Welcome to my personal website! I don't have much here yet, but feel free to hang around!
Anywho, I made this website because I felt like it, and I wanted to have a space that was entirely my own to play around with.
I was a big fan of Secret Bases back in pokemon's 3rd generation and spent more time getting things for it than participating in the core game loop.
I'm something of a fan of the unusual. Not as in, say, ghost stories.
Anything that lets me escape the dull same-ness of daily life is worth a second glance, at least.
I enjoy listening to music, playing video games, reading fanfiction, and telling people they're wrong on the internet.
I blog now because doing so reminds me of how much fun I had exchanging emails with people in my high school years.
It doesn't quite capture that excitement, but I'm going to keep trying.
If you're as excited to be here as I am, maybe you should head back to the main page.
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Authored: Sun Oct 04 01:00:00 2020
The objective of this article is to share my phone emulation setup, which works reasonably well for me, in the hopes that it is useful.
This setup neatly solves the majority of “I’m unable to install certain apps!” problem that most have on Linux, by adding “ARM Translation” as part of the installation process.
We do this because some phone apps are written for the ARM architecture exclusively. This is the major cause of being unable to run certain apps in Genymotion.
This is confirmed to work on Linux Mint 20. Your mileage may, but hopefully doesn’t, vary.
1. Install your distribution’s version of VirtualBox. This is a pre-requisite for Genymotion.
If your terminal output indicates that you need to do something, do it. If you’re not sure how to, search “virtualbox install output ‘your output here'”. The most common problem is needing to modprobe vboxdrv.
2. Download Genymotion Desktop here
3. Open your terminal, navigate to the download directory, and run sudo ./genymotion.bin. The file isn’t going to exactly be called this, type the first part and hit tab to autocomplete the file name.
4. Once you’ve installed and run the program, create a phone image. Make absolutely sure the Android API version is one of the following: 4.3, 4.4, 5.1, 6.0, 7.X, 8.0, 9.0
5. Download the correct translation tool for your Android API version here
6. Drag this file to your running phone emulator. When it asks to flash, say yes. This is why we start with a new image, so if something goes wrong we lose very little.
7. Restart the phone. Install Open GApps to get the Play Store app.
Congrats, now you’re capable of running ARM native apps.
Authored: Sat Sep 05 01:00:00 2020
[[https://ninite.com/][Ninite]] is good for provisioning new software to a new computer, has a decent amount of software available, and is a very hassle-free way to install a set of software on a new windows machine.
For a fresh install, I recommend the following software from Ninite: Firefox, qBittorrent, 7-Zip, Zoom, Thunderbird, Discord, Steam, VLC, MusicBee, Silverlight, TeraCopy, IrfanView, Foxit Reader, LibreOffice, Dropbox, Spybot 2, Malwarebytes, Python 3, FileZilla, and Notepad++. I also provisionally recommend Everything, but would recommend you download and install it separately if you don’t want to be nagged on every startup for admin permission. For whatever reason Ninite doesn’t correctly install it as a service.
O&O ShutUp10 is important to keep toggling off First Party Spyware.
Open your start menu, right click on each metro tile, and click Unpin. Once there are no metro tiles left you’ll have a usable start menu, no Classic Start required.
If you dual boot with linux, you canopen the registry editor (regedit), navigate to the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\TimeZoneInformation
Right click, Add 32-bit DWORD Value, Name it “RealTimeIsUniversal”, click ok. Then edit the value to “1”.
This tweak allows windows time and unix time to co-exist.
Make sure you install both Spybot Search and Destroy AND Malwarebytes if you are using your windows partition to browse and download from questionable parts of the internet.
If you’re interested in why I recommended the programs I did, here is a short explanation for each.
Firefox I recommend for being the only remaining mainstream non-chromium browser.
qBittorrent I recommend for being the spiritual successor to uTorrent without the proprietary nonsense.
7-Zip I recommend for being completely superior to WinRar.
Zoom because that’s what everyone is using for remote meetings. I wouldn’t ordinarily recommend it.
Thunderbird I recommend because nobody should willingly use Metro Outlook.
Discord…is discord. It’s a mix of teamspeak 3 and mumble, but casualized for the lowest common denominator/end user.
Steam if you do much, or any, gaming. Obviously.
VLC is a good video player and plays most, if not all, formats.
MusicBee is one of the best music players available. It’s reminiscent of iTunes when it was best in class. As far as I’m aware, it’s the music player most audiophiles prefer. Foobar2000 is a good alternative, too, but takes more setup.
Silverlight (and other runtimes) are better to have and not need, than need and not have.
TeraCopy supports resume infinitely better than native windows file transfer.
IrfanView is more intuitive to use than Windows Metro Pictures app, at least to me.
Foxit Reader is a gratis alternative to Adobe Reader.
LibreOffice: because subscribing to Microsoft Office 365 is nuts unless your organization pays for it for you.
Dropbox is my backup/sync solution of choice. Your mileage may vary.
Spybot 2 and Malwarebytes work well together with Windows Defender to cover most common angles of attack.
Python is one of the easier languages to write in and you can automate a lot of things with it. Everyone should learn a little IMO.
FileZilla I provisionally recommend if you use FTP a lot. If not, I wouldn’t bother, as it’ll never be used.
Notepad++ is a decent, light-weight text editor that supports code highlighting, themeing, and plugins.
Everything is a very very good search utility. It outperforms windows search by a mile.