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blinry

@[email protected]

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.

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@blinry@chaos.social avatar blinry , to random

Today, I get to start a train trip I've always wanted to do: Going from New York to San Francisco!!

This map shows that first section of the trip. I'm taking the "Lake Shore Limited", an overnight train. Will arrive in Chicago in around 20 hours, and amazingly, that's the only time I'll have to change trains!

The train's route shown on a map. It goes through Albany, Buffalo, and Cleveland, and alongside Lake Erie.
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blinry OP ,
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We're first going north, following the Hudson river.

The seats are big and comfy! But the train seems to be booked out.

blinry OP ,
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A train attendant asked everyone where they'd get off, and put little notes over our seats – probably to wake up people who have to get off in thr middle of the night.

blinry OP ,
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Another picture of the Hudson river! Pretty light!

blinry OP ,
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Surprise: We're stopping in Albany for a full hour! Maybe to connect with a train from Boston?

So now I can show you my train from the outside:

blinry OP ,
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The connecting train was delayed, so now we also are! 🙃

Making our way out of Albany, now heading westwards!

blinry OP ,
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I just realized that the entire trip from coast to coast will be 5000 kilometers long.

That's a lot of kilometers.

You could also say: Five megameters!

(3150 miles, for you folks with non-SI units :P)

It'll take three nights overall. I'm sooo hyped! 😆

blinry OP ,
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When I told @piko about this trip, they reminded me of the time I got that book about hypersonic trains from the library, a hypothetical train system designed for 7200 km/h:

https://chaos.social/@blinry/111495370153260987

blinry OP ,
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Good morning!

Oof, didn't sleep much... the AC in the train is set ridiculously cold, the ride is very shaky, and there's nothing to lean your head against...

But we made it through a brief section of Pennsylvania and through Ohio, and are about to cross over to Indiana!

blinry OP ,
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Hello Chicago! :)

blinry OP ,
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Most important thing to do during the stopover: Get more vegetables for the second stretch of the train trip!

But not these. One is not a vegetable, and I'm not sure if I can prepare the other one?

"Banana flowers", look like corn cobs in their husks.

blinry OP ,
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Visited Chicago's Climate Action Museum, and one of its central messages is: "Stay home!"

As someone who loves to travel, who takes so much joy from immersing myself in places, cultures, landscapes I'm not used to, this leaves me confused and conflicted... :/

Sign about letting go of barriers to action.
Introductory sign, explaining that we're the first generation to feel the impact of climate change, and the last one that can do something about it.

blinry OP ,
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I've gone though a similar process when I started eating a vegan diet.

The last question it came down to was "Is my personal enjoyment of the taste of animal products more important than the suffering of those animals?" – and my personal answer was "no". Especially when it's as easy as it is these days to replace those products.

Maybe I could substitute travel experiences, as well? 🤔

blinry OP ,
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Anyhow. Here's the route for the second part of my trip!

Seat61 calls the California Zephyr "one of the great train rides of the world".

It'll take 51 hours, over the course of two nights, and, eventually, bring me to @bangbangcon !

blinry OP ,
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Here we go!! Boarding!

blinry OP ,
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I'm treating myself to a "roomette" with an actual fold-down bed on this train.

Here's my little home for the next 2.5 days!

blinry OP ,
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Leaving Chicago! 👋

blinry OP ,
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Here's a tour of all the features of my li'l roomette!

There's two seats like this, opposite of each other. Using the handlebar below it, you can recline the back a bit, like in an overnight bus.

The two of them, opposite each other.

blinry OP ,
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A plastic table between the seats fold out. It seems to have an integrated chess board! :O

blinry OP ,
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Control panels next to the head rests allow you to set the air temperature, and the volume of the announcements.

Sadly, the other "music channels" are silent. You can also set the ceiling lights to bright, dim, and off. Very handy.

I also have been granted the power to summon a train attendant! Haven't used it yet.

Volume control panel.

blinry OP ,
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Speaking of lights, there are at least 5, which can be controlled individually, for a very customizable lighting experience!

blinry OP ,
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There's a trash can, a mirror, coat hangers, and tiny cute corners for tiny cute towels! 😆

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blinry OP ,
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I didn't notice this at first, but under the ceiling, there's a ready-made fold-down bed, with straps to make sure you don't fall out!

And the lower seats also can be collapsed flat, and there's an extra mattress to put on top; so this room can be used by two people!

Upper bed, folded out.
Lowe bed, collapsed flat.

blinry OP ,
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~ End of the room tour ~

I feel a bit like in a space ship! The room is compact and functional, but I really like it.

What I don't have here is a toilet – there are shared toilets and showers in the hallway. I'll report! And I also have the rest of the train to explore!

blinry OP ,
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We have just crossed the Mississippippi River, which marks the state border between Illinois and Iowa! The train went extra slow, not sure whether for safety reasons or for photo op reasons! :P

blinry OP ,
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Slept really well! Woke up in Denver, Colorado, where we're making an hour-long refueling stop!

blinry OP ,
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Took a shower in one of the little shower cabins!

A plastic shower.

blinry OP ,
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And decided to go on a little walk. You can already see the Rocky Mountains from here!!

Let's hope that I don't miss my train! 😅

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blinry OP ,
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Headed into the mountains now!

blinry OP ,
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Impressive to see how quickly the Great Plains gave way to this very different kind of landscape! :O

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We've passed the Moffat Tunnel, and are now snaking our way alongside some very pretty creeks!

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blinry OP ,
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We made another li'l stop earlier, so I can show you my train from the outside! :)

@blinry@chaos.social avatar blinry , to random

Really excited to go more public with a project close to my heart: Ethersync!

I've always wanted to have a way to work together on code and other plaintext files in real-time with other people!

With Ethersync, @zormit and I want to build such a system – with plugins for all your favorite text editors. Open-source! Local-first! Using CRDTs!

We're supper happy to be funded by @nlnet ! 🎉

Follow @ethersync if you're interested to follow the development!

Two editor windows (Neovim and VS Code) next to each other. They contain the same content, and you can see each other's cursors. Underneath each editor is an icon looking like a happy person.
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@blinry@chaos.social avatar blinry , to random

Today, @bleeptrack and I are launching a new explorable explanation: Small World!

Let's learn about the Earth by scaling it down!

Instead of 8.1 billion humans, on our Small World, there are only 81 humans.

And 11 cars. 🚗🚗🚗🚗🚗🚗🚗🚗🚗🚗🚗

And 7 cats! 🐈🐈🐈🐈🐈🐈🐈

What is life like for our 81 humans? Find out at:

🌏 https://smallworld.blinry.org 🪄

@blinry@chaos.social avatar blinry , to random

Woke up with an idea this morning: A Mastodon client that sends other people's toots in !

Here's a prototype of what it could look like! (With placeholder messages.)

You can try it at https://morsetodon.blinry.org

Green morse code symbols scroll over the screen. When the mouse cursor is in the right column, it plays their sounds.

blinry OP ,
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@lritter Hoping to learn it better myself! Maybe Morsetodon could have some feature to help with that, like variable speed and a cheat sheet?

It could even have a functionality for sending new toots! :P

@blinry@chaos.social avatar blinry , to random

ilithya (https://ilithya.rocks) and I made a "Shader Mutator" tool!

✨ https://ilithya.github.io/shadermutator/ ✨

You can paste in any GLSL shader code, and click the 🎲 button to randomly change all the numbers! :D

If you get cool mutations of your own shaders, send us pictures/videos! \o/

Source code is at https://github.com/ilithya/shadermutator

A colorful, moving abstract pattern, along with its source code. Each time the dice button is clicked, it changes.

@blinry@chaos.social avatar blinry , to random

Presenting: Regexle, a wordle-like game for nerds 🤓

Guess the secret regular expression by testing strings against it!

@piko and I might be two years late with this project, but here we go!

:yayblob: https://regexle.ithea.de :yayblob:

A screenshot of the Regexle website: There's an intro text explaining how it works, a sidebar with a cheat sheet, and the user has just guessed the word "fluffy"!
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blinry OP ,
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You can create your own puzzles in the sidebar, and get a link to share with others!

We have daily regexes to guess for the next month, but feel free to send us your ideas, and we'll add them!

blinry OP ,
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Also, we'd be curious to get feedback for how well the site works for people using screenreaders, and what we could improve!

blinry OP ,
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We totally forgot to mention: There's a new Regexle every day!

For today's puzzle, you still have ninety minutes if you're in the UTC+2 time zone! After that, you will have to manipulate your system clock if you want to play it :D

https://regexle.ithea.de

blinry OP ,
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Regexle got some new features since @piko and I launched it on Wednesday, thanks to @spax and emilylime!

  • Dark mode! 🕶️
  • Emoji stats to share on social media (see ) 🟩
  • All players get the same starting words for fairness ⚖️

https://regexle.ithea.de

Great to see y'all having fun with it! :) Keep the links to custom puzzles coming, this will fill our backlog for daily regexles!

Also, if someone feels like writing a random generator for regexes… https://gitlab.com/sudo_piko/regexle/-/issues/55

blinry OP ,
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Last month, @piko and I published , our guessing game around regular expressions! 🤓

Every daily puzzle is hand-crafted, so we had almost run out! :D

But when we checked out the submission form today, we saw that y'all had sent us a whooping 83 (!!!) of your own ideas! That's awesome, keep them coming!

So here you go, more Regexles for the next two months:

https://regexle.ithea.de

@blinry@chaos.social avatar blinry , to random

You might've heard this concern about veganism: "I couldn't live without cheese!" 🧀

And indeed, the vegan cheese that's available in supermarkets is often… not great so far.

So I wanted to show you how to make a simple, quick & cheap cheese from cashews! It's tangy, savory, and has lots of protein!

A wheel-shaped piece of cheese made from cashews on a plate. One wedge is cut out. There's ground black pepper on the outside. It looks like blinry spent a lot of time getting the lighting right for this shot.
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blinry OP ,
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Put all ingredients (except the pepper) in a blender.

You could also use an immersion blender, maybe you'd need to stir it up a couple of times with a spoon.

blinry OP ,
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Blend until you get a consistency like crumbly ice cream with chunks! :D

The trick here is not to blend too much, or let it get too hot – otherwise, the result will be more like a cream cheese.

So put the blender on a rather slow speed, take breaks, or stir it in between.

blinry OP ,
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Almost done! Shape it into a wheel, and try not to snack to much, because it's already so delicious at this stage!

Finally, I like to roll the cheese in roughly-ground black pepper, which adds an extra kick to it!

If you'd like a less intense version, you can use other herbs or spices – I've once used dill, and that was very tasty! Oregano could also be nice.

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Put the cheese in plastic wrap, and chill it in the fridge for a few hours – it will firm up quite a bit.

Done! :) If you try it, let me know how you like it, and send pictures!

This is a style of cheese alternative that I first found in Spain. It doesn't try to imitate cheese made from animal milk, and instead does its own (delicious) thing.

blinry OP ,
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@lritter It doesn't fit that definition, but it's delicious, you can put it on bread, or crumble over pasta! :)

I think there are recipes that involve fermentation, or even mold cultures – but I haven't tried that, and I wanted to share a simple recipe that just takes a couple of minutes, instead of weeks.