stephenhumphrey

The Daimond Aige: Or, A Young Person’s Illustrated Prompter

"Speak, Friend, and Enter!". Based on Durin's Door from Lord of the Rings, I built a working door with glowing Elvish inlay that appears like magic, opens when you say the secret word (MELLON!), and is made from real walnut wood. This start to finish build shows how it all came together, with all the problems, solutions, and mistakes.

[OP has no affiliation with this maker; I just think his stunning project deserves HN attention. —S ]

Healthy skepticism is certainly laudable, but too many llmuddites seem rather aggressive while whistling past their own graveyards.

I’m embarrassed to admit how readily I overlooked the “on” in “buttonhole”, and even more embarrassed how afraid I became when your post still made sense.

Well, for certain fringe definitions of “sense”.

“Luck favors the prepared.”

Huh. I also have that personal policy. Yet this time I jumped first to the comments before reading the article. I’m not certain why. Perhaps I subconsciously intuited that the ambiguity in the headline might be resolved by some of you smart people. Brains are weird; mine is, anyway.

Your video is so pedagogically beautiful. The subtext of what you’re doing in those two minutes hints deeply at the cyclical, iterative process practiced by most engineers and many other creatives. Concise, illustrative, memorable. I’ll be showing this to students regularly. Well done.

Regardless of whether that final line reflects reality or is merely tongue-in-cheek snark, it elevates the whole post into the sublime.

Unknown, but for anyone under-resourced, this experiment from the site loaded instantly for me:

https://mameson.com/experiment/glsl/ferro_9/ferro_9.html

As Diane Rehm once lamented on her radio show about two decades ago, as she was interviewing some cutting-edge engineer about his work, “why does it have to be so haaaard?!?”

We thought he was a goner.

I will make some personal comments to Lars privately, but let me say this, publicly:

I read between 10 and 100 articles or posts linked from HN every single day, and I have for years. As you can see for yourselves, I almost never comment. At this late stage in my life and career, it just seems fruitless to add my lone voice to the world of mostly-vapid, interconnected noise.

But Lar’s three poignant and vulnerable essays, as well as his comments on this post, seem to have brought out nearly universally the best people I’ve yet to see on HN or even on the larger net.

Wow. Most of you commenting are demonstrably fine people, and without calling out any in particular, I must decloak for this brief moment to say thank you for being such thoughtful, expressive, kind people.

I certainly hope some of your best comments resonate with and help Lars. However, even if not, your wisdom and humanity have helped me today — helped me process my own life and my still-too-raw tragedies.

Well done, HN “friends.” Keep up your “good works.” May we meet again, in real life or beyond.