Working on a command history view for the tiling app.

I've been thinking a lot about Joseph White's talk on his motivations for making the PICO-8 fantasy console. There's so much in the talk that resonates with what I've been thinking about for Constraint Systems: about how carefully selected constraints change the feel of working, making it feel more focused, and even cozy.

Since viewing the talk I've been thinking a lot about how he frames PICO-8 with the idea of a fantasy console and cartridges, and what I could do for framing Constraint Systems. I've toyed with the idea of making the Constraint Systems homepage into a simulation of a fantasy operating system with each experiment as an application. Part of the feeling I want to capture is going to the middle school computer lab in the mid 90s and trying out the strange collection of software the school had preloaded (even though the variety of the internet is great, there is something comforting and cozy in the idea of a finite number of programs to explore).

I had been thinking of the operating system metaphor as a fun, possibly attention-attracting, thing, that I should get around to sometime. After viewing White's talk, however, I think it's something I should prioritize. Framing Constraint Systems as a fantasy computer/operating system could (done well) communicate my vision of the project, and communicate it not in a long text somebody has to read, but as a general vibe. In the best case, they would "get" the project just by looking at the homepage. This is what "branding" is, I suppose, it just feels more tied to the core of the project here than I'm used to thinking of it.

Fantastic talk by Joseph White on the motivations for the PICO-8 fantasy console. I love the attention to how the process of designing and coding should feel (cozy, inviting).

From: https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=31634

Added multiple image handling and image swapping.

TIle collage. Tree collage?

After a long battle, I think my tile tree movement is finally free of crashing bugs.

Following a tip from @atav1k, I now have red-themed Firefox where I can access Twitter, and gruvbox-themed Firefox developer edition where I cannot.

Tile debug screens.

More tile movement debugging.

The set-up update.

The tree tile movement experiments continue.

Getting closer to a keyboard-controlled tiling movement that feels decent, but not there yet.

I recorded my first walkthrough video for Automadraw. Setting up OBS to record went relatively smoothly.

From: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFE5KO_9-Ws

Working on moving tiles within a tree (using i3wm as a model). A thorny negotiation between the data structure, what feels right, and avoiding a bunch of special-case code.

Sloth tile.

Kid Pix 1.0 blender modes.

From: https://archive.org/details/KID_PIX_DOS via https://cybre.space/@SuricrasiaOnline/104632534685909027

Working on tiling image collage.

Working on tiling splits and movement logic.

Updated my homepage.

From: https://grantcuster.com

Documenting my minimal gruvbox-inspired Firefox userChrome.css.

From: https://gist.github.com/GrantCuster/fb8631e711b8595084f7a551c6fb44ee