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Spacebar.org 2025
(30 Nov at 23:57) |
I almost forgot it's the end of the month!
One thing I accomplished this month is finally moving all my sites over to a new server. All of this was precipitated by wanting to use C++17 and later features (like std::format) in my various code, but the version of Ubuntu I was using on linux still had an old-ass GCC that did not support this. (I don't understand why it's so non-standard to have recent compilers on linux? Isn't it supposed to be developer-oriented?) The in-place upgrade wouldn't work, so I migrated everything manually and now I have GCC 13 (current is 15, thx a lot Ubuntu). The most "fun" part was that my website is so old that its databases predate the widespread success of Unicode (!) and many old records contained invalid UTF-8 or mojibake created by incorrect encoding/decoding of various scripts, and this prevented me from making a modern MySQL database that I was going to be happy with. There are some tools like ftfy that can usually decode the mojibake, but I prefer to expand my personal libraries and understanding, so I dared to port that Python code to C++ (fix-encoding.cc). Now these 20-year-old messages on my old rotting message boards and blog posts can live to see another day:
Unbaked 'moji
The majority of the text I fixed was either (a) spam or (b) my weird internet friends (e.g. from untitled.gif) mimicking spam!
ALSO: This gave me the opportunity to add https for my sites. I got too many people being scared off by the confusing interstitial messages that Chrome now puts if you dare to go to an http site. But I did not fully cave: I wrote my own https server, and I did this a weird way. More on that soon. Let me know if you notice any issues with it. I still recommend using http for this public, non-secret website.
I finished Silksong 100%. I think the Act 3 bosses are worth it, but I did feel ready to be done by the time I finished all the extended chores, especially e.g. the circus. Great game, though! I also played through Ultros, I guess craving more Metroid. This one has an amazing and memorable art style (imagine if the guy who did the art for Hotline Miami illustrated Aeon Flux, which is more or less what actually happened here) and good music. The gameplay is a bit unpolished, but I did find it compelling once I discovered the "living network," and overall liked this one. I also finished Öoo, a small puzzle game that takes about ~2h by the same people that made the excellent ElecHead. This one was very elegant. It feels like exploring coverage tests, in a good way. I'm now onto Blue Prince, which seems fine although it's infuriating that they don't have a way to customize controls ("coming soon")??
Two new video projects well underway! One of them should land by the year's end, at least. |  |
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| GCC 15 is only 7 months old; if you're getting 13, you chose an Ubuntu release that's 18 months old. The two releases after that have 14 and 15 respectively. It's not a conspiracy to deprive you of new compilers. |
| YOOO have fun with Blue Prince, I had to drop it when i started taping notes to my wall. I recommend getting an app that you can drop screenshots into and draw over and write yourself notes. Its easier to pick up on more interesting puzzles when you have all the relevant info at your fingertips. |
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