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i finally got a mechanical keyboard

Now i understand. Typing is like SOOO addicting now. It's so joyfull just to press these buttons. I could do it for hours. I could do it for years. I've hance realized that a large part of my facination with retro computers comes from my love of the excellent keyboards they use. I'm no monster however, I won't consume their keycaps for my own projects, this new keyboards is fitting my needs just fine!!!

I understand you people now. This is excellent.

_{1:32 PM 7/27/2023}

everything everywhere all at once

I just seen this film with my family. It's affected me in ways beyond words. Such a deeply passionate beautiful production, I am moved.

_{12:18 AM 6/3/2023}

Saccharine Pale

Hey guys! Please check out my friend's game, Sacchrine Pale! He's been working on it a good long time, and it's really cool and super fun! It comes out on the 6th of March, please wish list it if you can!

_{7:31 PM 2/16/2023}

Boom

Sorry for my incoherent rambling in the last post. I'm going through a lot right now.

Life updates?

Someone tried to steal my bike during my last final exam at the end of the semester. That special vanmoof lock kicked in tho so they were not able to get away with it. I found it leaned up a gainst the wall a few feet away from the cut lock on the ground.

I made a game! I can't post it here since it uses my IRL identity (trying to keep this lowkey), but I learned a lot while making it.

Oh, I almost forgot, BIG NEWS PEOPLE, MY SEGA SATURN WORKS!!!! WOOT WOOT!! I've been binging a bunch of cool games I hear about with the satiator device . Current faves are: Kingdom Grand Prix, Radiant Silvergun, Dragon Slayer 2: Xanadu via the Falcom Classics Collection, Street Fighter Collection, Bulk Slash is super awsome! I've played other RPGs, but progress on those is frozen since Xanadu takes up like 300 blocks!!! What the fuck falcom!!

I'm still pretty concerned for the future. Avoiding professional web dev without professional experience in C++ or C# is proving to be quite difficult. How do you break into a new industry without these types of experiences? arghhh

There's a game dev conference in November that I'm considering going to. I'lll let you know if I do.

For a number of reasons, I'd really like to move out of my home soon. But lack of employment or other prospects is limiting me right now. Also, the housing market in the New York area is flaring up pretty badly. Furthermore, there ain't that many jobs in the types of industries that I'm looking at in this area. I'd rather not have to leave this area.

The microblog bot is down. I've been shitposting on twitter (not gonna link that LOL) in the meantime, but it will likely return to the web in a few days.

Oh, I probably aught put some more fun things on this site, yes? More to come.

_{10:42 AM 1/17/2023}

Autism Diagnosis, Computer Rebuild, and Other Technology Ramblings

As the title suggests, I was diagnosed with autism three weeks ago. What does this mean for.. everything really? I'm not entirely sure. I'm glad that I've finally been diagnosed, but I'm wishing I'd gone through this whole process 20 years ago... it could have saved a lot of headache.. Better late than never I guess. I'm not planning on doing anything.. different? I guess I'm new to this level of understanding.

In other news, after a recent hard disk failure on my childhood desktop PC, I've taken it upon myself to do some upgrades. The last hard drive was about 12 gigs, I've installed a 64 gigabyte SSD. It's much faster!. I've also installed a brand new Nvidia Geforce MX200 which has honestly been incredible. I think when my parents first got the computer, they never configured the graphics card, and it was always running on default drivers. As a result of this, we always had very low color depth, and the computer always looked and felt quite sluggish. I installed the NVidia Drivers, and the result is night and day. I tried running Unreal Tournament before I installed the GPU drivers, and the software rendering was so bad I could hardly use the startup menu. After I installed it though? One way ticket to frag town baby. You have to understand, my folks bought this computer a few months after I was born. I have NEVER seen it fly like that. Simply exhilerating. I'm going to run it again and check the ram usage, since I feel that the default 96MB is not good enough. As for the OS.. it's running Windows 2000. Much faster than the Windows XP install we previously had running on it. I'm publishing a short guide on how I upgraded it along with this so others that might need help upgrading their vintage PCs can do so without worry.

I'm quite proud of myself here. I've never upgraded, built, or did anything super hardware intensive to a computer before out of fear that I may break it. When I was a kid I would always take things apart and then.. leave them dissasembled... permenantly. I'm sure you understand why now that I'm generally a software person, though it's empowering to know that I can totallly fix and upgrade computers when I need to.

On this topic of computers though, I've realized that I need a new laptop. My main computer just ain't doing it for me anymore. It's an HP Envy x360, and kind of un-approachable for a newbie to service. The kicker is though, I already have a lot of computers. Each one has it's own weird issue that's preventing me from using it like a normal laptop. HP randomly turns off. My old compaq's hard disk is failing and the rubber case is melting off, my lenovo's screen is fucking destroyed and costs 200 dollars to repair.. though the same laptop can easily be had for 100 dollars. My Dell Latitude XPI is from 1997 and way too old for daily use.. plus the GPU is terrible. My other, slightly newer Dell has motherboard, screen, AND battery issues making it completely unusable.

The only portable computers that I have that are generally a joy to use are my Asus A35e (currently running a discord bot), this Sony Vaio I swiped from my parents (it's quite sluggish, but i'm typing this article on it), and my TRS-80 Model 100. I LOVE the Model 100. It boots up immedately. It has BASIC. The interface is simple and fast. For simple note taking and testing out algorithms? It's basically the perfect machine (Not to mention that I find 1980s laptop design to be quite attractive. HUBBA HUBBA~). Alas, it's still from the 80s, and even tho I've said it has no issues, I fear the cassete modem does not work, making it somewhat of a challenge to share software between machines. I've been able to get software off of my TRS 80 Model 4.. so it's not an issue with my setup, it's just that the old bat is too stubborn to be insanely useful. All this is to say that I want a laptop with the user experience of the Model 100 with the aminities of a modern machine. I love the shape of the thing, wedge form factor is a must. With this in mind I was left with realistically two products:

• Ready Model 100
• DevTerm

I was so excited about the Ready! Computer. It's supposedly super customizable. A big factor in my attraction to READY! Is that the plans are open source. and the thing is built to be repaired. As you've seen, I'm not super comfortable with taking things apart, especially modern anti-repair technologies. READY's philosophy shits in the face of those shoddy companies by provinding a full guide to building the computer from scratch for free. It apparently uses off the shelf parts, so if something broke, I'd be able to easily rebuild it. After seeing the issues I've had with my other computers, this is pretty good. Most of my old laptops have parts that are either difficult to find or difficult to install for a newbie, and I'd rather not wrestle with old laptop hardware any longer than I need to. The form factor and hardware were also bascially perfect for my needs, so I was sold. There is one problem however. Nobody and I mean NOBODY is talking about Ready online. Aside from the initial buzz from its announcement, there have been almost no forum posts, and nothing on reddit about the damn thing. I had to make my own thread about it on r/cyberdecks and that was somewhat eye opening.

As it happens, the Ready company was hit with many supply chain hiccups during the pandemic. On top of that, the demand for this machine is quite high. As a small company, it's been hard on them to try to get everthing in order, especially with the high demand they've recived. In short, orders are taking a long time to be fufilled. I understand completely and wish them the best in getting those computers out, but I think I'll hold off on purchasing one for now. Yes I could build one, but I'd rather buy it fully assembled. I'll wait for new developments on their kickstarter, once people start writing some more reviews, I'll reconsider.

The Devterm on the other hand is way cheaper and quite similar! I just might get that one. I did much less reading on it than I have done on the Ready! So I'll update you when I've finally made my choice.

My one worry with these though is that the Pi inside may have difficulty with my school websites and google drive. I've slowly been trying to degoogle myself, but the reality is that I still need to use my school email for everything, and I store my school documents on google drive and need to be able to access them on the go. I probably won't be able to login to the private school wifi network since the network driver is Windows and Mac only, so I'll have to use a 4G connection, which is not optimal. This gets me thinking... should I get one of these cool repariable raspberry pi laptops? or should I splurge on something a bit more... powerful. I have taken to messing around with stable diffusion lately (not for stealing from artists and posting stuff online... just using it to make silly things for myself.. typing in shit like "giant toilet" and getting a gargantuan toilet in a normal size bathroom lol), and as my interest in machine learning grows, my laptop arsenal looks weaker and weaker. Only my desktop can run stable diffusion. If I want to do anything else similar, like NLP experimentation and Unreal Engine 5 experiments, I won't be able to do it on my laptop. This is not optimal. Powerful laptops are expensive however, both power wise and price wise. Battery usage will probably be too heavy to support a full day of use (the great thing about the Model 100 is that the battey lasts forever). In short I'm stuck between modernish alternative to the TRS 80 Model 100 that I'll probably keep in shape for a long time, or something powerful that I can use to run anything my heart desires. 250 dollars versus.. lord maybe a thousand dollars? more? Ughhhhhhhhhhh.. One nice thing about technology is that Moore's law is fucking dead. My current PC won't be totally completely fucking useless next year, so there's that to consider....

To make matters more complicated, I've been having issues with my bicycle. Strap in, because this story will piss you off.

About a year and a half ago, my father was upgrading his electric bike from his Vanmoof S2 to a Vanmoof S3. Being that I had been looking for an ebike for some years, he offered to sell me his old one at a steep discount to help finance his new one. Mind you, he had purchased it used and discounted, from Vanmoof, and I purchased it used and discounted from him, so the final discount was quite good all things considered. The bike itself rode fine, it's a comfy ride, and it gets me to school very quickly. However, there are some problems. When I first got the bike, I was not using it much. I was living on campus, and I was only using it for evening bike rides. Whenever I DID want to ride it, the damn thing would lock up. When vanmoof locks up, it LOCKS UP! If you nudge it, it starts yelling at you. The display on the bike's frame forms a skull emoji and synthsized growls emerge from it's speakers. I did not have the correct password for the thing, so i could not unlock it. ABout four times did this happen, and I had to get my dad's cell phone, bring it upstairs, pair it with the bike (this rarely worked), and then unlock it though Vanmoof's system. This system SUCKS. Although I've learned to deal with it a bit better (I know the password, so unlocking and locking it is no longer an issue), the random lock ups were not fun to deal with. I know now that there is a lock button on the back wheel that when triggered locks up the bike, I'm careful not to depress it when wheeling the thing through doorways, but it's still somewhat of a nusience. This button should be onhe frame beneeth the seat, so it's harder to press by accident.

Mind you, many times when we had the alarm issue and could not get the bike unlocked, the only solution was to take the Vanmoof ALLLL the way to the vanmoof store in fucking Brooklyn for them to unlock it. I live in Newark NJ. On the map, Brooklyn seems quite close! It's about 15 miles from here. Any New Yorker will tell you that driving that sort of distance though the NYC area is a pain in the ass. It's a full day trip just going to new york, since when you return, you're totally exhausted. We had to make the trip at least 3 times to get our bikes unlocked.

You know this bike store is far. You know it locks up. You know the bike is always on Vanmoof's network. Did I tell you that the parts are all proprietery? If you have any major issue with the bike, to Brooklyn you go.

In December of 2021 my Vanmoof S2 bike hit a MAJOR issue. On my way to class one day and my front wheel became jammed. So jammed that it would not turn. After doing some fiddling, I found that some dirt had gotten caught up in it, after removing the dirt, it rolled to class fine. After class that day, I tried to move my bike and the front wheel fell off the bike entirely. I flipped over the bike and put it back on, only to find that one of the screws was completely missing. Completely missing. Totally, fully, and completely gone. For context, in the 1970s someone I know got into a really bad bicycle accident wheere his front wheel popped off and he fell down on to the ground. He needed to get fake teeth after that, and I believe he got off lucky.

Although, the wheel was not fully back on the bike, the cable attatching the engine was, so I could still supply power to both the front and back wheel. I stupidly rode the thing back home barely in tact, Going over any slight bump or crease in the road could have detatched the wheel and wiped me out.

When I got home, we tried to sort it out. Over the next few weeks, and two trips to Brooklyn (one was caused by me forgetting a second screw at the shop) we aquired the proper screws and parts to re-assemble my Vanmoof S2 bike. After we got the parts, we quickly realized that the front motor was no longer working. We took it to Brooklyn after that. They lent me a Vanmoof S3 (a newer model) to use while the S2 was being fixed.

A few weeks go by. They had to ship the bike to their repair shop in Germany. Once I heard that I knew it was going to be a while. A month goes by. Nothing. Two months. Nothing. Three. Nothing still. My dad told me to be happy I had a newer more advanced bike to use.. but I was not buying it. That bike still has had its fair share of problems. I was not buying it. I want MY property. Five months go by. We finally hear a response. Do you know what those fuckers told me? They said they threw my bike away and that I could keep the S3. They THREW MY BIKE AWAY WITHOUT TELLING ME OR ASKING ME. The audacity of these people to have full control over MY property is astounding. People tell me I should not be too mad since I have an objectively newer and better bike but.. the principle of it is garbage. Imagine if you saved 2 years for a Toyota Camry and bought it for yourself, only to have it break down. You bring the car to Toyota, they keep it for a half year, while lending you a Toyota Supra while the Camry is being repaired. After 5 months of limbo, they say "your car was destroyed, keep the Supra"! I guess when you put it like that, it doesn't seem as bad.. but I can't help but be pissed. It's my property! I saved for that bike! Worse is, I would have been OK with them scrapping it if it was broken, but the fact that they only sent maybe.. two? Three? Emails over that five month period is what makes it not OK.

I fully intend to replace my S3 someday with something better. Over my dead body will I support another walled garden ecosystem. Over my live body is another two thousand dollar purchase I need to prepare for. Needless to say, it is not a priority... until that bike fucking breaks... I'm using my old Cannondale R400 this week.

Maybe I don't need an ebike after all.

_{3:00PM 11/1/2022}

It's kinda funny how things fall into place.

In the last 3 months I've contributed to the soundrack of 1 (almost 2!) games, and a short animated film with my school.

I didn't think any of this would happen but hey it did! :)

_6/23/2022

Just a lil blurb

304k Lifetime views! That's insane!

I also just got an idea for this site that I'll experiment with in a moment. Stay tuned!

_{5:48PM 5/21/2022}

Vagrant's Song

I did a little remix of a song from Mouryou Senki Madara 2 in Famitracker.

Enjoy!

_{9:01PM 3/27/2022}

A bit lost

Nine months... wow! My longest hiatus yet! How is everyone doing these days?

I'm still in school, still trying to push through a career change from web to game development.

I've also been doing some soul searching. I realize now that I have some mental health related quirks that have put a big burden on my personal development, and have been talking to some people about that. Eveyu time I try to work on something my brain switches to something else. I have a graveyard of unfinished projects on all of my computers.

Things are definately moving, but I can't help but feel very very lost at the moment. I've been coding casually since 2011 and professionally since 2016. Yet, most of the things that I worked on in the past, most of the technologies I used I'm going to have to drop completely in order to get a job in this industry. That or make something on my own, which is much, much harder to do.

I'm the type of person that gets very attatched to tools and a workflow, so having to rebuild all of that is not really something I look forward to. Part of me just wants to drop tech all together and get a job doing something artsy or even completely unrelated. Maybe writing? Music composition (lol)? Drawing (nowhere near good enough to do this yet)? Theraminist? Voice acting? Librarian? Ugh I just wish I had some guidence, ya know? New Jersey, and the NYC metro area does not have a repuation for cultivating the world's talent in the video games industry, or any reputation that matter. Most of the people I know who want to do this stuff are still searching, and most of the people I know who do this stuff live at least a thousand miles away. I'v seen some people make stuff work, however. Indie releases, hitting that just-right niche. But at what cost? What If I spend 10 months working on a Neo-Geo MVS game and it flops? Almost no companies are looking for a NeoGeo programmer, know what I mean? Ug h h h h h h h h h h h h. This stuff is a lot to think about.

ON A MORE POSITIVE NOTE, I've been doing a lot more gaming lately!

After about 6 years of trying to play the intro and giving up due to how slow the game starts, I finally actually got into Star Ocean: Second Evolution on PSP! I plugged about 30 hours into the game before I got to one of those really difficult points where I needed to take a step back. My thoughts are: It's a great game! I adore the player profiles of this remake more than I do the PS1 original game. I also really like the voice acting. Some of the dungeons were quite big, and could have benefitted from a map, but I never really found myself that lost. The combat is a bit annoying, and even though it feels like it's an action combat system, it's really a turn based system with some real time elements in it, which is OK, BUT each time you see it and play it, you'll default to thinking it's an action battle system based on its presentation and flashiness. I personally think it was cool, but wish that the game made it a bit easier to manage some of these elements. Also there's a lot of mechanics in game that I didn't use at all. Maybe it's because I skipped past all the tutorials in the beginning of the game since they were boring as fuck and I simply could not be bothered with them and none of that shit was relevant at the time anyway. OR Maybe the game doesn't do a good job explaining everything. Also, the music is kinda middling nvm it's good lol. Also there's apparently over 80 endings? So there's a lot of content and I've yet to see. note, I don't plan to 100% this game or anything, for now, playing to a single credit sequence is good enough for me. THE VERDICT THUS FAR: Good. Play it if you can.

What am I currently playing (while on hiatus from the GOAT game Star Ocean)? RADIANT HISTORIA on Nintendo DS. I'm enjoying it a LOT! I love the battle system. I'm 18 hours in thus far. I'll check back in once I've beaten it.

Other JRPGs I have in rotation:

• SMT V: I was stuck for a while, but now i'm not
• SMT III: Very cool, reminds me of SMT V a lot more than IV does.
• Octopath Traveler: I deadass only care about the battle system in this game. When I'm playing it I dont think anything of it, but when I'm not playing it, I'm always thingking about playing it again. Is my JRPG side peice?
• The Longest Five Minutes: I am very close to beating this game. It was my main squeeze before I got into SMT V and Star Ocean. I honestly stopped because I lost my PS Vita charger LOL. It seems really simple but it honestly really really grew on me. It's not a hard game at all. Honestly? It's a really nice experince. It's kinda like a B tier shonen anime that they made into a game. The characters are funny and memorable, the music is *chefs kiss*, the graphics are OK, the battle system is kinda meh but I like how fast everything goes. You could marathon this game in one sitting if u really wanted to. I really reccomend this one if you're looking for something casual.

Sorry for the rambunctious rambling, as you can see I have a lot on my mind. Anyhow, I hope you all have a safe and prosperous new year!

_{3:15AM 1/7/2022}

GAME COLLECTING!

I've been building a small collection of video games for a while, and I'd love to talk about it here!

In order to facilitate this, I've written a python script that works in conjunction with this app to generate a pretty webpage with all my stuff on it. Take a look here!

_{11:16 AM 3/30/2021}

Vibe Check

You know what's a really cool vibe? Listening to the Dynamite Headdy soundtrack while browsing through the feed and Districts. No questions, just do it.

(PS: flappyshoot is still in development, I had to step back and do school, but the next version will be up very soon).

_{9:02 PM 2/10/2021}

Adding music

WOW yall really like the games! Every time I add one the hit counter quadruples for like 2 days. More updates to come to Flappyshoot (title pending) very soon. I'm off (100% completely free) until Tuesday, I should have time to get some development in. Also.. I hope ya'll don't mind the little music updates here and there... since you'll be seeing a LOT more of them!

_{5:23 PM 1/16/2021}

Update 2 Dropped

Flappy Shoot is updated and ready for the web! Peep it here (requres keyboard).

_{12:48 AM 1/10/2021}

Happy New Year!

Happy New year everybody! Just wanted to do a quick update for the new year. I'll be adding new songs fairly often to the jukebox at the top of the page, that will act as my music blog of sorts... I'll upload tracks as I see fit. Also - I just turned 21! I can drink and gamble now! Kind of crazy if you think about it. I also just bought game maker studio 2 with web export! Expect to see a web port of flappy shoot in the next few days! Cheers!

_{11:55 PM 1/3/2021}

A year in gaming

God damn I sure did play a lot of games this year. I got into a lot of random franchises and I don't really regret that. Here's a short list of some of the cool games I played.

• Opoona: A really chill JRPG for the wii. Must buy as nobody knows about this game. I got a feeling it's going to be much more well known in coming years.
• BAYONETTA: I'm in love. Enough said.
• Kid Icarus Uprising: I have to say it - this would've been Nintendo's best first party video game.... if the controls were not so bad. The graphics, the pacing, the humor, and everything else about this game is a BLAST!! (it's a rail shooter + character action type of game)
• Shin Megami Tensei Devil Summoner: Soul Hackers: A neato dungeon crawler for 3DS that should not be missed. Grab it while you still can. Also my first SMT game ever!
• Shin Megami Tensei 4: A another neato dungeon crawler for 3DS that should not be missed. It's pretty great too!!
• Ys Origin: gawd DAMNN is this game good as fuck. Using the Ark of Napistim engine, this entry in the Ys series is a prequel to the first game. As a longtime fan of the series I can say with confidence that this game is damn near perfection. BUY IT!! My only gripe is that I wish it had voice acting like Felghana did. Other than that this game is liquid gold. shit got me droolin n shit lol.
• Ys Seven: I got a really good deal on this game. 37 Dollars complete in box on PSP. It's not a bad game, just much slower than the games I prefer. The boss battles are pretty neat. The long dialouge isn't. Ys is known for it's great combat, there is great combat in this game, I just wish there was more of it.
• Castlevania Dracula X Chronacles: My mom got me this for xmas. Thanks mom. Such a great game. The controls on Richter Belmont are a bit.... odd. But they really are not that bad. I can't wait to unlock symphony of the night!
• ASTRAL CHAIN: My brother got me this one for xmas. Thanks bro! Platinumgames does it again folks! Such a beautiful, enticing video game this is. I have to play it more but I'm enjoying the worldbuilding!
• Cloudpunk: A really nice adventure game! I'm playing it on switch.. it's groovy!
• Dissidia Final Fantasy 012: I'm not really a fighting games guy.. but this one is really nice! It's like playing through an anime with them big fights in open fields! I never played the first game and have no idea what the fuck is happening but I'm having fun :D
• Crystalis: ooooo boi this is a cool action RPG! The combat is really fun and so is the music. No wonder why people call it a classic... it totally is!
• Muramasa: The Demon Blade: The music? Check. The graphics? Check. The gameplay? CHECK!! THE STORY? CHECK!!! Vanillaware has sure outdone themselves in this beautiful beat em up adventure. I can't wait to play 13th Sentinel!
• SIN AND PUNISHMENT??? STAR SUCCESSOR??????: me trying to explain this game to you

_{11:10 PM 12/29/2020}

Actually doing it

Like I said before, I am training for an eventual switch to game development. As my first public project in some time, I will be using Game Maker (for now). I made this demo in Game Maker 7 Lite. The goal was to combine the cool elements of a game like flappy bird with the exploration aspects that come with a platformer. You can download a windows executable here. If you don't have a Windows PC, you can see a video demo here. I will be buying GM Studio soon so don't kill me pls for using this edition. TIP: JUMP then try moving around!

_{6:10 PM 12/26/2020}

I got the job!

I've been prepping for a position at a company for a while and I finally got it!

Still some things I have to learn before accepting the position. But I am excited!

Also happy holidays!

_{1:01 PM 12/25/2020}

There's a lot more to this story.

What's this? Another redesign? Yup.

I noticed that the last redesign was really pretty, but not really.... succinct. It was strange to use and a bit too janky for my taste. It was all over the place... in a bad way. The splash images were too big and it made the page slow to load.

Besides! This design is really clean and now that I have a better handle and design sense, I can make this place a lot more mobile friendly.

Thoughts?

_{1:51 AM 12/12/2020}