It is 10:44PM, and I am rushing this post out. So it won't be long, or edited. Expect a part 2 post tomorrow.

Stats

• I made 39 posts, wow!!
  • 9 blog posts (including this one)
  • 22 dailynotes
  • 8 devlogs
  • Plus 4 blog post drafts and 8 dailynote drafts
• I reached 123 followers on Mastodon (thank you, everyone!!)
• Released 0 old Roblox games :')
  • Made 7 basic prototypes
  • Got 2 games beyond a tiny prototype
  • Cancelled 1 (the farming game).
    • Micrathena will live 🤫
• Redesigned the site 3 times (1 2 3). But this one is here to stay.
• Posted about regrets for being lazy and not posting 6 times (1 2 3 4 5 6)

Notable stuff

The Roblox Legacy Wiki has had periods of super active work and inactivity. Right now we're mostly inactive, but we've gotten a lot of super cool work done over the year. The Roblox Legacy Wiki has seen a lot of use in various old Roblox circles across the internet, and that's amazing to see. I'm grateful for everyone's support and kind wishes! And I have to say thanks to all the editors who have contributed time, effort, and knowledge:

• Bitl
• GuestIsJustBest
• ObsidianPLG
• Pongo02
• Soupnuts6061
• Tobu

Thank you!

I'd really like to work on it more next year, including finishing a revamp that I haven't touched since late November.

The other project I did was remaking textarea.site as a way to learn the Svelte web framework and refresh my web development skills. I'd like to do more web development stuff in the future, but I have no idea what to make, hence the inactivity. Maybe things will change in 2024.

In August, I made a new effort to revive my site, and so far it's been a huge improvement. Posts aren't as active as I want them to be, but I've made tons of daily notes about different topics, and I have so many more I want to do. I'm still really happy about the whole look of the site, I think it finally looks a bit soulful and unique compared to before.

In December I got back into reading. And after Christmas, I've been making an effort to post here at least every other day. I don't think I'll keep this up for long, but I haven't run out of ideas yet and I can feel the habit of making sure to write something (even unpublished drafts) every day start to develop!

About Micrathena...

Micrathena is that new game designed for 2009+ versions of Roblox. And I haven't finished it. In fact, I haven't even touched the project since November!

But I don't want to cancel the project. I'm confident I will be working on it again very soon, and it'll come out when it comes out. I can live with on and off development, which is what's been happening.

• I made a prototype for something completely different in July and August
• I reworked the prototype into Micrathena in September
• Worked on it some more in October
• Worked on it very slightly in November
• December: Nothing.

Without a doubt, January will see work on this game.

Other stuff

Talking about my life is too personal even for this website. But I think a lot of the first part of this year was soulless, as were the years before it. I've only just started to have motives, hopes, and a plan for my future.

I think this really started with finishing my junior year of high school in May. I used a lot of the time in summer to reflect on things, as I finally traveled for the first time in years.

Mainly, the trip to Seattle helped set the course for my life, even if it's not heading straight for Seattle. I finally feel somewhat confident in my future, although there were still many, many bumps on the road and even at the moment. But I have hope I will make it through.

I just want to be more conscious about myself and my actions. Break free of the "autopilot" I feel like I've been going through. I picked classes I will actually enjoy, stuff that expands my mind in high school this year, rather than just accepting defaults.

I'm still not really there yet. But no matter what, I still feel like I've been slowly building myself up during the second part of this year, and in 2024, I will be the person I always wanted to be.

Happy new year, and here's to a passionate and fulfilling 2024!

-jame

He makes videos about a few topics, such as learning Japanese, learning art, working out, etc. But at their core, he makes videos about self-improvement and working to be better, to expand your mind and body every day.

I was very, very inactive not only on the blog, but on all projects and skills I'm learning in November and part of December. What helped me get back into the swing of things and with better disclipine was his videos.

Mainly, these two:

• Do Art for No Reason at All (Art for Practical People)
• What if You Had Started Earlier?

He does also make videos about whatever, like reviewing a mechanical keyboard (An Honest Review of the Lofree Flow) or renovating an old Soviet store into an house. Livakivi's channel is a very blog type of channel, if that makes sense.

I don't even do weightlifting (I probably should) and Japanese (though I am learning Italian), but I greatly appreciate the way he describes that core topic, self-improvement. There are lots of resources online for getting better, but being able to see someone's growth across weeks, months, even years, told to you in a very personal way, reassures me in a way books, news articles, and other sources don't.

It's not actually my code, but I did make a simple control to toggle the snow effect.

Adding the snowing effect

I was playing around with the classic snowstorm.js script by Scott Schiller, but I could never get it to properly turn on and off without requiring a page reload when making button. Plus, it always looked super distracting no matter what I did.

There's another popular(?) alternative that's implemented without any JavaScript, which is excellent.

CSSnowflakes

Some tweaks

I replaced the snowflake symbol (❅) used with a simple white circle emoji (⚪). I also made every other snowflake slightly smaller and more transparent, using a bit of CSS.

.snowflake:nth-child(odd) {
  color: rgba(1, 1, 1, 0.8);
  font-size: 0.5em;
}

Coding in the on/off toggle

Here's my code.

<button id="snow-toggle" onclick="toggleClick()">
  <img
    src="/assets/silk/weather_snow.png"
    alt="Toggle Snow"
    id="snow-icon">
</button>
<style>
  #snow-toggle {
    position: fixed;
    bottom: 1em;
    right: 2em;
    padding: 0;
  }

  #snow-icon {
    max-width: unset;
    height: 32px;
    width: 32px;
    image-rendering: pixelated;
  }
</style>
<script>
  const savedSettings = JSON.parse(localStorage.getItem("snowSettings")) || {
    snowEffect: !(window.matchMedia && window.matchMedia("(prefers-reduced-motion: reduce)").matches),
  };

  let snow = savedSettings.snowEffect;
  function updateSnowing() {
    document.getElementById("snowflakes").style.display = snow ? "block" : "none";
    document.getElementById('snow-icon').src = snow ? '/assets/silk/weather_snow.png' : '/assets/silk/weather_sun.png';
    saveSettings();
  }
  if (!snow) {
    updateSnowing() // apply previously saved changes on page load
  }

  function toggleClick() {
    snow = !snow;
    updateSnowing();
  }

  function saveSettings() {
    const settings = {
        snowEffect: snow,
    };
    localStorage.setItem('snowSettings', JSON.stringify(settings));
  }
</script>

The code creates a button with an image (pulled from the icon pack I'm using) in HTML. It makes it absolutely positioned in CSS, so it'll always show on the bottom right corner of the screen.

In JS, it simply toggles displaying the snow by setting the display style rule of the <div> containing snowflakes between none and block. It also saves the user's preference with LocalStorage, which I think is pretty neat. There's probably a more efficient way to write it than all the boilerplate I did with JSON and objects and stuff, but oh well.

If there's no saved preference, the code hides snow by default if the user prefers reduced motion, because accessibility is swag.

Happy holidays!

-jame

If you want to follow me:

• @jame@bookwyrm.social
• RSS feed if you're outside of the whole newfangled Fediverse thingy

What is Bookwyrm?

Bookwyrm is a social network for books (like Goodreads). So you can catalogue all your books on the website, give reviews and status updates, it's pretty cool! So far, it's been motivating me to read a little more, so that's nice.

Unlike Goodreads, it's free of corporations, and is designed to link up with services that use ActivityPub such as Mastodon. Bookwyrm is very good at filling a need I didn't even know I had!

Getting on Bookwyrm

It was pretty easy to create an account. Bookwyrm is tiny in comparison to the 10+ million user strong Mastodon, so nearly everyone is on the main instance, bookwyrm.social. About 15,000 people, to be specific.

Anyways, account's done. A nice feature I discovered is that you can import your books and reviews from Goodreads, or other places. I was able to import what's in my Calibre library, so after fixing a few books missing their cover, my whole personal library is here.

Maybe I'll make posts out of my reviews, as well as make more Bookwyrm posts if it keeps being interesting.

See you tomorrow,

- jame

Here's my gift to readers, and to myself: I will write a new post every day until New Years. So stay tuned!

That's all for now,

-jame

In other words, I'm not trying to read all of these books, but explore them. Even if you give up on a book, or simply skim it, you still gain something, I think.

I haven't actually read books in a few months now, and of course, I haven't read voraciously since I was 12 years old. If I build a habit now, I can change that for good. :^)

I'll post sometime soon, not sure when. Sunday? Then I can have 4 posts all in December, nice and tidy.

- jame

So, yeah. I've been dealing with spending more time on my phone than I'd like. And I try stuff like time tracking apps, blocking, etc. but nothing works. Quite simply, if my phone was there, I would be on it, such as before going to bed and then immediately waking up.

The problem is, I rely on my phone for certain things. Mainly, getting texts from my parents. This is the thing about smartphones - they're all-in-one almost to a fault at times.

After all, a common solution for this is to simply keep your phone out of your room when you sleep. But now I can't receive texts from my parents. And now I don't have an alarm clock either!

Introducing the smartwatch

Smartwatches seem to be equally good for 3 different things:

• Health and fitness tracking
• A remote control and display for your phone's media player and driving navigations
• A replacement for your phone at times (e.g. going out for a walk)

All of these are useful, but it's that 3rd thing that's super helpful in this situation. Thanks to my watch being tethered to my phone, I can send and receive text messages and voice calls.

Plus, it's the best alarm clock I've ever owned. Seriously! It being directly pressing and buzzing against your wrist is super effective at waking me up - no audio needed, so I don't have to annoy anyone with a loud alarm.

About price

Smartwatches can be expensive though. My reasoning probably sounds unnecessary to most. But just know it's not impossible to get great deals on a smartwatch if you really want one.

Officially, the Apple Watch SE seems like a crazy low price for the value - 249 for Wi-Fi only or 299 for LTE.

On the Android side, the Google Pixel Watch 2 released recently, so Google is marking the first generation decently low - 280 Wi-Fi and 330 LTE.

Other manufacturers are probably doing stuff too, mainly Samsung. I wasn't really paying attention to those because I wanted the strongest integration with my Google Pixel phone.

But of course, the best place to get one is used.

I got my LTE Pixel Watch from eBay for $160 by making an offer on a buy-it-now listing, but they seem to go anywhere from $100-200 on both eBay and Facebook Marketplace. So be vigilant on both platforms for a good deal. I hunted for maybe a week or two.

Note

The Pixel Watch also comes with 6 months of Fitbit Premium. Weirdly, when I set up my Watch, it *did* give me the offer. Maybe I got lucky and bought it from someone who never used it? Or does Google just offer it to any Google account who sets up a Pixel Watch? Not sure.

Scams are rare but possible, plus you don't get warranty buying second-hand. Not like Google repairs the Pixel Watch, though.

End

Maybe I'll write a daily note specifically about my experiences about the Pixel Watch, but I'll leave it at that for now.

Basically, it's a pretty nice pager for your phone. 📟

I find it fun, why do you think this site is here in the first place? I was inspired by stuff like this.

Throughout history, people have adored whatever was in the past, to a rose-tinted degree. Fashion seems to adore whatever was fashionable 20 years ago. And as stated, people are adoring the 20+ year old web.

But in 20 years from now, will people really be looking back on the internet we have now with admiration?

Well, maybe if the web gets even worse... which it definitely can.

Or maybe the web gets better? Which is a statement that means something different to everyone.

But we can't really predict the future, can we? Even if people do manage to glorify the late 2010s / early 2020s web, or if they don't, I bet it'll be for a reason we couldn't possibly have guessed.

For now, I'll just enjoy this wave.

That’s the promise: you will live more curiously if you write. You will become a scientist, if not of the natural world than of whatever world you care about. More of that world will pop alive. You will see more when you look at it.

Read it: https://jsomers.net/blog/more-people-should-write

Fantastic, inspiring post. I've kept journals the whole year because of this, and I won't stop.

Writing, being able to format and output thoughts in your mind, is one of the most effective tools for better valuing and reflecting on each day that goes by.

Writing needn’t be a formal enterprise to have this effect. You don’t have to write well. You don’t even have to “write,” exactly — you can just talk onto the page.

Walk around with a pen and a scrap of paper. Write some meaty emails. Engage more intensely with this place.

I want to write more posts. I have a few topics to write about, so this might push me to do it.

I'm not dead. That's the most important thing! Now you know.

I don't have anything to show for any projects at the moment. That doesn't mean I haven't done anything or I've abandoned them; just that they aren't complete enough to present.

That's the reason there haven't been any blog/devlog posts. For the near future, I only want to share completed work and not just discuss what I'm dreaming of.

I hope you understand.

- jame

We have no idea if it's been hosted and played by other people independently in this time. But a few weeks ago, my friend hosted a server for it, and people still like the game!

Meanwhile, the modern Roblox port now has 134 visits at the time of writing, and 10 favorites. Neat, for something that has had 0 promotion or anything shortly after release.

Looking back, it was really fun to make. It's kinda unfortunate I haven't had the motivation to finish a project since, but I swear that Micrathena's first alpha is 99.99% done and I have tons of plans for what to add next. 🙏

And about playing Spooking Out now... I feel like the instructions I gave in the original blog post are lackluster. I've actually been working on the Roblox Legacy Documentation project again, so hopefully we can start improving the site more and getting some good guides about how to play Novetus, host it, find maps, and maybe even showcase community content on the site, too...

OK, that's all. Have a good day!

Spooking Out release article Spooking Out modern port article

I say "my" team, but I am new to the club. It was worth it to take the whole day off to be there and support everyone. I also learned a lot for how I can help contribute in the feature, as well as what competitions are truly like!

There was also a partial solar eclipse, which I didn't even know was happening. But when dozens of people started coming outside where we hanging out with the robot, peering into the sun with cardboard glasses that look like the old 3-D ones, there you go.

What a sight it was! It's something else entirely with such a simple lens - where the sun once was, now a perfectly crescent-shaped silhouette in orange. Higher resolution video link

Anyways, about the competition, yeah. I didn't directly help much. But my teammates were very helpful, and it was nice meeting the majority of them for the first time. I mainly did just hang out and spectate, but I did help fetch a few things, as well as film the matches... that's gotta count for something, right?

Driving to and from the place was really something though. 2 hours one way... I've never driven that long before. And after doing so, I can say it was fine, but it was excruciatingly boring at times. Just having to devote full focus to essentially nothing but moving the wheel by fractions of an inch along a big road, for hours. I'll probably have to do it to see my family depending on the college I choose, so that'll be fun. Oh, along the way, I listened to a fanmade radio drama called "Sonic and Tails R" to pass the time, it was pretty good! Link

I feel like I should be talking more about the reason I went to the competition - Robotics?! I mainly talked about the other minute details. I don't wanna say it was bad. There were a lot of periods of just waiting around doing nothing, but even then, it was fun! I got to talk to people, hang out, etc. Not much more to say. How about some more photos to wrap it up?

I'm really looking forward to being a part of my high school's robotics team this year, and joining in for more competitions in the future. <3

I was considering making this a daily note, but because of all the images and stuff, I might as well call it a blog post. Even if the writing feels like a daily note, but who really cares about categorizing? I am the only person on this planet who will care about how daily notes and blog posts are differentiated on realja.me. So why worry about it? :P

I thought to write something about this because someone on Mastodon noted it in a post: the nights in Florida are growing cold. He wrote a thread that I'd like to share, about a change in pace for the place I live.

R🎃B 🏳️‍🌈 RMiddleton.art (@RMiddleton@mastodon.art) Sep 29:

In wonderful news my window is open and air that’s around 20C / 69F is breezing its way in. That makes me very happy. Window is still open. All day the breeze has been terrific. I live in Florida! (Northeast) October-April can be really wonderful here. (Strictly talking about weather. The people and the government are atrocious.)

Sep 30:

Another day in the comfort zone of no heat & no AC. I probably won’t continue to post every cool and comfortable day in a toot, but I am noting them in my calendar. It’s a form of gratitude journaling. There is a lot I don’t like about my building, town, county, state, and nation. If it were easy I would live elsewhere with no hesitation. Reminding myself of what feels good about here helps.

Oct 1:

Since I’m feeling kinda down today I’ll return to the comfortable weather. The breezes continue. Windows open for at least the last 72 hours here in northeast Florida. It’s 6:45 pm and I just decided I need socks to warm my tootsies. (Going barefoot at home is my preference for keeping cool during summer.) The weather cycle happens every year and every year it’s a pleasant surprise!

Oh! Also today my bed received a cover for the first time since May. My summer bedding is cool sheets only. (I don’t use AC any more than I have to.)

And finally Oct 6, where I saw the post:

Going on one week of 24/7 fully open windows, no heat or AC, here in northeast Florida (Jacksonville). I like keeping track of this info so I am entering Perfect Weather as an all day event into my calendar, set to repeat yearly. Next year I can compare.

Amazing! I actually happen to live near Jacksonville, so I opened my window at night and...

I relished as the elusive chill filled my room. That was one of the best nights of sleep I've had in years.

It makes me think back to Washington. After all, cold like that is the norm, not relegated to a few weeks or months a year.

I hope to move back someday. However long it will take.

Things are tolerable for a change, but for how long?

I just write blog posts in my code editor, Visual Studio Code. It does the job, and writing Markdown anywhere else might cause issues because of which features are supported by which editors. It has no smart features, but I could install extensions that add some of them.

For everything else, if not on a school computer, I write it in Obsidian. I'll write a note sometime praising Obsidian, but it's basically an amazingly useful knowledge-base/note-taking writing app. I wrote my college application essay in Obsidian! Besides features like auto-closing quotes, brackets and auto-formatting lists, it only has a spell-checker, which I turned off.

I've used Microsoft Word on school computers for essays and stuff.

So what about smarts?

By "Smart features" I mean stuff like:

• Spell check
• Grammar check
• Auto-correct
• Smarter selection - only being able to select whole words at a time with the mouse
• Probably more

I turned all these off on MS Word. I'll finally put the reason here for all this:

it's annoying

I'm just annoyed by the red and blue squiggly lines while I'm trying to write. The "smart" text selection gets in the way too. And when I'm trying to write words and names that aren't in the dictionary, it changes them.

I'm reminded of how George R. R Martin uses a 40 year old word editor on DOS to write, because he is tired of this too.

"Well, I actually like it. It does everything I want a word processing program to do and it doesn't do anything else ... I don't want any help. I hate some of these modern systems where you type a lowercase letter and it becomes a capital. I don't want a capital. If I wanted a capital, I would have typed a capital. Stop fixing it!"

Though to be fair, I think of myself as having a pretty strong grip on proper spelling and grammar. I'm not perfect, but I've written all of my prior blog posts without any help :^)

And even then, I did paste my college application essay into Google Docs for the spelling/grammar checks. There were a couple...

I think, for the part of it where you're just trying to convert your thoughts into words, disabling the software from getting in your way is ideal. We can check for the minor stuff later...

(I was gonna write more of a point, but I actually wrote everything except those last few lines the day before, and I'm tired, so I've decided to just wrap it up and post it.)

Can you do it? Click to Ten is a game I found on my friend's Steam profile - he only had 1 minute of playtime, yet he told me he beat it! How can that be? Is it really that easy to click to ten?

I had to find out. And the game was free, too.

Look at the trailer, this game has to be good!

I installed it, and the worry set in as I slowly clicked.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6..

7...

8...?

9...?!

One more. So close, yet so far. What could happen? Would it be a jumpscare? A funny image, maybe? Or what about a Steam achievement? There was only one way to find out.

So, I clicked.

Spoiler alert by the way.

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The last click...

I carefully lowered my index finger onto the mouse. I felt the cool plastic of the device soothe my nervous jitter. My curiousity was overtaking me. I summoned my courage, and pushed down with a cautious force. Click.

...And then the game closed.

Yeah thats what it does it just closes the game. No wonder he beat it in a minute.

(This post is sarcasm btw)

I still haven't gotten into a good schedule of finding time to write blog posts. These past few weeks, the time I devote to working on projects has been spent almost completely on Micrathena. (Or, just slacking off from it). So that's why there's been a lack of "thought" (non-nerd) daily notes.

But what about tech related daily notes? "Today I Learned" posts, right? Well, I actually have been learning a lot from this project, and found several note-worthy topics. But the problem is... I've been developing this game in secret! If I make a daily note, I would have to give up aspects of the game for the sake of context (making the context more abstract would make it less clear to understand).

So, I'm still writing daily notes, I just haven't gone all the way through with releasing them yet.

But today, I have decided to just release 2 other posts I've written as-is.

1. I need to blog more - September 28, 2023
2. Thoughts on corru.observer (it's very cool) - September 25, 2023

Oh, and about Micrathena

I should do this in a more dedicated post, but I want Micrathena's full reveal to be a bang with hopefully a trailer of footage taken from private testing with other people. But I'm excited to say that's happening really really soon! I've been spending the last few days just ironing out any multiplayer-related bugs, and it should be almost ready for other people to try playing on a server by... maybe even tomorrow! No promises, but the promised reveal should happen this week. (I've been saying that quite a bit on my Mastodon, but I think I can say it this time with almost complete confidence).

Please stay tuned for more info.

I made this notes section to encourage faster writing, but it makes me question how exact the separation is. Between nerd writing and non-nerd writing that is, and I do want to do more non-nerd writing. I'm not a big fan of the countless vapid blog sites by tech workers who only write about the most mundane boring things relating to, like, web frameworks or whatever. Right?

And that writing is useful, and important, but I really just want a mix of that in addition to other things.

I'm gonna start using the blog section more, even if the posts aren't as in-depth or have as many images as before. (Really, images are what costs so much time... seriously)

So basically, daily notes are primarily short nerd stuff that doesn't really have a major moral or informative takeaway, it's just... to note something down.

When I stumbled across it, I basically spent the rest of my night playing it for 3 hours straight. It's right up my wheelhouse, and great stuff!! I really do not want to say anything about what corru.observer is about. If you think you are interested, stop reading and play it now.

https://corru.observer

Come back when you're done, spoilers are ahead!

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My thoughts

Wow.

It's really something. Where do I begin?

It's super creative, and embodies a lot of interesting art styles and storytelling techniques familiar to other "indie web" projects, such as NeoCities websites (where this is hosted!) and the work of artists such as VLIF.

The constant changing of how you interact with the game - from 3D to dialogue interactions to RPG battles is incredibly engaging to me, and is something I would like to do if I ever make something like this.

Writing... worldbuilding... it makes my head spin with how deep it goes, mainly lore. The creator developed the alien species really well in a way that makes you reflect on what is considered "normal" in human society, right? At least, that's what I took from it. This is one of my favorite storytelling techniques, is when you're right in the middle of everything, you know next to nothing, but as the story develops you start piecing together the elements. Such as finding out the cyst is a sort of Google Glass brain implant thingy, what the alien figures of speech mean, etc. It's super engaging.

But speaking of writing, story-wise, is there a message or moral in here? I still love it from an art perspective, but in my head the story just seems like... a series of events. Oh well. The story isn't finished, anyways, so we'll have to see how it wraps up.

I didn't play all of it - honestly I got a bit tired of the RPG gameplay but that was due to me doing everything up to that point in one sitting. But I've seen gameplay of the rest, and all in all, corru.observer is very swag, go try it and show the creator some love, they have a Twitter and a website. That's all from me today!

Do you think 3D printing is cool? My dad bought a 3D printer for the both of us last year, but it went mostly unused due to some issues with calibration and also just, kinda getting lazy.

But I set everything up again, and somehow, after doing nothing but collect dust for 4 months, it prints better than when I was actively calibrating. Oh well.

It's cool, the ability to just m a k e things without any effort. Anyways, yeah, OctoPrint is neat. I plugged the printer into my home server, along with a webcam, and (combined with Tailscale) can check in on my printer and remotely start or cancel prints from anywhere.

Check the OctoPrint website for more info and an installation guide: octoprint.org

I'm sure people have written countless times about this. But it's true that being versatile is one of the best skills you can have as a software developer.

textarea.site is not much more than a textbox and some utility features; that's kinda the point of it. When I first made it a year ago, I wrote it in React. It's a pretty good learning project, after all. But...

Loading 200kb of JavaScript for a textbox is not fun, though. There are projects where 200kb is worth it. After all, React was made by Facebook. That's something a large framework would be vital for, as a way to handle the complexity.

But in this case? Why not just use vanilla, plain JavaScript? Or a lighter framework?

I could have gone with vanilla JS, sure. The Web Components technologies seems alright for small projects like this. But I decided to go with Svelte, just because it seemed more similar to React and was easier to pick up. So I spent a few hours going over the tutorials, and then spent a day rewriting my progress in the new framework.

And now, it's (mostly) done! This commit is where I applied all the rewriting to the development branch.

Why Svelte

Svelte is pretty cool, actually. It compiles down to vanilla JS, so its effectively not very different from if I decided to write vanilla in the first place. But it provides a development experience similar to React, but even better. And just look at that size! Just under 9kb when gzipped, and 24.67kb unzipped is still a massive reduction in size.

End of note

Frontend development has exploded in complexity over the last decade. It's not inherently bad - you should just explore more than the first thing you learn, so the technologies you use in your projects are properly suited.

And of course, you shouldn't be thinking about technologies if you want to build a project. As shown with textarea.site, rewriting or optimizing can be done later when necessary.

Now I'm just rambling... but I just wanted to share what I gained from rewriting the project. BTW, if you want to test these new updates, you can find the development build here on GitHub Pages. Have a good day, thanks for reading!

I wrote on my Projects page that the new Project Micrathena will resume development this month. I hope I will find time to work on it, but it will likely be at the end of September, and not the start as hoped.

Instead, I'll be devoting most of my free time to improving at web development. It's something I've been meaning to do for a while. Essentially, learning backend web development finally, and other various frameworks (Next.js, Tailwind CSS)

I've also returned to textarea.site, finally! I'm working on rewriting it in more standard frameworks and tools. The source code for the update development is here on GitHub.

I also mentioned college applications. Yes, college applications for most colleges opened on the first of this month, so I'm setting goals to complete my essay in the next few days and complete applications this month.

Also, clubs starting up in school, I'm joining a few new ones this year.

That's all I have to say. I really really really want to make Micrathena a thing. But this stuff is more important right now cuz... I need a source of income and I hope I can get something going with freelance web development. That's something that needs to happen now, not later. I also don't want to forget about college applications, that's why I'm trying to be on point about it.

I'm writing in circles now, so I'm ending it here. Stay tuned for more info. And hey look, I'm writing as promised! The daily notes, I think, will be really helpful for writing less formal posts compared to the blog.

There's a sidebar instead of the old header. I think it's a more effective use of desktop screen space, and on mobile, it turns into a horizontally scrolling top bar! I was inspired by Zenith's website in terms of design. The influence is definitely noticable in a lot of places :)

The blog page was redesigned too. I worked to add more comprehensive options for RSS and tags. Now, you can subscribe to individual feeds. And with tags, there's tags for more specific topics, which don't take up as much space as the commonly used tags.

The Devlogs page finally looks like a normal blog index, so that's nice.

The Daily Notes post feed is brand new, and is home to short-form writing. It's inspired by Simon Willison's TILs. "TILs" (Today I Learned) will be the main type of post, but I hope to write more than that - personal thoughts, that kind of thing. We'll see. Despite the name, I don't think I will ever actually post daily. Every other day, if I'm lucky. I keep the name because it's kinda catchy and fits well regardless.

It already has 2 posts that you can go read:

• August 16, 2023: Installing the latest Ruby with rbenv on Debian
• August 18, 2023: Jailbreaking a Kindle Voyage and installing KOReader

The Projects page is also new, listing my portfolio of works in a concise page. I spent a lot of time on its design, please give it a look!

The About + Contact page was remade from scratch, and it's very long now. It's not only about me, but it's about the site too. There are credits for the icons I used and shout-outs to people and sites that inspired mine! There's also a list of all my tech, if that's something you wanna see I guess.

I'm also more open about my personal self, mainly on the about page. I put up my Resume, and linked to my LinkedIn page which shows my real face and name! Losing anonymity on the internet is something I've been thinking about, and generally, it's something I think I should do in order to help move towards profiting from my skills online. So there you go...

The tags system should be more robust and precise with the separate feeds. Tag filter pages now only show you posts from a certain feed, but give you the option to switch feeds or have all 3 feeds in the filter. This might be a bit overkill, but who's to say in a few years from now when this site has matured and there's, what, 100 posts? 200 notes?

Last thing: a new button, enjoy. You should see other websites using it update automatically, like Nick64's site :D

Speaking of which, I'm confident posting will be considerably more active. I've spent a lot of time thinking about what kind of content this website will have. The daily notes especially would allow me to write whatever I want without worry of disrupting more long-form, important posts. Plus, announcements won't get buried by other posts thanks to it being archived in the Projects page. Finally, realja.me is organized and capable for everything I want to do with it.

This is the 3rd time I made a status update after a few months of inactivity saying how I'm healthier and I'm back before being inactive again, but I dunno. This redesign has made me satisfied with the website. I don't feel uncomfortable looking at it, or guilty feeling that it's ugly, or neglected. I think every time I return in that way, I'm not entirely there, but I improve a little bit, and so does my site. This might be the one to push me over. 3rd time's the charm, right?

WE ARE SO BACK :))))))

I'm new to KOReader, so I'll have to see if I actually like using it as a daily driver. But it can't hurt to try, and at the very least, liberating the device might come in handy in the future.

By the way, man I love tiny devices like this. I have an iPod Mini I've been meaning to write about. I think small portable devices that serve a single purpose are pretty cool! The Kindle Voyage is the smallest one they made, with a 6-inch screen. Super thin, too. It may not have USB-C, and it may not be waterproof, but that's OK.

Jailbreaking

My Kindle Voyage stopped getting updates at 5.13.6. Luckily, there is a known Kindle exploit working up to 5.14.2, so we're good here!

After researching a bit, I found the source for the jailbreak is at a forum called MobileRead, here's the link to the primary resource:

Tutorial: Open Sesame! (AKA., The New & Improved JailBreak Index)

Like with the previous note about installing the latest Ruby on Debian, I will not directly provide instructions, both because that would take much longer to write, and because information can change. There might be a new exploit method, or a new security update by Amazon, or new jailbreak software to install for setup. In all of these cases, the guides will be altered, and my information will become out of date and will be unhelpful or even harmful. A brick or even a ban are near-zero chances, but I can't guarantee. Please read the forum posts if you're here to do what I did, and I'll just provide the basic outline of running through the tutorial here.

Identification

Alright, I already know my device is a 2014 Kindle Voyage. All good here.

Device generation concerns

The main focus of this document will be all current devices with a touchscreen, running FW 5.x.

Yep, this device has a touchscreen. It's not running specifically version 5.x, but that's not important.

The right tools for the job

The author makes separate threads for each software they make, but the downloads are all on one single thread for convenience. I'll keep it open in a separate tab.

Tools: Snapshots of NiLuJe's hacks

The downloads are provided as tar.xz files. Luckily, I already use 7-Zip, which can unpack this archive format. All good.

Jailbreak

Now here's where it begins. The current method is called "WatchThis", and is found on a separate thread. Let's do it!

Tutorial: WatchThis - Software Jailbreak for any Kindle <= 5.14.2

The procedure is slightly lengthy, but doesn't require anything but a charging wire that connects to USB and a PC. I have to wipe my Kindle, but all my books are on Calibre so I'm fine with this.

I put the device in "demo mode" which I didn't even know existed. Using the search bar to access these commands is super interesting, honestly...

Then copy some files, do some more stuff.

Unique steps

Some stuff did not apply to my Kindle Voyage, and some did.

• I did not need to use the alternative demo mode entry method.
• I accidentally connected to wifi when setting up demo mode. However, this seemed to cause no issues.
• There was no misconfiguration lockout, no need for the "secret gesture" to bypass it.
• I was stupid and didn't see the part that told you to enter ;dsts (using the homescreen searchbar) to access settings in order to install WatchThis. However, opening the triple-dot menu, selecting Legal, and choosing Safety and Compliance did the trick.
• An application error did occur, so I had to do the appropriate step.

Now, the jailbreak has been installed! Back to the Open Sesame post.

Making sure your jailbreak survives updates

I severely doubt Amazon will update the Kindle Voyage again, but you never know. It's as simple as installing a tool called "JB Hotfix" on the Snapshots thread, unpacking it to the root of your Kindle, and running Update Your Kindle from the settings. Installing this should do... some stuff that is good for you, I don't know.

This will also take care of a few other necessary bits and bobs for the following steps.

Installing custom packages

This part was extremely unintuitive. So, custom applications are installed using a tool called the "MobileRead Package Installer". However, this depends on another tool called KUAL! How am I supposed to install MRPI if I have no way to install KUAL?

Well, according to the author, just install MRPI as if I already installed KUAL. Oh well. Again, just extract to the root.

KUAL

This is a GUI frontend that many custom tools will rely on, as such, we consider it a mandatory dependency. As it's designed to run across the full range of Kindle devices, there are four different variants of it available.

Alright. For the Voyage, we will need the Booklet (coplate) version, as our firmware is >= 5.9.

Following the guide further, I dropped the .bin into the mrpackages directory that was added from MRPI. Then, I ran ;log mrpi and now KUAL is installed!

Side note: My frustration with using forums for this stuff

I ran into this when figuring out how to install LineageOS onto an old Android tablet I had. These forums are just so... labyrinthine at times. Dozens of obscure forum threads, tons of digging, at least a dozen tabs open to find anything, having to pore through pages of comments for the real fix or solution. It gives me a headache.

MobileRead was nowhere near as bad, but it still gave me a headache. I don't know why, it was pretty intuitive so I think I'm just stupid. And it worked, so I can't complain too much. Ah well.

Installing KOReader

Let's get on to the 2nd part: installing KOReader.

This is stupid easy, but took me a few minutes to find out which specific variant I had to use. The proper installation instructions, which you should be using instead of this, can be found here:

Installation on Kindle devices

For me, I went to their website and clicked Download. This should take you to a GitHub Releases page for the latest version. Scroll down to the Assets section, there are several versions to choose from. They have Android and Linux ports, as well as other e-readers, which is all in all pretty swag. Reminds me of Rockbox in a lot of ways, but for ebook readers.

For the Voyage, I had to use koreader-kindlepw2-v<VERSION>.zip. You might have to click "Show all assets" to see it in the list.

Simply just unzip the archive into the root, and that's it! There are additional steps to install dictionaries and OCR language data, but I didn't grab those.

Complete

Now I have KOReader, an e-reader software that's packed with far more features than the vanilla Kindle firmware. It also has built-in integration with Calibre, which is fantastic.

I'll see if I like it or not, but for now, I'm interested in seeing what else I can do with a jailbroken Kindle!

For context, rbenv is a version manager tool for Ruby. This allows me to have multiple versions of Ruby installed at once and switch between at any time. Also, Debian has very outdated packages by design. Installing Ruby through their repositories would give me 2.7.4. Along with having 4 patches since, the 2.7.x line has been unsupported since March 2023.

Not like having the latest version is the end of the world, but it's nice (and also to keep things consistent across devices and servers).

Note

I've followed these steps on Ubuntu 22.04.3 WSL - this guide should apply to any Linux distribution based on Debian, not just Debian itself.

The simplest way is to install one of many Ruby manager tools and build it from source. I chose rbenv for not much reason other than the other tools were more finicky to install, wasn't easy to set up fish shell integration for, or just not recommended by the Ruby community.

Installation

The installation process is pretty simple. Instructions are on the GitHub repo, I used the git checkout method, as like Ruby, rbenv is in the Debian repos but is out of date.

But that installs rbenv, the manager. We still need to install a Ruby version to use.

So, I continued the guide, using this command to install 3.2.2, the latest Ruby version as of writing:

    rbenv install 3.2.2

Of course, it didn't go smoothly. I don't know if I would be writing this just to tell you to follow GitHub instructions. There were specific packages I had to install on Debian to make it successfully compile and install Ruby:

    apt install -y build-essential bison zlib1g-dev libyaml-dev libssl-dev libgdbm-dev libreadline-dev libffi-dev

Now I can get back to working on my website, which uses a framework that relies on Ruby. Hence, today's note.

By the way, this note is the first one! Here's a blog post I wrote to explain this section of the site. Hopefully, these notes can get on search engines and help people who are running into my problems.

The trip was a few weeks ago. I've been meaning to write this blog post since the day I got home, but having time to reflect isn't a bad thing.

Washington is great! I used to live here, and it's still a very cool place. The colleges, too.

If you don't care too much about lore you can skip to here for pretty pictures.

Click the images for a higher resolution version!

Recap from last post

I can go to college in a year from now. Where do I go?

I've lived in the greater Seattle area my whole life, before my family and I moved to Florida two years ago. Unfortunately, I've never really grown to like it.

It's due to a variety of factors, and maybe I could have done things different to make a life for myself, but at this point, I've decided I want to move back for college. I want to get into the University of Washington!

It's not out of nostalgia. There are a lot of things to do and places to see in WA that I never got to do, or even turned doing. Such as hiking, exploring landmarks in Seattle, and going to national parks. Even if college and work takes up the bulk of my time, I would be grateful to live here - I simply prefer the cold climate, hilly landscape, and culture of the Pacific Northwest.

A few weeks ago, I was able to visit Seattle for just a few days. If I worked for the next few months, I could have afforded a trip, but I am incredibly grateful for my parents to indulge me on this adventure.

I've been thinking about a trip for a while - to sample the area, and the colleges, to see if this is really the decision I want to make. Leaving the SeaTac airport, my mind was already made up.

For my senior year of high school in Florida, I will work hard, with disclipine and drive that's been lacking in my life, in order to live here again.

My thoughts on Washington

All in all, it's very nice. I didn't have time to explore more of the nature side of it - my time was in cities (Seattle) and colleges.

Seattle

Seattle...

is very nice. Despite living so close, my family only went to Seattle a handful of times my whole life. After staying a few nights, it would be fun to live here. Generally impractical due to the distance from colleges and price of living, unless I went to University of Washington's primary campus in Seattle. And I would love to!

Seattle isn't a total wreck and full of crime and homeless people like some might say. Downtown did have a considerable number, but I stayed in the Queen Anne neighborhood, and it was surprisingly clean and beautiful.

My favorite thing about Seattle is the walkability. Being able to wake up early in the morning and take just a 5 minute walk from the room to a local coffee shop was blissful. I could only hope to live in a place where I can do that!

Public transit

I rode the transit for the first time I was here, to get from Seattle to my hometown in order to see my good friends.

It was cheap, practically free. It covered the entire Puget Sound (AKA "greater Seattle") area. It was mostly safe. The decision to have lanes dedicated to buses (and carpools) was a smart decision.

But it was also rarely on time. The bus would constantly be delayed by minutes. Homeless people, drug addicts, got on the bus one time and be loud and annoying.

A different time, there was a father, mother, and their kid on the bus. They were very nice, and even handed me free bus tickets when I was fumbling with trying to pay exact change as required. The buses aren't totally dangerous as I said, but even then... I don't know if I would take my child on the bus. Maybe. Who knows, I'm just rambling at this point.

The Light Rail project is an effort to build high-speed rail covering the Puget Sound. I remember it being talked about way back in 5th grade, how it would let us ride from our town all the way to Seattle!

And it's still not done?!

The Seattle path is complete, I think. You can go to a lot of places around Seattle and nearby, such as the University of Washington, the various neighborhoods of the city, and even the SeaTac airport. So that's all well and good.

Just crazy that a decade on, it's still being worked on, and constantly being delayed.

Climate and landscape

The Pacific Northwest isn't for everyone. In the same way, Florida's tropical environment isn't for everyone. It's definitely not for me.

I don't want to say Washington is special, a lot of places in Tennesee looked similar to the photo above. Either way, I find it nice. I prefer it to Florida's Minecraft-superflat landscape.

Plus, the temperature and weather of Washington. Even in June, it's cold, and that's bliss to me. Even the rainy days and gray skies – I wouldn't have it any other way. This summer in Florida, it's been over 90 degrees at all times of every day, and I hate it. Not to mention the humidity...

UW Bothell

The University of Washington has campuses in Seattle, Bothell, and Tacoma. Although, after this trip, it seems Seattle is obviously the main one, and the only substantial one.

The Bothell campus was the first I toured. It's nice, honestly! I'm focused on UW Seattle, but I'm not ruling anything out.

I noticed they're only now starting to build student housing, and cafeterias too. It seems like a bit of a community college... not only because its attached to one.

Either way, I'll assess my options when I have to make the final decision, and UW Bothell will be one of them. It's quite a servicable university.

UW Seattle

The Seattle campus was something to behold. It's big! There's so much to do! And it's slotted right within the heart of Seattle.

There are a lot of concerns with getting in. As an out-of-state student, can I really get in, for Computer Science of all things? Even if I do, can I afford it?

I don't have the answer to that, but I don't want to give up on one of, if not the best college in the area I want to live in out of worry.

So for now, what I will say is that UW Seattle is a beautiful, large school, with tons of opportunities, all inside a beautiful large city with tons of opportunities. :]

The trip

Now, we can move onto something more interesting! Pictures!!!

I'll basically use the pictures I took to have a timeline of the trip, day by day.

Day 1

We got to the airport at around 3 AM. After a dozen hours of running through airports and flying, we made it to the SeaTac airport.

Look, there's Mount Rainier! Or one of the mountains/volcanoes in Washington. Probably Rainier.

My friends were available, so instead of going to my accomodation, I went to my former hometown to see them.

This picture is from a local bookstore in the town center, Brick and Mortar Books. Very cool, support them if you happen to be in Redmond.

After a night of hanging out in-person for the first time in years, I said goodbye (for now) and headed to the accomodation, where my parents were currently at.

Look at that – you can see the Space Needle from my bed! This trip is everything I dreamed of, and even more.

Day 2

I woke up early in the morning, put on my jacket, and took a short walk from the room through the Queen Anne neighborhood. I stopped by a local bakery and coffee shop, Nielsen's Pastries for a drink and a delicious snack.

If you find yourself there, get a "Potato"! It's a pastry filled with custard, but it really does look like a potato.

Anyway, we toured the Bothell and Seattle campuses of the University of Washington in the afternoon.

Oddly, I couldn't find any good photos of the UW Seattle campus. I remember being super absorbed by everything, I was constantly asking the tour guide questions. Sorry for the lack of photos, I guess lol.

In the afternoon, I headed with my parents to the famous Pike Place Market.

That is one expensive dragonfly. It looks beautiful, but I don't have almost three thousand dollars to drop on this. Bummer.

Later that night, I went walking through Seattle. Not anywhere in particular, just walking for a few hours to explore the city.

Good night, Seattle.

Day 3

Hung out with friends all day today!

The bottom image might be the favorite image I've taken this whole trip.

Day 4

On the 4th day, I headed home.

Thanks for everything. :')

As I write this, in 6 hours, I'm heading to the airport and departing for Seattle, Washington.

I used to live in Washington, specifically a city nearby Seattle. My close family moved to Florida a few years ago, and I don't feel at home here. Maybe, I... move back?

I've thought about it for a very long time. A trip to revisit the place would be a great start instead of jumping straight in with packing my bags and moving (Not like I can even do that without substantial effort and devotion). Now that a trip is on my doorstep, it's hard to describe how to feel. It's hard to feel, for an odd reason.

I went with my family to Tennessee to meet a relative new to my life. This state is beautiful!

After living in Florida for the last few years, I missed hills. TN has hills galore!

Honestly, I don't really know what travel blogs write about, so I will instead use this blog post as a journal to overcome feelings and plan my goals for the upcoming trip.

Enjoy the pictures, though. PSA: Open images individually to see their full, uncropped size :)

Pictures and journaling

Although, I didn't do much exploring. The Airbnb we stayed at was wonderful, and the goal wasn't necessarily about Tennessee, but about family.

As the Washington trip approaches, I need to have a different approach to this trip than any other I've been on.

I'm going to not only tour colleges for next year, but the state as a whole. Do I really still want to live here? Or is it just some sort of nostalgia of childhood life affecting my views?

To that end, I want to use the time I have to my fullest. 4 days, so 2 full days to experience Seattle. I think I'll spend a day to hang out with old friends in my old city, too.

I don't want to sleep in for this trip, and I don't want to spend most of my time relaxing in our accomodation.

What will I do with this extra time? I'm not sure. You know what sounds nice? Waking up early, walking out of the room to a nearby coffee shop and grabbing a drink in the cold Seattle morning... Seattle is infamous for having a Starbucks on basically every block. Local places, of course, are great too.

Speaking of cold, I miss that too. Florida is too hot and humid for my liking.

There is a lot I miss about Washington. Will it live up to my expectations? I don't want to have too many.

I'm looking forward to the trip above all. Washington may not be how I remember it, but that's okay.

In the past, I could have done so much more, and so much better. I'm nowhere near the best person I can be. At least I'm improving now, and fighting for a better future as much as I can. So, the one thing I hope to get from this trip is determining what I will be spending my final year of high school working towards.

Good pictures would also be nice to get too.

-James

Welcome to the 2nd General Update. It's been almost a month since I've spoken here. In fact, it's May! Almost June?! My friend Nick has written an article for his personal updates to mark the start of a new month, so you should read that too. He's dealing with stuff like money, college, and lots of personal projects... just like me.

New general update means new button

I'm proud of my animated 88x31 button. I don't think my website has gotten any special backlinks yet, other than from Nick64's, but I still like it. What's a personal website without its own button, after all?

However, I promised something. I encourage webmasters including my button to hotlink directly to my website. This may sound bad, but my server, or rather, CloudFlare's extensive caching, can take it.

What this allows me to do is update the button and have it automatically change on all sites that include it. The button is a recording made in the classic Roblox engine, so I could just plop the "realjame" logo blocks into any classic map to keep it fresh.

Well, here you go.

Pop quiz: what map this is? If you want to know, it's in the name of the file.

How are things?

I don't want to get too in details about my personal life, but things are going OK. I still have a lot of ideas and plans to better myself for the rest of the year.

I haven't been totally following my plans from the previous general update but I've still been gradually getting better at life and stuff.

School's out, and I don't want things to slip away without school's rigid schedule to keep me somewhat normal.

I've already been using a calendar/to-do list to help guide myself day-by-day (blog post soon I promise), so I think that will really make this summer productive for me.

Oh, and another thing that may also help me... is a job.

I got an internship

It's a month-long (paid) IT internship at a health company! I got it through my school, and I'm really glad.

Since the start of this year I've been pressuring myself, maybe a bit too much, to get a good job. It feels like a weight's been lifted off my chest.

I am still new to working standard jobs, specifically tech-related ones. But I am confident in my abilities, both technically and socially :^)

Devlogs, a new addition to the site

realja.me now hosts mirrored copies of the teaser/announcement posts I make on Twitter and Mastodon about what I'm working on.

I bet that it would be annoying to scroll through my whole Twitter account, through all my random meme posts and other stuff in order to reach the important thing.

Also... you just never know what'll happen with Twitter.

I wonder if this site could act as a sort of "portfolio" of my work. I mean, I already have the quick links section on the home page. Now that would be something...

Click here to view all the devlogs!

The devlogs are short, usually just an image or maybe a video, and a description. Future devlog posts will probably have some additional information not contained in the tweet. For the devlogs, you'll see old Roblox games, websites, just whatever I'm working on really.

Not all the devlogs have been fully transcribed onto here. Some of the older ones are just a direct Twitter link and nothing else. I'll clean them up later, I hope.

By the way, the news and Devlogs section currently are in the same pool as standard blog posts. Hopefully you aren't too annoyed that I'm separating these articles if you use an RSS feeder... no one has complained about that yet, so I'll leave it as-is. Cuz I'm lazy.

So, what am I doing with the site next?

Travel Blog time?

I am taking 3 trips this summer: Tennesee, Seattle area, and Italy. After being unable to travel these last few years due to the pandemic, and trying to improve myself lately, I want to savor these trips!

Journaling

I plan to carry a small journal. In fact, I'm currently in Tennesee as I type this up, and I've been writing in it!

Journaling has been one of my favorite activities recently. This one is so beautiful, I had to save it for something special.

I love the insect-themed cover, it looks (and probably is!) straight out of an entomology book. In addition, the leather binding and metal corners are really well put together, along with the gritty feeling pages.

I got the journal from a local arts market. Support local businesses!

In fact, here's a direct link to the business, Root Cove Bindery. If you live in the Jacksonville, Florida area, go check them out!!

So, uhh... how

I don't know much about travel blogs. What are they about, exactly?

Do people just write "I went to X and did Y and then Z and it was fun" and throw up some pictures? I could do that.

I'll figure out my own way of telling the story. Because all 3 of these places mean something to me personally, in very different ways.

But maybe, I don't want to tell my full life story yet to internet strangers.

Pretty pictures are still guaranteed though!

Full image here!

New project: Farming game

I've been working on this project recently (very, very slowly).

It's a new game for classic Roblox! It's kind of like Stardew Valley at first glance, but a lot has been changed, removed, or added to make this game feel right at home with classic Roblox.

Stay tuned

Scroll through the devlogs to find more info.

Follow me on Twitter and Mastodon for updates.

There's also an ongoing update thread in the Roblox Client Search Discord server, so check that out too. (direct thread link)

Last update's article ideas

Here's the topics I guaranteed want to make into blog posts (I'll update them into links when they get written):

• Announcing the Old Roblox Wiki rehosting project
• The beginning of and being invited to the Novetus Creative Team (making old Roblox games "in-house" for the launcher as a small team)
• A modern Roblox project I spent a lot of time working on in 2021 but gave up on
• A 2nd failed project for modern Roblox that came before it
• My thoughts on something I've been thinking of acquiring for a while, it's mentioned in this article (if you want to spoil the surprise...?)
• Can a YouTube channel and a blog coexist?
• Making a ChatGPT plugin for old Roblox: because Roblox is putting AI in modern Studio, two can play at that game :troll: (mastodon alt)
• Modding a USB-C port onto a Nintendo DSi

So far, I have done NONE of these. Sorry. Most I want to do. Others, I've found, are brief enough topics that I can just write their full story here.

Roblox Legacy Docs

AKA the Old Roblox Wiki in the original article, but I renamed it since then. You can find it here.

I'm not going to make an announcement article. It's already been announced, a long time ago! Now that devlogs are here, you can access the original announcement post easily.

For those who don't know about it, Roblox Legacy Documentation is a useful resource for people making Roblox games on old clients in the modern day, like I am. It could also be used simply for people who want to see what the Roblox engine and community was like back in the day.

The wiki is built off an archive of the Roblox Wiki from June 2012, but we've been doing a lot of work to make it more helpful.

After all, website documentation isn't really necessary anymore, right?

I do want to make articles about the project though. Like how I started it in the first place, not knowing anything about MediaWiki (the server software used). Or our progress, including a newfound interest in April.

The CRT monitor

AKA "my thoughts on something" etc. in the original article, I didn't use the real name for a surprise.

The CRT monitor is pretty cool. I like it!

I'm using it as an extra monitor for my computer setup, so now I have 3.

Due to the small resolution, I find it useful mainly for displaying some information such as a terminal window while I am working.

Problems with it

However, it has a really strange issue with color on the edges. Degaussing, both through monitor options and rubbing a strong magnet over it hasn't done anything to help.

Maybe I'll try to manually degauss it in the future... either way, I do like it.

And hey, owning it and presenting it makes it seem like I'm credible. It's like having bookshelves in the background of your camera. Makes you look smart.

New article ideas/plans

• Improving my wellbeing and productivity by maintaining a calendar (timeblocking strategy) and to-do list
• Renewing the life of an unused Android tablet by flashing LineageOS (and also: why I hate XDA Developers as a source of information)
• Why do I have a NeoCities banner if I'm not using it myself? AKA: Why NeoCities is swag and epic
• Should new Novetus games be ported (fixing scripts, etc.) to modern Roblox? On that note, what about doing the same to famous classic places? Is that even ethical?
• (Half of) 2023 in review - note stats (new followers, blog posts, other more joke-y stats) and My Glorious Accomplishments
• A tribute to the Taft Test - a years-old tool no one's heard of that highlights web bloat in a funny way

Stay tuned for the Android tablet article.

Also, I'll be on Medium! (POSSE)

I like my website. But if I want people to discover and read it, a possibly effective way is by reposting the content on other platforms.

I'll try reposting future blog posts (that aren't exclusively about the website) onto Medium. Not much else to say.

Goodbye

That's all for now. See you soon!

Tweet content

I'm still working hard on the farming game, but in the meanwhile, have you checked on the wiki? Now titled the Roblox Legacy Documentation!

We've kickstarted work on it in the last few weeks, and started doing a whole bunch of stuff! #Roblox #RobloxDev

Specifically:

• Archiving classic pages
• Marking pages for improvements of specific types
• New tutorials for working with classic stuff in the modern day!
• Fixing broken templates (specifically broken code formatting)
• Creating new object documentation

This post hasn't been transcribed here yet, sorry.

This post hasn't been transcribed here yet, sorry.

This post hasn't been transcribed here yet, sorry.

This post hasn't been transcribed here yet, sorry.

Hey there. It's been months since my last article, but I'm finally back. First, let's dive into what's changed around here.

Website revamps

Appearance

I have a soft spot for websites with a tiled background, as long as it's pleasing. This one in particular is a starry night from old Roblox. It's a gif recording of it, I adore the subtle color changing animation it has in-game.

The content of the website itself is a slight bit more colorful, with a bluish tint to the text, white borders, and a rounded black edge to the header (shamelessly copied from GNOME).

Light theme also has these changes. Plus, backgrounds of tables and code blocks look much lighter now, instead of a weird shade of gray.

The website is wider on medium-sized displays (between 1200 and 1500 pixels wide) and the mobile display now affects up to 1200 pixel wide displays.

Icons are properly centered now.

Text

The website no longer uses fancy symbols for quotes. Nobody was complaining before, but I think this was a good idea so it's easier to use excerpts of my blog posts in other places. Essentially, quotes now show up as " and not the pair of rounded quotes, “ ”. Single quotes too, ' instead of ‘ ’. Currently, I cannot figure out how to prevent ellipsis ... from turning fancy. Sorry!

4/8/23 update: Never mind, I figured it out!!!

New font - PT Sans. Looks far better than Trebuchet MS, in my opinion.

And the website's font is also bigger, so hopefully you won't need to zoom in for a better experience.

SEO

The website finally has a favicon (that little icon next to this website's tab in your browser). It's the symbol on various Roblox brand imagery throughout the site, such as concept art, badges, and most notably the "Bloxxer Cap" hat, which my Roblox character has owned and worn for over 10 years now.

The title now displays the title of the page, not just "realja.me". Though the top of blog posts look a bit empty now, so I might do something about that.

The website is also on wiby.me now. If you don't know what Wiby is, I should write a blog post about it, but in sum it's a search engine for Web 1.0 websites. Pages are submitted manually so I'm gonna start submitting my website's pages to there. I've already had the home page on Wiby for a while now.

Home page

The home page has been shuffled around a bit. The Recent Posts section is on top (because that may be why you're checking regularly unless you're cool and use RSS), then Quick Links, then the About Me at the bottom.

Quick Links

wiki.realja.me, the old Roblox Wiki rehosting/expansion project, has been added to the Quick Links. My Twitter and Mastodon links as well (redundant, but it has a lot of content there that isn't anywhere else so it's fairly important).

88x31 buttons

I also added some good old 88x31 buttons to the home page, they link to my favorite personal sites. They're either my inspiration, invaluable resources for creating a website, or are just really cool all in all. My good friend Nick64 has an awesome site, check that one out especially.

And by the way... I MADE A BUTTON FOR THE SITE! I'll quote what I wrote on the home page about it.

I have my own 88x31 gif button for this website! I would be humbled if you make use of it. If you do, please let me know, I'd love to see your site!

The button is a scene I quickly created in the old Roblox engine. I might change the button often in the future, putting the "logo" in different maps and skyboxes - right now it's just a good old baseplate and default skybox.

So on that note, if you put the button on your site, it might be a good idea for the image source to link directly to my site, instead of making a copy on your own server. So when I update it, your website will have the updated design!

Hey, I mean you can do what you want to though.

And then you can add it to your site with this HTML code:

<a href="https://realja.me"><img src="https://realja.me/realjame.gif" x="88" y="31" alt="realja.me"></a>

Blog

The blog index page has a "tag cloud" so you can filter by specific topics. I kinda had filtering before but it was a lot more unwieldy to use. Plus, there will be a lot more blog posts in the near future, so filtering will be useful!

Future blog posts?

I've been planning to write these blog posts for a very long time, but due to multiple reasons (mostly laziness) I never got around to it. No promises, but that should be changing now.

Here's the topics I guaranteed want to make into blog posts (I'll update them into links when they get written):

• Announcing the Old Roblox Wiki rehosting project (link)
• The beginning of and being invited to the Novetus Creative Team (making old Roblox games "in-house" for the launcher as a small team)
• A modern Roblox project I spent a lot of time working on in 2021 but gave up on
• A 2nd failed project for modern Roblox that came before it
• My thoughts on something I've been thinking of acquiring for a while, it's mentioned in this article (if you want to spoil the surprise...?)
• Can a YouTube channel and a blog coexist?
• Making a ChatGPT plugin for old Roblox: because Roblox is putting AI in modern Studio, two can play at that game :troll: (mastodon alt)
• Modding a USB-C port onto a Nintendo DSi

Welcome back

Okay, you might have been wondering why I've been inactive. I'm lazy, alright? Clean and simple. I've been growing content with sitting in my room, doing nothing, but just watching YouTube videos and scrolling Twitter, essentially. That's not the whole story, but the most important part is that I've been mostly inactive with things. Or even if I am making an effort, it's small, and barely productive. Life's been catching me by too; homework is piling up as we get closer to school ending, and family stuff (nothing bad, don't worry.)

What I'm saying is that I need to snap back and start being regularly productive. Nothing's going to fall into my lap and fix this for me. So I've been making small changes in my lifestyle to put me on a better trajectory. One thing is getting onto a normal sleep schedule. I always found myself having some work I want to do that makes me stay up way late; now, I get it done in the afternoon instead of wasting that time scrolling the internet.

I also am reducing screen time usage on my phone, and the biggest thing is keeping my phone in a different room when I go to sleep, so I don't immediately pull it out when I wake up.

Last thing is going on a short walk daily on my free days off to take breaks from looking at screens, and reading books as well. I plan to post book reviews, basically just my thoughts on books right after finishing it (with no background knowledge on the book or how it was reviewed/critiqued by others). I've found some interesting books at the library and various thrift stores.

I'm also reading some self-help books to help me "learn how to learn".

My current backlog is:

• Coyote Waits by Tony Hillerman
• 1984 by George Orwell
• Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
• How to Read a Book by Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren, audiobook narrated by Edward Holland
• Make It Stick by Peter C. Brown
• Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer
• Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mere Mortals by Mark Manson
• Deep Work by Cal Newport
• How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
• Atomic Habits by James Clear

By the way, I would like to add a new section to the site, a gallery list of all these books (and games, shows, movies, etc?) I've consumed and written about. Like here on Twelve Men or on Nick64's site. Each picture of a book cover in the gallery would act as a button linking to their review post.

My "To-Develop" List

Because I'm sure you liked the first list of promised blog posts so much, enjoy another list of all the stuff I'm currently developing or plan to develop.

• This website! My work is never done with writing blog posts and new pages, as well as revamping and theming it further.
• Improving and extending the Old Roblox Wiki
• fxreddit: like fxtwitter, for Reddit videos!
• textarea.site
• A new game for old Roblox
• ChatGPT plugin for old Roblox, and many more plugins in the future!
• Novetus Web Proxy for Linux, as the feature does not work under Wine. I want to adapt that component of the launcher into a native Linux program, so I can play games that use assets linking directly to Roblox servers without issues.

The next old Roblox game

I was invited to the Novetus Creative Team back when it was started in December 2022. Since then, we have published 0 games and made no announcements for planned projects.

...

That doesn't mean we're not trying! We're currently in something of a drought in terms of a definitive game we're all putting our energy into. In these few months, we've had tons and tons of game ideas and prototypes we're working through, and the whole team is still on good morale because we all share the love of old Roblox game development.

Stay tuned for more.

One more thing

I got a CRT monitor a week or two ago.

I've been interested in getting one for a while, just to try it out and see. Finally, I decided to do it. So I got this one off Facebook Marketplace. Was it worth it? Ehh... I'm not getting rid of it though. It's still nice.

Conclusion

My apologies for the inactivity. Though, should I be more apologizing to myself, because my inactivity here probably ensures no one but my close friends will read this?

Either way, I'm ready to get going... for myself, and for any future readers.

That's all I have for now. Thank you so much for reading!

This post hasn't been transcribed here yet, sorry.

This post hasn't been transcribed here yet, sorry.

Tweet Content

Yesterday and today, I have been working on rehosting the #Roblox wiki from 2012, with help from some people!

We plan to use it as a base to add new articles and info, and make it the definitive resource for old Roblox development in 2022!

# RobloxDev

https://wiki.realja.me

This post hasn't been (fully) transcribed here yet, sorry.

Don't know about Spooking Out? Read the previous article.

This means you can now play our game on modern Roblox. Oh, and we also went back and improved the experience to make playing it on mobile, controller, and Xbox just as playable and fun!

Play it here!

Or check out the Novetus 2010L version!

There are also 5 badges – essentially, achievements. Here's one of them:

TL;DR

Here's a list of this port's additions/changes to the 2010L Novetus version.

• Based off a patch made after the original release, v1.0.2, which has a couple more bug fixes. This will be the version included in the Novetus launcher, I'll talk about that more in a later blog post!
• Partial rewrite of the codebase to make it work on modern Roblox.
• Menu buttons now stacked vertically on the left center side of the screen.
• Grab tool charge UI is now bigger and positioned higher up (to fit on mobile).
• New menu button: "Invite Friends" which opens a built-in Roblox menu to send your friends an invite link to your server.
• 5 badges to earn by reaching various goals in the game!
• Now can be played on MacOS, Xbox, iOS, Android, and with a controller thanks to modern Roblox's cross-platform-ness!
• Menu buttons have controller bindings and button icons to make life easier, they use the D-pad.

Release Date

You might notice that I am publishing this article on November 1, which is not, in fact, Halloween. Except I DID RELEASE IT ON TIME!

Though, I'm releasing this a few days late. Sorry... some things got in the way, schoolwork being one of them. I hope you still enjoy the game in it's own right!

Behind the scenes

This was a solo effort because Tobu.fi already wanted to take a break and he doesn't know modern Roblox development very well. Plus, this was pretty simple, so I could do it by myself.

Work was split into 2 phases of development. Fixing the code to run on modern (the important part), and then "bonus features" in the remaining time I have.

Fixing the code

So, who would've thought that 12 years of engine updates would break our game? Actually, it mostly worked. Rounds, shop, and leaderboards all worked perfectly. But the tools don't. Because the former runs code on the server, and the latter on the client... and that's where Roblox's most devastating change that breaks old games lies.

Filtering Enabled

That's what it's called. It was added in 2014, and it became mandatory some time after, a few years or so. I'll be brief about it to not get too boring, if you want to read more about it, check the Roblox Wiki Developer Hub Documentation. Also, don't take this as the complete truth, this is all from memory.

You have your clients and your server. The server handles most of the data, and the clients are each player connecting to it. This is how hackers can perform exploits; they manipulate what their client tells the server to do or change. For example, they could instantly have 1 million gold by telling the server that they have 1 million gold, if there are no proper checks in place.

This is why exploiting is so rampant on old Roblox servers (besides the fact new anticheats can't be very easily modded on): there is much less security in place for what clients can manipulate. There is some, but in general, you can do basically whatever you want in a tool, such as placing a bomb, or killing a player, all done from a clientsided Script.

This is fun and easy for developers to work with! But, exploiters are annoying too, of course. Roblox added this "Filtering Enabled" thing some years afterwards, where the server pretty much does not trust the client at all. If the client wants to place a bomb or kill a player, they have to ask the server to do it by activating a "RemoteEvent" or "RemoteFunction", which signals a function in a server-sided script to run.

With that said, fixing the tools to be FE compatible was a fairly easy effort. Move the function that should be run on the server to a server script, and have the client call a RemoteEvent to run that function instead of directly running the function. Simple.

Although, our from-scratch Grab tool designed solely for this game is a bit more complicated than the 2007-era tools found in the shop. The Grab tool relies on maintaining a state and flow of the code and events.

• What part does the player want to pick up?
• Are we currently holding a ghost?
• How long has the player held the left click to charge their throw?
• Should we pick up a ghost or start charging the one we might possibly have?

But, it was not very hard to do either.

Bonus features

Mobile, controller, and Xbox support

Roblox already has built-in support for all these control options. Even though the code was designed only with old Roblox's single platform in mind, Windows keyboard+mouse, they have great backwards compatibility. So when the tools trigger on "Mouse left click", in actuality a controller right trigger press or mobile tap activates this as well.

Ghostwalk

This was the simplest. It actually all works, but I added a very simple quality-of-life feature for mobile and controllers.

The Ghostwalk ability lets you hold down left click to float into the air for a bit, like a ghost. But on controllers, it's a bit uncomfortable to always hold down right trigger, and on mobile, you need to let go of the tap to move the camera or player!

So, I made the "stop floating" part of the code not run if the last input type was a touchscreen or controller. Thanks, UserInputService!

Grab tool

Simple too, utilize ContextActionService to replace the Mouse events with "Context Bindings" which maps the actions to multiple inputs - a mouse click, a touchscreen tap, and a controller button press.

No new behavior was added in this refactoring, but I had to do it for one specific thing: a mobile button. You can use ContextActionService to display a UI button to trigger the action on mobile.

The reason I did this was due to a tap anywhere on the screen triggering the Mouse actions. This is fine for picking up, but what about throwing? Simply tapping the screen to move the character or camera will throw the ghost - very annoying!

GUI

This is what the gui looked like as-is from the 2010L version on mobile.

Now here's after my redesign.

• Moved menu buttons to the center left side of the screen
• Made the charge gui bigger and positioned higher up to not overlap with the tools menu on mobile
• Menu button text now scales to fit the size of the button
• Added controller button mappings for the menu buttons (d-pad) and controller indicator icons for them when one is connected

Badges

Badges were pretty simple. Just add the check for the requirement to get it in the script that handles that behavior. The "buy everything" badge will be awarded by the shop script, the perfect score badge in the rounds script, etc.

You can see how to get each badge on the Roblox page.

The rest

As I said, Roblox has surprisingly good backwards compatibility with old code. Every other part of the game, such as the shop, round status text banner, and the other shop tools, work just fine on mobile, controllers, and Xbox.

Of course, I could have worked more. I could have ported it to ContextActionService and give mobile users a dedicated button on some tools. Or, add a lock-on feature for controller users so they don't have to look straight at the ghosts? But, those things are more complicated and would take time, time I don't have. It should be quite playable on mobile, controller, and Xbox nonetheless : ]

Wrap-up

Here's how everything came together, allowing me to play our game on modern Roblox, on my phone!

I've tried making modern Roblox projects before, but like with old Roblox, this is my first time releasing a finished product. All in all, it was fun. We hope you continue enjoying it just as much as we did porting it!

After almost a month of active work on this project from the both of us, it's finally 100% complete. We'll be taking a break for a few weeks to figure out where to go from here. Stay tuned for more blog posts and other tech projects from me in that time!

Hope you had a great Halloween!

Client: 2010L
IP: court-michelle.at.playit.gg

Port: 41927
Map: Spooking Out!
Players: 12
Version: Novetus 1.3 v8.2022.1

Not sure how long I will keep this server running... at least until Halloween.

12/4/22 edit: the server went down after Halloween. It was a ton of fun playing with everyone! Thank you so much for your feedback and appreciation for what we made : ]

How to Play

Spooking Out! is a round based co-op game about catching ghosts. When the round starts, explore the map to find ghosts and use the Skullshot tool to sling skulls at ghosts.

After you deplete the ghost's health, switch to the Grab tool and click on it. You'll pick it up, now walk to the big hole and click again to throw it in! You can hold down the letting-go click to charge up your shot and throw it a farther distance.

Work together with everyone in the server to capture all the ghosts before time runs out. In the lobby, spend your hard-earned tickets in the shop to buy secondary items.

Speaking of which, secondary items! You can choose a 2nd item to equip alongside your Skullshot. This tool or ability can help you and your team out, so try all of them to find your favorite!

Screenshots

What is Novetus?

If you're interested in playing, you can install Novetus here! Novetus is a free and open-source launcher for old Roblox clients that allows you to host servers, edit maps in Studio, and play solo or online.

In order to join our server, make sure you download the current "Stable" release, not "Unstable Beta/Snapshot/Pre-Release". (It doesn't matter if you choose "Full" or "Lite", lite simply isn't bundled with any classic maps.) Unzip it and launch "NovetusBootstrapper.exe". In the launcher, set the IP, port, and client version to the ones specified in the server info, and you'll be able to join!

Novetus is Windows-exclusive, but it works well in Wine if you're on Linux. And if you're running into issues opening Novetus or 2010L, make sure you install the required dependencies (found in the "_redist" or using the "Dependency Installer" tool in Novetus):

• Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributables 2008
  • Required to run clients from 2008 and above.
• Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0
  • Required for the Novetus launcher to run.
• .NET 4.0 Update (KB2468871)
  • Required to run the Novetus launcher on Windows XP and Vista machines.

If you're on Linux, you don't need to install Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0. When running Novetus for the first time, Wine will prompt you to install Mono if you haven't already, so install that instead.

Speaking of which, this is unrelated to our game but if you are trying out Novetus and would like to play the 2007 or 2011+ clients, check the Dependency Installer to see what special dependencies you need to install to run them.

Behind the scenes

This game started because Tobu.fi wanted to submit a game to a Halloween game contest in the Novetus Discord server. The best game will be included in the launcher's pre-installed map collection.

We've been working on a game for about a month before that point, so our plan was to make it Halloween-themed. Brand new maps and a lobby, as well as a new challenge for the rounds - instead of simply picking up boxes, you have to first kill ghosts with a separate tool, while they're moving around. Development was pretty smooth because we were able to reuse the existing code for rounds, the shop, the Grab tool, and some shop items - with a few modifications.

Tobu.fi first created the original prototype of the game, he created the ghosts. I took that prototype and merged it with the base game to create a fork of it. I reworked the scripts to accomodate what's changed.

Unlike the base game, where we wish to only include 2 or 3 maps and have the community build more maps, this game was on a lot shorter deadline, so I made just 1 map and the lobby, and the other maps are reused from classic Roblox games.

We submitted it to the Novetus contest on October 22, and we got nearly a dozen players on the server. You can see them in the player list of the screenshots I provided, and it was a joy to finally share our work with the public!

In fact, one of the players, Lachrymogenic, created a thumbnail for our game, which we've adopted as the logo and branding. Thank you so much!!!

Wrap-up

Spooking Out! as well as the existing work from the original game took a lot of effort from both of us in all parts of development. We hope you enjoy playing it just as much we did making it!

As I mentioned at the start, you can currently play it on Novetus. But what if you don't have a computer or simply don't wish to install Novetus? Well, we plan to port the game to modern Roblox, and it's being worked on right now! When it's done, I'll write another article to introduce the modern port and it's behind-the-scenes when it releases.

Enjoy!