#I had to use a web-browser based thing to do it

[somerunner]

[Video description: In Playstation 1 graphics, an old man walks onto a snowboard course with his walker. He clips the snowboard through his walker, holding it for a second, and blasts off into the sky. Electronic music plays throughout; the beat drops when he flies away.

/End description]

I beg my followers to check out Battle Tapes' music video for their song "Brand New" - since I figure most people don't click on Youtube links, I took the liberty of using some tools to clip just the beat drop.

The rest of the video is just as good as this.

Here's the link; it's inline instead of embedded because it's 3am and I'm paranoid that people on Tumblr go "ew an embedded Youtube link": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tp6an4eVzP8

[the-midnight-blooms]

SHAMELESS WOMAN | smg

PROLOGUE

pairing: ghostface!song mingi x reader (ft. ghostface!jeong yunho) AU: modern au word count: 3.2k warnings: yandere themes, stalking

masterlist

A/N: I've never actually watched Scream but I love the concept, so general ideas revolving around the character will be used here (i also saw yungi!ghostface fanart, which i am OBSSESSED with).

A chat room is an online platform that enables users to communicate with each other in real time. Chat rooms are typically hosted on a server with an internet connection, enabling members from around the world to hold conversations about various topics.

Upbeat 80s rock music reverberates of the four walls of her room, the pen nib scratches, furiously, across the thin lined paper as her mind spills the plethora of knowledge that's locked up within it. Dropping the pen to the side, a long groan escapes her lips in tiredness the bright light of the computer screen gnawing at her attention. As she flicks between the several open tabs on her web browser, loitering in the far corner is an underground chat room for ‘conventional losers’, i.e. nerds, geeks, freaks, goths and emos and every other ostracised sub-cultural group you could think of. The thought itself was quite fascinating to her, which one was she? Or rather, was she the pretentious introvert who thought herself higher than those who defied society's conventional train of thought and aligned herself with the populars?

Snapping her book shut, she closed several of the academic pages she had open; leaving her with the final one: the infamous chat room. She’d already logged in, curiosity masticating her rationality and browsed a few pages, sent a few quick messages to people the website had recommended based on her “favourite topics”.

Her eyes glance carefully across the blaring screen, the blue light penetrating into her steady gaze as she reads the username that steals her undivided attention.

@ pyscho.killer

A snicker escapes her lips, she surfs their profile finding very little information about them, other than ‘Fix on’. Goodness, is she really going to talk to this person just because he too enjoys listening to Modern Talking? Her lips purse in contemplation as she clicks on ‘Message’, there’s no harm in conversing with someone you don’t know. Right?

modern-division: Fan of the Talking Heads much?

She prides herself on her nonchalance, if he wasn't to respond she really wouldn't care. After all, Yeji had invited her to join a number of societies at university and despite the fact that none of the them seemed particularly interesting to her; there was no harm in joining at least one or two if the outcome was a few friends to make her strenuous four years more bearable.

Ping. Her head snaps back to computer screen as she shoves all of her pens back into the pencil case; a dirty habit from childhood to spread all of her things across the table and then spend five minutes, impartially, cleaning everything up.

psycho.killer: Psycho Killer, Qu'est-ce que c'est?

modern-division: Fa-fa-fa-fa, fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa, better

psycho.killer: Run, run, run, run, run, run, run away,

psycho.killer: I think I have met my match. To whom do I now call mine?

A childish giggle escapes her, she leans back in her seat in a knowingness that she may now actually enjoy being on this sketchy platform. Careful, yet. She doesn't actually know this stranger.

modern-division: AHAHA you’re funny, Mr Fix On (what does that even mean?)

psycho.killer: that’s not for you to know, darling.

psycho.killer: let me guess…you like joy division and modern talking?

modern-division: what gave it away?

psycho.killer: I guess you’re pretty funny too

It's quite absurd to believe that a famous hit song by the 'Talking Heads' is what got her, her new best internet friend yet the notion is very much a fact. So much so, her life is now consumed by the chat rooms she used to look down on. Social media is very much a vortex, or vacuum of some kind, sucking one in; leaving them void of humanity, stripping them down of some yearning for human interaction. Or at least that's what it did to most. After a long day of lectures, she found herself wanting to be able to see 'Mr Fix On' in person, talk to him in person, be able to stare into his eyes.

Speaking of. As a matter of fact, she didn't even know what he looked like. Just that he was South Korean, had short black hair and brown eyes. She too allowed herself to share the same amount of information that he provided. Mum did say not to go around talking to strangers, and even if she was doing just that; she was not dim enough to start revealing absolutely everything about her identity.

The autumn leaves sway softly with the gentle breeze, a waft of biting air floods over her sending a ripple of goosebumps over her supple skin. Her shoes crunch the delicate leaves, that pave the way to her home, yet she feels a daunting figure stalk after her. For a split second, she believes herself to be hallucinating as she takes a daring look behind her shoulder to find the street behind her, empty.

A tall figure strolls after her, picturing landmarks that carves the path to her home. His soft dark brown hair tousles with the wind, the cold forging a pink blush over his cheeks; sinking his long nose into the woollen scarf his movements come to an abrupt halt as his heroine plunges her eyes into his.

God, she's fucking pretty.

They move over his, hastily, as to her he's simply rifling through his bag for a wallet in line for an expensive coffee alongside a couple of old-age pensioners.

Conclusion: She is paranoid, there is no one after her. Yet as it is autumn in her unsafe town, its better to be cautious than to walk across the surface of the earth with no walls at all.

psycho.killer: wanna join a gc with my friend? he likes some of the same music as us.

psycho.killer: plus, he's a compsci loser who needs a friend

It's been at least a month since she had began talking to 'psycho.killer', who she had learnt his name is: Mings. Or rather its a shorthand version of his forename that he is weirdly reluctant to disclose, as he insists on her calling him 'Min' or "darling, my lover, husband- whatever floats your boat." He is truly charismatic, his charms are perceived from the other end of the screen. She wonders what it would be like to see him in real life. Is he truly as amiable as he reads?

modern-division: haha, i don't mind. what's his @ ?

psycho.killer: its @ killed.theradio.st4r

modern-division: you guys are my people

She hums the tune to 'Video Killed the Radio Star." Her mother's soft laughter pervades her way into her room; the older woman places her washed clothes on the Chester drawer wondering how the younger generation manage to get invested in the songs of the past.

[psycho.killer added you to 'two losers and a hot nerd']

killed.theradio.st4r: helloo, i'm yuyu :)

modern-division: hi!

modern-division: also, who's the hot nerd?

psycho.killer: me.

killed.theradio.st4r: lmao. its you, doll.

Does Mings just refer to me as, Doll to everyone he speaks to?

modern-division: you don't even know what i look like

killed.theradio.st4r: guess we just know you're a hot girl by intuition

modern-division: what if i'm a man? ever thought about that?

psycho.killer: your bio literally states that you're a girl

psycho.killer: not-so-mysterious babe

It wasn’t so bad for someone online to know your gender, it was just ensuring that your femininity wasn’t exploited. She knew they would never ask her to share explicit content nor would they force her to engage in it, though talking to the pair of ‘Killers’ preserved an ominous feeling in the airs. She couldn’t tell if at any point, she really felt comfortable talking to either of the two.

To begin with, Min was always trying to call her. Ask her where she was, what she was doing, if she had she eaten, what time she was going to bed. He asked about her day, and if anyone bothered her in particular. To any other he may have seemed like a kind-hearted boyfriend yet to her it felt like an intruder had permeated into the walls of her bedroom and dominated her life. Then you had his esteemed friend, Yun. He was always deeming her the most beautiful being he had ever seen. She could see within his words the robust desire he had manifested from her words, the way he had subtly requested for her photos in order to fuel the raging fires burning in her absence.

He wanted her. Physically, to put it lightly. Indeed, she was a doll to him and to have her in his arms would purify him of all his sinful thoughts. Yun always brought it up with his friend, who had simply told him to put out those fires. (For the time being).

“Have you heard of ‘Ghostface’?” Her head snaps up from her workbook, in the library where one of her closer acquaintances sits opposite playing with her water bottle. A newspaper article sits in front with the notorious blurry image of a man with a ghost mask roaming around town.

“This is the first I’m hearing. I mean it’s Halloween soon, so it’s probably some idiot roaming around town.”

“An idiot? I don’t think so, ma’am. Read on, he’s been going around stalking people in his costume.” She raises her eyebrows, nimbly scanning her eyes over the text before returning back to her work. Though she cannot help but stare back at the blurred image of the figure. “I bet there’s a sexy man under all that.” Scowling at her friend, she sends a dirty look.

“You have got to be kidding me. A ‘sexy’ man. You said it yourself, he’s stalking people.”

“Yeah but, one of the girls from Art said he was mad tall and had this deep, attractive voice.”

“Yes, I bet he goes: ‘come here babe, let me kill you’ in his husky voice and you all go running to him because you have no morals.” Once again, she rolls her eyes whilst her friend merely giggles as if she is just pleasantly awaiting to be a victim. She rarely meets women who have an ambition for a victim complex, yet those she does: she steers away from.

“I’m only joking, but be real. Have you never heard a guy with a deep, attractive voice?” Her friend questions, making her pause her writing. In fact, she has. Mins’ voice has a sent over her railings during their late night calls, there’s something so potent residing within it. Intoxicating. It almost has her want to do everything he asks.

He is too, tall with a deep voice but there must be so many like him in this world.

The thought is dismissed and she shoos away her friend to allow herself to prioritise the exam that’s pending in two weeks time.

modern-division: have you guys heard of ghostface?

killed.theradio.st4r: why?

modern-division: just asking, apparently some loser is dressing up in a ghost mask and stalking people. idk if it’s just halloween round the corner though

killed.theradio.st4r: oh no :(

killed.theradio.st4r: could just be a halloween thing

modern-division: yeah, I think so too.

“So you like the librarian?”

“Mhm.” She steals her longing gaze away from him towards Yeji, who sends a vicious smirk her way. A blush taints her cheeks, knowing that Yeji will never live it down now. “I’m not gonna deny he’s pretty good looking.”

“Pretty good looking? He’s gorgeous as fuck. He’s not a want, he’s a need.” Playfully, she bites her lip suppressing a fit of giggles by burying her face into the textbook. A few others send irritated looks from across the room, which has the pair sinking in their seats. “You think a guy like him is single?”

“Absolutely not. If I had the chance, I’d snatch him up right away.” Her eyes flicker back to the tall man who catches her stare in an instant, he holds it before moving back to surf through the books on the trolley.

A low beat surfaces along the posters, her phone is sandwiched between her shoulder and cheek as she trudges furiously around the room looking for her scarf. Min's voice permeates her ears delicately, despite the alarming sentences he speaks; he converses in length about human anatomy saying that raw flesh must be easier to study than cadaveric tissue. As much as she agrees, just to play devil's advocate she will never admit that.

“I love your voice, Mings. It’s so deep, but like in a comforting way. As if you can protect me.” The declaration escapes her mouth before she can even stop it.

“Do you want to be protected by me, or from me, doll?” A pause lingers in the air, before he lowly chuckles—one that forces her to laugh with him though an uneasy feeling resides within her bones.

“By you, preferably.” She jokes, playing with the pendant of her necklace. A shadow looms by the open doorway, obscuring the stream of light that spills in from the hallway; the deafening silence panics her. “Mum!” She shouts, discarding the phone to the side in a frenzy.

“Yes! I just had a cup of tea for you, were you not studying?” The door is pushed open by nonetheless, her mother who waddles across the carpeted floor to settle the hot beverage down on the table.

“I was, I’m just tired now. Maybe I’ll come back to it later.”

“No, no. Go to bed, dear. I’m off to work, make sure you’re outside by 8, I’ll drop you.” A soft kiss is placed on her forehead, she is calmed by the maternal affection seeing her mother to the door before she dashes back into her room to find her phone.

The call must have been disconnected in the process of her flinging it elsewhere, her hands shake violently as she’s, pathetically, unable to hold the phone steady in her grasp. Mings has spammed her several times with messages, she doesn’t bother to read any of them.

modern-division: i’m tired, going to bed.

psycho.killer: goodnight, babygirl

In the midst of wandering through the aisles of the library, seeking books two shelves above her head, it instantaneously occurs to her that she’s never actually paid much attention to Yuyu and Mings’ pet names that they have for her. Doll, babygirl, darling, love, honey, etc. The list seems to never end yet she ponders the primary reason they get so comfortable around her is because she has never actually given them a reason to stop being so affectionate.

A cascade of books tumble down from the shelf, hitting the floor with a powerful slam—jumping backwards on instinct, she grimaces reaching down from them as a few pairs of eyes stare at her from their tables. Her face heats red in embarrassment, until another pair of hands comes to assist her.

"Goodness, how did you manage this?" Her eyes gleam up into another's; words lodge in her throat upon realisation of the being in front. It's the 'hot librarian', as her and Yeji have trademarked.

"Oh, I—they just fell." He raises his eyes at her.

"They just. Fell." A mischievous smile is sent her way as he stacks the books back onto the shelf, that's too high for her to reach anyway. "We'll call it the force of gravity then, shall we?" Shyly, she nods, handing him the last of the books. Her eyes reel in the name scrawled across the name tag. A thought Yeji will be pleased to hear drifts into her mind.

“I’m Yujin, by the way. I’m always at the help desk if you need to me to stack books that randomly fall off the shelf again.” Her eyebrows furrow in confusion. It clearly says ‘Yunho’, on his name tag. He stalks off in the opposite direction before she can question him, leaving her abandoned in the desolate aisle.

modern-division: the hot librarian lied about his name.

modern-division: I wonder why

Paranoia is no longer a delusion. It must be very true that someone is following after her.

Under the banner of the night, herself and Yeji walk back home after a long day of studying. They amble down the cobbled roads, yet her eyes cannot help but glance over her shoulder. There must be a man of some sort following them, his long calculated strides send a wave of fear pummelling through her. Instantly, she grabs Yeji’s hand dashing down the road towards the convenience store.

The dim lights flicker upon their arrival, she cowers behind the large aisles; ignoring her friend’s imperatives watching as a tall figure saunters into the store.

It’s him.

Jeong Yunho, the Librarian.

Or ‘Yujin’ as he addresses himself for reasons she assumes she will never know why.

Is he her stalker?

“I thought there was someone stalking us. There was a guy who walked all the way from the library to the road we just crossed behind us. I took a detour as well and he kept following.” She breathes out, leaning her head against the shelf.

“Are you kidding? Why didn’t you tell me?” Yeji squawks.

“I didn’t want him to suspect that I knew he was following.”

Her eyes sought ‘Yujin’ who gives her a sincere smile before he makes his way to the exit.

modern-division: I think there was someone following me

psycho.killer: ??? are you home? are you safe now?

modern-division: yes, but shit that was scary.

psycho.killer: let me call you bbg, I’ll help get your mind of it

Her phone vibrates in her hand, her finger traces over the red button before she lifts the device to her ear. His smooth tone infiltrates her ears again, easing the anxiety prevalent in the fibre of her muscles. She doesn’t know how Min does it. He helps her forget all about her problems, it’s as if he himself is the cure.

“Oh hey, baby. There was something I wanted to ask.” He pants slightly, the distant sound of leaves crunching drifts from the other end of the line.

“Are you outside?” He laughs.

“Yeah I’m walking home.” His hasty breaths pervade the line. One after another, a series of profane thoughts enter her mind. She is so disappointed in herself. “So, you got a boyfriend?”

“Why? Do you wanna ask me out on a date?” She teases, a lock of hair curls around her forefinger, the vibrato of his voice truanting into her ears, exhilarating her core as rush of certainty floods into her.

“Maybe, do you have a boyfriend?” He piques, she cannot help but grin at his words as if they are both playing a dangerous game of seduction, one she has never played before and one he has won a countless number of times.

“No.” Her truthful answer is not one that hurts her, though she says it as if she’s lying and has had countless lovers before in the past. Perhaps this is the persona that will have her enigmatic paramour crawling towards her.

“You never told me your name.” He acknowledges, 'Mings' has only ever called her 'doll'. Her moves are careful as she continues her cyber relationship with this unknown man, there's a reason she's at the top of her class—he thinks. A thread of messages enter from another chat room, his sharp eyes reeling in the words of his partner.

“Why do you wanna know my name?” Sheer curiosity. Yes, he told her he’s called ‘Mings’ but it’s just a silly nickname used to gain her trust. What is it really short for: Mingi? Mingyu? And Yuyu? Is it possible that he is Yunho? A foreign uneasiness rushes into her skin, she’s cautious as she sits up in her desk chair.

A bad feeling, an intuition of some sort.

He’s going to tell her something she doesn’t want to hear.

“I wanna know who I’m looking at.” Her finger immediately presses, harshly, onto the red button throwing her phone onto her desk. Her body jumps up from her seat, heart pounding furiously against her chest. With her body leaning closer to the window, her eyes outcast the front lawn in which a slender figure stands outside. A ghosts mask rests upon his face, his lanky frame is shrouded in a loose black cloth concealing the shape of his body. A large brick phone is held up against his ear, when he catches her staring down at him, his head cocks eerily to the side.

psycho.killer: Pick

psycho.killer: Up

psycho.killer: The

psycho.killer: Phone

psycho.killer: Doll.

•••

All Rights Reserved © the-midnight-blooms

DO NOT REPOST, TRANSLATE, REPURPOSE, OR PLAGISRISE ANY OF THE WORK HERE

A/N: happy 'late' Halloween! my timing is atrocious, but here's a 'small snippet' of a fic i may continue if my writing schedule allows. atm its a one-shot. What's your favourite scary movie? 👻

let me know if you’d like to be added to the tag list for any future fics I post!

tag list: @n0v4t33z @potatos-on-clouds @jjongwho

[laika290]

ever wonder why spotify/discord/teams desktop apps kind of suck?

i don't do a lot of long form posts but. I realized that so many people aren't aware that a lot of the enshittification of using computers in the past decade or so has a lot to do with embedded webapps becoming so frequently used instead of creating native programs. and boy do i have some thoughts about this.

for those who are not blessed/cursed with computers knowledge Basically most (graphical) programs used to be native programs (ever since we started widely using a graphical interface instead of just a text-based terminal). these are apps that feel like when you open up the settings on your computer, and one of the factors that make windows and mac programs look different (bc they use a different design language!) this was the standard for a long long time - your emails were served to you in a special email application like thunderbird or outlook, your documents were processed in something like microsoft word (again. On your own computer!). same goes for calendars, calculators, spreadsheets, and a whole bunch more - crucially, your computer didn't depend on the internet to do basic things, but being connected to the web was very much an appreciated luxury!

that leads us to the eventual rise of webapps that we are all so painfully familiar with today - gmail dot com/outlook, google docs, google/microsoft calendar, and so on. as html/css/js technology grew beyond just displaying text images and such, it became clear that it could be a lot more convenient to just run programs on some server somewhere, and serve the front end on a web interface for anyone to use. this is really very convenient!!!! it Also means a huge concentration of power (notice how suddenly google is one company providing you the SERVICE) - you're renting instead of owning. which means google is your landlord - the services you use every day are first and foremost means of hitting the year over year profit quota. its a pretty sweet deal to have a free email account in exchange for ads! email accounts used to be paid (simply because the provider had to store your emails somewhere. which takes up storage space which is physical hard drives), but now the standard as of hotmail/yahoo/gmail is to just provide a free service and shove ads in as much as you need to.

webapps can do a lot of things, but they didn't immediately replace software like skype or code editors or music players - software that requires more heavy system interaction or snappy audio/visual responses. in 2013, the electron framework came out - a way of packaging up a bundle of html/css/js into a neat little crossplatform application that could be downloaded and run like any other native application. there were significant upsides to this - web developers could suddenly use their webapp skills to build desktop applications that ran on any computer as long as it could support chrome*! the first applications to be built on electron were the late code editor atom (rest in peace), but soon a whole lot of companies took note! some notable contemporary applications that use electron, or a similar webapp-embedded-in-a-little-chrome as a base are:

microsoft teams

notion

vscode

discord

spotify

anyone! who has paid even a little bit of attention to their computer - especially when using older/budget computers - know just how much having chrome open can slow down your computer (firefox as well to a lesser extent. because its just built better <3)

whenever you have one of these programs open on your computer, it's running in a one-tab chrome browser. there is a whole extra chrome open just to run your discord. if you have discord, spotify, and notion open all at once, along with chrome itself, that's four chromes. needless to say, this uses a LOT of resources to deliver applications that are often much less polished and less integrated with the rest of the operating system. it also means that if you have no internet connection, sometimes the apps straight up do not work, since much of them rely heavily on being connected to their servers, where the heavy lifting is done.

taking this idea to the very furthest is the concept of chromebooks - dinky little laptops that were created to only run a web browser and webapps - simply a vessel to access the google dot com mothership. they have gotten better at running offline android/linux applications, but often the $200 chromebooks that are bought in bulk have almost no processing power of their own - why would you even need it? you have everything you could possibly need in the warm embrace of google!

all in all the average person in the modern age, using computers in the mainstream way, owns very little of their means of computing.

i started this post as a rant about the electron/webapp framework because i think that it sucks and it displaces proper programs. and now ive swiveled into getting pissed off at software services which is in honestly the core issue. and i think things can be better!!!!!!!!!!! but to think about better computing culture one has to imagine living outside of capitalism.

i'm not the one to try to explain permacomputing specifically because there's already wonderful literature ^ but if anything here interested you, read this!!!!!!!!!! there is a beautiful world where computers live for decades and do less but do it well. and you just own it. come frolic with me Okay ? :]

*when i say chrome i technically mean chromium. but functionally it's same thing

[frameacloud]

Some ways to avoid generative AI in web searches

Our web searches are being filled with more and more AI-generated slop. GenAI creates misinformation that can be difficult to tell apart from the correct answer to whatever question you're looking up. GenAI mixes things up that have similar names. In one example that is especially easy to recognize, genAI has thought that a baseball team and the bird that it was named after must both be the same creature, with a bizarre combination of their eating habits and behaviors. This mistake still happens with specialized topics that could be harder for you to recognize unless if you're already very familiar with the topic in question. GenAI also makes up fake sources and facts out of thin air, and you can't tell until you try to find them somewhere else. The tech is more like advanced predictive text than something capable of research or reasoning, even though it can look enough like it that it can fool you if you don't know how to spot its mistakes.

Not only are the results of genAI unreliable, the source texts and images that they’re based on were used without permission. Sometimes they aren't modified enough to avoid plagiarism, but it's worse than that. Source images have turned out to be private medical photos and intimate personal photos that hackers had stolen and leaked to harass the people in the photos. Another reason why this technology is unethical is that each genAI query has such a high energy cost that it's significantly harmful to the environment, contributing to the climate crisis.

Here are some things that you can do when you use Google, DuckDuckGo, or other conventional general web search engines:

To turn off Google's AI Overview, set "web" as default. Here's how to do that on your devices and web browsers.

Add this string to any web search to only show results from before the genAI fad. Before:2021

Install the web browser extension uBlacklist. You give it a list of web addresses to not show you in your web searches anymore. Other people maintain lists for it that you can subscribe to so that you won’t see certain types of results in your web searches. Follow the instructions in Laylavish’s Huge AI Blocklist to subscribe to that list which will rid your web search results of AI-generated pages or images.

Since genAI slop is getting to be such a big problem on them, use alternatives to conventional general web search engines some of the time:

Use a specialized search engine instead of a general one. For example, if you only wanted to find a particular science article, there are specialized search engines that only look for those. The blog post "Skip Google for Research" has a list of specialized search engines for academics.

GenAI is notoriously bad at math because that’s too far outside the scope it was designed for: advanced predictive text. In any case, genAI is overpowered for math that is easy for computers to do. If you want to use a very advanced calculator, or even ask a math question in natural language, use Wolfram Alpha.

For questions about how to do things, look them up in WikiHow, the Youtube channel Dad, How Do I? or The Ultimate Manuals Library.

You can search within Wikipedia, but unfortunately vandals have been putting machine-generated falsehoods into it, as well as genAI images. To avoid this, use the article history to view versions of the article from before 2022.

Ask yourself if there are some topics that you often do a web search for just because you keep forgetting an answer to something. Start saving those answers in a book or file that you can refer to offline. This is called a commonplace book. For an example of one, Beth and Angel made theirs into a zine, Stuff I Often Google.

How about a completely different sort of web search than present-day Google or DuckDuckGo? Marginalia Search only brings up results that are text-heavy and similar to the web of the 1990s and 2000s. Its software is independent and open-source.

Have you been using a web search engine to take you to the websites that you visit on a regular basis? Switch to saving them in your web browser's bookmarks folder. Your web browser, Firefox, can sync your bookmarks to your other devices. If you often need to refer to a large number of static web pages (ones that don't change what is on them every day), then you can save and organize them in your Zotero, a bibliography management program. You can sort them with folders and tags so you can find them again.

[theunmarkedtombstone]

Part 2 | Part 3 Hello hello! today I will be teaching you how to make GIFS, from scratch, and some other stuff. I've been doing this on this platform for the past 10 years (yay!). I've seen gifs morph and change, seen tumblr up their image size by a considerable amount (in 2015 you had to maintain your gifs UNDER 2MB. 2MB!!!!) and all the sizing changes, PSD changes, etc. So, idk, I decided to do this too cause I thought it might be fun!

I am going to go through a few different GIF types in this:

GIFS that are straightforward, take your frames, turn it into a gif and go. I'll be teaching everything here: How to grab frames, how to organize it, how to open it on photoshop, how to do the thing (except for coloring, at least here), etc. (Half in part 1, half in part 2).

The BITMAP gif, how much faster it is (despite the slightly lower quality) and how it enables you to make gifs on potato computers. (Part 2).

GIFS that need a little more finessing, like GIFS that contain two different angles you have to make work in one. (Part 3).

GIFS that have text, which are 90% of my GIFsets, and how I make the text look crispier (this is still a work in progress, though, would love some tips <33). (Part 3).

Now, I'm not saying that this is gonna be such a different gif tutorial from all the others, or that I'm an actual expert (I'm bad a synchronizing gifs, for example). I'll try to make it comprehensive, but I think all the other ones are really solid, I'll just go through my own process, the program I use and have been using for years (as someone who's tried GOMPlayer and didn't like it) what I do for individual gifs, and all that. I will NOT go into coloring, because I am BAD at it, never been too good, but everything else should be covered here pretty neatly! Keep in mind I don't do insane edits, though I find them BEAUTIFUL, or anything overtly complicated cause I am, hmmm, lazy. Sorry. I CAN make them because I've learned, but my heart is not in it and there are hundreds of talented GIF and edit makers here on this webbed site that would provide a more solid base.

Also, this is a pretty wordy tutorial, because it goes from frame capturing all the way to the end result, but I hope it helps peeps. So, let's get to it. (divider used in this tutorial by @e-resources)

INTRO:

Before this year, I used to make all of my gifs on my Dell Inspiron 2012, with 6GB of RAM, rolling on Photoshop CS5 and praying. Each gif took 5 minutes to load, ten minutes total to complete. Believe it or not, I've seen Hell.

I also do all my gifs, from a young age, using the KMPlayer. The KMPlayer doesn't open pop ups on your browser (which on my old computer would mean CHAOS and UPRISE and I'd probably have to turn it off because it only actually did one process at a time, believe it or not) and it allows you TO CAPTURE FRAMES WHILE THE MOVIE OR SHOW IS PAUSED which GOMPlayer DOESN'T LET YOU. In general, KMP's advantage is also that the PNG frames it takes are higher resolution than GOMPlayer. A GOMPlayer PNG frame will always have 96ppi whereas a KMPlayer frame will have an 120ppi:

A higher resolution image has more ppi, and though anywhere between 92 and 125 is good, KMPlayer is better. Now, idk if KMPlayer was outed as being spyware, of being bad, because everyone on this platform used it and then stopped for some reason, but unfortunately IMO it's still the best program to do it. Yeah. If it sucks, I'm sorry :(( I can't stop using it cause I am spoiled, and it never did anything on my computer as someone who has used it for YEARS (and who has gotten probably every single virus out there, including computer ending ones. Twice. Thankfully they were close calls, but the fear was there). (Later in the tutorial, I 'll do a pros and cons of each program).

Ok, intro done, let's begin the segmented portion of the tutorial.

INDEX:

Frame capturing 101: Frame organizing, and how I personally do it (part 1).

Basic GIFS (including resources I use for sharpening) (half in part 1, half in part 2).

GIFS with Text (part 2).

GIFS with two angles, and what to do to center them (part 2).

How to make lower quality GIFS look acceptable (or SOMEWHAT acceptable) (for older PCs and lower quality releases) (BITMAP instead of PNG).

FRAME CAPTURING 101

This is gonna be pretty straightforward. Open your movie with KMPlayer, or your program of choice. Now, KMPlayer doesn't allow me to record its screen for some reason, at least OBS doesn't let me, so I'll make do with prints. CTRL+G opens the capture window. You can pause your frame and start from this point without releasing the movie, cause like I said the KMPlayer allows you to do so, and to me this is important cause I like to capture as many frames as possible, and be as perfectionistic as I can be.

Now, if you have a potato of a computer like I had, both KMPlayer and GOMPlayer offer a few formats on your capture (CTRL + G) window. On KMP, there's BITMAP, JPEG and PNG. My program is in Portuguese, but basically it says BITMAP is fast, JPEG is medium and PNG is slow.

I used to take my frames in BITMAP from 2014 til very recently. It sucks, it doesn't have a high quality, but it allows you to have SOMETHING to work with. If you are an aspiring GIFmaker and you don't have the equipment, you can still make stuff with this setting (I say this because my other computer used to turn off when I captured frames in PNG so, uh… Try it at your own risk on old machines. I never tried JPEG, might do you a solid. probably better than BMP, but like I said, I never tested it).

Here are some examples of gifs I made with BITMAP quality:

As you can see, they're not bad, just a bit grainy (I did the sharpening myself, so my bad. Later in the tutorial, I'll put better examples, and you'll see they're not bad.). When I upgraded my laptop, I started taking frames in PNG. The gifs now look like this:

Sometimes, I still struggle with quality, like on my Bedazzled gifsets. This is due to me being an obscure, old film lover, and those often not having 4K or real 1080 quality (Most of my BITMAPs were taken from YTS releases, though. It helps on old machines and it looks ok. Real 1080 is over 2GB and 4K is way more than that, so that's the difference, and it looks better. YTS releases are very compressed, but real 1080 never rolled on my old PC (nothing over 3GB did) so I still used them for basically everything. Not many complaints here).

Now, to go back to how I capture the frames: Depending on how familiar I am with the scene, I allow the frames to capture continuously until the scene is over. That being said, if it is a scene with dialogue that I am not 100% familiar with, I usually capture it gif by gif. It really depends on your specific style.

The KMPlayer, like GOM, will capture these to the CAPTURE folder. This folder is located inside of your disk (local disk? is that the name in eng. too?) inside of the program's folder. I then divide these captured frames into other folders, for ease of maneuvering.

I usually use 48 frames per gif, especially because I make gifs that are 540px (by either 405 or 540px). If you are doing a gif that is smaller, like 268x268, etc, you'll be able to get away with 60+ frames, up until 10MB. You have no idea how much 10MB is a Godsend. It was the trenches in the olden times. Unlike GOM, KMP captures all frames, regardless of movie or show, on the same folder and it is your job to organize it. I think GOM got this specific point right, but I'm used to the heavy lifting, so I don't mind. Still, be mindful of KMPlayer eating older frames. If you have important frames on the main folder, make sure you organize them into smaller ones, because KMP will replace these unorganized frames with newer ones. I hope I made this easy to understand. Bottomline is: Make sure all your important frames are as organized as possible to prevent mistakes and accidents.

Kind of left field tangent but there is nowhere else here to put it, so here you are: For my Peter Cook in Bedazzled, Matt Bennett in M&E&TDG, and my Nightmare on Elm Street gifsets, I made A LOT MORE GIFS THAN I USED. I made up to 11, 12 gifs for both my Nightmare and Bedazzled gifsets. Sometimes you have to make a lot of them to decide later what you want, so don't be sad if your process is extremely chaotic. From chaos comes beauty in the form of tumblr.com the website and the app GIFsets.

Ok, now that this is done, let's get to the gifmaking portion of this mess.

BASIC GIFS (no text, just frames and sharpening):

You have to have a Photoshop that allows you to have the timeline function. CS5 worked for me for years, 2020 also has it, and I'm assuming 2024 does too (but that one didn't roll with my system). I use Photoshop 2020, I got it from Pirate Bay, first result, because the one we have rolling around here DID NOT PASS ANY VIRUSTOTAL SCANS I PUT IT THROUGH, though I'm sure the person didn't know. Always put stuff like this through virus total to be sure. My Photoshop never gave me any issue.

Anyway, if you don't have your timeline enabled, go to window> timeline, like so right there at the bottom:

There you have it. Now you can load up your frames. For that, you'll go to to file> scripts> load files into stack:

You click on browse:

Get your frames and load them. Yep. That simple. Nothing to it.

PNG FRAME GIFS:

(I will be using Capitu (2008) as the examples for this tutorial)

Now, different from GOM Player, KMP will not name your frames automatically, for some reason when its PNG, so your images will flash on screen as Photoshop renames each individual frame. On a potato computer, this takes 30 minutes to do and it's undoable. I know cause I tried. Anyway, it takes a little longer to open, but it should be done in less than a minute or a minute or so on good computers, probably a few seconds on state of the art ones. Just make sure that if you don't like or are sensitive to anything flashy that you either don't look or don't do this using KMP. Ok, now that you opened the frames, you create video timeline by clicking on the middle right here:

Then, you click there, nvm if my timeline is not loaded. Just click and it'll create one of your frames for you. Now click here on the corner and on "make frames from layers, to create the rest.

This will make your actual frames for you, in a nice neat line. Now, keep in mind that these frames are reversed at this point, so you have to click on the "reverse frames" option, right there on the panel (it's unclickable on my example photo up there, but it'll be available once all your frames are loaded). Still on the same panel, you click on select all frames, cause you basically do everything from here, and once the frames are all selected, you input your delay.

In my time, we used 0,07. Now that's too slow. Some people use 0,04, I use 0,05, I think it depends on what you want. Once the gif is all loaded up you'll be able to see if the frames are too fast better (In my Goodbye Again gifset, I struggled with frame velocity as 0,04 was too fast and 0,05 too slow for example), but if you are not a perfectionist like me and you don't feel like backtracking every time, 0,05 is your best bet for most gifsets.

After this I usually crop the gifs. I use the pre-crop thing here:

And input the size I want. Usually it is 540x540 or 540x405. In this case, though, it'll be 540x304, which is the native usually (unless your movie is widescreen. I hate those). This tool will not actually resize your image, it will just leave it ready for when you do resize, here:

Remember, tumblr dimensions are 540px by 540px for square gifs, 540px by 405px for medium sized gifs and usually 540px by 304px for rectangular gifs (usually it is the size of the screen, unless your movie is widescreen. I hate those). For gifsets that are two gifs per row, the dimensions are 268px per whatever you want, better if it's square though. 177px by whatever is the three gifs per line one, also better if square. You can still leave it 540 on the pre-crop tool, though, because it'll just do the 1:1 square ratio. When you do resize it to 268 or 177, it'll work, it'll be square, or whatever other size you want. Anyway, when you do resize, you'll be taken to this screen:

These are my settings. I also use bicubic sharper, but it's holistic for me, tbh. I usually resize it to 540px right away, some people like to do it in increments, and I respect it, but I have no patience for it. If you want to do it in increments, you can take image size little by little (from 1920px, for example, to 1400px, then 1200px, etc, until you get to 540). It works. But I'm lazy. Anyway, here's what the gif looks like as it is:

Ok, so you cropped and resized your gif. What now? Well, now I do coloring, but like I said I will not teach PSDs here, cause I think there are more talented people than I out there for it. If you wanna make your own, just go here:

And add brightness, levels, curves, etc. holistically, like I do cause I GENUINELY don't know what I'm doing and just play it by ear. I don't use PSDs often cause I love doing this part, I just suck at it, but feel free to do as you must in these trying coloring times. I do have to say though, in Photoshop 2020, you can edit your coloring in whatever frame you want (for example adjust brightness and contrast settings while frame 40 is clicked) whereas in Photoshop CS5 this is not possible. You have to make sure you do all your edits on the first frame, which is still a good general rule of thumb, imo. Ok, cool, now what what? You go here:

Same tab as usual, select all frames, then you make sure the frames on the left are also selected, like so:

Usually, when there are gif malfunctions (for example, you open the save for web screen to save the gif in its entirety and the gif is only a few kb big with all the frames being the same image), it's because you didn't select every single frame, or you forgot to hit "make video timeline," which is the next step. Make sure you DON'T select your PSD, whatever it is, or text. I mean, to be completely honest, the text one might work, but here is a gifset in which I merged text and image together:

I think the text looks odd, too sharpened, which is why I sharpen it afterwards, but it's a matter of taste, no big deal. I'll teach how to do it both ways in my text gifset portion of the tutorial, so more on this later. Anyway, after you do all this, you click, on the same panel as the select all frames, etc, in "convert to video timeline." Once that is done, you go here:

Convert for smart filters, don't forget to do this otherwise it won't work, all that. Now, for the true meat of the tutorial, the sharpening:

(continued on part 2, because I exceeded the image limit. Oops.)

[raccoonfallsharder]

Just wondering: Where did you read any of the GOTG/Rocket comics? I've looked for a while and can't find a reliable site to read them for the life of me xD

hey babe! this is a great, fair question.

honestly, as an artist and as someone with an ever-decreasing trust re: companies honoring digital licenses, i like print media for my favorite comics. i have most of the modern rocket, rocket & groot, and groot arcs in print.

i care much less about most gotg comics at large lol, so i have been more creative in my consumption of them. some ideas below (and maybe others will see this and add their own!) ♡ i am US-based so these may or may not be options in your location.

i was very lucky in 2023-2024. my partner had a free one-year subscription to marvel unlimited, so i consumed a vast amount of gotg comic content then. i don't love a lot of gotg comics (i'm a cretin, i know; a lot of the human characters are boring to me) so i read a lot at that time when it was free lol. things may have changed but marvel unlimited at the time was not a super-intuitive app (it might have been better from a web browser?), and there is a three-month lag from the comics hitting the shelves to be available in-app, but i didn't care about that too much at the time since i was mostly reading older stuff. marvel unlimited is $10/month i think. it looks like there is currently a free trial period you can access with a Disney+ account (not sure how long that lasts), and a code for 50% off for two months.

comixology through amazon is $6/month i think, and there's a 30-day free trial. if you're interested in going that route, i'd recommend lining up all the stuff you want to read in a list before you even sign up, and then consuming as much as you can before you cancel. you read through the kindle app, and some comics are available through kindle unlimited, too. if you've got money to spend and you enjoy electronic copies, you can also straight-up buy most of the comics through kindle. i haven't done a comparison on e-price vs print-price, so you'd probably want to double-check that.

finally, we also have a used bookstore near by with a decent tradebacks section, and we usually stop in about once a month. there was a pretty decent hardback version of rocket raccoon 1: a chasing tale (2014, skottie young) there two weeks ago, and it's actually where i got my copy of groot (2015, loveness & kesinger) about a year ago. i think i got it for like a quarter of the new-print price, and it was in really good condition. all the pages were nice and there was a little grime on the hardcover that i was able to get off (carefully) with some dish soap and a damp cloth. i've also gotten a couple gotg arcs there for cheap.

of course, all this relies on having at least some expendable income (unless you're gonna just truck through your whole library on that 30-day trial from comixology, which i fully support). i have not looked into this recently BUT if you have access to a local library, a lot of times they do have tradebacks/comics and will get what you want with an interlibrary loan if they don’t have it on hand. in most places you can coordinate the whole thing entirely online (even accessing the media digitally, sometimes).

beyond that, there really isn't (to my knowledge) a good way to access the comics for free, which i have complex feelings about.

i hope one of these options works for you nonnie, or that there are better options available and you can find them quickly! best of luck, and happy comics-hunting, my friend. ♡♡ may you find exactly what you need.

[relleytrots]

is it bright where you are? (vtm city meta 2/?)

In Part 1, we talked about how to choose your city. In Part 2, we're going to start populating it with SPCs!

how many vampires?

If you've been around Vampire: the Masquerade for any significant length of time, you'll have heard the 1:100,000 ratio passed around.

Discard this. Ignore this. Screw this up, do a shit on it, nail it to a frisbee, and fling it over the rainbow. It's arbitrary, it's frequently contradicted, it persists in fandom largely because it's a hard number on which the brain battens and sticks, and it's got no relevance whatsoever to how many vampires YOUR city needs.

Likewise, anything from the sourcebooks that gives you any impression that you need seven Tremere before you can have a Regent, or a dozen Ventrue to fill out the bottom rung of the Board? Yeet that. Those aren't characters; they're filler. A needless strain on the night to night. They probably exist, shunted off into suburbia with cleaver families or otherwise keeping themselves to themselves, but please don't feel like you need to know their names or have statblocks for them. They do not matter. They are there for verisimilitude's sake; spackle for the brain wrinkles of tidy minds.

You'll have Player Characters. They'll need sires, and they may have a Mawla or an Adversary. In an ideal world that's where you should start: build around the things the players put on their sheets, i.e. the things they've signalled they want in the game.

We do not live in an ideal world. At the present moment in time, my brain has been sparked by an impromptu chat from one of my D&D group who's been watching LA/NY By Night and getting back into Vampire. This particular group are now considering a pivot when we're done with our current D&D adventure, and I am reconsidering the handful of ideas I had for a Manchester based story some years ago. We have a sense of what clans are cool: we're probably looking at Toreador, Tzimisce and Lasombra (which is weird) and probably Anarchs because I know what these gremlins are like, and I want to lean into Ventrue and the Anarch pillar clans (Brujah, Gangrel, Ministry) because we're gonna have to fill out the conventional sect members.

The truth is, you've probably got an idea or two about your city already. That's why, a lot of the time, I actually start with the domains.

domains and you

Most cities kind of divide themselves into domains naturally. If you know the city, you can do what I'm doing right now and go "hmm, Oxford Road would make a good seat for a Ventrue Prince with this feeding limitation and that power base... Deansgate feels more anarchy, more Brujah... if we're going to put Toreador anyway, put them in Salford, maybe a Toreador/Gangrel axis, that could be fun... Elysium in the Northern Quarter, there's places there that would be perfect... and obviously the more north you go the more Anarch things get as the money runs out..."

If you don't, here's a trick you can do. Point your web browser to snazzymaps.com. Select your preference of style (I like to use Dark and Red as filters, for obvious reasons, and "dango red" is my current favourite). Drag the view to your real-world city of choice and zoom out until you have the names of good-sized, famous districts visible. If you want a busier and more complicated city, zoom in a bit and get the smaller ones. You'll need an account to save, but nothing stops you taking screenshots...

Here are a couple of maps of Manchester: the wide zoom that includes some of the outer city, but not the real satellite towns like Sale or Altrincham, and the close in on the inner city which is where most of the action will probably be happening. I would of course crop these to hide the various UI greebles if I was using them in any sort of player facing resource, but that comes later.

That gives you your domains, which you can start populating with any SPCs you already have burning a hole in your brain. You can set markers at this stage, if you know where you want to put things, or you can do so in the later Relationship Mapping stage, or you can not bother and use a damn notebook (which, again, since I know Manchester fairly well - I lived there for two years and married a local - is probably how I'd go about things).

The old-school variation on this is acquiring an Eyewitness travel guide (the fat ones with the white covers) and using the chapters from that as domains. I like using Eyewitness because they're pretty exhaustive in terms of landmarks - gives you plenty of things you can navigate by and slip into descriptions, although it does give your game a slightly sightseer vibe.

For historical games, I like to dig up a historical map! There's not always one from exactly the right decade, but usually some from close enough that you can pinpoint landmarks around which a domain might centre and still achieve the right period vibe.

Anyway. However you've reached this point, this is where you start doing the Research, rounding out your initial enthusiasm for PCs and SPCs with historical conteeext! Vampire works really well as historical fiction in my experience - reality is deeper and gnarlier than anything you could make up and, quite often, you'll come across people and events and places that make you think "oh, this could be vampires."

I usually spend a couple of weeks on this. Just chipping away on different deep dives, different conflicts - politics, sport, universities, anything that exposes deep long term fault lines in the city's integrity, because that's where the monsters live and where their influence is felt. Once my head is creaking and my notes arranged along conflict lines... the Process can really begin.

[smbhax]

Amazon / Kindle / Comixology comic page image extraction tip!

For some reason, Amazon / Kindle / Comixology have two separate web-based comic readers.

Googling "Kindle Cloud Reader," clicking the green "Read Now" button on a comic's Amazon store page, or using the "Kindle Library" button in the upper left corner of the "slice reader" (see below) gets you to a reader with URLs in the format "https://read.amazon.com/manga/[content ID]"; this reader has a zoom function, a panel-by-panel Guided View mode, and fullscreening your browser (F11) actually scales the images up slightly. In addition to turning pages by clicking on the arrows on the sides of the screen, you can also can turn pages with your mouse wheel or the keyboard keys on your keyboard.

On the other hand, going through your "Content Library" from amazon.com and opening a comic by clicking its "More Actions" button and then "Read Now" will serve you your comics in a reader with URLs in the format "https://read.amazon.com/?asin=[content ID]"; this reader has no zoom function, no Guided View mode, does not scale up when you fullscreen the browser, seems to have more little delays in loading, doesn't let you turn comic pages with the mouse wheel. I call this one the "slice reader," which will make more sense in a bit.

In both readers, double-clicking a panel zooms it up to near full-screen.

The Cloud Reader is more user-friendly--but not for getting images of your comics. Sure you can take a screenshot, but it's using a "blob" renderer that is always scaling the graphics some way or other, and doesn't seem to provide the actual underlying images themselves in any easily-accessible format.

The "slice reader" loads pages a lot slower and in general feels like an older, crustier implementation that maybe they meant to replace completely with the Cloud Reader but had to keep around for some reason (or have they just kind of forgotten it comes up when accessing comics via some of their many reading buttons?), but I guess I'm glad they did because if you poke through the "slice reader's" page source code you'll find two "sliced" "jpeg" URLs per comic page, one for the top half of the comic page and the other for the bottom half; they're in what appears to be a streamed data format, but you can copy and paste them into a browser window and it'll give you an actual image; join them together in an image editing program, and you've got the base comic image. The image resolution is a lot less than you get from, say, Marvel Unlimited's web reader--DC pages 1249 pixels wide vs Marvel pages 1821 pixels wide--but at least it isn't extra blurry like it would be if you just screenshotted it from either reader.

All of this only really matters if you're trying to grab one of the smaller comic panels, really--and then you still have to be kind of picky to notice a difference--but it's the kind of thing that drives me up the wall. ; )

This was about the best I could do for a couple smallish early Batman panels from the Cloud Reader, for instance (DC's image quality in the Kindle versions of their Golden Age comic collections is rather poor 'p'):

Whereas with the images I could dig out of the "slice reader," I was able to avoid having to use Sharpen on the drawing, so after some color indexing, got cleaner, non-haloed edges:

So uh yeah this made me happy. ^ _^

[quesadillawizard]

Dogtrot: Detour - a ramble

This post is compiled of a thread I made about a project I've had floating around in my head for a long time called Detour!

THE THREAD:

so Dogtrot: Detour started its life as a little self-indulget 'lol what if my blorbo went to silent hill' type thing where I was gonna make up a mock wikipedia page on my website (an old, now gone googlesite) describing what my imaginary game featuring Maurice would be including characters, maps, monsters, puzzles, items, unique mechanics featuring the sun and beer, a bunch of stuff. I never finished the project but I liked what I did end up developing for it. I forgot about it for several years but a couple years back I started reworking it into its own thing. It still kept aspects of the old project like monsters based around Maurice's flaws and fears. eventually I brought in some kind of fungus that set up in his lungs and caused hallucinations. I wanted the story to have like a double POV where instead of it being a rug pull of 'omg it was all a dreeeeaaaaam' you're like VERY aware that Maurice is tripping serious vampire balls and is in danger and there's shit that WE see as the watsonian audience and the things HE sees.

Now I MAY NOT KEEP THIS ASPECT but it's what I've got so far! As for what the project is, originally it was gonna be the wiki page but then I was like what if I made it a short story or a novella and then like...last year? i think? I started learning how to use TWINE, the interactive branching storytelling software. I've actually finished writing one game in #TWINE and I'm in the process of illustrating it. I kind of made it as I went along as i was learning. I had a really good time learning all the code and stuff, but TWINE has something called story formats which is basically different code sets that do different things. uhhh ENGINES. they're like engines. anyway The Address, my first game, was built in Chapbook which was a great way to learn the ins and outs of TWINE but it's pretty limited in its display style.

ANYWAY I'm now learning SugarCube which lets you do a lot of wild stylistic stuff and since TWINE runs entirely on HTML and CSS I could style the game to look exactly how I wanted and anyone can play it in a web browser! SO. i thought what if I actually brought the video game aspect of Detour's original incarnation back and made a little TWINE game where you control Maurice and navigate through an area and avoid monsters and the sun and shit. That's the current idea! More in next thread.

[donnyclaws]

Ur website so cool!! ❤️❤️ Do you have by any chances coding tips? Been trying to make my own website for a while but adhd won't let me concentrate a second when it comes to learning coding

Thank you! And 100% It is deceptively approachable but also time consuming, I'm familiar enough with html from a highschool class where we did need to write code out by hand, and then soft practice with coding toyhou.se profiles and futzing around with free code snippets. Largely though I don't think you need to know everything or to write everything by hand, you just need to frankenstein code pieces together (As long as they're free ofc).

I used this first, it's fucking insanely handy and lets you make a simple layout with sidebars, navigation, header, footer and a body base ect, and then just generate and copy the code. The html itself also has greyed out little notes about what parts do what!

I'll be real the rest of it after that is just me googling what I want to do or googling html snippets bc I forgot them. So like html image link with size attributes ect ect, how to make a html image gallery. I don't use one site exclusively but w3schools.com has a bunch of common ones and also has a little live code editor in its tutorials.

Like I still get greatly stumped for hours bc code's kinda sensitive and one or two characters out of place will break sections of it especially when ur just frankensteining. Trying out little segments in live code editors is really helpful because you can kinda break it apart and diagnose the issue before putting it into your site html.

Also if it helps this is kind of how I break it down in my brain as another ADHD-er. so fuckign sorry for how this looks im doing it in snipping tool. But code bits love to live in cages even if it all looks the same, iit would also help if you clean your code up mine is pretty horrid but you just want to familiarize yourself with the little "Sections" ig that's where doing things by hand would help because you would 100% know what each chunk is for but yk yk.

CSS is a different beast I barely understand. The parts of code where it starts stacking on top instead of being horizontal is css and it's basically how you do fancier things to your code, it's linked to stuff you already have down. So like changing the background in the body text box or something, you can only do so much in there. Css targetting the body text box is where you can level it up. Again the sadgrl layout builder has notes so you're not completely blind in there. There's also 100% so many resources to explain what all these words mean, my mmethod is incredibly avoidant I don't know what flex is I haven't needed to fight her yet ect ect.

Sorry if this is confusing this is just my hack and slash understanding atm. Be humbled by code I've spent too long trying to fix up hysterical margin issues just because I had a random apostrophe somewhere or because I tried to spell it colour and not color ect.

[a-girl-called-bob]

I don't want to reply to this on the post it's on, because it'd be getting pretty far away from the original point (that being that chromebooks have actively eroded the technological literacy of large proportions of young people, especially in the US), but I felt enough of a need to respond to these points to make my own post.

Point 1 is... pretty much correct in the context that it's replying to; the Google Problem in this case being the societal impact of Google as a company and how their corporate decisions have shaped the current technological landscape (again, especially in the US). I'd argue it's less like saying Firefox is a good alternative for your dishwasher and more like saying Firefox is a solution for climate change, but whatever, the point's the same. You can't personal choices your way out of systemic issues.

Point 2 is only correct in the most pedantic way; we both know that 'running on a Linux kernel' isn't what we mean when we talk about Linux systems. It's one true definition, but not a functional or useful one. Android and ChromeOS (and to a lesser extent, MacOS, and to an even greater extent, the fucking NES Mini) all share a particular set of characteristics that run counter to the vast majority of FOSS and even Enterprise Linux distributions. Particularly, they're a.) bundled with their hardware, b.) range from mildly annoying to damn near impossible (as well as TOS-breaking) to modify or remove from said hardware, and c.) contain built-in access restrictions that prevent the user from running arbitrary Linux programs. I would consider these systems to all be Linux-derived, but their design philosophies and end goals are fundamentally different from what we usually mean when we talk about 'a Linux system'. Conflating the two is rhetorically counterproductive when you fucking know what we mean.

Point 3 is a significant pet peeve of mine, and the primary reason why I feel the need to actually respond to this even if only on my own blog. "Linux is not a consumer operating system" is such a common refrain, it's practically a meme; yet, I've never seen someone explain why they think that in a way that wasn't based on a 30-year-old conception of what Linux is and does. If you pick up Linux Mint or Ubuntu or, I don't know, KDE Plasma or something, the learning curve for the vast majority of things the average user needs to do is nearly identical to what it would be on Windows. Office software is the same. Media players is the same. Files and folders is the same. Web browsers is the same. GIMP's a little finicky compared to Photoshop but it also didn't cost you anything and there are further alternatives if you look for them. There are a few differences in terms of interface, but if you're choosing between either one to learn for the first time you're using a computer, the difference isn't that large. Granted, you can also do a bunch of stuff with the command line - you could say the same of Powershell, though, and you don't have to use either for most things. Hell, in some respects Windows has been playing catch-up - the Windows Store post-dates graphical software browsers on Linux by at least a decade, maybe more. Finding and installing programs has, quite literally, never been harder on Linux than on Windows - and only recently has Windows caught up. I used Linux as my daily driver for five years before I ever regularly had to open up the terminal (and even then it was only because I started learning Python). I was also seven when I started. If the average teenager these days has worse computer literacy than little seven year old Cam Cade (who had, let me think, just about none to start with), I think we have bigger issues to worry about.

In my opinion, Linux users saying Linux 'isn't for consumers' is an elitist, condescending attitude that's not reflective of the actual experience of using a Linux system. To say so also devalues and trivializes the work put in to projects like Mint and Ubuntu, which are explicitly intended to be seamlessly usable for the vast majority of day-to-day computer tasks.

[slashedout]

My Windows XP x64 desktop. I have it installed on my main PC alongside other operating systems, and boot into it to either mess about with, get a nostalgia hit, or play around and try to get stuff not-supporting-XP working.

Windows XP remains surprisingly usable today. There are several updated web browsers - one recent appearance is Supermium, which ports the newest/almost-newest Chromium and permits use of Discord, Youtube etc without a sweat under XP (plus it has several privacy tweaks from Ungoogled Chromium, for those conscious of that).

Windows XP had an especially vibrant custom theme landscape - in part because it remained supported and widely used for a humongous amount of time. As such people made great-quality custom themes that encompass all kinds of design trends that popped up over the years. The theme used by me here is "Watercolor Emico: Black" by Jamush, which is one of my all-time favorites.

In service of 4/13, which happened yesterday, I have put up a Homestuck wallpaper, in this instance one of my favorite ones that has stuck around with me on those XP x64 setups ^^. I believe that this

is the original, but it has a couple of small quirks, like the way darker space on the right. I have wrangled it quite a bit on my own end, but I don't remember what I precisely did since it's been ages. It does appear to be a vectorized picture of Skaia, which would make it "recreatable" for anyone interested. Overall, I enjoy using this system - I normally use Linux, but when I get a desire to use Windows this usually does perfectly. It does, however, have several things that later Windowses clearly do better - for example, the audio system got greatly enhanced in Vista, with per-application volume settings. Additionally, and this may be a problem with my drivers, I get pops and slight skips in certain programs and games (for example, VVVVVV) under XP that I do not get on other systems. Older Windowses certainly had their own warts indeed (as someone who generally doesn't like newer Windowses, I do apprecieate being able to use older Windows versions regularly, to have further perspective on what changes in the later versions I would call definite improvements, and what I would rather have be similar to the older versions ^^)

A very important thing to note is that my hardware is old enough for XP x64 to still be supported driver-wise. You generally can't install Windows XP on newer hardware by default, and while there are modded drivers, custom drivers and workarounds, it is certainly not a task for the feeble. Additionally, the XP x64, being based on Server 2003, and not being a particularly common system (Vista/7 were the first x64 OS's that properly "took off" to put it highly clumsily), has spottier driver support than "regular" 32-bit XP. Indeed, I have to use my GPU with a single screen, as plugging in a second monitor bluescreens the computer! (this is an issue with the driver under specifically 64-bit systems, and while there is a patched version for a later driver version than what I use, that driver version has its own issues and keeps resetting itself into washed-out-colors-mode (clamping the colours to 16-235/"limited RGB" ). So I stick with the older driver version and just use it with a single screen) So yeah, have an inpromptu-and-overlong description of an OS install I have particularly enjoyed messing about with recently :D

[just-system-rambling]

TW: government "oversight", tracking of private data

I hate how fearmongering and straight up lying is used to trick people into thinking that everything they do is NOT watched by authorities and/or corporations.

Cookies, in your browser, track you. Anything used for advertising? It's tracking you. If you disable cookies, they "fingerprint" your browser based on your operating system and features you have on your browser.

I've had old friends try to bring up "oooooo imagine if the government watches what you are doing".

They already do. It's observation en masse, but it exists.

There is a law a lot of larger countries have (in capitalist/socialist heavy areas) where governments get around not being able to "spy" on their own people by sharing information about other governments' citizens with other governments.

There is a main 5 countries, then one referred to as "9 eyes", and then an additional 5 (referred as 14 eyes).

A VPN only hides your location. If you change nothing about your behavior, it's useless for making your internet activity discreet, if that's why you are using it.

Disabling cookies in your browser makes it hard to be tracked, but if you have things that are unique about your browser (the theme, addons/extensions, settings), it doesn't do much overall other than reduce how targeted the ads you receive are.

Using Tor as a browser does nothing if you use it like a normal browser. Even the guide to Tor explains this.

If you want to be seen as "invisible", you need to do this:

Use a specific browser for the invisible activity (ex. researching political parties, shopping, researching controversial topics in your country). Do not ever use this browser for anything else. This browser needs to have an ad blocker used by at least several million people. Any extensions need to be used by millions of people. For best results, use a Virtual Machine which will have a different serial number than yours. Before you open the browser, turn on your VPN (or change it to a specific country of which you always use and only use for that browser). Ensure that you leave all settings to default other than disabling cookies and, if you want to be more careful, disabling JavaScript. If you disable JavaScript, you will find that most of the internet is much more difficult to navigate. But, your browser will not be able to share as much if you do.

What I just described is almost exactly what is explained by Tor in how they explain to use the Tor browser. I struggle to understand why, I have friends that are also highly familiar with software and web development, and should know how tracking works, that still fall into being fearmongered over their personal information being tracked.

If you are using the internet, you are being tracked. What matters for how easily it identifies you, is how much information about you is kept all together. Which, most people have almost all their information together.

Remember that information is "en masse", meaning that generally specific details are not restricted to individual people.... but if you want the tracking to not carry between say different online accounts - keep them separate.

[dylawas-reblogs]

Aight, I'm pissed enough at Y*utube's aggressive ad bullshit (this reddit comment summarizes it pretty well) and it's one of the few G**gle services that we're stuck stuck with, that I'm gonna make my own post on current workarounds as of 10/12/2023, with info on methods that I know of for both desktop and mobile. They may not be the best workarounds, but they are what I'm currently using or trust from what I've heard (and I haven't had any other posts like this come across my dash, so maybe this is needed). We fight to the bitter end, comrades.

This post is specifically for if you must be logged in to use Youtube. Your greatest defense would be to use Youtube while logged out. From what I can tell, they basically can't do anything to you if you are.

Please note that I am absolutely no web or code expert, I don't understand the inner workings of the G**gle all seeing eye and how they catch you on this shit, I don't know if it's account based or IP based, I just barely figured out how to buy and use my own domain like three weeks ago, so there are likely things in this post I will suggest that people will correct me on. If for some reason this post gets big and starts circulating (unlikely), please check reblogs and replies for additional information (and make sure it's ACCURATE if you can). Knowledge is your friend.

With that plea to the void out of the way:

Desktop:

Some folks are using browsers with built in ad blockers such as Brave (with varying results; the comments are worth a read by everyone regardless if you use Brave) to circumvent the ad block policy, but that's Chromium shit! We don't do that in this house! I guess you can if you really want to (PrivacyGuides apparently gives it the seal of approval) but if you like your online privacy, I personally really do suggest sticking with Firefox.

"But Dyl, they're catching us on Firefox even with Ublock Origin."

Yes, but the Ublock team is working their asses off to keep up with every. single. ID. change. Y*utube makes to try to break their workarounds. If it's not currently working for you, click on that link right there and follow that guide. This war of the ads will probably continue for a while, so my advice for the foreseeable future is this:

Always perform the four steps listed in the above link any time you've been away from Y*utube for a while (even just a couple hours),

and double check the Y*utube ID VS Ublock's current ID as stated in the linked comment at the start of this post.

After verifying there's an ID update and Ublock is caught up, reset your filters every single time you get on after a several hour break (after backing up your personal filters and trusted sites, if you have any of those customized). Why so often? Because that's just about how often Y*utube's updating their popup ID to catch you with your ad blocker. The Ublock team is staying on top of it fairly well considering the insane frequency, but they may not always get to it for a few hours (hence checking the ID).

After rebooting your Ublock, check a few videos without being logged in first so as not to put your account at risk. Do so in incognito if it's easiest for you. EDIT: If you aren't logged in, YT won't give a shit if you have an ad blocker-- or so I've heard.

"That sounds like a hassle. Don't the filters in this post work?"

They may have at one point! But that post was made all the way back at the end of June 2023, and most recent replies in the post are stating it's not working for them anymore. Thus, I'd just constantly reset your Ublock for the time being until a better solution is implemented. Besides, once you know what you're doing, resetting Ublock takes a grand total of, oh I dunno, a minute? On that note, with YT's constant updates, I have no idea how Brave is faring/keeping up in comparison. And besides from using either Brave or Firefox+Ublock, I don't know of any other desktop solutions.

Furthermore-- and this applies to both desktop and mobile, but I'm bringing it up now-- if you really value your Y*utube channel and don't want it to lose access to watching videos-- or worse-- it may work to make a Y*utube account that's dispensable as your new default. I just used my spam email, honestly. It's literally no skin off my nose if that account suddenly can't watch Y*utube anymore. Then, save the browsing on your main account for when you can afford to have your adblock off (or just don't watch videos from that account anymore). It seems if you've already got the warning once, you're basically on G**gle's watchlist with that account now-- so if you've gotten it on your main, better safe than sorry.

Mobile:

There are a couple things I know of that you can do here. My first suggestion, and the one I just set up, is Revanced (aka the Revanced Manager, and it works in tangent with a MicroG fork (I absolutely do not have the vocabulary to explain what MicroG is/does, just know you can't log in to YT Revanced without it)). This Reddit post is the one I think will make the most sense to everyone for installation, but I would use it in conjunction with the official guide for dummies, not as a replacement for it.

TL;DR, Revanced is an open source APK patcher (or in gamer speak, a mod) that provides patches for numerous applications (T*mblr included, hint hint). Note the term "patches." Yes, you do need to download an APK of your app of choice (on non-rooted devices), but technically what Revanced does is create its own "build" of the app by combining the APK and the patches, and since they're not the ones distributing the APK, I believe that technically keeps them out of G**gle's death laser. PLEASE note that Revanced does NOT distribute its own APKs: if you're trying to save yourself hassle and find something claiming to be an already patched Revanced APK, be it for Y*utube, Reddit, etc, assume it's a virus even if it's not. Always get your APK from apkmirror with your own fingers and manually patch it in with Revanced.

I know the guide looks scary, but believe me: Revanced used to be WAY harder to install, as in, you had to go through a virtual machine on your phone harder. At the current moment, Revanced is Android only. Sorry Apple users :/

If logging in to an account is of no consequence to you and you could not care less, Newpipe is another good third party YT choice from what I've heard; I don't know if it has all of the same features as Revanced YT, but at the very least, yes, it should block ads. It seems to also be compatible with Soundcloud and Bandcamp of all things at a glance, so if those are common applications for you, Newpipe might even be a better option for you over Revanced. Alas, yet again, this app is not compatible with Apple-- and as this is the last third party YT app I have to offer, I don't know if there are any third party YT apps that are Apple compatible. However...

If installing a scary new non-playstore app isn't up your alley, Brave seems to have a mobile app as well; you'd be watching Y*utube in your browser instead of the Y*utube app, but hey, I was watching Y*utube in Firefox mobile with Ublock until I put on my big kid pants with Revanced, so it's absolutely doable. Again, I must reiterate, I don't know how Brave is faring with these changes.

That's all I've got, but just to reiterate: I'm not an expert. I only know bare bones web/code stuff, my understanding on some of these things may be slightly off or wrong, these are just the methods I know of that work to circumvent YT ads. Your mileage may vary on a number of factors, including but not limited to, your understanding of/ability to learn how to download and use non-playstore apps, any breaking updates YT makes to further enforce their tyranny, how G**gle keeps track of ad blockers in browsers, and how long ago this post was made vs when you're seeing it.

It's war out there, soldier; good luck.

[finclgicls]

＋ closed starter for ( @someotherdog ) based on — deep web — maya is a programmer with a penchant for exploring the dark web when she shouldn't. somewhere along the way, she managed to rope your character, her roommate, into the same kind of obsession, they might have even asked for dark web mystery boxes. one day, when exploring, they come upon a website called 'the echo chamber' where people claim to communicate with the spirits of the deceased using unorthodox digital methods. as deeper they get into it, the more details they start uncovering and more fiction start to seep into reality as they start receiving strange messages. — open to any of your muses, because i love them so. also, maya is awkward asf and might have a smol crush on your muse.

it was hard to say when maya stumbled upon the deep web. truth be told, being a programmer gave her too much access to the internet and screen time. she also was a walking cliché—insomnia was a staple in her life, and what once she had been medicated with video games, now was being medicated by a tor browser and random websites. her hyper fixations often caused maya to hole up inside her room for days on end, usually claiming to be working on projects, but most of the time really following a lead she knew she wasn't prepared to investigate. maya was no investigative journalist, she was just really curious.

codes filled two of her screens in her dim-lit room, while on the third a tor browser was open. she found it fun to see what people thought they were hiding from other people. since her first time, she had seen a little bit of everything, and maybe had her roommate been completely uninterested in it, she would have searched for it less, but just so happens that they were as excited as she was when she talked about it with them for the first time, and now, as lame as it sounds, she had been looking for more reasons to bring them new things. making excuses to have them spend time together.

she had stumbled upon that website, the echo room, a few days ago. as it said in it's description:

the echo chamber is a virtual gathering place for individuals who claim to communicate with the spirits of the deceased using unorthodox digital methods.

there, what she had so far encountered were snippets of boards where people shared eerie stories of messages from beyond the grave, strange encounters, and eerie photos capturing the supernatural. she was pretty damn sure she could debunk each and every one of them. however, it wasn't until maya finally decrypted the password to enter a private chat room that she even raised her eyebrows for the first time. what she was seeing could only be described as some sort of digital séance. maya jumps from her chair and runs into the living room, the light of day assaulting her eyes as she doesn't know how long she's been up for.

"holy shit, you're not gonna believe it—" she was nearly squealing at how excited she was, both for having a reason to talk to them and actually stumbling upon something interesting. "they're having actual séances on that side, séances, can you believe it? do you think we can get one of the participants to talk to us? most of it is encrypted, but i think that if i work a few more hours on it i can get us in and find out who is in there. are you game? please tell me you're game?"＋ @someotherdog