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Amazing to read about the Recurse Center [1]. It seems to be some kind of artist-in-residence, but for programmers.
I've spent some time in residencies as an artist, and it's amazing how much it helped me to open up new perspectives. It'd be nice if there were more of these opportunities to do nonsensical (i.e., non-commercial and non-competitive) things in science. I'm sure it's beneficial to society or at least for the lucky individuals who get accepted there.
(post author here)
If Recurse sounds fun and magical to you - it is! And you should consider applying :). You can always defer your acceptance until the timing works out. It's free (they make money via job placements, but when I applied I was clear that I wasn't looking for work). I've been meaning to write a blog about my time there - here's what I would want to say:
The best thing that Recurse (RC) did for me was help me get in touch with my own taste. When I arrived I was making games that were pretty "normal" - Flash-style games with high scores and weak themes. While there I got weird. One of my first projects was an abuse of the OpenSearch spec to make a version of Wordle that ran in the Firefox address bar[1].
It was the perfect place to build something like this - folks were encouraging and supportive and interested; it made me realize that people were interested in the type of thing I actually wanted to do. I think I shipped 8 games during my 12 weeks at RC. I wouldn't have started making the types of things I now make without RC. I think plenty of folks have similar experiences across all sorts of techy things, not just games. Kinda like finding product-market fit but for your own interests.
RC also connected me with a bunch of folks that were doing similar things. The community is huge and kind and weird in the best way. It is like a writers' retreat but for people that want to program (and become better programmers).
I am probably coming off as shilling RC hard and I suppose I am (although I'm not being paid for this - I'm just a grateful alum). I'm literally typing this from the RC space right now (I occasionally stop by to chat with people in batch and work).
[1] https://eieio.games/nonsense/implementing-wordle-in-the-fire...
I also attended the Recurse Center years ago, but it didn’t quite click for me, which was surprising because everyone I spoke to had such positive experiences there. Even now, I find it hard to pinpoint exactly why it didn’t feel worthwhile for me.
Perhaps it was the location. New York City is expensive, and although I had enough savings to justify taking unpaid leave from work, many things seemed unreasonably priced. New Yorkers also have a reputation for being unfriendly, which added to my feeling of disconnect. Despite hearing glowing reviews from others, I didn’t quite mesh with the environment at Recurse Center, similar to how some visitors to the city might not feel entirely welcomed during certain encounters.
On the bright side, some of the residents and alumni [1] have become quite well-known in the tech industry. You might get lucky and find one of them around the space, which could lead to some really insightful conversations. During my time there, I had the chance to meet people like Robert Lefkowitz [2] and Filippo Valsorda [3], which was pretty cool. They definitely added some interesting perspectives to my experience.
[1] https://www.recurse.com/residents
NYC was also my least favorite part of Recurse. I had to move 2 weeks in because my first apartment was right next to the train.
I absolutely loved Recurse though and credit it for a lot of my development as a programmer and it's my favorite programming community.
Luckily you can also do Recurse remotely now!
Check out https://sfpc.study/ too!
The School for Poetic Computation is an experimental school in New York City and online supporting interdisciplinary study in art, code, hardware and critical theory. It's a place for learning and unlearning.
https://youtu.be/QOtuX0jL85Y?si=Kwo8OZSYOVzoI-Uh
Obligatory The Office reference.
If it somehow did hit exactly right angles into the corner, wouldn't it then be stuck bouncing between diametrical corners?
In fact I don't see how it ever could hit a a corner exactly.
Here's the math: http://lostmathlessons.blogspot.com/2016/03/bouncing-dvd-log...
Only if the tv is a square, which most tvs are not.
Curious to know if you’re under the presumption that TVs are square? Or are you imagining that the logo doesn’t move at 45 degrees?
Both seem obviously false but I’m struggling to think how someone could otherwise have come to your conclusion.
Try on paper originating it from a corner on a rectangle where the initial path is just offset from the diametrical corner.
let's wait and see https://codepen.io/CaptainKeyframe/pen/eYKQVKE
Huh. And here I thought it was a reference to "Saturday Night Fever."
>Obligatory The Office reference.
At first I thought 'Huh?". After clicking the link I see you were referencing the US version of The Office.
Thought I was going crazy for a few secs.
Came here for this comment.
dev here, fun surprise to see this on the front page (I'm glad it's resonating! give the pico-8 a try!)
happy to answer q's if anyone has one. I haven't built a full pico-8 game since this (my stuff got...weirder...[1]) but I miss it + have been toying around with playdate and picotron ideas.
Stuff like this makes me utterly adore Pico-8. It's one of the most fun coding environments I've used since I first discovered the ActionScript in Macromedia Flash MX.
The retro IDE is a huge attractor for a lot of people but for me I just love the limited constraints at runtime. I wish I had a high resolution modern editor for code/sound/graphics to work with, but was still limited by resolution, cpu power, API, etc.
+1 on this. The Pico-8 is a delightful little platform. I have a few unfinished projects kicking around and this is inspiring me to go back to them.
Worth mentioning this tale of the psychological and social suffering brought about by the DVD logo never quite hitting the corner of the screen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ws0QtAiiXQ
Jazz Emu fan!
Made this a while ago if you just want to look at the screensaver.
This would be a blast on the Playdate, perhaps even using its little crank to advance time (and additional points for keeping the right rhythm?)
Here you go:
https://uguu-org.itch.io/bouncing-dvd
It's pretty bare bones since I made it just now, feel free to fork it:
Stars Of the Screen has a DVD attract screen game.
Pam claims to have seen [the DVD logo in the corner] when she was in the conference room alone. I believe she thinks she saw it.
Direct link to play the game: https://itseieio.itch.io/dvdlogo
Source code (pico8): https://github.com/nolenroyalty/put-the-dvd-logo-in-the-corn...
That was really fun and a good explanation of the PICO-8 environment. Well done! I got 19 but think I got lucky towards the end.
I love these little fantasy consoles. I think this is how coding should be taught, with small runtime requirements and simple tools which let people start adding graphics and movement on the screen immediately
I absolutely love PICO-8. Never been a hardcore gamer but started playing PICO-8 games on my commute after buying a Myioo mini. The games are simple but are extremely playable and fun.
Same here and I highly agree! My favorite games are simple (e.g. Suika Game Demake) but so fun and addicting.
https://dvd.js.org/?names=han,luke,leia,chewy
Stupid app i made to (colloquially) roll the dice using the dvd screen
Didn't realise how big a cultural phenomenon this was.
I made this a while back if you just need your corner bounce fix https://oopsallcornerbounces.com/
Fantasy consoles would make for interesting programming learning environments for aspiring school or even CS students, I think.
Sometimes I think the opposite is true.
When I was a student I much preferred hacking around with games I actually liked playing already like Skyrim and Minecraft vs. "fantasy" consoles or purely educational systems like Scratch.
Whenever I became more familiar with programming I liked retro systems like the Apple ][ but I think that was inspired by an old comp sci prof who showed us QBASIC.
I would have loved that, especially with a language like Fennel to write Pico animations in Lisp.
Somehow got 19 by hitting a lucky streak at the end. Now I can rest easy knowing I'm not gonna beat that.
26 here! It was moving so fast I just basically let it do its thing.
Short games that are based on humor or a simple concept can be incredibly refreshing and entertaining.
> There’s no good way to refer to 2000-2009, sorry.
The 2000 noughties/aughties.
it would be fun to make an open-ai gym wrapper on this & train an rl agent to hit the corner every single time
Has anyone reverse engineered the original DVD screensaver algorithm
Obligatory post to my DVD screensaver done in all CSS and inline SVG. https://dvd-player-screensaver.glitch.me/
Is there an easy way to actually make this my screensaver? (on mac)