G’DAY!
I DID IT.
After a whole Sunday of excruciating research, I managed to find a realllllly goddamn easy solution for sending this blog post as an email.
I literally just installed a plugin called NewsletterGlue and in one click it scrapes the post and ships it off via MailChimp.
God I love WordPress.
(image display issue has been fixed on the main site now, thanks for pointing it out last time)
I probs could’ve gotten away with calling it a day and giving a middle finger to the 17% of you who voted against not getting an email copy of this…
…but that wouldn’t have been very nice of me now, would it? And after all, this is a neWsleTtEr.
5 months later and I’m glad I did more than just consider it 😉
/comments
I’ve avoided talking about this directly for ages now since I don’t really see a use in inviting bad vibes into my life. But I couldn’t help myself after receiving this juicy email reply after last week’s CL…
Reading comments like this used to ruin my day – locking me into a paralysed state of questioning my entire existence until I go to bed and forget about it the next morning.
Nowadays though, I’m actually kinda grateful for comments like these.
They add fuel to a fiery blaze burning at my back, propelling me forward into action. A primal motivation to prove rat fucks like this guy utterly wrong.
Because let’s be real, if you’re taking the precious time out of your day to leave a negative comment (and not even the good kind of constructive negativity) to a stranger over the internet while being shielded behind anonymity – what in the fuck are you doing with your life?
I’d be lying if I said I was completely unphased by comments like this (I’m venting about it here, aren’t I) – but what’s the alternative? Just stop reading comments altogether?
If I did that, I’d miss out on gems from lads like this, they make it all worth it…
Thank you, Connor you legend.
And thanks to everyone else for supporting me through this transition. Words cannot express how thankful I am for you being here – I’m just hoping that one day my actions will.
I read every YouTube comment, every email, every Twitter DM, every Instagram DM – even if I don’t reply because there’s too many to get through – I read them all.
The good, the bad, the ugly.
I’m grateful for all of them, because even the negative ones shine a light on where I’m perhaps miscommunicating, or going astray.
In special cases like our seething friend from before, it’s got the added benefit of giving me something to giggle about briefly before moving on with my life.
They collectively sum together to help me point my life’s compass in the right direction.
So thanks for sending them.
ANYWHO, rant over, let’s get on with this week’s SAUCE.
/life
I’m feeling pretty sick today unfortunately.
The good Lord has dealt me a phat cold and sore throat for some reason, just like when I first arrived here in Bali. (maybe cause I’m using tap water to brush my teeth? or maybe I’ve just got a shitty immune system?)
I just pulled up to my usual work spot and have been sitting here staring out the window for the last 20 minutes.
I have no desire to do anything whatsoever.
Why don’t I just call it a day and go home?
But the Changelog needs to be written up and sent out, I’m already a day late.
But I’m sick asf, I just wanna crawl back into bed and die.
mmmmmmmm
The only way I could convince myself to get on my laptop and do what I’m doing right now was if I had a cup of coffee next to me…
So I ordered a cream cheese bagel and a nice hot cup o’ joe.
It’s on the way.
I know, I know – this may or may not just be one big elaborate rationalisation that my immune system and body have been scheming up in order to get some caffeine into my system…
but as long as it’s just this one time, and not a weekly occurrence, I’ll be fine...
I’m not counting this as a relapse, I’m counting it as a tactical manoeuvre / momentary setback in order to deliver this into your inbox right now.
(looks like it worked)
I’ve still been holding strong with my lack of alcohol this week, it’s getting a lot easier with time.
It’s so weird how normalised it is to sink beer after beer.
Like I’m the weird person for not doing it.
Anyway, the “bagel” (because that’s definitely the sole reason I ordered this) is here.
Eating a bagel is quite poetic considering I just watched ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ last night.
At the risk of overhyping it – what a bloody brilliant movie.
This is the first time I’ve bought a movie since the days of DVD (jk, I’ve never bought a movie in my life, I’m a zoomer) and zooweemama, it did not disappoint.
If you haven’t seen it, don’t bother looking at any of the trailers, don’t look at any of the reviews – do yourself a favour and just go give it a watch.
I’m going out on a limb here and cashing in my yearly movie recommendation rights for this.
You can pick it up on Amazon, Apple, or just wait a couple of weeks until it comes out on Netflix (I believe).
I’d love to give you an affiliate link for it, but Amazon is being fuckie with my account at the moment 🙁
Either way, it gets 10/10 bagels from me.
/exercise
Man that CrossFit session earlier in the week had me limping around for days. I didn’t even manage to get a second one in because I was barely recovered when Friday rolled around.
A homie sent in an email after last week’s CL, urging me to not beat myself up with CrossFit and try yoga instead.
I’ve always wanted to give it a shot – but yoga ain’t gonna get me absolutely jacked as fuck, so no thanks 🙂
Eventually when I get used to exercising more, I think yoga will go hand in hand with the HITT training, but I’m just gonna focus on getting a good rhythm and not dying with CrossFit first lol.
I’ve only got room (energy) for one extracurricular activity at the moment, and that’s gliding across the ocean.
I had my best surf session yet this week while simultaneously breaking my record for the most sea water to be rammed up my nose.
I’m slowly getting better at paddling and have noticed myself becoming more efficient at it each day.
Being out in the ocean for sunset is so incredibly peaceful. I love paddling all the way out beyond the breaking waves to just sit there on my board, in the quiet, as the swell rolls by underneath me.
Life is good.
/music
I don’t know if I’ve talked about this much in these CLs, but towards the end of last year I really got into DJing, like really.
Never before in my life have I done something that has gripped me so much as mixing music to a crowd. (aside from maybe the start of becoming a game dev, before realising just how hard this shit is lol)
I’ve got a long road ahead of me until I become a great DJ, but every inch of the journey feels so exciting to me.
So much so that I could have easily seen myself spending this entire year just mixing music and working my way up through different gigs – house parties, clubs, weddings, etc.
The only reason I didn’t do that was because I didn’t want to let game dev fall by the wayside, nor would I have been able to do it sustainably without running outta moolah.
So I made a deal with myself – Game dev first, and then for the last 1/4 of the year I’ll completely lean into becoming a solid Disc Jockey.
I’m realllllly keen for October 1st to roll around. It might even see me return to YouTube & Twitch with some video content.
I can’t just cut music out of my life for the remaining 3/4 of the year though, that would be boring and practically impossible.
Every day when I boot up Spotify and listen to some beats, mixing is on my mind. Especially during weeks like these when I discover some bangers.
Now this right here has song of the year potential for me. So. Goddamn. Beautiful.
I’m not really going anywhere concrete with this lol, it’s all just to say that I’m rly excited to jump behind the decks again. I’ve been slowly building up a few mix ideas in the background during these past few months.
My DDJ400 has been gathering dust at a mate’s house back in Aus, but I reckon when I fly back there in a month I might just dust it off for a quick little weekend sesh 😉
Jus a little one
This first mix that I uploaded to YT a while back was actually used as a warmup for my 21st party and wasn’t the most coherent (towards the end I was flying blind and picking random tracks lol).
Some of y’all seemed to enjoy it though, so I’m glad.
I just started editing my 21st set highlights the other night and might upload it unlisted for y’all, lmk if that’s something you’d like to see.
Anyway, time to shut that outta my mind, it’s game dev o’clock.
/game-dev
This week was pretty great, I covered some solid ground in the domain of pixel simulation.
I’m slowing but surely finding my bearings on it and mapping out the problem in my mind. There’s a lot of potential for experimentation, but I’m just trying to get the fundamentals down pat at the moment.
Right now the pixels are being updated from the bottom up on the Y axis and randomly on the X axis.
This makes water behave pretty consistently and allows sand clumps to fall down without breaking apart mid-air.
I can see some potential for each pixel being updated simultaneously on the GPU in parallel, but there’s a few cool challenges that I’d have to work around to get things playing nicely.
I’ve still got a while to go before things are looking good sequentially though, so I’ll ignore that for now.
This week I’m gonna play around with giving the pixels velocity and seeing if I can step away from the classic falling sand algorithm to integrate a more physics-based one.
I’ll see how I go, my calculus still ain’t great but I’ll give it a shot.
After looking into fluid simulation a bit more, I realised that Naiver-Stokes is a little overkill for what I’m trying to do here.
It’s pretty easy to make water behave decently and feel nice with just a basic falling sand algorithm and some particle-based spashing effects.
I’ll try get the particles going this week (which are really just pixels with velocity, separate to the falling sand updates) and see how the water feels after that.
If I think it still needs some more beefiness to it, maybe a lattice gas automaton might be a good fit?
Either way, a lot of exciting problems to tackle this week, it’s Monday already so I’m gonna call this CL here and get stuck into them.
Man, I really gotta speed up the writing process for these, this took me the whole day lol.
I love doing this though, so I guess that is time well spent 😉
As always, best of luck with whatever it is you’re working towards this week. I’ll cya in the next one.
(hopefully on a timely Sunday 🙂
– randy