Dan Q

Blog

Too Many Cards

Somebody on /r/MegaLoungeVI 1 this week asked me what my favourite magic trick (to perform) is. And because it’s far easier to show somebody than to tell them, I turned on the webcam and did a one-take shot of this, my attempt at something akin to Derek Dingle‘s stunning interpretation of Larry Jennings‘ Ambitious Classic:

Given that it’s rare for me to film myself performing magic and be, on the whole, pleased with the result, I thought I’d share it with you all, too, in case there are those among my friends who haven’t had the opportunity yet to see me perform (apologies for the fake-sounding monologue – the sound was dubbed on later).

Why do I like this particular effect so much? It’s certainly not the thing that gets the best reaction from my spectators. In fact, if I were to ask people I’ve performed for what trick was their favourite, I imagine that not one of them would choose this. But for me, it represents the challenge of magic: it’s a moderately-complex series of sleights joined together into a rhythmic dance.

I’m not sure if that translates well, or whether one of those things, like describing code as poetry, that you already need to understand before you can understand.

In any case – if you were impressed by my trick, you should now watch a master performing it, and perhaps you’ll see how far I’ve yet got to go…

1 One of Reddit’s MegaLounges2, access to which is gained by being gilded in the prior MegaLounge (or /r/lounge itself, in the case of the first MegaLounge).

2 For the last 5 years, it’s been possible to buy “Reddit Gold” subscriptions, and for most of that time it’s been possible to anonymously gift individual months of Reddit Gold to other users (known as “gilding”), in acknowledgement of a contribution they’ve made on the site. Having “Reddit Gold” grants you access to the official gold subreddit /r/lounge; getting gilded while in /r/lounge gets you access to the unofficial /r/MegaLounge, and so on. There are several dozen ‘levels’.

Article posted at UTC on .

2 comments

[Yet More Graphs!] Where, what, and whom do you gild?

This self-post was originally posted to /r/MegaMegaMonitor. See more things from Dan's Reddit account.

They said it couldn’t be done! And, technically-speaking, they were right. But I’ve come up with a way for you to generate your personal gilding history graphs. By which I mean, things like this pie chart showing which subreddits I gild in the most.

Follow the instructions in this post, and you too can have a report made for you like this one about me – note that the web addresses each contain a unique code so that nobody else gets to see your graphs (unless you choose to share them here).

How to get your Gilding Report… more-easily

You should still read all of this post because it has some valuable warnings about doing what strangers tell you to do on the Internet. But if you’re looking for a way to get your Gilding Report that works in Firefox and doesn’t require you to copy-paste ugly code everywhere, just go to https://danq.me/megamegamonitor/gilding-graph/ and follow the instructions there. Good luck! And don’t forget to share the highlights of your results!

How to get your Gilding Report (old instructions)

Copy-paste the following code into the address bar of your browser (triple-click it to select it all): 

javascript:(function(){function l(n,i){var t="/u/"+n+"/gilded/given.json?limit=100&after="+i;$("#d").append("."),$.getJSON(t,function(i){if(my_gildings_given_json.push(i.data.children),null!==i.data.after)setTimeout(function(){l(n,i.data.after)},2e3);else{for(var t=[];my_gildings_given_json.length>0;)t=t.concat(my_gildings_given_json.shift());t=JSON.stringify(t.map(function(n){return{kind:n.kind,subreddit:n.data.subreddit,author:n.data.author}})),$("body").html('<h1>Almost done...</h1><p>Just drawing some graphs...</p><form method="post" action="/megamegamonitor/gilding-graph/"><input type="hidden" name="u" /><input type="hidden" name="g" /></form>'),$('input[name="u"]').val(n),$('input[name="g"]').val(t),$("form").submit()}})}var my_gildings_given_json=[];$("body").html('<h1>Please wait<span id="d"></span></h1><p>This will take a little over 2 seconds per 100 gildings you've given.</p>'),$.get("/api/me.json",function(n){l(n.data.name,"")});})();

Important: many web browsers will remove the “javascript:” from the start when you paste it. If this happens, you’ll need to manually type it back in before you press enter. Sorry.

Also important (because some of my work is in computer security and I’d be remiss if I didn’t say this): if anybody asks you to post something beginning with “javascript:” into your address bar, you should be paranoid. People can do all kinds of naughty things, like trick your account into gilding them, like this. However, they can’t do anything that they couldn’t already do if you installed a browser plugin that they wrote, so if you’re already using MMM, you’re already placing more-trust than this in me. Just… be careful, people: if anybody in the comments says e.g. “hey, put this into your address bar!” then I’d recommend that you distrust them. And if somebody geeky feels like auditing my code, above, to verify for everybody that it’s not malicious, then that’d be appreciated too. In short – run at your own risk!

How does this work?

For the technically-minded (or just plain paranoid), here’s what happens when you paste that into your address bar – your web browser will, over the course of several seconds (about 2 seconds for every 100 gilds, or part thereof, that you’ve made), collect statistical information about all of the gildings you’ve given (you can see the information it collects for yourself by going to /u/your-username-here/gilded/given – note that you can’t see anybody else’s gildings using this method, which is why this weird Javascript-based approach is needed). That information is then collated and sent to the MegaMegaMonitor server, which collates it into a web page for you (with a secret web address) and then sends you to the web page (if you later choose to share that web address with us, that’s up to you: but hopefully you will!).

Repost posted at UTC on .

No comments

Gilded ents who should be considered for admission…

This self-post was originally posted to /r/gildedtrees. See more things from Dan's Reddit account.

Hi! I’m /u/avapoet, and if you know about me already it’s probably because you’re using MegaMegaMonitor, a browser plugin that enables you to, among other things, spot other gilded ents elsewhere on Reddit by the “universal flair” gold cannabis leaf they carry (note that only gilded ents get to see other gilded ents: no secrets between frients, right?).

I’ve just been doing some data processing off the back of the MegaMegaMonitor engine, and I’d like to suggest that the following ents be considered for membership here, based on their being gilded in a tree-related sub (there shouldn’t be anybody in this list who’s already here, but if there is – sorry! – however there may be duplicates within this list). It’s a LONG list – far too long for a message (max 10,000 characters) and too long even for a self-post like this (max 15,000 characters), so I’ll share it with you in the comments to this post. That way, /u/green_euphoria, /u/Elderthedog, /u/BassInMyFace and /u/jamacianbagpipemetal can – I don’t know – upvote them to mark them as processed, or something. Or comment on them. Or whatever.

“Tree-related subs” for the purpose of this search were those found listed here, minus e.g. /r/explainlikeimfive which isn’t really tree-related and /r/ReligEnts, /r/Sprouts, /r/boxBritannica, /r/enTOR, /r/entsnyc, and others which are private (and I’m not a member). I also rejected /r/leaves, because most of those folks wouldn’t appreciate being invited in here anyway, I imagine!

I’m not telling you how to run your sub, by the way – far from it. I just think that this community could enjoy a little growth (and not just of the fresh green buddy variety), and wanted to make it easier for the mods to make that happen.

Right: on the the comments…

Edit: Okay; all the comments are there now. Have fun!

Edit2: I’ve been made into a mod, so that I can help trawl through this list and get everybody added! It’s going to take a few days (mostly because Reddit won’t let me add more than a hundred without then taking a few hours break!) but I’ll get there.

Edit3: 1,014 contributors now in our sub (up from ~600 when I started). 512 left to add.

Edit4: 1,314 contributors now in our sub. No more than 213 left to add. And wow; there’s more traffic here than before, mostly in the form of “dude, what is this place?” posts.

Edit5: We’re done! The backlog is cleared! Welcome to /r/gildedtrees, new folks!

Repost posted at UTC on .

No comments

TIL that early in the second world war, Churchill (anticipating trench warfare stalemates as in the first world war) commissioned the invention of a “mole” machine that could dig new trenches to take itself and a convoy of tanks deep into the enemy lines.

This link was originally posted to /r/todayilearned. See more things from Dan's Reddit account.

The original link was: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultivator_No._6

Repost posted at UTC on .

No comments

Are you running v98? Can you help me with an experiment?

This self-post was originally posted to /r/MegaMegaMonitor. See more things from Dan's Reddit account.

Hi! It’s me, /u/avapoet. You might remember me from such MegaMegaMonitor releases as v95 and v92. Also, this post right here.

Anyway: v98 contains the first third of an experimental new feature that I haven’t decided whether or not to implement the second half of, yet. This post is a proof-of-concept of the first half of the feature. Would you mind looking at this post (the actual post – you’ll need to click the “comments” link… and you’ll need to do so with MegaMegaMonitor enabled, of course), and then leaving a comment to let me know that… it appeared in a way that made sense, and showed the kinds of things that you’d… expect it to show. ;-)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Don’t give too much away in the comments, though: remember that just because you can see something on the Internet doesn’t mean that everybody can see it. Don’t believe me? If you’re using RES, click the “source” link under this text and you’ll see for yourself what I typed here…

 

Repost posted at UTC on .

No comments

MegaMegaMonitor now supports DecadeClub

This self-post was originally posted to /r/decadeclub. See more things from Dan's Reddit account.

If you already use /r/MegaMegaMonitor, great! Now it supports /r/DecadeClub, too. If you don’t then, well: maybe you should!

As a DecadeClub member, what MegaMegaMonitor enables you to do is to see a piece of DecadeClub “flair” next to other DecadeClub members, anywhere on Reddit. If you’re in certain other private subs (e.g. /r/gildeddrunk, /r/MagicSecrets, /r/The_Haven, /r/MegaEarth, or any MegaLounge) then it’ll highlight your friends from there, too. It’s like RES-tagging everybody from your private subs… but you don’t have to do the hard work of keeping your tag list up to date!

Give it a go! Let me know what you think.

Edit: This is what this post looks like to me, for example, with all the appropriate bits of flair showing.

Repost posted at UTC on .

No comments

v95 adds comment-searching powers to help those of you who like to gild others “up” the chain

This self-post was originally posted to /r/MegaMegaMonitor. See more things from Dan's Reddit account.

I’ve just pushed out version 95; you can get it by telling Greasemonkey to update manually, or just wait a day or so and you’ll get it automatically. This release makes some minor CSS improvements to help make the tooltips visible even on awkward subreddits (still a long way to go, though), and also adds a powerful new tool that I hope will be useful to those of you who like to help your fellow MegaPeople to ascend the ladder.

Here’s an example. Suppose I enjoyed /u/glitzyjan‘s comment, sharing a video in /r/MegaMegaLounge, and would like to give them gold and help them climb the ladder. MMM tells me that /u/glitzyjan is already in /r/MegaLoungeV, so they’d probably appreciate my gold better if I were to go and give it to some arbritary post of theirs in /r/MegaLoungeV, but it’s a bit of a drag for me to go all the way through their post history just to find them saying something in /r/MegaLoungeV.

That’s where this new feature comes in: it does the searching for me. It’s not much faster than I am, but I can kick it off in a separate tab and then come back to it in a few minutes. First, I click the new MMM Options/Tools link in MegaMegaMonitor. Then I fill in the form to say that I’m looking for a post or comment by /u/glitzyjan in /r/MegaLoungeV and click Search. MegaMegaMonitor will then start exploring as fast as it can through /u/giltzyjan‘s post and comment history and reports back on what it sees. Like this!

It’s very rough around the edges right now, but I’ve been using it over here for the last couple of days and it functions, even though it’s ugly as sin, so I thought I’d share it with any of you that want to try it out, too. And if you don’t: well that’s fine too, just ignore it. But I think this new feature could be very useful for folks like me who sometimes like to reward good posters by gilding them in their highest lounge, rather than just where they produce the great content.

Tip: if you’re happy with the results you’ve got e.g. you’ve found what you’re looking for, click “Stop searching.” Or it’ll keep going until it’s read the entire post and comment history of your target, which will take a long time and will start to slow your computer down! This is a slow operation because I can’t pre-cache it all for you like I do the other parts of MMM (because I don’t know what you’re going to search for in advance!), but it should still be faster than doing it by hand, which many of us do already!

tl;dr: New tool lets you search for posts/comments made by a particular person in a particular subreddit. Great for chain-gilders.

Repost posted at UTC on .

No comments

I just sold a flat and bought some creddits. Who wants gold?

This self-post was originally posted to /r/MegaLoungeVIII. See more things from Dan's Reddit account.

Today, I just agreed the sale of the flat (that’s “apartment” outside of British English) that I inherited from my father (who died three years ago yesterday), and I’m marking the occasion by splashing out on a pack of 36 creddits to fuel a gold train.

/r/MegaLoungeVIII‘s getting crowded. Who wants to come up to /r/MegaLoungeIX?

Repost posted at UTC on .

No comments

Just for fun, I’ve pre-generated ascension graphs for everybody in MegaLoungeIndia

This self-post was originally posted to /r/MegaLoungeIndia. See more things from Dan's Reddit account.

As described over there, I’ve come up with a way to make graphs of the speed of everybody’s ascension through the MegaLounges. But because everybody up here in /r/MegaLoungeIndia is far too important to have to ask for things for themselves, I’ve pre-generated graphs for you all. Here they are:

Hope that provides some amusement and diversion to you all.

Repost posted at UTC on .

No comments