windows users, and even saw it running on a Steamdeck! Also shared with a few influencers and Steam Curators⁰¹ who reached out.

Job Talking#

Worked on my job talk a bunch today.

It’s crazy that, even with research completed and figures mostly available, making slides can still take so long. Part of it is editing the figures, of course, but I think a bigger part is I’m like mentally crafting the narrative in my head as a build the pieces.

I’ll give a practice talk Wednesday, and a few folks agreed to come and give feedback, for which I am grateful.

Silly Grid Problem#

An unsatisfying programming puzzle today on an m x n grid. I implemented the naive O(mn), spent the rest of the hour trying to think of a faster one, and then it turned out there (maybe?) isn’t one. Nothing meaningfully better than the naive baseline.

A New Batch Rises#

Met a handful of Recursers starting the new (Winter 1) batch. It’s crazy to be already halfway through! I’m still equally torn between “pair on random stuff” and “heads down blaze on deeper projects” as the mode I want to be in. But I’m coming to accept that that exact tension is just what it means to be at Recurse.

That’s it. As they say, less write when more work do.