Episode: 230
Title: HPR0230: Expressive Programming 4: Escapism and Alternative Resources
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0230/hpr0230.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 14:27:45

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Welcome to this episode of Expressive Programming, an exploration into programming as an art.
Here I'll focus on programming, design, and development as an art form, especially as a form of self-expression.
We'll look at open-source projects, the projects that I'm working on, the code that others have written,
and focus on how that reflects what we feel, what we intend, and how we impact the world.
Special thanks for all episodes go to heck-of-how-the-gradio for helping me get this podcast after ground, especially in Nigma,
and also special thanks to HotBitchArson.
The band's website can be found at HotBitchArson.com for other wonderful, inspiring, and moving creative comments,
and things that they've allowed me to use.
They're the cure for the uncommon non-college.
And now onto today's episode of Expressive Programming.
Enjoy!
Welcome to Expressive Programming, episode 4,
development, and escapism.
I got into computers to escape the world that I grew up in.
The environment, the people,
Jehovah's Witnesses, the ignorance,
everything, just the world, that didn't make any sense.
Teachers that were apathetic.
And then I found the internet.
Of course, it was actually just a group of VBSs had together at that point.
But it was a different world, where people were judged by how they acted, how they behaved,
what they said, what they had to share, and what they knew.
Now, I don't know if I've mentioned this in Expressive Programming,
but I have a neuromuscular disease called generalized dystonia.
This disease is similar to Huntington's disease.
Meaning that it causes my body to spasm and contort 24-7.
It's painful.
It's left me with control over none of the soft muscles in my body,
except out of my left hand,
which now thanks to some blessed friends online,
I'm actually able to program thanks to their gift of an iFrog Pro,
a 100 keyboard.
I'm now up to 90 words per minute.
Prior to this summer, I was at 30 words a minute.
Anyone who programs knows you can't develop anything at that speed.
I'm still improving. I improved daily.
But if not for this opportunity, I wouldn't be able to program, participate in Twitter, IRC.
I'm still not to the point where I can catch up on email,
but I can't find anything among all the bacon and spam that throws up in my inbox.
But once again, I find myself programming to escape the pain,
escape the reality of the town I live in,
and I'll save all the person on Vama if you want to know what I'm really going through,
and follow me on Twitter.
But what I do want to talk about is how many people that I know
that use programming as an escape, intentionally, unintentionally.
How time can go into a vacuum,
and suddenly it's 3 o'clock in the morning,
and then suddenly it's 2 o'clock in the afternoon,
how a solution that you see the code to,
that seems like a half an hour of coding can turn into a two-day project.
How you can wake up in the middle of the night with an idea.
You have to drive it down, you have to at least write it down.
You write it down, it doesn't do any good, it's still going through your head.
You have to start programming it.
It's even worse when you're bug-fixing,
and you know the bug-fix.
How many times have you went to work the next day?
Not having any slight, not having slept,
because you've been up all my bug-fixing.
Everyone finds a way to escape.
Reading, video games, television,
with whoever can consume mass media and manage to escape.
I can only assume it's by shutting down their cerebral cortex.
But regardless of what else you may do to escape,
is programming one of them?
Or is the detachment from the reality a result of the creative process?
As we begin to create draw,
program,
as we develop design and follow our inspiration,
is a simple result of that,
that we detach ourselves from the world.
There have been numerous studies on what happens when people enter meditative stances,
people enter deep concentration.
There are neurochemical changes that happen.
Brain chemistry changes.
When people focus the brain changes.
Perception of reality changes.
Perception of time changes.
Not exactly what Einstein meant by time is relative,
but anyone who's ever spent more than one night working on a project,
knows exactly what I meant.
Or a hackathon.
24 hours to come up with a solution to a computer science problem.
There are a few things more...
Accelerate, and something like that.
Whether it's for competition, academia, or just amongst friends.
How many bugs can you fix in 24 hours per day?
What motivates us to do that?
What makes a programmer program until 4 a.m.
When we know we'll be more productive if we got some sleep.
But patch won't wait.
What motivates you?
Are you escaping from reality?
Do you notice time slipping by?
Is it enhanced reality?
Well, as I said before, this is simply a job.
But it's programming with...
...due to your mind.
Can you go along for the ride?
Really interested hearing it once feedbacks us.
Your experience with middle of the night hacking sessions.
What you think your motivation may be.
What the cause may be.
And any other information you might like to send along.
I did not have a cook update on some of my projects.
As I mentioned in episode 3 of Expressive Programming.
I am focusing on Gamefuck.
Right now I'm working on converting the book that I wrote two years ago for Nanorama.
It was a take on a group of characters.
The way it can describe them.
That I met while I was becoming single.
And I wrote the story, analyzing them.
And a sketchbook for Expressive.
A scientific one.
And it's from one of their friends.
From inside their world.
Out of the games made a lot of changes from the book.
And now it has eight characters.
And it's coming along nicely.
By nicely I mean I have a terrible way to go.
Mostly in the form of 3D models.
Which brings me to topic number two.
Managing resources.
Every project, web development, graphical.
Programming, game development.
That's top application.
You have something other than the code that's part of your project.
And if you're lucky enough that you're able to work with other programmers and designers and on a team.
That's great.
But not all the time.
Especially now at the beginning.
And I find myself wanting to program.
More than I want to model.
Most of the time.
I have my days where I'd rather model than program.
But not usually.
Right now I'm creating a massive amount of figure model.
A little more than wire friends.
They're not fully textured.
But they give me enough to work with that I'm able to start development on my game.
The end I'll be using for my game is radium3D.
The website is r-a-y-d-i-u-m.org.
It's a very unique take on 3D programming.
And especially on game development.
I'll be going on into that more in the future.
But as far as managing multiple resources.
I have hundreds of textures.
A single knuckle.
So for each hand.
At least 15 textures.
For our face.
That usually can be done one for most of the characters.
For the main characters.
I can't even count.
The model hours and hours have development.
It's a different type of development.
But it has to be done to get the game ready.
So I'm interested in any tips or any experience that you may have doing the same.
I am attempting to start conversations with other developers, with other hackers,
other coders, and other programmers.
What are your experiences with these issues?
What are your solutions?
How do you escape?
How do you get back if you have?
Where have any of us ever come back?
Are we all still lost in the land of things?
Thank you again for listening to expressive programming.
Please contact me with any questions or especially comments of similar stories.
I'll assume you want to remain anonymous.
For information regarding my game.
If you'd like to get involved.
Modeling, programming, or sign up for early affotessing, which will probably be a year away.
Feel free to contact me.
If there's a project you're working on.
With episode five, I'm going to start highlighting projects from my single developers.
If there's something that you'd like me to highlight, listen to the archer,
contact me the way you'd like.
And if you have a very pretty code.
I'll be pretty happy to talk about it.
Until next time, express yourself.
If you enjoyed this episode of expressive programming.
If you'd like more information about me, my projects, my podcasts or anything else.
Please feel free to visit my website at ubersheetgeekchick.com.
If you have any questions, comments or feedback.
Please feel free to email me at feedback at ubersheetgeekchick.com.
Warning, I'm Flaky and I suck at email.
I'm also a member of the phpwomen.org community.
It's a wonderful place.
Any woman involved in development, please join us there.
Also another wonderful community that I'm involved in is devchicks.com.
All the development principles are welcome.
Please come along.
And lastly, I'm a proud member of both linuxchick.com.
That's chick-chic.org.
And linuxchicks.org.
That's chix.org.
And there you'll find opinions and topics and anything you could want.
So any woman out there, please.
You're not alone.
Come join us.
Lastly, I'm on Identica, Twitter, and on IRC three-note server.
I add ubersheetgeek.com.
Feel free to hop in, say hi.
Find me in a room, PM me, and a probably block out.
Other than that, until next time, express yourself.
Thank you for listening to Hack with Public Radio.
HBR is sponsored by Pharaoh.net.
So head on over to C-A-R-O dot-N-T for all of the team.
Thanks for watching.
