iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

aaron-tamarin @aaron-tamarin.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

This album has been growing on me a lot lately... Do we call this style "worldbeat", "hiphop", "alternative"? #chineseman www.youtube.com/watch?v=oz5p...

youtube.com

Chinese Man - The Groove Sessions (Full Album)

YouTube video by Chinese Man

000

aaron-tamarin @aaron-tamarin.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

I had no idea Japan was in the Indian Ocean 😬 I hope we all don’t “just get used to” these kinds of AI inaccuracies.

040

aaron-tamarin @aaron-tamarin.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

In-class reading and writing seems like it would constrain depth of analysis. I almost want to say care less about how a paper is constructed cause you can't (and never really could) control that -students should be able to present and interactively defend their theses- that's a transferrable skill.

020

aaron-tamarin @aaron-tamarin.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

i would ideally like to see a model exclusively trained on primary resources and perhaps a select set of author-consenting books/papers run by an office of the UN with data replicated in multiple countries - no billionaire backing, no social media or rando website content, no stolen content.

010

aaron-tamarin @aaron-tamarin.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

I ran my BA thesis topic through GPT and its response wasn't bad, but I hugely distrust the commercialization of knowledge. Once they decide they need to make money, paywalls will go up, access will go down, and someone like Elon will insist on rewriting history because its "his property".

120

aaron-tamarin @aaron-tamarin.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

Watching (and trying to participate in) the #indieGame setting has show me how much you can do with very little if you put some thought into it. Software engineers have to be willing to optimize and remove overhead. The days of relying on hardware to make up the difference might be over.

020

aaron-tamarin @aaron-tamarin.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

As someone whose worked in software for 30+ years, its exceedingly rare to hear someone say "the app needs too much memory" - its always a dogpile of functionality and the end-user has to have enough system to run it. Historically, its been "ram and disk is cheap - cpu's are always upgrading"

000

aaron-tamarin @aaron-tamarin.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

"The solution? Start selling hardware with less RAM, apparently." Counterpoint - that might actually be the answer. Challenge tech to stop bloatware to free up memory - it probably means removing ads, IAP's, and AI, but that might be good. #bloatware #software #ram kotaku.com/the-ram-is-a...

kotaku.com

The RAMapocalypse Just Got Its Most Dire Warning Yet

Also: Black Ops quietly won the summer

220

aaron-tamarin @aaron-tamarin.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

What the web has become is an embarrassment. 5 ads for Adobe and a pop up combined with poor page layout leaving a sizable portion of the page blank. The actual content I am trying to read is maybe 15% of the displayed page. #webDesign #oldManShoutsAtTheSky

A screen shot of a news page where the vast majority of the page space is advertisements for the same company

020

aaron-tamarin @aaron-tamarin.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

It was the first trek where Klingons looked like Klingons, spoke in Klingon, and had computer screens in Klingon. The opening five minutes of the movie were very strong - I sometimes just rewatch that one sequence 🤷

020

aaron-tamarin @aaron-tamarin.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

I guess Inc can't use words like "enshittification", but that's exactly what they are describing here, OpenAI transitioning to the next stage: www.inc.com/jason-aten/o...

inc.com

OpenAI Just Declared ChatGPT as You Know It Dead

The company's desktop makes it clear that free ChatGPT users are not its focus.

020

aaron-tamarin @aaron-tamarin.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

Spent the weekend working out the bugs and Pawn-Up! is officially live on Itch: golden-tamarin.itch.io/pawn-up This means I've launched apps on Apple's App Store, Steam, and Itch.io. Pawn-Up! - pay what you want, even if that's nothing😂 #cards #indiedev #chesslike

golden-tamarin.itch.io

Pawn-Up! by golden-tamarin

Kinda like Poker - Kinda like Chess

070

aaron-tamarin @aaron-tamarin.bsky.social · 03/07/2026

Rewatched Devs - its not a perfect show, but its pretty good and definitely has its moments. Well acted - Alex Garland is good at what he does - after watching Civil War and Alien: Romulus, seeing Cailee Spaeny as Lyndon 🤯 www.youtube.com/watch?v=PoBm...

youtube.com

Devs - E02 Opening scene

YouTube video by TheOncomingStorm

000

aaron-tamarin @aaron-tamarin.bsky.social · 23/06/2026

Maybe Tim Cook and Gabe Newell should go cry in their yachts - I'm sick of listening to wealthy people say they need help, have to raise prices, "its unavoidable"...

000

aaron-tamarin @aaron-tamarin.bsky.social · 23/06/2026

Waah - I'm a profitable $400 BILLION dollar company and can't help but raise my prices!! Boo hoo - take a pay cut, Tim Cook... We all spent the last 10-20 years reading about how Apple was one of the most profitable companies of all time... #apple thehill.com/policy/techn...

thehill.com

Apple raising prices, CEO says

Apple CEO Tim Cook told The Wall Street Journal in an interview that his company is raising its prices. In an interview published Wednesday by the Journal, Cook said the tech company is set to incr…

100

aaron-tamarin @aaron-tamarin.bsky.social · 22/06/2026

Perhaps its time for *consumers* to dictate the level of machine they are willing to pay for and *software devs* to constrain themselves to that spec. This cost death-spiral is driven by manufacturers and large software publishers determining the specs and consumers stuck in the middle #boycott

010

aaron-tamarin @aaron-tamarin.bsky.social · 31/05/2026

So if you have a grid of textureRects and you want to display things by coloring them, you can take what you want to display, send it to an offscreen subviewport, resize it to your grid of textureRects, extract it as an image and check each pixel to drive which rects to display #godot

010

aaron-tamarin @aaron-tamarin.bsky.social · 31/05/2026

Alien3 is probably my least favorite of the movies, but the acting saves it - Charles Dutton does a great job at owning his role #alien #alien3 www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2cm...

youtube.com

I ain't much for BEGGING! Nobody ever gave me NOTHIN!

YouTube video by Majin Yojimbo

010

aaron-tamarin @aaron-tamarin.bsky.social · 30/05/2026

All textureRects and tweens with a tiny bit 'o math #godot

051

aaron-tamarin @aaron-tamarin.bsky.social · 26/05/2026

Discovery #1 for today: Amazon charges double what Microcenter does for a #raspberrypi zero 2, but they'll give you free shipping on that 100% markup (that you also pay for via your Prime account) #amazon #enshittification Discovery #2 - my #godot clock app does not run on a pi zero 2 (not shocked)

330

aaron-tamarin @aaron-tamarin.bsky.social · 24/05/2026

here's the htop for reference... its making me think that the P4 is processor overkill for this

000

aaron-tamarin @aaron-tamarin.bsky.social · 24/05/2026

I had been avoiding using shaders for vfx to keep things easy on the #raspberrypi, but I wanted something "lava-lampy" so I tried and its totally fine. The shader is a simple dual-texture overlay with warping, so its still fairly simple, but it works. #godot #clocks #shaders

121

aaron-tamarin @aaron-tamarin.bsky.social · 24/05/2026

www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jHY... - its nice when you stumble across something like this from 15 years ago (album released 2009) #music

youtube.com

My Body's a Zombie For You

YouTube video by Dead Man's Bones - Topic

000

aaron-tamarin @aaron-tamarin.bsky.social · 16/05/2026

I've also gotten enough unexpected results from getting a font's text size that I'm not 100% convinced it works right on certain fonts. Not saying the function is broken, more so that font designers take a lot of creative liberties in designing fonts that throw it off.

000

aaron-tamarin @aaron-tamarin.bsky.social · 16/05/2026

I've seen people post that you should write a do while loop resizing your font until its text size matches the label size, but that seemed computationally intensive. There should just be a proportional difference between the two that equates to a multiplier.

000

aaron-tamarin @aaron-tamarin.bsky.social · 16/05/2026

Perhaps someone has a better approach. In #godot I have a label with text and a randomly selected font which I want maximized in size to visually fill the label. So I determine the % diff of the label size to the font's text size and then multiply the font size to that %. #fonts

Screen shot of the following code:

# final font sizing
# tmpRect == label, only attempt if label has text or get_string_size will error
if tmpRect.text != "":
# set font to a starting size, doesn't matter what
tmpRect.label_settings.font_size = 20
var string_size
# if single line, use get_string_size - if long enough to be multiline, use get_multiline_string_size
if tmpRect.text.length() < 14:
string_size = tmpRect.label_settings.font.get_string_size(tmpRect.text, HORIZONTAL_ALIGNMENT_CENTER, tmpRect.size.x, tmpRect.label_settings.font_size)
# pad the value slightly for better results
string_size.y += 10
else:
string_size = tmpRect.label_settings.font.get_multiline_string_size(tmpRect.text, HORIZONTAL_ALIGNMENT_CENTER, tmpRect.size.x, tmpRect.label_settings.font_size)
# pad the value slightly for better results
string_size.y += 15
# compute the percent size difference for X and Y axes
var tmpX = tmpRect.size.x/string_size.x
var tmpY = tmpRect.size.y/string_size.y
# sort of average them to get a resizing multiplier (.5 results were too big, so downsized to .35 via trial and error)
var fontMultiplier = (tmpX + tmpY)*.35
# apply the multiplier to the font size
tmpRect.label_settings.font_size *= fontMultiplier

230

aaron-tamarin @aaron-tamarin.bsky.social · 09/05/2026

The hardware clock gets sync'ed initially with network time and then the battery attached to it (the yellow thing on the underside) will keep a ticker going - then you reset to Pi to pull time from it instead of the network and your Pi will have an accurate time with no network.

000

aaron-tamarin @aaron-tamarin.bsky.social · 09/05/2026

Lesson about #clocks and #raspberrypi's - Pi's don't actually have a persistent clock - like many SBC's, they rely on network time to update their clocks on boot-up - so if you boot without a network, it has no idea what actual time it is. The solution is to attach a hardware clock to the GPIO pins.

Picture of raspberry pi board with a hardware clock attached to it.

281

aaron-tamarin @aaron-tamarin.bsky.social · 09/05/2026

Trying to see how far I can take a text-only experience in #godot. This is all labels and tweens and math behinds the scenes. #Fonts really make it visually interesting, but they also introduce a ton of placement variability and issues - font-sizes are very inconsistent. #clock #raspberrypi

041

aaron-tamarin @aaron-tamarin.bsky.social · 26/04/2026

Now that I've got a "clock face" that's an RSS news reader, its making me wonder if I want it😬 I tried to make everything else uplifting or meditative and this is like pouring a bucket of darkness in the swimming pool... #godot #rss #raspberrypi #news

020

aaron-tamarin @aaron-tamarin.bsky.social · 26/04/2026

Huh... #godot XMLParser is a SAX parser - somehow was expecting it to be DOM. Maybe no one cares anymore 🥴

000

aaron-tamarin @aaron-tamarin.bsky.social · 26/04/2026

You specifically want to create a theme and add an override for VScrollBar - then add an override for its scroll StyleBoxFlat - adjust the Content Margins of the style box - then apply the theme to the FileDialog node. You can also use that theme to apply alternate fonting and font sizing.

010

aaron-tamarin @aaron-tamarin.bsky.social · 26/04/2026

Tip: #godot has a good built-in file/directory chooser, but when your project is running on a #raspberrypi with a 3.5" screen, the file listing scroll bar winds up being like 3 pixels wide and nearly impossible to use via touch - you can create a theme override though to make it much wider.

Screen shot of godot file chooser with tiny scrollbar

Screen shot of Godot file chooser with wide scroll bar

Screen shot of Godot theme manager setting an override on VScrollBar

Screen grab of Godot StyleBoxFlat settings highlighting content margins

130

aaron-tamarin @aaron-tamarin.bsky.social · 12/04/2026

[audio] Why have just one spectral analyzer when you can have two for the same price? 😀 Creates some nice glitchiness - still runs like a charm on a RP4... #godot #raspberrypi #audioplayers #mp3player #vfx

030

aaron-tamarin @aaron-tamarin.bsky.social · 11/04/2026

and I have to say Offspring's The Kids Aren't Alright makes it really pop 😍

010

aaron-tamarin @aaron-tamarin.bsky.social · 11/04/2026

A quick demo of clocky playing an externally loaded mp3 file with playback debug parameters showing - its mostly just taking a series of geometric patterns, applying spectral strength as a modifier, randomizing colors/sizes, and tweening it all. #godot #music #raspberrypi #classicRock

120

aaron-tamarin @aaron-tamarin.bsky.social · 05/04/2026

I've noticed while working on Clocky that recurring adjustments to font settings in #godot script winds up loosing memory (i.e. this discussion: tinyurl.com/mv6njbr3) - which apparently is not so much a "leak" as "over-caching". Adding this func and calling it before font adjustments helps a lot.

func font_size_cache_clear(font : FontFile):
for i : int in range(font.get_cache_count()):
for size_cache : Vector2i in font.get_size_cache_list(i):
font.remove_size_cache(i, size_cache)

000

aaron-tamarin @aaron-tamarin.bsky.social · 05/04/2026

Watching Ralph Fiennes trudging through life muttering the lyrics to Girls on Film 😂 ...and I thought I was the only one... really enjoyed 28 Years Later: Bone Temple #BoneTemple #duranduran

000

aaron-tamarin @aaron-tamarin.bsky.social · 04/04/2026

Apparently in Godot you can't just set the HSV values on a color, even though they are exposed - you have to use the from_hsv method off the color class. HSV is nice for creating a spread of colors cause you can just iterate over the H value instead of triangulating RGB's #godot #color #hsv #clocks

030

aaron-tamarin @aaron-tamarin.bsky.social · 28/03/2026

[sound] And now we use our old friend "lerp" to help transition line and 2D mesh positions when shifting between display models and bring them all together #music #spectral #godot #clock #lerp

020

aaron-tamarin @aaron-tamarin.bsky.social · 28/03/2026

My new HTOP from my Raspberry Pi4 - much better! I kind of thought that since ColorRects are basic Control nodes that you could maybe be a bit more "sloppy" with them, but they seem to have about the same overhead as a 2d mesh which kind of surprised me.

HTOP screen grab showing low utilization

010

aaron-tamarin @aaron-tamarin.bsky.social · 28/03/2026

[sound] Redid this effect as a 2DMultiMesh and its much lighter weight (now runs on a Pi4 with plenty of processor room to spare) - originally this was done by instantiating ColorRects and queue_free'ing them, but ColorRects aren't free candy you can sprinkle everywhere🤔 #godot #raspberrypi #clock

110

aaron-tamarin @aaron-tamarin.bsky.social · 24/03/2026

...completely different approach using points on a line per track - going to have to keep yutzing with this, but its MUCH lighter-weight than what I was doing before and runs very smooth on the #raspberrypi 4 and 5. #clock #music #godot

030

aaron-tamarin @aaron-tamarin.bsky.social · 22/03/2026

interestingly enough, the pi5 seems to keep up with the visualizations while the pi4 is clearly dropping frames and skipping tweens - but I guess that makes sense as the pi5 has a stronger processor.

000

aaron-tamarin @aaron-tamarin.bsky.social · 22/03/2026

[sound] Playing with the maths for a more interesting visual and making clocky show the #clock - also you might notice my janky #bpm syncing kicking in - first track (the guitar) controls the rhythm in this case. #godot #music #visualizations

140

aaron-tamarin @aaron-tamarin.bsky.social · 22/03/2026

then again, maybe I'm just running non-optimized code 🫠

010