#web dev stuff

[kronim195]

node js so stupid. oh you wanna make a solid back-end for your app? better make sure to install penis, and penis-express, and penis-authenticator, and penis-encryptor, and cock-and-balls-tester, and penis-database-sniffer, like shut the fuck uuuup theres so many modules. like why does every tiny little bit of functionality require its own package, how are you supposed to remember it all

[aspectpriority]

it might have taken upwards of 4 hours between yesterday and today, but I finally got toyhouse to give me functional on-hover dropdown menus <3 exciting times!

[l0stw00d]

CSS has VARIABLES?

[julesbilee]

JUBILATION! Saturday Update!

First things first, for those of you who’ve no idea what’s going on on this page, howdy! :o)

Our friends who made their way here down the tree of links will probably know this already, but by way of introduction to the site where I am actually posting this particular update (Update? Devlog? It’s sort of a log, but I do like the term Update, gives it some kind of nebulous significance doesn’t it?), a little about the “what’s going on here” part. I’m Julesbilee, a constitutional law scholar, founder of the (honestly sort of unfounded as yet) Jubilant Party, and author of the upcoming game JUBILATION!, whose first chapter will be releasing later this year! Coming soon to an abandoned theater in a collapsing society near you! Or you can just download it and play it on your device, I guess.

Speaking of JUBILATION!, those of you who haven’t scoped it yet may want to take a look at our first teaser for the game over at https://youtu.be/59_3KrwYNyY. Go on, give it a peep. And while you’re at it, feel free to hop on over to https://linktr.ee/julesbilee and follow everything on there (who knows what might be relevant later!) then head back here for the remainder of this juicy little morsel of update.

Go on, we’ll wait. I’m sure the rest of the audience will need a moment to get over the fact that I just used the phrase juicy little morsel (twice in a row now, so you’ve got extra time).

Alrighty, everybody back in your seats?! Got your popcorn at the ready? Ringers off? Great! I mean, there’s no movie today, I don’t know why you brought popcorn. Uh, unless you watched the little movie up above, in which case why did you just get popcorn?? This feels like some kind of breach of protocol. And now half of you reading this are going to be thinking “mm I want some popcorn” and people are going to be shuffling in and out of the theatre, god, what have I done.

Well, I guess there’s hardly ever a bad time for some good old fashioned hydrogenated Iowa gold. Orville Redenbacher and his Colonel of Kernels probably thank me for my service.

So, it’s been about a week and a half since I dropped that first teaser for JUBILATION! Eleven days, that’s something right? Hmm, elevensies? No that’s 111. I’ll just check a few pages in my future and see what I decided to call this post… Saturday update? Okay sure, it’s the second Saturday since the teaser was shown. What an amazing milestone, hooray!! (Why not, that makes as much sense as anything else.)

ANYWAY

First look got a nice little bit of interest, some eager eyes one might expect to accumulate with time and further information becoming of an actual video-game studio. But as you can see, I’ve since furnished NO further content whatsoever for the teeming masses, hungry hordes, beloved audience, etc.

And so now seemed like the perfect time to set up this little temporary residence and give you all (whoever is even looking so far) a proper update. Or rather, several weeks ago would probably have been the perfect time to set up here, and definitely the perfect time for this update would be uh, somewhere before today. But hey, one mustn't be too self-effacing when setting out to start a revolution (and make no mistake darlings, that is EXACTLY what we’re doing here), or so I hear.

Unless the self-effacery is funny of course; personal dignity is never worth the sacrifice of a good joke.

You can’t just go around missing punchlines, not in this economy.

Now the more eagle eyed and also the blind and deaf of you and just about everyone in between may have noticed that so far this update contains a whole lot of no information whatsoever, to such an extent that one might imagine some kind of popcorn metaphor working here if the author were forethoughtful enough not to make a non-sequitur joke about popcorn further up the post…

But at any rate, we should probably get into the nuts and bolts of it, give you something to actually get excited about beyond the promise of an infinite quantity of my waffling. Peel back, if only for a fleeting glimpse, the veil into which you no doubt eagerly peer, the churning maw of my shadowy organization and its seething content mills, the future objects of beholdment inching their way towards your eyes and ears.

Let’s see… oh! We’re working on a website. Well, I’m working on a website really. It’s like five people over here and mostly they’re furnishing music or helping me with [REDACTED] for the [REDACTED] when we announce the [REDACTED], although I suppose that’s way too big to talk about just yet, heheh.

And seriously you guys this site, it’s gonna be so rad.

I don’t wanna spoil too much but let’s just say there’s more to JUBILATION! Than what comes on the cartridge. Some games are best played with the use of everything that comes in the box, if you get what I’m putting down ;o)

So, you know the mysterious pseudo-mmo earthbound style twin peaks inspired city used as the home menu screen on the satellaview add-on for the Super NES?

Really, you do?! No way!! Oh, you’re messing with me. Rude. But okay yeah I figured you wouldn’t, that was a bit of a reach. Hmm… okay imagine club penguin, a mother romhack, an AOL chat room, and an old Web 1.0 blog all had some kind of multibaby together, or paired off and made babies who made grandbabies or something. This is gonna be sort of like that.

And if you have any idea whatsoever what any of that means, you probably just clicked the follow button. Thanks for that by the way! If you have no idea what I’m talking about, don’t worry, you can click the button too, it’s all very cool and exciting and your trendy friends will be so mad at you later for finding it first.

Oh, and of course there’s gonna be more animated content coming soon too! I mean, nothing special really, probably just a lot of totally ignorable promotional type materials. Nothing to do with that “everything in the box” analogy, so definitely don’t go subscribing to the channel waiting around on some kind of weird avant-garde peripheral content or story additions, there is definitely absolutely nothing of that variety churning in these here content mills, nosireebob.

(please intuit the above as some kind of very high effort eldritch abomination and definitely not just a lot of character sketches layered obscuratively over top of each other to create some enticing garbage, the author gets tired sometimes, work with me on this one)

Anything left to note, hmm.. oh, I’m gonna try to put out some speed paints soon! I finally figured out how to record those properly without the hassle of rotating footage all over the place, by which I of course mean I discovered clip studio paint’s extremely obvious button for recording that exact kind of capture. Big achievement there, very proud of myself for noticing the button. And these digi-art tools be dropping buttons out of every pocket like a kleptomaniac kid in cargo shorts in a button store, so I’m only like 80% kidding on that one.

But yeah, may be furnishing some visually interesting dev-vlogs (say that three times fast) by way of this amazing discovery, accompanied of course by whatever I happen to draw for that. As soon as I climb the additional hurdle of clearing some hard drive space to actually store and edit those videos that is. Nobody said Sisyphus had to work quick. But hey, let’s give that one a solid Soon^TM.

Oh and the other big thing of course, I am just over the moon to finally announce [REDACTED] to y’all! Though of course I can’t give myself the luxury of unredacting it until [REDACTED] also comes together, but that sure was a nifty callback to that joke wasn’t it? Really advanced stuff. And I didn’t even excessively metatextually pat myself on the back about it or anything.

So yeah, I guess that’s pretty much everything on your need to know basis bases covered for now! I’ll try to keep posting updates here semi-regularly, as well as maybe some concept art and stuff, especially in any particular droughts of other content as we pick up the pace over here at the mills in moving towards launching an actual game. But for now, that’s today’s program, thanks for tuning in!

See you next time!!

[omeletcat]

guys we gotta stop this, literally all i do is draw pixel art for my games and code, and i go on the godot discord to see some GENIUS SAY WORDS THAT PROBABLY HAVEN'T EVEN BEEN INVENTED YET.

QUATERNION?? NOWAY THATS A REAL WORD.

[bf-rally]

hi! just wanted to remind anyone who hasnt to go get the current bfs and spring alts (and frogs)!

[radioregine]

also why is every other thing getting flagged explicit lately lol i see so many people's shit getting pixelated and even that underwater screenshot i just posted is under content review ... maybe this site rly is reaching a certain point bruh . is it time to do neocities?

[brainrot-time]

nothing makes me want to shoot myself in the head more than writing css. what the fuck are we talking about. why is the display flexing at me.

[lieutenantselnia]

By the way, because I just found myself using this again - if you want to backup your blog, I really recommend using tumblr-utils as described in this document! I originally wanted to reblog the post where I first found this, but it was somewhere further down a reblog chain and apparently the op either disabled reblogs or deleted it, since it didn't work. So I'm just sharing the link to the document (written by user @/magz) here:

It's genuinely so useful, I've used to use Tumblr's own export feature but once a blog reaches a certain size this just takes super long (mine took literal days until it was ready to download), whereas here it was just a couple minutes, plus the folder as a whole is much smaller too. And if you set it up correctly (with incremental saves, which is also explained in the document) you don't need to download the entire thing every time!

Personally I did run into two smaller issues, one being that the download of embedded Youtube videos didn't work for me (despite running pip install youtube-dl). Maybe it's just a me issue that I missed something on the install, otherwise I could imagine that maybe there's some compatibility problem between the current versions of tumblr-utils and the youtube downloader.

The other, very minor issue (which isn't even an issue per se, more like a preference) is that there is no css styling applied on my backup, when I open the html file, so it looks like a really old website like straight from the 90s😅 I was mainly a bit confused about whether I had an error or it was supposed to be like that, because a screenshot in magz' document showed that their page apparently has some styling applied to it. I still need to look more into the documentation (btw, here is also the documentation on github directly, though I think the most important features are included in the document anyway), but as it looks you can add your own styling by either adding an override.css file to change some of the existing styles, or add your own entirely by adding a custom.css file. It would be super handy if there was also a way to easily pull your current styling from your blog to copy-paste it in there, but I haven't researched yet if such a feature exists (if you know anything I'd be happy about additions!).

But one of the best features for me was that it also allows you to export your likes. I'm sure I'm not the only one who sometimes runs into this problem that you like something, but maybe feel too embarrassed to reblog it, or may not want to do so for another reason (e.g. it's something nsfw, but you generally never share nsfw content on your own blog). [Btw I still encourage you to reblog posts when you can, as it will usually make the op happy :D But I absolutely understand why you won't sometimes.] Problem is that when the original poster deletes it at some point, it will be gone and you'll have no way of getting it back. However with tumblr-utils you can export your likes the same as your own blog. Mind you that it will have the same name as your blog, but will only contain your likes and not your own posts, so the way I did it was inside of my tumblr_backup folder, I made a likes folder and then just downloaded it into there, like this:

(For downloading my own blog, I did basically the same except one folder level above and without the --likes flag.)

I just wanted to point out this feature specifically because I actually completely missed it when I first started using this method of backing up my blog. I looked into the document again today because I wasn't entirely sure about the whole process anymore and suddenly spotted that likes flag and was like "👀👀 this has been here the entire time and I didn't use it yet??!" One thing to be noted is that your likes will have to be public for the download, otherwise it won't work, however you can of course just set them to public for the time it takes you to download them (which in my case was a couple minutes for about 4000 posts) and then make them private again, and all should be fine.

All credit goes of course to the developer(s) behind tumblr-utils and to magz for writing this instruction document, but I think that maybe this post helps at least some of my own mutuals who might not know of this amazing tool yet!

[dreamersdescent]

Why Climb? | Dreamer's Descent

The reflection of the pixelated mountain from the billboard across the subway platform felt sharper, more tangible to Emil than the dim, flickering reality of the train car around him.

The subway car rattled and screeched as it hurtled forward, its fluorescent lights flickering in uneven bursts. Emil leaned against the grimy window, his phone in hand, staring blankly at the notes app. The black screen reflected his pale, tired face, the dark circles under his eyes pronounced even in the dim light. Around him, the other commuters sat slumped in their seats, swaying with the movement of the train like ragdolls in a game physics engine. No one spoke.

Emil thumbed through the half-written ideas cluttering his phone: "Puzzle platformer: player builds their own path to escape a collapsing world." Nope. "Surreal horror game: every door leads to a new version of the same room." Too ambitious. "AI companion learns from you but becomes something you didn't expect." Meh.

He sighed and flicked to a new page, the blank digital canvas staring back at him like an accusation. The words wouldn't come. They never did these days.

The train jolted suddenly, and Emil stumbled, clutching the metal pole for balance. His phone slipped from his grip, tumbling to the floor.

"Damn it," he muttered, crouching quickly to grab it before someone stepped on it.

As he picked it up, he noticed something scrawled in faint black marker on the side of the seat in front of him. "Why climb?" The words were barely legible, half-faded beneath layers of grime and scratched graffiti.

Emil frowned. He leaned closer, brushing away a smudge of dirt with his sleeve. The phrase stood out starkly now, clean and deliberate, as though someone had just written it moments ago.

Why climb?

The question burrowed into him, unwelcome and persistent. He sat back, phone in hand, staring at the words as the train rumbled on. It felt familiar, somehow, though he couldn't place why.

The train's brakes screeched as it pulled into the next station. A voice crackled through the intercom, unintelligible but vaguely annoyed. A few passengers shuffled off, replaced by others equally lifeless, their faces blank masks of routine.

Emil turned his attention back to his phone and opened a fresh note. His thumbs hovered over the keyboard as the train jerked forward again, but nothing came to him. Just static in his brain, a fog of exhaustion and inertia.

The world outside the window was a blur of shadows and dim light. The subway tunnel rushed past in shades of gray, but Emil couldn’t shake the feeling that something was watching him from the darkness - a shadow that didn't belong, a flicker that didn't match the rhythm of the train's motion.

He shook his head and blinked hard, forcing his gaze back to the screen.

Finally, he typed: "Game idea: player climbs an endless hill, pushing a boulder. Each time they reach the top, it resets."

He paused, staring at the words. It wasn't much, but it felt… right.

The subway lights flickered again, briefly plunging the car into darkness. In that instant, Emil swore he saw the faint outline of a mountain on the black screen of his phone, glowing faintly like an afterimage burned into his retinas.

But when the lights returned, it was gone.

He leaned back against the window, clutching his phone tightly. He hadn't made a promise in years - hadn't trusted himself enough to follow through on anything - but something about this felt different.

"Tonight," he muttered to himself, barely audible over the hum of the train. "I'll start tonight."

The train jolted again, and Emil glanced up as it approached his stop. The question on the seat in front of him - "Why climb?" - still hung in the air, but now it seemed less like a question and more like a dare.

The doors hissed open, and Emil stepped out onto the platform. The crowd swept around him, faces blank, feet shuffling forward without thought. He stood still for a moment, letting them flow past him, his phone warm in his hand.

The note stared back at him, stark and empty except for the single line.

"Player climbs an endless hill, pushing a boulder."

He added another line before slipping the phone into his pocket:

"The hill resets each time. But the player learns."

The air in the station was thick and stale, heavy with the smell of damp concrete and burnt electricity. As Emil ascended the stairs, leaving the platform behind, he felt a flicker of something he hadn't felt in years. It wasn't hope, not quite. But it was close.

[sincerely-sofie]

Check-in for 01/28/24

It's been a while since I did one of these. Time to remedy that!

I've been doing well in my assignments, but due to some registration issues at the start of the semester I was unable to sign up for any web development or programming classes :< It's nice to take a break, but I'm really worried about getting stagnant in those skills, and maybe even losing what I've learned over time.

This is where a couple of new projects come in: A blorbo database and a tool for drawing pokemon from memory. These things are going to keep me avoid stagnancy and help me develop my web dev and Python programming skills, and I'm real excited to talk about them.

First up, let's talk about that tool for drawing pokemon from memory. I love drawing pokemon from memory, but it's a bit of a struggle to find tools online that work well for a solo experience when you're doing this challenge alone. So I made a program in PyGame to solve this problem, and I've actually already completed it! It was a great learning experience when it came to getting a taste of APIs, and PokeAPI really helped me do all the heavy lifting with it. I also ended up using ChatGPT to help me understand how to phrase my questions and the things I needed to research. This is the end result:

If you click "Get Random Pokemon", the program will provide a pokemon's name. The point of it is to draw the pokemon as best as you remember it, and then click "Show Pokemon Image" to see how you did. You will then have the option to get a new random pokemon, which clears the image from the window.

There's a lot of stuff I don't understand about how the program works--- APIs evade my understanding, and Tkinter is a dark art beyond my comprehension. But I was able to make a program that solved a genuine problem for me for the first time, and that's super exciting to me!

Now, for web development--- long story short, I'm making a website dedicated to cataloguing my OCs that's very much inspired by tumblr user @snekkerdoodles's personal site on neocities, which I regularly stare at in an effort to motivate myself to make cool things like it (everyone reading this should check his page out IMMEDIATELY and tell him how cool it is). Here's the screenshots of the WIP I'm chipping away at right now:

I don't have much to say about it, as the interesting stuff will really be the content of the pages, and I still have yet to finish the template page I'll be filling with my OCs' information. However, I can say that I'm very upset with the lack of proper teaching that took place in the first (and currently only) college web dev class I've taken. I spent an entire semester doing my own research to learn everything they were supposed to be teaching us. I'm still very peeved about that.

To summarize this very rambling post I'm too sleepy to edit properly, I'm making a digital blorbo encyclopedia, and I finished making a little desktop app thingy, which means I need to summon a new programming project. I'm tempted to make it a video game... maybe I should turn back to that visual novel idea I had ages ago and boot up RenPy!

[verdantstudios]

Our first official BloomFallen mini comic! This comic features Simon the Greater Siren and Levi the Lemon, they're both rivals! Frenemies, perhaps...but they still don't like one another a bit! (No greater sirens were harmed in the production of this comic...) Artist Credit: clnna_bun (Artist notes that this is their first time ever making a comic, so please be patient with them!)

[l0stw00d]

guy talking faster than anyone u've ever heard in a tutorial: "so you need to install live preview extension and also javascript snippets and bootstrap and shoelace and also offer a blood sacrifice to the almighty server in the sky and-"

[glassrockgathering]

Here we goooo, a short comic set in the Star Steel Smackdown universe, by @mcbrauart!

In this weekly short comic, you will follow Stickshift, our grungy mech(anic), during his extremely busy work day :)

... Join our nonsense on Discord and if you like what we do consider supporting us!

[piixandria]

[ralabbit]

Ugh professional web devs on the internet are so annoying sometimes. They're really smart, and I'm obviously very thankful to them for all of the stack exchange posts and reddit threads that have helped me teach myself html, css, and JavaScript. But why on earth would it ever be okay to read a question someone asked of how to do something, and respond "you don't. It's bad practice." If you don't know, just say you don't. But sometimes they say it on something that shouldn't be so complicated at all.

I understand that most people are on social media and the amount of people making personal websites is very small in 2025. But there is a space on the internet for hobbyist web devs, people who make websites for the fun and creativity of it. Not just professionally developed websites for companies. Not just portfolios made on squarespace. Not just Carrds and Linktrees. Not everyone cares about what's "best practice". Not everyone cares about SEO. Some people just want to exist on the internet away from corporations. Away from the ads. Web development is an art form as much as it is a career and not everyone who asks questions is training themselves to make all those marketable minimalistic sites. The internet is losing its creativity and the stifling of information to make sites more unique is part of it. (That and the fact that browsers remove support for different features and APIs all the time.) I should be able to make the most obnoxious, horrific website and not be stopped because it's mine.

If someone asks you how to do something, and you know how to, but you tell them that you're going to willingly withhold the information because it's unprofessional to do it in that way, you should really think about the role capitalism has played when it comes to how you learn new things or approach hobbies. Not everything has to be marketable. If I see one more "bad practice" post I am going to scream.