Stuff. Most of my posts go here.
So, you know that calculator project I made a while back? solvent?
I came back to it after abandoning it and have released a new update to it.
Now, the changes:
That’s about it, now go check it out if you want at https://theglasspenguin.github.io/solvent/
Introducing solvent.
It’s a web based calculator that can do some cool stuff, like
with more to be added in the future.
It’s also fully open source too, so you can look inside and even help contribute (and if you can, please do!).
So, why not try it out? Please?
I seem to have a weird habit of switching web hosts. First, it was Wix, but I moved from it to WordPress for more freedom. I found a few when I searched for free web hosts that would give me a good platform to run a WordPress site. I almost went with AccuWeb, but I learned that you’d need to share a government-issued ID so, I couldn’t set up an account here.
Here’s the thing: most of the free web hosts out there are resellers of the same company’s hosting package, and that company is iFastNet. You set up an account on one of these resellers, get your website started, and then if you want to “take it further” you can transfer your website from the reseller to a paid plan on iFastNet.
I discovered one of these resellers after about 5-10 minutes of web searching, and this one was “aeonfree”.
Despite the poor English, I decided to set up shop here. The feature set was impressive, and the limits were generous. I created an account and registered a subdomain. After installing WordPress and moving my posts over from Wix, I enjoyed using it for quite some time, however, I had some massive issues with it.
First off, it was very, very slow. You could feel it was slow. I know that a common complaint with WordPress is that it’s naturally slow, it has to make SQL queries and such. However, my friend’s website ran on WordPress on a similar setup to mine (not the same host, mind you), and it was fast. It loaded in less than 2 seconds, whereas mine took upwards of 4 seconds, half of which was spent waiting for it to connect to the server instead of sending and receiving data. I tried optimizer plugins, CDNs, and lightweight themes, but nothing worked.
I’ve also had a major skirmish with tech support over a transcript of a chat conversation in a blog article. On April 12, 2022, the comment filter in Scratch stopped working, and all hell broke loose on the website. I created a quick blog article to inform people. I intended to leave it up as a historical archive, but I couldn’t because I was apparently breaking aeonfree’s Terms Of Use, via a screenshot of a chat conversation included in the article. They don’t like “chat scripts” on the websites they host. However, the article did not contain a chat script or a link to one, and only contained a screenshot of a conversation. I later deleted the article, however, I didn’t delete the screenshot from the WordPress media folder, so I continued to receive emails about them. I later deleted the images, and they stopped giving me grief. The whole experience left a bad taste in my mouth.
However, more recently, on August 23rd, my website didn’t work and responded with a 403, and did so for over 12 hours. I was able to get the site back, thankfully.
Even more recently on September 1st of 2022, my website all of a sudden now redirected all traffic to Google. No, really. I had set no redirects, and I had no idea why this was happening. I couldn’t even sign in to the WordPress admin panel, but I managed to break and enter using the desktop WordPress app. I grabbed a backup of my website made the night before, and I set up a new hosting account and subdomain, and well, here we are.
Don’t get me wrong, I sorta liked my time on that web host, but I’m looking forward to using this new one more.
Every time you help people, you would really like it if you were right.
Admit it.
Even though it’s human nature to make mistakes.
And you will make mistakes.
And you will not be right.
Anyway, I spend a lot of time on the Scratch forums.
And I mean A LOT. I currently have 1000+ posts in Questions about Scratch and Suggestions combined.
And when you’re trying to help people solve a problem or give decently meaningful feedback on a suggestion, then being correct on what you are talking about is kinda very important.
If you do not meet the standards of correctness, then you shall attract the ire of your fellow forumers.
However, it is extremely hard to be 100% correct. Let’s stick with the Scratch forums example.
Three things are important when replying to posts on the Scratch forums:
Speed is important because you need to be on top of the literal ninjas faster typers other people that are replying to the topic.
You also need to be clear in your topic because apparently, you might confuse the total idiots that are New Scratchers
And you need to be correct because being wrong will not help the person asking the question and also make yourself look like an idiot who spent 30 minutes trying to find a nonexistent page on the Scratch Wiki to show what a 404 error is on the wiki
However, it is widely known that attempting to be fast will result in incorrect information being dispensed. An example is attempting to understand an article on why throwing empty soda cans at others is not very nice of you within 30 seconds and then tabbing back to the thread to speed-type your response in 25 seconds, wait 1 second for your grammar checker program to tell you that you misspelled 24 words in your response, and spend 4 seconds correcting them. Then you may have given the incorrect answer that “people hate soda cans being thrown at them because those people hate soda”, where it’s because you just simply shouldn’t be throwing garbage at people in the first place!
You could also sacrifice being fast for accuracy, but then by the time you’d have pressed the “submit” button, your post is buried 6 pages in by a flame war started by the person making the topic bein a total freakin idiot about what the heck a “duplicate topic” is
You could also sacrifice clarity for accuracy, however, you would also confuse the total freakin idiot on extremely confusing words such as “ocular” and “TOLORS” and “Scratch”, because inherently they only understand stuff broken down into extremely simple terms such as “a forum search engine created by jeffalo” and “the place that explains why the scratch team won’t add certain things” and “the website you are currently on, seriously how the heck would you not know that you are on Scratch??????”
Therefore, you should not try to be 100% correct and instead strive to have the core point of your post be correct. That way, you do not have to sacrifice anything to help people.
If you are wrong and do anger the others around you, then simply be correct from then point onward.
Thank you for reading this absolute piece of trashpost.
Note from the creator: this post was supposed to be humorous (well, to me anyway) so do not take it seriously. although you should probably take this seriously: the fact that it’s ok to be wrong and you should not be mean to anyone who is wrong or misunderstands something, just simply correct them politely.
thank you once again for taking the time to read this post (and stopping by my website)
I’m probably not going to play Minecraft with a select few from my friend group for a while. We were screwing around with the new Wild Update by generating worlds with seeds designed to give us the new features (like the new and improved swamp), and we generated one with the Deep Dark biome in it.
I assume you know where this is going.
After a little bit of caving, base-building, and general-resource-gathering (with fighting over who got what), we stumbled into the Deep Dark. So, we ran around, flashing our iron swords and incomplete armor sets (I was using a chest plate and helmet only), and grabbing loot from the chests. I ended up with regen potions, some music discs, coal, and sculk blocks.
One person was using their pickaxe to obtain and investigate the blocks making up the massive castle-like thing we were exploring, and then we hear a “CRACK” like sound, and a Warden spawned. We just ran around like crazy, dodging it, crafting arrows and bows to try and distract it, and then,
“CRACK!”
Another one spawned, and someone decided to go nuts on the mobs by swinging their sword at it. Bad idea. Some reasonable people (like me) decided to try and find the exit. And then the 10-year-old Minecraft nerd had an idea: summon an equally-powerful mob and see if that would help. TL;DR; never summon the Wither to help you do ANYTHING.
As you can probably guess, this didn’t end well. Everybody was killed in the sheer insanity that broke out.
Fun times, I guess.
2 Years
Of
Within 2 years of being on Scratch, I’ve shared 60+ projects, made 1500+ forum posts, launched a new website, got into the Scratch Wiki, joined a fandom about living swimming minerals, and finally got into the Forum Helpers.
I have done quite a lot this year, haven’t I?
I’ve also been thinking about where all of this started.
Well, ready your scroll wheel, because I’m going to tell the story of my Scratch account.
So, let’s get into it.
I’ve been on Scratch longer than 2 years, just on a different account.
Let’s go back.
November 2018. Scratch 3.0 has just entered beta, and, on a rainy day, the 29th, after using Scratch at an after-school program, I went home and created my first Scratch account, @Go_34, on a slow, old Windows 7 computer.
On there, I created tons of projects, some unique, and some created with tutorials taken from the Internet, the Help sidebar on Scratch 2.0, and library books. I never shared one, however.
Later on, I got a new, used Windows 8.1 computer (that I later installed Linux on, and the one I’m typing this text on), but I had an issue with the new computer and had to create a new profile, but I couldn’t transfer the passwords stored in the browser’s password manager (stupid Chrome), and I had forgotten both the password to my email account and @Go_34. Eventually, I had to focus more on school, and Scratch wasn’t on the top of my list of priorities.
Let’s go forward.
April 2020. COVID-19 happened. Like everybody else, I was forced to stay home. I then revisited Scratch, of course, I was still locked out of @Go_34 and my old email account (I created a new email). As a result, I had to create a new account, @TheGlassPenguin. I took the username from a small penguin desk statue made of (you guessed it) glass.
Eventually, I got to the point where we are now.
I’ve only recently been able to sign into @Go_34. After a little assistance from the email provider I used for my old address and a Scratch password reset, I finally signed in to @Go_34, and I have decided to share a few projects in this blog post.
Well, I’ve got plans for the future. Projects, games, blog posts, and other various things, so stay tuned!
Here’s to another year!
Minecraft is an awesome game. Not only is it really fun, but the game can also generate some awesome landscapes and animals. As I’ve played the game, I’ve taken lots of screenshots. Here are some of them:
You know what you clicked on. You want to know about my old Scratch account and the treasures hidden inside. Before we get deep into it, let’s get into a bit of history.
And for that, we need to go back to November 2018. Scratch 3.0 was on the way, the Scratch community reached 30 million shared projects, and on a rainy day on the 29th, I created my first Scratch account, @Go_34. Throughout the next year and a half, I created several projects, but I never shared one. Later on, I got a new computer. I had an issue with the computer and had to create a new profile on it. However, I couldn’t transfer everything over, and that included all the passwords stored in the password manager, and I had forgotten the password to both my email and Go_34 a few months prior.
Fast-forward to April 4th, 2020, and I created a new account, which was my current one, @TheGlassPenguin. And here we are at the present date. A few months ago, I emailed the Scratch Team with Contact Us, and I received an email response that wasn’t much help, simply telling me to try the normal password reset. I couldn’t, however, because I didn’t have access to the email account linked to Go_34. Eventually, I sent several emails to the service I had my old email account on, and after another month of being stuck in tech support hell, they set my old email’s recovery address to my current one, and I just ran the password reset for my email as normal, and then ran the password reset on Go_34. And here we are at the present date.
Anyway, what’s in the account? Well, let’s explore some of them.
This one has to be my favorite. I saw one of the many OS projects out there and set out to make my own. Honestly, it came out a little worse than I wanted, but I still like it nonetheless. It was originally made on May 19th, 2019.
This is a relatively early prototype of Number Guessing Computer. Here are the main differences:
This is a platformer I made with a tutorial I found somewhere on the Internet, and it only has three levels. You should know how to play. :P
This was a quickly-made Frogger clone. Except the frog looks… I don’t even know what it even is. Just press the arrow keys to move and don’t run out of lives.
And that’s everything I’m going to share – for now :). Maybe stay tuned? Thanks for reading!
2021 is approaching its end. Here’s a look at my accomplishments from the past year.
To move between slides, press the left or right arrow keys, or tap the left and right sides of the screen to move forward and backward, respectively.
Project Credits:
The slides were created using Google Slides, using the Spearmint theme.
The slide engine is by @-CloudCodes-.
The music is “Backroom Coffeehouse” from the Codebreakers OST.