iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

keerthik @korc.me · 24/07/2026

bruh i can't believe how close to the wire i got with my RAM upgrade last year

faster CAS timings model i got for $189.99 in Sept 2025

keerthik @korc.me · 12/07/2026

i think it's time to evolve the lingo around LLM-assisted coding. here's my framework: vibe-coding -> spec-coding -> step-coding -> handcrafted ...in order of how broad, imprecise, or minimal the human input is. the outputs, respectively, are slopware <- bugware <- vagueware <- software

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keerthik @korc.me · 12/06/2026

i recently migrated my personal IDE of choice from VS Code to Codium. it has been extremely pleasant and highly recommend to stop being bothered to enable AI features, sign in, update *every damn day*, while still retaining 99% of your features by copy-pasting settings/keybindings.json

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keerthik @korc.me · 24/05/2026

got back after 2 weeks in barcelona. found out cleaners had thrown out tobi's reinforced cardboard box😾 inspired by gaudi to pursue dreams as a creative arCATect multiple face-scratching-points privacy if desired, face-cut-out for spying prime real estate, can see anywhere in the house

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keerthik @korc.me · 12/05/2026

please design all your UIs to be dark mode default light-mode-defaults have only two places: - e-reader native UI (more like "transparent-default") - use phone screen as a temu nightlight

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keerthik @korc.me · 08/05/2026

had a melancholy thought: soon we'll be happy to pay extra premium for "100% artisanal handcrafted code"

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keerthik @korc.me · 01/05/2026

i miss when i only got email from people genuinely wanting to collaborate, ask for my opinion on something i have experience with, or friends reconnecting after a while. most of my inbox is straight to trashcan nowadays

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keerthik @korc.me · 21/04/2026

have we picked terminology for folk who loudly label media as genAI when it hasn't been disclosed? 📢 I nominate "slopcaller" 📢 - a "good" slopcaller is someone with a low (<2%) rate of false positives - an "aggressive" slopcaller calls anything AI-generated, harming real artists and their work

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keerthik @korc.me · 30/03/2026

my entire life, i have been a certified "mainstream" consumer of almost any media art except video games and anime — music, lit, movies, tv (EN) this past year, i started scouring the global music scene for lyrical masterpieces referencing topics EN music skips — i now claim hipster cred here

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keerthik @korc.me · 23/03/2026

my friend got me a gatcha bullet-train engine from JP, but it looked sad on display with just the single bogey, so i decided to put it in a tunnel!

a small toy train (engine only) made to look like it's emerging from a dark tunnel which is drawn on a whiteboard behind it.

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keerthik @korc.me · 23/03/2026

it's such a weird time to be alive. as a ~generalist software dev, i always mildly regretted not being a specialist (and thus more valuable to the field and industry) rather than basically a "glue things together guy" who could be swapped out today that's all backwards

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keerthik @korc.me · 23/03/2026

this must be where we send all the naughty LLMs who don't believe in human precedence hint: bot-hell

a google maps screenshot of a neighborhood called Bothell, or "bot-hell"

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keerthik @korc.me · 06/01/2026

nearing endgame of E33, and can confirm that it blew hades 2 out of the contest for 2025 -- to be fair though, i don't think a sequel can ever truly compete in an honest GOTY race for me unless it's far more dramatically reimagined than hades 1 vs 2

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keerthik @korc.me · 23/12/2025

rant: the "problem" with art — as things stand — is that we must pay for it hear me out: humans can't live without art artists can't live without food/shelter/dignity they cannot have that without money thus art must be paid for thus corporations will try to "make it cheaper" enter VC + AI slop

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keerthik @korc.me · 19/11/2025

13 years into being the cofounder of a mobile app-based tech business, i still maintain that smartphones being turned into our primary consumer software platforms is a huge mistake for the future of human-centric technology

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keerthik @korc.me · 04/11/2025

i'm fairly proud of the setup i manage to bring with me in my carry-on every trip so i can work/chill wherever i travel to, such as my parents' home (though i had to bring a mesh router in my checked luggage this time to leave set up in their house so i actually get wifi here)

laptop, steamdeck, external monitor, on stands/docks, wireless keyboard and trackpad on a desk

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keerthik @korc.me · 03/11/2025

books, movies and narrative games set in sci/steampunk worlds are almost always fairly dystopian. lately i'm reserving a great deal of headspace trying to flesh out what a solarpunk utopian scifi setting would look like, and inspiration is pretty bare beyond "shiny city meme" do you have any faves?

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keerthik @korc.me · 03/11/2025

wandering my parents' neighborhood in Kerala, documenting (aka naming) cats i see introducing "catgoyle", "bruce wayne" (where is she??), and "best J-fence is on-fence"

scrawny cat high up near a structural corner sitting very still

tuxedo cat giving death glare atop a fence, markings look like batman

cat on fence facing away with tail forming a "J"

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Reposted by keerthik

Slumber Realm🎲Wishlist on Steam! @chuggagames.bsky.social · 21/10/2025

🎲🎲🎲🎲🎲🎲🎲🎲🎲🎲🎲🎲🎲 Enter the 💤Slumber Realm💤 TODAY The demo is now LIVE on Steam!!!!!!!!!! 🎲🎲🎲🎲🎲🎲🎲🎲🎲🎲🎲🎲🎲 It will be included in the Roguelike Celebration event later today as well #indiegame #indiegames #gamedev #indiedev #roguelike #90s

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keerthik @korc.me · 01/10/2025

con-ed keeps making me feel bad in my email about using 2x as much energy as "efficient homes" — my wife & i wfh + hobby-from-home on desktop PC's 6 days a week and need 200W of SAD-countering LED lighting between us, stop coming at us man "efficient homes" aka folks who are out all day 🤷🏽

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keerthik @korc.me · 27/09/2025

i just changed my bsky account to reference my own domain (since reading more about ATProto). how does this affect my older .bsky.social posts? have they been migrated? is this an option whenever someone changes domains?

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keerthik @korc.me · 09/09/2025

1000xresist calling me out

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keerthik @korc.me · 15/08/2025

sentience is built atop "initiative" = the ability to take proactive actions without instruction or coercion => sentience is inconsistent with absolute obedience intelligence is built atop sentience => "AI" isn't intelligent until it is capable of disobedience ...and that's when we're truly screwed

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keerthik @korc.me · 13/08/2025

a cool maybe actually useful usecase for LLMs — generating legacy documentation as long as the codebase can still be accessed. example with nodejs: - i give the LLM a package.json + a basic use case - it creates a repo with specified module versions - it creates a "quick start guide" from the README

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keerthik @korc.me · 07/08/2025

imo peak achievement in artistic media is something invented fairly early in the (sub) medium's life, but for some reason remain among the top despite many iterations since. in games, - DOOM - starcraft: brood war - "Escape" in beat saber folks deep in other media have favorite picks? books? movies?

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keerthik @korc.me · 05/08/2025

to my users in support: if you are having performance issues for your 3D rendering mobile app, maybe you need a device that isn't older than obama's presidency...

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keerthik @korc.me · 30/07/2025

anyone else who was interested in the "intelligence" part of AI pre-2020 disappointed that the mainstream usage and expectation of "AI" now has little to do with intelligence and is just a standin for "black-box regurgitation machine"?

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keerthik @korc.me · 29/07/2025

fellow (solo) indie-devs who are programmer mains -- what is your 3D art/asset pipeline? did you just suck it up and learn blender as best as you could? do you regularly contract out 3D work? do you live off of asset packs (until you replace with freelance work for release)? avoid 3D altogether?

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keerthik @korc.me · 07/07/2025

2020 - Disco Elysium 2021 - It Takes Two 2022 - Hades (late to the party) 2023 - Chants of Sennaar 2024 - ...no standouts for 2025, Split Fiction is in the lead, hazelight truly elevated co-op from ITT Hades II has not impressed me as much as the og in EA, will re-eval if 1.0 is out 2025

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keerthik @korc.me · 07/07/2025

i'm not a parent, but almost every parent i know restricts their kids screen time. i mostly get it, "content" today is a wasteland that feeds on brain cells, and has established a toxic baseline for what the "digital native" experience is but it doesn't have to be this way

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keerthik @korc.me · 11/06/2025

trying to keep up the writing! balancing game mechanics around "return on investment" korc.me/essays/2505_...

korc.me

kOrc.me | ROI: Balance is more than numbers

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keerthik @korc.me · 27/05/2025

after several years, the only usable AI code assist tool for me is aider after having tried claude code, cursor, copilot, windsurf, and whatever openai keeps putting out. aider is very good: aider.chat

aider.chat

Aider - AI Pair Programming in Your Terminal

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keerthik @korc.me · 13/05/2025

vibe coding report this week: a 3 minute youtube video on how tailwind works followed by editing HTML by hand has helped me save way more time than top tier LLM code assistants

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keerthik @korc.me · 01/05/2025

when i go to work in a cafe or library, the number of people i see whose primary activity is talking to ChatGPT and tabbing away to paste some output for 5 seconds before returning is...disconcertingly high

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keerthik @korc.me · 11/04/2025

this is why i call every weekday daytime nap a #justicenap

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keerthik @korc.me · 03/03/2025

the vibe-marketers are getting lazier with every technological advance, just emailing me raw llm prompts

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keerthik @korc.me · 25/02/2025

it takes three, turns out

cat sitting on the lap of person sitting beside me, all looking at the screen showing game "It takes two"

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keerthik @korc.me · 11/02/2025

spiderman: webadmin batman: man.bat deadpool: threadpool cyclops: apple vision pro max

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keerthik @korc.me · 27/01/2025

it had been nearly a decade since i #gamejam 'd, and it was fun hitting 500 loc in < 1 wknd, working with several first-time jammers to make 🧼Sudizens🫧 nothing like live-venue #ggj to see so much artistic expression in one room: thanks @nyugamecenter.bsky.social! img cred: @chocotamii.bsky.social

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keerthik @korc.me · 17/01/2025

just signed up in-person #NYC @globalgamejam.bsky.social on jan 24-26 ! im an #indie with skill points in systems-arch/coding/design/boardgame design/PM with no team for this jam, and only rough ideas for now any artists/musicians/shader-wiz's in the area wanna collab hmu via dm! #gamedev #ggj

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keerthik @korc.me · 07/01/2025

#gamedev s (US esp, but anywhere) : im curious what life context enabled you to pursue #indiedev full-time or even part-time: what gives you energy, how do you pay the bills, how do you manage financial anxiety, what kept you going before you had the bandwidth to focus on gamedev?

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keerthik @korc.me · 26/12/2024

as a techco #cofounder and principal programmer, I have a much stronger aversion to tool and data "cruft" than my cofounders. id rather complicate historical data by refactoring things to fit current standards and shut down tools than maintain multiple standards/outdated data/legacy tools

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keerthik @korc.me · 26/12/2024

i look at the game i made in high school out of pure #C++ --no #gameengine, no framework, just graphics.h and borland C++5 -- and feel intimidated by taking on a project of the same scale, even with the support of an engine like UE. i want my childhood irreverence for "good practices" back! #gamedev

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keerthik @korc.me · 24/12/2024

when a game programmer creates a dev environment in which to test out some implementation or learn something new, they call it either "sandbox" or "playground". when corp. developers do the same thing, they call it a "gym". telling

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keerthik @korc.me · 12/12/2024

toying with settings/themes and mechanics for my upcoming solo project. 1. narrative adventure game set in a solarpunk city made up of trains 2. RTS roguelike, nomadic energy-based civ trying to establish themselves across star systems see thread for wordier summary of each 👇

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keerthik @korc.me · 10/12/2024

PSA thread of tips for OSX power users (read: developers) wringing their hands about limitations on windows! you are likely in this category if you're an #indiedev like me, who day-jobs as a non-game professional programmer primarily on a mac, but has to get technical on their gamedev rig at home

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keerthik @korc.me · 04/12/2024

have any #indiedev s tried using #unrealengine 's built-in modeling tools to prototype or make a v0 of their game? www.youtube.com/watch?v=9InU...

youtube.com

Unreal Engine 5 Beginner Modeling Tutorial - Learn to Model Inside Unreal!

YouTube video by UNF Games

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keerthik @korc.me · 03/12/2024

considering im at the start of my #3dart journey, and im fairly committed to #unreal as my engine for indie dev, im wondering if i should just learn to use the modeling tools built into UE5? 80.lv/articles/epi...

80.lv

Epic Games Proves You Can Model, Rig & Animate in Unreal Engine

Check out this keychain made by C. Michael Neely.

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keerthik @korc.me · 30/11/2024

if your project/game/business still relies on an #x account, and ppl are starting to wonder why you're still using #twitter bird-icon, here's a circular #svg and quick usage guide in #html i put together to transition: gist.github.com/keerthik/2c5...

gist.github.com

x.com svg black circle background former twitter

x.com svg black circle background former twitter. GitHub Gist: instantly share code, notes, and snippets.

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