Jonathan Dowland
jmtd.net · Personal blog · on HN since 2009
Jonathan Dowland, a British software engineer with a PhD in purely functional stream processing, blogs about Linux, Doom, Vim, Git and hobby projects.
What HN saysHN links it for his Doom experiments, such as removing randomness from the game, and a commenter references his post as a useful write-up on Doom's PRNG.
25HN people shared it
3linked it in comments
43stories submitted
755story points
3 months agolast shared
2009people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Frictionless External Backups with Systemd4 people · 11 points · first shared 2021 · discussion on HN
- 2What happens if you remove randomness from Doom?3 people · 450 points · first shared 2015 · 102 comments on HN
- 3WadC – Procedural Programming Environment for Henerating Doom Maps3 people · 7 points · first shared 2016 · 1 comments on HN
- 4Blog After Death3 people · 6 points · first shared 2023 · discussion on HN
- 5Git Worktrees2 people · 6 points · first shared 2022 · 1 comments on HN
- 6Vim Plugins by Tim Pope2 people · 4 points · first shared 2021 · 1 comments on HN
- 7Hacking Xiaomi IoT Thermometers2 people · 3 points · first shared 2022 · discussion on HN
- 8Things I would like to 3D print1 people · 124 points · first shared 2021 · 138 comments on HN
- 9LaTeX Makes Me Angry1 people · 67 points · first shared 2022 · 100 comments on HN
- 10My first attempt at hacking on Linux: a story1 people · 30 points · first shared 2009 · 1 comments on HN
- 11Hyperlinked PDF Planner1 people · 5 points · first shared 2022 · discussion on HN
- 12Wad Compiler: lazy functional language and IDE for construction of Doom maps1 people · 3 points · first shared 2016 · discussion on HN
- 13Using an iPad for Note-Taking in Talks1 people · 3 points · first shared 2022 · discussion on HN
- 14Linux Mount Namespaces and Persistence1 people · 3 points · first shared 2025 · discussion on HN
- 15Java in a Container World [slides]1 people · 3 points · first shared 2021 · 1 comments on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
jmtd · 2020-04-08
https://jmtd.net/
I've been blogging for about 20 years. Exactly what I write about has changed over that time (of course), but in recent times I've been writing about my PhD (applying purely-functional programming to distributed stream processing); cultural stuff I like, books, music, in particular Nintendo Switch games recently; free software stuff, particularly around Linux and Debian (I'm a Debian developer); note-taking and personal productivity; reading and archiving old media (minidiscs, ZIP drives, stacks of DVD-Rs, floppy disks); my fledgling adventures in 3D printing; retrocomputing and restoring my old Commodore Amiga; various classic Doom hacking projects I've worked on; running and maintaining a DIY free software NAS; computing history and preservation…
I wouldn't normally post in a thread like this but a friend put me up to it. Any feedback appreciated.
paulannesley · 2015-07-01
ghayes · 2015-07-01
To be fair, the key insight to the DOOM prng is that it was used frequently enough for hundreds of mundane events that a player didn't realize (or care) that it wasn't very random at all. There was never a "guess the number" game. A good write-up is here: http://jmtd.net/log/deterministic_doom/