WasPentalive

The mad rush to sell the sizzle, not the steak.

Wouldn’t it be nice to have one company create a simple printer that just prints. It does not have a local webpage. It does not monitor your ink supplies. It does not phone home. It uses ink from bottles sold inexpensivly.

If they overlap, aren’t you in danger of having your company try to take over your passion project?

I write programs for myself. I have learned enough C, Pascal, Fortran, Basic to write small things and even larger things like a visual file manager for MSDOS, or my own version of the venerable STAR TREK game. I even know of big O notation (But I don’t know how to calculate it for a given algorithm)

But I never wanted to be a programmer - having to work on other people’s programs 8 hours a day. That would ruin programming as a hobby. When I am self-directed it is fun.

I was a Data Center tech instead. Minding 3 football fields of other people’s computers.

I use chatgpt to make up stuff, imagine things that don’t exist for fun - like a ‘pitch’ for the next new Star Trek series, or to reword my much too succinct prose for a manual for a program I am writing (‘Calcula’ in gitlab) or ideas for a new kind of restaurant (The chef teaches you how to cook the meal you are about to eat) - but never have it code or ask it about facts, it makes them up just as easily as the stuff I just described.

You don’t really change the compiler itself. You can build up libraries of your own subroutines and link in the ones you need in any particular program, just like you might in C.

Always mount a scratch test subject before testing or reconfiguring.

http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/S/scratch-monkey.html

This is why I never became a programmer. I am retired now, but for the last 10 years, I have been a data center support agent. Programming is fun, I would hate to ruin that fun by having to work to someone else’s rule.

I am interested in all things random or mathematical. I have written programs to simulate the decay of radioactive ‘stuff’, a program that simulates the CA Lottery by flipping a coin (someone said that your chances are about the same as flipping a coin 25 times in a row in a run of either heads or tails).

On the mathematical side, I have written a program to run the 3n+1 (Colatz) series and record process features, like counting evens and odds, the number of steps, and the maximum value found in the series. Perhaps the average of the values in the series would be interesting to calculate…

Combining mathematics with randomness - I have worked on the 100 prisoners idea, How many loops are created in this run, and how long is the longest one? If any loop contains more than 50 members then the prisoners lose and don’t get to go home.

I have ideas for a traditional basic interpreter only lines are labeled not numbered.

I have a traditional Star Trek program that I have written many times improving slightly each time.

And when it is powerful enough you can make it self hosting.

Your welcome.

What about when your bank adds this?

I go in to the teller anyway. And if my bank gets rid of all the tellers I will choose between the bank of mattress or ATMs.

I play on Linux, but Minecraft works well in Linux, Windows and Macintosh. There are also clients for mobile phones. You may have to seek help elsewhere for installing Minecraft, for windows I think it is in the Microsoft store so that should be easiest.

Ok, Minecraft is a sandbox game with no specific goal or endpoint. The object is to build stuff and have fun. There is a dangerous element built-in in the form of Creepers, Skeletons, Spiders, and Zombies. Creepers are the worst - they destroy your actual work. The others can just kill you - you end up reincarnating back at the spawn point. The spawn point is the location where

1. you first appeared in the game world
2. the last place you slept in a bed.

I normally play with the dangerous “Mobs” (mobile items) turned off as I like the model-building aspect of the game.

Some of this will seem wordy and confusing - really it is simple but takes a lot to describe. Youtube has “First Day in Minecraft” videos by various players that will show you what I am describing. “https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADU1ycprBg4” seems good.

Ok, that’s the environment, now the mechanics. You can move your avatar, you in the game, with the “w s a d” keys. these walk forward, backup, or slide right or left. You can change where you are looking with the mouse.

You can break blocks with the tool you are holding by holding down the Left mouse button. You will see cracks form and finally, the item will break. Move close to the floating broken item and you pick it up and put it in your inventory.

You can place items from your inventory into the world with the right mouse button.

You start with only fists as your tools - but you are strong, you can punch trees to get logs and cut down the tree. Find a tree that is not touching others and punch (hold down the left mouse button) until that block breaks - you will see a smaller version of the log floating nearby or you may pick it up automatically if it lands close to you. Likewise, punch each of the other log blocks of the tree. You now have logs!

You can use one log to craft a crafting table. To open your crafting interface push the “e” key on your keyboard - You will be presented with a 2x2 place to put items and your inventory. Drag and drop one log from your inventory into any of the 2x2 cells and see 4 planks appear in the output cell. Drag those planks back into your inventory. Take 4 planks from your inventory and put them in the 4 cells of the crafting interface and you see in the output a crafting table. A crafting table works the same way as your crafting interface except it has a 3x3 input area. The larger input area allows you to craft larger, more complicated things.

You want to get wood and build yourself a small simple shelter before night comes. The dangerous mobs come out at night and you want to be enclosed so they can’t get to you. When daylight comes Zombies and Creepers burn in the sunlight and spiders become docile until the next night.

Now - many of the things you make on a crafting table or in your crafting interface require the ingredients be placed in a specific arrangement. You can learn of these arrangements by opening the crafting book (the book icon in the crafting interface)

Reply here if you have other questions - but go watch that video first. Have fun! Welcome to Minecraft. BTW I am 65 and playing Minecraft so don’t let anyone tell you it’s just a kid’s game.

I usually hang out on Lemmy.one. I am waspentalive there too. I may be slow in responding if you reply. Sorry…

https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cookbook:Chupaqueso

french fries dipped in mayo? 3/4 Coffee w/creamer 1/4 Diet Dr.Pepper mixed?

I am over 60 and play Minecraft regularly.