See https://alexbarry.net/ for projects I’m working on, and contact info.

Also check out github.com/alexbarry

  • 5 Posts
  • 74 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 3rd, 2023

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  • I’ve never been into tablets, are Surfaces as easy to install Linux on as a PC? Is there any bootloader unlocking or anything like on a phone, or is it more like secure boot on a PC?

    I had installed Linux on an old Chromebook and it would always offer to wipe the hard drive on every boot, so now I’ve assumed that some hardware isn’t as Linux friendly as others. I think a lot has changed since I got my desktop and the last laptop that I installed Linux on.

    And are the Linux touch screen interfaces any good? I tried a Fairphone that was running something Linux and the touch interface was lacking. (It was a great tiny laptop for using a terminal though).

    And last random thought… I loved the 10” netbook form factor back in 2009 or so. I think tablets are a similar size, but the weight is in the “monitor” part, I preferred the bottom heavy laptop form factor. Are the Surfaces okay for that, or top heavy enough that they can fall over and can’t have the angle adjusted finely like a laptop?


  • I bought a 512 GB SanDisk one for $65 USD a few years ago. I don’t like Samsung software bloatware on their phones, but having 512 GB of storage for $65 feels pretty futuristic to me. I can’t believe more phone manufacturers don’t offer external SD card support… you’d think more consumers would demand it, given that the alternative is to pay a lot more, every time you get a new phone.

    I’m basically able to keep like every photo I’ve taken for the last 10 years or so (though not at original resolution).


  • I was thinking this too, but consider some improvements:

    • wireless printing seems to “just work” now. Besides having to painfully enter my wifi password with up and down arrows on my printer, it seems like my windows and Mac laptops are able to print to it wirelessly without any initial setup. (I use Linux on my desktop but haven’t tried printing from it yet). I think it even works from phones.
    • cables: I don’t remember what type of cable printers used, but I remember the big keyboard cable, then the smaller purple and green PS/2 ones (I think keyboard and mouse were different?)… I vaguely remember multiple different peripheral cables, like FireWire? Giant parallel ports for things like scanners?

    I hate that most printers don’t come with the USB (B?) cable that seemingly only printers need now, but I’m glad that it’s standard and that everything supports <strikethrough>USB-A</strikethrough> I mean USB-C (except my PC) now. Such a utopia.


  • I find that stove top popcorn is even less convenient (so less tempting to eat all the time), but much cheaper, and maybe tastier in some ways.

    Get a ~500 g (1 lb or so?) bag of whole kernels for $3-ish, some oil that you use for cooking other stuff anyway, and salt. Heat the oil on the stove with a few kernels, then when those pop, briefly remove from heat and add more. Make sure the pot has a lid. Keep shaking it side to side to keep the popcorn from burning.

    I find it adds just enough oil to taste good, but not so much that I’m eating something super awful for me. (And it’s much tastier than air popped). And I assume you could still add melted butter if you want an extra treat.

    I want to get one of those movie theatre style things where the popcorn can fly out of the pot.



  • Grazie mille! Ecco il mio primo tentativo di supporto per le traduzioni. Ho suddiviso le traduzioni italiane generate dalla macchina in un commit separato. Per ora ho tradotto solo l’applicazione web e le stringhe nel gioco Solitaire. Sentiti libero di aggiungere qualsiasi miglioramento, su github o qui o via email/matrix/qualunque cosa ti faccia comodo:

    https://github.com/alexbarry/AlexGames/pull/15/commits/9e8d244998e79831ac1d3d0bcac1b9d19474f8f2

    Le stringhe comuni dell’app web sono in data/strings/it.yaml, questo potrebbe non essere molto importante e ce ne sono molte di più di quanto pensassi. Le stringhe solitaire in src/lua_scripts/games/solitaire/solitaire_strings.lua sono più gestibili e potrebbero probabilmente trarre maggior beneficio dalla revisione umana (perché mancano di contesto perché sono stringhe più corte come “draw type” (“one”, “three”)).

    Potrebbe essere più semplice dare un’occhiata veloce all’applicazione funzionante con le nuove stringhe, l’ho ospitata qui: https://alexbarry.net/dev/games/i18n/it.html

    Probabilmente sarò impegnato per la prossima settimana o forse due, quindi non sentirti obbligato a guardarli tanto presto. Potrei anche unirli al ramo principale, ma non mostrarli automaticamente agli utenti a meno che non accettino, o almeno con un disclaimer che li traduca automaticamente.

    Inglese (Originale)

    Thanks so much! Here is my first attempt at support for translations. I split the machine generated Italian translations into a separate commit. I only translated the web application and the strings in the Solitaire game for now. Feel free to add any improvements, on github or here or email/matrix/whatever is convenient:

    https://github.com/alexbarry/AlexGames/pull/15/commits/9e8d244998e79831ac1d3d0bcac1b9d19474f8f2

    The web app’s common strings are in data/strings/it.yaml, this may not be very important, and there are way more of tham than I realized. The solitaire strings in src/lua_scripts/games/solitaire/solitaire_strings.lua are more manageable, and could probably benefit more from human review (because they lack context due to being shorter strings like “draw type” (“one”, “three”)).

    It might be easier to just skim the working application with the new strings, I hosted it here: https://alexbarry.net/dev/games/i18n/it.html

    I am likely busy over the next week or maybe two, so don’t feel obligated to look at these any time soon. I could even merge these into the main branch, but just not automatically show them to users unless they opt-in, or at least with a disclaimer that they are machine translated.


  • Vorrei anche aggiungere a questa frase:

    I giochi presenti sono diversi e, come detto, è possibile su alcuni è anche giocarci con altre persone all’interno della stessa rete.

    Ciò è vero per la versione Android, in cui stai ospitando una versione websocket sul tuo telefono. (Questa era per lo più una bella funzionalità demo, ma è raramente utile).

    Ma nella versione web, si connette a un server websocket su Internet pubblico. Chiunque abbia accesso a Internet dovrebbe essere in grado di accedervi. Quindi se apri semplicemente l’URL del sito normale, scegli un gioco, dovrebbe generare un ID casuale nel parametro URL. Quindi puoi semplicemente copiare e incollare l’URL per condividerlo con un amico e dovresti essere in grado di giocare insieme. Non devi essere sulla stessa rete. (Mi rendo conto che non è intuitivo e dovrei migliorare l’interfaccia utente, almeno mostrando l’ID multigiocatore).

    E se non vuoi affidarti al mio server websocket (o anche all’HTML statico sulle pagine GitHub), sei libero di ospitarlo tu stesso, ho fornito un’immagine docker, vedi https://github.com/alexbarry/AlexGames per maggiori informazioni. (Mi dispiace che sia solo in inglese, spero che i file Docker siano abbastanza chiari)

    Parte del motivo per cui ho lavorato a questo era per non dover dipendere indefinitamente da un software di hosting di terze parti e non introdurre modifiche che non mi piacciono, quindi ovviamente altri sono benvenuti alla stessa libertà :)

    Inglese (Originale)

    I would also like to add to this sentence:

    The games present are different and, as mentioned, it is possible on some of them to play with other people within the same network.

    That is true for the Android version, where you are hosting a websocket version on your phone. (This was mostly a cool demo feature, but it is rarely useful).

    But on the web version, it connects to a websocket server on the public internet. Anyone with internet access should be able to access it. So if you just open the normal site URL, pick a game, it should generate a random ID in the URL parameter. Then you can just copy and paste the URL to share with a friend, and you should be able to play together. You don’t need to be on the same network. (I realize this is not intuitive and I should improve the UI, at least showing the multiplayer ID).

    And if you do not want to rely on my websocket server (or even the static HTML on GitHub pages), you are free to host it yourself, I provided a docker image, see https://github.com/alexbarry/AlexGames for more information. (Sorry that it’s in English only, hopefully the Docker files are clear enough)

    Part of the reason I worked on this was to not have to rely on some third party hosting software indefinitely and not introducing changes that I don’t like, so of course others are welcome to the same freedom :)


  • (Non parlo molto italiano, quindi sto usando Google Translate. Versione inglese qui sotto se la traduzione non ha senso)

    Ciao, sono lo sviluppatore di questi giochi. Per favore, fatemi sapere se ci sono miglioramenti o nuovi giochi su cui vorreste che lavorassi! Ho provato a creare molti giochi come esempio e ad aggiungere una versione Android, ma non ero sicuro di quali giochi o piattaforme sarebbero stati più interessanti per le persone. Alcuni dei giochi sono incompiuti e potrebbero tutti usare una grafica migliore.

    Inoltre, sarei felice di aggiungere traduzioni in italiano e in altre lingue, se fosse gradito! Almeno per i giochi più popolari, potrei aggiungere un’API per ottenere l’impostazione della lingua del browser e mostrare le stringhe appropriate.

    Grazie anche all’autore per aver pubblicato questo! Non so davvero come condividere i miei progetti software, molti posti su Internet non accolgono con favore l’autopromozione.

    Inglese (Originale)

    Hi, I am the developer of these games. Please let me know if there are any improvements or new games that you would like me to work on! I tried making many games as an example, and adding an Android version, but I wasn’t sure what games or platforms would be most interesting to people. Some of the games are unfinished, and they could all use better graphics.

    Also, I’d be happy to add Italian and other translations if that would be appreciated! At least for whatever games are most popular, I could add an API to get the browser language setting and show the appropriate strings.

    And thanks to the author for publishing this! I don’t really know how to share my software projects, many places on the internet are not welcoming of self promotion.




  • This is actually what I did when I was in school, and overall it was quite pleasant. There was some WYSIWYG LaTeX program too that I shared with some colleagues when we were working on a document together, I remember it working okay.

    But I don’t see the average student, especially studying non technical stuff, to pick up LaTeX just for normal sort of essays. Even I am fairly rusty now. And honestly I don’t even know if I could have managed it during high school, where I had to write English essays and stuff with specific formatting for references. (I am grateful that my engineering education was less strict about that sort of thing).

    I was hoping that someone would suggest a self hosted web document suite, I think “Nextcloud” is a popular one. Then it should work on any OS, and you don’t have to worry about syncing files. Even if you can pay to have someone else host an instance (not sure if this exists), and ideally a program that can keep a local backup synced to your PCs would be a big step in the right direction. Syncthing seems pretty great, though I haven’t used it much, and on iOS it doesn’t seem to be able to run in the background.

    edit: I just read another comment that recommended OnlyOffice, this seems like another good option (source: this reply: https://lemmy.ca/comment/9415293). Aside: is there a proper way to link to a comment on lemmy that will go through your own homeserver?







  • Thanks for posting this (I’m the original author). It’s not clear to me where to share my projects like this, many places on the internet don’t seem to welcome any form of self promotion, even if it is open source / ad free / etc.

    My original post was directed towards the self hosting community, but it should still be completely useable with the github pages version (linked in the post). And stay tuned for an Android app (and maybe iOS some day), most games are great offline. I’d love to add multiplayer over bluetooth, the main time I play games like this on my phone is when I’m on a flight or when physically with someone else.

    I’d love to hear feedback, especially constructive criticism! There are some other features and new games that I’d like to add, but I’d love to hear what people actually want, instead of just what I enjoy working on.





  • Thanks a lot! Usually I’m okay up until I reach near the end … spoiler-ish warning:

    spoilers for nearing the end of the game

    I was doing great up until psychic ships kept crashing. I’d arrange all my colonists in a circle around the ship, and usually they could kill the mechanoids pretty easily. But sometimes one or two of my colonists would die. I tried to keep going after that, but then another ship part crashed within what felt like a few days (maybe it was 7 days), then I lost a few more. I had barely recovered from the last one.

    I may have tried to start building the ship too soon. I think I had assault rifles for several colonists, and marine armour for a few.

    But anyway, for a psychic ship, are you supposed to attack it, run away, and kite them back to your well defended killbox-ish base? Maybe that was really my biggest mistake. I would have just left it way on the other side of the map, but the psychic drone was getting bad. And I think there was a fire or something too?

    (end spoilers)

    It’s also possible that I had tried to challenge myself and set the difficulty to the mid level, but forgot.

    Oh, also I often find myself running out of components, and just barely making it to component manufacturing before I run out. I always buy them all from traders, and try to conserve them. But even with component manufacturing, it feels like it takes forever to make one, even if I have like ~15 colonists, where a few are dedicated crafters. Maybe I just need to stay in this stage for longer, until I can get assault rifles for everyone?

    And I never really read much about strategies, I generally just like to figure it out myself, but I suck at trying new things.

    I guess the main thing is that I love the part where you try to survive against natural disasters and have enough food, but I’ve never gotten too into the combat. Plus it felt like it was always pretty easy up until I got to the kinds of enemies that you encounter regularly at the end of the game.