Ariel Millennium Thornton @arielmt@computerfairi.es

sometimes when searching for niche tech, you come across what can only be described as technological shitposts:

#inktober #inktober2019 day 3: bait. When you're fishing for starfish (starfishing?), what better bait can reach the stars where starfish live than a star balloon?

I think I can sustain two quick ballpoint drawings a day. #inktober #inktober2019 day 2: mindless. If you follow the news at all, read it at your pace, don't watch it at the TV's pace.

It's been so long since I drew anything on paper, & I'm way late. #inktober day 1: ring. My av in feline form has bells on the end of her tail, & I never showed any detail of how the band (ring) holds them on.

This is my home desktop, where I just finished making a much simpler signpost-like desktop icon theme, and I'm going to start my write-up with this.

Have I mentioned I like L-shaped furries recently? Anyway, this is my work desktop, and I'm finally, *finally*, going to start writing up how I made the fancy group of desktop icons and framing, and how I maintain it, this week.

I think I was just spear-phished by an idiot. A typical "DHL consignment couldn't be delivered" spam sent to my ISP's abuse desk, but the attachment was named "DHL_RECEIPT.PDF.gz". Who gzip's anything on Windows? (Does Windows even *have* gzip support?) Anyway, save & check out:

Remember the lobster from the GEOS demo? It apparently has a hidden history, only a part of which was ever revealed: "[...] been multiplying so fast we've had to build new corrals and feeding troughs just to keep up with our stock. We can't even ship them off to makret fast enough before they've gone and created more of [...]"

This ✨ sparkly shellscript princess ✨ spent her weekend writing a shellscript to convert numbers from one base to an intermediate representation to another base. The result is the most uselessly useful shellscript I've written in a *very* long time, a script to convert a conventional date into a Rickdate string: https://thornton2.com/rickdate.html

Pictured: my sense of accomplishment.

While adventuring in the lands digital, refrain from stabbing thy trustworthy companion, ye olde Amiga 500.

It took 20 years for me to take this picture. IDK if the larger one works, but the smaller one still works.

I have finally, actually finished a project I started: my static website generator! Of course, immediately after I uploaded the package, I spotted typos & grammatical errors, & I had to pack up & upload a revision.

http://files.thornton2.com/amtswg/ if you want to check out the tarball & my samples, or http://files.thornton2.com/amtswg/amtswg-1.1.tar.gz if you want to check out just the tarball.

They're out of fresh strawberries. Guess I'll have to get the recycled strawberries instead.

box(){ t="$1xxxx";l="";c=${2:-=};i=${#t};until [ $i = 0 ]; do l="$l$c";i=$((i-1));done;printf "$l\n$c $1 $c\n$l\n"; }

# A slightly longer but more portable (& BSD-friendly) version of the bash box function in https://mastodon.social/@climagic/100792670341617316

For children who aren't ready to read "To Serve Man" yet:

Another game I've been wanting to play since the '90s is a Game Boy game called "Catrap," a puzzle platformer. It was released in Japan as "Pitman," but c'mon, "Catrap" is a cooler name.
http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/catrap/catrap.htm

As little-known as the game is, I'm surprised it actually has fan art: https://www.deviantart.com/horriblepencilist/art/AKA-Pitman-268812260

I'm playing it as Catgirl instead of Catboy because of course I am. :3
🐱

... Why do you go through the trouble of writing documentation fitting perfectly into the help manual system that's been around literally my whole entire life plus a few days, then just landfill it in the docs directory instead?

I took the Arcade Classics Centipede box apart enough to see what's inside it. It looks like a nintendo-on-chip board with all the interface pads directly soldered to everything else.

I couldn't lift the plastic display bracket out without risking breaking the plastic frame, & I probably broke one of the frame's plastic screw threads putting it back together.

An RPi would be a tight fit, unless it's a 0 or 0W.