A design for the heart of the world, a gigantic machine created to power a project unfinished by a mysterious society. Hundreds of stagnant years left it to rust and fall apart, throwing the world into darkness.
Sorry for the gap in work, I’ve been super busy with my portfolio. I’m going to add more map parts to this later, the final dungeon has a clockwork and rouge-like randomness to it so it’s all modular. I also want to get somebody to add short expedition entries to some of these designs, what do you guys think?
Or, the time a class of middle schoolers kicked my butt at neural network ice cream naming.
The other day I got an email from Anita Johnson, who teaches coding classes at Kealing Middle School in Austin, Texas. She explained that her students had been reading the neural network experiments on my blog and had decided to do their own.
The middle schoolers (about 11-14 years old) had downloaded textgenrnn and had generated some new flavors that they wanted to share with me. Did I want to see them?
As it turns out, I had just trained textgenrnn on ice cream flavors myself. But there were some problems with my attempt:
1. I only had a dataset of 200 flavors (that I had a dataset at all is thanks to Salli Wason of Rosanna’s Ice Cream in Portland). 2. textgenrnn allows transfer learning, meaning that it remembers some of what it learned from its previous dataset. 3. My previous dataset had been metal bands.
So the flavors I had generated were not, shall we say, appealing.
The 11-14 year olds, however, had collected nearly 1,600 flavors, due in part to their coding skills, and in part to sheer numbers, time, and motivation. Their results were significantly better than mine.
Lots of the flavors they produced were sweet and fun. The kind you might find at a trendy ice cream or yogurt shop near you.
It’s Sunday Cherry Poet Brittle Cheesecake Honey Vanilla Happy hmmm Bubble Bun Triple Bun Holy Lemon Monster Cookies & Red Hot Lover Vanilla Nettle Sundana Rainbow Team Cherry Cherry Cherry Cherry Chocolate Breath Pig Nut Bumble Cookie Oh and Cinnamon
Other flavors sounded a bit weirder. Approach with caution.
Chocolate Finger Rainbum Caramel Book Cupsie Core Washing Chocolate Peanut Cinnamon Budge the United Bacon de Vanilla Texas Boy Nut Key de Smoke Crackberry Pretzel Middlenut Salted Pie Breekberry Sundae Texas Charlie Covered Stunt Seat Strawberry Butter Sweep Bunny Out Strawberry Moons Pretzel Egg
Others: a quite worrisome level of ambiguity
Nuts with Mattery Brown Crunch Sticky Crumple Cookies and Green Sea Cheesecake Mango Cats Lemon Cream Grassplay
The 6th graders (the 11-12 year olds) tended to favor the very weird flavors.
Garamel Phankie Cookies & Peach Cark Nutty Banana Croced Banana & Crazz Vervette’s Caramel Borfle Oatleak with Ninterbise Barming French Cambarcot Chocolate Blackbumple Herbetures with The Chillin Pie Lime Mint Thrippine Praline Pelletral Liver Banana Cookies & Jarange Core Peach Peacket Marsh Blue
The 13-14 year olds, though? They preferred my first attempt, actually. And added a few of their own to the list.
Death Brain Orange Chocolate Killa Blood Chip Explosion Stick Die White Pistachio Funge Ecide
For the complete list of the coding class’s ice cream flavors, as well as a few PG-13 flavors that weren’t quite appropriate for the main blog, enter your email here.
Protagonist now remembers key facts about important people. He no longer develops convenient amnesia between cutscenes.
Protagonist now has a cooldown on certain adverbs. Adverbs have been buffed by 30% to compensate.
Developer note: Adverbs are important to writing but they are sometimes overused. This change keeps adverbs relevant while encouraging the use of adjectives and verbs.
The horse now has a name.
Deuteragonist snark power has been increased to 150, up from 75.
ATTN: WEB WEAVERS, HEX HAVERS, AND SWAMP SORCERERS
SUBJ: STATE OF THE BOG ADDRESS
As many of you have no doubt noticed, things have been quiet on the Problem Glyphs front this spring. This interruption in our usual profane activities was the result of a serious medical issue that struck Problem Glyphs creator, Eliza Gauger. We are pleased to say that Eliza is doing fine now, and recovering swiftly. We hope that she will be returning to work on Problem Glyphs this month or next. We have big plans for Problem Glyphs this year and hope to be able to share more on that soon. Patrons of the Problem Glyphs Patreons will be the first to hear about what we’ve got in the works.
In the meantime, we’ve taken this opportunity to turn some of Eliza’s other work into M E R C H A N D I S E.
First and foremost, we’re excited to launch our new ACAB NASA pins! Previously only available as apparel from Threadless, these 2.5″ buttons are sure to make you friends wherever you go. We’re also informed that they are BANNED IN SPAIN. These pins are available in classic NASA colors, as well as a black-and-red colorway, sure to complement your protest-oriented fashion choices. A set of both styles is also available.
We’re also releasing the brand new HAPPINESS CHEF t-shirt design. The Kanji states a Japanese idiom, “The misery of others tastes of honey.” Happiness Chef is also available in black-on-white. Taste the discourse!
A very limited number of Problem Glyphs [SHEELA NA GIG] pins are also available. Only 12 of these pins remain, with another 3 available as part of our [TOADSTONE] & [SHEELA NA GIG] bundle. Once SHEELA’ is gone, she’s gone for good (or at least for a long time).
Finally, our publisher, Strix Publishing, is running a spring sale through their webstore. Take 15% off all of their products including the Problem Glyphs art book, and the ultra limited edition version, featuring a genuine bonded leather cover, four-hub spine, signed and numbered by Eliza Gauger, in an edition of 100 copies.
Nogling 