When the Duke walks, you don't notice it

In the spirit of transgender day of visibility

 Posted on 2019-04-05  |  6 minutes  |  1131 words  |  Carmen Bianca BAKKER  • Other languages: Esperanto

This is my late submission for transgender day of visibility. It comes almost a week late, but I suppose I’ll use this proverb that is popular among the trans community to justify myself: The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now. Or: The best time to post about transgender day of visibility was 31st of March. The second best time is 5th of April. [Read More]
Gender  Personal 

An argument for the existence of non-binary gender identities

 Posted on 2019-02-23  |  3 minutes  |  537 words  |  Carmen Bianca BAKKER

So there’s a thought I’ve been having lately. The idea that some people identify as neither male nor female has become more mainstream over the past few years. And I assume like a lot of people, I’ve struggled with giving those people a place within my own concept and experience of gender. So I’d taken the accepting-but-condescending view of “yeah whatever, do what makes you happy, I just don’t understand it”. [Read More]
Gender  Activism 

Nine lives

The guardian cat

 Posted on 2018-07-30  |  1 minutes  |  141 words  |  Carmen Bianca BAKKER

Not long ago, I created an NPC for my level 3 D&D party to encounter. The NPC is a little kitty in a basement beneath an abandoned tower full of magical treasures. As soon as the party began to take any items from the basement, the cat turned on them, swiping its little claws at the ankles of the daring adventurers. Two floating weapons assaulted the party together with the cat to prevent the party from stealing anything. [Read More]
D&D 5e 

Amsterdam time

Why we should use cities, not timezones, to indicate time

 Posted on 2018-04-23  |  3 minutes  |  548 words  |  Carmen Bianca BAKKER  • Other languages: Esperanto

We will meet at three o’ clock GMT, the first of May. [sic] This is a subject on which I am extremely pigheaded. Often, when I am planning an online meeting with people who live in other timezones, they wish to choose a time and date using the GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) timezone. And often, that causes misunderstandings. The cause behind the misunderstanding is normally daylight saving time (henceforth called summer time). [Read More]
Opinion 

Improving En Pyssant

How to improve the performance of a Python program

 Posted on 2018-04-06  |  11 minutes  |  2295 words  |  Carmen Bianca BAKKER

I have been working on En Pyssant for a while, a Free Software chess engine written in Python. The engine part of the program is not (yet) complete, but the rules of chess are wholly implemented. My primary goal in writing this engine is to use everything and the kitchen sink to learn new things: Maybe the program does not need a full testing and benchmarking suite, but I have implemented it anyway. [Read More]
Programming  Python  En Pyssant