#easily configable

[closetfullofghosts]

Thank you Vintage Story mod Knapster by Apache on the VSMD for saving my wrist from Fatal Carpal Tunnel

[endreal]

The main (only?) reason I'm not switching the T-level system to a sev category system is because I'd have to completely retool the order of them.

[vyxated]

[Reshade add-on] Clean UI for DX11

After so so sooooo many crashes later, I finally managed to create a working setting for this add-on for DX11 games by using an older REST version 🫠

You can read the whole post on Patreon here, or below the cut for those who can't access the site.

As using REST 1.2.0 and above cause crashes whenever I create a setting or attempt to use it for a brief amount of time, I decided to use a much older version of REST (1.1.0), which turns out to be more stable to configure and use. While this means being able to use the add-on for the DX11 game, it has its own set of problems, which may/may not be a dealbreaker for some.

I decided to make a new post since the original one is quite lengthy and I want to keep DX9 and DX11 versions separate due to the different information each version has.

➡️ For the DX9 version, find it here. And here for the Patreon post.

In short, with the help of REST (an add-on for reshade/gshade), you can block/prevent shaders from affecting the UI.

// Things to know if using this version ⚠️

Some shaders will not work properly and will cause some gamma issues. If your preset look different than how it normally is (a lot darker/brighter), enable/disable your active shaders and see which one is causing it. It's easily fixed by using an alternative shader that achieve a similar look.

Shaders affected (ones I've known so far): SMAA & MartysMods_SMAA (FMAA is not affected, use this instead), FilmicAnamorphSharpen, ArcaneBloom & NeoBloom, Glamarye_Fast_Effects, MagicHDR, CRT_Lotte.

You will not be able to change your window resolution, either via graphic settings or by using SRWE. This will cause your game to stop and eventually having to force stop it with the task manager. It is recommended that you have your game in Windowed Fullscreen to avoid issues and have the add-on disabled if you want to change the resolution in-game.

// Required Files

REST add-on v 1.1.0 (testing)

REST config for v 1.1.0 (simfileshare only)

// Installation

Have ReShade with full add-on support installed for this to work.

Download the REST_ x64_1.1.0 add-on from the github linked in the requirements section as well as the config.

Extract the ReshadeEffectShaderToggler.addon file into the game's \Bin folder where your TS4_64.exe is (where you had also installed ReShade).

If you use GShade: place the .addon file in the gshade-addons folder.

Still in the \Bin folder, drop the x.x_ReshadeEffectShaderToggler_DX11.ini file you downloaded.

If you use GShade: place the .ini file in the gshade-addons folder along with the .addon file. If my config doesn't show up in the add-on menu, move it back to the \Bin folder.

Rename the file and remove the prefix and suffix. Both .addon and .ini file should share the same name for the add-on to recognize my settings = [ ReshadeEffectShaderToggler.ini ]

Open up your game. If you see the same menu as below then you’ve successfully installed the add-on & settings! Restart if needed.

I've set the shortcuts for Clear UI to match with my Effect toggle key, which is Ctrl + F2. If yours are set differently, match the shortcut of this toggle group with your effect toggle key:

Reason being, having the toggle group active will prevent you from enabling/disabling your preset. Changing the shortcut will allow you to disable & enable your preset and toggle group at the same time.

To avoid the add-on from not working, make sure to do the following:

Enable post processing effects

Disable laptop mode & edge smoothing

Set 3d scene resolution to high

As long as all of the above are met, you should not encounter any problems. This has been tested to work on all graphics settings from low to ultra. External modifications (like Simp4Settings) may/may not have an effect, but from the testing I've done it has shown no problems so far.

[factual-fantasy]

I've just finished reading your response for the first time,

First off, thank you very much for the GIF and Video, as well as the explanations. I can definitely work with this.

I've downloaded and installed FireAlpaca for myself so I can start comparing what I'm seeing vs what is supposed to happen.

Immediately, Something stood out as weird to me: You're selecting multiple tools at once. That's... not supposed to happen. I tried it myself, Opened like 20 tabs and just started throwing colours at each canvas. This doesn't happen for me At all.

So I'm gonna give you some more instructions. (Tl:Dr for the instructions at the bottom, just above my little rant)

Backing Up your Brushes

FIRST let's make sure you don't lose all of your beloved brushes. from what I'm about to suggest.

in FA, I want you to go to Help > Open Config Folder

That will lead to a folder that, for me, looks like this

Keep in mind that it could look different for you, I have a fresh install with no cool special brushes. (also I can't draw to save my life)

Now simply Ctrl+A (select all) and copy it to another folder. go to like... Documents or Downloads or something, Make a folder called "Brushes Backup" and Paste all of it in there.

Alright, now to the actual thing I want you to do.

2. and 3. Uninstall and Reinstall FireAlpaca

There is some weird glitch I cannot Reproduce. So Just Reinstall FireAlpaca. this is the reason I wanted you to back up your brushes. Deleting the program and reinstalling will nuke all of the settings you use, so by copying the Config folder, you can easily reinstate your settings.

4. Testing

After you have reinstalled the program, I want you to open it, and mess around for however long you think it will take to trigger the glitch. (which sounded like only a few minutes) and see if something happens.

If not: Great!

If yes: You might want to reach out to https://firealpaca.com/report/ and fill out a bug report, and tell them that you have no way of reproducing the bug. (although I really think reinstalling will work)

5. Reinstating your brushes

Now, after you've made sure that FireAlpaca works, only then do I want you to Open the config folder again and put your brushes back. (simply close FireAlpaca after you've opened the folder, delete everything that's in it, and then copy everything from your "Backup Folder" into the config folder. )

6. Testing Part 2: Electric boogaloo

Then if you re-open FireAlpaca I want you to once again mess around a little and pay attention. Because the Bug might come back.

If it DOES come back, It might be one of your settings/brushes that is causing it. Which in that case I unfortunately have to suggest starting over with your brushes.

To recap: I'm asking you to:

Back up your brushes

Uninstall FireAlpaca

Reinstall FireAlpaca

Test to see if the weirdness is gone

Restore your brushes

Test to see if the weirdness is still gone

--- Rant Below ---

I have no clue what's happening to your program. This looks like some bug in the code that just causes FA to say "Nope" and stop responding to the side bar.

This acutally reminds me of a bug I've been encountering in Unity where the program refuses to open one of the UI pages in the Program's settings, which just completely shuts me out of the settings for one of the input libraries. Funnily enough it actually printed an error in my console, and the error was thrown so incredibly deep into compiled code that I was pretty sure I was reading Unity Source Code at that point.

I still don't know what's happening. Luckily I have Other People to interact with that settings page for me.

(This ask is in response to this post)

So once again I took sometime to test all this out, but unfortunately it didn't take me very long to come back with bad news.

So this is exactly what I did in this order:

I went to my config folder and copied everything into a new folder I created in my Documents tab. Then I went to my settings > apps > FireAlpaca and uninstalled. I then went to the official website and reinstalled it.

I opened up what should have been a fresh FireAlpaca and found this,

The red numbers are brushes that I have adjusted/used. And the "Fire roller (multiple colors)" and "twisted ribbon" are brushes that didn't come with FireAlpaca by default. I downloaded them afterwards from their little brush shop. For some reason FireAplaca remembered my brushes..

And of course, FireAlpaca was still breaking in the way that I've described in your last ask.

So I thought "Okay, I don't care if I lose my brushes and settings. I just want FireAlpaca to work." So I deleted that copied folder from Documents that I made, I unpinned FireAlpaca from my taskbar and deleted the desktop shortcut too just to he extra safe I guess..? Then I went to settings > apps > FireAlpaca and hit uninstall. Then went back to the website, reinstalled the latest version and wouldn't you know it,

All the exact same brushes, in the same order with the same settings. And FireAlpaca continued to break the same way.

So now I'm wondering if I did something wrong.. why does FireAlpaca keep remembering my settings? Did I do the uninstall process wrong? I wondered if that cache thing might be holding data or something? I've heard about that before. But with the help of a friend recently I cleared my Google Chrome and Laptop's caches. And FireAplaca didn't change at all and I didn't lose any of my settings. So that cant help me here..

I wonder if somehow my pen could be a problem? I've dropped it on the hard floor 100s of times. Could it be contributing? And what did I do wrong in this process for FireAlpaca to remember all my brush settings?

If anyone has any advice I would love to hear it <:(( Please and thank you very much 🙏🙏🙏

[cozyinhyrule]

My Favorite Stardew Valley Mods 🌱

✦ Diverse Stardew Valley ✦

Add better ethnic, racial, cultural, gender, ability, and body type diversity to Stardew Valley.

✦ To-Dew ✦

Adds a to-do list so you never forget your tasks.

✦ Gender Neutrality Mod ✦

Makes Stardew non-binary friendly with more gender inclusive language. Players can choose their preferred pronouns & how they want to be referred to using the Mod Config Menu Mod.

✦ Pregnancy Role ✦

Players can choose how they want to have children regardless of gender.

✦ NPC Map Locations ✦

Adds NPC sprites to your mini map so you can easily find everyone.

✦ Hobbit Holes ✦

Turns cabins (including multiplayer cabins) in hobbit holes.

✦ Automate ✦

Place a chest next to a machine & the machine will automatically pull raw items from the chest & push processed items into it.

✦ Family Planning ✦

Allows you to customize the maximum number of children you can have and their genders. You can also adopt children with a roommate (ie Krobus).

✦ Carry Chest ✦

Allows players to carry a chest even when it's full of items.

I also have a list of all the mods I currently use (always updated) right.... here!

I hope you enjoyed it! Also curious, what are your favorite Stardew Valley Mods? 🎮

[lyinginbedmon]

Hey Wheelchairs mod enjoyers, I've got an inquiry for y'all particularly if you have experience with being/are nonverbal (be it mutism, selective mutism, or any other form).

Seen above is the UI prototype for an upcoming craftable ingame AAC device item called the Speech Tablet. When you click on a button, it sends a translated message into the ingame chat for you. This means it can be read in a different language than your client's language setting, and that you can send potentially quite complex messages with just a couple mouse-clicks, no typing or heavy thinking needed.

What's more, the ingame narrator will even read your message out to players if they're nearby (though since the ingame narrator shares its volume setting with the entire Minecraft client, and hence can be pretty loud, this can be disabled in your client config if need be).

This is by far the closest this project has come to adding an actual accessibility device to Minecraft (instead of just a visual representation of one), and as such I want to get some input from people who might actually use it:

What messages should this tablet provide?

Right now I've got around 5 categories with capacity for up to 25 messages each, but I can expand that quite easily if necessary. I just don't have the experience to know what will/won't be useful.

So let me know!

[meadowlade]

Little Falls Farm 🏞️✨

Guess who started making their own Stardew map mods! It's me! Had way too much fun working on this I didn't realize it only took three days haha.

Featuring custom starter gift box items, diggable grass, respawning hardwood, various recolor compatibilities, and some appearance customization all easily configurable through the config file OR General Mod Config Menu. I recommend downloading GMCM for ease of configuration.

As I'm a newbie to modding, if any of y'all are interested and want to try this mod out, I would greatly appreciate any kind of feedback (or link shares!) so I can improve in the future.

Grab the mod here!

[slimegirlslugwife]

I’m sorry but I’m still losing my fucking MIND over elons incomprehensible Linux own the libs tweet like

Like it’s incredibly obvious he heard about a traceroute, and then googled “how to delete file in Linux” and then didn’t even read the results

Like… woke_mind_virus isn’t a fully qualified domain name, meaning it relies on a custom DNS resolution specific to his machine, or if utilizing a vpn, that specific vpn’s custom host file. Or that the American government would have a host entry for a woke mind virus, which if you’ve ever had to use a government website, is laughable. Also DNS is global for the most part, but honestly we can move on at this point.

So sure, we’ll say that the government has forced all public internet in America to resolve woke_mind_virus. Where does it resolve to? YOUR OWN COMPUTER, you silly billy! Obviously! This is *almost* comprehensible. Sure, we are all infected with the woke mind virus, why not. It must be destroyed within ourselves. Yeah man, whatever. Why not? So how do we destroy it?

Duh! Just delete it! How do we do that in our L337 uber hax0r terminal on our fresh kali live usb (because partitions are scary)? We’ll save that for last.

Because while deleting one file could make a website inoperable, it does not remove every trace of it! It first needs a configuration file in the web server, usually Apache or nginx. This is at LEAST one file, but cmon, if you’re gonna psychologically program the masses and keep it out of public view, you gotta encrypt that shit! So naturally, an SSL is in order! That’s easily 1-3 more files. woke_mind_virus can get a pass on not being fully qualified in this specific case because certs can theoretically be self signed and trusted on local networks, but he wouldn’t be able to tell you that. If you stood up a little one page html site on a web server on your own computer, and navigated to it on port 443 (https://) you would get an SSL error, even though it’s on your own machine. I feel like I’ve beaten this into the ground enough, but just understand it’s stupid.

What’s important to note here is that these BARE MINIMUM files are what routes the request from your machine to the destination site, even if it’s your own computer. If you delete the contents of the site (also called the docroot), the site still exists, and can receive and route requests to and from it, it’s just empty. You’ll probably get a 404 because there’s no actual content to serve. This woke mind princess is in another castle.

It’s also imprudent to delete these configuration files first, because that’s how you determine where the site content actually is! These files dictate what directory (folder for you windows losers) is called upon to actually serve you the content you see displayed when you open a webpage. So you need this information if you don’t want to destroy the entire file system and only want to remove the woke_mind_virus site. Cmon Elon, this is baby shit.

So of course, the strat with the most Efficiency and preserving the rest of the system (which seems to be the point of the tweet) is to find the docroot, delete the docroot, and then delete the web server config files. So how do we delete them?

And here we have it: rm -rf

The syntax is as follows:

rm -rf </path/to/file>

Even if you don’t know shit about Linux, you can probably see the problem here. It’s just so blatantly incorrect, it’s almost as if he’s never done it before.

For those that want to see a real world example, here is me creating a file called woke_mind_virus in my home directory and then trying to delete it the Elon Way:

[dumbditzyginger]

Cyberpunk and Hypnok1nk

Chronic pain hit me young, and I've pretty much always had a fluid sense of identity (trending femme, but fluid nonetheless). So it's not really surprising I've always been fascinated by the idea of full-body-replacement transhumanism, Ghost in the Shell style.

Like, I don't want to be in pain anymore, but that's just a fact of the meat I'm trapped in. It's going to hurt, no matter what, for the rest of my life. It'd be nice to keep on existing but feel good instead, y'know?

And sometimes I might want to be smol and cute so I can be someone's little spoon and feel safe in their arms, while other times I might want to be a seven foot tall amazon with a giant dick. I might want both of these things alternately several times a week, and it'd be great for that to be possible.

But there's the classic thing people talk about in scifi where full-body-replacement cybernetics are a thing. The brain-computer interface. That bit where you'd (in theory) have to expose every single thing that you are to an outside connection to hook everything up.

It'd be a huge security risk, where people could turn you into a passenger in your own body, or delete your childhood and replace it with another set of memories as easily as you can move files around on your PC. And maybe they don't want you to be able to stop them, so they lock you out of your own systems while they keep hacking away at your very personhood until all that's left happily agrees that you walked off the assembly line for brothel dolls only a few hours ago and expecting you to read or have opinions would just be silly.

And yeah, like, that's a nightmare scenario, right?

But also, that's so hot, right?

But it never really occurred to me that it's also kinda the same dynamic with hypnokink. It's basically just handing your tist - whether they're an actual person or just a hypnofile you like to listen to - the keys to the kingdom. Letting them root around in your file system, ripping some folders out, dropping new media in, changing some configs.

It never occurred to me that maybe my hypnokink might have partially come from just going "y'know what, fuck it, I want a hacker to turn me into their joytoy". If I'm happy with the idea of someone getting into my head and ruining me, then the only drawback of full-body-replacement cybernetics is that it's not here yet.

I'm ready to have someone reduce my clock speed to a crawl, wipe my memory, swap my language database from English(US) to English(Grade School Dropout Bimbo), delete my optical character recognition software, and reduce me from Admin to Guest user privileges. Fuck playing it safe, I'll intentionally put myself in the same chassis as last gen's most popular sex dolls, and while most people are gonna worry about random people tapping in to their hardline ports, I'm just gonna leave my wireless wide open with no password and no firewall and accept the inevitable.

A ditz can dream...

[4ltrd]

See Update in Reblog Below!

I've futzed around with a bunch of machine translation over the years, and here's what I've landed on (for Android and Windows).

Note: For both of these, the translations are wildly imperfect. Having some knowledge of the language you're translating obviously helps, or you're going to be confused when Google or DeepL decide to infer the wrong pronouns because they aren't people and don't understand context.

EverTranslator

When I'm purely on my phone, I use EverTranslator. It's free and much better than it used to be once you make a few changes in the settings. I have it set to . . .

Joiner between text blocks: Space

Remove ending dashes: On

Remove line breakers inside text blocks: On

Remove spaces in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean text: On

EverTranslator: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=tw.firemaples.onscreenocr

UGT (with a controller)

Mirroring Your Screen on your PC

I cast my phone to my laptop via Windows Phone Link or ScrCpy when I use UGT.

§ Windows Phone Link

Upsides of WPL:

It should be natively included in your version of Windows (you'll need to get the app on your phone, though).

(Usually) sound will come through your PC instead of phone.

USB connection not required--you can connect wirelessly to a PC on the same internet connection. Great if your phone is charging across the room.

Downside:

Can't rotate the screen manually for apps that are weird about rotating (AKNK).

§ BlueStacks

This method ought to also work with BlueStacks, but I haven't ever used BlueStacks because I'm paranoid about where I allow my Google data to be accessed.

§ Samsung Dex

Samsung Dex doesn't rotate apps at all, so that method is straight out.

§ ScrCpy

Scrcpy via USB Debugging mirrors your Android to your PC without having to root your phone. This is a little more advanced than using Windows Phone Link or BlueStacks, but you're using your own phone without granting anyone your Google credentials AND you can rotate the screen easily (unlike Dex or Windows Phone Link).

Upsides of ScrCpy:

You can rotate the ScrCpy window on your PC by holding alt and pushing the left arrow key. Great for AKNK's outings and sleep support.

Downside:

Getting sound through your PC rather than phone via ScrCpy is less reliable. Though it supposedly ports audio to your PC natively with the latest release, I still need to use the dev's SndCpy: https://github.com/rom1v/sndcpy/blob/master/README.md

Setting Up UGT

UGT requires more work than EverTranslator, but once you've set it up, it's worth it. You can use it for anything on your PC. Congratulations, you can now play any untranslated Japanese otome game via emulator.

A walkthrough on how to set up UGT: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2741318181

You'll need to futz around with the config file a bit, especially with the autoglue, even when you move from game to game, but it's worth the hassle.

UGT normally supports controllers to make it easier/faster to translate (and save your wrists/fingers), but that feature is broken at the moment. The dev knows. So, I cobbled together a script in AutoHotKey for my Xbox controller . . .

Autohotkey: https://www.autohotkey.com/

The script: https://vatnalilja.neocities.org/UGTAHK

Once you load this script into AutoHotKey and run it, the buttons on your Xbox controller will work as follows:

UGT's normal functions will work; consult the program

A will translate the active window (use ctrl+F10 to set a translation rectangle so it's not unnecessarily translating everything onscreen—you can always use ctrl+F10 to set a new rectangle)

B will clear the translation (the equivalent of spacebar in UGT)

Y will act as the left click of a mouse button

Left joystick will act as a mouse, so you can move around the screen to select things without touching the mouse

I updated the above AHK config file so its set back to UGT default (ctrl+f12), allowing you to run it out of the box with UGT. My original version was tailored to my modified hot keys.

These AHK settings may conflict with games that require these buttons on a gamepad, but you can look up AutoHotKey's instructions and easily change them in the script. I promise it isn't hard. Otome games are usually point-and-click, though.

This is what my setup looks like on Windows with my Android phone cast to my laptop via Windows Phone Link using UGT and a controller (not that you can see the controller part). It's so big. Good for my old eyes!

Here's my setup via ScrCpy:

DeskTranslator

Another option besides UGT is DeskTranslator, which won't require you to connect Google or DeepL in the settings or set up anything in Google Cloud Dashboard, but will require you to know some Python, access PowerShell, etc.

The installation directions for DeskTranslator and its requirements are available on each repository page, and if you need help installing Python packages, you can very easily search Google for the right commands to copy/paste into PowerShell.

One nice thing about DeskTranslator is that it will give you reasonably real-time translations without having to push any keys/buttons. Use this combined with Windows' captions in a foreign language and you can have translation of spoken dialogue that has no built-in captions in your game.

You can also drag the translation box over a normal dialogue box and use it that way, too (like UGT or DeepL's app--see reblog below for more on DeepL's app).

When used with ScrCpy, you can simply hold your phone in your hand (connected to your PC by USB) and tap the screen like normal. No controller or keyboard hot keys are needed.

ScrCpy + SndCpy with Windows Captions and DeskTranslator

ScrCpy + SndCpy and DeskTranslator

If you use Apple products or a controller other than an Xbox controller, YMMV. There is a version of UGT that is on Linux and experimental on MacOSX: https://pypi.org/project/pyugt/. Godspeed.

[amwult]

i'm obsessed with the versatility of the steamdeck.

i am hoping between: java minecraft using the touchpad for mouse-like aim and mod that provides me with correctly mapped button indicators. windows "only" xbox games that just released. ps2/gamecube/snes games with crt emulation.

and none of this required me to mod or 'trick' the operating system which ships with the device itself. it plugs into tv. connects easily with my xbox one, ps5, switch pro controllers. hhnngngnn.

there's a built in system wide overlay for performance stats i can toggle on and off while tweaking config to my liking. community controller mappings. &c

it comfortably fits my big stupid man hands which has been a major problem with other (especially smaller) handhelds and even some console controllers.

it's quite good :3

[didyousayboop]

How to archive your favourite podcasts before they disappear: a beginner's guide

Podcasts, unfortunately, disappear off the Internet quite often. The smaller the podcast, the more likely this is. Fortunately, we can do something to prevent this.

I have a very simple system for archiving podcasts that anyone can easily replicate:

Step 1. Search on archive.org to see if the podcast has already been saved there.

Step 2. Find the podcast’s RSS feed on the podcast’s website or on podcastindex.org.

Step 3. On Windows, paste the podcast’s RSS feed into the free, open source app Podcast Bulk Downloader: https://github.com/cnovel/PodcastBulkDownloader/releases

For Mac and Linux, you can use gPodder: https://gpodder.github.io It’s also free and open source.

Step 4. In Podcast Bulk Downloader, select “Date prefix”. This puts the episode release date in YYYY-MM-DD format at the beginning of the file name, which is important if someone wants to listen to the episodes in chronological order. Then hit “Download”.

In gPodder, go to Preferences → Extensions → check “Rename episodes after download” → Click “Edit config” → Check “extensions.rename_download.add_sortdate”.

Step 5. Create an account on archive.org with an email address you don’t care about. It’s bewildering, but your email address is publicly revealed when you upload any file to archive.org and they do not ever warn you about this. Firefox Relay is a good tool for this: https://relay.firefox.com

Step 6. Fill out the metadata fields on the archive.org, such as title, creator, description, and subject tags (e.g. “podcast”). I recommend including a jpeg or png file (jpeg displays better) of the podcast’s logo or album art in your upload. Whatever image you upload will automatically become the thumbnail. After that, go ahead and upload.

That’s it! You’re done!

If you have any questions or just want to chat about podcast preservation, feel free to email me at didyousayboop@yahoo.com.

Everyone has my permission to copy/paste, republish, and modify this guide. It’s under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

[guzsdaily]

I'm stuck

Day 87 - Jan 31st, 12.024

Apparently, writing Nix files doesn't count as "real programming", because it's being hard to code lately.

I have been writing Nix files, with are pretty much just "fancy JSON", for more than a week, and now, coding even on JavaScript is being somewhat hard on my brain. This new project is a "subproject" of the whole productivity system, and it is just a small CLI application to transform Obsidian's Markdown, into plain [CommonMark] Markdown. And my head is fighting on trying to come with solutions to code, it is like I can imagine the concept and separate the pieces of this project to work on, and I feel like even a simple task I can't just code y'know? Even when I'm being hands-off with things like dependencies count, scalability, etc. etc. Things which normally I take care in "production code".

To be honest I even don't know if I should use JavaScript for this, I choose it because it is the easiest language to just get things done, and it seems logical to use it for content-related and/or HTML-related things. However, I kinda feel I should use Go or Rust, even if I need to learn them from scratch and have a smaller related ecosystem, I don't know if I should, knowing that it is a project that I would like to not spend a lot of time, but also the idea of learning something new in the time kinda drives me another way? I don't know, maybe I will try to use Go or Rust in this project, so it's easier to use them in my future "actual" projects.

I even don't know if I should continue using Obsidian all together now, because even if it is where I settled up most everything, even when it is the center of my productivity and note-taking routine, I kinda feel locked-in a lot more than I like, and having this Obsidian-like syntax (together with all the plugin's syntaxes), it can be kinda hard to get out of it. Yes, it is impossible to me to not be locked-in some technology, but I feel like I would prefer to have everything in plain Markdown and edit it with a Neovim config, than to have a lot of things that I can't read and use without a specif editor and previewer.

However, if I continue this, I will also never work on actual projects, you know, the ones that can give me a job. But without "The System", I can't organize and share easily said projects.

I feel stuck.

---

Today's artists & creative things

Song: That Funny Feeling - by Bo Burnham

---

Copyright (c) 2024-present Gustavo "Guz" L. de Mello <contact.guz013@gmail.com>

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) License

[thatspacepirate]

The Colors of Quake

This weird mess is the color palette that Quake uses! The original Quake engine could only display variations of these exact 256 colors due to hardware restraints, so while designing the textures for the player, the enemies, the items, the environment, and even the UI, ID Software had to make sure they only used these colors. Most of them are very brown.

Here are some very disconnected fun facts about the Quake palette!

The bottom row of the palette is for fullbright colors. These colors are usually used in flourecent lights, fires, lazers, and plasma beams, and they always display the same color no matter the light level. You can see these colors being used to their full potential in techbase mods like Alkaline, where enemies often have glowing weapons or armor!

Color #255 on the palette is often used for transparent textures such as grates, chain-link fences, vegetation, decorations, and lettered signs. Most modern Quake source ports will ignore this color if the texture starts with the "{" character.

You may have noticed that right around the halfway point of the palette, the pattern of dark-to-light colors switches. Nobody knows why this happened.

"It is important that the latter 8 palette rows are 'backwards' (light-to-dark instead of dark-to-light). It appears that the ID artists did this for no good reason in the original Quake palette, and the engine programmers were forced to add a hack to accommodate it (along with the comment "the artists made some backwards ranges. sigh"). The only area this affects is player shirt/pants color translation (where one palette row must be mapped to another)." - The Quake Wiki

Having several different variations of the same color in a palette meant that Quake could easily reuse textures by recoloring them. You can see this being used in the Multiplayer config menu, where you can change the player color. Every time you change the player's color, it's actually cycling through a row of the color palette!

While Quake's colors are often laughed at for being overwhelmingly brown, you can pull off some pretty impressive stuff with them. The texture artist and environment designer Makkon has released several truly incredible texture wads for Quake that really show how much detail you can squeeze out of a limited color palette!

ID Software's games kept using color palettes until the release of Quake 3, which used JPEGs that can hold pretty much any color. Today, modern Quake engines can render most colors just fine, so long as you use TGA images to stand in for palette-limited textures. But the original color palette has a place in the hearts of many Quake fans, and it is the standard used by most mappers and modders.

[tokinanpa]

have you used arch? if so, what main benefits do you feel nix has over it?

I'm going to assume you mean NixOS, since nix is a distro-agnostic package manager that can in fact run on arch!

the main selling point of nixos (aside from just... using nix) is that it supports declarative configuration, which means that you can write a program to specify the packages, settings and configs for everything on your computer. all of the aforementioned packages are automatically pinned to exact versions, and if necessary the entire config can be easily rolled back if something breaks.

it's honestly a bit difficult to even compare arch and nixos, since nixos does so much more to begin with. arch's design philosophy is to be hands-off and let programs do their own thing, whereas nixos's approach is to try to unify everything you could possibly do with your computer under one system.

as for nix itself, it's easily the best package manager/universal build tool/container/deployment system I've ever used, and was my main draw to try nixos in the first place. it's not for everyone, but it is for me.

[christanworkshop]

DIY: ESP32-CAM Module for Flipper Zero

Here's a simple add-on module that you can build easily for just a few dollars. Essentially, you just need to connect 4 wires between the ESP32-CAM module and Flipper Zero, then flash the firmware.

This module allows you to use it with apps like Marauder, Camera, Morse Flasher, etc. The nice thing about using ESP32-CAM is that the module already has micro SD card slot built in, in addition to the camera and LED. This setup is also referred to as Mayhem board.

You can find the ESP32-CAM module on various e-commerce sites like Amazon, Aliexpress, etc. for just a few dollars. Note that you only need the ESP32-CAM module itself, the top module in the photo below. You don't need the Micro USB to Serial Port module (bottom module). Many sellers sell both items together as a bundle.

I used a breadboard below for demonstration purposes, but you can make this permanent and smaller by soldering it on a prototype board.

First, here are the connections you need to make. You can even use jumper wires to directly connect the ESP32-CAM module to Flipper Zero.

After plugging your module into Flipper Zero, we need to flash the firmware on the ESP32-CAM module. To do that, connect your Flipper Zero to your computer using a data cable (use the cable that came with your Flipper Zero if unsure). Then, on your Flipper Zero, open GPIO > USB-UART Bridge. It should show Pin 13 for TX, Pin 14 for RX. If it doesn't, press the Left arrow button to go into Config and change UART Pins to 13,14. Next, you need to connect pin IO0 and GND (put something metal like the tip of a screwdriver to connect these 2 pins) on the ESP32-CAM, then press and let go the RST button under the ESP32-CAM module, then disconnect pin IO0 from GND. If you do this correctly, the next step will work. If it doesn't, try again.

Now, point your Chrome/Microsoft Edge browser to this site and click INSTALL. In the popup, select your Flipper Zero and click Connect.

Now, you should see the firmware being flashed. When done, you can disconnect your Flipper Zero from your computer and exit USB-UART Bridge on your Flipper Zero.

If you have already installed third party firmware like Xtreme or RogueMaster, the apps you need to use this module is already installed under GPIO and you can use it right away. Otherwise, you will need to install the apps yourself using the links provided in the above firmware install website. Do connect your Flipper Zero to your computer to install those apps.

That's it! Just a few bucks and a bit of effort. If you haven't already done so, check out our Makers & Hackers Exchange Facebook group to learn more from other Flipper Zero users.

Here are some videos from other makers for reference: