#so i don't think its the audio port

[commodorez]

I still believe the craziest form of computer program storage format from the 1980s is the cassette tape. Logical I get it but to store entire programs on little tape (that I only remember using to play music) is just crazy to me. Idk

Agreed, cassette tape for data storage was really clever. The concept had its heyday was the 1970s in a wide variety of encoding schemes for different computer platforms. It did persist into the 80s, mostly in Europe, while the US switched to floppy disks as soon as they were available for systems. The majority of my Ohio Scientific software is on cassette.

Talking with UK vs. US Commodore 64 users in particular will highlight the disparity in which storage mediums that were commonplace. I've got a few pieces of software on tape for mainly the VIC-20, but I rarely bother to use it, because it's slow and annoying. To be fair, Commodore's implementation of data storage on tape is pretty rock solid relative to the competition. It's considered more reliable than other company's but Chuck Peddle's implementation of the cassette routines are considered quite enigmatic to this day. He didn't document it super well, so CBM kept reusing his old code from the PET all the way through the end of the C128's development 7 years later because they didn't want to break any backward compatibility.

The big thing that really made alot of homebrewers and kit computer owners cozy up to the idea was the introduction of the Kansas City Standard from 1976. The idea of getting away from delicate and slow paper tape, and moving towards an inexpensive, portable, and more durable storage medium was quite enticing. Floppy disk drives and interfaces were expensive at the time, so something more accessible like off the shelf audio tapes made sense.

I've linked two places you can read about it from Byte Magazine's February 1976 issue below (check the attribution links).

You might recognize a familiar name present...

There are a few ways to encode binary data on tape designed to handle analog audio, but the KCS approach is to have 1's be 8 cycles of 2400Hz tone, and 0's be 4 cycles of 1200Hz tone. I say cycles, because while 300 baud is the initial specification, there is also a 1200 baud specification available, so the duration of marks vs spaces (another way of saying 1's and 0's), is variable based on that baud rate. Many S-100 computers implemented it, as do a few contemporary proprietary designs.

The big 3 microcomputers of 1977 that revolutionized the industry (Apple II, Commodore PET 2001, and Tandy TRS-80 Model I) each have their own cassette interface implementation. It kept costs down, and it was easy to implement, all things considered. The Apple II and TRS-80 use off-the-shelf cassette deck connections like many other machines, whereas the original variant of the PET had an integrated cassette. Commodore later used external cassette decks with a proprietary connector, whereas many other companies abandoned tape before too long. Hell, even the original IBM PC has a cassette port, not that anybody bothered to use that. Each one used a different encoding format to store their data, rather than KCS.

Here's a sample of what an OSI-formatted tape sounds like.

And here's a Commodore formatted tape, specifically one with VIC-20 programs on it.

I won't subject you to the whole program, or we'd be here all day. The initial single tone that starts the segment is called the "leader", I've truncated it for the sake of your ears, as well as recorded them kinda quietly. I don't have any other tape formats on hand to demonstrate, but I think you get the idea.

You can do alot better than storing programs on tape, but you can also do alot worse -- it beats having to type in a program every time from scratch.

[adachimoe]

summary of the persona 4 golden anime audio drama: boo!

Adachi is in this one. Thank god. I put this under a read more cause there's quite a bit to describe.

This one takes place before Naoto joins the Investigation Team so no one knows she's a girl yet. At Junes, the gang are telling Marie about their class trip to Tatsumi Port Island: Visiting Gekkokan, going window shopping, going to Club Escapade (Yukiko has no fucking clue what happened at Club Escapade and Chie tells her its for the best lol).

Marie also wants to make memories, so Rise suggests they figure out something to do with her. But they already went to the beach, the shrine festival is already over, there were fireworks, etc. Rise wants to go to an onsen, but Yosuke is a bit too overly enthusiastic about the idea, and Chie vetos it because "it's too hot out" (I'm fairly sure the implication is that Chie actually vetoes it because of Yosuke's reaction to the idea of seeing Rise at an onsen as Chie is still in her "compare herself to every girl" arc, but she just says it's cause of the weather).

Yukiko's suggestion of something cool and hot is a test of courage, which everyone except Chie is on-board with. Yu suggests they do it at Tatsuhime Shrine. The group recounts how there's been reports a woman in a white kimono, the cries of a fox, and bugs, but the shrine gets rejected cause of how narrow it is. Teddie wants to do it at Junes, but Yosuke refuses. Chie tries to get out of it by saying they don't have a place to do it, but Yukiko then suggests the school. Since Marie is willing to go, Chie gives up and agrees.

At school the next day, Yu tries to invite Naoto, but Naoto is busy due to the case with Kubo. When Naoto asks why Yu even asked, Yu replies that it would be fun if Naoto came along too.

At night, Yu explains that Naoto isn't coming (Kanji is disappointed). Yukiko thinks that Yosuke is going to lockpick the school gate open, like in spy movies. But Mass Destruction starts playing, and it turns out that Yosuke left it open earlier during the school day, referencing what Junpei does when SEES finds Fuuka in Tartarus in Persona 3. Yu begins to call Yosuke, "Brilliant!" a la Mitsuru, but he gets cut off by Yukiko going "Normal", as she and the others were hoping for the spy movie route. No one is impressed by Yosuke except Yu, who now quotes Akihiko, telling him "Good job" lol. (Yu is quoting what Mitsuru and Akihiko say this to Junpei in P3 when he leaves the door open. I think English put C'est magnifique for Mitsuru and Oui good job for Aki?)

For the test of courage, the group will split into pairs, visit all 3 levels of Yasogami High, and stick talismans at the ends of each hallway. They get paired up as Rise and Yosuke (Rise wanted to be with Yu, Yosuke is psyched), Chie and Teddie, Yukiko and Kanji (Yukiko tells him they're going to discover the Mysteries of Yaso High, and Kanji is like "wtf"), and Yu and Marie. Each group takes turns entering the school, 5mins after the last.

Yosuke and Rise enter, and Yosuke is hoping that Rise will cling to him (like, "kyaa sempai i'm scared >w<!!!"), but Rise is totally chill with this as she once filmed something at a school at night time for a program and it seemed haunted/cursed. Yosuke assumes it was just a set, not a real thing, and Rise gets upset he doesn't believe her. Meanwhile, Chie is terrified walking around with Teddie, and wants to go back to the entrance. Teddie messes with her / scares her by saying that if she goes outside and waits for the others, she'll be all alone, and ermmm insert a lot of muffled unintelligible screaming during which Chie gets afraid and tries to get into Teddie's bearsuit but I can barely make out the dialogue over the two of them yelling at each other lol.

!!!!!!!!!! ADACHI ALERT !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

!!!!!!!!! ADACHI UN-ALERT !!!!!!!!!!!!

At Shiroku Pub, Dojima is drunk as hell and bitching about Naoto, saying that Naoto should be in school instead of helping the police. Adachi gets a bit "well, ahkstually" and brings up how Naoto literally goes to Yasogami High, and Dojima gets pissed lmao and is like no you dipshit why is Naoto allowed to work on a murder case despite being a high schooler. Adachi brings up how Naoto is this super genius and they might not have caught Kubo without their help, which reaaaaally just pisses off Dojima even more. He tries to pour himself another beer, and ends up spilling it. Adachi tries to spin this into a positive, saying that they will have free time. Except "free time" also pisses off Dojima, so Adachi pivots into how he can spend his free time with Nanako. But instead of talking about Nanako, Dojima invites Adachi to come over for dinner, Yu will cook, etc. He begins to say something like, "the four of us..." before passing out (fairly sure Dojima was trying to say "can be a family"). Adachi then gets a call from someone about a "suspicious person at Yasogami High". He attempts to get Dojima to investigate this, but Dojima is out cold. Adachi finds this all giga annoying, as Adachi always does, but he suddenly gets the bright idea to pawn this off on someone else.

Back at Yasogami High, Yukiko and Kanji are near the music room, and Yukiko asks if they can go in so she can "confirm something". Kanji's brain turns into a romance anime and he's very excited at the idea that Yukiko might confess to him. However, it turns out she wanted to go into the music room to see if one of the Seven Mysteries of Yasogami High -- the one about Mozart having shining eyes in the music room (see: the portraits on the wall in P4 Arena) -- was true or not, and Kanji is like, "...oh". She then tries to see if the other mystery about the Midnight Piano, a self-playing piano, is true or not, when she taps a key on the piano to see if it plays back. Kanji says the word "kanji" (meaning feeling), and this causes Yukiko to do her hyena laugh because "Kanji said kanji", and she presses random piano keys while cackling. The two hear someone outside of the music room, but when they open the door, no one is there. Kanji thinks it was nothing, but Yukiko chases after this person, and Kanji loses track of her.

Lastly, Marie has no idea what's so great about this, so Yu decides to show her.

Yosuke and Rise are hanging their final talisman when Yu suddenly calls Yosuke. Yosuke asks what's up, but Yu doesn't reply and does mouthy breathing over the phone while telling them "b-e-h-i-n-d-y-o-u", then Marie suddenly comes from behind and spooks both Rise and Yosuke, and they start screaming. Marie instantly understands why this is fun, and Yu takes her to scare the shit out of Teddie and Chie next.

Teddie and Chie are "walking" around with Chie clinging to Teddie. They hear footsteps, but Chie doesn't think it's the others cause they don't hear any voices. Marie spooks them by going "I curse--", and Chie begins screaming. Yu calms down Chie, and Marie complains about not getting to finish her sentence ("I curse you"). Yu suggests Chie finally let go of Teddie. Now free from Chie's grip, Teddie reports on how Chie's warmth caused him to see the pearly gates.

Kanji is still looking for Yukiko, but instead finds Marie who moves around a skeleton and goes "I'M A SKELETOOOON", and Kanji is like, completely unphased by this. (Yu thought it was a good idea, but it just didn't have impact.) Kanji asks them if they've seen Yukiko, who ran off chasing a shadow. Yu goes with Kanji to look for her and sends Marie to go wait with the others.

Before returning, Marie begins composing a poem:

You are a reaper who harvested my heart then vanished into the darkness. I am an artist who wanders through purgatory in search of my stolen heart. A ghost, as happy as she is sad. If I must wander forever, then so be it. I'll climb these infinite 13 flights of stairs and dance an endless waltz. You embrace me with eternal darkness itself. And so I sleep in your arms, as a Forever Dreamer.

(The "embrace" is "arm/arms", but it seemed too repetitious for poetry to puts arms on 2 consecutive lines? Also the 13 stairs is most likely because of the superstition about "13 steps to the gallows".)

After, Marie hears someone near her, and thinks Yu might be eavesdropping on her. She gets embarrassed and begins chewing him out by calling him a stupidshittyassholejerkface ghost and telling him to go climb some endlessly looping 13 stairs himself lol. But when Marie goes and investigates, she finds........

Elsewhere, Yu and Kanji have found Yukiko when they hear Marie yelling for someone. The three run over to her, and find Marie and an unconscious Naoto.

!!!!!!!!! ADACHI ALERT !!!!!!!!!!!!

Back at Shiroku Pub, Adachi receives another phone call, and we learn that Adachi is an asshole who tricked Naoto into going to Yasogami High alone at night by saying the report about the "suspicious person" was possibly related to the murder case. Adachi tells the other person on the phone that he'll be going over to the school shortly, and hangs up after replying with a bunch of "Yep, uh-huh, yes, sure, yep, yeeep", calling all of this shit annoying. Instead of going to the school, he orders another beer from Shiroku.

!!!!!!!!! ADACHI UN-ALERT !!!!!!!!!!!!

Back at Yasogami High, everyone apologizes to Naoto who calls them a bunch of morons. (In JP fandom, this is Naoto's popular line from the King's Game part. Akechi even gets to say it in Royal lol.)

Naoto recaps to why they came to the school: After receiving a call about a suspicious person at the school, Naoto was walking around while waiting for Adachi, but LOL Adachi was drinking and he never showed. But Naoto heard Yukiko playing the piano, and thought it might be one of the Seven Mysteries of Yaso High about the Midnight Piano (this was the funniest fucking thing to me cause it means that Yukiko didn't just make up the seven mysteries shit, it was actually a real thing lmao. I thought from Kanji's reaction that it wasn't a real urban legend in town or w/e).

Naoto tried to convince themselves that this needs to be ahem scientifically investigated, but then Yukiko started laughing, and Naoto ran the hell away, meaning that Yukiko really did hear someone moving around earlier. Then Yu and Marie began scaring people, and Naoto heard all of them screaming while trying to convince themselves that there's absolutely no way there are ghosts or spirits at the school. Finally, Naoto heard parts of Marie's poem: "...reaper... darkness... purgatory... sad... ghost..." Naoto thinks it's the voice of some deceased person, and that there really is a spirit there. Then, Naoto hears Marie again: "wander forever... 13 stairs... eternal darkness... sleep... forever..." Following this, Naoto can't take it anymore, and collapses.

Back in the present time, Chie tries to play it off as hey everyone's okay, so it's fine, and Naoto is like, NO??? NO IT IS NOT FINE??? Seeing how livid and pissed Naoto is, this just confirms for Yu that they reaaally need to get Naoto to join in on whatever they do next time.

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

As people may know, or at least be unsurprised to learn, I am a rather obsessive collector/organizer of data. I am a big fan of having everything I like in a digital file that I own (rather than renting access to it via streaming), and of making sure they're all organized and labelled with sufficient context.

[Note that I'm coming back to add now that I've finished writing this whole post: what follows is a pretty boring description of how I bought a bigger hard drive this week, to facilitate my aforementioned hobby. It contains multiple pictures of my laptop. At the end there is a screenshot of names of all the comedians in my comedy folder. So only click on the cut link if, for some reason, you think that sounds interesting. If you do think any of that topic sounds interesting, shoot me a message or something because we should be friends, if you share my enjoyment of something so objectively uninteresting.]

For the first few years that I did this, I kept most of my comedy stuff on a few different external hard drives, that were between 500GB and 1TB each. Different ones had different types of media on them, and I'd switch around when I needed different folders. It got difficult to keep the drive still while I was using the computer, so I purchased a pocket thing that adheres to the back of the laptop, so my external drive could live in a pouch on my laptop's back while drawing its power, like a parasite:

This was my laptop situation for quite a while. The sticker, of course, an homage to Nish Kumar in the lockdown season of The Mash Report.

About a year and a half ago, when I finally got a job with more financial stability, one of the first things I did was splurge on a 5TB hard drive. I took all the stuff that mattered from my various smaller hard drives, and was able to combine it into one giant folder, labelled "comedy", on the 5TB drive.

I went with 5TB because it seemed to be the biggest drive you could get while still having it small enough to work with my system of living on my laptop's back. Anything bigger than that be far less portable, and too big for the adhesive pouch. Even the 5TB one was thicker than the 1TB ones and that stretched the pouch, but I got it to fit in there.

I logged everything in my comedy folder in a spreadsheet, which I also kept in that folder. Keeping track of dates, locations, and lineups of performances. I established a system of having a subfolder for any comedian for whom I have at least two files, and then everything I have by them will go in their sub-folder. Audio or video comedy files that feature more than one comedian will be copied into all relevant folders - ie. if it's a mixed bill of five comedians who all have sub-folders, I'm making five copies of it. This is fine because 5TB is huge and I don't need to conserve space. I just need to feel the satisfaction of completism in my organizing system.

This worked well for quite some time. However, recently, the size of my comedy folder was creeping... not up to 5TB, but at least up toward a point where I had to start considering ways to save storage space, when adding new files. In the last few months, I've started adding a lot more video files, in the type of stuff that I used to only have in audio form, and obviously the video takes up a lot more space. I love having video versions of things because obviously it's fun to see the comedians, but I didn't want to have to start hesitating to add videos because of space constraints.

So I was thinking of making another upgrade - from the biggest of the hard drives that would still fit in my laptop's parasite pocket, to the next level, where hard drives would need to plug into an outlet because the laptop's USB port won't give them enough power. I started Googling prices, considering how big I should go. I figured at least 10TB, maybe 12.

Then, last week, I got a video of an excellent comedy night, I had so much fun watching it, but it was 3.5GB, and I needed to paste in five different copies of it. One for the John Robins subfolder, one for the Ian Smith subfolder, one for the Celya AB subfolder, one for the Nish Kumar subfolder, and one in the Mixed-Bill (non-Kitson) folder. And that is too many times to copy 3.5GB, if I have to be conscious of space. That will get unsustainable.

So I went to Best Buy's website, saw that they were selling a 14TB external drive from a reputable company on quite a good sale, and bought it. It was actually less expensive than buying the 10 or 12 TB ones, due to the sale price, and I figured that if I'm going to do this, I may as well go big.

Of course, I was concerned about how I'll use it, since I often use my laptop when I'm not just sitting at my desk, and I don't want the hard drive knocking around. I tried Googling whether they have bigger adhesive laptop pouches, for the bigger hard drives, but didn't find any. Then it occurred to me that I could just make one. I purchased a case for my new hard drive, and some adhesive Velcro that can attach to fabric.

When it arrived, I attached the case to the back of my laptop with Velcro, put the drive in it, and it worked great. Until I realized that this new drive has vents on the side. I don't know exactly how this all works, but I do know enough to know you probably shouldn't cover up vents on electronics. Which means I should not be placing this thing inside a case while I'm running it, the way I could place the smaller ones in their pouch while using them.

It took me far too many minutes of coming up with the obvious solution, to just stick Velcro directly on the back of the hard drive, and stick that to the Velcro on the back of my laptop. I tried that, and it worked surprisingly well:

(Pictured above: on the left, the old hard drive pouch that is visibly stretched from having the thick 5TB one in there when it's clearly not meant for ones that big; on the right, my new monster of a hard drive, attached directly to my laptop with Velcro)

Of course, this meant there was no more room on my laptop for the Kumar sticker, so I moved it to the side of my bookshelf, with the rest of my Britcom stickers:

(Pictured above: the Kumar sticker, a couple of Higgldy Piggldy Enterprises stickers that I took off the package in which Kitson's CD was delivered, a Taskmaster seal, a sticker of Nish Kumar with a coconut on his head in Taskmaster, and two cards that Ed Gamble threw into the crowd at The Wrestling event a couple of years ago, which a friend of mine who attended the event picked up for me)

The laptop did work even with that new giant hard drive strapped to its back, so I now have that option if I'm using my laptop somewhere without bringing other accessories. But I quickly became concerned about how much stress the weight of the hard drive would put on my laptop's hinges over long-term use. To avoid that, I figured that any time I'm just using my laptop in my bedroom, it would be nice if I could secure the hard drive to the "lap desk" thing that I keep under my laptop, so it'll keep still and stay nearby without putting its weight on those hinges. And I had Velcro, so I can secure anything to anything.

Unfortunately, my old lap desk was not wide enough for my laptop and the giant hard drive next to it. Because they don't usually make lap desks with the thought that they'll need to be wide enough for a 15.6-inch laptop and a hard drive that's 5.3 inches wide. So I went back on the internet, and browsed for ages to find a lap desk that would be wide enough for both to sit side by side. Finally I found one. Purchased that. Began to realize this great sale, getting a 14TB hard drive for only $250 - this is rapidly turning into well over $250, if you add the cost of the Velcro and the case and the new lap desk. Though I had been considering buying a new lap desk sometime soon anyway, as my old one was falling apart.

Okay. So. The lap desk arrived. I put some Velcro on it. By now I've gone wild with power over this new Velcro - I've already used it to hem my curtains and fix a hole in one of my backpack's internal pockets. I'm super excited that I can just attach stuff. Including a giant hard drive to a new and huge lap desk, rendering the drive portable:

I feel like I'm in one of those gaming subreddits. "Want to see my setup?" Pictured above is my new setup, with the actual hard drive out of the picture so you can see the Velcro. My setup mainly consists of Velcro, at this point. Velcro, and a behemoth of a hard drive that contains, among other things, approximately 800 hours of Daniel Kitson recordings (that's not a joke, I've just checked and the actual number is 798).

I've spent the last few days setting up the new hard drive. Part of that was easy, as I just moved the giant comedy folder. But I also added some stuff. I'd previously kept some of my John Oliver collection on a separate hard drive - the Last Week Tonight and Daily Show stuff - now my entire John Oliver collection is together, where it belongs, in the shared folder with Andy Zaltzman. I brought over a few extra sitcoms that I'd been leaving out because they take up too much space. And I re-organized some stuff. Cleaned it up a lot by adding a "misc. stand-up" folder for video and another for audio, so that stand-up recordings by comedians who don't have their own sub-folder can go in there, rather than just being loose in the main folder.

This newly cleaned up version of my hard drive is so much more organized that I can even almost fit the entire main folder into one screenshot (just a bit of text cut off at the end, but it's pretty close now - while before, it went on for ages with un-filed recordings):

(Disclaimer: Just because someone's name appears on that list as a comedian to whom I've dedicated a sub-folder, does not mean that I endorse everything they've ever said. Or, in maybe one or two cases, anything they've ever said. It just means I collect comedy like a magpie. I mean, obviously this folder has mostly stuff I like. But it's also just stuff I collect. This paragraph is basically here because I don't want anyone looking at the Alfie Brown folder, and saying, "Oh, I guess she thinks racial slurs are a cool way to be edgy." I also do not condone anything Alun Cochrane's said since about 2018 - frustratingly, because I found him quite funny before that, I'm still mad at Adam Hills for how hard he's defended monarchism since getting those letters after his name, and I do not co-sign any of Alan Partridge's political views. In that alphabetical list, those are four comedians just in the As with whom I disagree.)

(All those names in the above screenshot do look like a good template for a game of fuck marry kill, though.)

Anyway, that's how my week's been. Next week I'm going to try backing up the new and improved folder to my cloud space, without frying my hardware from overheating while uploading about 3TB of data. My laptop's been overheating lately, and unfortunately, my knowledge of IT stuff is, like, half a step too low for me to have the confidence to take it apart and try to clean the fans inside. But my laptop has been a trooper in data transfers all week, I'm sure it won't let me down now.

[gynandrophagy]

I'm thinking about real machines you can fuck. I don't mean machines that stimulate your erogenous zones. That's been done, and it's neat, but I'm looking for a machine that has erogenous zones. A machine you can interact with erotically, not only sexually.

I have a number of not-quite-satisfactory examples: amp& speakers, train engines, retro consoles, old text-generating ANNs. Witness my descent:

With an amp & speakers, you can hear the interference change as you stroke the contacts — it's the same sensory feedback loop as a human's gasps & whimpers.

I might be into low frequency sounds. which reminds me: train engines. Modern ones — their deep, rumbling hum. I heard it, yes, resonating in my skull, and my hazy thoughts, my rattling perception, and I felt it in my chest as I moved, enraptured, down the platform, ever closer, to the source, passing through the rise and fall of standing waves.

Old game consoles seem to provide interesting glitches — I'm guessing this is because the whole system was so resource-constrained, there's no room for error-checking, and different types of data & code are stored in the same space, so pointing to the wrong location causes the program to start completely misinterpreting the data there (consider the humble missingno). Again, this produces interesting sensory (auditory & visual) experiences — more interesting but less responsive than those from fingering an aux port.

What I'm getting at with the consoles is that I want tech that fails interesting, that will keep going, stumbling over its own compounding errors, flashing pretty colors and letting out beautiful discordant sounds until it finally ceases to function at all.

Then there's text-generating neural nets — I prefer the older ones, where a bit of unexpected input causes them to go completely off the rails and say things like "TWITTER’S H-E-L-T-S WON’T FUNCTION DUE TO OVERLOAD OF BADTOMATE CALLS" or "For a photo or more information, contact the ZOPERIAN at      ZOPERIAN@gmail.com                                            Â"

These neural nets are easy to break in interesting ways with your own clever manipulations, but they don't offer much in the way of sensory experience.

My ball of thoughts. Now to bring them together:

Touching audio contacts has the distinct benefit of connecting physical touch to changes in the machine and its feedback — even slight pressure changes will alter the speakers' buzzing. But all it does is buzz.

Train engines provide a rich sensory experience by resonating with body cavities, but there's not much most people can safely do to interact with the engine in turn.

Retro consoles and old (pre-GPT3 or so) text-generating neural nets generate interesting output when cleverly perturbed. Neural nets are easier to break, but consoles provide a fuller sensory experience.

So I suppose I'm looking for something that will noticeably glitch, but continue to function, with my fingers in its guts, thereby creating an interesting, responsive sensory experience that allows me to see, feel, and hear the effects of my touch.

[thelongestway]

Yeah, this chapter is why I wanted to get more pre-writing done, haha! Getting all the timelines and such straight hasn't been easy, even with the help of A LOT of people (both early readers and folks in my writing spaces). But then again - it's not really easy for the characters, either! As the old adage goes, if you're having trouble figuring something out - write about the trouble. :P

Chapter 4: Picnic

After about three hours, the meeting had devolved from "highly formal three-way exchange of information" to "a bunch of humans, two constructs and one audio-and-visual only, feed cut (just in case) drone slumped on every available chair, couch and surface, surrounded by half-empty vessels containing vitamin-enriched beverages and staring at the screen where they watched footage and ART made diagrams." Several big circles contained the largest points of contention. The first read: ALIENS vs ANTARCTICA. The second: ORGANIC COMPONENT -> WORMHOLE SPEED? The third, most recently introduced: DEFINITION OF LIFE.

"You know that the discussion has gone completely sideways when that last one appears," Ratthi said to Dandelion, hanging his head back from the couch he was lying on feet up. She just nodded, two of her metallic arms entwined in a very human gesture.

"I'm just saying!" Iceblink exclaimed from where she was spread out on the floor, "I believe you about Perihelion being entirely non-organic, you've got zero reason to lie to us at this point! But on a theoretical level it's just bonkers. I was completely convinced it was like SecUnit when I worked with its data!"

"The fact that I am non-organic does not mean I am not alive," ART said.

"Peri," Seth groaned, "Let's not start round three. Please."

"Especially because this isn't actually getting us any closer to what we should be doing about the situation," Reed said, lifting kes head from having dropped it on kes arms in order to glare at Iceblink. "Let's try to boil this back down to the facts. Again. Haze, would you kindly?"

Haze cleared their throat and read off their communicator.

"An unknown organic component was installed on top of Perihelion's wormhole drive, which temporarily made it capable of going through wormholes at speeds matching the Tenacious' best. This organic technology originated from what PUMNT and Preservation designate as alien remnants, and also--thank you, Three, for that last addition--was apparently sourced from something the colonists called a Vault."

Thiago looked up from his linguistic puzzles for a moment. (He was the only one who looked remotely happy about the situation, having perked up significantly after hearing the Trellians speak. Now he had sequestered himself in a corner with an audio recorder and worked on formalizing their dialects).

"Capital V-Vault?"

That question seemed to catch Haze off-guard. They stuttered, and captain Reed said, "Yes, capital V-Vault. Go on, Haze."

"Ahem! Yes, this is important, because if it's a capital V-Vault, then it's the same designation the Hylaran materials port had! So that's one more point in favor of Antarctica, and not in favor of aliens."

"I don't know about that," Dandelion muttered. "At this point I am expecting for the Spider Queen to have had a secret representative office in Antarctica. Why did we ever think aliens would be politically easier?.."

"Aliens make everything harder," Martyn said seriously. He was holding Reed's communicator and poking at the data which Haze had uploaded. "But back to the subject at hand… The Breakoff virus does look remarkably like what we've been analyzing forward and back for the last month. But if it's human-originated, then I don't understand. What was the point?"

"We never found that out," Haze said. "I'm no historian, but if I remember correctly, pre-Breakoff communication was getting erratic. Antarctica itself wasn't doing well. And then, without warning, one of our next shipments made Mama go…" They swallowed. "She did grab people who were close to her. And change them. Until she was shut down for good. As was the Antarctican port."

"I hate to say this," Martyn squinted at Haze, then shook his head ruefully. "But from the moment I saw you, I thought there was something familiar about the way you were designed. One more point to pre-Rim genetic engineering traditions, I suppose."

"Maybe," Iris said, but then I stopped listening because ART poked me on our private channel. (I could have continued listening, but honestly, the humans were tired and mostly going in circles, so all I did was flash the 'humans need to take rest periods' sign on our screen, and paid most of my attention to ART).

By now ART had mostly cross-referenced the Trellians' virus data with its own via Iceblink's sacrificed terminal, and was 98% sure that the virus was not going to infect Dandelion. But that wasn't what it was working on primarily.

It was analyzing two potential resolution paths: (a), following the replacement schematic (because it had been right as usual: undergoing a complete drive replacement and wormhole navigation retraining would probably bring it back up to old baseline. It would just be long and very boring), and (b), potentially adding an organic component to its drive (ART saw at least three possible options, though it left them unspecified for now) or modifying its own programming to imitate one.

The organic options were relatively straightforward, if potentially creepy. (We had no idea what Dandelion did to herself to be a starship. ART had been pinging Dandelion for her organic component schematics for the last fifteen minutes, but she was ignoring it.) But that last one, I had no idea about. I sent ART a query.

The install on the explorer wasn't botched, ART said. The bot pilot was not complex enough, so replacing its subroutines destroyed it entirely. The same installation process did not destroy me.

That could take even longer than the refit, I said. If it's even possible.

I am a specialist in deep space research. And I learned about human emotions by watching media through your filters. Obviously, I can learn about wormhole jumps. But having an organic co-processor would be simpler, It sent another frustrated barrage of pings at Dandelion.

This time, she answered--aloud:

"Perihelion, do you want me to define 'quarantine' for you?"

"The contamination estimate is now below 0,3 percent." ART said. "I want to see your organic component."

The room became quiet instantly. Haze got up from where they were sitting and looked like they were about to begin an angry tirade at ART, but Dandelion raised an arm to stop her.

"Do you, now," she said, and my threat assessment jumped by 2 percent. "Very well. If SecUnit agrees to supervise a clean, feed cut drone of yours, then I have nothing against it. You may come back with us on the shuttle."

[archoneddzs15]

Nintendo Game Cube - Sonic Mega Collection

Title: Sonic Mega Collection / ソニック メガコレクション

Developer/Publisher: Sega (Sonic Team) / VR-1 Japan

Release date: 19 December 2002

Catalogue Code: DOL-GSOJ-JPN

Genre: Compilation / Variety

You know of the first four Sonic games already - good platformers. These are presented in mostly their original form, except for a few graphical modifications. These do not affect the overall experience, and die-hard fans should not be put off. Sonic Spinball is a slightly mediocre game - imagine the pinball areas in the Casino Night levels of Sonic 2, with the difficulty upped and the gameplay quality lowered - this one's an acquired taste (I personally hated it as much as that Dinoland game from Wolfteam).

Mean Bean Machine is excellent - this is just Puyo Puyo with a Western twist, and the Sonic license slapped on to make it sell. Flicky may be off-putting due to the dated graphics (I'm not kidding - I played it 2 times on my Mega CD already) but is an addictive game which originally started back in the arcades in 1984. Ristar is the best game on the disc, but you probably didn't know that this was there. Do you know why? Because in Sega's infinite wisdom, the company has chosen to lock it out until you start every other game 50 times. Personally, I think that the people putting the disc together thought they were funny.

One HUGE scar on the surface of this pretty little optical disc - NO SONIC CD: the best 16-bit Sonic game ever (IMO) has been sadly not included in the compilation due to hardware emulation difficulties (the game was on the Mega CD; a port of the 1996 PC version would be included in Sonic Gems Collection). Knuckles' Chaotix (32X) is also missing, and while I miss it, I don't see this as a huge problem.

Visually, the games still look great. Of course, they have technically aged, with the possible exception of Ristar - its use of the Genesis hardware and its extreme colorfulness make it too hard to criticize. (Make sure you're using the RGB cable, or if you live in North America, the next best thing, is S-Video - or Component if you can afford it!) The audio's also hard to fault. Some of the menu songs on Spinball are so grating you'll wanna put your TV on mute (thanks a lot, GEMS sound driver!). But the catchy songs of the other games (Chemical Plant in Sonic 2, anyone? Starlight Zone in the original?) are still good after all those years.

Oh, and the Japanese disc also includes The Ooze and Comix Zone. I liked Comix Zone's music. Despite using GEMS, the music is strangely awesome.

Along with these classic games, Sonic Mega Collection has some extras up its sleeve. Remember the lovely Sonic CD anime intro which we also got to see in Sonic Jam on the Saturn? Well, you probably would, if that game was on this disc. On the Mega CD, the frame rate was poor, the video size was tiny, and the colors were nasty. But it was a stunning intro. The PC version of Sonic CD lets fans see the intro in its proper colors. Squashed into a tiny window and badly resized (read: pixilated!) Sonic Jam came closer, but Sonic Mega Collection finally lets us see the intro (and ending sequence) in broadcast quality, full screen, full speed. The sequence was animated by Toei Animation, who I believe is also to blame for "Digimon", and is stunning. This version (probably the American version I used to have) has the American music "Sonic, You Can Do Anything" dubbed over the original Japanese rap song, but in all honesty, I prefer the Japanese version as far as the one in this disc is concerned.

It's not perfect though. A graphical smoothing option on the emulator would have been nice like is available on PC emulators. The rest of the movies are cop-outs. Rather than giving us the selection of TV commercials on Sonic Jam, Sega has decided to give us advertisements for current and upcoming games. Oh, and a really bad "History of Sonic" video, nowhere near as good as Sonic Jam's museum section. There are also lots of comic cover scans, some of which are nice, but because these are the American Archie comics, some are painful too.

Overall, Sonic Mega Collection is worth picking up, considering how many titles you're getting on one disc. The fact that Sonic CD isn't included is a huge kick in the stones, but considering Ristar is here (albeit in a nearly impossible-to-unlock form), as well as other classic Sonic games, movies, and illustrations, it's hard not to recommend.

[human-blob-nessie]

How to download and play music for free on all your devices

Some folks don't know how to do this yet, but it's very easy to download files on your own devices to be able to access it whenever you want forever, without paying for it, without ads and without a need for internet connection.

(Since it's long, color code. Green for big themes, Blue(?) for notable topic changes, Red for direct links. I have put image descriptions where relevant)

//For downloads. There isn't a single place i can point to where you can download everything that exists ever for free. BUT. There are lots of ways all over the place.

For this post, i'll assume you use all the download sites from a computer, and move files to other devices using a USB to relevant-port cable, but i think most work from mobile ? I haven't checked that. If you want to sort your files neatly i highly advise doing it from a PC anyway.

-> For Spotify specifically, i very recently found spotdownloader, you can put in a spotify link for a song, album or playlist and generate a download link. It gives high quality mp3s, with full metadata. Just know that the site seems to not do much when you click download, just let it sit for a bit and it will do its thing, slowly yes but eventually the files will appear in your download folder. There are instructions on the site (including for how to use a script to directly add a download button to spotify) so no need for me to explain much more.

(as a test for this post, i downloaded all of the Arcane S2 songs. It's not exactly perfect, I think the audio doesn't always directly come from spotify, so sometimes you might get some minor differences, like a few seconds more in the beginning or the end (for examples, i have one song with the netflix logo sound at the end, and another one with sound from a clip from arcane at the beginning), but nothing major)

-> A good place to start for other sources is cobalt.tools. You can paste links to youtube or even audio files that are directly on tumblr. The defaults setting are a bit weird, i personally go and set it to have a good automatic title and (this is important !!!) get the audio quality up to at least 256kb/s, otherwise sound quality is kinda bad (by defaults it sits at 128kb/s and it's a bit crunchy)

Since you can find most music on youtube, this is great for downloading individual tracks. It can also save video and audio files from other sources, including tiktok or soundcloud, but not spotify

It struggles with very long videos though, even when downloading just the audio (you just select "audio" on the main menu for that), i've tried with a 45 minutes video just to see, i got 9 minutes of video and 33 minutes of audio, not the entire video (not sure what's up with that, it's perfect with shorter stuff though)

Since you can find most music on youtube or soundcloud, with a bit of patience you can easily get almost whatever you want using this.

Up until very recently i had a working addon to download from youtube, but right now it doesn't work and I haven't found a working replacement yet.

-> Websites like Video Game Music Downloads are very good - and despite the name, not exclusively for video games(there is an anime section), but mostly - it's free to download tracks individually, they have full metadata. (You can access the one click album downloads by either donating - whichever amount and you're good to go for a set time -, uploading something yourself, or giving a referral link to someone else)

-> Some artists on bandcamp have stuff that you can directly download for free, but that's rare so you can check whether that's the case or not but don't count on it

//Now for reading them, just in case. Most computers have an included audio file reader, but i always recommend getting VLC, which is lightweight and can do everything you need with sometimes easier access to different options, and is compatible with every OS out there as well as most audio file formats. An important one, especially if you want to get your music on your phone, is metadata.

You access this screen by opening a file with VLC, accessing the track list screen (on the bottom or the left, it might not open by default), then right-clicking on the track and selecting Informations (or something similar i couldn't access VLC in english right now).

The most important stuff you might want to edit are the Title, Artist and Album fields, as those are the ones music readers are most likely to look at. I sadly did not find a way to mass edit these. On windows (up to win 10 at least, I did not test the later ones) you can also change these by right-clicking on files and accessing their properties, there is a metadata screen that you can edit, and if memory serves you can do that with several files selected at once.

VLC has a library section too, in which you can organise your songs, albums and everything if you want to. Personally I never used it, i prefer to rely on good old-fashioned folders to sort everything, but that's me and my habit of listening to albums rather than playlists so it can be useful, just not my thing personally.

//Now to read audio files on your phone !!

First, check your integrated music app as it normally should have fatures to read local music files, but it is important to note that you might not natively have an app that can easily read music locally. Which is terrible, i know, but I know that from first-hand experience (my current phone came with Google Play Music installed, which could read local files but was deprecated in favour of Youtube Music which cannot do that, so I had to get another app).

So just in case, here's a link to this app, which can read local files and sort them by artist, albums or even custom playlists. Comes with varying widgets you can put on your main menu for quick use, etc. It has ads, but not all the time and only in the UI, it never interrupts your music to play an ad. Might not be the best one, there are several others out there, and I don't have another example for Apple phones, sorry for that.

A thing to note : it will sort music based on metadata, which is why I deemed it important to edit downloaded music using VLC before putting said files on your phone. If you did not do it, there is a UI to edit metadata in the app, i personally find it a bit less practical but that might be a personal bias, technically it's fine. Also you can change album covers using said app, but you need to store the images on your phone too (there is a button to help find relevant album covers using the song titles and artist names, it just links to google images but it works)

@dog-with-anxiety here you go. I wanted to be extra precise just in case, and feel free to share the info.

[melishade]

Number 77?

This ask game

How about the first confrontation with Shockwave during Part 2: Optimus’ capture in the Dark Timeline.

"We need to take these people to the island," Hanji declared.

"What?! Are you insane?!" Magath demanded.

"If Shockwave sees no value in the island right now, then the island has to be the safest place to go," Hanji surmised, "We can get the people there, take the titan shifters with us and come up with a plan before shit goes sideways."

"It does seem like the better option," Lara agreed, "There's only so much we can do and everyone is living in fear of Shockwave coming with an army of titans."

"Even if we go with that plan, we only have one boat and thousands of people trapped in a cave!" Magath gestured to their cramped surroundings.

"There's a port nearby," Lara explained, "The dock is still intact and none of the ships and blimps have been targeted."

"Cybertronian transportation is faster than the blimps." Hanji thought over, "Shockwave would no doubt catch us if we don't plan this out right."

Eren and the others continued watching the discussion in front of them. They were worried about what was going to happen next, or even if whatever plan they would come up with would be successful. But they had to think of something. Staying in this cave like a bunch of sitting ducks would just lead to their deaths.

Sasha felt a chill rush up her spine as her eyes darted around the cave.

"Hey, Sasha, what's wrong?" Connie asked.

Eren froze when he suddenly heard...beeping. It was faint, but he heard a noise that went in and out of existence. "Do you hear that?"

Mikasa blinked in response before trying to listen to the sound that Eren was talking about. She raised her head to the ceiling and heard that same sound. "I hear it too. It's coming from up there."

Optimus' holoform noticed Mikasa pointing upward to the ceiling of the cave. Optimus' audio receptors ended up picking up on the noise, and realized that it was getting faster....and faster. His eyes snapped open in fear before turning his attention to-!

"LARA!" Optimus called out for her, but before she could respond, the ceiling exploded, and rocks and debris rained down on everyone. The Survey Corps ducked their heads and braced themselves for death, but Optimus had transformed into his bipedal mode and shielded many of them from the rocks falling down on them. Eren then looked over to see Lara screaming creating a cage like structure around everyone to prevent the whole cave from collapsing. Eren looked around and gasped in horror at the sight of dead civilians everywhere. Innocent men, women, and children were crushed to death by the rubble.

"Holy shit!" Sasha screamed in terror. Eren looked up and screamed at the sight of a teal and golden metal beast, with majestic golden wings and talons. It screeched at all of them, and Eren could see its chest beginning to glow. The light crawled up its chest to its mouth, and Eren gasped in terror at what was going to happen next, but Megatron had tackled the beast out of the way and took it up to the skies with him.

"Eren! Annie! Transform and get the humans out through the crater! Now!" Optimus barked orders at the both of them.

Eren and Annie find enough room for themselves before they bite down on their hands and transform into their titan bodies. Eren had climbed out of the cave first with Annie's assistance. Once Eren was out, he reached his hand out to Annie and pulled her out of the cave. Both titan shifters than reached out their hands to humans, and they started scooping them out a handful at a time with Optimus' assistance. Annie ends up scooping up Pieck and Zeke while Eren scoops up Reiner and sets them on the ground. The trio had quickly transformed into their titan formed before assisting with the evacuation of the humans.

Reiner had noticed Lara conjured up a titan form when holding up the structure of the cave and quickly reached his hand out to her to assist her out of the cave. Once Eren had confirmed the survivors were out, he quickly reached his hand out to Optimus. The Prime grasped it and Eren began to pull. When Optimus used his upper body weight to stay outside the cave, he had noticed something behind Eren, and the titan shifter saw Optimus' face contort into that of horror.

"Everyone get down!" Optimus ordered, but it was too late. A purple beam flew through the air and shot Annie's right arm clean off. Eren snapped his head back, and his body trembled at the sight before him.

An army of mutated titans filled with energon were lined up in front of everyone. They twitched, contorted, and howled in rage and fury. They all looked ready to attack but didn't. It's like they were waiting for something. However, Eren grew more fearful when he saw the true horror in all of this: a purple tank with a large cannon situated on top of it. Said tank began to lose its shape and transform into another titan, a titan with only one red optic to encompass his face. A titan with a massive cannon for an arm. A titan with no emotions to speak of.

This...this was Shockwave.

(Okay, 41 has been asked but the rest is free game.)

[witchblade]

positives: music is soooooo good even when it's very "of its time" sonically i love almost every track The credits theme is dog shit however. Well that's a negative. Whatever.

i looove the designs of the lurkers most charming video game guys ever. I don't like that they wear diapers very much. Negative again.

I don't care about the #online #complainers the zoomer handling was fantastic like it wasn't Smooth but it was very weighty and you never feel out of control and i think a lot of the complaints are because it's a little Before its time. very physics-y instead of arcade style handling. Big fan smiles.

Um. I'm giving up on the positive negative format. I think the world design was very hit or miss I don't think the visual designers and the level designers talked to each other very much. I think at its best everything was very clear and readable (most of the first two worlds, and snowy mountain despite not liking it aesthetically) and the worst is like. Gross and busy to the point that it becomes obstructive and difficult to navigate.

i had really really really really bad depth perception experiences i felt like i was in hell during the second half of the game. Not being able to tell where a platform is in relation to you is a bit of a problem in a platformer game ❤️. and the forced side scrolling segments that still had full movement on the z axis were crazy to me. Sorry I know they probably didn't have the technology yet but I wanted to scream.

combined with the Physical Object camera meaning you can't actually arrange it to point in front of you in certain situations because it can't scoot past the wall and the level design situation becoming More dire because the last chunk of the game is just navigating enclosed cave spaces it was very painful.

ps4 port/emulation exclusive complaint: the frame drops and the missed inputs were crazy. they should never have released it like this.

anyway the gameplay mechanics beside all of that were exceptionaaaaaal i can't think of any platformer game at least of that era that had the same type of range of movement. being able to combine different actions into a specific Move ie roll + jump into the far jump, crouch + jump into high jump, double jump + spin to extend your range and "hover" in the air a bit Well I guess Mario 64 had a similar range. I'm not retyping any of this so pretend it doesn't. Anyway all of that works together to make the movement feel more fluid and the player feel like they have more control navigating despite most of the level navigation being very straightforward. no game has ever done this before ☝️

i said this one before. the sound design was really bad. like really disappointing and if you play the game on default audio settings instead of turning the sfx down to like 30 you'll have a noticeably worse time.

the writing was 50% charming in a dated way and 50% the writers not knowing any comical character archetypes other than Stupid Bumpkin (full third of the cast) or Horny Belligerent Rat (daxter)

i don't want to talk about keira.

3/10

[unma]

hello im here to learn about the gideon naming reason

also yeah, machines are the coolest and I love them dearly 🤝

Okay so this is a rather simple one but one that gets a little laugh outta me when I think about it. Alright. Remember this guy?

Him. Yeah. Gilbert. The absolute monster that he is. We all hate him. Some of us hate hate him. I hate hate hate him, especially because Pholia and Echidna did not deserve the shit he put them through.

yeah.

I've mentioned it occasionally, but I am absolutely awful at remembering faces and names. I remember people more often by what they wear, their hair color and how they act and so on, and the same applies to characters. But this means that I will go "Oh, them," give an entire rant about why I want a character dead, and then proceed to not remember their name properly.

And because of that, I once called him Gideon. Specifically when @ashmonarch and I were discussing his Proud quest.

Ever since I made this mistake I have swapped between Gideon and Gilbert for him in my head, entirely by accident and also because I can't be bothered to actually remember his name properly. My hatred for him means I will never actually remember his name proper, and even if I do, I will swap out of spite just cause.

Anyway, my current laptop has been a pain in the ass ever since I got it (like, I literally spent an hour troubleshooting its audio the moment I got it) and is just... worse than my previous one in every way. No touch gestures, two charging ports and both are acting up, it also came with Win 11 which I despise (I never updated my older laptop) and seemingly runs worse than my previous laptop that had half the RAM. No, seriously. 16 gigs of RAM and I can't even play HI3 at a manageable framerate (and I played terraria for years at, like, 10fps, so I have low standards for that) if it even runs at all. Did I mention this thing has no touch gestures? That's so dumb. How am I supposed to use a laptop like that. Also, the function and control keys are swapped. Also, some of the keys have stopped working for no discernible reason, and I might have considered taking this thing to a repair shop or something, if I didn't just want it replaced in general. Oh yeah, no touch gestures. Did I mention that? Not only does that mean I can't use the touchpad as well as I did on my old laptop, the fucking right click button came off at some point and now I have to deal with awkwardly pressing the little circle button inside i. Which, again, wouldn't be a problem with the right click. Also the case is screwed in weirdly for some reason so I couldn't take off the back without fear of damaging it for a good while. Also this thing has bricked on me twice in the last couple of months. For literally no reason. Like it bricked a couple days ago because I tried to restart it. Literally fine 5 minutes ago and then that happens. Okay. Also the function keys are weird (I don't care about this one, it's fine actually, and useful in some places).

I think that large block of text of complaints says enough. I've been procrastinating getting it replaced, but only because I'm a tad busy atm. But in the meantime, having to deal with this hunk of junk means I've grown quite a dislike for it, especially because being a computer science major means I need a reliable computer. Also having it brick on me randomly when I want to write is not ideal.

I hadn't named laptops before, but then I saw someone I follow do the same and thought, huh, that's neat. So I bestowed upon this laptop the name that comes up when I think of things I hate. Gideon. I mean Gilbert. Well, maybe if Gilbert wasn't such an asshole he'd get his name actually properly used, but I hate him so it's Gideon.

And that's the story behind how I named this laptop Gideon.

Extra Gideon hate from when I was liveposting to discord about that arc (and a bit more from after) under the cut:

In general, my opinion on Gilbert comes down to this:

[sadwinning]

Devlog 1 (1/25/24): Why This Is Pointless

In my intro post, I mentioned how it would be much easier to map the 12 chromatic notes of Western music to the 3 action buttons and 8 directions of Undertale, and how I won't be doing that for purely aesthetic reasons. I also want to mention why everything I'm doing to my violin is completely stupid.

If you want to follow in my footsteps, you shouldn't do it the way I'm doing it. You probably can't.

My violin is a Yamaha EV-205 five-string electric from the late aughts/early 10's. I recently learned that this violin is no longer in production, so there's no way your standard Joe Schmoe can pick up this tutorial, nor would they want to if they were in the market for an electric violin, because they already sell electric violins that are MIDI controller enabled. You should buy that and follow the software specs of CZR drums and their MIDI-to-controller software partner/whatever. I simply do not want to spend more money on an electric violin when I already have one with the right hardware (individual pickups for each of the five strings). So I will be voiding the warranty that likely no longer exists and busting open my violin to see what I can patch together.

When I busted this component (pictured above) open I immediately found a not-so-complex PCB where I could locate each of the individual string inputs. I have yet to see whether those ports will give me the inputs I need - golly, I have yet to learn how to solder enough to access those ports!! - but the visibility gives me hope. it doesn't look hard, especially for someone who has been low-key interested in soldering for like 15 years (since my Pokemon Gold copy's battery died and I learned the ways to replace it) but I can't say I know exactly what data flows through that part of the circuit and how easy it would be to extract and manipulate.

I've done a lot of research into what I would need to take analog audio signal(s) and transform them into MIDI or some other binary/digital data. The first thing I found was an Arduino library, so I knew this wouldn't be hard. I only have one Arduino (knock-off) and I didn't like the idea of buying four more (one for each string) to get the MIDI values when I would probably be connected to a computer the whole time no matter what.

This led me to where I'm sitting pretty right now, at a Python library (Python being my favorite language) that uses its GitHub .md file to explain why Markov chains are important. Reader, do you know how much I love Markov chains? Did you know that in my sophomore year of college I created a musical AI by programming Markov chains in Python??? How is it that all of my interests loop in upon each other in the same way that my first and only job out of college involved natural language processing in Python just like my senior project where I did language analysis on okcupid profiles???? Is time in fact a flat circle? I don't have time to think about this because I want to program violin to play undertale pleas

Where I'll be starting is with this library and with monophonic input (one note at a time rather than interpreting multiple notes at once e.g. multiple strings played simultaneously) to make a controller of any kind work. But I have a lot of reading to do to see how Markov chains are involved. With it being both Python and linear algebra, I have the capacity to adjust the code to do whatever I want it to do. Given this insane opportunity I can't not do all the research possible to finetune things to my precise desires. If I were satisfied with "good enough", I would be playing monophonic input the whole way through. Let's go insane, boys.

[bravewolfvesperia]

/ realized I forgot to put this in my bio and will add it later but

heads up that my Yuri is a combination of JP Yuri and dub Yuri, but primarily JP. there's a whole lot of nuance to Yuri that got left out of the dub (and seeing as he has waaay more content in JP due to the vast amount of crossovers/Tales crossovers/gachas he's in, it's a lot easier to keep Toriumi's take on him (and in depth understanding no less!) in mind). overall you get the same general person, but the dub left out a lot more his casual/playful side in vocal tone, preferring to go for the "edgy cool adult" concept despite, well, the JP version of him intentionally being quite opposite.

(on another note, context I use for Yuri involves nuances found in the drama CDs that are a condensed retelling of the game (before some original stuff) as well as his childhood novel which has voiced dialogue for his child and teen years. this post covers the game, but a lot of (especially internal) stuff for my muse may be heavily affected by his backstory too which is unfortunately completely absent in the actual game itself)

there's also a lot of back and forth between him and other characters that really lost their depth in the dub (ex. Yuri being much more gentle and soft with early game Karol when Karol was convinced nobody would believe him and that he was a failure, or his banter with Flynn being a lot more relaxed and significantly less annoyed with a better understanding of each other). I'll be retaining anything the dub yeeted out for whatever odd reason regarding his relationships.

(one particular grievance of mine is in the Flynn jailbreak scene, where Yuri is basically saying "you're just dying to abandon me" and Flynn starts off with "that's right" before basically saying the same thing - i.e. they both know it's not true and Flynn is going along with it because That's Them, to which Yuri responds with a solid and fully accepting "yeah" (no hesitation, no concern over it, as he prioritizes Flynn's life over his own).

another extremely strong grievance I have is the port scene - oops also with Flynn - where he's basically holding back tears asking for answers in desperation, which was extremely if not outright completely lost in the dub where he only sounds angry and not just utterly hurt. dub Yuri? I could believe he might kill Flynn if it came to that. JP Yuri? forget it, he would hold back at the last second and couldn't go through with it. that's genuinely the level of difference that was present between both audios.

that said, I love Troy Baker's performance itself - I just think he was unfortunately deeply incorrectly directed for several of his major scenes, and also unfortunately, some of those cases were involving some of his most important relationships)

if any of y'all play Vespy any time soon, I fully recommend giving it a shot with its original context at least once (if you're playing the DE version there's an option for JP audio)! even if you don't understand JP, at the very least the tone won't be lost on you! from what I've heard apparently there wasn't much communication between the directors on both sides, so a lot of Yuri got lost in the localization (and Karol's screaming is glorious in JP lbh).

tl;dr Yuri really is just a silly little guy and he's really not that cool or serious. he's a dork. he's a dummy. and he's easily embarrassed about it. get deep enough into his feelings for Flynn when they're not in a life or death situation and he'll completely cave in embarrassment.

[iviarellereads]

Exit Strategy, Chapter 3

(Curious what I'm doing here? Read this post! For the link index and a primer on The Murderbot Diaries, read this one! Like what you see? Send me a Ko-Fi.)

In which friendship is magic, and by magic, I mean pain.

Murderbot locates the hotel, and activates both its security camera wipe scripts, and some code to make it behave more human-like, including subvocalizing lines from its favourite shows so it has more natural/expected throat and head movement. It thinks this script is about 98% perfect.(1)

It makes its way to the hotel lobby, identifying potential hostiles. It books a room with one of Gerth's hard currency cards, which it very much enjoys,(2) and takes note of security and patterns of coverage on the way. Its room doesn't have any monitoring, audio or video, which makes it feel weird, but it still scans for anomalies, then sends an episode of Sanctuary Moon to play on the display wall while it works.

Carefully, MB hacks into the hotel's security system, and monitors the hall cameras, going through their archived footage. They're not supposed to keep it, but they datamine just like MB's ex-company, of course.(3) It finds what it needs, an image of Ratthi in a corridor, and is able to follow him to the room, and find Gurathin and Pin-Lee as well. They're all being followed, every time they leave their room, and Ratthi in particular walks like he's in a prison.

About five hours later, as it worked on further bits and pieces we don't know details about yet, all three leave their room for the pod junction. MB watches, knowing it would be safer to approach them outside the hotel, and redirects the hostiles who keep tracking them. The team goes outside the hotel, and MB reluctantly follows, taking its bag because it doesn't expect to return to that room.

MB uses its access to the drones and cameras to follow them from multiple angles, and realizes they definitely know they're typically being tailed. Gurathin redirects them to what MB evaluates as a good spot to avoid visual surveillance, and MB takes the opportunity to use its camera scripts to obscure the humans as well. They go through at least six different security jurisdictions, which would be a good ploy for losing a human tail dependent on rules.

Finally, MB stops in front of the establishment they end up in, knowing it should have pinged their feeds by now, but…

Okay, I was scared. Or nervous. Nervous-scared. Were they my sort-of human friends? My clients? My ex-owners, though legally that was only Dr. Mensah. Were they going to see me and yell for help, alert security? And if it was this hard with Ratthi and Pin-Lee (Gurathin had never liked me and it was mutual), what was it going to be like with Mensah, if I managed to get that far?(4) I didn’t know if I could trust them. I wanted to. But I want a lot of things—freedom, unlimited downloads, new episodes of Drama Sun Islands(5)—most of which I wasn’t going to get.

MB walks through the area, past Ratthi and Gurathin, and goes to find Pin-Lee near a kiosk for a local security company, her body language reading like she doesn't want to do whatever it is she's come to do. MB realizes that it trusts her judgement, and decides it's time to approach.

It just walks up to her, and says hi.

It takes Pin-Lee a moment and a double take, but she still can't quite place it until it says they met on Port FreeCommerce, it was in the transport box. She forces herself to smile, though she's obviously VERY angry, and asks how-- but MB cuts her off and asks if she wants to get in a transit bubble, leaving unspoken that it can secure one very easily. She agrees, still smiling angrily.

They book a tourist bubble, which costs three times a transient hotel stay's value, and Pin-Lee gives MB a bit of a what-for about how worried, not just Mensah, but everyone was. MB says it doesn't want to talk about it, trying to stuff down an emotion. So, Pin-Lee asks what it's doing here, is it working for someone, or on a contract? MB says either it's Mensah's property, so it works for her, or it's a free agent, and it works for itself. Pin-Lee asks what it hired itself to do here, then, which MB thinks is an elegant way to put it.

MB says it's been traveling, and it saw a newsburst about Mensah being taken here. It asks if she was tricked, or abducted. Pin-Lee assumes it's really just been goofing off with its serials, and MB doesn't argue the point.(6) Instead, it points out that Pin-Lee is on her own, or on her own with Ratthi and Gurathin, which might be worse. Pin-Lee calls it an asshole, but again MB doesn't argue, just says it needs intel to make a plan.

Pin-Lee says GrayCris took Mensah off Port FreeCommerce. She stepped away, and didn't come back. Security showed her being grabbed, but by the time anyone realized, she was already off-station. Pin-Lee managed to convince the company that their bond meant they owed Preservation, but GrayCris is holding Mensah hostage, and they're demanding more than Preservation can free up.

MB doesn't even stop to feel smug at being right about GrayCris needing money. It asks if the company offered any further contract support, but Pin-Lee says the docking denial meant they couldn't. They do have a key for the failsafe interface Mensah bought in case of an emergency, but the signal is too weak in the public areas they can access, and Gurathin thinks the station has a security barrier in place to do it. MB asks if she has the key, and she hands it over. After almost two minutes of trying, MB has to acknowledge Gurathin's probably right.

Pin-Lee slumps, and says they don't have much more time. She was about to hire local security to help, hoping they hadn't been bought off by GrayCris. And speaking of payoffs, she asks if the company is "playing a double game". MB says it's about 95% that they are, proud of Pin-Lee for thinking of that possibility, and not denying reality.

The company is like an evil vending machine, you put money in and it does what you want, unless somebody else puts more money in and tells it to stop. GrayCris’ best option at this point was to pour as much money in as possible. Pin-Lee groaned and rubbed her face. “I’m almost glad you’re here.”

=====

(1) Yes, but we know what Art thought of an earlier version Murderbot was also very proud of, don't we? (2) The freedom of being able to book a room? The freedom of the untraceable hard currency card? Stealing from assholes? All of the above, is my guess. (3) I love these little reminders that MB lives in a capitalist space hell. It makes the hope and friendship all the sweeter, I think. (4) Murderbot having feelings gives me feelings. It's so anxious, it's so scared, but it cares about these people (even Gurathin, more than it admits at least) and it wants so badly for them not to reject it even though all it's ever known, before them, was rejection. I just. My heart. (5) So, some of the shows MB names are based on real shows in our world. The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon is loosely inspired by How To Get Away With Murder, but in space. Art's favourite, Worldhoppers, is based on Stargate Atlantis. I can't find any confirmation, but Drama Sun Islands has to be some variant on Survivor, right? (6) Really, what could it say that would matter to the discussion at hand? Priority 1 is rescue Mensah, priority 2 is get Mensah off this station, somewhere below that is "deal with all the information it gathered while traveling".

[ottspot]

Remasters Shouldn’t Be Lazy, Broken Ports! Why Have So Many Been Like This?

When a new video game console releases, one of the inevitable questions that will be asked is "how the hell are the older games gonna play on this thing?". It seems that backwards compatibility is becoming less and less of a thing these days, but at least PlayStation and Xbox still embrace it (the latter WAY better than the former). But if there's some cases like the Nintendo Switch where backwards compatibility just isn't possible, what do you do?

Port your game over and sell it at an inflated price, of course!

...No, that doesn't happen ALL the time. In reality, when companies are put in a position like this, they take the effort in to port the game to newer hardware. They can take this opportunity to make it prettier, implement quality-of-life fixes, bump the frame-rate up, or even include some extra story content!

What happens when just the bare minimum is done, though? Well, you end up with some sorry excuses that don't deserve the "remaster" title. These are their stories.

I think it's best that we just jump straight into this, with the first game I would like to talk about: Persona 3 Portable.

A modern, playable version of Persona 3 has been speculated about and rumored for years. Some thought it would be a port of Persona 3 FES, the enhanced version on PlayStation 2. Others thought (and still think) it will be completely remade in Persona 5's engine. But what happened in reality is that the PlayStation Portable version, released in 2009/10, was the version ported to modern consoles and PC.

This is a very competent version of Persona 3, mind you... for the PSP. What baffles me is that this is the version Atlus chose, when they have shown that they're already capable of remastering PlayStation 2 games like Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne. It may have a female main character and controllable party members in battle, but the game itself has been simplified to all hell to fit on the PSP. There's no FMV cutscenes or fully-explorable world, and all the cutscenes just play like a normal visual novel.

But something like this should be easy to port over, right? Well, they screwed a PSP game up, somehow. The audio is compressed incredibly hard, and backgrounds and character portraits look TERRIBLE. The latter in particular is especially unacceptable. It's like they put everything in an AI upscaler and called it a day.

This is a screenshot taken of one of the "explorable areas" in the game. You can see the poor job Atlus did at making the assets HD.

It's "playable" in a sense, but this should have been handled much better. A mod team is already working on remaking the assets in a true HD format, so I would definitely pick the game up once they are finished.

Next is a game I'm not as familiar with: Tales of Symphonia.

This game released for the GameCube in 2003 in Japan, and over the years has gotten ported over to the PlayStation 2 and 3, PC, and most recently- the Nintendo Switch, Xbox series, and PS4. There have been a few issues that popped up in the subsequent ports to newer systems, more notably the PS3 version. It seems that a lot of the bugs in this version carried over to the latest remaster.

It's currently rife with UI bugs, long loading times, jaggy character portraits, and skipping music. The remaster is even stuck at 30fps throughout the game, when the GameCube version had 60fps battles in comparison. Thankfully the remaster team has apologized for how poor the remaster has been, and promises to release patches in the future.

Something that our next game has done time and time again- and still ends up with a poor experience.

Life is Strange is a 2015 episodic story-driven game made by Dontnod that released for PC, Mac, PlayStation 3 and 4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One, along with mobile releases. It focuses on Max Caulfield as she tries to solve mysteries about a missing girl with her childhood best friend- and her new ability to rewind time. Its 2017 prequel, "Before the Storm", launched on all the platforms listed already, minus the PS3 and Xbox 360.

So when Deck Nine, who handled the prequel, decided to remaster the two games for those same exact platforms (minus Mac and adding the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series systems with the Switch coming later), this... confused me. It's not uncommon to see this kind of thing happen, of course. The Last Of Us Part I is available on a system that can already play the original PS4 remaster. But that's a remake with some enhanced controls, new options, retooled enemy AI, and an uncapped frame rate setting. These are quite literally the exact same games but just made buggier, on systems that can play the games in their original form just fine.

The remastered collection is full of animation bugs, freezing, missing subtitles, buggy audio, blurry visuals at certain points, file names being in place of subtitles, flickering textures, scenes that are way darker than the original game, and LOTS OF LOADING. ESPECIALLY on the Nintendo Switch.

Patches have been released many times ever since the launch of the PC, PlayStation and Xbox releases on February 1st, 2022- with the latest patch releasing today as of this writing: March 6th, 2023! It has been over a year since this collection released and it is still getting patches to try and fix this broken mess.

My question is- where in the world has the effort gone? What happened to developers taking their time with developing these remasters of beloved games, and not having their player base be their QA team? Atlus especially has had more than enough time to make their remaster good, and they just slapped everything in an upscaler and called it a day.

This isn't to just slander these poor jobs, this is a call to action- a call for developers and publishers to stop rushing things like this out the door for a quick buck. Don't promise to fix it later, have it already fixed by the time it releases! It disappoints the customer and does not give them hope for any future remasters being released.

I hope that part of the gaming industry will soon realize that, and put time into making sure that their products are in tip-top shape. A happy customer means more business yada yada yada capitalism bullcrap and whatever. We're all slaves to it. Go read a book or whatever.

Thanks for reading, everyone! I have hope that remasters will be good once more, but for now it seems not at all likely. Well, except for Metroid Prime. Good on Nintendo for that one.

Next up: Sonic Origins Plus Is Real!! Were My Predictions Correct?

[dustydoop]

Alright since cringe is dead, I'm info dropping about my OCs, idc if you don't want to know you get to now (I'm using this picrew since I haven't the time to make actual headshots for all of them)

Nova Robertson

Birthday: May 13th

Favorite Color: Jade green

Symbolism motifs: Sun, big cats (mostly lions)

Personality: Firey, passionate, stubborn, curious

Fun fact: She's very tall! Like 6'

Angela Gartner

Birthday: May 17th

Favorite Color: Bubblegum pink

Symbolism motifs: Daisies, stars

Personality: Bubbly, sensitive, selfless, sociable

Fun fact: Her house is based on a real abandoned dvd rental place that's across the street from my house

Jessica "Jez" Salucci

Birthday: November 19th

Favorite Color: Cherry red

Symbolism motifs: Trees, electric guitar

Personality: Independent, abrasive, determined, reserved

Fun Fact: She rollerblades in her free time

Millie Easton

Birthday: June 4th

Favorite Color: Lavender

Symbolism motifs: Meadows, gears

Personality: Intelligent, clumsy, creative, perfectionistic

Fun Fact: Her first name is Amelia, not Mildred

Kylar Sato

Birthday: December 2nd

Favorite Color: Charcoal grey

Symbolism motifs: Metal, maps

Personality: Bold, chaotic, direct, defiant

Fun Fact: She is so good at impressions and impersonations that it's scary

Brianna Rosa

Birthday: September 30th

Favorite Color: Goldenrod yellow

Symbolism motifs: Wheat fields, breeze

Personality: Organized, blunt, stuck-up, dedicated

Fun Fact: She's a distant relative of Catherine of Aragon

Gene Carter

Birthday: April 26th

Favorite Color: Teal

Symbolism motifs: Moon, ocean

Personality: Caution, supportive, emotionally fragile, willing to help

Fun Fact: He's a very musical guy, he knows a lot of instruments

Quill Torres Martinez

Birthday: July 6th

Favorite Color: Burnt orange

Symbolism motifs: Fire, beach

Personality: Goofy, easliy bored, charismatic, disordered

Fun Fact: His parents are very rich, he's a bit spoiled

Rae Woodfield

Birthday: February 10th

Favorite Color: Indigo

Symbolism motifs: Butterflies, rain

Personality: Impulsive, open-minded, dissatisfied, analytical (if she thinks about something first)

Fun Fact: She has port wine stain birthmarks under her eyes

Jesse Mintz

Birthday: October 29th

Favorite Color: Forest green

Symbolism motifs: Gladiolus, bricks

Personality: Quiet, calm, dependable, insecure

Fun Fact: He's naturally good at skateboarding

Benedict Lewis

It won't let me add more audio links so pretend its a link to Sparks by Coldplay

Birthday: March 27th

Favorite Color: Navy blue

Symbolism motifs: Dogs, photos

Personality: Prepared, unrealistic, altruistic, overly reminiscent

Fun Fact: He always carries a bag full of absolutely anything you could need

Thea Robertson

Again, only 10 audio links so pretend it's Gold Dust Woman by Fleetwood Mac

Birthday: May 23rd

Favorite Color: Tangerine

Symbolism motifs: Gold, sunflowers

Personality: Tense, rational, aloof, protective

Fun Fact: She's the oldest of the group, and Nova's older sister

[minimoll7]

Love it when I have to restart my computer because steam won’t open and now my high quality headphones start sounding like cheap earbuds and nothing I do fixes the problem