| So here's what I've been up to lately... |
[Apr. 12th, 2020|11:27 am]
StevenRoy
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Okay, that's enough of that last Subpar Journal Wittiness.
If it seems like I'm not doing very much right now, it's mainly because I'm doing a lot of different things simultaneously, and that makes everything take forever.
For example, here's a partial list of what I've currently got in progress:
- A browser script that'll make long random hard-to-hack passwords using just the name of the site you're on plus a shorter keyword of your choosing. It will work like more advanced "password manager" addons, without storing anything at all on your computer.
- Learning how to write music using "Deflemask", a rather interesting tracker for retro chiptune music. I'm about 90% done with my first piece of YM2151 music. (I'm gonna put it in a demo! I've already got my own parser/converter for VGM files and a corresponding music player routine that works rather nicely.)
- So yeah, I'm also experimenting with programming for a new system called the X16, which is a lot like an overclocked C64 with tons of memory, a YM2151 chip for some interesting sounds, some extra graphics abilities (like a SNES in some ways, except 640x480 and it's got a VGA port) and other crazy features. It's very retro and very weird and it's still under development and the specs keep changing and that keeps me on my toes!
- That old Commodore 64 game I've been working on intermittently for over a decade still gets poked every now and then.
( Read more...Collapse ) |
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| What does SJW mean to me? |
[Apr. 1st, 2020|05:20 am]
StevenRoy
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Snowy Jingly Winter
Seen Jack? Who?
Smelly Jocks Wafting
Subtle Japanese Wives
Silk Jumpers Woven
Spectacular Job, Whigs!
Soggy Jam Waffles
Suspicious Jesus Worship?
Sheriffs Jailed Wrongly
Six Jackpots Won
Skunks Jogging Wetly
Startling Jumpy Werewolves
Smoking Joints Witlessly
Soft Jackal Wings
Sunny Jordan Weekend
Saucy Juicy Walrus
Sapphire-Jewelled Wristwatch
Sent Jeeps Where?
Strictly Judging Wardrobes
Someone Just Went
Surreptitiously Jovial Witches
Strawman-Jousting Wannabes
Sweden's Judiciary Weaknesses
Seattle Jinxes Washington
Stinky Jamaican Weed
Single Jewish Women
Snake's Jiggly Wiggle
Stealthy Jaybird Watching
Stormy July Weather
Senators Justify War
Squeamish Jailhouse Workers
Surprisingly Jarring Wedgies
Stupid Jerk Wads
Sheep's Jagged Wool
Stop Juggling Warheads!
Syria's Jihadist Wackos.
Strait-Jacket Wearers
Shushing Justin's Wailing
Sickly Jaundiced Wretches
Slowly Journeying Westward
Symphonic Jazz Washboard
Special Jurisdiction Wanted
Strong June Winds
Sondheim's Jaunty Waltzes
Spitting Jettisons Water
Science? Jury Wonders!
Seven Jalopies Wagered
Silly Jolly Weirdos
Sherlock Joins Watson
Sinfully Joyful Wednesdays
Southern Jersey Whorehouse
Shattered Jade Windows
Some Jokes Work
Swamp Juice, Waiter!
Suicidal Jerboa Warts
Serengeti Jaguar Wrestling
Screaming, Jabbering, Whinging |
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| Been a while, hasn't it? |
[Feb. 5th, 2020|05:01 am]
StevenRoy
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So, I haven't posted here, been active, or really even logged in, in many years.
There are multiple reasons for this.
Russia is one of them.
It's not that I don't trust the LiveJournal people themselves, or Russians in general - there are a lot of great people in these groups. The government is another story, though: Any government that would hack the election process of another country (such as the States), can't be trusted to not interfere in the operations, especially the privacy practices, of a site such as this one. It can't be trusted to not send armies into server farms to harvest data on all the democracy-tolerating users of popular sites, and then try to find ways to use that data to subvert laws, identities, communities or entire countries.
LiveJournal has already had at least one data breach. That's reason #2. On two separate occasions within the past 5 years, someone in Eastern Europe emailed me my unique password to this site (I of course changed it immediately after the first message - the second message still had the old password) in an attempt to extort money from me. (Long story short, this site says no one but me ever actually got into this account, and nothing was accessed or damaged, and nothing happened.)
There's also a third reason: Put simply, I haven't had much to say, and even less reason to say what little there was. These posts take time, and they take energy, and, especially on a site as practically-deserted as this one has become, it's just no longer worth it.
So let's see if, in the future, I suddenly feel interesting again, or if something else changes. Until then, I'm gone. |
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| #WTFAmerica |
[Nov. 10th, 2016|05:23 am]
StevenRoy
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| If you get the reference... |
[Nov. 6th, 2016|08:48 pm]
StevenRoy
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This is pretty close to summing up my opinion of this year's election:
(Image courtesy of Frinkiac.)
Frankly, the way I see it, I think both sides need their butts kicked. Everyone needs to be reminded that they don't have to vote for either Total Ass (И возможно шпион) Donald Rump, or four more years of Clinton scandals. Yes, America, you -can- vote third-party!
(Really, I want to see [this] happen!)
(And then later maybe we should think about having basic background checks and mental health evaluations required for all presidential candidates in the future...) |
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| My adventures with MP4 support in Firefox |
[Oct. 12th, 2016|06:41 am]
StevenRoy
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For a very long time, I've been trying, with no success, to find a way to get MP4 videos - like those on Twitter and Imgur - to play in Firefox on Windows XP.
The official story, of course, is that the MP4 technology is patented, and this creates licensing restrictions that aren't fully compatible with Firefox's "free and open source" philosophy. Thus, for this reason, Firefox lacks built-in support for MP4 files (MPEG4 containers and H.264 compression), and instead relies on the underlying operating system to provide the necessary decoding functions.
( "This seems to me, of course, like a load..."Collapse ) |
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| Did this happen elsewhere? |
[Sep. 17th, 2016|05:52 am]
StevenRoy
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Immediately before Trump entered the stage of Fallon's Tonight Show on NBC, the local CBS station - which I was watching at the time (because I like Colbert more) - suddenly went off the air for several minutes, returning approximately 30 seconds before the end of Fallon's "interview" with Trump.
While it's likely that the CBS station just had to do some transmitter maintenance to get their closed captions working (they were absent before the outage, but worked fine afterwards), I still find the timing somewhat suspicious.
The only reason I'm mentioning this publicly is because I want to know if this happened anywhere else, or just on the digital TV airwaves in Utah. Did anyone else get that? |
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| Getting Spammed by the GOP - part 2 |
[Sep. 13th, 2016|12:58 am]
StevenRoy
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So, today, we got another letter from the Republicans... the third one so far this month, that I know of.
They are now doing that thing I really hate where a group will actually -send- money or gifts while soliciting donations.
I think we'll keep the dollar... But I'm tempted to reply with a little note:
Dear Reince Priebus,
Thanks for the dollar.
We promptly burned it to save you the trouble.
...And that's how to do sarcasm!
Sincerely... |
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| Getting Spammed by the GOP |
[Sep. 8th, 2016|09:26 pm]
StevenRoy
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Click the image to view on DeviantArt
During August 2016, we'd receive as many as three envelopes in a week from these people, each one containing a long letter describing how desperate they are for money (for reasons that I don't consider valid), and a reply envelope (or, in one case, three) with which to send our contribution.
To put it mildly: "This seems excessive."
Plus, there's some sort of really stupid irony in the whole idea of Donald Rump asking my family for money. It's the kind of irony that makes me wish people could be arrested, fined, and/or jailed for excessive irony.
Frankly, I don't like either side very much (I'm actually leaning towards the Libertarian candidate right now), but there's no ambiguity about which one is spending more money to directly bother my family.
I'm currently in the process of composing an angry letter to them, asking them to stop. |
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| An experiment in graphics programming |
[Jul. 1st, 2016|05:47 pm]
StevenRoy
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Lately, I've been digging through some of my really old QuickBasic graphics experiments, and figuring out ways to convert some of the more interesting routines to JavaScript... (Because, dang, I was imaginative in the early 90s!)
I figure this trippy thing is especially worth sharing, as it's one of the more interesting results.
Later, I want to make a version of this that will measure its own performance and allow users to send it in as feedback. If this sort of thing runs smoothly enough on enough computers (and if I can get sound to work well enough), I might try to convert some of my old unfinished games into versions that can be played online. That will be interesting! |
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| Goals for 2016 |
[Feb. 9th, 2016|05:36 am]
StevenRoy
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This year, I hope to:
- Backup all the hard drives over here. It's been a while... (It's 2016; Have you backed up your files lately?)
- Get a ref made of my new sona. The design's pretty much all together in my head; I just need to find the time and the motivation to sit down for a few hours and try to set it to pixels. (And I might stream that, too; hoping that having an audience might help me stay motivated and productive... Or at least it's worth a try.)
- Commission more art of my characters. I actually did manage, somewhat recently, to come into enough money that I was able to set aside some of it specifically for art. The main problem now is that I can't decide whether to wait until I can get a ref of my new sona put together (a debut that's long overdue) and then get lots of art of it (because I know I'll want that), or get some art of some of my other characters in the meantime even though that will mean less art of my sona when that's ready. I'll admit, this decision would be much less taxing if I didn't have to worry so much about the money. Thus the next item:
- Find some source of proper, regular income. To be honest, I think I've developed a minor phobia of spending money on "nice things"; That's the natural result, though, of having had so little for so long. Would you believe I've been unemployed for over a decade? While I do manage to earn a few dollars here and there, mostly with doing computer repairs for the neighbors, I really need something more substantial. (I'd consider a Patreon, for example, if I had something good to offer...)
- Finally, if there's time, maybe I should try to figure out just how the heck I manage to be kept so busy by so much nothing! Fun fact: This list was originally supposed to be of my New Year's resolutions. See how good I am at getting things done on time? |
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| A quick question about here and there... |
[Dec. 13th, 2015|07:42 am]
StevenRoy
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I keep pretty much forgetting this thing exists. Not sure if I should bother posting stuff here again or not. (And it's not like I have much to say nowadays anyway...)
Is there anyone watching me here who isn't also watching my DA and/or FA pages?
(My Youtube doesn't count because it doesn't have a "Journal" feature... Or at least one I intend to use at all.) |
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| My take on the recent IMVU drama over at FA... |
[Apr. 1st, 2015|05:54 pm]
StevenRoy
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I'm with the community that will come together as a sort of plan. Yes.
Just because this is the response can be free from bias, then yeah, this acquisition was. Heh, I make the changes, doesn't mean new crazy rules / art bans / censorship on FA, I'll be on Facebook that rely on your page so you have a few of my head - Weasyl, Inkbunny, others hate them, users that have fallen through, this is kinda harsh if they want to check if it, a quick message to all watchers?
( Please, bothering me is definitely not right...Collapse ) |
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| Alert for Avast users, danger of data loss! |
[Nov. 14th, 2014|04:48 am]
StevenRoy
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I figure this is important enough to post here as well...
Avast's "Browser Cleanup" tool has a bug that may cause it to delete a large number of installed programs and/or other files on your hard drive, while supposed to be only removing "unwanted" toolbars.
( DetailsCollapse ) |
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| The things I do for money... |
[Dec. 18th, 2013|01:39 am]
StevenRoy
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So, after getting to bed and falling asleep at around 4 AM last night, I had to get up again at 5 to answer the phone, because one of my neighbors was having internet trouble.
By the time I had a very early breakfast, finished waking up all over again, and got into the car, it was 6 AM... And the full moon was still out, and big and bright.
Long story short, a DSL modem needed to be reset... And I figured, having to be up so early is very likely to mess up the entire day, and I predicted I was going to need caffeine.
So, on the way home, I brought a mug by the local 7-11 and got a refill. 4 parts Mountain Dew, two parts Fuze Raspberry Tea, one part Cherry Coke... with one shot of lime and two of coconut. It tasted pretty good!
It did a pretty good job of keeping me awake enough to get some work done, too. By the time suppertime rolled around, I had had about half of it.
...And then my mom, without asking, dumped the rest of it into some punch she was making for supper.
And it tasted weird. And now I'm sleepy.
What a day. |
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| A Star Trek pun dream. |
[Nov. 22nd, 2013|06:49 am]
StevenRoy
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The man and his two sisters were captains, each of their own Federation starship, and tended to travel as a group while patrolling one of the more dangerous Neutral Zones at the edge of Federation territory. During their many missions, and their many adventures, they had to have been doing something right; for, at some point, they had managed to incur the attention of some sort of unknown, unseen, unidentified assassin.
( Read more...Collapse )
This was a dream I had a few weeks ago. I have never been so impressed by the punning ability of my own subconscious! (Although that does seem like a lot of setup for just that one pun, doesn't it?) |
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| What I've been up to the last few months... |
[Oct. 19th, 2013|07:15 am]
StevenRoy
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I haven't been feeling very creative lately. I've been too busy with other things to bother coming up with more stuff to post here. Sorry about that!
I repaired a neighbor's TV recently. A huuuuuge flat-screen HDTV. I had to remove 31 screws just to get the back off, 3 more to get a bracket out of the way, and then 6 to get a circuit board out. That was mounted on a backplate, which had to come off, and that involved undoing 16 more screws plus 11 of those little plastic standoffs that you had to pinch with pliers (those count, right?)... All to get to the back of a circuit board and solder on a part I got for $2 at Radio Shack! ...And then 3 more screws to move a fan out of the way so I could wrestle that board back into place and reconnect all the wires!
Imagine using the total number of screws you have to undo as an indicator of the complexity of the job you're doing. This TV repair job would have a score of 31+3+6+16+11+3, or 70 screws. That's a lot! (Especially considering how I had to lean over the TV at a very painful angle - it was too big for the table so I had it on the carpeted floor, and was practically standing on my head while undoing most of these screws! Oh, my aching spine! Don't worry, it's all better now!)
In comparison, I also recently replaced a power supply in a friend's computer, because the 5V line had become "flaky" and was causing the power supply to shut off (thank goodness that's all it did!) whenever a USB device was plugged in. That was only a 6-screw job: Two to get the side open, four for the power supply!
The good news: I earned a lot of money!
But I'm not done yet: Eventually, I gotta replace the motherboard in my own computer because of its bizarre sensitivity to cold. I'm also building more computers: some to sell, and some which will be Christmas presents to friends and family members whose computers badly, badly need upgrading!
I am so, so busy!
(By the way, it's probably worth pointing out that I collect old dead computers sometimes. Some of them just need replacement parts to be as good as new, while others usually have useful parts worth salvaging!) |
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| Sometimes I hate Unicode... |
[Aug. 23rd, 2013|09:44 pm]
StevenRoy
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The Unicode character set is meant to contain pretty much every possible character from every language, including a variety of miscellaneous symbols, and even spaces of varying widths for multiple purposes.
There are also some very special Unicode character codes (I believe the technical term is "code points") that, instead of being printable characters, mark the formatting of the following text. For example, there's an invisible code that can be placed at the beginning of Arabic or Hebrew text to specify that the text is meant to be read in a right-to-left direction.
This seems perfectly reasonable, until you see that same special formatting code used in filenames, directory names, and Windows registry keys... Suddenly you're trying to delete a virus and you're getting error messages like ".yek gniteled elihw rorrE" and wondering what the heck language that is... Or trying to look through a virus scanner's log file and seeing a messed-up line of text, or trying to tell people on a message board that you're having problems with the "gupdate" service, when in fact the problem is named "(reverse)etadpug" and regedit can't even parse that name correctly because of that Unicode cheat!
(Yes, my nephew had that virus on his computer. After spending several hours trying to deal with it manually, some Googling pointed me to a program called "RogueKiller" which took care of the problem very nicely.)
Unicode has its good points (pun intended), but sometimes I just hate how much potential for malfunction and mischief there is! (For example, is there something up with the tags in this LJ post?) |
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| Firefox sound vs sound reasoning. |
[Mar. 11th, 2013|03:20 am]
StevenRoy
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Regarding my experiments with generated sound in JavaScript, I'm officially declaring them a failure, at least for now. HTML5 still seems like a good platform for programming simple games, but I'll be using an embedded Java applet for sound. (Of course, if I'm going to do that, I might as well just abandon HTML5 entirely and program the whole thing in Java, right?)
Mozilla's Audio Data API, in addition to being proprietary (which I actually don't mind), is also not working correctly in current Firefox versions (it actually never worked the way I wanted it to), and it's apparently also already deprecated, despite not having anything good to replace it with yet!
(There is, apparently, a new standard that they're supposedly considering; I even found the specs for it, but the whole thing reads like the ramblings of an Eastern European mental patient who's halfway through his first month of an "English as a third language for mental patients" night school course. My rule is: If I don't understand it, I'm not using it!)
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( During my experiments, I began thinking up a list of criteria for what I would consider a good sound API...Collapse )
With these criteria in mind, a functional API pretty much designs itself. Still, I'll consider typing up a detailed specification later, if anyone seems interested in it. (Even though I don't expect much to come of it!)
(In Firefox's defense, it's possible to do some nifty things with the sound functions provided; it just can't be used adequately for games or any application where one needs to minimize lag.) |
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| Toshiba 64GB USB flash drives. |
[Mar. 9th, 2013|03:31 am]
StevenRoy
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Wow, there are a lot of inexpensive Toshiba 64GB USB flash drives on eBay right now...
There's only one problem: Toshiba doesn't make 64GB USB flash drives! (At least not yet...) |
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