Ben Harris
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bjh21.me.uk
Ben Harris
@bjh21.me.uk
5 followers 1 following 150 posts
[bridged from https://wandering.shop/@bjh21 on the fediverse by https://fed.brid.gy/ ]
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bjh21.me.uk
Last weekend in #dwarffortress, the goblins went easy on us and we found our bolt throwers less useful than hoped. I'm not sure where it's going today, but I think we probably need more equipment.

https://youtube.com/live/mxgVLHCF8yE
A screenshot of Dwarf Fortress. We are looking at the equipment view of a small squad of dwarves. Someone who understood this screen would recognise that three members of the squad are lacking weapons and quivers.
December 5, 2025 at 10:40 PM
bjh21.me.uk
A fun consequence of having servers in the NTP Pool is that it gives me a 10,000-packet-per-second distributed monitoring system for the University's Internet connection.

So if, for example, the border firewall and routers briefly have trouble talking to one another, I get to see it in my graphs.
A line graph headed "NTP traffic from NTP Pool". It stretches in time from 11:50 to 12:20. There are three lines across the graph at around 4 kp/s, with occasional peaks, but at 12:04 there's a sharp downward spike as all the lines go to zero very briefly.
December 5, 2025 at 6:31 PM
bjh21.me.uk
In my #dwarffortress of Keskalokil, the second new-style siege has turned up. We have bolt throwers, but they have cave dragons and the last siege killed two thirds of my fortress. Join me to see if we survive!

https://youtube.com/live/vQyMuFwXUUM
A screenshot of Dwarf Fortress. We are looking at a cave dragon called "Ago". A gigantic monster, once a dragon, now adapted to and polluted by the underground. Its wings fall limp at its side. Its face is full of incredibly long teeth. Its eyes are large to penetrate the darkness. She is tough, but quite susceptible to disease and very weak. She is weak. Her scales are white. Her eyes are green.
November 30, 2025 at 9:00 PM
bjh21.me.uk
It's time for some #dwarffortress, and I'm trying to learn how these new-fangled bolt throwers work.

https://youtube.com/live/WXrIK_t9XA4
A screenshot of Dwarf Fortress. We are looking at a building called "Practice bolt thrower" which is pointed north, not in use, and loaded with 100 bolts.
November 28, 2025 at 10:23 PM
bjh21.me.uk
In the #dwarffortress of Keskalokil, we've mostly finished burying the dead from the last siege, so maybe we can start fortifying against the next one. And doing something with that minecart full of magma.

https://youtube.com/live/wLYcEz3bLsA
A screenshot of Dwarf Fortress. In the background is the usual chaos of ground level in a fortress that's seen far too many sieges. In the foreground we are examining an exceptional steel minecart that contains magma [833].
November 23, 2025 at 9:52 PM
bjh21.me.uk
Last time out, we got to experience the new siege mechanics in #dwarffortress 53. Now we need to clean up the resulting mess and bury the dead.

https://youtube.com/live/6c0fxuB5QVk
A screenshot of Dwarf Fortress. We are looking at the combat log for a recruit who misses a goblin Axe Lord several times and then gets his hand bashed hard enough that he drops his weapon. (I've checked and the recruit is still alive, astonishingly)
November 21, 2025 at 10:46 PM
bjh21.me.uk
It's been suggested that a #dwarffortress called "Shoottest" should perhaps be testing the improved siege engines in version 53. But first, we're trying to get the magma-transporting railway to work properly, and I've found an oddity in the atom smasher.

https://youtube.com/live/Rplt5E5P3L0
A screenshot of Dwarf Fortress. We're a little way below ground, and apparently looking at a square containing a Gypsum Bridge and Water [7/7]. The significance of this is unclear.
November 16, 2025 at 10:33 PM
bjh21.me.uk
So far, the siege update to #dwarffortress hasn't caused me any serious problems, so it's possible that this evening will be spent trying to get more magma somewhere useful.

https://youtube.com/live/j4ovEICzhBc
A screenshot of Dwarf Fortress. We are deep underground, and between two large natural caverns there's some kind of engineering work involving upward and downward slopes, some constructed walls, and some water. There are works ongoing, indicated by some characters appearing in black on brown,
November 14, 2025 at 10:32 PM
bjh21.me.uk
The new version of #dwarffortress hasn't yet delivered one of the new, scarier sieges, but we're expecting a (small) one soon, and the dwarves are slowly getting prepared...

https://youtube.com/live/IXQbvKsIzAY

[edit: guess who forgot to post this at the start of the stream!]
A screenshot of Dwarf Fortress. We are looking at the equipment of a member of The Oceanic Calm, who has some iron chain leggings, two gauntlets, two high boots, an iron shield, a steel spear, and an oaken crossbow.
November 10, 2025 at 12:22 AM
bjh21.me.uk
#dwarffortress 53.02 is out, and apparently has new siege mechanics. Let's see how Keskalokil copes!

https://youtube.com/live/VezQ3vdR4Xk
A screenshot of Dwarf Fortress. We are looking at a settings screen, which has items like "Invaders can break constructed walls" and "Invaders can dig natural walls". All of these are set to "Yes".
November 7, 2025 at 10:32 PM
bjh21.me.uk
On Friday's #dwarffortress stream, I got the first immigrants in years of game time. Join me while I try to get them organised:

https://youtube.com/live/Y-RFuQ2lBh4
A screenshot of Dwarf Fortress. We're looking at the unit list, which shows ten dwarves, most of whom either picking up equipment or with no job. The dwarves have a variety of normal dwarven occupations like engraver and gem setter. There are no doctors visible at all.
November 2, 2025 at 9:41 PM
bjh21.me.uk
My #dwarffortress game seems to be settling down a bit. Not sure if it's in a good way yet.

https://youtube.com/live/UxuUiFACh2A
A screenshot of Dwarf Fortress. We are looking at a list of cancelled jobs, most of which are caused by agitated wildlife.
October 31, 2025 at 10:27 PM
bjh21.me.uk
I'm a little worried that my #dwarffortress game may be converging on some kind of steady state. But to be honest that would be a nice problem to have. Stream here:

https://youtube.com/live/u-0PXaROsRM
A screenshot of Dwarf Fortress. Everything is calm, albeit covered in dead goblins, railways, old armour, ravens, etc.
October 26, 2025 at 9:51 PM
bjh21.me.uk
Gratuitous Saturday repair content: this knife's handle had split from vigorous use, so I tried a whipping using wet cotton string. Now that it's dried and the cotton has shrunk, the blade seems quite firmly fixed in place.
A photo of a ceramic-bladed knife, looking at the joint between the blade and the handle. If you look closely, you can see that there are two cracks in the handle along the blunt edge of the blade, so that if you try to cut with it the blade will just move up in the handle. Or it would were it not for the whipping in the background. A long view of the knife from the previous picture. About a centimetre from the blade, the handle is bound up with white cotton string over a length of about a centimetre. It looks quite neat from this side if I do say so myself. A close-up of the other side of the knife handle. The whipping consists of 9 turns of string. The ends of the string have been pulled underneath the whipping, leaving a slightly unsightly bulge.
October 25, 2025 at 1:19 PM
bjh21.me.uk
I looked for HaSeul's most recent single on Qobuz. Wondered why the title was missing. Remembered that elsewhere I'd seen it starting with a less-that sign. They didn't, did they? Oh dear. How embarrassing.
A screenshot of a search result from qobuz.com. It lists four "Albums". The first two are "Fragile Eyes" by HaSeul and "Plastic Candy" by HaSeul. The third is also by HaSeul, but there's a blank space where the title should be. A screenshot of the Firefox developer tools showing the DOM inspector. In the middle of the screenshot is what appears to be an element called "love" with an attribute called "poison". A close-up of the text '<love poison=""></love>'.
October 25, 2025 at 12:55 PM
bjh21.me.uk
In #dwarffortress, I'm trying to reduce the number of goblins on the map by humane (dwarvene?) means. And also improving people's bedrooms.

https://youtube.com/live/h6fg-n3USkM
A screenshot of Dwarf Fortress. We are looking at a list of bedrooms, most of which are assigned to dwarves.
October 24, 2025 at 9:22 PM
bjh21.me.uk
In #dwarffortress, it's the start of autumn, so I'm expecting a dwarven caravan and probably a goblin siege. I hope I'm properly prepared.

https://youtube.com/live/3kUoB5HgOuQ
A screenshot of Dwarf Fortress. We are looking at a goblin cage made of tin. It's one of a group of goblin cages, some of which are still waiting to be built.
October 19, 2025 at 9:01 PM
bjh21.me.uk
In #dwarffortress, I think it's time I rationalised my cage traps, and maybe let the goblins out. Carefully, of course.

https://youtube.com/live/24TBJWAKGpU
A screenshot of Dwarf Fortress. We are looking at a cage trap which has three cages on it, all containing goblins.
October 17, 2025 at 9:17 PM
bjh21.me.uk
In #dwarffortress, I'm trying to keep the gradually declining number of dwarves reasonably happy. And also stopping the giant hamsters taking over.

https://youtube.com/live/yz1uD1NMnZU
A screenshot of Dwarf Fortress. We are looking at a weapon trap that's full of silver mauls.
October 12, 2025 at 8:32 PM
bjh21.me.uk
In my #dwarffortress we dealt with the last goblin invasion with no loss of dwarven life. The swimming pool did kill someone though. So let's try not to let that happen again.

https://youtube.com/live/L2u64F42qKw
A screenshot of Dwarf Fortress. At the bottom of the screen is a large walled-in room full of water and featuring a large number of dead goblins. The total dwarven population is 30.
October 10, 2025 at 9:37 PM
bjh21.me.uk
I learned that the Korean for "grapefruit" is '자몽' (jamong), wondered a bit about etymology, and now I'm lost in a twisty maze of cirtus fruit, all different, and have 14 Wikipedia and Wiktionary tabs open.
October 10, 2025 at 9:54 AM
bjh21.me.uk
In #dwarffortress, the goblins killed rather too many of my dwarves in the last siege. But at least my ravens are doing well.

https://youtube.com/live/6-dA_jGk9Xk
A screenshot of Dwarf Fortress. We're looking at the generally rather messy ground level. Under the cursor, we're told that there's a Stray Raven (+Trained+), a Stray Raven (Tame), a Stray Raven Hatchling (Tame), a Nest Box, and some Dense bentgrass. On the other hand, the dwarven population is now 31.
October 5, 2025 at 8:53 PM
bjh21.me.uk
My #dwarffortress is running out of dwarves, but no-one has died for months, which is probably an improvement.

https://youtube.com/live/ksY3D5og-gw
A screenshot of Dwarf Fortress. We're at ground level and it's quite messy as usual. The small pool by the west river now has a ledge along it that is in some way significant.
October 3, 2025 at 9:24 PM
bjh21.me.uk
As goblins continue to reduce the ranks of my dwarves in #dwarffortress I think I may need to cautiously start bringing them back to work.

https://youtube.com/live/lHr2oSASyZU
A screenshot of Dwarf Fortress. We are looking at the work details configuration and have selected a detail whose symbol is "=X". Its tasks include Stone Hauling, Wood Hauling, Item Hauling, Burial, etc.
September 28, 2025 at 9:02 PM
bjh21.me.uk
I'm slowly running out of dwarves in #dwarffortress, but I'm determined to press on.

https://youtube.com/live/6tQJSnuU3uc
A screenshot of Dwarf Fortress. We are inspecting Asën Zasittagùz. She is 28 years old, and is constructing a building. She is currently carrying some copper bars.
September 26, 2025 at 10:00 PM