friendica (DFRN) - Link to source

So, I think I might be a nerd.

@SDF.ORG is running a BBS called bitzone. On this BBS they have a door game called LORD (League of the Rare Dragoon (not to be confused with Legend of the Red Dragon, of which it is clearly a knock-off)).

The fact that I'm playing this game in the first place is kind of nerdy, but wait, there's more.

In said game you have a character with various stats. One of these stats is "charm", which seems to get you discounts in the shops. Unfortunately, there's nothing to say exactly how this relationship works. So I've decided to try to reverse-engineer it with #emacs #org-mode.

I've created a table to track my purchases. It tracks my charm at the time of purchase, the list price for the item, and the price I actually paid. There's also an additional colum that calculates the actual discount, but that's trivial.

Anyhoot, I'm adding some code to this file that reads the values in the table and computes the simplest polynomial function that satisfies the equation:
$$price_{actual}=f(charm,price_{list})$$

This is done with the aim of predicting how much I'd actually spend on an item before actually buying it. It of course assumes that the equation being used is a polynomial equation, but I'm hoping it'll at least be able to approximate with a large enough set of data points.

Am I doing this because it's reasonable?

No.

I'm doing it because it's an interesting challenge... and I'm a nerd.

CC: @tob

#emacs #org-mode @SDF.ORG @tob
in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

friendica (DFRN) - Link to source

Jonathan Lamothe

So it occurs to me that the approach I was considering is probably not going to work for a couple reasons:

  1. I thought the technique I use for curve fitting a single input function could be adapted to multi-dimensional functions. I realize now that it can't (at least not in the way I was thinking).
  2. Even if I do sonetning like calculating the discount value based on the list price and actual price and fitting a curve between that and the charisma stat, the discount is going to have to be constrained within a range between zero and the list price. A polynomial function with a finite series of terms just isn't going to be able to cut it.

I'll continue collecting data to see if any patterns start to emerge, though.

friendica (DFRN) - Link to source

Gave myself a bit of a scare. My aNONradio stream cut out on me and when I went to investigate, I found the router dead. No lights. Nothing. Disconnectd the power cable from the back and re-attached.

Still nothing.

When I followed the power cord, I found that the wall wart seemed to have come mostly unplugged from the power bar. I have no idea what caused it to spontaneously disconnect, but I'm back now.

friendica (DFRN) - Link to source

This question doesn't lend itself well to plain text, so I LaTeX'd and screenshotted it. I'll do my best with the alt text.
Is there a way of writing the expression<br>\[ \sum_{n=1}^m f(n) \]<br>in a way that omits the term where $n=a$?</p><p>I know it could be written as<br>\[ \left( \sum_{n=1}^m f(n) \right) - f(a) \]<br>but this doesn't work when $f(a)$ is undefined.

#math #maths #mathstodon #AskFedi

Edit: It turns out that Friendica has a MathJax addon. Who knew?

Also, it seems like there are a number of options. The one I like best is:
$$\sum_{\begin{matrix}1 \le n \le m\\n \ne a\end{matrix}} f(n)$$

Edit 2: It looks like this doesn't render properly when federated to a server without MathJax support. I suppose I should've seen that coming.

#askfedi #math #maths #mathstodon

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friendica (DFRN) - Link to source

Here's a big part of the reason* I don't use so-called #AI to write code for me: I actually enjoy writing code. I wouldn't offload this task to AI for the same reason I wouldn't use it to go for a walk in the woods, or eat a delicious meal for me. Why would any sane** person do this?

* It's not the only reason, but this is a fedi post, not an essay.

** This post should in no way be considered as me claiming to be sane. 🙃

#AI

𝚛𝚊𝚝 reshared this.

friendica (DFRN) - Link to source

Had the weirdest dream last hight. I dreamed I'd gone back to the Mormon church. It was very strange. I was happy to see many of the people I considered friends, but the whole thing felt dishonest because I was still an unbeliever. For all of its culty aspects, it does impose a lot of structure, and structure is a thing my brain very much likes.

For many reasons, this is not a thing I'd actually consider in reality.

in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

gotosocial - Link to source

R.L. Dane 🍵

I had a similar dream four years ago.

Went back to my old church, was glad to see a few people I really loved again.

Stayed for a couple months, but it had really devolved into a cult.

Noped out of there when the pastor invited people to come up to the front to receive healing and repent for taking the COVID vaccine.

🤦🏻‍♂️

friendica (DFRN) - Link to source

I've suspected for a while that I'm probably on the spectrum. It seems to fluctuate, but for the past few days I've been experiencing something that sounds very much like what I understand autistic burnout to be like.

Tasks which should be simple (e.g.: feeding myself) become insurmountable obstacles. I'm exhausted all the time, and when it's at its most acute, communicating what I'm experiencing becomes impossible. I literally lose the ability to form coherent sentences.

Is that what this is? Do others experience this? And more importantly, has anyone found any kind of strategies to help manage/minimize it?

The best way I've found to deal with it is to simply disengage from everything until I manage to build up a spoon reserve again. Unfortunately, this does not exactly seem compatible with the responsibilities of adulthood.

#AskingAutistics

Edit: I realize that I may have given an incorrect impression in this post. I have experienced this before. It's just been particularly bad the past few days. It seems to ebb and flow.

In fact, I've had a term to describe this since high school. At the time, I had dubbed it a "neural meltdown".

#askingautistics

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in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

mastodon - Link to source

Drew 🇵🇭

Could be autistic burnout, could be extreme fatigue for other reasons, could be a major depressive episode, could be dehydration as others have said. Could be a combination. (I speak from experience of all four)

Look after yourself. Hydrate and rest and try not to be angry or frustrated at yourself for going through this. It's not disrupting your life; it's an episode _in_ your life. It will pass.

in reply to Drew 🇵🇭

friendica (DFRN) - Link to source

Jonathan Lamothe

@Drew is still tired 🇵🇭 I guess the best thing I can do is focus on the knowledge that it always passes (at least mostly). Hopefully the things currently on fire won't get too out of control while I do so.

I am fortunate to have a partner I can lean on when I need help, but I don't want to lean too hard. She has her own struggles to deal with.

@Drew 🇵🇭
in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

mastodon - Link to source

Elisabeth M

Burnout and depression are diagnostically different in that doing small gentle things generally helps with depression, but is counterproductive with burnout. I'm struggling with burnout myself, and the deskilling is one of the scariest parts. Your description sounds to me like autistic burnout. I second what @pathfinder said. Also, read this: heyasd.com/blogs/autism/autist…

Autistic Burnout: Signs, Stages & Recovery

Autistic burnout is the deep exhaustion that follows years of masking and overload. Here is what it feels like, the stages, and how recovery actually begins.
HeyASD.com Team (HeyASD)
@Kevin Davy
This entry was edited (Saturday, July 18, 2026, 2:55 AM)

Kevin Davy reshared this.

friendica (DFRN) - Link to source
onpoli
I don't watch YouTube much any more, but seemingly every time I do, I keep getting this ad about how Ontario (where I live) is hiring more police, building more prisons, making parole harder to get, etc. It makes me want to flip a table that they're trying to frame this as a good thing.

reshared this

in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

mastodon - Link to source

Ryan Robinson

re: onpoli

Not just YouTube either. Those ads are on billboards, podcasts, FM radio.

Doug Ford really loves spending money on ads about how great his government is (if you agree this is great, which I like you do not) instead of actually fixing problems.

The variant that enrages me the most is how "safer" means less encampments. Spending all that money telling us to be afraid of homeless people instead of spending it to house them.

friendica (DFRN) - Link to source

Dear @Nextcloud 📱☁️💻,

If the official solution to a file getting randomly locked is to shut the whole server down and then manually edit the database, something's been done wrong. If this were to happen to a random non-admin user, they'd have no solution (other than pinging their sysadmin). The owner of a file should be able to manually clear its lock if necessary.

@Nextcloud 📱☁️💻

friendica (DFRN) - Link to source

@🅰🅻🅸🅲🅴 (🌈🦄) I came across my first love lock a few days ago. I'd seen it a few times, but wasn't carrying my tools. I finally remembered to bring them with me today only to find that the keyway seemed to be filled with some sort of glue?

Have you encountered this before? Is there any hope of non-destructive opening left? I imagine probably not (especially at my current skill level).

I'm clearly not the first person who's tried to open it. It's in pretty rough shape.

#locksport

#locksport @🅰🅻🅸🅲🅴 (🌈🦄)

friendica (DFRN) - Link to source

Got an odd email to my old Gmail address that I only keep around for legacy reasons, asking about an Emacs package I wrote. I'm not sure where they even got that address. It can't be found anywhere in the repository, and my current address is clearly in the README and on every single commit.

Anyhow, I don't even understand what they're asking, but I think they think I've used an AI agent to write the code and are asking about its configuration? I want to reply that I have no need of such things because I'm an actual programmer with an actual brain, but that would probably come off kind of asshole-ish, and I could be wrong about what they're asking.

Then again, this whole email could have been written by a hallucinating AI. Who knows?

friendica (DFRN) - Link to source

Sometimes I wish I were less of a perfectionist. I was baking cookies for a potluck tomorrow. The recipe called for the dough to be rolled out into one inch balls. There may or may not have been a caliper involved.

In my defense though, they turned out amazingly. Now I just have to not eat them before they get to where they're going. I did have to eat some though, but strictly for QA purposes.

a parchment paper-lined cookie sheet filled with freshly baked peanut butter cookies

friendica (DFRN) - Link to source

Sometimes I like researching obscure mathematical topics just for fun. The frustrating thing I occasionally run into is notation that I don't know how to interpret. This turns out to be rather difficult to search for online.

For example: I'm doing some research into finite fields, and I have encountered something that looks like ℤ/pℤ.

I know that ℤ typically represents the set of integers. I'm also given that p, in this case, represents an arbitrary prime number. From context, I think it's meant to represent the set {0, 1, 2,... p-1}, but I could be wrong, and, if so, I don't follow the logic.

I'm trying to brush up on my set theory, but nothing I've seen thus far explains it.

Edit for additional context: The document I'm reading is at:
people.math.harvard.edu/~lande…

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