Let's Gamify Goodness

Over the past few months, I’ve been helping someone named Ram with a little side project, and I thought some of you might enjoy it.

Ram runs a mindfulness and meditation site called Ramapani, and he’s been exploring ways to make spiritual practice feel lighter, more playful, and a bit less… solemn. One of the ideas he came up with, and the one I’ve been helping him shape, is something called the World Karma Game.

It’s exactly what it sounds like: a simple, daily invitation to do something kind, log it, and watch the world’s total karma tick upward.

No accounts. No ads. No leaderboard of who’s “most spiritual.”

No tracking. No Cookies.

Just a gentle nudge toward doing one good thing a day, and a shared counter that grows as people contribute.

I liked the idea immediately. It’s small, it’s human, fun, and it’s the sort of thing the internet could use more of. So I’ve been helping Ram with some of the writing, the structure, and the general shape of the experience. Nothing grand: just a collaboration on something that feels wholesome.

If you’re curious, you can try it here:

https://ramapani.com/page/wkg

It takes about ten seconds to participate. You do something kind, anything at all, and you add a point. That’s it.

What I love about it is how uncomplicated it is. There’s no moral scoreboard, no pressure to be perfect, no spiritual posturing. Just a tiny daily reminder that kindness counts, and that even the smallest actions add up when enough people take them.

Ram’s wish (and mine, if I’m honest) is that the counter eventually reaches one million. Not because a million is a magical number, but because it’s a symbol of what’s possible when lots of people do small things consistently.

Anyway, I don’t usually post here these days, but this felt worth sharing. If you’ve been part of this blog at any point over the last decade‑plus, you’ve already contributed more goodness to the world than you probably realise. This little project is just another way to keep that spirit alive.

If you try it, let me know what you think. And if you add a point, thank you, sincerely.

~ A collaborator

Pond life

Back in 2014 I wrote a pond life simulation in BBC BASIC for Windows and promised to share the source code.

With thanks to Ed for the prompt, I have spent the morning getting it ready and it is now available for download from my OneDrive.

In this simulation, a number of 'critters' move around a world trying to stay alive. Critters eat grass, and if they don't get enough they die. Each critter is blind and moves around randomly in the hope that they will find food or a mate (they don't have Tinder nor do they have the Tesco app).

There are a number of parameters that you can play around with, including:

• how many critters start out;
• how likely a critter is to die of old age or hunger;
• how quickly the grass grows;
• how likely two critters will breed;
• how satisfying the grass is;
• how many critters can be born in one 'litter';
• and more.

This simulation is intended as a bit of fun only and I hope you enjoy it. Whilst commenting the source code I have noticed at least two places where the efficiency of the simulation is really bad. I mean REALLY BAD and massive improvements are in the pipeline.

Until then, enjoying being a pond god and I'll see you for the next geeky post which I promise will be about something.

If you want more life simulations, then you might like this post, or, who knows, even these ones.

Maybe you just want to write something on the noticeboard.

More groovy patterns for Raspberry Pi

Following on from the last post about groovy patterns for Raspberry Pi, I present my latest program, another random walk.

It is a random walk similar to last time, however with this one there are three degrees of freedom (rather than horizontal and vertical) and rather than a line, the object displayed in a coloured 3D box.

This code is for BASIC V running under RISCOS on the Raspberry Pi. Copy the code, or download directly.

The code:

   10 REM Blocks
   20 REM T Street
   30 REM 2017-05-21
   40 :
   50 MODE 19
   52 delay = 0
   55 colcyc = 0
   60 angle1 = RAD(45): angle2 = RAD(20)
   70 size = 16
   72 LIMIT = 50
   73 DENSITY = 40
   80 xo=500:yo=500
   90 x = xo: y=yo
  100 dir = RND(5)
  110 PROCsetdir
  112 lc = 0
  114 dc = 0
  120 REPEAT
  140   PROCbox(x,y,size,angle1,angle2)
  141   t=TIME:REPEAT UNTIL TIME>t+delay
  150   x = x + dx: y = y + dy
  151   lc = lc + 1
  160   IF RND(6) = 1 THEN PROCchangeDir
  170   IF x<0 OR x>1000 OR y<0 OR y>1000 OR lc>LIMIT THEN
  180     x=xo:y=yo
  181     colcyc = colcyc+2: IF colcyc > 127 colcyc = 0
  182     lc = 0
  183     dc = dc + 1
  190   ENDIF
  191   IF dc>DENSITY THEN
  192     dc = 0:CLS:x=xo:y=yo:lc = 0
  193   ENDIF
  200 UNTIL FALSE
  210 END
  220 :
  230 DEFPROCbox(x,y,s,ar,au)
  240 REM draws a box at coords x,y
  250 REM where the coords are the lower left corner
  260 REM and s is the size of box
  270 REM and ar and au are angles
  280 MOVE x,y
  290 LOCAL up, right
  300 up = s*SIN(au)
  310 right = s*COS(ar)
  320 REM front side
  330 GCOL 2+colcyc
  340 MOVE x,y+s
  350 PLOT 85,x+s,y
  360 MOVE x+s, y:MOVE x, y+s
  370 PLOT 85, x+s, y+s
  380 REM right hand side
  390 GCOL 1+colcyc
  400 MOVE x+s+right, y+up: MOVE x+s, y+s
  410 PLOT 85, x+s, y
  420 MOVE x+s+right, y+up: MOVE x+s, y+s
  430 PLOT 85, x+s+right, y+s+up
  440 REM top
  450 GCOL 1+colcyc
  460 MOVE x+right, y+s+up: MOVE x+s, y+s
  470 PLOT 85, x, y+s
  480 MOVE x+right, y+s+up: MOVE x+s, y+s
  490 PLOT 85, x+s+right, y+s+up
  491 GCOL 0
  492 MOVEx,y:DRAW x+s,y:DRAW x+s,y+s:DRAWx,y+s:DRAW x,y
  500 ENDPROC
  510 :
  520 DEFPROCsetdir
  530 CASE dir OF
  540   WHEN 1
  550   dx = 0: dy = size
  560   WHEN 2
  570   dx = size: dy = 0
  580   WHEN 3
  590   dx = 0: dy = -size
  600   WHEN 4
  610   dx = -size: dy = 0
  620   WHEN 5
  630   dx = -(size*COS(angle2)): dy = -(size*SIN(angle2))
  635   WHEN6
  636   dx = (size*COS(angle2)): dy = (size*SIN(angle2))
  640 ENDCASE
  650 ENDPROC
  660 :
  670 DEFPROCchangeDir
  680 dir=RND(6)
  690 PROCsetdir
  700 ENDPROC
  710 :


Day clock page

Following on from yesterday's Dementia Day Clock, I decided to create a new Day Clock with a little more information - for instance - accurate time.

Day clock on my Lumia 950. Click the image to load the new Day Clock.

I managed to export the data from the Perpetual Calendar for the BBC microcomputer using BeebEm and then wrote a script to convert the data from a BBC text file into a JSON file. The data contains the dates of various interesting anniversaries, and so I thought it would be a nice touch to show these on the new day clock, including a calculation of how long ago the event took place.  For example today is the 41 year anniversary of the UK Sex Discrimination Act 1975.

BeebEm has some really useful tools, most notably the 'export' function which allows you to export one or more files from a BBC disk image to a PC format. This means that I can code a file on the BBC microcomputer, but still access or edit it on my Windows 10 machine. Yay!

I then added in 'red-letter' days, or other recurring events including holidays and Pagan festivals (from Pagan Calendar). I cannot be absolutely sure I haven't made any errors here, but I'll keep checking that this works and then add some more date/time information as and when.

The final touch was to put the current time into the new page tab so you can check the time in your list of browser tabs without navigating back to the page.

Well that's it for now. In the future I may add some other features, perhaps a background image that changes with each passing month. Maybe I shall put a Google search box in, or other widgets such as weather. Maybe I'll just sack it off and build something else.

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Come back soon for more nerdy stuff.

If you liked this post, then you might also like to watch some bouncing balls, or just play a game of Have Spell Will Travel.