Pointless Software Piracy

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Linspire. That one word sums up my whole experience. Now, while I don’t condone piracy for the sake of piracy, I would like to get it out there that (as with everything in life) it’s a nuanced thing in my opinion. Say, for instance, that you’re building a retro PC… you want those /486 vibes so bad, I know it! Anyway, let’s say you’re building a retro PC and you’re intent on getting hardware and software from circa 1992. Okay, that’s great and all, but the software? Technically (assuming I’m understanding correctly, but more on that later), it would be illegal to download a copy of MS-DOS, Microsoft Windows for Workgroups 3.11 (gotta have more than just Real-mode Networking… it’s a /486! With Netscape 2.02!), and all of the software and games that you might want to load on it for that authentic experience, even though the companies who designed and coded it are either ran by people who were born after its release or the company came down with a bog-standard case of not existing anymore. The question: why is it technically illegal to build these things when nobody gives a damn about computer code from 1992? I ask you. You’re not hurting Microsoft’s bottom line if you get the ancient software… they wouldn’t even support it if you went up to them; they’d probably make some comment about it belonging in a museum (Internet Archive, anyone?).

Honestly? They’re probably right on that one.

As a hypothetical, let’s say that I went and made some software for the Commodore 64 (Gen Xers, here-here) back in 1983 and copyrighted it. It gets sold in the stores on the exact same shelf as the C64, so popular that nobody would think about getting the C64 without getting my software (think cassette tape, diskette, or (if I could be super-efficient with the 6502/6510 machine code) a ROM cartridge). Well, by the time the internet would have came along and made its way into the hands of the general public, we would’ve already been through the C128, C128D, most of the early (and in my opinion, iconic) Commodore Amiga systems… Commodore Computer would have stopped existing, the IBM PC would become one of the two primary computer systems of the era, sporting MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows (or PC/GEOS… yes, I’m weird) and in competition with Apple’s Macintosh (outliving both the Lisa and Apple ][ platforms), and most, if not all, systems would be either 16-bit (Intel 8086/8088-80286) or 32-bit (anything after the original Macintoshes, Intel 80386 through the end of the original Pentium series). Technically, my software would still be copyrighted and not in the public domain (much to the dismay of retro computing enthusiasts, but I’m not a dick; no DRM or copy-protection). In practice, by 1998, the only people who would still use the software would be C64 enthusiasts, and that number would be incredibly tiny, compared to the original userbase during the hayday of the C64. If someone decided to download it to play around with in an emulator, make the source code public, or to make a room of their house that’s just stuck in the 80s… they wouldn’t be hurting me as a developer (actually, I’d encourage it, if I’m being completely honest here) in any real way. Sure, I’d be hurt, but only in a way that would come from looking to the past with rose-colored glasses. In practice, it would be do-or-don’t, so that brings us to the next question that explains this point:

Would it even be piracy? Sure, it would technically be copyrighted, BUT it’s not supported, sold, or maintained by the developer, the only thing anyone could get from it would be an understanding of how things used to be, and, quite frankly, I have a very strong feeling that nobody wants to go through the hassle of dealing with 5¼” floppies anymore unless they’re firmly dedicated and have the room to store everything. Even going the emulator route (clicking disk images into VICE instead of actually writing the disks in a VIC-1541 compatible format), it’s not like you would be able to make a major gain, as it’s, well, obsolete. It’s old, ancient, outdated, outmoded.

Put simply, while I believe software piracy is wrong, I also hold firm to the truth that, when someone abandons the code, it’s up for grabs. It doesn’t matter if you want to futz with someone by making them think you’ve got Mac OS 7.6.1 running on a brand-new ThinkPad T14; it doesn’t matter if you want to use that rotting corpse of a /386 to type up your articles, essays, and reports like it’s 1989; it doesn’t matter if you want to use Windows XP or 7 Pro as your server’s OS (my issues with that are completely unrelated… just trust me on that one); and it doesn’t matter if you want to make a private time capsule to the past. As long as the code has been abandoned by the original authors/developers/whathaveyou, it’s just waiting on a second shot at life. Whether that’s learning how things used to be or helping it grow up while staying true to the fact that it’s still GEOS… at the end of the day, it’s abandoned.

A Defense of Adblock… and Torrenting

To anyone who has ever had the misfortune of a painfully-slow internet connection or tried to scour the internet tirelessly for that one show you absolutely loved, you’re probably familiar with plugins like Adblock, Adblock Plus, and uBlock Origin, as well as seeing so many tiny files ending in .torrent. Today, I plan on defending (at least, from my position) both of these internet tools.

We’ll start with uBlock Origin (my ad blocker of choice for the past several years and running). Put simply, ads online are okay, so long as they are non-intrusive! That means maybe a few (no more than five and not plastered every two minutes in the video) ads every ten-to-fifteen minutes on Youtube, no layers on webpages that are invisible and trigger a modern interpretation of “Let 1k windows bloom” for the Macintosh, and (because I’m one of those people who doesn’t use all of the streaming services out there) making some of the “gray sites” where I like to watch old and obscure shows (most of which wouldn’t even be on Netflix, Hulu, and Paramount anyway) actually usable. Believe me, I’ve had more than my fair share of opening up Netflix and looking for a TV show or movie, only to find that it’s not there. To clarify, my family has a family Netflix account that I’m on, but very few things are on there that I’ll actually watch, so for me, streaming means opening up a Linux machine in VMware and perusing DuckDuckGo until I find what I'm looking for and hoping that the video server is still up. Often times, it isn’t, so I have to try other mirrors (if the option even exists) and search the rest of the web. Now, while this seems like it would only apply to the next section (where I’ll talk about torrenting), keep in mind that the hidden ads and “invisible frames” (as I call them) take up so much bandwidth, especially if you are still using an ADSL modem to get onto the Information Superhighway. Until a few years ago, when my father signed up for a few streaming services (sometime after the world shut down due to COVID-19), the internet speed at my house was 3-5 Mbps down, generally on the lower side. That wasn’t per person or per device, that was the max bandwidth for the whole modem. Honestly, ad blockers helped with the speed issue tremendously! Where a page might take ten-or-so minutes to load without the tiny plugin, that same page could load in just under two with the plugin. I still remember the difference with and without the plugins, mainly because of the shock value. Granted, in the long run, it never made the connection lightning-fast (because of the streaming services thing, we’re now at 10-15 Mbps down), but it was and still is able to rescue the bandwidth that can easily get stolen by those pesky popups or banners that make pages completely unusable, and it even makes YouTube usable again on my laptop (even though they're trying to get me to pay so much per month to stop ads… JUST MAKE THEM MORE TOLERABLE! USE AGING WHEELS AS AN EXAMPLE! IT’S NOT HARD!), though that’s starting to take an extra plugin, but it’s a nonissue except for less than five occasions and counting. Anyway, onto torrenting!

Now, I’m certain that most of you have come across a file that ended in .torrent at some point in the past and have been bewildered by what it was. Put simply, and this is coming from someone who frequently makes use of ancient and lost software, it’s just a P2P file sharing thing that doesn’t download linearly. Rather, it pulls what it can from where it can, although most of what you’ll find in the various databases and search utilities can best be summed up by the traffic in Cambodia: it’s a complete-and-total free-for-all; watch all sides, all the time. There's nothing inherently wrong about torrenting (or the dark web, for that matter), but that doesn’t always hold true for what people use it for. Hence the watch yourself warning. Anyway, within the torrenting realm lies what I consider to be my personal bread-and-butter of the internet: animé, TV shows, movies, and software, all of which might not be accessible on the regular internet anymore (namely a huge number of the software titles and animé I like to watch, many of which just aren’t in English to begin with… imagine that) or at all to begin with. Torrenting and the dark web are two ways, as far as I’m concerned, to access a complete freedom of information. A more overt way of seeing this would be to go to China, Russia, Laos, Cuba, Vietnam, or any country with restrictions on information (in any capacity) and ask even the least-savvy computer users if they know what a VPN is. They probably won’t be so quick to respond in public, but they would almost certainly show you how to get access to them so that they can get on the unfiltered Information Superhighway (yes, I’m coming from experience with seeders from China, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Russia, Laos, Cambodia, and Venezuela… why else would they try to make themselves less traceable online?). Torrents can be a way of hiding in plain sight, as the transfer of data via BitTorrent isn’t linear and comes from and goes to several other targets, rather than one at a time in a linear fashion. It’s also for this reason that I don’t use the original BitTorrent client (it’s full of ads, limits your speeds unless you pay, and doesn't have all of the features in the free version… yuck!), though there are plenty of forks and clones out there, I’m sure; still, I’ll leave you to pick your poison here. So far, with torrenting, I’ve been able to find any software or media anytime, though my first stop for software is the well-known Internet Archive (I highly recommend this to anyone working on a project, should you not want to get into torrenting). Anyway, that’s just my thoughts on the matter from the technical mind of someone who believes that all information should be free to access.

Stay safe and С Новый Годом!

ᚣᚢᛚᛖᛏᛁᛞᛖ 2024

So, it’s that time of year again… Yuletide. A lot has been going on at my end, to explain for the blog’s apparent neglect (I absolutely hate to see it get like this), but it’s just been chaotic to the nth degree. Anyway, now that I am here, I've been working on a few projects in my free time, none of which will likely see the light of day in any mainstream media, but I like to have something going on, and writing some kind of crackpot story while waiting on parts for a junk store computer to come in from Ebay seems to satisfy that need. I’m still in the process of getting certificates to back up some of my skills with a computer, and I also have been going through some of my older stuff and daydreaming about how I can revive those projects. I’m also hoping that I can get another WITSEC-themed story out (whether it be on Fur Affinity or full-on published as an eBook has yet to be seen) because there is a shockingly-low number of that type of story out. Shame, too, because those turn out to be pretty good when given a chance. I’ve also been thinking, and I don’t know where I want to go with Aleks anymore, although I may get an answer when everything goes back to normal on my end.

Somehow, though, I’ve got the next few years planned out in my head.

Anyway, not much to post this week, apart from the fact that I’m still here. Happy Yuletide, everyone!

Caffeine & Computers

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Okay, so I feel like Reagan Ridley right about now, seeing as how I’m already on my umpteenth cup of coffee (I’d go for the energy drinks if I could bring some into this house without starting WWIII), but I feel like I’m making progress. I’m still going over the markdown document for The Golden Record (the vast majority of my writing has generally been for my eyes only, so I forget that other people don’t have access to my thoughts and memories of other writing projects), but, you should be expecting a new character: Link Riviera. The reasoning for his creation is that, originally, Aleksey was my fursona, but (and I’m genuinely not sure if I’ve stated this here before) he’s more of a sociopathic, fictional character now, rather than a portrayal of myself. Granted, I like the feeling of the character not being myself, but I literally started writing characters based on either myself (I never made a whole batch of them, I didn’t inherit any narcissism gene, thankfully… I hope) or people I knew decently well. Some, however, were based on other fictional characters, which I do hope to bring back for the rest of the world to see. Anyway, my computer courses are going well and I’m thinking of building a NAS, just for the hell of it. I have loads of anime, comics, pictures, everything, and I’d like a way where I could store them to play on my TV or devices whenever. Somehow, the thought of building a NAS from scratch seems easier than using one of the junk store computers I have lying around. Anyway, we’ll just have to see what the future holds!

Next Few Weeks

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Not much to say this week, but I’ve decided to start pursuing certificates for some of my skills with a computer. My plan is to block off a couple or three hours Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday and leave writing for my downtime (usually Friday and part of Saturday and Sunday) for the near future. So far, I have to say that Codecademy is actually working out better than the college courses did, not to mention that it’s leagues cheaper and easier than sitting in a classroom with a teacher who may or may not be an objectively-bad match for me (I’ve had some that were just flat out terrible teachers and some that, while they were excellent at their jobs, they just weren’t right for me). Anyway, that said, I went ahead and sprung for the annual billing of the Pro tier so I could get my certificates (and give myself a good refresher course, too) and have something I can go back on, should writing not work out like I’m hoping… plus, it would be a good middle-finger to some people who are still going on about my failure with college back in 2018/2019. Anyway, put simply, my writing is going to be pushed to the back (this should help with writer’s block as well) for a block of time while I focus on something else.

Keep quirky!

I’m Still Here.

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Yeah, pretty much what the title says: I’m still around. With Typhoon Helene and the still-deteriorating condition of my grandfather, my thoughts these past few weeks have just been massively screwed. Sadly, I can’t code a firmware patch for my body/brain to just make it go away (or at least go back to the level of functional I’m used to), so that’s unfortunate, but I guess it’s a good-enough wakeup call for me to come to terms with some things that I’ve just been ignoring over the past several years, as well as some financial issues. Right now, about all I’m really good for (these past few days, at least) has been doing a “B47_L1NK Restoration” on an old laptop that was given to me a few months back.

Anyway, I’m not going to force anything because, the last time I tried that, I just ended up worse. I can’t give an ETA right now about when everything is going to be back to normal with me, but hopefully it’ll be back soon.

Just an update

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Not much to report back this week, other than I’ve somewhat-started on a story focusing around my new sona, Link Riviera. The abridged version is that, while Aleksey was my first fursona, he’s not an accurate portrayal of me anymore, just a character. Anyway, between some life issues (namely my body taking its sweet time adjusting to and from the Megaplex trip, followed by Typhoon Francis sending a monsoon our way) and a mixture of jetlag and reading the comics and books I bought (I HIGHLY recommend Bloodline and Slightly Damned to any comic lovers out there), I am way behind on getting stuff typed. Still, though, I do enjoy the slower pace of being able to relax after finishing a draft.

A proofreader had reached out to me a few days after I got back, so I took him up on his services, so that makes two firsts for The Golden Record (first for not having an AI cover and first for being proofread by a set of fresh eyes). When it gets published, I do plan to bring the book prices down again (at least a few more times in the future, mainly because of how Kobo sends payment at an interval which I haven’t hit yet), so I can say with confidence that they should be lowered by Christmas, assuming that’s been a deterrent for anyone who looked at them.

Whelp, anyway, like I said, not much to post this week, so stay weird!

Back from Megaplex 2024!

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Okay, so I want to start by saying that I’m shocked I was able to make the trip, primarily because of everything that happened between the time I was picked up from my house to the time I made it back, though I won’t go into detail here. This isn’t supposed to be that kind of place (unless you are Intel or Nvidia, then you may gladly take it up with me wherever), but I’ll say that everything that happened just made it even more worthwhile. For anyone reading, I was «Aleksey Ivanovich Buryakov», and I had an amazing time with the people I did get to talk to and meet up with… picture the feeling of being at home for the absolute first time in your life.

That’s a very muted version of what it was like.

Anyway, now that my preface is over and done with, this week’s post is going to be for the outcasts, the ones who don’t think they have any worth, anyone who just wants a place to be in the world… this week is all about you, my friends.

For nearly twenty-five years, I’ve lived with some rather atypical interests (the furry fandom being a big one) and kept them hidden. That went all, well, and good (my fellow outsiders will understand the sarcasm there) until I went into Grade 5, and I met my first real friend. I won’t name him here but if he wants to be named, I’ll update it with his name. Anyway, he moved into my school district from another part of Alabama, and, in a very autistic way (on my part), I just started talking to him over lunch one day. I liked carrots and ranch and I didn’t care that eating the crusts from his sandwich looked like I was eating scraps. The carrots were good (he didn’t like them at the time), and I had an attitude where I didn’t like to see food go to waste. Eventually, our little friend group expanded from two to four, and we began to talk more about animé (and another friend eventually got me to become a brony for a time). In Grade 8, we had a creative writing project where we had to write a short story and present. By that point, I had already gone into the mindset of «There’s no kill like overkill!», so I remember bringing a camera to school (on another occasion, I managed to get a school iPad to actually work with an old Gateway laptop of mine from the late 90s). Anyway, so I ended up taking a few pictures to use as visuals for when I was presenting. Our teacher had okayed it, the friend shook his head and muttered «Oh, Lord.», and everyone else was completely lost at why I was so high-energy. The first day we presented, I went first… and people from the Board of Education were observing. I remember looking on at everyone as they heard the crazed inner workings of what could possibly happen when the synapses in my brain fired. The teacher (and student teacher) were a mix of smiling and shaking their head with what looked like some concern for what I called sanity mixed in… yes, it was unhinged. The board members were looking at me like I was crazy, but weren’t willing to have me sent to a psychologist again (the first time was in Grade 4, where an IQ test revealed me as clinical genius and I just stopped going), the most of the class never fully took their attention off of me until the final bell (something that I find both amusing and unnerving, years later), and the friend, just straight-up, ready to ask either «How?» or «Why?». Or «What?». Continuing on, high school is when I became a brony, although the reason I got into it was to help cope with a lot of crap going on at the time, not so much being a fan of My Little Pony. Somehow, I just stuck with it until everyone showed their true colors that I’d met from the fandom, so I just let them fall like flies. It was also at this time that I got into a years (and I do mean years) long fight with my friend (we’ve since made up), so he and I didn’t see much of each other. I had even dropped out of the band and taken up tutoring someone in algebra, just to avoid seeing him. Granted, a lot of people in the room were assholes to me by this point, but he was the main reason I tolerated it. Well, that and my love for music. When I graduated high school, I went through a semester of college and kind of drifted around for a while, focusing even more on my writing and chatting with people who (at the time) were still my friends. Honestly, I don’t have any contact with very many of them anymore for one reason or another (the bronys, I mean, and I’m highly glad for that). I dated a few girls over the years from my junior year in high school to about the time Covid reared its ugly head in full-swing, but all of those relationships ended rather shortly in, and only one of them I still consider to be my friend (a stark-contrast to my most-recent ex who thought she was the shit when she dropped a lot of weight). Eventually, I job-hopped into my current position, went back to college for a single writing class, and met the friend that took me to Megaplex this year and even the person I’m dating (two separate people, who I’m dating lives in Pennsylvania, I was only at a local community college). We all get to talking, and he invites me to the Megaplex last year, but that doesn’t pan out for me at the absolute-last minute. Thankfully, this year was a different story, though barely. While I was in college, I had a near-death experience with some idiot on the road when I was coming back home one evening after a class, and I found out what it felt like to have someone care for you in that special way (I found out after I replaced my phone and laptop that they were crying nonstop for a few days over the incident, actually). They and I had really similar interests (though I’m not much of a gamer, to be completely honest), and I even managed to go up to visit them while my unpaid medical leave was massively screwed up. Yeah, I live in the US. Paid medical leave is something you get if you’re in a position of power. Otherwise, the rulebook essentially just says “Screw you”. Anyway, meeting them was a dream come true, even if we didn’t do all of the things that we wanted to do… always best to leave some plans unfinished so you’ll have the list started for next time, am I right? Anyway, making it back to this year… on the way down to Florida, on the turnpike, my friend was involved in a minor accident (basically a fender bender with a Jeep Wrangler), I almost had to be carted to the ER twice, and my own tenancy to overthink and worry almost ended in my current relationship ending (it would’ve been me being stupid and pulling the plug). Thankfully, everyone that I talked to (both from home and the convention) pretty much seemed to enjoy the fact that I’d made it as far as I had. By the end of the weekend, my biggest regret wasn’t that I hadn’t enjoyed anything for so long, it was that time travel doesn’t exist, otherwise, I would’ve went back in time, solely, to tell my younger self that it does get better. You just have to give it time.

Fur Affinity Outage

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So, this past week, Fur Affinity had an outage because of some hackers. Don't worry, nothing was stolen, it was just LARGELY annoying. Everything's been taken care of now, so that's good. Anyway, this coming week, there's a furry convention in Florida, so I may or may not put something up. Because of that, I haven't been able to devote any of my attention to getting something written. The reason I've been obsessed with that is because that website is, in a sense, one of the places I call my online home, so the feeling wasn't particularly good… to say the least. I did, however, manage to distract myself for long enough to come up with a name for a recently-acquired character, kind of. Granted, I don't give myself full credit there for the sole fact that I still kept checking on the site every hour, at least, though it wasn't at the forefront of my mind; my other thoughts just ground to a screeching halt. Whelp, I'm sorry I don't have more for you this week, and next week is up in the air unless I can get something typed and timed in the next few days. After that, my schedule here should be back to normal… well, normal enough, but I won't get into those things, they're just not public. Anyway, to finish it off, this week was a hiccup, and everything should be back to smooth-sailing after next week.

Some Frustration with Intel

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Okay, so here’s the thing: I hate Intel with a burning passion. I don’t mean it for reasons aside from my own experiences with their processors. Sure, I’ll admit that the processors are capable, no doubt, I’ve just been brand-loyal to AMD, occasionally playing around with some of the more quirky options in 86Box (VIA, Cyrix, IDT WinChip, the NEC V20), and, looking at the evidence, I feel like I made the right decision. Don’t get me wrong, Intel processors have always had their pros (namely availability… name the last time you saw a computer without the Intel logo hiding somewhere), but I’ve noticed that, over the past few years, it feels like they’ve stopped innovating. When I had to get a new laptop a few months ago, predictably, I ended up getting myself a ThinkPad T14. I had done my research, and the Intel models generally had the fans going more often than not, whereas the AMD models didn’t have to deal with that. Yeah, the fans come on sometimes, but that’s mostly when I’m working with the thing in bed at night, or if the temperature is already sweltering. I could rant on and on about how I’ve always known Intel CPUs to run hot, but it goes a bit deeper than that. If you look into historical processors, then you’ll find that the modern 64-bit instruction set (x86_64) is actually called amd64.

Yup, they developed it. AMD Athlon 64.

Now, I’m sure I already have (and heavily-so), but I don’t want to proselytize. In a way, to me (apart from the nostalgia), it’s a similar situation to the Amiga 1000 computer: you can use it as an Amiga, you can use it as a Macintosh, and (with a sidecar), you can use it as an XT-class IBM PC. I mention the sidecar on that last one, mainly because, if you do it all in software, the PC emulation is notoriously slow- the sidecar is basically a self-contained IBM. Anyway, back to my original thought.

Intel did create the x86 platform, I won’t deny that, but AMD (as with the other manufacturers, in some way, shape, or form) has innovated it to a degree. Sure, I’ll admit that an AMD Ryzen 7 badge is probably more suited to gaming PCs (or so the stereotype goes, I don’t subscribe to it, regardless), but to me, it’s a very powerful processor. My last computer (which I’d like to get fixed… if I learn to solder, it’s a five-minute job… seriously) has an Intel Core i5 in it. I’ll admit that it was a few years old, but, in 86Box, running anything newer than about a /486-class machine with Windows 3.1 (if it made use of enhanced mode for any networking, it wasn’t happy). I mention that because I make extensive use of that software (as mentioned in last week’s post), not just for writing, but also for various software titles that, God-forbid, cannot run on a 64-bit copy of Windows. Sure, the old computer has Linux on the hard drive, but Wine and VirtualBox also exist, and I’m also aware of some of the tricks to get Windows 11 to run 16-bit titles, but that's just not something I'm willing to deal with, not to mention that most of that stuff starts to look a bit poorly-designed at resolutions bigger than 1024×768 and none of it was designed with a high-DPI screen in mind (the screen at my desk isn’t an issue, but the one on my laptop is scaled to 150% by default). Ignoring the screen issue and the issues around Windows 11, 64-bit Windows, and Wine, there’s just something that’s lost when running those ancient titles outside of their environment. On some of them, I have done tests between the Intel and AMD options (as well as other choices, occasionally), and, from most of my testing, it seems like the AMD CPUs do have somewhat better performance. Granted, all of this came from an emulator on a modern computer while being timed with a stopwatch, so I wouldn’t take that as the end-all-be-all.

Personally, I’d like for whoever is reading this to do their own research as, part of my brand loyalty here is colored by nostalgia, likely keeping me from being as objective as I’d like to be.

I’m Back

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Alright, so now that I’m back, I’m hoping that I can balance life and my writing career, as unlikely as that seems to be at the moment. Drama aside, I have resumed work on The Golden Record, meaning Chapter 9 is now started. While I’ve been gone, I had a recurring dream that has since turned into an obtrusive thought, so that’s probably going to be turned into a story, though I’m not sure if I’ll publish it on Kobo or just upload it to my Fur Affinity page. Either way, it’ll be something low-effort and free (or no more than a dollar, but that’ll probably only exist the same way a tip jar does). In non-writing areas, the program I use to go down virtual rabbit holes and “build” old computers, 86Box, has now gotten the capability to emulate a dial-up connection!

Since I have a gut feeling that it’s going to be in some people’s minds, no, I’m not getting paid to link the program’s website. I just genuinely like to build old computers, and that’s the way I go about it, since I don’t have the space or money for the actual hardware. As far as I’m concerned, I’ll settle for virtual, not to mention that I can just have all of that stuff on my laptop… for better or worse. Also, the camera I’ve been using for my photography, something that looks like an older Sony model with a blue case, has kicked the bucket. Honestly, I expected about as much, so I’ll be replacing that on my next trip to the Ollie’s with something that actually has a branding on it.

Earlier, I mentioned that I’m starting back on The Golden Record, but for a while, I'm expecting progress to be on the slow side while I get some long-overdue cleaning done, throw out some older-than-me garbage furniture (trust me, it’s not worth saving, I’ve asked). Nothing major, just everyone using my room for a storage room.

Short Announcement

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Nothing this week, I just wanted to say that I'm planning to take from now through to the end of July off to recover from some burnout. By August, I should be back and ready to go, though, so don't go too far!

Intelligent Life

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Today, I'd like to explore the possibility of other intelligent life, and I'm not referring to monkeys that can peel and sort bananas. I'm talking about alien life. The whole time I've been alive, I've been thinking about the possibility of other intelligent beings out there in the cosmos, but if I try to bring up the topic, there's so much stigma attached to the topic that it's not unlikely that I'd be dismissed as a crazy person. Sure, I'll concede the point that we haven't found any intelligent life yet, but Voyager I (launched in September 1977) only exited the solar system in August 2012 and averages a speed of 38,210 mph (17 km/s, if you use the sensible system). The version of the Andromeda that we see at night, from Earth, is 2.5 million years in the past. Put short and sweet, space is vast. Traveling at the speed of light (known to some as c), it would take eight minutes to make it from the Earth to the Sun (and vice-versa). The first radio transmission was two days before Christmas in 1900, and transmitted human speech for almost a mile, and the Taldom transmitter [Передатчик Талдом] in Taldom, Moscow, RF is (at the time of my writing, supposedly), the most powerful (longwave) radio transmitter in the world, transmitting on 153 kHz @ 300 kW and 261 kHz @ 2500 kW. To put it in perspective, if you want to hear Sputnik [Спутник] (Formerly Voice of Russia [Голос России] (post Soviet-era)/Radio Moscow [Pадио Москва] (Soviet-era)) on the moon, best of luck to you! You'd need an absolutely massive antenna and a way of filtering out background noise; as far as I can tell, you can pick up the signal at 4/3 the distance of Earth's circumference away from Taldom, but the moon is roughly 28/3 the circumference of the Earth away (assuming I haven't trailed off too far, English isn't a good language).

Put simply, again, good luck.

Still, that brings us back to the topic of the lack of communication from other space-faring civilizations- we don't know the frequencies they're broadcasting on, they might be too far away to pick up with the background radiation, and we don't know what equipment they're using, if they're using what we call radio waves at all. Before I go any further, though, yes, I know we use high-power dishes to listen into space for any signals, but I wasn't about to go through an amount of research that would sate NASA for the sole purpose of one of my articles, plus I know most of you have listened to a radio in a car and know how it sounds when the signal of a station fades out on a car trip. Still, though, I would like to put it out there that I do consider myself arrogant enough to believe that there are aliens out there, but we can't detect them for a number of reasons (looking in the wrong places with nowhere-near-enough-powerful equipment), so, assuming the Drake Equation is correct, it's entirely likely that there's another planetary civilization out there, not unlike us, with its people looking up at the night sky with the same questions. In short, do I consider the lack of evidence for extraterrestrial civilizations to be evidence against them? Obviously not, primarily because I live by the statement "Correlation doesn't equal Causation". We're still looking, we have SETI, so unless there is a sign that, without reasonable doubt, proves we are alone, I'll believe otherwise.

After all, when you played Hide-and-Seek as kids, you wouldn't assume a very-good hider had stopped playing, just because they hid in the closet next to the front door, would you?

AI: My Thoughts

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I want to preface this week’s article with an apology. Usually, I try to find what I consider to be a fitting graphic to go along with my article, but I couldn’t find something this time that I felt truly fits the context of this page. That being said, the content is still the same as I usually make.

My thoughts on Artificial Intelligence (AI) are quite simple: while it could be a good tool for the world to have, it could also be easily abused. The reason for this is simply because of how capable some of the free chatbot models [to me] are, but mostly, I don’t want to see people relying on what is essentially a dolled-up supercomputer with programming that “learns” how to be better humans than humans. To my mind, at least, this is the start of a pathway to the singularity. While, yes, computers and technology are a big hobby of mine, I still think that there are things that could be done better without the use of modern technology. Take Windows, for instance. The UI remained largely the same from Windows 95 (or NT 4.0, if you've had to deal with that), all the way up through to Windows 8.x, when it got a tablet overhaul and was, in a word, infuriating without a touch screen. We managed to get advertising in Windows 10 (I don't know if it’s still in Windows 11 because I’m using the Pro version for more than a few reasons which probably has most of that cut out) and good lord… Still, I don’t feel like an idiot for taking a laptop that was, extensively, 10/+ years older than I was (and even ran Windows 1 from a floppy disk for a time) to take notes in chemistry class in Grade 10, but that’s neither here nor there. It had a word processor and didn’t need the internet… though I guess that’s in part because the internet wasn’t even in its current form until five years after the software had come onto market. Still, it worked… loudly. No internet connection required.

Anyway, back to what I was originally going to talk about, and that was my personal opinions about AI. Sure, I’ll admit to using it, but primarily as a last resort (and even then, I make notes from it and have it fact-checked by people I trust) when using a standard search engine yields no [clear] results, trust me. Really, AI, in my personal tests, isn’t convincing enough to use if there are decent alternatives. For my first two books, yes, I used AI to create the cover, but at the time, the most affordable artist I could find was well out of my price range… I’m not exactly rich, but I’m not going to throw a pity party about having nothing because that’s not true either. At the time, AI was the best option I had for a single task to use in the end product of something I was working on. However (and this is a big however), when I ask AI for writing prompts (I don’t generally follow them beyond writing a few sentences, overanalyzing, and coming up with something so far into left-field… It’s great! [he said, sarcastically]), I do get some pretty interesting things, both from the computer program and my own creativity, when it starts firing on all cylinders again. For me, though, I see AI the same as what ISDN was designed as: an interim solution. ISDN wasn’t the end-all-be-all for high speed internet (barring things like satellite, but you factor that in if you want). Simply, ISDN was a stepping stone to DSL and other wired, broadband technologies, and AI is [at least part of] an interim solution for whatever is coming next. No, I don’t think that it’s capable of ending my writing career before it begins, it isn’t going to put every artist out of business in time (some even boast about not using the technology, actually), and it isn’t capable of being human. AI can be thought of as how some autistic people function: the observe, learn, and imitate. I have firsthand experience with that and I’m not ashamed of it. I just suck at public speaking. And singing in front of a crowd. And crowds in general.

Anyway, AI has a place, I’ll admit, but its place isn’t a substitute for the things we humans are capable of. Personally, I'd like to see it used as the tool that it is, not as a replacement for humanity. Call me old-fashioned in that regard, but to me (even though I can’t stand it and actively avoid it sometimes), there’s something about the human touch that AI just can’t replicate. At least not in the near future.

Red Star OS (or, the answer to the question “How can I make my computer more communist?”)

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Yes, I'm talking the Red Star Operating System. From the KPDR. Where Kim Jong Un gets to be the nuke-happy, egomaniac ruler of a country that almost started World War III over a damn tree. Why? Well, if you've ever seen LGR on YouTube, you know he does a series called Oddware, and this is definitely one of the things that he might end up looking at one day. On a side note, with few exception, I ended up leaving the system in Korean (save for Sogwang Office) and opened the thing to the internet, but that's neither here nor there. What I'd like to get at today is that this (both this and v2) is one of the operating systems I'd used on my main computer a few years ago. It wasn't a good computer (it was a laptop from 1997 that I fitted to be a desktop because I'm quirky), but it could run Red Star OS 2 decently and could boot OS 3, but that was just a pain, so I left it with OS 2. I could make it into a "Communist, North Korean Windows XP knockoff" and enjoy the path of insanity that I sometimes let myself go down, though the "distraction-free" aspect didn't end up working for me. I just had another fun toy to play with. Still, it was funny that I was able to use what was ostensibly, a piece of complete and utter crap to do assignments for school on and use, to some degree, the internet. For reference about just how much of a rip this OS is of western software, Sogwang Office and Uri Office were just different versions of OpenOffice.org; Naenara Browser 2 is the same version of Mozilla Firefox that made me fall in love with the Gecko engine (North Korea's version is just in Korean and rebranded as the propagandistic "My Country"); the OS uses KDE 3 (picture the Linux equivalent of Windows XP); and the whole thing is based on code from (I believe) Fedora 11. I never had wireless networking on the system.

Now that my anecdote is out of the way, the reason I'm writing about RSOS today is partially because I don’t see things as a linear path the way that most people do. I can get my writing done on one of several versions of Microsoft Windows, a choice of Linux distros, or (assuming it still works) I could break out my iMac G4 and try to break into it because God knows I don't remember the password after umpteen years. My point here is that there's not just one way of doing something and there's not just one set of tools that you have to use. You can, ultimately, use whatever combination that you want and can get your hands on. When I sit down to my computer with my Windows for Workgroups machine running, I tend to be more self-conscious of my mistakes (whether or not I'm aware of what they are, I have no idea), but when I sit down to write in Microsoft Word (not in any emulation, just running Word straight on my computer), it's easy for me to get distracted by the "features" available. When I would sit down to type on Red Star, however, I wouldn't be distracted by the array of choices (they didn't exist, beyond whether to use Konqueror or Naenara to get online and to use Sogwang Office or Uri Office), but the sheer lack of any available options in the system had me baffled and intrigued as to what was really going on under the hood. Short story, (crappy) spying on the end user and not much else. I was actually held back after class one day when I said that I had typed my homework on North Korean software, but the teacher and I didn't get along, so I didn't worry about anything in the long-run.

Using a different set of tools to achieve a certain task doesn't mean that said task won't get completed or completed badly, it just means that the end result is going to be somewhat different than if you'd used "regular" tools. Sometimes the end result can be more about you learning different ways to go about something, sometimes, you'll end up with a bigger and better goal than you started out with, the possibilities are truly endless. As with everything, though, I do caution you to use some discretion when trying things in the manner that I do (not that it's bad, I'm just a skeptic on so many levels) because, while most of the time, the differences are in no way harmful, there is the off-chance, and that doesn't stop at working with computers; it goes to every aspect of life and doing things. Truly, you'll be shocked when you really step back and look at all of the ways that something can be done.

Whelp, with that being said, I'm going to leave you with another challenge: Find something that you do and do it, but use a different toolkit than what you're used to. If you're in a funk of some kind, this is guaranteed to help you along.

About Musique

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Music (as well as any “complex audio”) is an interesting subject to me. Take the recording of Jerusalem (And Did Those Feet, in Ancient Time) by Lesley Garrett, for instance. If you listen to the standard recording of it, you’ll hear her start to sing the first verse of the song at 1:43 (on an unrelated note, she has an absolutely beautiful voice here, I challenge any contradicting opinion). If you listen to it with the pitch a little lower (I usually have Musicolet set to p=0.85), you can hear a five-note pattern at 1:44 that is nowhere in the song, apart from that one moment. It doesn't sound bad, it sounds like an orchestra. Ms. Garrett's voice (obviously) becomes a lower pitch, somewhere around the tenor/alto range, I believe, and the five notes can be heard as if they were played in the “melody octave” (it’s what I call the range of notes that falls within singing range for me, it just helps to have that label) and they're somewhat-more pronounced. At p=0.70, the notes are pronounced, and at p=0.50, most things below that part of the staff, as well as the voice, is distorted.

Anyway, rant over.

The thing I'm bringing up here isn’t to download an app and screw with the settings to see what you can and can’t hear in your music; rather, it’s about how sound is an amazing thing when well and complex, I find music to be the best examples to use. Sound, like so many other things, is often overlooked when you’re talking about complex and delicate things. Sure, it’s just a form of non-electromagnetic waves, but at the same time, there's more to it that just that. Sound is closer to an art than most people realize (so long as it’s not irritating clatter) and, like art, can be deconstructed and analyzed from multiple viewpoints. Look up a picture of the Zaisan Memorial in Ulaanbaatar online, you’ll understand what I’m getting at. Sound, like art, can convey worlds of different meanings and messages, sometimes without even changing the most-minuscule of details.

At some point, I’d like you to take a song and run it through any full-featured audio program (Musicolet for Android & Audacity are both good options) and experiment with it by tweaking some aspects like speed and pitch in small increments. Musicolet is a music player, so it won’t mess up the original song file, but I’d recommend you use a copy of the song of your choosing if you use Audacity, that way, you won’t have to worry about anything getting overwritten that you care about. Do this and listen to how the song changes, listen to what parts become audible or more noticeable and vice-versa. It’s an amazing experience, believe me.

The Golden Record Preview №5

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Preview №5

As I finished with breakfast and had everything sat on the island, Azathoth came through the great room, smelling the air before looking at me as he stood, completely naked, covered only with his tattoos and his hair that now was only pushed back from his face as I froze and my eyes scanned his entire body.

“I… uh…” I said, finally able to blink again.

“Yes?” he said, crossing his arms and looking expectantly at me, “I walked here to find that smell.”

“You’re… naked.”

“So?”

“It’s just… whoa,” I said, closing my eyes and shaking my head as I finished taking up the food, “It- it’s breakfast, I made it for us,” I said, fixating my gaze on the stove to respect his privacy, “Go put on some clothes, Azathoth, and I’ll have it ready when you come back.”

“Of course, right,” he said.

“I made it a point to not turn around until I was certain he was out of my view.

“My God,” I muttered, setting the rest of the food on the island and grabbing the cups and orange juice.

“Right, of course, I’m back,” he said, “I’m wearing clothes.”

“Thank God,” I said, “Azathoth, this is breakfast. I… don’t know if you’re hungry right now, but it’s something we do on Earth. Go ahead, make a plate and dig in. It’s my favorite breakfast ever, actually.”

“If you say so,” he said, filling up his plate and stopping halfw2ay to the table as he tried it, “Khlahng-yeng! This is good!”

“Azathoth, it’s like I always say, don’t half-ass two things; whole-ass one thing and be damn-good at it.”

“This is… I thought food last night was good, but…”

“Fast food is just a quick meal. As actual food, it’s not much past taste,” I explained, “Compared to this, fast food is just garbage food.”

“Tdrakh-vih-nay-yuh,” Azathoth muttered as he savored the bagel and tomatoes in particular, “The food on Tanh Khlokh – Khu'aiy, it’s nothing like this. It’s mostly aintervened on.”

“Here, we call that undomesticated.”

“Interesting,” he said, “Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

“Nah,” I said, “I’m an only-child. What about you?”

“I have one sister and she is more into body modification than I am,” he said, showing me a picture of him and a girl.

She was a much different shade of blue, almost mauve. Her eyes were red where Azathoth’s were blue, and she had a dark, long mane that rested on her shoulders and had been dyed in strips from red to yellow, like fire. Her teeth, like Azathoth’s were the color of human skin, but she had eight fangs, which she showed off by holding what looked like a cigarette with her teeth. Each arm was covered in the tattoo of a dark dragon, outlined in the color of wood with dark purple runes adorning her torso, each hand wearing four rings with a glowing, purple gemstone. She had three breasts, unlike humans, and was wearing nothing more than a dark bra, underwear, leg warmers, and metal shoes. From her back was a pair of massive wings that were purple at the bottom and faded to black at the top with the section in her back being a vivid crimson color. On the top of her head was a pair of metal horns and a row of fiery-colored spikes. A dark, spiked tail, however, wrapped around her leg, ending in a larger spike that looked like it was made of metal leather.

How Far We've Come

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I was playing around in 86Box yesterday, and something occurred to me about getting on the Information Superhighway: I don't need to try to install a DOS driver for the NE2000 Ethernet card, I don't need to install WinPKT, I don't need to remember to do it before I type in WIN.COM, I don't need to screw around with Trumpet Winsock 1.0a and hope I get it right, and I don't need to have any more browsers on my computer (save for the glorious Mozilla Firefox, even though it's nothing like what I fell in love with years ago anymore), and I don't need to know if I'm running in Real Mode, Protected (Standard) Mode, or Virtual (386 Enhanced) Mode for access. I just need to make sure the telephone lines at my house are doing their freaking job for once and that I'm connected to WiFi (or Ethernet, if I'm at my desk). The above screenshot was taken at my dock setup, the computer itself was running Microsoft Word with one of my "Writer's Block Shorts" (just my way of making myself write every day) and, in 86Box, PFS:WindowWorks Word Processor running on Microsoft Windows for Workgroups 3.11 running on MS-DOS 6.22 running on an emulated Am486DX at 33MHz.

It occurred to me the other day that I might be getting old, even though I'm not thirty yet, but moving on!

The reason I'm writing this is because, in The Golden Record, the society Azathoth comes from is akin to what most science fiction would still call futuristic, even for today. Seth comes from a time when getting on the internet involved making sure nobody was on the telephone (in most cases, at least. We've all heard of dial-up, right?) while most of us live in a time where Covid-19 is either ending or about to end and the reasons to leave our homes are dwindling. The society that Azathoth comes from has already mastered faster-than-light travel, no further explanation is needed, even if it makes us look like cavemen who've just learned that getting bonked on the head with a club is painful (I know the Neanderthals were more intelligent than that, I'm not good at humor). The reason for the story being written in that way partially hails back to my younger self. I was always invested in anything 90s and the portrayals of the future that were around were fascinating beyond belief, even if I was born a month before the millennium. Remind me to post a story about SheepShaver, Mac OS 7, and a Hackintosh when I was in ninth grade.

Explaining myself a little bit further, I consider myself to be (somewhat) a student of history and a Cold War Enthusiast, which is a double-edged sword, living in the Southeast US- it causes headaches, to say the least, but it does give me context for the present in so many situations that arise, even if I'm not always right about things the first time. Most of what happens, I solely believe to be the fault of egotists wanting to be right (to put it nicely), though what I do know to be right is that, to a degree, everything is subjective, and nothing has a one-size-fits-all context, no matter what you want to say about it. I remember seeing a… very illuminating graphic on Facebook one day, as shown to the right. Of course, this is, at best, highly oversimplified, and of course, I found it while I was scrolling through Facebook waiting for something to finish downloading (it was a few years ago, so I couldn't tell you all of the details if I tried, beyond it was several gigabytes over a DSL connection), but I think it illustrates my point… fairly-well. I'm sure there are better ways that it could be articulated and better people to do it than me, but I'm typing this while waiting on someone and I do not claim to be a professor, doctor, or anything of that matter. I just know what I'm talking about most of the time.

To sum up what I'm trying to say, generally, the context behind the present is in the past, and while I know that, to most people, context doesn't seem important, in reality, it is very important.