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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 25th, 2023

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  • While it’s a pretty good vpn all round that’s super easy to set and forget, I’ve been having issues the last ~6 months in Australia with the CIDR ranges getting blocked by Google, Reddit, and the like. It’s annoying to have it run fine for a few days, then suddenly have every second thing I do needing to solve a captcha for it.

    Try the freemium tier for a while and see if it works for you - I may be wrong and you’ll run a whole month with nothing, but never hurts to verify.





  • For the latter, a good approach is to pick a project or idea and try to make it. If you’re familiar with the logic you can look up the syntax for the new language, but it you’re fresh off the boat then there is a bunch of good stuff on YouTube, Khan academy and stack overflow that are geared to newbies.

    Some starting ideas:

    • Make a text based tic Tac toe/card game
    • Make a number guessing game
    • Find all prime numbers under a number given by the user

    Once you’ve got a decent grip on the logic involved, it can be quite effective to implement more complex approaches to the solution. Instead of guessing randomly, implement a binomial (1:N divided by 2) search algorithm, or have the game play against itself. Go back over how you wrote the solution, and add some good comments, improve the functions descriptions, even refactor some code to be more efficient and more readable. I learnt how to code through doing, textbooks are great for some people but my preferred approach is to make something, break it, and learn how to fix it.


  • Part of the identity crises that comes with(out) religion is the ultimate question of purpose: why are we suffering, surely it has a reason? Some of us are content to accept that there is no purpose, and therefore we must define our own; others need a purpose greater than themselves and/or to have one defined for them, and look to religion for that purpose. There is no right answer, and the struggle of identity and purpose are well documented in religion, fiction, history, and philosophy.












  • Fair enough if combat isn’t as much your thing! I find the stories that are generated to be excellent, and there tends to be more combat than most similar games which is why I focused more on it.

    I was doing great up until ships kept crashing

    My usual approach here is to either bombard it with mortars, have a trader “accidentally” set it off, or if neither are available set up a lot of traps and sandbags and get ready for a battle. Make sure you always have plenty of cover, and for psychics especially destroy them sooner to minimise the effects. If they’re the newer style of mechanoid raid, you may need to get really close and throw a few explosives in there or otherwise be inside the area and have everyone attack at once.

    You can start building whenever you’re ready really, but definitely have a good defence set up before you start. For components I usually send a few people off with cattle to carry everything back from a friendly town (since traders can be somewhat sparse at times), and if you trade enough you may even be able to request reinforcements. I try to make sure everyone has the best armor and weapons I can afford/make - if you’ve got golden tiles but not much better than dusters, then a lot more deaths are likely. Even with the best gear, one of my characters was once killed by a lucky shot in the eye from a measly bow!

    If you’re more for the survival aspect then definitely feel free to keep it on lower difficulties (I often do at the start), and you can usually make do without much strategy as long as you have good gear, decent cover, and a medic on standby with the best meds you can afford. Turrets or other friendlies are often great distractions, and if they’re taking the bullets then none of your colonists are.

    Edit: I’d also add that learning from mistakes is great for all areas of life, if you can look at why you failed (not enough farms, too little meds, etc.) and learn from it then you’re going to do better the next time. Even if the general strategy stays the same, small changes can make a massive difference.