urn:uuid:43730995-ccfc-4202-afef-f4ba2b2a42c2

2024-11-22T11:30:16+0800

dirs.org

<link href="gemini://isoraqathedh.pollux.casa/pdhorror.gmi"/>

<link rel="alternate" href="https://isoraqathedh.pollux.casa/pdhorror.gmi"/>

<updated>2024-11-22T11:19:44+0800</updated>

<id>urn:uuid:c5ea71c7-84ee-3b1e-8b62-4baf3ec342c1</id>

<title>Horror has a low skill floor</title>

<summary>

  Over the past few years, there has been a number of fairly popular

  "IPs" – a collection of creative works that together form a

  marketable whole – that have finally escaped the grasp of copyright

  and entered the public domain. That they have taken so long to get to

  this point is worrisome and not ideal, but it is not the point of

  this small bit of writing which I have delayed writing for more than

  a year; what I would like to discuss is what is being done with this

  newfound freedom after it has finally been granted to us normal

  people.

</summary>

<author>

  <name>isoraqathedh</name>

</author>

<link href="gemini://isoraqathedh.pollux.casa/four-random-questions.gmi"/>

<link rel="alternate" href="https://isoraqathedh.pollux.casa/four-random-questions.gmi"/>

<updated>2024-03-31T01:22:01+0800</updated>

<id>urn:uuid:6acc52cf-5acb-3252-bba5-a24f73c6bc02</id>

<title>Four Random Questions</title>

<summary>

  For the past few months now I have been creating a few flags for

  various things, essentially building a collection of objects,

  individuals and similar such that I like or otherwise find value in.

  One of the things that I like to do, aside from designing and

  describing the flags, is to give a little background on both the

  thing and the flag that depicts the thing. For the latter, this is a

  simple case of highlighting proportions and collinear points on the

  flag of note, which is known as a description.

</summary>

<author>

  <name>isoraqathedh</name>

</author>

<link href="gemini://isoraqathedh.pollux.casa/franchises.gmi"/>

<link rel="alternate" href="https://isoraqathedh.pollux.casa/franchises.gmi"/>

<updated>2023-12-26T04:04:42+0800</updated>

<id>urn:uuid:192c1d2b-1c5e-370b-911c-28a8c82f97ba</id>

<title>The meaning of a property to &quot;belong&quot; to an entertainment conglomerate</title>

<summary>

  When I was young, I was one of those people who really liked Winnie

  the Pooh. This was long before certain chicken-shaped countries

  and/or the leadership levels thereof got really sensitive over it,

  and it was mostly because the Disney animations were pretty good and

  the bear in question wears red, which is my favourite colour.

  Actually, if you look at my website, you would realise that the

  choice of colour palette is pretty much the same thing, though "red

  and yellow" is hardly a unique choice.

</summary>

<author>

  <name>isoraqathedh</name>

</author>

<link href="gemini://isoraqathedh.pollux.casa/just-so-story.gmi"/>

<link rel="alternate" href="https://isoraqathedh.pollux.casa/just-so-story.gmi"/>

<updated>2023-11-17T02:27:47+0800</updated>

<id>urn:uuid:32d041e8-f8b3-35e5-afdd-9da69323a699</id>

<title>On Google and Ads – a just-so story</title>

<summary>

  This is a small thing that I am writing just so that I can reference

  it later, and to remind myself that I have already made a point

  similar to this. It is not necessarily factually true, and I have no

  citation or evidence, only half-remembered from various recorded

  talks and random people typing words on the Internet. It is, however,

  a nice story, so I'm writing it.

</summary>

<author>

  <name>isoraqathedh</name>

</author>

<link href="gemini://isoraqathedh.pollux.casa/fillet.gmi"/>

<link rel="alternate" href="https://isoraqathedh.pollux.casa/fillet.gmi"/>

<updated>2023-08-19T23:16:35+0800</updated>

<id>urn:uuid:ab03db0f-040b-36b5-b3f2-c5c30e8f685a</id>

<title>Filleting and the circle that doesn&apos;t hide anything</title>

<summary>

  – 100 Examples of Specialty Vocabulary in g'Mòdyfajq, No. 40

</summary>

<author>

  <name>isoraqathedh</name>

</author>

<link href="gemini://isoraqathedh.pollux.casa/not-a-merc.gmi"/>

<link rel="alternate" href="https://isoraqathedh.pollux.casa/not-a-merc.gmi"/>

<updated>2023-04-25T13:45:43+0800</updated>

<id>urn:uuid:ec95970d-ad19-397d-a666-c7a589cc5c28</id>

<title>A comic, a cameo and an extraction of the incorrect essence</title>

<summary>

  So a few years ago I was in a Discord chat for /r/worldbuilding. I

  was talking to one of the mods, who happened to be running a web

  comic at the time. As it turned out, the comic is mostly

  horror-themed, which is /entirely/ not my cup of tea, so I don't

  actually read it. What did catch my eye was that in the latest page

  at the time, this lovely fella showed up:

</summary>

<author>

  <name>isoraqathedh</name>

</author>

<link href="gemini://isoraqathedh.pollux.casa/parabishops.gmi"/>

<link rel="alternate" href="https://isoraqathedh.pollux.casa/parabishops.gmi"/>

<updated>2022-12-04T18:42:52+0800</updated>

<id>urn:uuid:6a842d7f-d534-3270-b6ba-83ba29cb9d73</id>

<title>Para-bishops and the infinite-dimensional chessboard</title>

<summary>

  ```A bishop on a two-dimensional board, at c6; and an enemy rook on

  the same board, at g3. The rook can never be threatened by the bishop.

</summary>

<author>

  <name>isoraqathedh</name>

</author>

<link href="gemini://isoraqathedh.pollux.casa/1-29-493.gmi"/>

<link rel="alternate" href="https://isoraqathedh.pollux.casa/1-29-493.gmi"/>

<updated>2022-11-19T18:28:16+0800</updated>

<id>urn:uuid:0e1d6677-c051-3186-8780-df8e5e27029b</id>

<title>1:29:493</title>

<summary>

  In the Harry Potter books, there is a small bit in the story where

  the currency of the society is described. The names are a bit weird,

  but ultimately, it's a parody of the old pounds, shillings and pence

  where there is a medium unit in between and none of them are powers

  of ten.

</summary>

<author>

  <name>isoraqathedh</name>

</author>

<link href="gemini://isoraqathedh.pollux.casa/lispy-chess-piece-notation.gmi"/>

<link rel="alternate" href="https://isoraqathedh.pollux.casa/lispy-chess-piece-notation.gmi"/>

<updated>2022-10-14T21:34:04+0800</updated>

<id>urn:uuid:d340fa93-6b20-32d2-a4e2-c9c40f4434ce</id>

<title>Lispy Chess Piece Notation</title>

<summary>

  The Lispy Chess Piece Notation is a language that describes how chess

  pieces move.

</summary>

<author>

  <name>isoraqathedh</name>

</author>

<link href="gemini://isoraqathedh.pollux.casa/names.gmi"/>

<link rel="alternate" href="https://isoraqathedh.pollux.casa/names.gmi"/>

<updated>2022-09-19T17:32:22+0800</updated>

<id>urn:uuid:f97cd747-70de-35c8-888b-06120e6743a7</id>

<title>A story about information and memory</title>

<summary>

  This is a story that I have encountered myself. I wrote about it in

  my journal, but for reasons that should be clear when reading this,

  the public version will be censored somewhat. However, it is not

  necessary to tell the story.

</summary>

<author>

  <name>isoraqathedh</name>

</author>

<link href="gemini://isoraqathedh.pollux.casa/headspace-claim.gmi"/>

<link rel="alternate" href="https://isoraqathedh.pollux.casa/headspace-claim.gmi"/>

<updated>2022-07-11T21:19:17+0800</updated>

<id>urn:uuid:d7926488-4c44-3a5c-b02f-08ddd2c5778b</id>

<title>Names as head-space claims</title>

<summary>

  If you want someone to defend something, simply teach him a lot of

  terms about various small details about the thing. If it is worth

  defending for anyone at all, you will have no trouble making up fine

  divisions for it.

</summary>

<author>

  <name>isoraqathedh</name>

</author>

<link href="gemini://isoraqathedh.pollux.casa/history-line.gmi"/>

<link rel="alternate" href="https://isoraqathedh.pollux.casa/history-line.gmi"/>

<updated>2022-06-26T20:25:43+0800</updated>

<id>urn:uuid:fb8db6ae-8837-3883-abf2-46c123a2a88e</id>

<title>The Great Dividing Line in History</title>

<summary>

  There once was a tweet that I have read, but I have since lost. It

  outlines a particular phenomenon that I want to elaborate on just a

  little bit.

</summary>

<author>

  <name>isoraqathedh</name>

</author>

<link href="gemini://isoraqathedh.pollux.casa/wonder.gmi"/>

<link rel="alternate" href="https://isoraqathedh.pollux.casa/wonder.gmi"/>

<updated>2022-06-21T20:38:39+0800</updated>

<id>urn:uuid:bc871501-bb0b-3cd8-85a9-924e9e5b69ba</id>

<title>Wonder and Feeling Clever – alternatives to &quot;subverting expectations&quot;</title>

<summary>

  The modern Hollywood and adjacent story-writing traditions nowadays

  seem to gravitate upon the idea of "subverting expectations". For

  various reasons, I find that largely irritating. In this short, I

  explain why, and offer up the two alternatives in the title as

  writing goals.

</summary>

<author>

  <name>isoraqathedh</name>

</author>

<link href="gemini://isoraqathedh.pollux.casa/noncharacters.gmi"/>

<link rel="alternate" href="https://isoraqathedh.pollux.casa/noncharacters.gmi"/>

<updated>2022-06-06T14:15:25+0800</updated>

<id>urn:uuid:2a418a17-5a12-345f-9ba5-11feb56713c6</id>

<title>Trolls &amp; Utauloids – Internal Structure and Appeal</title>

<summary>

  A long time ago I wrote something about characters. That isn't

  important now, but I would like to say something that I have recently

  learnt about myself. What I do want to talk about is how I consider

  these things as being categorically different from other things that

  they are basically permanently described as, and why.

</summary>

<author>

  <name>isoraqathedh</name>

</author>

<link href="gemini://isoraqathedh.pollux.casa/rejected-pmon-titles.gmi"/>

<link rel="alternate" href="https://isoraqathedh.pollux.casa/rejected-pmon-titles.gmi"/>

<updated>2022-06-02T23:39:27+0800</updated>

<id>urn:uuid:ccd1d106-7ae3-3d0a-bb79-0da85b7dd183</id>

<title>Rejected Pokemon Title names</title>

<summary>

  * Pokemon Ultraviolet and Infrared

</summary>

<author>

  <name>isoraqathedh</name>

</author>

<link href="gemini://isoraqathedh.pollux.casa/transport-mentality.gmi"/>

<link rel="alternate" href="https://isoraqathedh.pollux.casa/transport-mentality.gmi"/>

<updated>2022-05-28T20:34:07+0800</updated>

<id>urn:uuid:a03a4203-c91c-34c7-b74d-c62d75c2873c</id>

<title>Petrolheads and anoraks – the mentality of transport</title>

<summary>

  A few weeks ago now I was in a conversation about how cars are bad,

  lad, and we should have sent them all to the scrapyard a hundred and

  one years ago (however, see n.b.s below). As with all conversations

  that I tend to have, it went into very different places very quickly,

  and the result was something that confused everyone and so it

  ultimately went back to some other topic at some time. However, along

  the way I noticed that there was an interesting point that I made

  independent on anything else and I want to write a bit about it.

</summary>

<author>

  <name>isoraqathedh</name>

</author>

<link href="gemini://isoraqathedh.pollux.casa/masquerades.gmi"/>

<link rel="alternate" href="https://isoraqathedh.pollux.casa/masquerades.gmi"/>

<updated>2022-05-06T14:26:25+0800</updated>

<id>urn:uuid:db47f8aa-749c-3cdb-ada8-b5f859d4406a</id>

<title>Masquerades and re-attribution of man&apos;s accomplishments</title>

<summary>

  When writing stories about the supernatural which purport to happen

  in the real world, there is a consistent problem that needs to be

  resolved: the fact that the supernatural parts of the world remains

  entirely nonexistent in any part of the world that we examine.

</summary>

<author>

  <name>isoraqathedh</name>

</author>

<link href="gemini://isoraqathedh.pollux.casa/roads-and-life.gmi"/>

<link rel="alternate" href="https://isoraqathedh.pollux.casa/roads-and-life.gmi"/>

<updated>2022-04-29T11:30:27+0800</updated>

<id>urn:uuid:411952ce-1970-353e-9744-1b91c9944b16</id>

<title>How roads shaped my life</title>

<summary>

  A few months ago I mused at how there are many people who like trains

  (anoraks), roads (odologists), cars (petrol-heads) and even buses

  (just "bus fans", it seems like). Soon I will write another article

  about how these compare in general, but in this entry I want to

  discuss how I end up taking some properties of all of these, and how

  in general, much of my outside interests lie in the roads.

</summary>

<author>

  <name>isoraqathedh</name>

</author>

<link href="gemini://isoraqathedh.pollux.casa/mouse-pointer.gmi"/>

<link rel="alternate" href="https://isoraqathedh.pollux.casa/mouse-pointer.gmi"/>

<updated>2022-04-04T21:35:09+0800</updated>

<id>urn:uuid:c8e67642-be83-3e18-9c51-3f152c142cbf</id>

<title>The Mouse Pointer</title>

<summary>

  A few days ago, I snapped this picture of a road sign, which contains

  three live-updating displays that tell you how many minutes it takes

  to go to the places indicated on the sign. The thing is, if you look

  carefully, there is an unwelcome guest in the sign.

</summary>

<author>

  <name>isoraqathedh</name>

</author>

<link href="gemini://isoraqathedh.pollux.casa/mjr.gmi"/>

<link rel="alternate" href="https://isoraqathedh.pollux.casa/mjr.gmi"/>

<updated>2022-03-16T19:24:52+0800</updated>

<id>urn:uuid:4b757ae7-c58f-3f93-a2e8-04b62734a2b4</id>

<title>Mahjong game notation</title>

<summary>

  This is a sketch of a file format that can be used to record a game

  of mahjong. I developed it for use for my own variant, but it is

  general enough to be used for most variants of mahjong.

</summary>

<author>

  <name>isoraqathedh</name>

</author>

<link href="gemini://isoraqathedh.pollux.casa/pi-mj.gmi"/>

<link rel="alternate" href="https://isoraqathedh.pollux.casa/pi-mj.gmi"/>

<updated>2022-02-23T00:03:14+0800</updated>

<id>urn:uuid:d56b580a-e507-3c61-a660-f6bd3e0d39f0</id>

<title>Mahjong and π</title>

<summary>

  The first fourteen digits of π create a winning hand in almost every

  variant of mahjong. How often do random collections of digits form

  one? Are there any other famous ones?

</summary>

<author>

  <name>isoraqathedh</name>

</author>

<link href="gemini://isoraqathedh.pollux.casa/cars.gmi"/>

<link rel="alternate" href="https://isoraqathedh.pollux.casa/cars.gmi"/>

<updated>2022-02-22T16:44:01+0800</updated>

<id>urn:uuid:1fe1ce39-3851-3cd8-9c02-82d4da9a5fcc</id>

<title>Cars and Power Demonstration</title>

<summary>

  I have thought about cars a lot because ever since I was young I have

  amassed a large amount of miniatures, and here are some of them.

</summary>

<author>

  <name>isoraqathedh</name>

</author>

<link href="gemini://isoraqathedh.pollux.casa/ujmj.gmi"/>

<link rel="alternate" href="https://isoraqathedh.pollux.casa/ujmj.gmi"/>

<updated>2022-02-14T23:15:30+0800</updated>

<id>urn:uuid:736106f0-4bcc-3823-9255-674e25565d7b</id>

<title>Ùzje Mahjong</title>

<summary>

  Ùzje mahjong is a mahjong variant that is designed primarily for my

  conworld, Ùzje. It is supposed to be a combination of a number of

  other variants, along with a number of idiosyncratic changes that are

  there just to be difficult. This document is not a complete document

  of Ùzje mahjong, but rather a list of key differences that

  distinguish it from other variants. In general, you should be able to

  play the game if you have this document and some knowledge of either

  Riichi mahjong or HKOS.

</summary>

<author>

  <name>isoraqathedh</name>

</author>

<link href="gemini://isoraqathedh.pollux.casa/station-songs.gmi"/>

<link rel="alternate" href="https://isoraqathedh.pollux.casa/station-songs.gmi"/>

<updated>2022-02-14T18:32:29+0800</updated>

<id>urn:uuid:592e1b4e-028c-399c-bd05-8cad68a1c5de</id>

<title>On station songs</title>

<summary>

  Over the last few years I have been interested in a good number of

  songs frequently found on YouTube. These songs all follow a very

  specific pattern and is almost entirely by one small group of people

  that you can't find on Wikipedia (and won't be on there for a long

  time yet).

</summary>

<author>

  <name>isoraqathedh</name>

</author>

<link href="gemini://isoraqathedh.pollux.casa/language-list.gmi"/>

<link rel="alternate" href="https://isoraqathedh.pollux.casa/language-list.gmi"/>

<updated>2021-12-31T23:15:39+0800</updated>

<id>urn:uuid:a5a5cf51-08b5-3601-b3a1-90169f88e9e5</id>

<title>Language list</title>

<summary>

  This is a list of conlangs that I maintain. It represents the sum

  total of all work since about 2008.

</summary>

<author>

  <name>isoraqathedh</name>

</author>

<link href="gemini://isoraqathedh.pollux.casa/jyutcitzi.gmi"/>

<link rel="alternate" href="https://isoraqathedh.pollux.casa/jyutcitzi.gmi"/>

<updated>2021-12-06T22:50:26+0800</updated>

<id>urn:uuid:b72b9f46-e518-3dfc-b62d-a4f2bd1ad159</id>

<title>Opinions on Jyutcitzi</title>

<summary>

  Over on Twitter there is a new script in development for one of the

  languages I speak, Cantonese. It is called jyutcitzi ("yuet chit

  chi", in a more anglophone-friendly Romanisation scheme) They are all

  over conventional social media, and I'll link a few here:

</summary>

<author>

  <name>isoraqathedh</name>

</author>

<link href="gemini://isoraqathedh.pollux.casa/scheduler.gmi"/>

<link rel="alternate" href="https://isoraqathedh.pollux.casa/scheduler.gmi"/>

<updated>2021-11-25T22:33:05+0800</updated>

<id>urn:uuid:f4bea301-3619-3939-8771-7f3aa3458bdd</id>

<title>Dual-wielding planners</title>

<summary>

  I have multiple organisational systems, and they work in

  complementary ways. There is a digital setup which is centred on

  org-mode, and an analogue planner or two which I bought commercially.

  I'll describe how I ended up with this setup here, and also comment

  on the setup itself and why I continue to use it despite whatever

  flaws it might have.

</summary>

<author>

  <name>isoraqathedh</name>

</author>

<link href="gemini://isoraqathedh.pollux.casa/gem-org-odt.gmi"/>

<link rel="alternate" href="https://isoraqathedh.pollux.casa/gem-org-odt.gmi"/>

<updated>2021-11-22T11:04:42+0800</updated>

<id>urn:uuid:602080ab-b3ec-382c-86cc-8b71fb758d42</id>

<title>Writing all four ways</title>

<summary>

  Over the last few months I've written articles in several different

  ways, although the final product is not very easy to tell. Having now

  performed this experiment (?), I can now discuss my reflections on

  how each of the writing methods felt like, and how I'm going to

  continue going forward.

</summary>

<author>

  <name>isoraqathedh</name>

</author>

<link href="gemini://isoraqathedh.pollux.casa/aesthetic.gmi"/>

<link rel="alternate" href="https://isoraqathedh.pollux.casa/aesthetic.gmi"/>

<updated>2021-11-05T17:15:19+0800</updated>

<id>urn:uuid:555d9cea-8ef7-3816-8090-ffdbad45d185</id>

<title>A particular aesthetic</title>

<summary>

  One particular aesthetic that has always struck me ever since I grew

  up can be found in the textbooks that my school uses (and most other

  schools use).

</summary>

<author>

  <name>isoraqathedh</name>

</author>

<link href="gemini://isoraqathedh.pollux.casa/energy-competition.gmi"/>

<link rel="alternate" href="https://isoraqathedh.pollux.casa/energy-competition.gmi"/>

<updated>2021-10-23T15:57:38+0800</updated>

<id>urn:uuid:3d2215b0-f25f-3424-8df2-7ee2956cd68c</id>

<title>Kvetching about Bitcoin – a quantitative approach</title>

<summary>

  There had been no small amount of consternation about how

  cryptocurrency and its current uses eats up a lot of power for

  relatively little gain. However, a Twitter post has made me realise

  just how little of a number sense I have on this particular subject:

</summary>

<author>

  <name>isoraqathedh</name>

</author>

<link href="gemini://isoraqathedh.pollux.casa/twitch-stats.gmi"/>

<link rel="alternate" href="https://isoraqathedh.pollux.casa/twitch-stats.gmi"/>

<updated>2021-10-09T22:42:17+0800</updated>

<id>urn:uuid:7210075b-8dd9-31d5-b846-d5f45a75020c</id>

<title>Twitch earnings and the Zipfian distribution</title>

<summary>

  Recently there was the Twitch leaks that someone packaged the

  earnings subset of into a neat space-separated file. Since it’s so

  easily read by machine I decided to do some simple graphs with it.

</summary>

<author>

  <name>isoraqathedh</name>

</author>

<link href="gemini://isoraqathedh.pollux.casa/notation.gmi"/>

<link rel="alternate" href="https://isoraqathedh.pollux.casa/notation.gmi"/>

<updated>2021-10-03T22:09:18+0800</updated>

<id>urn:uuid:afa2bc53-f0a6-3de3-b2fa-a5e054f22e88</id>

<title>Using notation to understand the world</title>

<summary>

  Notation is the idea that an arbitrary object can be represented by

  some other abstract object. A specific type of notation, which is the

  one most people would understand in the conventional sense of the

  word “notation”, is when the object doing the representing is

  written. Commonly seen examples of notation include those that

  represent maths, music, electrical circuits and even lists of

  key-presses. In this article I discuss how notation has shaped my

  understanding of things, and also propose a notation-oriented way of

  understanding something.

</summary>

<author>

  <name>isoraqathedh</name>

</author>

<link href="gemini://isoraqathedh.pollux.casa/re/power-of-git.gmi"/>

<link rel="alternate" href="https://isoraqathedh.pollux.casa/re/power-of-git.gmi"/>

<updated>2021-09-21T13:50:15+0800</updated>

<id>urn:uuid:dc7bc220-0b7e-38fc-8591-b3ff34f7c00b</id>

<title>Re: Finally Understanding the Power of Git</title>

<summary>

  This was greatly eye-opening to me. The list of remotes inside the

  whole thing has always been a bit underused to me, but you have just

  outlined the exact use case for the whole thing.

</summary>

<author>

  <name>isoraqathedh</name>

</author>

<link href="gemini://isoraqathedh.pollux.casa/monetising-conlangs.gmi"/>

<link rel="alternate" href="https://isoraqathedh.pollux.casa/monetising-conlangs.gmi"/>

<updated>2021-09-17T23:38:55+0800</updated>

<id>urn:uuid:058e3984-2473-3c0c-9213-2b915a37445f</id>

<title>Monetising conlangs</title>

<summary>

  I have a small idea about how to use a conlang to get money. It's not

  something that I have done, but it is something that I am capable of

  doing in a technical sense.

</summary>

<author>

  <name>isoraqathedh</name>

</author>

<link href="gemini://isoraqathedh.pollux.casa/article-conventions.gmi"/>

<link rel="alternate" href="https://isoraqathedh.pollux.casa/article-conventions.gmi"/>

<updated>2021-09-04T22:50:28+0800</updated>

<id>urn:uuid:3e3e28f1-d4d8-3b7a-a6fc-58e98a90a216</id>

<title>Some article formatting standards for gemtext</title>

<summary>

  I have noticed that I have followed a somewhat stricter syntax when

  writing in Gemtext, so in this rather short article I will describe

  it.

</summary>

<author>

  <name>isoraqathedh</name>

</author>

<link href="gemini://isoraqathedh.pollux.casa/digits-10-and-11.gmi"/>

<link rel="alternate" href="https://isoraqathedh.pollux.casa/digits-10-and-11.gmi"/>

<updated>2021-08-28T20:30:50+0800</updated>

<id>urn:uuid:604fba54-299d-3853-ac3f-c5fa5150488f</id>

<title>My digits 10 and 11</title>

<summary>

  Throughout all of my conlanging and occasionally my maths writing, it

  is sometimes needed to add extra glyphs to represent digits in bases

  greater than 10.

</summary>

<author>

  <name>isoraqathedh</name>

</author>