Timberborn detailer custom tail pattern (LGBTQIA+ progress pride flag)

If you haven't heard of Timberborn it's a great city builder game, kind of like a simpler, cuter version of Dwarf Fortress, but with beavers instead of dwarfs (dorfs).

In Timberborn's Update 6 they introduced the Detailer, a building that lets beavers stamp designs on their tails. And you can make your own custom patterns for it. They have a gallery of custom tail patterns on the wiki, but they don't really fit with the "rustic" textures in the rest of the game imho. So I made one for the progress pride flag. Here it is in action:

You can download the LGBTQIA+ Pride Progress Tail Pattern here:

2025-06-06_timberborn_pride-flag-tail_final.png (1.3 MB PNG Google Drive link)

Lastly, here's a screencap of my current Folktails settlement, Gnawcksville:

Fantasy Drag Race (s17) final update

Here are the final Fantasy Drag Race Top-4/Bottom-3 (RuPaul's Drag Race Season 17) results! Congrats to Cris on winning with 96 points. A&L came in second with 76 and I scored a gentleman's 52. There was no scoring for the final episode, which aired 4/18/25 (Onya Nurve won), because this roto only calculates scores at the end of each episode in which there are at least four contestants left in the competition.

Cris and I are doing something similar, but less structured, for RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars Season 10. This time they're doing three brackets of six contestants each, so we picked our top-3 in each bracket (plus a bottom-1 per bracket) and then an overall top-3 from that pool of 9. Here are my picks for All Stars s10 (excuse the messiness):

Gamifying Dinner Decisions: A 12x12 Grid for Takeout

"What should we have for dinner?" The eternal question—riddled with metaphorical quicksand, ready to trap anyone who dares ask it in the sinking suck of choice paralysis. But fear no more: Introducing Dinner Picker.

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This is an idea I had last night. I made a list of places from which we could potentially order delivery. Conveniently, it was a nice round number (40). Then my spouse and I weighted some of the results using these rules:

• You have a budget of 15 +'s and 5 (-)'s.
• Apply +'s to places you like and (-)'s to places you don't.
• The maximum number of +'s you can apply to each place is 2. Max (-)'s per place is 1.
• Each place starts with a 3-point share, modified by the sum of +'s and (-)'s applied to it.

This was the result:

Today, I refined it further. It was pretty straightforward because I'd made something similar for TV shows back in 2019. So, now, here's Dinner Picker v. 0.10:

And, hey, a printable PDF version (88 KB) because why not.

Each restaurant appears in the grid a number of times equal to its modified share value. Luckily, it works out that there are 140 results (40×3+(15-5)×2) which fits nicely into a 12x12 grid if you chop off the corners. Scrambled the positions because it's more interesting that way (and it helps prevent I thing I dislike where folks can start predicting results without consulting the table after they become familiar with the layout).

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(cue announcer:) Dinner decisions don’t have to be a nightly spiral into vacillation. With a little structure, Dinner Picker turns chaos into clarity—one grid square at a time. Go ahead, let the table decide.

Hex Translator - SubPalette Tests

There's this 5-color palette I like, sort of a combination of muted/faded versions of teal, red-orange, gold, navy, and dark gray. Couldn't find a name for it specifically, but people seem to consider it part of Art Deco. Separately, I've been working on differently-weighted subpaletes for the next iteration of the Hex Translator. I decided to work out the relationships between those "Art Deco" colors using my homebrew color system so I could have the HT generate new versions of that palette. These were the results:

Began by getting as close as I could with selections from the 56-hue palette (the colors on the far left, excluding jet). Then figured out how those needed to change to match my ideal version of the Art Deco palette (the next column, indicated by the black triangle). Navy was complicated because I have rules about how modifications to BaseHues can't stack too much ink in one place, or get too dark—i.e., in CMYK, C+M+(Y/2)+(K×1.5) can't exceed 180. So the K formula for that color ends up being (180-((C+M+(Y/2))/1.5.

I treat teal as the index color from which all others (except jet) are calculated. So the red-orange slot, for example, is always the index BaseHue minus 24 (and wrapping around to 56 if less than 1). Confusingly (to me), in Excel, the actual formula for that (since there's no 0 BaseHue) ends up being MOD(IndexColor-25,56)+1. Then the result gets its CMY values multiplied by 0.95.

The next four columns are the subpalettes generated from different index colors (7, 34, 41, 55).

The process of figuring out how to translate an existing palette to my own grammar was engaging. Think I'll try this again with a different palette.

FDR Update (s17e10), Mickey 17, HT2024 palettes

New Fantasy Drag Race update (now current through episode 10). Good thing this has been a bit of a test run—realized I'd completely forgotten a major part of the scoring (the points players get for members of their Top-4 remaining in the competition).

Saw Mickey 17 yesterday. Really enjoyed it. My Letterboxd review for anyone interested.

Been working on palette stuff for the next version of the Hex Translator. Finalized the 56-color "basic hues" palette a while back but never shared it here. This forms the backbone from which all the colors used in the patterns are derived. The basic hues each have 2-4 light variants and 0-4 dark variants based on formulas for minimum and maximum pigmentation (C+M+(Y/3)+(K*1.12) > 20 minimum, C+M+(Y/2)+(K*1.5) < 180 maximum). In the spreadsheet excerpt below you can see the effects of those formulas as red zeroes where a light or dark variant passed out of range for having too little or too much pigment. It's also why, for example, indigo (im500) in the BasicHues chart (right) only has light variants.

refine(refine(refine (garden troughs)))

This is a series of images I had DALL-E 3 generate. The initial prompt was for garden troughs with beautiful shrubs and flowers growing out of them. Then I asked it to refine that output and kept on iterating like that. It couldn't quite get what I had in my mind's eye (or maybe I couldn't communicate it well enough), but it made some pretty stuff along the way.

Feel like we peaked with these two:

More refining...

Last two:

FDR Update

Fantasy Drag Race update for s17e08 (see below). And I made a mistake in the last one, now corrected.

Fantasy Drag Race update, new Kancho, card binder

Six episodes into Drag Race Season 17 now. Our updated Fantasy Drag Race T4B3 standings:

Also, another awesome Kancho illustration commissioned from the excellent Alen Fey!

Recently reunited with a binder of collectible cards I kept when I was 11. One of my most prized possessions at the time. The page shown here was "favorite Marvel superhero art cards (female)."

Made crinkle cake today. It's really good. Didn't put nuts in mine. I think next time I might do 50% more custard. Would go well with almond gelato.

FDRT4B3 Update

Three episodes into Drag Race s17 we finally have an elimination. Here are the current standings (click to enlarge):

Fantasy Drag Race Season 17

Some friends and I are doing a Fantasy Drag Race game for RuPaul's Drag Race Season 17. Here's a link to the rules (264 KB PDF): 2024-12-14_Rules for Fantasy Drag Race.pdf
(edit: updated file 12/14/24)

Message me your picks by Jan. 2, 2025 if you want to play!

Nauvis Space Platform is Go

Still chugging along in Factorio: Space Age. Last night I got my first space platform into orbit! Here's the big moment down at the rocket silo (surrounded by heavily polluted waters):

And the platform itself (named for the space station from Planetes), rinky-dink as it is:

And a snapshot of the main base map at time of launch:

Solid Fuel Optimizer

This is a little solid fuel optimizer I made in Factorio: Space Age using decider combinators. It figures out which oil fraction (light oil, heavy oil, petroleum gas) is most plentiful and processes it into solid fuel for boilers down the line.

Same image without the decider windows:

Kancho

This is an illustration of my porcine (piggy) character, Kancho, that I commissioned from the extremely talented Alen Fey. The design was largely inspired by the pig ninja from Chicken Pig Attack, a Gregory Brothers/Takeo Ischi music video from January 2020. I'm really happy with how it came out. Currently using this as my PFP in various places.

HT palette stuff

Worked on CMYK full-spectrum palette generation stuff over the Labor Day weekend. Some screencaps from various points in the process:

It's getting there!

New Shapes

New shapes for the next hex translator build: Gears, vacuoles, chiral start/north signs, end signs (halmos finality symbols).

Next on the docket: A large static CMYK palette.

2 Things to Vent About

Here are two behaviors I need to vent about. The world hardly needs more negativity so I will at least make it quick. This is all IMO, disclaimer disclaimer, etc.

1. Criticism by proxy. I've touched on this before, but it was from a don't-yuck-my-yum angle. Now, the true intent is more clear: Sometimes a person resents you but they want to keep up the appearance of being magnanimous (or simply "not a jerk"). So instead of belittling you directly, they criticize the things around you. "Your house is shabby, your car is gay, that picture (you picked out) is ugly." It's usually sneakier than that, but that's the gist of it. All of it so that if you blow up and ask them "what is your problem with me?" then they can look shocked and retort, honestly (technically), "I never said a word against you!" Right, you just slagged off every choice I made, they way I live, etc. etc. Eventually it's obvious what their real target has always been.
   
   
2. Setting daemons. A daemon is a background process in computing and it's how I think of certain (non-computing) tasks with specific triggers. I am assigned tasks all the time and they broadly fall into three categories: Do it when able, do it at a certain time, and do it when a condition is met. That last category has the potential to incur terrible costs beyond the cost of the task itself. "Tell me this account balance" and "tell me this account balance on the first of every month" are easy. The latter just needs a recurring calendar entry. But "tell me this account balance when it becomes negative" is a huge pain in the neck. (Because what am I going to do, check that account every day to see if the balance has turned negative? It might not turn negative for three years, and if it takes me one minute to check it each day, that's more than 18 hours of work you're asking for.)
   
   My real gripe with this one is that the people asking almost never think about the processes involved. They assume things can be automated when they can't. I explain this, but it rarely sinks in. Many times, the best I can do is turn it into a category-II task ("Okay, I'll check it on the first of every month and tell you if it's negative."), but even then, using the previous example, we're looking at 36 minutes of work. And the real problem here is that the asker, being ignorant of the process (and often unwilling to learn), gives the request as much weight as if it only needed to be done once ("It only takes you a minute!").

Alright, it's off my chest. Thanks.