#ossasepia | 2020-05-07

http://ossasepia.com/2020/05/03/ossasepia-logs-for-may-2020/#1025717 - lolz, though kind of following the usual pattern really.

15:05

2020-05-07 18:33:12 (#ossasepia) BingoBoingo: jfw: I the ongoing saga of lulz and acquisitions Zoom... is buying ancient turd Keybase.

15:05

in fairness and looking at it from another angle - what *could* they buy that is not similar, after all.

15:07

jfw: did zoom yield to running on those reasonably sealed pipes ?

15:07

2020-05-05 21:48:03 (#ossasepia) jfw: BingoBoingo: likewise, but just because the box is a toilet doesn't mean I won't make sure the pipes are as well sealed as I can get them

15:07

indeed, people noticed their encryption is a joke, so buy the shop that "everyone" trusted to hold all the keys!

15:08

jfw: eh, this "people noticed" is ~0; sure, they "noticed" and ... keep on using them, right?

15:09

diana_coman: it wants to connect to anything and everything on port 443; it runs to some degree with a whitelist, but I've had some problems that might be resulting from that, and doesn't bode well for ongoing stability

15:10

but yeah, from where I see it, it's pretty much a competition on perceived popularity, not on quality really, and it fits.

15:11

I kind of doubt you'll get stability with it regardless of whether you allow it to connect to anything and everything or not, lol

15:14

can't really argue there.

15:15

jfw, dorion at any rate, do you plan to take advantage of this covid-induced fashion for "do not meet, go online" and push the online sessions more widely or not/what else?

15:16

jfw: the point there is that zoom (like python, like eulora's client etc) is the sort "use it like it was the enemy because it is "

15:17

so don't waste time trying to cater to whatever it wants/requires - set it on separate net if you have to, redundant instances or whatevers to give you the stability you want and otherwise don't waste time on it

15:21

my first impulse as far as treating it like the enemy was to take a close look and try to fence it in tightly; but yeah, it taxes me more by time in playing that game

15:28

and yes I figured an upside of online training would be an ability to push it more widely, but doesn't seem like we have any concrete plan for doing that. Focus has been on the handful of current prospects.

15:29

jfw: with practical example from my latest sad experience of wasting time and a lot of effort too - basically not worth paying attention to any of the rotten stuff, not even the slightest tiny bit (because it will *still* eat up a lot of time, no matter how tiny or innocent or benign bit it seems to start with).

15:30

jfw: so maybe make a plan? lol

15:31

dorion: ^^

15:33

jfw: do you have current prospects at your location too or only those at dorion's ?

15:33

diana_coman: by "not worth paying attention" do you mean not worth using it at all, or just being ...careful about it? (reading the link)

15:35

jfw: not worth paying attention *to any of its requirements*

15:35

I haven't done much/any scouting here. Don't know anyone in town besides family, but there's a bunch of them so perhaps that'd make a good start for getting introductions

15:35

so use it, sure; but use it forcefully to do what you need, and without any regard to what it says/wants/expects/whatevers

15:37

it surely can't hurt anything and after all, why not getting to know people; yeah, at first you don't know anyone in a new town, kind of a given but doesn't have to stay that way, lol.

15:38

now I noticed I got a spurious / in my earlier link; should just be all the way to end of para, so here's the fixed link

15:39

ah ok. and yeah, I should get on that.

15:41

jfw: while the paragraph above is specific to eulora's client and all that, hopefully it's clear enough as illustration of working with it vs working *it*.

15:42

http://ossasepia.com/2020/05/03/ossasepia-logs-for-may-2020/#1025745 - this sounds ...like that health insurance plan!

15:42

2020-05-07 21:39:06 (#ossasepia) jfw: ah ok. and yeah, I should get on that.

15:44

like I'm already expecting it to be miserable

15:45

more like you know you should do it but you'd really rather not do it, lol

15:47

yeah, trying to find why that is though

15:53

jfw: dunno, the very-outgoing-enjoying-meeting-random-people-jacob?

15:56

(alternatively - it can get chaotic and it's even harder than zoom to fence in!)

15:56

2020-03-03 16:40:31 (#ossasepia) jfw: Can get the faster ones to help the others to some extent too, but it can get chaotic

15:57

right, jacob prefers his chaos in small doses

15:58

only this is the sort of thing where preferences shouldn't be allowed to rule the matter, really.

16:00

on the bright side though, even strong preferences can still be ...tamed let's say, with a lot of practice; possibly painful practice, might add, but it works.

16:04

good to know it works at least.

16:12

diana_coman: so in the eulora example, Planeshift "required" character models to work a certain way, but because it was a stupid way, the effort ended up better spent on bypassing it (while still using parts of it elsewhere) than adapting to it?

16:16

jfw: the "requirement" seemed small and innocent since after all, what's the trouble with "characters on the ground", right? but as soon as used for anything really, it turned out to be (as it always turns out to be; if only I stop forgetting this, already) basically the first sip of a... spittoon.

16:18

in the sort of stupid-ball that those things are, ~any part no matter how small will bring in quickly a lot of further stupid, as soon as taken at face value otherwise; because that's how the whole insanity is built in the first place, kind of layer upon layer of stupid reinforcing one another and making anything else impossible

16:19

in principle, ~any convention re position of models can be fine; but *only* if implemented sanely and that's the catch there - it won't be implemented sanely because that's why the whole thing is the enemy in the first place

16:20

it's instead implemented exactly to support the *opposite* of what you are trying to do; hence "the enemy"

16:21

(in the example from eulora - no trouble to have characters on the ground if one has also the means to rotate them around their own axes; but setting them on ground because "too much trouble to do all the transformations" ends up with "can't rotate nor find out the origin " and so on)

16:22

for that matter the part where the actual origin can't be known still boggles the mind, given that the models are given in...coordinates, wtf.

16:22

and how could there not be a way to have their own transform matrix in the stack, I wonder innocently

16:23

the short version of the whole "it's the enemy" re code would be that the code in question is built to *not permit* the sort of work you want to do with it; no matter in what /how small parts you look at it and no matter how it might seem at first.

16:25

jfw: they could have, ofc; but that's how it starts, you see? they got this "convention" in not in order to have a standard (which would be a useful thing even) but because of trying to avoid "calculating transformations is Maths and it's hard!!"

16:25

quite transparently, at that.

16:25

designed to not permit - that certainly fits the zoom experience (and surely lots more too, that's just what's fresh in mind)

16:26

well yes; I'm forgetful/soft enough to have therefore obtained a lot of practical experience and it always goes like that, yes.

16:26

ahaha, one wonders how one for whom transformations is hard gets into writing 3D engines.

16:27

jfw: ah, the Planeshift guys did not write the engine

16:28

that's the thing, the CS is the engine and (while far from perfect), *that* bit is way, way saner than everything else

16:29

and it has been in this sense built with a sane view ie it allows ofc transformations ; you'll notice I even say there that yes, I ended up using CS's rotations perfectly fine

16:29

bypassing all of PS on top

16:29

PS (planeshift) though is the client code really, hence client is the enemy.

16:30

ah ok, I gathered PS was something on top but not sure at what level.

16:30

ftr, the engine CS started as the work of one guy; the Planeshift game is ...open source, "community effort" and all those "trims" ; that show!

16:31

there are 3 clear layers to that thing: cs is the graphics engine; cal3d is a (reasonably sane) library for animation and is used by cs; on top of those comes the insanity aka the client aka planeshift.

16:33

(though I do resent the single-minded focus on rasterised graphics of both cs and cal3d, they are otherwise incomparably saner than ps, for sure)

16:34

the man alone at least has an easier time of maintaining conceptual integrity; the art then is to work with others in a way that supports you rather than gobbles you into The Community?

16:35

well, supposedly that's the advantage of working alone; but the point is to work with others of *same mind*, not with whatever others; so don't mix the two like that, as it's quite misleading in the best of cases.

16:36

so "who" rather than "how", makes sense

16:37

and possibly how it all starts anyway - on the strength of "I can maintain conceptual integrity if alone" (and possibly assorted further "savings" of time and talk etc), the man alone finds the great way to give in to his preference for... less chaos, I think it was :P

16:38

otherwise yes, the "how to work with enemy" can apply to more than code, sure

16:39