Leon Mika

Tue, 25 Aug 2026 14:37:39 +1000

Riddle me this, Claude:

Working Around One-Shot GPUParticles2D Emitter Slowdown

Mon, 24 Aug 2026 22:15:44 +1000

I’ve got a couple of one-shot GPUParticles2D emitters in my Godot game, and they have a habit of causing slowdown when they’re emitted for the first time. For a while I tolerated this, but it’s got to the point where gameplay was being affected, and this had to be dealt with.

I had some success removing that slowdown using a variant of the technique documented here. Basically, you fire the emitter within the _ready() function, wait a single frame, then hide the emitter:

func _ready():
    pop_emitter.emitting = true
    await get_tree().process_frame
    pop_emitter.visible = false

This does mean you’ll need to set the emitter visibility to true when you want to fire it for real:

func emit_for_real():
    pop_emitter.visible = true
    pop_emitter.emitting = true

Based on my experience, the order is pretty important. The emitter needs to be visible while it’s emitting in order for the material to load. But it seems like a single frame is enough for that to happen. The technique also works if the emitter is a fair distance from the camera. And in that case, you probably don’t need to hide the emitter at all.

Mon, 24 Aug 2026 14:11:05 +1000

I don’t know how, but my email address mades it’s way onto a luxury watch spam mailing list. I’ve never worn a luxury watch in my life, unless you count that Timex watch that can be programmed with assembly. Which I do, by the way. A watch you can configure to do what you want? That’s luxury. 😏

Mon, 24 Aug 2026 10:22:59 +1000

It’s a bit of a shame that sites like Stripe ditched their search in favour of an AI chatbot. Search is still useful, and I think there’s room for both. I think what Kagi does would work quite well here: query ends in a question mark, send it to a chatbot; if it doesn’t, run a traditional search.

Mon, 24 Aug 2026 07:59:35 +1000

Why are we still doing image CAPTCHAs? I’m pretty sure modern AIs can blitz through these now. Instead, we should throw free-text challenges like “Please type ‘anachronistic’ incorrectly.” If you misspell it, or type “dog”, you’re in.

Sun, 23 Aug 2026 17:44:05 +1000

The avian guests have arrived, and seemed to be settling in quite well. 🦜

Sun, 23 Aug 2026 12:59:59 +1000

Ooh, a bird sighting first for me: a blue-faced honeyeater.

Sun, 23 Aug 2026 12:58:08 +1000

Being in Albury around noon, you’re likely to see the steel train come through. Although, today it was stopped to allow the departing Velocity train the right of way. Gave an opportunity to get a close up of it’s load.

Sun, 23 Aug 2026 12:26:40 +1000

And there it goes: XPT departing Albury and traveling onwards to Sydney. Might be a long while before I take it again, if at all. It’s been nice though.

Sun, 23 Aug 2026 08:42:54 +1000

Back at “Broady 3” looking at the standard-gauge train line up to Melbourne.

Sat, 22 Aug 2026 19:06:51 +1000

If there was ever a game where the level design could be compared to a work of art, my vote would go to Super Mario World. The level design a masterpiece. A few key elements in each screen mixed and matched in harmony and counterpoint. Then a shift to something different. Truly magnificent.

Sat, 22 Aug 2026 12:52:28 +1000

Prepared the spare room for a few family members (of the avian kind) that will be coming tomorrow for an extended stay. Had to cover the mirror with paper, just so they don’t fly into it (this is what all those old newspapers were for). 🦜

Fri, 21 Aug 2026 18:59:43 +1000

🔗 Zachary Kai: What Everyone Should Know About Australia

Yes, there are things with the capacity to kill you (like everywhere) and yes, we have a large selection. […] Yet you’re more likely to die from a falling coconut than a shark attack, and the people killed by spiders is infinitesimal next to the other unfortunate ways to go.

As an Aussie, I do wonder at how genuine the fear of being killed by spiders, snakes, etc. actually is. I mean, they’re real, but I’ve not personally been threatened by them. Closest are a couple of redbacks, and they’re easy to deal with.

Via: Michael Harley

Fri, 21 Aug 2026 07:43:55 +1000

Worked on music for my Godot game last night. Think I landed on something quite good as I woke up with it in my head this morning.

Thu, 20 Aug 2026 12:32:09 +1000

Had someone come and service my air-con who made a point that the gutters were in awful condition and needed to be cleaned. He made the comment that it would take more than a day. Maybe if I was doing it, yeah; because I organised someone to clean them today and he got it done in an hour.

Thu, 20 Aug 2026 08:20:02 +1000

I submit to you my extension to Betteridge’s Law for podcasts: if an episode’s title ends in question, the topic will be brought up last.

Thu, 20 Aug 2026 07:23:46 +1000

Hey, Go 1.27 has been released. That’s awesome. And what a release! Some pretty cool things I’ve been wanting for a while have been added to the language. Looking forward to getting my hands dirty with these. 🎉

Thu, 20 Aug 2026 07:06:46 +1000

The Pragmatic Engineer newsletter had an issue about engineering leads leaving the industry. I won’t elaborate on the reasons (you can probably guess) but I found it grating to read due to all the business speak. All this talk about equity and ROI: hardly relatable information for a salaried employee like myself. Perhaps I’m not the target audience of these.

Wed, 19 Aug 2026 08:48:12 +1000

I wish more modern code editors adopted the same approach to extensions as the editors of yore: a script interpreter with a broad yet approachable API. Needing to setup a brand new developer environment is too much for the small things you simply want to hack together.

Tue, 18 Aug 2026 07:11:00 +1000

Exit 1.

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 16:38:23 +1000

It’s said that maths is not so much invented as it is discovered. I think the same thing could be said for most software. Sometimes a design is clear to everyone. You just need to “talk through” to the discovery.

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 10:17:17 +1000

There are some things you wouldn’t have thought you’d miss when you loose a contact that worked at a library. Access to old newspapers is one such thing. Now I’m calling branches saying things like “can I collect your old newspapers? I have a need for old newspapers. Can I have them?”

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 07:37:57 +1000

Forget national service. Maybe what we need to introduce is that everyone is required to be a garbo for a month. That way, everyone will think better about throwing their litter on the ground.

Sun, 16 Aug 2026 21:12:15 +1000

Silhouette.

Creating Keyboard Split Tracks In Logic Pro

Sun, 16 Aug 2026 10:04:21 +1000

Here are instructions for how to create a “keyboard split” track in Logic Pro, where the left hand plays a different software instrument to the right. I used to create an electric piano patch with tones above C2 (1 octave below middle C) having a delay.

Create the individual tracks as you would normally.
Select them, right click, and select “Create Track Stack.”
Select “Summing stack.”
In the track settings on the left, adjust the “Key Limit” so that one track covers the left hand and the other covers the right.
Select the track stack to record a take.

I don’t know if this is the correct way to do it, but it was surprisingly difficult to find this information online: many of the queries for “split track” were for splitting clips. But this seems like a pretty versatile technique for combining software instruments and having them respond to a single input source. Based on what’s available, it looks like it’s possible to do something similar across the velocity dimension too.