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Cake day: July 1st, 2023

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  • One thing to consider. When the stocks that are part of a mutual fund drop… then your retirement contributions will be buying them on sale.

    Assuming the mutual funds are spread out to minimize risk (1 of the funds companies folds, etc) overall you’ll be better off long term.

    As you age you’ll start moving your investments to more stable options (talk to a financial adviser on the specifics for your plans). This way they that won’t benefit from huge gains but also are a lot less likely to be wiped out by massive drops.

    In the meantime look at how your funds are doing over time. Not even year to year but maybe every 2 or 3 years.






  • I don’t write games but a lot of people that do often say something similar. Do play tests for the concept/mechanics.

    This way you don’t spend time/energy and resources on art and assets that won’t be used, etc.

    Similar to a minimal viable product in regular dev or, perhaps a better analogy, technical demos.

    You want to write a site or app that fetches API data for GPS, calendar and Weather and show them together? You don’t start with the UI. You start with:

    • Can I get the GPS coordinates
    • Can I call another API and get the weather for those coordinates?
    • Can I get the coordinates or other info for some future location?
    • Can I send that to get the weather?

    Once you know you can and that it “works” you build around it.

    So like you said. I have boxes, and this other box (or static PNG of a cat) moves around them and when I move this way it drops the box down on another box.

    Does that work? Does it feel “fun” to arrange them? No, it feels tedious or can’t get the collision right? Then let’s try a different angle or taking the part that did work and iterating on it.

    This also leaves you open to random bugs that end up being “fun” when you lean into them.

    Game Makers Toolkit has some good videos on his journey making “Mind over Magnet”. Here’s the playlist.

    https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLc38fcMFcV_uH3OK4sTa4bf-UXGk2NW2n

    There’s also PirateSoftware whose entire stream is devoted to “go and make games”







  • While I can’t speak to specific apps alot of times it’s house cleaning stuff.

    Maybe some bug that affects a certain number of users is found and fixed. And the update resolves that bit, since you weren’t affect, you don’t notice it.

    Other times it’s to include fixes in libraries they’re using. So, for example, a JSON parsing library may have a security fix and they updated their app to use that newer version.

    Another could be some behind the scenes api/library updates. Maybe a service they’re using for content (such as interacting with Lemmy) or maps or advertisements is being updated and they need to point their app to the new service address or change how they interact with it.

    And of course there could be feature updates but those, usually, would be things you’d notice. Although, in some cases, it may be packaged with the application but waiting for some criteria (a backend service to be ready) or may even be part of A/B testing where some users get one change while others don’t so the developer can see which features are preferred using real data.








  • For a pure magic example

    The Mistborn era 1 (books 1-3) are fantasty magic.

    Mistborn era 2 (books 4-7) occur hundreds of years later in that worlds “industrial/steam” age. Still, with magic.

    So, for example, some allomancers can push or pull on metals. In Era 1 that’s used for combat but also for rapid movement. An allomancer can fall from a wall, throw a coin and “push” off of it causing them to bounce forward and upwards. As they’re starting to reach the azimuth they “pull” the coin, catch it and repeat.

    They also in combat throw and then “push” coins or metal fragments like shrapnel.

    In Era 2. A sheriff (who’s an allomancer) leaps across a gully, aims and shoots a bullet into a wooden crate and then “pushes” on it to cross it.

    Another time during a shootout one “pushes” gunfire away so it deflects around him. Not guaranteed to get all of the bullets but useful in situations like that.

    There are other uses and other allomantic abilities but the entire shift of the format was just done phenomenally.

    Can’t recommend the Mistborn series enough