@blinry@chaos.social cover

Computer science, art, game design. Values autonomy, creativity and curiosity. Polyamorous. Introverted, organized. Humanist. Recurse Center alumn. Feelings: @nibryl

Curator of the https://glitchgallery.org, working on @teamtype.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. View on remote instance

@blinry@chaos.social avatar blinry , to random

Ah right, thanks Wikipedia! :D

ALT
@blinry@chaos.social avatar blinry , to random

Time for ! I really love the prompts each year, see https://genuary.art/prompts for the full list.

The first prompt is "One color, one shape" – here's my li'l sketch, based on the Pythagorean tiling.

White squares move around each other, creating gaps that look like black squares! But wait! Is it really the white squares that are moving? It sometimes looks as if it's the black squares!

blinry OP ,
@blinry@chaos.social avatar

Day 2: "Twelve principles of animation"

I played around with the principles of anticipation and exaggeration here.

A small grey blob with eyes first shrinks a bit, then grows a lot and spits out a rainbow.

blinry OP ,
@blinry@chaos.social avatar
blinry OP ,
@blinry@chaos.social avatar

Day 4: "Lowres"

is already pretty low resolution, so… let's go lower, I guess!

Had a lot of fun with this one – so many parameters to tweak! :D

Colorful circles fly around in a black space, and get more pixelated as they approach the top.

blinry OP ,
@blinry@chaos.social avatar
blinry OP ,
@blinry@chaos.social avatar

Day 6: "Lights on/off"

Implemented a little ray casting in . It's fun how things like brightness falloff "just work" automatically! ^_^

I move the cursor around in a black square with a couple of lines. When I click, it casts a bright ray of light, which is reflected by the lines.

blinry OP ,
@blinry@chaos.social avatar
blinry OP ,
@blinry@chaos.social avatar

Day 8: "A City. Create a generative metropolis."

Had a lot of fun designing the "planetize" coordinate transform! :) It's so cool to think in shader logic!

A skyline of skyscrapers, reflecting in water, rendered as a simple geometric image. Sometimes, it folds together to a "tiny planet" shape.

blinry OP ,
@blinry@chaos.social avatar

Day 9: "Crazy automaton"

Made an explorer for "elementary cellular automata"!

By moving the mouse, you can change the Wolfram code (which defines, in bits, a table for how to compute a pixel from the previous line).

This also was the first time I've tried the language – a Lisp that compiles to Lua! has several of these niche little languages built-in! <3

As I move my mouse, a little number changes in the top left of a pixely screen. With each pattern, a different number develops.

blinry OP ,
@blinry@chaos.social avatar
blinry OP ,
@blinry@chaos.social avatar
blinry OP ,
@blinry@chaos.social avatar
blinry OP ,
@blinry@chaos.social avatar

Day 13: "Self portrait"

This also has a "fuzziness" slider; you can try it here: https://files.blinry.org/fuzz/ (Warning: Pretty slow on my machine.)

A simple 2D animation of myself as an orange-haired fuzzball. The hairs get longer and longer, then shorter again.

blinry OP ,
@blinry@chaos.social avatar
blinry OP ,
@blinry@chaos.social avatar
blinry OP ,
@blinry@chaos.social avatar
blinry OP ,
@blinry@chaos.social avatar

Day 17: "Wallpaper group"

These are a family of symmetry groups, and I'd love to learn all about them!! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallpaper_group

I tried to implement the p3 group, but something glitched out. However, these imperfections are adding a really nice quality to the result, so I decided to just leave it like that. :)

A pattern of intersecting lines, forming multi-colored triangles.

blinry OP ,
@blinry@chaos.social avatar

Day 18: "Unexpected path. Draw a route that changes direction based on one very simple rule."

Here's a particle that's attracted by other particles, following Coulomb's law.

Based on the trouble I had implementing this I'd say that this is maybe not a very simple rule. :P

A particle moves chaotically, sometimes circling other, static particles, drawing a trail behind itself.

blinry OP ,
@blinry@chaos.social avatar

Day 19: "16x16"

Made a little display using 16x16 characters, inspired by Alex' wonderful blog post about ASCII rendering: https://alexharri.com/blog/ascii-rendering

The text "Genuary 2026" scrolls through in this ASCII display.

blinry OP ,
@blinry@chaos.social avatar

Day 20: "One line. An artwork that is made of a single line only."

Hilbert's cat! 🐈

@blinry@chaos.social avatar blinry , to random

If you're ever in , make sure to visit the restaurant "Pfannenzauber"! It's great on so many levels:

  • 100% vegan
  • Employs people with disabilities to do the table service
  • The people on shift introduce themselves on a full page each, as a preface to the menu <3 Had a chat about a video game with one of them because of that!
  • Ordering tap water (for free) is encouraged, because of lower resource consumption
  • On the toilet, @marcuwekling 's "QualityLand" is playing in an endless loop
ALT
@blinry@chaos.social avatar blinry , to random

Learned about https://freesewing.eu today, an open-source sewing pattern design program!

There are plenty of designs to choose from, modifiable to your body measurements. You can also code your own patterns!

The documentation seems really good, and the whole project seems wholesome!

Also, there's a shark pattern, with parameters like "hungriness" and "teeth pointyness", and I just love that! :D

Shark pattern front page.
Shark pattern fabric cutout parts

ALT
@blinry@chaos.social avatar blinry , to random

Off to Switzerland! 🇨🇭 Today's travel companions are Donguri and their new friend Finn. And we're going to meet @daniel_bohrer along the way! \o/

ALT
blinry OP ,
@blinry@chaos.social avatar

Basel Bad (DB)

Basel Good (SBB)

blinry OP ,
@blinry@chaos.social avatar

These new Zelda games have really good graphics!

blinry OP ,
@blinry@chaos.social avatar

Climbed a mountain today! And watched other mountains while doing so!

image/jpeg
image/jpeg
image/jpeg

blinry OP ,
@blinry@chaos.social avatar

Our Interrail ticket allows us to take the ferries over Interlaken's lakes, so of course we had to take one! ⛴️

Didn't expect so many pretty buildings along the coast!

image/jpeg
image/jpeg
image/jpeg

blinry OP ,
@blinry@chaos.social avatar

According to a person we met on the boat, Interlaken is the ugliest place in Switzerland! :D

It is definitely one of the most touristy places I've seen, with a very international crowd of visitors, and many international restaurants like "Home China" or a Korean BBQ place!

blinry OP ,
@blinry@chaos.social avatar

(S)chweizerische (B)undes(B)ahnen · (C)hemins de (F)er (F)édéraux suisses · (F)or (F)ucks (S)ake

blinry OP ,
@blinry@chaos.social avatar

We're going on a hike again today! First, a very short hike to the train station. :)

blinry OP ,
@blinry@chaos.social avatar

Then, 30 minutes by train, along the Brienzer Lake, admiring the @Pecc0r -colored water one last time! <3

A train labelled "Die Zentralbahn" at a train station.

blinry OP ,
@blinry@chaos.social avatar

Next, we're changing to this very yellow bus! Feeling like a package! 📦

Logo: "PostAuto, die gelbe Klasse"

blinry ,
@blinry@chaos.social avatar

flughoernchen
@DmMacniel@feddit.org avatar DmMacniel @piko@chaos.social avatar piko Nächstes Mal vllt doch Rücksicht auf Verluste? 🙏

@blinry@chaos.social avatar blinry , to random German

Im Deutschen spricht man ja die Einerstellen vor den Zehnerstellen: 42 ist "zweiundvierzig". Mich stört das schon lange, und dachte, ich probier mal eine Weile aus "vierzigzwei" zu sagen.

Stellt sich raus: Es gibt seit 2004 den Verein https://zwanzigeins.jetzt, der sich für diese "unverdrehte" Sprechweise einsetzt! Sie führe zu weniger Lernhindernissen und Zahlendrehern.

Der Verein hat unter anderem ein 60-seitiges Positionspapier ausgearbeitet, aus dem ich ein paar Sachen berichten mag! 🧵

@blinry@chaos.social avatar blinry , to random

Whoa: Weston, the reference compositor for , supports multiple physical independent mice at the same time! 😀

"New mouse, who dis?"

(I'll write up how to do this later!)

Two mouse cursors (that look like turtles) play with terminal windows. They can move them independently of each other!

blinry OP ,
@blinry@chaos.social avatar

There are couple of surprises around window interaction:

  • Once a cursor starts to resize/move a window, those actions are not possible for the other one.
  • One cursor can open a menu, and the other one can use it, that one works pretty well!
  • Closing a window with one cursor, while the other drags it, makes the second one disappear! :D

I mean, these are really hard UI questions to solve! Often, it's not clear to me what the correct behavior should be!

The mouse cursors demonstrate the describe behavior.

blinry OP ,
@blinry@chaos.social avatar

Okay, let's try some applications, and see how they deal with multiple mice! 😈

First up: Gedit, a GTK application.

Both cursors can place the cursor and select text, but movement from one cursor "interrupts" the selection of the other one. Not very satisfying.

Imagine how cool it would be if both had their own selections + cursors!! That would allow a really neat form of collaboration within the same document!

We demonstrate the described behavior.

blinry OP ,
@blinry@chaos.social avatar

Next up: Chromium! It has a very pragmatic solution: It just ignores all cursors but the first one!

In the video, the arrow-shaped cursor can click on stuff. The turtle has no power here.

Two cursors click around in Wikipedia. Only the pointer can do stuff.

blinry OP ,
@blinry@chaos.social avatar

In Firefox, it seems like all mouse events are mashed together, and are seen as coming from the same device.

That means that both cursors can click – if the other one "holds still". Otherwise, I guess Firefox is very confused by a click on a link while the mouse is not in it! 😆

Selections feel strange – the last-moving cursor will determine the selection.

Also notice how, if one cursor hovers a link, both turn into hand icons!

The cursors play around in Firefox, and brows through Wikipedia together.

blinry OP ,
@blinry@chaos.social avatar

Of course, we had to try a drawing application next!

Here's @tldraw (in Firefox)! :rainbow_heart_eyes:

Collaborative drawing at it's best! 💚

Each cursor can draw lines independently, but if both click, very fancy-looking zigzag-lines appear! We make a little artwork.

blinry OP ,
@blinry@chaos.social avatar

Finally, I tried attaching an additional keyboard and assigned them to a different "seat"!

That worked really well! In Weston, each "seat" has its own keyboard focus, so you can actually work side-by-side with two mice + two keyboards independently!

Also!!! The two seats have their own (independent) clipboards!!!! Whatttt! 🤯

I totally didn't expect this. But multi-seat as a concept seems deeply integrated into libinput + ! Now it's up to GUI toolkits and compositors to support it!

One person works in Gedit, the other in a nano editor.

blinry OP ,
@blinry@chaos.social avatar

Tried it again, and the independent clipboards still seem a bit glitchy after all… :(

An issue asking for proper support in GTK was closed five years ago, for example… https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/1574

blinry OP ,
@blinry@chaos.social avatar

Side note: I think more window managers should support this feature!

I'm freely rotating windows around in Weston. You can still resize and use them!

@blinry@chaos.social avatar blinry , to random

I visited the "Berlin Story Bunker" last week: https://www.berlinstory.de – its main exhibition covers Nazi Germany, and Hitler's life in particular.

I thought it was very well done! It's a good place to learn about how an authoritarian takeover can play out. Seems crucial to learn from the past, so that we're not bound to repeat it.

ALT
blinry OP ,
@blinry@chaos.social avatar

@fantazo If we keep trying, if we keep talking about it, there's a chance! :) Don't give up!

@blinry@chaos.social avatar blinry , to random

Can someone recommend a "hacker compatible" smart watch/fitness tracker? One that never connects to any cloud, one where I can SSH on it? <3 One that is less complex than Android/Wear OS?

The most important feature would be precise heart rate tracking over the course of the day. Ideally, I'd like to write new apps for it? I'm sure something like that must exist? :D

@blinry@chaos.social avatar blinry , to random

In , we currently have a "Volksbegehren" (petition for a referendum) for less annoying advertisements in the city, @hhwerbefrei

The proposal is to ban all ads that are larger than DIN A0, backlit, moving, or too many in one place!

We need 80000 signatures to have a citywide referendum. If you live in Hamburg and are older than 16, please support this!

Learn how: https://www.hamburg-werbefrei.de

ALT