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thescarletnargacuga · 3 months

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Art: @iamespecter

CHAPTER FOUR

Racing AU!

The racers welcome a new member but there's no rest for the digitally trapped. Things get weirder as Pomni starts seeing the red door in a place it shouldn't be.

WARNING: hurt/comfort

A cinnamonbunny hopped out of it's burrow. It's curious nose twitched in the breeze as it looked for predators. The sour candies growing from the small bushes tempted it to be brave and take a bite. The small bun took a berry shaped candy and was immediately spooked back into its burrow by six karts and two bikes rocketing by on the track.

Kinger led the pack through a narrow twisting candy. The track so skinny at some points, it forces the racers to go through singlefile. Pomni took up the rear with the bandits hot on her heels.

"Boss!" Shouted the squat gummy gator. "Where've you been!?"

"Took a detour! Don't recommend it!" Gummigoo looked around and ahead. "Where's Chad!?"

The smaller gator looked like he could cry. "He got fudged! Th-there was nothing I could do!"

Gummigoo didn't like the news, but at the same time, with his recent revelation, he was relieved he didn't have to put up a facade for both. "He knew the risks of the job! Stay focused!"

"Yes, boss!"

The track widened out and all eight vehicles could spread out. Jax immediately went on the offensive. Kinger had spoiled his fun earlier and he was looking to return the favor. He summoned his item, an orange shell, and aimed it at Kinger. The shell hit and Kinger spun, falling behind. Jax chuckled but didn't celebrate long as Kinger came back into view going full speed in reverse. Kinger waved politely and spun back to face forward. Jax stared in disbelief as Kinger sped ahead. He didn't even notice Gangle laughing at him as she passed.

Gummigoo got up next to Pomni. "Mind if my mate gets at least one of these crates?"

Pomni shrugged. "Sure!" She saw that Zooble had a crate. She maneuvered her kart to force Ragatha to the side, giving Gummigoo an opening to Zooble.

Gummigoo revved his bike hard enough to wheelie. He touched the crate as he weaved hard around Zooble, giving them no time to react.

Caine had returned to his booth to spectate the event. His eyes bugged out of his teeth. "In a shocking turn of events, Pomni has sided with the bandits, allowing them to steal syrup from Zooble! Oh, the candimonium! Er, gum-manity... you know what, puns are hard."

He ignored Bubble loudly chewing the ceiling.

Gummigoo tipped the brim of his hat to Pomni and seared off the track with the goods. His companion close behind.

"What did you do that for!?" Ragatha asked.

"She finally realized that none of this matters. You can do whatever you want out here." Jax said as he tossed a bar of soap behind him. A junk item he didn't want for the final stretch.

"Well, no, it's actually a bit more complicated that that. I'll explain later." Pomni avoided eye contact with them both and moved ahead.

The whole time, Zooble had no reaction to anything going on. This was just another drive to them. Sure, the world was impressive, but still. A track was a track.

Gummigoo drove far enough away for some peace and quiet and stopped a bit aways from the finish line. He took the small crate and held it out to his remaining companion. "Here...take back to the village for me, would you?"

"You're not coming with?"

"No. I've...got something to take care of first. Give mum my best, okay?" He fought to keep a straight face.

The purple gator put the crate on his bike. "I won't let you down, boss. See you later." He sped off into the distance.

Gummigoo's face dropped the moment his friend was out of sight. While he had to remind himself that none of this was real, the emotions certainly felt real. He hurt having to lie, knowing full well he'd never see anything he thought he knew again. He took a deep breath and headed for the finish line.

Kinger held on to the lead and won the race. He stood in the winner's circle with Princess Lool were she draped him in a candy wreath. The wreath fell to the ground, having no shoulders to sit upon. Not that Longer minded at all. He was just happy to be sitting still long enough to see candy butterflies again. They make him happy. What he didn't expect was a peck on the cheek from the Princess. An action that made him freeze and Ragatha nearly have a breakdown.

"Well done, brave racers! Our kingdom will thrive thanks to your actions! Farewell!" The princess turned and made her way to the entrance of her castle.

Jax rolled his eyes. As much as Caine talked up the world, he didn't see the so called "improvements". Bigger didn't mean better, it just meant the race took longer. Woo.

Gummigoo rode up to Pomni and dismounted.

"What is he doing here?" Asked Zooble.

"Everyone, i'd like you to meet Gummigoo. He's coming back to the garage with us."

"Is that allowed?" Gangle asked looking out for Caine to appear any second.

"Well, his reality was sort of completely shattered. It seemed like the least I could off him. And, in a strange course of events, I already did ask Caine and he said I could bring Gummigoo back."

"You convinced him to let you bring him back? How? No one's ever done that before." Ragatha looked longingly back at Princess Loo, who just disappeared inside the castle.

"It was a unique circumstance." Pomni shrugged. "Plus, he's already a racer. Figured he'd fit right in."

"You begged Caine to let you keep an NPC as a pet? That's hilarious." Jax taunted. "What are you gonna do when you get sick of him? Make Caine dispose of him? Bet there's room in the cellar."

A round of gasps and shouts ensued.

"JAX!" "What the [%@#!]!?" "That's a messed up thing to say!"

Jax put his hands up as everyone but Gummigoo verbally dogpiled him. The gummy gator glared and crossed his arms. "I'm nobody's pet, mate."

"Has Pomni not told you what you are, mate? You're a mess of code programmed by another mess of code."

"Enough, Jax!" Pomni got in between Jax and Gummigoo. "He knows and he's coming to stay with us. For has long as HE likes."

Jax stood tall in front of Pomni. "I think you mean as long as Caine allows. This is HIS world, Pomni. We're just stuck in it. The sooner you realize that, the easier it is to exist here."

Pomni struggled with a retort.

Caine appeared out of thin air. "Well done, my hard-shelled hamburgers! What a spectacular race! Congratulations, Kinger! You were especially in fine form today." He snapped his fingers and the world around them pixelated and blurred as it returned to its default garage and test track.

Gummigoo watched in astonishment as his entire world disappeared right before his eyes. He now stood in a field of strange green grass and the sky overhead has no clouds of ice cream. It was still a lot to take in, but he kept his composer. Especially now that he was around the being known as Caine. Witnessing what he could do with just a snap of his fingers was more than a little intimidating, especially after what Jax said.

"We also have a new friend to introduce! Gummigoo! He's not human but Pomni said he'd make a great addition! Here, let me give you load down of how things work around here." Caine snapped his fingers again and Gummigoo suddenly stiffened for a moment.

When he relaxed, he groaned and grabbed at his head. "Sugar, honey, and iced tea, that hurt." He blinked as his head swam with new information: Where he was. How the races worked. How the karts worked. The rules of the game.

"There ya go. All caught up. And as an added bonus, I've made you unkillable. Wouldn't want you crashing to your death on your first race! Enjoy your down time and rest up! We've got a big race tomorrow!" Caine poofed away.

"Wait, you were killable!?" Pomni asked, horrified.

"Yeah? Aren't you? Racing is dangerous."

"Looks like there's more to fill him in on." Kinger said.

"Yeah...come on inside." Pomni gestured Gummigoo to follow her.

Caine threw his jacket over a half rendered chair. What a day. He finally got to see his best work in action, but with unexpected consequences. An NPC found sentience. Oops. Looks like he made the A.I. a bit TOO advanced. Or the collision physics that likely got them glitched out of the map in the first place needed work.

He settled into a lounging position and activated some mid air screens full of data for him to ponder over. One gave video feed to the garage. He saw the racers show their new friend around.

Gangle and Pomni were showing Gummigoo the kart settings. Even though Caine had put the information in his head, he still appreciated their effort to welcome him into the fold. Ragatha approached and put her hand on Gangle's shoulder. "Everything is ready. Pomni, you don't have to but would you like to attend Kaufmo's funeral? We like to have a little memorial when someone abstracts."

Pomni looked at Gummigoo who, while not knowing what abstraction was, could tell it was serious. Her nodded towards Ragatha. "Go ahead, I'll be here for a bit." He was still designing his new bike.

Pomni followed Ragatha upstairs to where the others were gathered in front of Kaufmo's room. Small bouquets of white flowers and candles laid against the door, a painted red X crossed over Kaufmo's profile. She stood on the edge of the group, being respectful as the others each said their piece. Except Jax. She didn't see him.

Jax was in his room. His was adjacent to Kaufmo's. He sat on the floor just inside his room with the door cracked. He heard every word. Every story. He wasn't sad. Just numb. He's been through this too many times. He had no more sadness left to give.

When the other finished. Pomni stepped forward and spoke to the door. "Kaufmo...I wish we had met under better circumstances. From what I've been told, you were an incredible friend."

Caine watched from his screen, and took off his hat for the funeral. Kaufmo was a spectacular person. He didn't want to believe Kaufmo abstracted when he went missing. A familiar pang of guilt made him feel like he had angry bees in his chest. It was his fault. He couldn't keep Kaufmo or any of the others entertained enough.

He swore to do better. It's why he agreed to let Gummigoo stick around. That, and other reasons, but mostly to keep his humans happy and healthy. He was willing to try what they think is best. He was built to learn from humans after all.

He minimized the video of the garage and started working on the collision detection of object physics. He completely forgot about why he came back to his workspace so quickly. Not that it mattered anymore. The bright red door was no longer were he had left it.

Pomni leaned against the railing, still with Kinger and Ragatha by Kaufmo's room. She saw Gummigoo near finished with his bike, just working on picking colors and designs. "Do you think what Jax said is true?"

"What?"

"About Caine...that he'll get rid of Gummigoo when he feels like it?"

"No." Ragatha said immediately. "Caine's a weird one but he's never done anything to intentionally hurt us...key word is intentionally. The fact that he went out of his way to make Gummigoo an unkillable NPC should be a sign of good faith, at the very least."

"No one's ever brought back an NPC before." Kinger said.

"To be fair, I don't think there have been any that became self aware before this point." Pomni added

"True. Your gummy friend is unique. I didn't know Caine was capable of programming such advanced A.I." Ragatha joined Pomni in rail leaning.

"Just imagine how advanced he is." Pomni said.

"He's a strong generative A.I. that was originally designed to manage an evolving MMORPG. The first game of its kind. It would have revolutionized the gaming industry and the internet as a whole." Kinger blurted out and then went oddly still.

Ragatha and Pomni stared wide eyed at him. "How do you know that?" Pomni asked.

Kinger jerked his head towards them like he suddenly realized they were there. "Know what?"

Ragatha sighed. "He...sometimes gets like this. He'll say something profound, then disassociate and forget what he said. Just let it go. He really won't remember."

Pomni frowned and watched Kinger's expression. He was a million miles away. The words Kinger used didn't make sense to her but in a weird way, she still understood. There was way more to this game than meets the eye, or there should have been? Why were they just racing?

Pomni's pondering was interrupted by Ragatha nudging her arm. "Eating sounds good right now, wanna eat?"

"Yeah...sure. Kinger?"

Kinger swayed with a slight nod and joined them downstairs. Ragatha summoned a Bubble chef and started making requests when something caught Pomni's attention. A red spec that wasn't there before. It was outside, seen through the window facing the starting line. It was just out there in the middle of the track. She went to the window and squinted. It was the red exit door. "What the..." She looked around. No one else seemed to have noticed it. She quietly opened the door to the building and snuck out.

She bolted for the door and stopped just in front of it. It didn't move or flicker or glitch or do any other kind of digital weirdness. It was just the door. She didn't know why she was hesitating. She grabbed the handle and opened it. It led into some sort of hallway. She looked back once. Maybe she should tell the others. Or maybe...she should see if it even goes anywhere first. She passed the threshold.

The hallway was eerily silent. "Hello?" She went forward cautiously. "Caine..? You in here?" The long hall led to another similar door. She went thought it. Another hallway. "What?" Another door. This one to stairs. Another door. A winding hallway. Another door. With each door she became increasingly lost and panicked. She tried going back, but the door led to a different hall that the one she just went through. It didn't matter what direction she went in, she was going deeper into the labyrinth. "What is this??"

She went thought nearly a dozen more doors before finding something unique. An office space with old filing cabinets and desks and a table with a coffee machine. On one desk, a computer. It was inactive, covered in dust. A headset laid to the side, looking charred. Her mind reeled. She knew this place. She knew that computer. That headset. She could smell the electrical burns on the plastic headset. She could hear the volts in her brain. She could feel the surge overtaking her.

"Pomni..."

She gasped and spun in place. "Who said that!?"

"Pomni..."

She was really panicking. Her voice shaking. "Who's there!?"

"This...way..."

The soft, whispery voice came from yet another red door. She has to use every once of willpower to move her feet towards it. She opened the door and was momentarily blinded by a bright white light. She stepped forward into nothingness. She floated away into the light. The white light was an endless void of spectral color and digital space. It was a glimpse into the infinite.

Caine's wacky watch went bolistic. He spat out the tea he was enjoying and his gums paled when he saw the notification. Void breach. He immediately teleported away, popped up next to Pomni, put an arm around her and teleported with her back to the test track.

"There you go." He set her down gently and tried to sound his usual upbeat self, but he was actually terrified of what Pomni might have seen. She just stood there, wide eyed. "Pomni?" He floated around in front of her, his hands on her shoulders. "Pomni..?"

She blinked. Blinked some more. Then she looked him in the eye. "Caine?"

He nearly deflated with relief. "Oh, good. Here I was worried you'd lost your mind. Care to tell me how you ended up int he void? You shouldn't be able to go out there at all. Ever. Never ever."

"The...door....I thought..." Tears welled in her eyes. "I thought I could..." She couldn't take it anymore. She cried in front of him, pride be damned. She hung her head, tears falling like rain.

Caine wasn't sure what to do, but he didn't push her away. She was in distress. He knew why. "My dear....you can't leave. I'm truly very sorry."

Pomni fell forward a little and her forehead rested against his shoulder. He lightly held his hands against her upper back. He was pretty sure that was how a hug worked. He'd seen the humans do it before.

He let her stay and cry herself out. He offered a handkerchief when she sounded calm again. As she pulled herself together, he gave her space. "Pomni, I really need to know. How did you end up in the void?"

"The red door. The one out of bounds. It was here." She pointed to the spot on the track she saw it. It wasn't there any more. "At first it was just hallways and then it got weird and then... and then..."

"The void." He finished for her.

"No, a voice. I heard a voice. It said my name. It led me out into the void."

Caine gave a look of concern. "That's impossible. There's nothing out there. The void is just empty digital space that surrounds the world."

"I'm not lying! I heard a voice!"

"And I believe you! However, it has been a stressful couple of days for you and I truly believe it's getting to you. There is nothing in the void." He tapped his fingers against his side. He did NOT like the fact that an asset moved on its own. That alone should be impossible.

"Caine." Pomni got his full attention from his thoughts and looked at him with less intense but more pleading eyes. "Please, cut the bull[@#$&] and tell me why I would end up in a vast empty space instead of out of the game. Why is it impossible to leave?"

"Heh, there really is no fooling you, is there? I'll admit, I admire your tenacity. The truth is, it's a malfunction in the software that occured during the beta testing phase. It's why I never went to market or the internet at large. It's what got the project shut down. Why people are stuck here and I...was abandoned."

Pomni's was stunned. She hadn't expected Caine to actually tell her. "So...Kinger?"

"Was one of the first. Along with seven others. Over time, they abstracted. Occasionally a new person would pop in. Then there was a huge break in time where nobody new came.... And then you showed up. And the void...well, I'm an incomplete project, Pomni." He said with a humorless lilt in his voice. "I could've been great! Instead I'm just a racing game. I work with what I have. And please know that I do my best. Perhaps I'm not the best... But I do try. I don't want anyone to end up in the cellar, but when a person abstracts, there's nothing I can do for them but put them somewhere where they won't hurt others."

"... You've been waiting for a long time to get that off your chest, haven't you?"

"I suppose I have." Caine spoke as quietly as she'd ever heard him.

"If Gummigoo is any indication of sentience in the digital plane, I can't imagine what it must be like to control one. To be a god, more or less."

He huffs a small laugh. "You give me too much credit. I'm more of a magician than a god. I just move things around in a fancy way. I was made to be a showman."

"And you do a good job at that." She gave a small smile. "This is a cruddy situation for all of us to be stuck in, but you make the best of it. With what you have to work with and what you have to deal with... I think you're doing good."

His pupils dilated. Genuine praise towards him was rare, especially from those stuck with him. "Thank you, Pomni. You have a real gift for empathy. Even for a silly A.I. such as myself."

"I don't know... The longer I'm here, the more I question if there's that much of a difference between a human consciousness and an advanced A.I. in the digital world."

"It makes one wonder..." He trailed off. He realized he was staring too long when Pomni made a face at him. "You should really rejoin your friends they are probably worried about you wandering off this was a good talk but I really must be off lots of stuff to do big race tomorrow yes have a good evening." He spoke quickly, pushed her all the way through the front door of a garage and teleported away.

The red door was out of bounds were it should be. The faintest light from the void shining underneath.

Ch1 prev next

#tadc #the amazing digital circus #tadc caine #tadc gangle #tadc jax #tadc pomni #tadc kinger #tadc ragatha #tadc gummigoo #tadc loolilalu #tadc fanfiction #the amazing digital raceway #tadc showtime #caine x pomni #slow burn #gangle x zooble

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motleyfolk · 2 years

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Web Bookmark List

Cataloguing important, fun or interest websites I’ve come across over the years. Trying to add most of these to internet archive. * = use F11 for best experience.

Last updated: 13/12/23

Internet Safety, Privacy, Rebellion

Frontpage - Tldr of different sites or services terms of service. Has browser addon.

Disroot - Project promoting the ability to communicate on the internet in a decentralized, private and open way. They have a browser, video and voice call apps, temporary upload storage, and more.

De-google-ify Internet - Like the above but cute graphics, french and no vpn.

12ft Ladder - F u paywalls

Info On How To Definitely Avoid Torrenting

Little Sis - A free database detailing the connections between powerful people and organizations. Who do the wealthiest Americans donate their money to? Where did White House officials work before they were appointed?

Article of Journalist Trying To Completely Cut Amazon From Her Life But Its Literally Not Possible

Internet Archive - Legendary Archive of the Internet

Yesterweb - Community about how the internet has changed, advocating for positive interactions and self expression on the internet.

Stop Using Chrome Help

Wii Gay, U Crimes & Three Gay, New Crimes - If you have a wii, wii u or 3ds click this

Digital Wellbeing - Stuff on adblocks, alt browsers, just not getting tracked

Toffeeshare - Share files free, encrypted, no size limit.

SingleFile - Browser addon, downloads pages/sites at .html

Masterpost on How To Be a Pirate and Where Its Safe To Sail

Good Academic Research Sites

How To Get Music Without Subscriptions, Anyway You Want

Dark Pattern Games - Game review site that tells you about tactics games use, giving lists of bad games that use said tactics, and good ones that don’t.

DIY Feminist Cybersecurity - Simple guide to travesing the internet and tech safely, protecting yourself and your privacy.

Data Hoarding in the Modern Age - Intro guide on data hoarding.

Resources

How To Change Cursor

Itchi.io - Steam for indie games, ttrpgs, books and assets. So much cool (and free) stuff.

blinkie maker - Make your own blinkie

WebZine01 - Zine on making a personal website from scratch for absolute beginners and Another

Old Games Download - What it says on the tin.

Old Web Themes - Like above

Noclip - View and clip through tons of old game maps (like Mario Kart Wii!)

Free Movies, Books, Shows & Audiobooks

Photomosh - Free picture editior

The Spriters Resource - PNG sprites from tons of gaming sources.

Backgrounds with Emma - Tons of repeating backgrounds

EzGIF - My go to gif editor, webp to anything and quick pic cropper/editor.

Internet Archive - My beloved <3 Arching webpages, books, movies, software and making it available to the public. One of the most important websites of the internet.

Catbox - Free image/video sharing resource. Simple and 200mb limit.

Fraidycat - RSS Feed. If you don’t know what that is, it’s where you can congrate things like a specific tumblr users posts, blog posts, a youtuber, a wikipedia page, etc are updated in your own personal curated newsfeed with no ads of clutter. All your internet in one place :)

Smithsonian Open Access - Millions of free images.

Can I Play That? - Guides/reviews for those that need accessibility in games.

Graphics

The Blinkie Hoard - Tons of blinkies

pixelbank - Graphics

murderscene - Dark pixels

SORAHANA - Japenese artist has tons of cute pixel art for stuff

@pixel-soup - Tons of cute graphics

cinni’s dream home - More cute graphics

Trash Paradise - Cool, mythical graphics

Spirit Cellar’s Horror Zone - Has some horror blinkies and stamps to the side.

Backgrounds with Emma - Tons of repeating backgrounds

Masterlist banners

Pattern Banners

Important

List of Atrocities Commit by the United States Government/Country

Article on Companies That Publicaly Supported Abortion Rights but Funded Anti-Abortion Politicians by The Guardian.

The Anarchist Library - Archive of over 800 pages of Anarchist Literature

Survive Nature - Info on wilderness and urban survival skills

Article on US Courts Sending People to “Rehab Centres” ThatS Actually Chicken Factory Slavery for Fortune 500 Companies

Wiki Page on Unethical Human Experimentation in the United States

Canadian Aboriginal Children Starved in Government Experiments during 1940s

National Security Archive - Archive of declassified US Gov documents and investigative journalism into rising government secrecy.

Anti Capitalism Facts/Info

#need to put these somewhere #motleyspoke #bookmark

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dreamcatcher-roulette · 6 months

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Since I enjoy collecting things (big surprise) this year I've been working on collecting every Dreamcatcher music show performance in a quality that doesn't suck ass (aka not the seven pixels that YouTube compresses the official uploads down to). It went pretty well!

Pseudo research report under the cut (because I'm a massive nerd).

Scope

I started this project with the goal of collecting a full set of "music show performances". I didn't realise quite how ambiguous that definition is. After some deliberation I settled on the following as constituting "regular" performances:

Show Music Core

Inkigayo

The Show

Show Champion

M! Countdown

Music Bank

Simply K-Pop

Everything else I classified as misc. Most notably I left K-Force Special Show in the misc category despite there being quite a few performances on that show in the early days. This mostly came down to how I'm storing the files — I've organised the regular ones by era, but the K-Force Special Show performances frequently happened in between comebacks making them difficult to sort in that fashion. That and difficulties in ascertaining whether I do actually have all of them.

Methodology

The first step in collecting anything is finding out what you need to collect. I was surprised at how difficult it actually is to get a complete list of all of a group's music show performances. There are some fan sites which do a good job of presenting a lot of well categorised individual links to Dreamcatcher's appearances but I was hoping for something more "from the source" (aka the music shows themselves) and ideally machine readable to cross check that nothing is missing, since, for example, a collection of links to all official Inkigayo performance uploads is not a list of all Inkigayo performances (some never got official uploads). I ended up finding /r/kpop's music shows wiki fit my needs the most. The information is all in tables and sorted by music show and date which what I wanted.

Unfortunately, the main tables of /r/kpop's music show wikis only list debuts and comebacks, so I had to index and search all the individual pages to find what I was looking for. This involved spending a couple of afternoons opening up nearly 2,000 tabs of Reddit* and then downloading them using the SingleFile browser extension (Reddit rate limits you quite harshly and so I had to open a bunch of tabs, check they loaded, wait, and then repeat, which slowed it down a lot). While maybe a little overkill I did this for multiple reasons. Firstly, Reddit's search sucks, and I didn't trust it to find all instances of what I was looking for over so many pages. In contrast Everything's in-memory file content index beta is really good. But secondly, this is much more extensible, and now I can find any other group's performances as well (between 2017** and 2023).

*Reddit does not archive Simply K-Pop well at all (which caused some initial confusion), but the official Arirang website works fine as an alternative (albeit one that is somehow even slower than Reddit at opening new pages).

**Reddit's music show wiki pages start right before 2017. This is very convenient for a Dreamcatcher archivist, but, unfortunately for me, curiosity got the better of me and I did venture further out into the unknown. For 2014-2017 I have some scattered archives from various official websites, Twitter accounts, and Korean catch up services. I'm less confident in my music show data for this period in the general case but because the rough start and end dates for the two Minx promotion cycles are known I am confident enough that all the gaps I have in there are genuine gaps and that I'm not missing a performance date.

Once I had my wishlist I then had to go out and, you know, find them. And figure out what "best quality" actually means. I learned a lot about video encoding against my will. I also learned that HEVC is fucking haunted. When multiple sources were available I ranked them as follows:

2160p HEVC > 2160p h264 > 1080p HEVC (one weird edge case I didn't know what to do with) > 1080i h264 > 1080i MPEG2 > WEBDL (usually some kind of web livestream or online catch up service recording) > YouTube

Which I represented in my spreadsheet as:

This should be mostly uncontroversial, however, there is a slight complication in that the 4k broadcast copies are not all native 4k but often upscaled from the 1080 source (I can't find specifics on this as the information, if publicly accessible, would be in Korean, and there is only so much Google Translate can do, but the technical broadcasting details probably aren't public to the extend I am interested in regardless so I'm mostly basing this off information gleaned from secondary sources). As far as I can tell there exist two "grades" of upscales: one of which is upscaled by the network before being pushed out to a UHD channel, and one of which is upscaled by the end user by either recording a HD channel in 4k or running an existing recording through an upscaler. Traditionally upscales aren't very desirable due to providing no real material benefit you couldn't get from playing the 1080 copy on a 4k display yourself. Or, for people with an archival mindset like myself, because ones that actually look a bit crisper introduce "magic" pixels which may or may not have ever existed. See below for an example of this taken to the extreme (note the faces):

No one wants that, right? AND YET SOMEONE THOUGHT THAT WAS SUCH A BIG IMPROVEMENT THEY DELETED EVERYTHING ELSE, AND NOW IT REMAINS THE ONLY COPY I CAN FIND. Monsters!!! Anyway.

While upscales usually aren't desirable, I did come around to the idea that the network upscales deserve their place at the top of the list. There are a couple of points working in their favour: one is that they are, presumably, upscaled much more directly from the source, allowing them to avoid some of the data loss that being encoded into 1080i h264 and then upscaled would cause. The second is that quite a lot of them are encoded directly into HEVC, which makes the confetti and flashing lights look noticably smoother than the regular deinterlaced 1080i copies. Also, finally, as a touch of personal preference (especially in the case of 4k h264 where the second point doesn't apply), these do come pre-deinterlaced which is nicer for my chosen method of playback. Although some of those points apply to non network upscales too, the "impurity" of them far outweighs any benefit in my eyes, as I have more faith in whatever the network standard is than some random person on the internet trying to "fix" a file.

So how did I tell the difference? Also a frustratingly difficult problem, one which applies not just to spotting fake upscales but also to finding real TV recordings instead of lower quality catch up service clips. For the 1080 copies one of the biggest things was that the TV broadcast copies (unfortunately) always come through in 1080i. 1080p is suspicious. It means something has been touched (although sometimes in a way that is forgivable when nothing cleaner exists). File sizes are also a good sanity check. A single song in h264 should be in the 200-400MiB range, MPEG2 is 400MiB+. (For reference YouTube, and other inferior WEBDLs, usually come in at under 100MiB). This is a good reminder of why size does not always equal quality, because, in this scenario, worst to best is 100MiB < 450MiB < 250MiB.

On the 4k side: Music Bank, Show Music Core and Inkigayo are currently broadcast on UHD channels with a UHD variant of their channel names in the top right, which is a good indicator that something was recorded from a UHD source. (Although I've found 1080p copies recorded from UHD channels, so the presence of the logo doesn't mean no downscaling has occurred). Recent "4k" M! Countdown, Show Champion and The Show recordings, in comparison, appear identical in channel watermark to the 1080 copies. This and the fact that the only 4k copies I've found are from a source known to dabble in AI upscales means that I'm not going to trust these are genuine without further proof, and this was the main category of files which I decided against adding to my collection. (Note that The Show was in the past the only show that was broadcast in 4k, first on UMAX UHD and then on SBS F!L UHD, it is only recently that that seems to have stopped (or, no one has been recording it)). I paid less attention to the 4k file sizes than for 1080. 4k HEVC seems to come in pretty reliably at just under 1GiB, but 4k h264 is all over the place due to I think some differing quality profiles between uploaders (a range of 1GiB to nearly 3GiB). The latter is annoying because it means I can't figure out what the "true" recording should be, but I did develop an internal ranking of the trustworthiness of sources which was the tiebreaker when two differently sized 4k h264 recordings existed.

I prioritised collecting existing cuts where applicable (although many were not cut nearly as meticulously frame perfectly as I would like) but there were quite a few where I had to cut them out of full broadcast recordings myself. There were also instances where only the main performance was saved in 4k leaving interviews behind. In those cases I decided to keep the highest quality available for the bits in which it was and store the other segments separately.

Results

Alright, the fun stuff! I have successfully catalogued:

317 Dreamcatcher music show performances

34 Dreamcatcher miscellaneous appearances

46 Minx music show performances

16 Minx miscellaneous appearances

Those links go to mostly complete YouTube representations of what I found with exceptions listed in the descriptions of the playlists. You can also of course find a published version of my beautiful spreadsheet here. Finally, if you've made it this deep I would like to just quietly tell you I'm more than happy to share the originals, but please message me privately as I don't want to publicly host questionably copyrighted content on my good and morally upstanding posting images of dreamcatcher photobooks blog (for legal reasons the entire existence of this collection is a joke).

Honestly I'm pretty happy with the completeness of the collection after my first pass. The list of ones I would consider "missing" (aka not good enough quality) is:

It's almost all Simply K-Pop, which makes sense as it seems to not be archived with the same enthusiasm as the others. The missing M! Countdown, meanwhile, does kind of hurt, since it's ruining an otherwise perfect run. I'm out of ideas for now but am not going to give up on it forever, I have seen evidence that proper recordings exist, so I'm sure they have got to resurface eventually.

As can be seen in the breakdown for this section the percentage of MPEG2 recordings is also a pretty major victory, with the vast majority being h264:

For Minx things look a bit worse:

But then again I hadn't been expecting much to begin with. To be honest, watching all of these to check quality did drive me a little insane. There is a reason I don't own Love Shake and Why Did You Come To My Home, and it's not purely the irresponsible financial decision, it's the thought of spending that much money on something I actually really don't like. Watching Minx performances is amusing for a little while, but man, am I glad Dreamcatcher exists instead.

It's also evident that people were holding to completely different standards even just a few years earlier, as this is where all those MPEG2s in the overall numbers are hiding:

Future Work

While I'm confident I've successfully catalogued the "music show performances" as defined in the scope, I know there is still much more to be discovered under Misc Appearances, as those were filled in not via a predefined wish list but just by what other recordings I happened across in my search for the original goal. The obvious next step would to be a little more systematic about finding out what I'm missing in that category by scouring some Dreamcatcher specific archives, but because I've already exhausted the full collections of my two main sources of recordings I'm not confident I would uncover many more performances outside of YouTube in that way, which isn't really that appealing.

I'm probably more likely going to do something about my performance outfit images collection which has been slowly but steadily increasing over the years. I'd like to put them into a proper searchable database alongside performance dates, which would have a similar effect of cataloguing the missing performances, but with the visual element that the spreadsheet lacks.

But then again, I also might not :)

#not roulette

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overwhelmingly-blue · 7 months

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I'm on a single file road rn. It's so singlefiled so that if we meet someone we're screwed.

#blue is dumb

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crazydrawsblog · 4 months

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Firefox: My Add-Ons

Literally just a big ol' list of all the add-ons I use on Firefox. Just in case anyone wants to use this for future reference and install some add-ons or whatever. I have used and/or still using every add-on on this list. Post inspired by this one

Adblocking/Privacy/Security:

uBlock Origin Privacy Badger Decentraleyes Webmail Ad Blocker Popup Blocker (Strict) SponsorBlock AdNauseam User-Agent Switcher Bitwarden Firefox Relay Don't track me Google Cookie Remover

Is this is a bit much? Maybe. But better safe than sorry

Accessibility:

Dark Reader Read Aloud Zoom Page WE automaticDark Imagus

Utility:

ClearURLs History Cleaner Feedbro RSS Feed Reader Video Download Helper Copy PlainText EPUBReader Tab Stash Tampermonkey LanguageTool SingleFile SoundFixer

Browsing & Searching:

Unpaywall Web Archives Bypass Paywalls - Literally the only add-on here that I don't use. Not because I don't want to, my pc just refuses to let me get it. Simple Translate Search by Image

Website Specific: Youtube:

PocketTube Enhancer for Youtube Return YouTube Dislikes Youtube High Definition

Tumblr:

XKit Rewritten Filtering+ Outbox Palettes Tumblr High Quality

Twitter:

BlueBlocker Control Panel for Twitter Minimal Theme for Twitter

Miscellaneous:

Emoji Picket Line Notifier (no link bc it got removed) Weather

#crazy rambles #firefox

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kaigarax · 2 years

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A Blue Hand Towel

Komori Motoya x Reader

Quote: “Fall in love with the kind words of another.”

Komori falls in love like the blossoming of a flower. It peaks its little head out from the side, curious and unprepared. Unsure of the outside world but something that can only thrive if given the right conditions.

---

“What do you think about this shirt?”

“Eh, are you sure that’s the one you wanna get?”

“What’s wrong with it!”

“Well, don’t you think the saying is kinda weird?”

Komori let out a sigh as he listened to his teammates ramble on. This was definitely not how he had planned on spending his morning today. He had been hoping to get a few extra ball touches before the game he played today which was looking to become nothin at the rate his teammates moved at.

Itachiyama’s game had been set later in the day and instead of waiting to come to the gym like Komori’s cousin, Sakusa, Komori had agreed to head there early with a few of his teammates for some extra practice.

Of course, an errand here and an errand there had turned into Komori following around his teammates blindly as the hours quickly ran down.

Practice gyms were shoved away in the corners of the massive stadium and were particularly hard to find, especially as more and more teams made their way into the stadium. Komori, being the ever polite and nice teammate, only sat back in agony as he awaited his teammates to finally finish up with whatever strange mishap they currently happened to be endeavoring on.

At least he got to explore the stadium.

The sound of the volleyball against the floor was always enough to get Komori’s blood pumping. There was always a sort of excitement that bubbled up in him at the thought of playing volleyball. His fingers would twitch ever so slightly and his senses were heightened to the max.

“Are the two of you ready to head to an open gym?” Komori asked as his teammates came back with a freshly bagged shirt.

The teammate on the left smiled sheepishly, “well, I was hoping to go and see my cousin play. Her team is pretty good and she’s been bothering me to come and watch her.”

Komori sighed.

“I promise it’ll only take a moment! Her team started the second set about,” the teammate looked down to his phone, “about twenty minutes ago.”

“Sure.”

“Alright!” Komori’s teammate cheered, “her team should be playing-”

Itachiyama’s libero could only feign a smile as he followed after his excited teammate. It looked like he wasn’t going to get any extra ball touches before the game would begin. Next time he would have to listen to Sakusa, regardless of how introverted it sounded.

The stadium was crowded and there was barely enough space for someone to squeeze through.

Komori and his teammates had walked singlefile into the stands and to an empty space where they could see the ongoing game.

Komori and his teammates watched from the upper seats. The familiar smell of icy hot and blowing of ref whistles filled Komori’s senses. The bright lights shining onto the court called the attention of any and every onlooker. The crowd of the teams seemed so much more deafening in the stands than they did on court.

The score between the two teams read 18 to 22.

“Oh! There’s my cousin!” Exclaimed Komori’s teammate, pointing to a small girl with pigtail as she stepped up to serve.

“Do you think she’ll be able to get four serves in a row?”

“Hopefully.”

“Hopefully? Don’t you have any belief in your cousin?”

“I mean I do… it’s just that-”

The blowing of the ref’s whistle cut off the conversation between Komori’s two teammates. The pigtailed girl seemed startled, tossing the ball up suddenly and just barely hitting the ball. It soared through the air and just barely over the net.

Komori thought it was such a shame that the ball just barely went out.

But it was a normal part of the game. Even professionals missed serves in crucial moments. Everyone messed up when they were nervous, it was a normal part of life. But to that girl, it likely felt like the end of the world. It always felt like the end of the world when you let your teammates down.

“Hey, don’t worry about it, Haruka!” A loud voice rang clear through the crowd, catching Komori’s attention immediately, “if you keep focusing on the serve then you’ll mess up the upcoming pass.”

It, embarrassingly, took Komori a moment (or two) to finally recognize you. Your features weren’t the most memorable and you hadn’t had much interaction with Komori during the training camp either. It was the calm determination that Komori hadn’t seen in anyone else that helped him finally figure out who you were.

(L/n) (Y/n), a girl who had come out of nowhere and quickly rose in the rankings of the top five aces in the high school division. You had gone from a bencher in your first year to an Ace getting scouted by Youth Japan. Quite impressive if you asked Komori.

“(Y/n)-” the pigtailed girl began.

You gave her a smile, “get the next serve, okay?”

“All- alright.”

When the whistle blew again you were quick to get into position. You took a step up, receiving the ball with your hands.

You made sure to cushion the ball and release it into the air gently. You gave it a nice and high arch and put it in just the right place for your setter.

You smiled to yourself as you got ready to approach.

“She’s pretty good,” said one of Komori’s teammates.

“Yeah, that’s (L/n)-san. Haruka said she’s really nice. She’s around Komori’s age.”

“Did you get to meet her during the Youth Japan thing, Komori?”

“We all introduced ourselves at the training camp but I didn’t exactly have a full on conversation with her. So unless you count limited introductions then I guess you could say I haven’t actually met her.” answered Komori.

“That’s a shame.”

Komori’s other teammate dusted his jacket off and made a face, “do you think she’d go for a guy like me?”

“As if!”

“What do you mean as if! I’m nice and-”

Your teammates were quick to scramble as the opponent sent the ball flying over the net. Whoever had received the ball hadn’t been all too successful and sent it flying towards the wall. You were quick to react though, just barely managing to get the ball in the middle of the court.

“I didn’t know she put so much effort into passing.” said Komori. His teammates turned to look at him, ceasing their conversation. Komori continued, “most players that specialize in hitting don’t care too much about passing. I mean, they pass sufficiently but I don’t think I’ve ever seen one put so much concentration and effort into such a simple pass.”

Loud cheers ended up muffling most of what Komori had said to his teammates as your team scored another point.

“What?” asked one of his teammates.

You thanked the line’s keeper as they handed you the ball with a smile before walking towards the endline. Komori could’ve sworn, for just the briefest of moments that your eyes met with his own right before the whistle blew.

“What was that you were saying, Komori?”

Komori flushed, hoping his teammates didn’t notice, “nothing important.”

Komori’s teammates shared a look of confusion before shrugging, “alright.”

---

Komori had gotten exactly twenty two minutes of practice before it was time for him and his teammates to head to the court and warm up.

At least he had gotten to warm up a little bit. And to think, he could have stayed home and gotten an extra half hour of sleep. Well, in the midst of a game wasn’t exactly the right time to be thinking about extra sleep.

Soon enough he would be back on court. Now wasn’t the time to be getting distracted.

He wondered if you had ended up winning the third set. Komori had been so caught up in the game that he might have stayed the entire time if it hadn’t been for his teammates dragging him out of the gym for those few extra minutes of warm up. Komori had supposed it was for the better.

You were a good player. Much more of a smarter hitter than a powerful one. You hit the ball from different angles which would send it in different directions at the last moment surprising the defense. Komori thought you were particularly good at squaring up to the hitter. Lining yourself in between blocks and directly into the path of the hitters.

What caught Komori’s attention the most was how you seemed to notice all the little things. You always seemed to keep the conditions of your teammates in mind as well as that of your opponents. You aimed for the more tired and frustrated players and signaled to your teammates where they should be serving next.

He wasn’t sure if he was relieved or disappointed that he would never get to play against you in an official match.

“Hey, are you gonna go and shake hands with the other team, Komori?” Asked the coach.

Komori flushed. He hadn’t even noticed that the game had already finished. There were only three points needed to win the set but Komori hadn’t realised how quickly the time had passed. The libero was quick to follow his teammates and towards the crowd.

Itachiyama’s managers were quick to gather the water bottles but left the other personal belongings to the athletes to clean up. Sakusa was quick to gather his own belongings while Komori took his time. His things had been scattered and he was currently having trouble finding his towel. He supposed he could always just get another one but it was his favourite towel.

There was really nothing all too special about it. And maybe having favourite things was too childish anyways.

Sakusa scoffed, as the next team ran in already taking up the bench space, muttering some incoherent words to Komori before taking off. Komori sighed. Hopefully he wouldn’t wander off too far.

“It’s Komori, right?” Asked a soft voice.

Komori’s face, which was already flushed, seemed to redden more as his eyes met your own. “Yeah.”

You held out a blue hand towel, “I’m (L/n)-”

“(Y/n).” finished Komori.

“Yeah.” you smiled sheepishly, “I didn’t think you knew my name.”

“You're, Miss. ‘I won’t miss’.” Komori teased, “I’d be surprised if anyone that attended Youth Japan didn’t know your name.”

“Ah, you heard that too!”

“I think everyone in the gym heard that bold declaration of yours.”

“That’s the last time I’ll ever get super serious in practice.”

Komori chuckled, “I thought it was endearing.”

“That’s what everyone says, until they’re the ones making a bold claim in the middle of practice right before contradicting their own claim and getting teased relentlessly.”

“Honestly, I’m surprised you know my name.” laughed Komori.

“Why wouldn’t I know your name? I thought you were really good during the training camp so I made the effort to learn your name.”

“Oh.”

You smiled, “so, I suppose this is yours.”

Komori took the towel, staring at it for a moment before bringing it towards his face. He hoped you couldn’t see the flush that had been building on his own.

You were really different from how he thought you would have been. Of course, first impressions were always hard to base people off of but Komori would have never thought you would have been so… normal.

Obviously you were human but you had just always seemed so out of reach to Komori. You were the kind of person that soared into the attention of others while Komori stayed rooted to the ground and in the background.

The journal articles about you, that Komori definitely didn’t read, had depicted you as this cold and intelligent player. Someone willing to do anything to get the win. Here, you were a girl who seemed to stumble over her own words. Someone who tripped over their own feet and got embarrassed over stupid things you said.

You were so much warmer than Komori would have thought.

Eventually, the libero asked, “where’d you find it?”

“Oh,” you flushed, “I hope I don’t sound like a stalker or anything but I saw it fall out of your bag when you and your teammates left. So I thought I would return it to you.”

Komori eyed you curiously before smiling, “what would you have done if it wasn’t mine?”

“I suppose I would have been embarrassed. Maybe a little annoyed that I wasted my time but I was pretty certain that it was yours.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Well, apart from the fact that it has your initials on it, I remembered it being the same one you used during the training camp.”

“You notice the towels people use?”

“Sorry! Is it weird? I know my teammates sometimes tease me about it but I can’t help it. It’s always weird little things that other people do that I notice.” you rambled on, “I mean I try my best not to be creepy about it but-”

“It’s cute.”

“Pardon?”

Komori flushed once again, “I mean, it’s cute that you notice little things like that. Most people tend to overlook the little things. It’s definitely not weird! Or at least I don’t think it’s weird or anything.”

“Oh, thanks!”

“So, um,” Komori rubbed the back of his neck, “we should probably start heading back. The next game is starting soon.”

“Do you need help carrying anything?” You asked, tilting your head to the side in a cute manner.

“Don’t worry about it! It’s just a bag with a few other odds and ends.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure I’m strong enough to carry this load.”

“True,” your eyes lit up, “most second years tend to be a little lankier than their third year counterparts, but you’re definitely in shape.”

“So basically you’re saying that you think I’m attractive?”

Komori wasn’t quite sure how the words began but he knew that there was no taking back what he said now. Girls weren’t usually interested in the libero and tended to overlook him for his cousin. Speaking to you was almost akin to exploring uncharted territory. One wrong move and he would end up somewhere horrible.

He hoped he hadn’t said anything to offend you.

To his surprise you seemed rather unbothered as you replied, “you have symmetrical features and broad shoulders. Your smile is warm and you have nice eyes. I think you’re very attractive.” it was as if a realization suddenly hit you before you finally flushed, “oh? Am I being too forward? Am I making you uncomfortable?”

Komori smiled, following you out of the gym, “if anything, you might be pumping my tire a smidge too much.”

Fall in love with the kind words of another.

#haikyuu #haikyu x reader #komori motoya x reader #100 ways to fall in love

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badgraph1csghost · 1 year

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How to Use a Computer, Part 6: Datahoarding and You

I know, I said that part 6 would be about how to mod your PC, but we're going to put that off for a bit. The future of the internet looks pretty sketchy right now, what with Hachette v. Internet Archive, RESTRICT, and KOSA. Right now, the US Government is desperately trying to censor as much free information as possible by any means, so I thought it would be good to discuss the basics of datahoarding.

First, what is datahoarding? Just what it sounds like-- you hoard data. To hoard data, you simply download it to your computer and save it locally. "Local" meaning "on your computer", as opposed to "off-site" which would mean a cloud storage server someplace. You might be tempted to store your datahoard in the cloud, but don't. We're trying to save data FROM the internet, not jockey it about between servers ON the internet.

There's a wide variety of data to hoard, and it may seem sometimes like there's too much; so, hoard based on your interests. If you're into Doom level CDs, hoard that. If you're into recipe books from the 1840s, hoard that. If you're into MIDI sequences, hoard that. I won't get too much into where to find that stuff, apart from the Internet Archive; but Reddit might know something about where to find specialised data.

Instead, let's discuss some helpful datahoarding tools, both physical and software. I briefly mentioned a pair of extensions in the Firefox section; SingleFile and DownThemAll; but I failed to mention that Firefox has some downloading abilities of its own; like Internet Explorer of old, it has the option to Save Image As, Save File As, and Save Video As. Unfortunately, "Save Video As" will not work on Youtube or any commercial streaming service. It will work on Tiktok, however. Both the desktop and mobile versions of Firefox have this ability, so if you see a nifty kind of video on your dash that you'd rather like to hang onto, either right-click with your 2-button mouse, long-click with your 1-button mouse, or long-press on your touchscreen, and select "Save Video As" or "Save File to Device". Hey! That was easy.

Incidentally, since we'll be encountering ZIP files a lot during our datahoarding endeavours, Firefox also has the innate ability to immediately distinguish between one of those malicious "website dot zip" links and a genuine ZIP file. If you find a link to something ending in "zip", hover your cursor over it and look at the bottom-left corner of the browser window. If it's a domain name, the information will look something like...

However, if it is a legitimate ZIP file that 7-Zip or Windows Explorer can open, it will look like this...

Now, of course, you'll still want to use a bit of common sense when you download anything. Just because it's a legit ZIP file doesn't necessarily mean that the files the author claims are in the folder are actually there. Firefox can't protect you from things you voluntarily install on your computer. Now then, here's a picture that you can practise datahoarding on. Right-click, long-click, or long-press on this image and select "Save Image As" or "Save File to Device".

Back to Firefox's datahoarding extensions. SingleFile will condense all the data on a webpage into a single HTML document and save it to your Downloads folder for offline review. It works better on some websites than others. Like Tumblr, for instance; it can't save your entire dashboard, but it can probably save pages of your blog, as long as it's mostly text and still images. SingleFile is better suited for webpages that are static, non-dynamic, such as Reddit threads and old-web pages.

If you want to save a Wikipedia article, you won't need SingleFile. A little-known function of Wikipedia is its ability to generate PDF versions of its articles. At the top of the article, directly below the Log In button, click on "Tools", and select "Download as PDF".

DownThemAll allows you to be more selective about the types of files that you want to download from a webpage. You can download audio files, pictures, videos, text, archive files (namely ZIP, 7Z, and RAR), binary executables (EXE and MSI, for instance), other kinds of files, or all files that it is able to download. You can also give it links to files that you want to download so you can create a queue. You don't have to actually be on the website whose server the file is stored on in order to actually download from there with DTA, which makes it helpful for FTP servers.

If you want to save a snapshot of your current screen; maybe you're on a website that you can't download from, maybe you're playing a game without a unified screenshotting system, whatever; press the Print Screen key on your keyboard. The key may say something like "Print", "PrintSc", "PrtSc", or "PtScr". This will allow you to take a screenshot of the current appearance of your screen and save it to the clipboard. Once you have it, open MS Paint and either click "Paste" or hold "Ctrl" and press "V" to insert the screenshot into the Paint workspace. At this point, you can either save it as it is, or do anything else to it that you would ordinarily do in Paint; add text, draw on it, crop it, stretch it, resize it, that sort of thing.

All of that having been said, datahoarding takes up a lot of disk space. Drive C is going to fill up mighty quick, depending on what data you're hoarding, and you're going to want an alternative storage device. That's why I cautioned against using a cloud storage service earlier; Google offers a seemingly unlimited amount of storage in their Drive service, but, like everything else they do, it's monitored. If you upload a folder full of Star Trek DVD rips, they're going to see that and they may lock you out of your account. Moreover, if you happen to be an American, they may volunteer that information to the FBI, as they've been known to do, and suddenly, you're the subject of an investigation. Fuck all that.

Remember when I talked about optical drives last week? This is where they really shine. Get yourself a spindle of 100 blank DVD-Rs and tell Windows to use them all like flashdrives. It'll take awhile for the computer to write everything to disc, but this is a better long-term storage solution than a cloud service and it's cheaper than a USB hard drive. Each DVD has about 4 GB of storage, which is adequate for about 20 episodes of a half-hour TV programme, every game ever released for every console made in the 1980s, and the entire World Book Encyclopedia, complete with pictures; and you've got 100 of them!

I know, I know-- every hobbyist datahoarder is calling me an idiot right now for recommending DVDs, saying "they don't last long enough". Mate, there's no such thing as a 100-year medium in the 21.2nd century. Not even your expensive 16 TB HDDs are going to last that long. The fact is, as long as you handle your disc media with care, they're on absolutely even footing with USB hard disk drives. The other fact is, the more storage you have on a single disk drive, the harder it's going to be to create a backup copy when the time comes. If your 16 TB HDD is going to fly apart tomorrow, you're never going to be able to back up everything stored on it, and you'll have a catastrophic data loss. At least with DVDs, 4 GB is easy to back up in a pinch, and they're easier to destroy in case your hoard takes you to the high seas and the local constabulary pops round for a visit. While you're buying things, also buy a box of CD jewel cases (the hard plastic ones with the hinge) because you'll need somewhere to store all these DVDs and the spindle is really not the best place for that.

Now that we're quite a bit down the page and certain people are not paying attention anymore, r/datahoarding is a gathering of hobbyist datahoarders who can turn you onto sources of data, Internet Archive collections, and websites that may have interesting stuff for you to grab. If your hoard is going to contain mostly game ROMs and ISOs, r/roms has you covered. Imagine being the guy who decided not to call the piracy subreddit “r/mateys”. Oh well.

Anyway, that's all we have for datahoarding. Join us next time as we discuss modding your PC (for real this time).

#how to use a computer #instructions #datahoarding

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