TODEPOND PONDCAST: Contribution

Hello.

It's time for another weekly episode of the...

🐸 TODEPOND PONDCAST 🐸

What's new this week?

Contribution

This week, I've been working hard on Arroost. I also added a tiny tiny contributing guide in case others want to get involved.

I'm delighted to say that two people have contributed already!!! Thanks to jessiejs and loglot for doing some cross-browser testing for the project ⭐⭐

And massive thanks to jessiejs who improved the visual design of Arroost! She added some shadows and borders to the circles that you chuck around.

It looks so nice. And it's a lot clearer too. I'm amazed at the speed and quality of her submission!

The use of a 'filter' to apply the shadow slowed down the engine a bit. Browsers seem to be really slow at using it. So I copied her code into a 'box shadow' instead. It does the exact same thing, but it's a lot quicker now.

If you're interested in contributing to Arroost, then hop on over!

Restoration

Near the start of the Arroost project, I made a small proof-of-concept to find out if it was possible. It succeeded!

Now that it's further along, I'm restoring more and more of that initial demo. Bit by bit, it's moving from the 'old' folder to the 'arroost' folder.

It mostly stays the same, but some things need to be tweaked to match the newer changes. Thankfully, things are simpler now than they were before.

One of these changes will include using a library for audio, instead of doing it myself. I'm currently learning how to use tone.js for this.

Making sounds isn't too hard. But getting them to happen at the right time is. Tone.js helps with that!

Credits

I like to thank all my patrons and supporters in the credits of each video.

I used to manually add each patron to the little 'pond of fame', and then the 'tree of fame'. I also used to give each person a welcome message.

Unfortunately, now that a lot more people have signed up, this has become too big of a job. So I've been looking at ways of automating some of this. I want you to be able to pick your credits name and colour on an online form or picker or something.

I've been trying to figure out the easiest and most lightweight way of doing this. I think I've got a decent solution for this now, and I need to get it going in time for the next video.

By the way, when the next video comes out, I'll increase the limitations on each tier as well (so that you can be a froggy/berd/bot/whatever). Thanks for your patience!

As a supporter, the best way of reaching me is by joining our discord server, THE LILYPAD. If you're on patreon, you can connect your discord account to get auto-invited. If you're on substack or liberapay, message me on discord (@TodePond) and I'll let you in.

Events

It's a busy couple of months. I'll be filming some B-roll footage in Scotland next week. Then I'm attending Strange Loop where I might meet some of you. Then there's a Future of Coding meetup where I might demo Arroost. Then I'm visiting the USA. Then it's SPLASH where I'm demoing CellPond.

And now there's more. I spoke with someone this week who wants me to go and do a talk about DreamBerd.

Whenever I receive a message enquiring about DreamBerd, I never know if they know that it's a joke language or not.

For example, someone contacted me about publishing a book on it. I guess they just saw that DreamBerd was a 'trending' programming language and didn't realise it's a joke. They were quite embarrassed when they found out.

So I wasn't quite sure what to expect for the meeting I had this week. But it turns out that they did know the truth about DreamBerd. It had been recommended to them by a friend, and then they watched Mr The Primeagen's read-through of it. 

They're trying to put on more 'fun' talks. So that should be fun!

But hey. Thank you for all your support. Progress continues. Slowly but surely. Have a great week! 🐸

Days since tode fell asleep: 246
Days since bot went missing: 211