After a lengthy 2 hour or so session of Discord conversation, I've come to a conclusion that both explains the functionality of the AI, as well as how Twilight became corrupted, taking over Lisa's body.

It's a loose theory, given how it's back and forth conversation, but it's a usable theory nonetheless. I won't reveal anything directly, so y'all just have to keep reading to know for yourself...

FSS is now at version 1.3!

Changes since I first promo'd the userstyle:

• Made related stories box on story/chapter pages scrollable too.
• Fixed popular stories scrolling on Microsoft Edge using Tampermonkey.

Read More

i said "nuh uh".

(and then i suffered.)

Guess who's posting from a 300MHz Pentium 2???

Suprisingly, 300MHz and 512mb of RAM is actually very usable as long as you're not trying to watch Youtube.

EDIT: BTW, I'm using a USB wifi dongle running at USB 1.1 speeds because I don't wanna use up the precious PCI slots for an ethernet card, and the only other networking card in the system is an 8-bit ISA US-Robotics modem.

Gotta love it when the retention spring on 40+ year old hardware has been sitting for so long that it's lost its springiness. I tried bending the thing into a shape that'd let it work again, but the wire itself that the spring's made from is so degraded that the whole spring looks like it's a gust of wind away from disintegrating. I can't find any replacement torsion spring small enough to replace it, so I might just go with mutilating a paper clip until it's the right shape. :P

Read More

this youtube hobby is a financial burden on my bank account oof.

Yes, that includes "What If..." as well. The hiatus won't be too long though, hopefully. I've just been too tired lately to really do much writing, and even when I do, it's usually over the weekends working on Pony-Me or something non-story related.

Either way, I'm smack in the middle of build season in robotics, and I'm part of the 3-person bumper crew that's in charge of making sure the robot isn't going to get rammed to pieces during the rounds.

I've only set up a limited number of pages so far, but feel free to check it out over at https://museum.themajortechie.com/!

Right now, clicking on the description text for the images only gives you a 404 error, but when I get around to it, we'll be seeing detail pages with even more hi-res photos!

yeet

It's a bit of a mess, but considering as how I have multiple levels of random, it's probably understandable.

Aside from that, I just found out that it's mind-blowingly easy to use an expansion slot-cover to pry stuck CPUs out of their sockets! It works great compared to using a screwdriver!

What if I designed and built a mechanical keyswitch?

This is mostly just coming from the fact that I've got a box full of drying keycaps after cleaning my half-mechanical/memchanical keyboard that I've owned literally all my life.

And as far as designing the keyswitch goes, the basic idea behind it is quite simple, anyways. The keyswitch is a type of temporary button that is designed according to a specific consumer preference regarding the tactile and audible feedback.

Read More

And this time, it's actually running smooth enough that writing this blogpost doesn't place an awful amount of lag on the system!

Here's the end specs for anyone who may be interested:

• Motherboard: Asus P5A-B
• CPU: AMD K6-2 @ 450MHz
• 512 MB SDRAM
• GPU: Nvidia Geforce FX5500
• HDD: Quantum Bigfoot 19.2gb
• Sound Card: Sound Blaster AWE32
• Additional hardware: NEC 5-port USB 2.0 card
• PCI to PCMCIA adapter (for wifi and stuff)

Read More

I got a copy of RightWriter 4.0 on 360k 5.25-inch floppies from the thrift store after noticing that it might be rather rare, being an early form of software similar to Grammarly. Turns out that this particular format, the 5.25-inch 360k disks for version 4.0 has never been archived or uploaded onto any major archival site such as Winworld, BetaArchive, or Archive.org.

Read More

For the past week, I've been looking all over the internet for digital copies of Peter Rony's Bugbook series on computer logic. Apparently, back in 2009, he released the entire series for free on his personal website, since the books had been out of print for decades already and he still held the copyright.

Only problem with that? His website's been down since 2010, which happens to be the oldest archive that the Internet Archive has of his site.

Read More

idk.

I'm 17 now.

Birthday is a Monday.

Oh boy.

I have a calculus test today.

Oh boy.

On the bright side, today (tomorrow? I mean it's 12:03 AM Mountain Time here) is also gonna be the first building day for the freshman team in robotics. While I'm now on the senior team (of which includes juniors and seniors, and one sophomore), I can still watch and give tips to all the new team recruits working on the robot this year for the AMES (not FIRST yet) competition.

Final specs:
AMD K6-2 475MHz overclocked to 500MHz
384MB RAM
19 GB Quantum Bigfoot HDD
Intel pro/1000 xt server-class gigabit ethernet (yeah, pretty mismatched, but it's the only ethernet card I have available with Windows 2000 drivers)
Yamaha XG sound card
Windows 2000
Web browser: K-Meleon 74, custom compiled for Windows 2000

The touch-sensitive part of a screen is actually completely separate from the actual screen itself. Instead, it's a "digitizer screen" that's overlayed and glued/mounted directly on top of the actual screen.

There are two primary types of touch digitizers: Resistive and capacitive. In recent years, capacitive screens have largely overtaken resistive screens.

Read More

you read that right.

pics tomorrow.

maybe e🅱ic gamer time.

but midterms first.

because of course I have midterms next week.