Organic Donut

A blog by Erty Seidohl

  • The !!Con Talk Anonymization and Selection Process

    Another conference organizer recently asked the !!Con team what our anonymization process was, and we realized that we didn’t have a good source for them. While we tout our anonymization as a major component of our quest to eliminate implicit bias during the talk selection process, we haven’t written what our anonymization and talk selection…

  • a e s t h e t i c đŸ’« g e n e r a t o r

    Update: the a e s t h e t i c g e n e r a t o r is now online.   Ryan McVerry, Per-Andre Stromhaug, and I got together this weekend to do a mini-hackathon. We’d been inspired by a Chicago-based artist on Tumblr named Galactic Castle. Specifically, this image: Our goal, was…

  • We Built an Arcade Cabinet in a Weekend!

    We built an arcade cabinet! In 72 hours! The team: Project Lead ERTY SEIDOHL Software Engineers RYAN MCVERRY MAX FELDKAMP Hardware Engineer BEN GOODING Music and Sound EVAN CONWAY Cabinet Construction ERIC VAN DER HEIDE MATT GOLON Cabinet Art HALEY WHITE-BALLOWE Finished image first 🙂 We had the idea to build an arcade cabinet several…

  • Dictionaries and Word Lists for Programmers

    I love to play with words, and I especially love to play with words programatically. I’ve written three small apps (so far) which use some form of a dictionary to create readable, humorous text: English to Shibe Translator Song Lyrics Twister Deity Generator I’ve had some people ask, so here are some great resources that…

  • Project Idea: “Lanky” PHP Middleware Language

    I keep not writing weekend web apps because I know that my projects generally follow this trajectory: 1. Build a database 2. Build some thin PHP middleware to expose an API to that database 3. Build a slick react/angular/whatever frontend 4. Realize a bunch of things I’m missing in my API and add them, lamenting the entire time…

  • Notes from PAX Prime 2015

    I attended PAX Prime 2015 this past weekend with a friend, and ended up going to two talks. Ask a Dungeon Master So You Want to be a Game Writer Ask a Dungeon Master Chris Perkins Dungeon Masters are unique. Gary Gygax Had the players declare a “caller”, who was the only person to talk to…

  • Prps

    Uber, but for providing meaning to your life — Matthew Garrett (@mjg59) April 15, 2015 My good friend Angela told me about the Service a week ago. Once you press the button on your phone, you no longer know what’s real. Every person you bump into on the street arouses suspicion. Are they part of…

  • Should You Prefer Prefix over Postfix Increment?

    I’ve been told in the past by a programming mentor that ++x is faster than x++, and I found myself refactoring a few increments in javascript the other day. But then I got thinking – is it really faster? Wouldn’t most modern compilers optimize out the difference? I decided to do some science. A Hacker…

  • Making Tea With Javascript: OOP with the Prototype Chain

    Javascript is weird. Prototypical inheritance is really powerful, but it’s quite a bit to wrap your mind around if you’re new to it. My first language was Java, and I’m comfortable with the “traditional” OOP paradigm. In this post, I’ll build a traditional Superclass/Subclass relationship in Javascript in an attempt to untangle the weirdness that is Javascript’s…

  • Notes from PAX East 2015 (Part 3 / 3 – Dungeon Mastering)

    I went to PAX East 2015! It was awesome! I took a lot of notes! (Part 1: Social Stuff) (Part 2: Making & Selling Games) Here are the notes from the one talk that I went to on being a good Game Master. Playing Between The Lines Luke Crane, Adam Koebel, Sage LaTorra, Thor Olavsrud…