@vampiress@eigenmagic.net

Elissa @vampiress@eigenmagic.net · Aug 06, 2026

Replying to @tuban_muzuru@beige.party

@tuban_muzuru@beige.party Hah. Yes, that's a good observation. It's a skill I was good at.

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Elissa @vampiress@eigenmagic.net · Aug 06, 2026

Replying to @abstractcode@eigenmagic.net

@abstractcode@eigenmagic.net Yeah. And for sure a huge factor is Australian education becoming an industry.

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Elissa @vampiress@eigenmagic.net · Aug 06, 2026

Quite a few friends of mine are academics, teaching in universities. One was just saying she hit a new low - not one student, not ONE in her tutorial had done the reading. All just read a chatGPT synopsis. She's utterly despairing, as the uni itself just makes motions to hand-wave it. They have to pass students, you see, to get their money. They can't just fail all of them. Or even most of them. It's gotten so bad she outright said "I honestly wouldn't trust a degree handed out after the existence of chatGPT. They mean nothing."

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Elissa @vampiress@eigenmagic.net · Aug 04, 2026

My self-education in slashers continues with the second part of tonight's double feature. It's already a lot less good than Halloween.

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Elissa @vampiress@eigenmagic.net · Jul 30, 2026

"There's a storm coming."

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Elissa @vampiress@eigenmagic.net · Jul 28, 2026

Replying to @masek@infosec.exchange

@masek@infosec.exchange Oh no. Extra bad given replacing storage has gotten so expensive.

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Elissa @vampiress@eigenmagic.net · Jul 24, 2026

It's a Friday, meaning I want to throw all technology in a skip and go drink paint thinner at a bar.

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Elissa @vampiress@eigenmagic.net · Jul 24, 2026

The problem with making things, is that when you're done the thing exists, and that's not always a good thing.

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Elissa @vampiress@eigenmagic.net · Jul 23, 2026

Replying to @vampiress@eigenmagic.net

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Elissa @vampiress@eigenmagic.net · Jul 23, 2026

Computers are not Computering correctly today. I may require a second coffee. Or to simply defenestrate all Computering Objects and return to the sea.

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Elissa @vampiress@eigenmagic.net · Jul 21, 2026

Me, watching A Bridge Too Far: "Y'know, I don't think this Operation Market Garden thing was a great idea, actually."

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Elissa @vampiress@eigenmagic.net · Jul 16, 2026

Replying to @vampiress@eigenmagic.net

Hunt for Red October details Hover or focus to reveal Sensitive

The detail about the magnetohydrodynamic drive the Red October employees is still sparse in the novel, but gives much more detail (and quite different detail) to the movie. What's interesting is that they seem to be describing effectively different drive systems. In the book it's effectively an impeller in tubes, and the limiting factor for its performance is the amount of water gets in.
A boat with a true magnetohydrodynamic drive got built by Japan in the early '90s - the Yamato-1. The weight of its electromagnets was its major limitation in how fast the boat could go. (Pictured: the stern of the Yamato-1's MHD drive)

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Elissa @vampiress@eigenmagic.net · Jul 16, 2026

Replying to @vampiress@eigenmagic.net

Hunt for Red October details Hover or focus to reveal Sensitive

The un-named US President is depicted as Texan (NUMEROUS Texans appear in this, Clancy appears to have a Texas fetish) and a Judge who prosecuted drug traffickers. I wonder if this is the same President depicted as starting an illegal 'war' against the cartels (chronologically) two books from now. It's not stated but he reads to me as Republican in this book, yet I remember Clancy saying he felt Democratic presidents were more likely to break constitution (lol), so I vaguely recall his President character in that is Democrat-coded. Guess I'll find out in two books...
James Greer is a VERY different character in the novel than the current adaptations, and even moderately different from his larger role in the film. His love of coffee and having his own coffee machine is one of the few traits to carry over to the film, and NONE of them carry over to the current TV/movie series.

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Elissa @vampiress@eigenmagic.net · Jul 16, 2026

Replying to @vampiress@eigenmagic.net

Hunt for Red October details Hover or focus to reveal Sensitive

By far the weakest characters in the book are the Soviets. They're not BAD but they very much fit the "American imagines that Soviets are brain-washed and not very smart".
There's a bit where the Soviets are shocked that one of the American sailors is African-American. Clancy's characters are surprised by this, and America being free and not "caring" about skin colour is a point of pride for them. Fascinating seeing how even for a conservative Republican in the '80s, this was a thing they could believe and take pride in. Right wing Republicans now sure don't seem to...
There's a lot more detail about the submarine ops than even I remembered. In the time since I first read it I learned a LOT about submarine operations, and in the novel there are quite a few instances of fairly technically complex things like sound speed profiles and thermoclines being mentioned without explanation, though I don't think NOT understanding what they are would hinder readers' enjoyment. But it's still interesting WHICH things he decides to explain to the reader and which things he just mentions and passing and moves on from.

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Elissa @vampiress@eigenmagic.net · Jul 16, 2026

Replying to @vampiress@eigenmagic.net

Hunt for Red October details Hover or focus to reveal Sensitive

It was interesting to note that Robert Ritter (one of the CIA antagonists in Clear & Present Danger) appears in this as someone helping Ryan. Makes me want to keep reading the series. If he features heavily in Cardinal of the Kremlin before turncoating in Clear & Present Danger, that'd make it an extra sad development. In the film he's slimy and villainous from the start.
Clancy's conservative Republican (in the '80s sense) politics sometimes shine through in funny ways. Some of his characters like Jonesy gush about Cal Tech and California as 'the place to live', but the author insert characters like Ryan explicitly talk about west coasters (or, Californians at least) being 'odd' (by inference, the crazy bastards are progressive!)
The details about Skip Tyler designing a program to calculate the performance of the Red October to give to the commanders in the field was entertaining - remembering just how different doing large scale simulations was in the early '80s. When Compute meant huge cathedral-sized Crays you had to book time on.
The fapping over Apple Computer and Jobs/Wozniak fits perfectly with Clancy's Capitalism fetish. They're not even mentioned by name, but are mentioned as exemplars of Why America is Great(tm).

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Elissa @vampiress@eigenmagic.net · Jul 16, 2026

Replying to @vampiress@eigenmagic.net

Big post, Hunt for Red October details Hover or focus to reveal Sensitive

The last third is SO steeped in pro-Capitalist / pro-American propaganda, it's the part of the book that's aged the most poorly. It's basically Clancy jacking off while thinking of Reagan and Country.
I was mildly entertained to identify a few technical inaccuracies in the novel wrt some of the submarine stuff. Not a criticism of Clancy's research, more than certain things weren't KNOWN at the time he wrote it (notably about the Alfa-class boat's reactors, lead-bismuth cooled beasts).
Clancy's quick and free shifting between various POV characters, wherever he needed to go to tell his story, is good. I like that style. It gives a broad feeling to the story.
Clancy is famously for obscenely detailed technical research, but to his credit the characters are often quite well written. I mean, none have complex character arcs, but they feel alive enough to make you believe everyone from the SOSUS operators to the CNO have interior and exterior lives.
It's fascinating reading it again now and comparing the believably messy operation it depicts to the streamlined version in the movie. A case study in good adaptation IMO - takes the core of the story and strips it back to its major beats.
I forgot that if anything the film version cut BACK some of the action sequences - Red October actually RAMS Tupolev's Alfa to destroy it in the book, believable given Typhoons are designed to be ice-breakers.

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Elissa @vampiress@eigenmagic.net · Jul 16, 2026

Finished my first re-read of The Hunt for Red October this century. I loved it when I first read it, and re-reading it now I see why: it's competence porn. Very smart people doing their jobs very well. A few stray thoughts (no spoilers for the book or the film adaptation) follow:

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Elissa @vampiress@eigenmagic.net · Jul 14, 2026

New partner last night: "I miss when the internet was a place you WENT to." I mean, it's a sentiment I've heard before but it was really lovely hearing it said by her.

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Elissa @vampiress@eigenmagic.net · Jul 13, 2026

A non-exhaustive list of things I hate this morning:

Discord

Seriously, fuck Discord. I hate almost literally everything about it and I hope it enshittifies so much people stop using it.

But, mostly, I hate that there's functionally no competition for it.

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Elissa @vampiress@eigenmagic.net · Jul 08, 2026

Replying to @hacks4pancakes@infosec.exchange

@hacks4pancakes@infosec.exchange Absolutely. And here I am, pre-ordering a remake of a 2014 video game I've played a million times, because I have absolutely zero faith that 99% of the remaining companies that make big open world games of the sort I enjoy can even do that any more without corporate profit mandates making them utter garbage. My house is full of physical media, I subscribe to almost no streaming services, and the most excitement I get when I acquire hardware is... when it's 20 years old.

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Elissa @vampiress@eigenmagic.net · Jul 07, 2026

Today's background watching while working on Deck & Conn:

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Elissa @vampiress@eigenmagic.net · Jul 06, 2026

(BTW due to my AI-sucks averaging-machine blog post going viral my mentions are all over the place right now, so apologies if I miss an @ from someone. I'll come back to check on it once things slow down a bit.)

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Elissa @vampiress@eigenmagic.net · Jul 06, 2026

I've pushed Dungeons of Freeport 1.0.10 up to the open beta branch on Steam.

A small bug fix in this one, and some new work I've been doing on the aesthetics of certain dungeons. Pretty happy with the results but it needs a bit of testing.

And just a reminder - #DungeonsOfFreeport, my play-once-a-day classical roguelike extraction game, is still 30% off on Steam and Itch!

And you can even play it on 64-bit Raspberry Pis from itch.

Just a reminder - if you own it on steam and are enjoying it, tell your friends and leave a review to help me out!

#GameDev #IndieDev #Roguelike

https://funtimeelectrics.itch.io/dungeons-of-freeport

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4579170/Dungeons_of_Freeport/

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Elissa @vampiress@eigenmagic.net · Jul 04, 2026

My re-watching-Con-Air hot take:

The Fairchild C-123 Provider is a fucking beautiful plane.

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Elissa @vampiress@eigenmagic.net · Jul 04, 2026

Re-watching Con Air as I work today.

I love how '90s movies so often, no matter how absurd their core premise or plot got, played it dead serious, without the post-Whedon wink-and-a-nod to the audience that modern flicks feel obliged to include out of insecurity.

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Elissa @vampiress@eigenmagic.net · Jul 04, 2026

Anyway, now seems a good time to show prototype 4, or [sekrit project].

I posted some hints about it months ago, but since then I've been spending my spare time and most weekends working on it.

Art by the amazing @marceles_pixel@mastodon.art and myself.

#GameDev #IndieDev

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Elissa @vampiress@eigenmagic.net · Jul 04, 2026

Replying to @vampiress@eigenmagic.net

The TL;DR version is essentially this: Writing code is not just creative in the "writing code is an art as well as a science" sense, but also in that every line of code you don't write is a million tiny design decisions you are NOT making.

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Elissa @vampiress@eigenmagic.net · Jul 04, 2026

Blog post: Inspired by the video I just boosted - some honest thoughts on my AI remorse from my experiments earlier in the year. It was bad, and I have SERIOUS regrets. https://goodnameforablog.com/posts/very-average-prototypes/

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Elissa @vampiress@eigenmagic.net · Jun 23, 2026

Welcome to 2026. Your average morning headlines:

That TV show you love is cancelled
That celebrity you like is, unfortunately, a transphobe
Record storm and/or heatwave somewhere in the world
Computers are worse & more costly than even one day before
Cat photos tho

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Elissa @vampiress@eigenmagic.net · Jun 07, 2026

Exciting personal news: I finished watching all 5 seasons of Miami Vice for some reason, including the Lost Episodes which I inserted so I got it all in roughly intended airing order. Ask me anything, I guess. Now I gotta watch another Miami-shot TV show I guess... (Yes, I've already seen all of Dexter & spinoffs, Burn Notice [which rules], Bad Monkey, RJ Decker and even Florida Man [which isn't great, and mostly isn't even filmed in Florida]. I don't count StartUp as it's filmed in Puerto Rico. I guess I could go to Bloodline now? That's mostly in the keys, but the keys are cool.)

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Elissa @vampiress@eigenmagic.net · May 16, 2026

Replying to @vampiress@eigenmagic.net

Though t be fair this is more about "Instagram just firehouses random shit at you" rather than anything else. At the moment it's apparently a weird combo of steam train POV driving videos, flying videos, and busty goth girls, because I posted a selfie a while back and The Algorithm concludes I must want to see more of what I post. Remind me to never post selfies to algorithmic hellservices again.

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Elissa @vampiress@eigenmagic.net · May 16, 2026

The problem with game graphics these days is that when I make the near-terminal life-mistake of opening Instagram, I'll see a video of an epic low-and-slow flight of a Cub and go "wow what nice graphics - I wonder what bush flying sim that's from?" before realising it's just some drone footage of a Cub flying over a swamp or something.

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Elissa @vampiress@eigenmagic.net · May 16, 2026

Good Morning! Welcome to UFO Weekend, day 2.

With my birthday over I'm spending today dumping footage captured yesterday (many of the fabled gigabytes), sorting them, and preparing for a later start today as myself and a more minimal crew of *checks notes* one go get some miniature shots and pickup shots to complete shoot.

I'm going to need a bigger coffee...

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Elissa @vampiress@eigenmagic.net · May 16, 2026

Outstanding day, too tired to function, so going to go head out to see a friend before my legs stop functioning. Will reply properly to folks tomorrow but for now -

Our little project is sort of inspired by terrible low budget 1950s scifi - what if the Martians decided to invade Earth... but all Martians are Aussies? For prep before hand we watch stuff like Plan 9 from Outer Space.

Most of it shot in one day, just got some pickups and miniature work to do tomorrow (YESSSSSS fuck I love miniature work).

May even include a puppet.

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Elissa @vampiress@eigenmagic.net · May 15, 2026

Anyway, good morning! This weekend I'm directing a short film, because that's the kind of thing I felt like doing.

So I'll be a little sparing in my social media usage, beyond posting the odd image.

Have an excellent weekend, and I'll see y'all on the other side!

Time to slam an espresso and look at that shot list...

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Elissa @vampiress@eigenmagic.net · May 15, 2026

Dungeons of Freeport, our play-once-a-day extraction roguelike is now fully out on steam and itch!

Huge thanks to @marceles_pixel@mastodon.art, @Nekomancer@tech.lgbt and all our testers for making this happen.

https://funtimeelectrics.itch.io/dungeons-of-freeport

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4579170/Dungeons_of_Freeport/

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Elissa @vampiress@eigenmagic.net · May 15, 2026

Replying to @twilliability@genart.social

@twilliability@genart.social I think so. I'll look at retargeting it to an earlier SDK after the weekend. Are you on steam or itch?

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Elissa @vampiress@eigenmagic.net · May 15, 2026

Certain people I know on here are going to love this one.

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Elissa @vampiress@eigenmagic.net · May 15, 2026

Aziz, LIGHT!

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Elissa @vampiress@eigenmagic.net · May 15, 2026

De-lish!

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Elissa @vampiress@eigenmagic.net · May 15, 2026

Typed 'bs' and hit enter expecting the usual auto complete to bsky to go over to Bluesky. Didn't quite autocorrect fast enough, but DuckDuckGo 100% gets what Bluesky is all about.

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Elissa @vampiress@eigenmagic.net · May 15, 2026

So it looks like I'm releasing a video game AND directing a short film on my birthday tomorrow, unless something else goes wrong.

Everyone cross fingers for me.

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Elissa @vampiress@eigenmagic.net · May 13, 2026

Attention post-WW2 submarine nerds / people who thought Dangerous Waters back in 2005 was just some tops shit:

We are FINALLY getting another nuclear submarine simulation, first proper one since DW in 2005, and honestly, it looks VERY good.

With one caveat: it only simulates a US Virginia-class submarine. Which unfortunately I care very little about, as I prefer my shit steam-gauge rather than glass cockpit, so to speak.

But I'll no doubt give it a crack when it comes out anyway.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94yiPXRv9Gg

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Elissa @vampiress@eigenmagic.net · May 13, 2026

Good Morning!

Dungeons of Freeport releases on Steam TOMORROW.

Last chance to be able to say "oh yeah I totally wishlisted that game before it came out, how cool am I?"

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4579170/Dungeons_of_Freeport/

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Elissa @vampiress@eigenmagic.net · May 13, 2026

Replying to @grumpygamer@mastodon.gamedev.place

@grumpygamer@mastodon.gamedev.place gremlinGP

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Elissa @vampiress@eigenmagic.net · May 13, 2026

Replying to @stilgherrian@eigenmagic.net

@stilgherrian@eigenmagic.net "No good, mate. No good."

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Elissa @vampiress@eigenmagic.net · May 12, 2026

Replying to @stilgherrian@eigenmagic.net

@stilgherrian@eigenmagic.net I tried it once but it's just too much FUN getting bug reports constantly to want to change things up.

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Elissa @vampiress@eigenmagic.net · May 11, 2026

Replying to @grumpygamer@mastodon.gamedev.place

@grumpygamer@mastodon.gamedev.place Nice stairs. Rickety, like you want in a dangerous dungeon.

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Elissa @vampiress@eigenmagic.net · May 10, 2026

Good Monday, folks!

Coffee has been acquired. Today I’m doing Dungeons of Freeport bug fixing to prepare a small patch, prototyping Sekrit Project, and doing some prep work for Saturday’s filming.

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Elissa @vampiress@eigenmagic.net · May 06, 2026

Replying to @stibbons@s.scintilla.social

@stibbons@s.scintilla.social Well, Steam isn't up yet so there isn't much of a choice - still a week or so to go there. For me personally Steam is probably better if only because the stats there aggregate to help more sales where as Itch lives in a vacuum, but the DRM-free fact is good.

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