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taylor

@taylor.social.axfive.net.ap.brid.gy

8 followers 10 following 73 posts

I am Taylor. I am a programmer who mostly uses Rust, C++, Ruby, Python, Lua, and JavaScript at work, and work intermittently in roughly a dozen other languages. I'm […] 🌉 bridged from ⁂ social.axfive.net/@taylor, follow @ap.brid.gy to interact

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taylor @taylor.social.axfive.net.ap.brid.gy · 24/09/2026

Just some geometry nodes playing from yesterday. The small spheres are points from a icosphere with their position multiplied with a sine wave over time (phase offset randomly). The big sphere uses a geometry proximity node and a float curve to calculate displacement and pass data to the shader […]

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taylor @taylor.social.axfive.net.ap.brid.gy · 09/08/2026

Who at StackOverflow thought this was a good idea?

A screenshot from StackOverflow showing a comment. The relative date on the comment shows "Over a year ago", but when I hover over it, it says "2014-04-16T14:27:33.843Z", which is over twelve years ago.

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Amber Herbert @amberherbert.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

Early morning musings. #writing #poetry

A quote from Amber Herbert: "There’s a strangeness that lingers in the quiet of an empty house. The cracks and groans of the foundation’s bones. The hiss of a radiator. The sigh of an electric kettle as it simmers. When everyone else has left, it’s easy to remove ourselves from the bodies we inhabit and take up space in the bowels of our homestead—reveling in the aging structure of another container, once removed from the aches and dysfunctions of our own."

taylor @taylor.social.axfive.net.ap.brid.gy · 17/07/2026

I think I need to start taking it easier. I don't know why I turn all my free time into more work. This is my personal forge, so all of this is stuff done on my off hours.

A commit heatmap from my Forgejo instance, showing multiple contributions for most days over the past year, totaling to 1837 contributions in the last 12 months.

taylor @taylor.social.axfive.net.ap.brid.gy · 12/07/2026

PSA: Modular power supply SATA cables are not interchangeable. I needed an extra set of SATA power cables and grabbed one from my PSU box, and didn't notice that it was actually a leftover from a different power supply, and simultaneously fried two 4TB hard drives, both members of a RAID1 array […]

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taylor @taylor.social.axfive.net.ap.brid.gy · 07/07/2026

A "bigger on the inside" proof of concept in Blender. This was pretty challenging. The basic effect is pretty easy, with compositing multiple view layers and using a holdout to layer them, but I need to have an object that can extend from the […] [Video] [Original post on social.axfive.net]

A still render of the same box, but showing an artifact seam in the lighting

taylor @taylor.social.axfive.net.ap.brid.gy · 03/07/2026

Been learning Japanese and kanji for the past month or so via Mango and WaniKani. Started off the right way, learning all of hiragana and katakana via Anki before I did anything else. Japanese is kind of hard, but kanji are **hard**. It's incredible to me that there's an entire country and […]

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taylor @taylor.social.axfive.net.ap.brid.gy · 03/07/2026

I liked this piece by @sako , so I recreated it in Blender with Geometry nodes. I spent a while mostly doing the Instance Grid node group. I got a simple version working pretty easily at first, but wanted something more robust, with functionality […] [Video] [Original post on social.axfive.net]

A screenshot of an Instance Grid geometry nodes node. Gives options for working with the Size and resolution of the grid, as well as options for Margin between instances. Shown options for margins are Margin Type, Margins (relative) as a vector, an Edge Margins checkbox, and a Collapse margins checkbox.

taylor @taylor.social.axfive.net.ap.brid.gy · 18/06/2026

Can somebody who sees this like and/or reply to this post? I broke my gotosocial instance by restarting it while running migrations, and I ended up having to restore it from a backup that I'm not certain was finished (and therefore might be corrupted). I'd appreciate some reassurance that […]

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taylor @taylor.social.axfive.net.ap.brid.gy · 10/06/2026

Ended up doing the dithered approach in Blender after all; came out better than I expected, and I was able to render it to lossless VP9. #Blender #EeveeRender #EeveeRenderer #GeometryNodes #SimulationNodes #3DArt #Art #Cube #Cubes #AbstractArt #AbstractArtwork #MotionGraphics #MoGraph

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taylor @taylor.social.axfive.net.ap.brid.gy · 10/06/2026

I spent a couple days reimplementing much of this piece by @Goldstarknight . The principles were relatively easy, but the details took a ton of fiddling, especially getting it to loop properly. At first, I tried a BSDF for the material, but that proved too challenging to get the two-tone look I […]

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taylor @taylor.social.axfive.net.ap.brid.gy · 10/06/2026

I spent a couple days reimplementing much of this piece by @Goldstarknight . The principles were relatively easy, but the details took a ton of fiddling, especially getting it to loop properly. At first, I tried a BSDF for the material, but that proved too challenging to get the two-tone look I […]

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taylor @taylor.social.axfive.net.ap.brid.gy · 30/05/2026

First render in a while. It's a simulation nodes gravity simulation. I went through many phases of overcomplicating it to varying degrees of success before going the absolutely simplest approach of Newtonian gravity with a force filter that drops very close particles to 0 influence (otherwise […]

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taylor @taylor.social.axfive.net.ap.brid.gy · 30/05/2026

First render in a while. It's a simulation nodes gravity simulation. I went through many phases of overcomplicating it to varying degrees of success before going the absolutely simplest approach of Newtonian gravity with a force filter that drops very close particles to 0 influence (otherwise […]

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taylor @taylor.social.axfive.net.ap.brid.gy · 24/05/2026

Getting a bit sick of fielding LLM PRs. I understand why many projects have a no-LLM policy. I'm generally fine getting good PRs, LLM-aided or not, but the poor ones are just complete wastes of time. They all read the same, good or not, so I have to spend quite a bit of time sussing through it […]

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taylor @taylor.social.axfive.net.ap.brid.gy · 07/03/2026

[screams internally]

A screenshot of a Reddit comment chain. The first comment is a deleted comment, simply saying "[removed]", by the user "[deleted]" 1 year ago. The reply is from the OP, Villagerjj, saying "thank you so much! this fixed it :)"

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taylor @taylor.social.axfive.net.ap.brid.gy · 02/03/2026

Felt like texturing something I didn't make for practice. Basically digital miniature painting. The model is this mimic by Yasashii Kyojin Studio on Thingiverse. The brick floor is this one from polyhaven. This took me probably about 4 or 5 hours of work. A surprising amount of work went into […]

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taylor @taylor.social.axfive.net.ap.brid.gy · 02/03/2026

Felt like texturing something I didn't make for practice. Basically digital miniature painting. The model is this mimic by Yasashii Kyojin Studio on Thingiverse. The brick floor is this one from polyhaven. This took me probably about 4 or 5 hours of work. A surprising amount of work went into […]

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[Video] Original post on social.axfive.net

Reposted by taylor

Amber Herbert @amberherbert.bsky.social · 20/02/2026

A concise but compelling look at art and how the use of AI for profit misses the point of creation.

We Are The Art | Brandon Sanderson’s Keynote Speech

YouTube video by Brandon Sanderson

taylor @taylor.social.axfive.net.ap.brid.gy · 29/01/2026

@btp Finally started playing Axiom Verge during my lunch break today. Pretty good for the first couple dozen minutes. I'm looking forward to the rest; thanks for the recommendation. I've got a list of like 10 games in the same vein that I plan on playing through this year; Axiom Verge is just […]

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taylor @taylor.social.axfive.net.ap.brid.gy · 21/12/2025

Refrenched my quest tonight at Pathfinder.

taylor @taylor.social.axfive.net.ap.brid.gy · 19/12/2025

Art Advent 10: Baubles I put a lot of work into the shaders for this one, and I'm pretty proud of them. The glitter shader uses the voronoi color output, projects it onto the normal, and perturbs the normal by that amount in an adjustable way. That took a bit of work, because I initially tried […]

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taylor @taylor.social.axfive.net.ap.brid.gy · 17/12/2025

Art advent day 9: eggnog Spent a couple days working on this one. Couldn't get the cinnamon (both the powder and the stick) looking just the way I wanted, but it's not terrible. I spent forever trying to deform the cinnamon stick with a curve deform […] [Original post on social.axfive.net]

A 3D rendering of a glass of eggnog on a table. The eggnog is in a round glass with a lipped rim. The liquid of the eggnog is separate from a top layer of foam. On top of the foam is a sprinkling of cinnamon, and a cinnamon stick is resting in the eggnog. The glass is resting on a wooden table.

taylor @taylor.social.axfive.net.ap.brid.gy · 14/12/2025

Art advent day 8: Stocking This was a pretty easy one. Just a couple tubes, some cloth deformation in sculpt mode, a quick fur object, and borrowing the candy cane from a previous day. I was going to put it over a fireplace or something, but "Fireplace" is […] [Original post on social.axfive.net]

A 3D rendering of a stocking floating in front of a green backdrop. Three red and white candy-canes hang on the furry white rim of the stocking. The body of the stocking is a red velvety fur.

taylor @taylor.social.axfive.net.ap.brid.gy · 14/12/2025

Art advent day 7: Underground I don't even know what I'm doing, man. #Blender #Blender3D #3DArt #Santa #ArtAdvent #Advent #Christmas #Dirt #Underground #3DRendering #CyclesRender #Cycles #Art #ArtAdvent #ARtAdventCalendar

A 3D rendering of a hole in the ground, out of which a man with a white beard, glasses, rosy cheeks, and a santa hat is looking.

taylor @taylor.social.axfive.net.ap.brid.gy · 12/12/2025

[Advent of Code 2025 day 12 solution] Day 12 done. I really didn't like this one. Basically have to do some bounds checking "it obviously always works" or "it obviously will never work" on it to get it to work on the actual input, but it still NEVER FINISHES on the example. I'm slightly […]

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taylor @taylor.social.axfive.net.ap.brid.gy · 12/12/2025

Art advent day 6: Snowman Still 5 days behind. Planning to catch up over the weekend. This one was an excuse to sculpt a decent-enough male basemesh, then destroy it with my horrible rigging and posing skills and wobbly displacement in the snow shader. I'm […] [Original post on social.axfive.net]

A 3D rendering of a humanoid snow man. He is wearing no clothes and is made entirely out of snow. He stands in front of a snowy hill, holding a snowball.

taylor @taylor.social.axfive.net.ap.brid.gy · 12/12/2025

Art advent day 6: Snowman Still 5 days behind. Planning to catch up over the weekend. This one was an excuse to sculpt a decent-enough male basemesh, then destroy it with my horrible rigging and posing skills and wobbly displacement in the snow shader. I'm […] [Original post on social.axfive.net]

A 3D rendering of a humanoid snow man. He is wearing no clothes and is made entirely out of snow. He stands in front of a snowy hill, holding a snowball.

taylor @taylor.social.axfive.net.ap.brid.gy · 11/12/2025

[Advent of Code Day 11 solution] Day 11 done. Memoization actually worked for this one. My first instinct was to just crawl the graph with a memo, and it fortunately did the right thing. It was effectively an exhaustive depth-first search. Really not much to discuss. My code is not nice or […]

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taylor @taylor.social.axfive.net.ap.brid.gy · 10/12/2025

Day 10 part 1 done. Part 1 was a little tricky and fun. Solved it by just testing every combination, and sped that up by turning all the buttons and the goal light configuration into numbers that I could XOR together. Technically, part 2 is done too, but it will never work on the real input. I […]

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taylor @taylor.social.axfive.net.ap.brid.gy · 10/12/2025

Art advent day 5: Missing Way behind on this art advent, mostly due to Metroid Prime 4. Hope to catch up over the next few days, starting Thursday (am DMing The Lost City for some teenagers tomorrow evening, so I don't think I'll have enough time for more […] [Original post on social.axfive.net]

A 3D rendering of a knit mitten laying in the snow.

taylor @taylor.social.axfive.net.ap.brid.gy · 10/12/2025

[Metroid Prime 4 review with some spoilers] Just finished #MetroidPrime4 with 100% scans. It was ok, but I really didn't like it all that much on the whole. I was really looking forward to this game, and like most things I'm excited about, I didn't look […] [Original post on social.axfive.net]

A Metroid Prime 4 end screen, showing Samus Aran in front of a purple background. To the left of Samus is the following text:

MISSION COMPLETE
Scans Collected 100%
Items Discovered 95%
Time Played 14:47
HARD MODE unlocked
Press A to Continue

taylor @taylor.social.axfive.net.ap.brid.gy · 09/12/2025

[Advent of Code 2025 day 9 solution] Day 9 done. This one was really hard for me. Part 1 wasn't bad at all; I could basically use the entirety of what I did yesterday for it. Part 2 was really hard. At first, I tried actually building a `HashSet` of all the red and green tiles, and then a […]

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taylor @taylor.social.axfive.net.ap.brid.gy · 08/12/2025

Day 8 done. Now that's what I call Advent of Code! I'm happy with the algorithm for the most part. I'm sure it could be improved, but I paired up all boxes and pushed them into a `BinaryHeap` based on their squared distances, then popped the number based on the number of connections to consider […]

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taylor @taylor.social.axfive.net.ap.brid.gy · 07/12/2025

[Advent of Code day 7 solution] Day 7 done. Typical "don't even try brute-forcing it" part 2. I kept track of the timeline count as I worked my way vertically down the graph, and then added up the beams' shared timelines at the end. I also considered that dynamic programming with a recursive […]

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taylor @taylor.social.axfive.net.ap.brid.gy · 06/12/2025

Art Advent day 4: North Pole I'm a few days late on this one, but I got something working out. I might modify or skip yesterday's prompt, because my youngest son picked something that I couldn't possibly figure out how to represent (but I'll give it a try at least). I'm pretty happy with this […]

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taylor @taylor.social.axfive.net.ap.brid.gy · 06/12/2025

[Advent of Code 2025 Day 6 solution] Day 6 done. This was a funky one. Pretty easy for part 1. Just trimming, splitting, and parsing all the numbers and operators and grouping them columnwise. Nothing too hard. Part 2 was awkward. I always am a bit flustered when I have to go back and parse […]

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taylor @taylor.social.axfive.net.ap.brid.gy · 05/12/2025

[Advent of Code 2025 Day 5 solution] Day 5 done.. Now this one was the easiest one so far. I was shocked at how simple part 2 was. Just combining all overlapping ranges and doing some simple arithmetic. I initially tried a linear search, and it finished in 1.5ms. Then I switched to a binary […]

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taylor @taylor.social.axfive.net.ap.brid.gy · 04/12/2025

[Advent of Code 2025 Day 4 solution] Day 4 done. This was probably the easiest one so far, but it might be because I'm so used to the grid problems from previous years. I felt like just doing the count for part 1 would end up forcing me to rewrite something, so I returned the coordinates […]

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taylor @taylor.social.axfive.net.ap.brid.gy · 04/12/2025

Art Advent day 3: Caroling I couldn't really think of anything to do with this one other than literal carolers. It's pretty simplistic and amateurish, but I'm pretty amateur, so I'm not too beat up about it. I'm just glad this thing is getting me actually […] [Original post on social.axfive.net]

A 3D rendering of three carolers holding sheet music and singing. They are all the same shape, but with varying skin and clothing colors. A light illuminates them from above like a stoplight. Stone stairs descend behind them.

taylor @taylor.social.axfive.net.ap.brid.gy · 03/12/2025

[Advent of Code 2025 Day 3 solution] Day 3 done. This one was pretty easy. My part 1 solution mostly generalized to part 2, but I ended up having to rewrite the whole function anyway because I didn't make it flexible enough. For part 1 I initially just scanned for the max digit in the whole […]

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taylor @taylor.social.axfive.net.ap.brid.gy · 03/12/2025

Today's advent prompt was "Candy Cane". The ribbon doesn't look exactly right, but I couldn't figure it out after a while of hacking at it. I probably need to do some fabric studies; they're definitely a weak point. #Blender #Blender3D #3DArt #Advent #CandyCane #Christmas #Art

A 3D rendering of a candy cane on a striped green background. The candy cane has one thick stripe and two thin ones running in a spiral up its body. There is a green ribbon tied into a bow about halfway up the shaft of the candy.

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taylor @taylor.social.axfive.net.ap.brid.gy · 02/12/2025

@amberherbert.bsky.social and I are doing an art advent this year that we threw together. She's doing writing and I'm doing 3D art. Today's prompt was Ice Planet, and this is my bit. The mountains are quite exaggerated, but I still like it as a whole. The […] [Original post on social.axfive.net]

A 3D rendering of an icy planet floating in space. The planet has peaks of white snow, descending through a misty vapor atmosphere into smooth, glossy ice oceans. You can see through the glossy surface of the planet to see a glowing ice-blue core. There is a nebula in the background, as well as some stars.

taylor @taylor.social.axfive.net.ap.brid.gy · 02/12/2025

[Advent of Code 2025 day 2 solution discussion] Advent of Code, day 2 done. This one felt familiar. I remember previous years having digit grouping problems like this before. I remembered that doing it arithmetically in most cases performs much better than a string comparison, so that's how I […]

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taylor @taylor.social.axfive.net.ap.brid.gy · 02/12/2025

@amberherbert.bsky.social and I are doing an art advent this year that we threw together. She's doing writing and I'm doing 3D art. Today's prompt was Ice Planet, and this is my bit. The mountains are quite exaggerated, but I still like it as a whole. The […] [Original post on social.axfive.net]

A 3D rendering of an icy planet floating in space. The planet has peaks of white snow, descending through a misty vapor atmosphere into smooth, glossy ice oceans. You can see through the glossy surface of the planet to see a glowing ice-blue core. There is a nebula in the background, as well as some stars.

taylor @taylor.social.axfive.net.ap.brid.gy · 01/12/2025

[Advent of Code day 1] First day on Advent Of Code 2005, and I had to completely remind myself the difference between modulo and remainder. Already stumbled on part 2 because of how little arithmetic I have to do in my day to day work. Got through it, and the solution is pretty simple […]

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taylor @taylor.social.axfive.net.ap.brid.gy · 29/11/2025

The #OneRing from #TheLordOfTheRings in #Blender. This actually took quite a lot of effort to get looking good. I tried a handful of different approaches, from boolean modifiers to normal maps, to actually sculpting the letters in (which did not go well) […] [Original post on social.axfive.net]

A 3D render of the One Ring from The Lord of the Rings. The inscription glows a menacing red. The ring lies upon a cloth map of middle earth, and a soft yellow-red light comes from elsewhere in the room.

taylor @taylor.social.axfive.net.ap.brid.gy · 29/11/2025

The #OneRing from #TheLordOfTheRings in #Blender. This actually took quite a lot of effort to get looking good. I tried a handful of different approaches, from boolean modifiers to normal maps, to actually sculpting the letters in (which did not go well) […] [Original post on social.axfive.net]

A 3D render of the One Ring from The Lord of the Rings. The inscription glows a menacing red. The ring lies upon a cloth map of middle earth, and a soft yellow-red light comes from elsewhere in the room.

taylor @taylor.social.axfive.net.ap.brid.gy · 25/11/2025

Modern UX is so trash across the board. I shouldn't have this much trouble figuring out where I can safely click on a window's title bar to focus it now that title bars are stuffed with buttons, or to discover what fields in a view are scrollable now that scroll bars are verboten, or to even […]

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taylor @taylor.social.axfive.net.ap.brid.gy · 24/11/2025

Follow-up music visualizer video. This time I used Simulation Nodes, and it looks a lot better. For each frequency band, I'm generating an icosphere 60 times per second and shooting them up the Y axis. This one was actually far easier than the way […] [Video] [Original post on social.axfive.net]

A higher-fidelity rendering of the previous video, done with the Cycles render engine. The bands of color glow brilliantly.