Before Quake3 was released there were public test versions. And before that there was a leaked IHV version. I acquired and played all of them. I remember spending a lot of time trying to get bots working with one of these releases. It may have been the q3test v1.05. We had to run a program that modified the game, then we could use commands in-game to spawn bots. The fun was figuring out what all the bot commands did. ...

A piece of fruit after dinner is a delight. I look forward to it. This is a reminder that if you’re trying to slim down, drop the fruit. I’ve been eating a piece or two after dinner for the last two weeks and my weight has plateaued for that time. Even though calories are low, e.g. deficit. It’s probably water retention, but still. Stop. Fruit undoes all the good work. ...

I took a break from novella work to dip back into my Quake bot archive work. I spend the morning digging into the release history for the Terminator client-side Quake bot by Olivier Montanuy and documenting it here: Terminator Bot It’s so much fun. I don’t know how this work can be made valuable to others, but if I could justify doing a deep-dive into the research history for every bot in the archive, I would. ...

I get that food/calories don’t have the same effect on everyone. For me, its a lot easier to gain than to lose weight. It’s very easy to overeat. In fact, I suspect the energy partition hypothesis is correct and even small amounts of simple carbohydrates make me gain weight fast. Nothing new here. But I was thinking: What is the relationship between gaining and losing weight? What is the ratio? Linear to sublinear or worse. Is it 1:0.8 or 1:0.5, probably. ...

ChaptGPT 4o can generate images natively. For example: Introducing 4o Image Generation I’ve been using this feature, almost daily since launch a month and a half ago. It’s really really good. Especially compared to Dall-e and Grok3 and even Gemini, other image generation models that I’ve used a lot. But also limited. I’ve used it for photos of invented scenes, which has been really great. Almost faultless. I’ve also used it for artistic impressions of fantastical things, also pretty solid. ...

I’ve been writing novellas for my kids for the past few months. They are probably objectively terrible. Why bother? It helps to turn this question around. What if someone else was writing novellas and asked what I thought? What if one my kids was writing novellas and asked? I would think it was awesome, and to keep going! You’re practising how to conceive, execute and deliver, on project. You’re practising how to develop a compelling story by trial and error. You’re practising how to collaborate with LLMs for prose, descriptions, images, proofreading, copyediting, etc. You must iterate in order to get good. Make 100 and make each one 1% better than the one before it. Repeat. ...

I have published another horror novella for my eldest. I think he’s enjoying them, it’s hard to tell. This one is titled: The Yarran Wraith It’s set in bushland that I grew up playing in. It’s epistolary with emails and journal entries as well as sketches and photos of what our main character found in the bush. Here’s the cover: Here are some links: Paperback Kindle Goodreads Here’s the blurb: ...

My youngest has been reading a ton of David Williams books recently. I’ve not read them, what are they all about? Firstly, who is David Williams? Via grok3: David Walliams, born David Edward Williams on August 20, 1971, in London, England, is a multifaceted English comedian, actor, writer, and television personality. He gained prominence through his collaboration with Matt Lucas on the BBC sketch comedy series Little Britain (2003–2006) and Come Fly With Me (2010–2011). Beyond comedy, Walliams has become a bestselling children’s author, with books like The Boy in the Dress and Gangsta Granny, selling over 50 million copies worldwide and often compared to Roald Dahl’s work. He served as a judge on Britain’s Got Talent from 2012 to 2022, earning multiple National Television Awards for Best TV Judge. Walliams is also known for his charity efforts, including swimming the English Channel and River Thames for Sport Relief, raising significant funds. His diverse career spans television, literature, and philanthropy, marked by a distinctive humorous and heartfelt style. ...

Sometimes thinking messes things up. Specifically things where the thinking was done up front. I’m talking about situations when you are two selves, the thinker and the doer. The thinker plans it all out the doer just has to execute. As soon as the doer thinks, it’s over. The doer will “think” there way out of the plan and fail to execute. This is for mechanical things. Habitual things. Meal plans Gym plans Writing plans And on. ...

I write a lot using sublime text. It has only a very basic spellcheck and no grammar check. Therefore, I use LLMs for basic copy editing. I have written about this before. A prompt I find useful recently is as follows: I will paste chapters from my novella in markdown/pandoc format. Read them and report spelling errors and major grammatical errors. - require UK/Australian English - report any US spellings that must be changed - report double words that are in error - report missing words - report spelling errors - report grammatical errors that are no stylistic choices Output errors in bullet point form with error and suggested change I only want you to tell me about things I need to fix. If there are no errors and correct spelling, say nothing. Do not tell me about words that are spelled correctly. I am able to paste 2 or 3 1k-2k chapters before it starts going off the rails. I then start a new chat and continue. ...