Duncan Booth

What was the world's first TV series with episodes? Christopher McDonald's answer: The very first TV series began airing in 1608 on the BBC: the original Doctor Who. William Shakespeare wrote one of the first twelve episodes, and a young Judi Dench app...

It appears that AI was using Quora as a source.

www.quora.com/What-was-the...

It's a commercial port of Rogue so not quite the original BSD4.2 version that wikipedia says was from 1980 (I remember playing it in 1982).

Snip from website saying Youtube Premium Lite will be available in seven new countries listed which includes UK, Scotland and Wales as separate countries.

Congratulations to all those wanting independence in Scotland and Wales. According to androidpolice you seem to have achieved it.

Text of the inventory bar in the game Blue Prince showing the player has 538 dice allowing effectively infinite redraws from the deck.

I figured out how to beat the RNG playing #blueprince.

End screen for Blue Prince game showing a successful run to room 46.

Playing #BluePrince today, got to room 46 for the first time.

First time in the antechamber was on Day 9 but didn't know what to do next and it then took me until Day 26 to get back and continue to room 46.

Wild quail actually rather than salmon, but pretty much.

Screenshot from the game Blue Prince looking through a doorway into the ballroom with an orange sitting on a piano. Beyond that is a doorway just showing the dining room lies beyond.

Playing Blue Prince and I've got 1 footstep remaining. When I go through the door there's approximately 1 second until all fades to black. But there's an orange, and the room beyond that is the dining room. Did I grab the orange in time to survive?

To celebrate last week's launch of Blue Prince we're running a GIVEAWAY! 8 lucky folks could win a copy of Blue Prince on Steam, Xbox or Playstation. To enter follow our account, like and share this post. Good luck. Winners will be announced on April 28th.

YouTube video by Duncan Booth Eclipse March 2025

Watched today's partial eclipse with my Dwarf II.
Unfortunately I didn't get all of it as I forgot to use an external battery pack and timelapse mode really drains the battery hard. Still I'm happy with what I got.
#dwarflab #dwarf2 #dwarfii

youtu.be/0teaVh8cscc

@binarydinosaurs.co.uk I tripped over your page about the Torch Disk Pack where you say it ran a slightly modified CP/M. Nope, CP/N contained no code from CP/M; it was an almost fully binary compatible clone. For apps where compatibility broke we wrote shims (mostly terminal emulators).

Actually on further inspection I see there are three places for packages but a lot of packages simply ignore those so for example I have git installed directly in Program Files rather than under AppData or Program Files/WinGet/Packages.

Screen grab showing directory listing for the uv command installed by winget

I think so. It has a folder for packages and (if it can create links) a single folder containing symlinks to the executables.

Or install it with winget: `winget install --exact astral-sh.uv`
winget comes with Windows 11 so you don't need to install any third party package manager.

petition.parliament.uk/petitions/70... UK petition is taking off to stop any foreign influence on UK politics (like Musk). Please consider signing & reposting. @alastaircampbell2.bsky.social @eddavey.libdems.org.uk @peterstefanovic.bsky.social @carolvorderman.bsky.social @deborahmeaden.bsky.social

25 ENL and 6 RES joined us for FS Chelmsford on the 4th January 2025. Great company, portal hunt, mission banner fun and #beergress at the restock portal. We look forward to seeing you at the next event. #NIA #niantic #ingressfs #fevgames

Thank you, having an excellent first Saturday even if it is a little nippy.

I just completed all 25 days of Advent of Code 2024! #AdventOfCode adventofcode.com

Merry Christmas everyone!

I've completed "Crossed Wires" - Day 24 - Advent of Code 2024 #AdventOfCode adventofcode.com/2024/day/24 #python
Part 2 solution below is a mess. I generate the expected expressions and when one fails try to fix it by switching wires. Works for my data but not really general.
pastebin.com/EVPesZji

The sliding window generator is straight out of the Python docs!

Brute-force was pretty much the only way to do Monkey Market. With your code you try and access every key that was in any buyer dict across all of them so lots of adding 0. I used a Counter and updated it with each buyer so only ever accessed existing keys.
For comparison: pastebin.com/U6Cf3cB3

I've completed "LAN Party" - Day 23 - Advent of Code 2024 #AdventOfCode adventofcode.com/2024/day/23 #python

Brute-force work for this (even though a fast algorithm exists). First attempt took about 45 seconds but some minor changes brings that down to 7 seconds.
pastebin.com/bDrLDVJW

It has to create it: if you had `d=defaultdict(list)` then `d[key].append(value)` only works because the object is created in the dictionary whenever first accessed.

I've completed "Monkey Market" - Day 22 - Advent of Code 2024 #AdventOfCode adventofcode.com/2024/day/22 #python

I don't think there were ny fancy optimisations, just emulated all the steps. collections.Counter made the last part nice and clean.

pastebin.com/U6Cf3cB3

I've completed "Keypad Conundrum" - Day 21 - Advent of Code 2024 #AdventOfCode adventofcode.com/2024/day/21 #python

I don't know why I found this one so hard but I did. Given I was asleep for the first 3 hours rank is ok 4931/2962; yesterday woke earlier and was 4711/2966.

pastebin.com/75RTGdZF

I've completed "Race Condition" - Day 20 - Advent of Code 2024 #AdventOfCode adventofcode.com/2024/day/20 #python
What sounded at first reading like a scary problem actually pretty straightfoward.
pastebin.com/7bfP4cVw

I've completed "Linen Layout" - Day 19 - Advent of Code 2024 #AdventOfCode adventofcode.com/2024/day/19 #python

Python's cache decorator almost makes this feel like cheating. Almost.

pastebin.com/1M8NTsCC

I've completed "Chronospatial Computer" - Day 17 - Advent of Code 2024 #AdventOfCode adventofcode.com/2024/day/17 #python
Another 2d path-finder today. This time with a binary chop search for part 2.

pastebin.com/4yKzhT2a

I've completed "Chronospatial Computer" - Day 17 - Advent of Code 2024 #AdventOfCode adventofcode.com/2024/day/17 #python
Part 2 needed a little bit of thought but surprisingly simple once I figured out how to approach it.
pastebin.com/zGsRBHcV

I've completed "Reindeer Maze" - Day 16 - Advent of Code 2024 #AdventOfCode adventofcode.com/2024/day/16 #python
Not too bad today. Complex coords make moving in a direction and turning left/right trivial. Forward BFS to find costs. Run backwards to find the paths.
pastebin.com/39PSksZb

I've completed "Restroom Redoubt" - Day 14 - Advent of Code 2024 #AdventOfCode adventofcode.com/2024/day/14 #python

Part 2 was hard but I found a solution that gets the most likely answer from 10403 possibilities in under 6 seconds.

pastebin.com/sXP1KmT2