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the chief

from my experience riding the Amtrak Southwest Chief across the country earlier this year. 6:30 PM. The Chief arrives in Fullerton. I meet Jonathan in the window seat next to me. His mother and sister are across the aisle from us. He was visiting in LA. Together they are returning to Chicago. We chat about his recent trip to see the Northern Lights in the upper peninsula of Michigan. An announcement from the conductor. The observation car is open. Another announcement for dinner reservations. A reminder I have not eaten a proper meal all day. 9:30 PM. The Chief arrives in Barstow. The conductor warns those stepping out for air not to go too far. The desert is warm at night. I am tired but do not return to my seat. A man and woman sit together in the observation car. They discuss relationships over whiskey and coke. He offers advice, having one divorce and four other “great relationships”. I drift to sleep. 4:30 AM. I wake to an attendant asking if Flagstaff is my sto...
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raytracing 187,500 voxels in the browser with only 13 kilobytes

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js13k is a web game development competition that happens every year from August 13th - September 13th. Participants are challenged during that time to build a game around a specific theme. The catch is that the final submitted zip file for the game must be less than or equal to 13 kilobytes. That is exactly 13,312 bytes. I participated for the first time back in 2018 and won 14th place that year. Career and life obligations have prevented me from participating in the years since. Unfortunately, this year I was not able to come up with an idea for a game in time. At least one I thought was interesting enough. I went through many prototypes that never went further than that. So this year, I ended up submitting my entry “F-Stop” to the “Unfinished” category as an engine tech demo. For a while now, I have been fascinated with the game Teardown and its approach to rendering. I thought js13k was the perfect opportunity to try and implement a similar voxel engine. The challenge o...
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