March 2023

Link List

Saturday 2023-03-04 – Link List

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Blogging Intensifies Link List for Saturday 2023-03-04

04-Mar-2023 – Inspect the RF Realm with Augmented Reality

Brief Summary: “Intellectually, we all know that we exist in a complex soup of RF energy. Cellular, WiFi, TV, public service radio, radar, ISM-band transmissions from”

04-Mar-2023 – Ask Slashdot: Can You Use an Unsafe Computer Safely?

Brief Summary: “”I think the answer is no, but there are some clever people around here,” writes long-time Slashdot reader shanen, “so…

“Is there any firewall or “

04-Mar-2023 – Code.org Celebrates 10th Anniversary With Fond Memories of Its Viral 2013 Video

Brief Summary: “Long-time Slashdot reader theodp shares his perspective on the 10th anniversary of Code.org:

Remember this?” asks tech-backed Code.org on Twitter as “

04-Mar-2023 – Pluralistic: Solving the Moderator’s Trilemma with Federation (04 Mar 2023)

Brief Summary: ”
Today’s links
Solving the Moderator’s Trilemma with Federation: You CAN please all of the people all of the time (sorta).

Hey look at this: Delights”

04-Mar-2023 – The B-Movie Queens

Brief Summary: “Tom Jolliffe celebrates some of the most popular B-movie queens of the video era onward… Think of those legendary actresses of the last few decades. M”

02-Mar-2023 – Funko Will Lay Off 10% Of Its Workforce And Destroy $30+ Million Worth Of Excess Inventory

Brief Summary: “Before you immediately skip this article because Funko does not interest you: you want to read this. Because Funko’s brand new earnings report for 202”

03-Mar-2023 – New poster for Apple TV+’s Tetris movie starring Taron Egerton

Brief Summary: “Apple TV+ has shared a new poster for the biographical drama Tetris featuring Taron Egerton as Henk Rogers, the man responsible for helping bring the “

02-Mar-2023 – Chibi Godzilla Anime Roars to Life This April

Brief Summary: ”
The only thing that could possibly hold its own against Godzilla is the adorable power of Chibi Godzilla, and the pint-sized kaiju is about to star i”

03-Mar-2023 – Glastonbury 2023 confirm Arctic Monkeys, Guns N’ Roses and Elton John as headliners

Brief Summary: “Glastonbury Festival have today confirmed the long-speculated headliners for their 2023 event. Arctic Monkeys, Guns N’ Roses and Elton John will headl”

03-Mar-2023 – I made a modular building from the Not Lego Sembo 601070 Crab Shop

Brief Summary: ”  Hello brick fans!  I’m here to show you my latest creation and yes, it’s another modular building. This set started life as the Sembo Crab Shop 6″

03-Mar-2023 – Stable Diffusion AI Art Generator Now Has an Official Blender Plug-In

Brief Summary: “A popular app for 3D artists just received an accessible way to experiment with generative AI: Stability AI has released Stability for Blender, an off”

Link List

Thursday 2023-03-02 – Link List

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Blogging Intensifies Link List for Thursday 2023-03-02

02-Mar-2023 – Play Cluedo on Instagram in on-going “immersive” board game event

Brief Summary: “An “immersive” Cluedo event is currently taking place on Instagram, with players able to gather clues and solve a case via the social media platform.S”

02-Mar-2023 – I Killed Bambi

Brief Summary: ” So. That music post I was going to do. The one I kept hinting at. Well, I’m not going to do it any more. Probably. It sounded like a good idea but i”

02-Mar-2023 – President Joe Biden’s new cybersecurity plan would crack down on ‘insecure’ software

Brief Summary: “Photo: Win McNamee/Getty ImagesThe White House has issued a new cybersecurity strategy that addresses, among other things, the role of large tech comp”

02-Mar-2023 – Scott Adams and the Time Cancel Culture Was Good

Brief Summary: “Cancel culture has come for Dilbert creator Scott Adams. On a YouTube livestream, Adams said things others considered racist, people denounced him for”

02-Mar-2023 – How Hard Could It Be to Get Millions of Phone Bills Right?

Brief Summary: “It may be a foreign concept to anyone who has never paid a dime for a phone call over and above the monthly service charge, but phone calls were once “

02-Mar-2023 – As Twitter Goes Down Yet Again, Report Highlights How Fragile Its Infrastructure Has Become

Brief Summary: “On Wednesday there was yet another major global outage at Twitter, something that feels like it’s becoming a recurring issue and bringing us back to t”

02-Mar-2023 – New F-Droid repository format for faster and smaller updates

Brief Summary: “Comments”

02-Mar-2023 – All you may need is HTML

Brief Summary: “Comments”

02-Mar-2023 – USPS Starts Nationwide Electric Vehicle Fleet

Brief Summary: “An anonymous reader quotes a report from CBS News: The U.S. Postal Service’s plans for a nationwide fleet of electric vehicles are getting closer to b”

02-Mar-2023 – Jakartan noodles and Sulawesi seafood: three Indonesian recipes from Petty Pandean-Elliott

Brief Summary: “From a spicy fish stew to a bowl of goodness from the big city – the chef and author shares her culinary highlightsIt has been more than four decades “

02-Mar-2023 – Minecraft’s upcoming 1.20 release now officially known as Trails & Tales

Brief Summary: ”
Let’s be honest, “Minecraft’s 1.20 update” wasn’t exactly a phrase that tripped off the tongue, so thank goodness for developer Mojang, which has now”

02-Mar-2023 – Microsoft Activision deal set to pass EU regulators – report

Brief Summary: ”
Microsoft’s $68.7bn Activision Blizzard deal looks set to pass EU regulators, news agency Reuters has now reported.

Citing sources familiar with th”

02-Mar-2023 – [Epic] Rise of Industry (Free / 100% Off)

Brief Summary: “submitted by /u/Musth [link] [comments]”

01-Mar-2023 – Super Mario Bros. Movie Release Pushed Up to April 5

Brief Summary: “Mario’s coming, and he’ll be here earlier than expected! The Super Mario Bros. Movie is now set for an April 5 release, two days earlier than the prev”

Programming Projects

Code Project – JavaScript Dice Roller Game

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I mentioned in my Python Class posts that I really enjoyed the instructor and I planned to eventually move to doing her Web Dev Course. Well, I’ve started working on that one. It’s not a “100 Days of Projects” so I’ve not been quite blitzing through it like I did the Python Course, and it’s a lot of material I am already way more familiar with. Hell, I skipped over the first third of the course because it was the same HTML/CSS content included int he Python Course.

My main goal here, is to get much more familiar with JavaScript. I have dabbled, lightly, in JavaScript (ok, let’s go with JS from here on), and well, it’s a coding language, so I already have a lot of the “logic” side down. At some point, learning new programming languages just becomes about learning the syntax and maybe some of the special uses for a particular language. I’d only say I am Intermediate or above in Python and HTML/PHP, but I’m familiar with several other languages including BASIC, C, C++, LSL (Linden Scripting Language), Arduino (mostly just C), Bash Shell scripting, SQL, Cold Fusion, and probably some other I am forgetting.

It all mostly works the same on the base level, a loop is a loop, conditionals are conditional, and it’s just a matter of remembering if the language uses braces or parenthesis or semi colons and if tabs matter. And that’s where Google becomes your friend.

Anyway, the first real stand along project of this course is a simple Dice rolling game. And I have to say, “game” is the loosest sense of the word. It’s a webpage you refresh to see if Player 1 or Player 2 has the higher dice face. I might actually try to make a more complex version of this later where you select from different Dice and it rolls them, for you know, gaming. Sure there are plenty of D&D Dice roller apps, but it would be a fun exercise.

The class provided the basic HTML Structure and graphics, since the focus was on the JavaScript side of things. It’s not an overly complex project, but here is the JS Code.

function setImage(diceImage, roll) {
    console.log(roll);
    if(roll === 1) { rolled = "images/dice1.png"; }
    else if(roll === 2) { rolled = "images/dice2.png"; }
    else if(roll === 3) { rolled = "images/dice3.png"; }
    else if(roll === 4) { rolled = "images/dice4.png"; }
    else if(roll === 5) { rolled = "images/dice5.png"; }
    else { rolled = "images/dice6.png"; }


    diceImage.src = rolled;
}

let player1Roll = Math.floor(Math.random()*6)+1;
let player2Roll = Math.floor(Math.random()*6)+1;

let dice1Image = document.querySelector("img.img1");
let dice2Image = document.querySelector("img.img2");

if( player1Roll > player2Roll) {
    document.getElementById("headtext").textContent = "Player 1 Wins!";
}
else if (player2Roll > player1Roll) {
    document.getElementById("headtext").textContent = "Player 2 Wins!";
}
else {
    document.getElementById("headtext").textContent = "Its a Tie!";
}

setImage(dice1Image,player1Roll);
setImage(dice2Image,player2Roll);

So what’s the process here. Let’s skip the function at the top for now. Step one is to roll two dice. This is done with Math.random, which selects a random value between 0 and 1. Dice have 6 sides, so we multiply this by 6, to get a number between 0 and 6. But technically it’s a number between 0 and 5.999999~ into infinity, not 6. And Math.floor rounds things down, so it’s actually between 0 and 5. So we need to add one.

let player1Roll = Math.floor(Math.random()*6)+1;
let player2Roll = Math.floor(Math.random()*6)+1;

After this is some selectors to pick the the two dice images off the page, so they can be updated to reflect the rolls later.

let dice1Image = document.querySelector("img.img1");
let dice2Image = document.querySelector("img.img2");

Next we get to use a conditional chain to determine the winner and update the h1 tag on the webpage to display the winner, or if it was a tie. I’m not going to repeat that code here again.

Lastly we make two calls to that function I mentioned before, the one at the top of the script, that updates the image for each dice. The function takes the document selector, and the value of each roll as an input. It runs the roll value (1-6) through a selector and then sets the dice image on the HTML document to the appropriate image.

Could this code all be cleaner, probably, but it gets the job done and is easy to follow. There is probably a simpler way to set the images. The image selector could also just look for 0-5 mapped to 1-6 instead of adding 1. But what if I needed this function to do more based on these rolls. Maybe it becomes part of a larger game and deals damage or something. Personally, this is why I prefer code like this, that isn’t perfectly compact, because it becomes functionally more useful down the road.

Also, the game is available to play at this link.

Link List

Wednesday 2023-03-01 – Link List

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Blogging Intensifies Link List for Wednesday 2023-03-01

01-Mar-2023 – Pathfinder studio to add narrative starship combat and revised classes in sci-fi RPG Starfinder Enhanced

Brief Summary: ”
Starfinder, the science fiction tabletop RPG sibling to fantasy-flavoured Pathfinder, is due for a major revision, according to publisher Paizo. Clas”

01-Mar-2023 – Morse Code Clock For Training Hams

Brief Summary: “It might seem antiquated, but Morse code still has a number of advantages compared to other modes of communication, especially over radio waves. It’s “

01-Mar-2023 – Get a whole lot of games in Humble’s Türkiye and Syria Charity Bundle

Brief Summary: “Humble Bundle has put up a new bundle of games to support relief efforts for Türkiye and Syria, after they were recently devastated by earthquakes.”

01-Mar-2023 – Godot Engine 4.0 out now plus console porting is coming

Brief Summary: “Today is the big day! Godot Engine 4.0 is officially out now, and there’s also work happening for developers to port their games to consoles now too.”

01-Mar-2023 – Venus, Jupiter, Moon Shine from Space Station

Brief Summary: “Former NASA astronaut Scott Kelly snapped this photo of the Earth’s crescent, the Moon, Venus, and Jupiter (from top to bottom) on Aug. 6, 2015, while”

01-Mar-2023 – Battle Angel Alita: Mars Chronicle Manga’s Return Delayed Until Summer

Brief Summary: “Manga will move to Comic Days app after Evening magazine ends publication”

28-Feb-2023 – We put weird food in curry to make it “un-curry-like”, find a killer secret ingredient instead

Brief Summary: ”
And it’s not something we would ever have thought to try!

You might not think of curry as Japanese food, but Japan has certainly developed its own v”

01-Mar-2023 – [Steam] Portal Bundle (1 and 2) – 93% off; $1.48 USD. Each individual game is also currently $0.99.

Brief Summary: ” submitted by /u/Theghostscomereeling [link] [comments] “

01-Mar-2023 – HBO Max New Releases: March 2023

Brief Summary: “There’s nothing quite like when HBO is airing one of its trademark watercooler-worthy dramas weekly. Thankfully, we’ll get to it experience exactly th”

01-Mar-2023 – Disney+ New Releases: March 2023

Brief Summary: “With its list of new releases for March 2023, Disney+ is premiering another season of arguably its most successful and recognizable series. That’s rig”

01-Mar-2023 – Hulu New Releases: March 2023

Brief Summary: “Hulu’s list of new releases for March 2023 features an event long in the making.

On March 6, History of the World, Part II will finally arrive more”

01-Mar-2023 – Amazon Prime Video New Releases: March 2023

Brief Summary: “With its list of new releases for March 2023, Amazon Prime Video might be rolling out its most impressive monthly lineup yet.

We know that sounds l”

01-Mar-2023 – Google: Gmail Client-Side Encryption Now Publicly Available

Brief Summary: “Gmail client-side encryption (CSE) is now generally available for Google Workspace Enterprise Plus, Education Plus, and Education Standard customers. “

01-Mar-2023 – Brand New Colecovision Console – On a Breadboard

Brief Summary: “The Colecovision console from the early 1980s is probably not the most memorable platform of its era, but it retains a retrocomputing following to thi”

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