April 2023

Programming Projects

Code Project – Python Flask Top Ten Movies Site

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So, I mentioned dumping the Flask Blog a while back, but then I decided that since I had managed to get it all working, it would be somewhat trivial to get it working on a subdomain, instead of a main domain, which had been my original plan to start with.  I was never too excited about dropping this project because I have a few ideas for little projects that I wanted to build that would actually work pretty well in Python and Flask, since it essentially adds a direct path to running a back end style script and a front in interface.  Part of my frustration had come from trying to integrate OTHER Flask projects into the same website and Python code.  Specifically the Top Ten Films website.  

So I stripped out all of the work I had done on integrating the Top Ten movies site, and got the bare Blog running on smallblog.bloggingintensifies.com.  That’s not a link, don’t bother trying to go there, there is nothing there (More on that in a bit).  In this process, I got to thinking, I could run separate Flask Instances, one for each project, though I feel like that’s probably kind of super inefficient for server overhead.  I went and did it anyway, with the Top Ten Movies site.

Which worked fine.

At this point, I realized, I had a working copy of this website to work with and test.  A lot fo my previous frustration was adapting and merging two Python files, which share some redundancy, which share the same names on some secondary files and variables.  I could now, modify the Top Ten Movies code, and test it, to remove the problem duplication.  Satisfied, I shut off the Flask Blog, and merged the code again, and, it worked!  Worked as expected.  I did update the code a bit more again to add in the user/admin features of the Blog to the Movies page, so no one else can change the list.  

I also changed the subdomain from smallblog.bloggingintensifies, to flask.bloggingintensifies.com.  I mostly plan to use this sub domain to show off Flask Python projects, not just this blog I’m never going to fully utilize, so the name change makes more sense.

I also used some of the other HTML knowledge I’ve gained, well, the modern HTML knowledge, to reformat the Movie Site from how it was built in the class.  The class just had a long single column with ten movies.  I’ve changed it so number 1 is large and everything else is a smaller grid.  It’s much prettier looking now.  I doubt it changes much, if at all, but it’s a neat and fun project.

Albums

Dodie – Build a Problem

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Released – 2021.05.07

I am not sure what first brought me to Dodie’s music, I know a lot of her fans came from her previous life as a regular YouTube Vlogger. I can say it was quite a bit before the release of Build a Problem. This is her first Studio Album, though she has released 3 previous EP albums, though the third one, Human, has most of her best known tracks, with Monster probably being her most well known. She also has a pretty large amount of additional “unreleased” tracks on YouTube and other channels.

This little bit of background is rather essential to some of what I want to talk about on this album, Build a Problem.

Anyway, I enjoy Dodie’s music enough that I had tickets to see her back in 2022, though things fell through and I could not make the show for a couple of reasons (COVID was ramping up again, and my wife had a medical procedure come up). Her music can probably be best described as modern emotional folk music. There is a lot of airy feel to a lot of her songs, and they incorporate a lot of more traditional acoustic style instruments along side some modern electronic mixing and layering. Most of the songs have a strong emotional push around relationships, loneliness, anxiety, depression, and being a bit of an “outsider” at times.

All of these themes are very much present in the themes of Build a Problem. The album open with a short interlude in Air So Sweet, before going into the first proper track with Hate Myself. It’s not the “title track” but it is where the album title comes from, where the phrase Build a Problem shows up as part of the opening lyrics:

Could it be different? Did I ruin the day?
Oh, do you look angry? Oh, what did I say?
Filling in the gaps, build a problem that
Neither of us need, something wrong with me

Hate Myself is one of the better tracks on this album, it’s showcases a lot of the strong parts of Dodie’s songwriting and layering in structure. I don’t know that it’s my favorite track, but it’s certainly up there. The theme of this track is basically the idea of being insecure in a relationship, and possibly overjudging one’s self based on the reactions of the partner. Essentially, building a problem, in one’s head, where a problem may not actually exist. Which only leads to more self hate and insecurity.

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Though Hate Myself is a bit more upbeat and “poppy” sounding, things turn down and become a lot more reserved for most of the rest of the album. I’m just going to go over some of my personal highlights from the album with commentary on the rest after.

Probably my favorite track on the album, is Cool Girl. I just really like the way this song slowly builds over the course of the track from something relatively low key to something rather grand. I also really like the use of the stringed background instruments, which is also part of the overall build. The video is also a One Take, which is like my kryptonite for video media, so that pushes up my enjoyment even more.

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The next few tracks, Special Girl, Rainbow, and Four Tequilas Down are all pretty good.

The two “bonus” tracks, Guiltless and Boys Like You round out my list of actual “top tracks” on this album. I believe they are “bonus” in that they have both been released for a while, they just, never had a proper album release. Guiltless has a lot of really fun and interesting structure to it. The lyrical sections are kind of quiet and quaint before dropping into this fuller chorus moments. It ends with this really fun little layered loop of some of the lyrics of from the track previously.

Boys Like You has a decidedly different feel than the rest of the album but it’s still a great track that does deserve to be on an album. It’s quite a bit more punchy in it’s melody than the previous tracks, and feels a bit like a different era of Dodie.

So, as for the other tracks. I have the ALOSIA (A Lot Of Songs In A Steam) Deluxe version of this album, but for now I’m just referring to the other tracks on the album itself. I really like the tracks mentioned above, I kind of really dislike most of the ones I didn’t mention. I do like this album, but it also feels like, another EP’s worth of tracks, with a bunch of half finished tracks intermixed in to pad it into an album. This isn’t really a criticism of Dodie by any means, and maybe it’s just that I just don’t resonate with these tracks for whatever reason.

It doesn’t really harm the album as a whole, especially since you know, we live in a digital age where it’s easy to pick out the tracks one most enjoys. It just feels like maybe there was some sort of behind the scenes deadline that came up too fast and things maybe could have felt a bit more complete in places.

PC Hardware

Hard Drive Woes Part 2

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This post is a follow up to my previous Dead Hard Drive post.

I used to hassle with PC hardware a LOT more than I currently do. I’ve kind of worked my way out of that gig honestly. I am at a point where I can afford shit for starters, mostly, so I’m not trying to cobble together workable machines from random parts. I also got tired of doing tech support for people, so I basically just, sort of hide that I can, because when people find out you can “fix computers”, now you’re vacuuming out 50 years of dust from a Pentium 1 in your backyard for a neighbor who refuses to just buy literally any cheapest machine at Wal-Mart for an infinite performance boost.

“Back in my day!” (fist shaking), you could pretty much just slap any drive with an Operating system in any machine and it would boot. Sometimes it would boot into an ugly driverless environment because it was ripped from another machine, but that was fixable. Things seem more complicated these days. I’m not blaming UEFI, and all that more secure BIOS stuff, but it’s a likely culprit. I think that better security is good, it just, is also part of why I can’t more conveniently fix my damn PC.

I say Conveniently, because that’s the core issue. I can still EASILY do it. It’s just… not convenient.

Shortly after messing with Linux a bit for troubleshooting, I did a bit of set up to use it as the main driver but, decided to just go back to Windows. I downloaded a fresh recovery image, sliced the Linux partition down to 500GB and reinstalled Windows.

I like Linux. I use Linux, almost daily, if not daily. It’s great for automation tasks and running server software and all that. It, kind of really sucks as a desktop OS. Don’t get me wrong, it’s usable, especially for simpler needs (literally anything not Gaming or Video/Photo Editing). I have run Linux as the sole OS on many machines, mostly laptops, and lots of Pis and Servers. I’ve used Linux off and on for over 20 years now. The problem here is, the main use case for my “Kick ass gaming rig” is well, gaming. Half the games I had slated “to play” from Steam are not available in Linux. I set up Hero Launcher for GOG and Epic, but like, my cloud saves didn’t work, and Fortnite doesn’t work and the whole thing felt a little off. Graphics also felt a little off, even though I did switch to using the official proprietary NVidia drivers.

Anyway, I went back to Windows. I spent an eternity downloading drivers and doftware and getting things set up properly. Unfortunately, the secondary drive I was now using as my primary, is just too slow to handle the needs of a lot of games as well. I had to roll Fortnite back to DirectX 11 for example, because it would take like 10 minutes to drop into a match because it would load shaders or some shit. For anyone not aware of how Fortnite works, it’s online, in an arena of players. If you drop in 10 minutes late, your character will have already landed in the map and probably be dead or dying.

So I bit the bullet and bought a new NVME drive. I planned to eventually, I just, did it sooner.

I went and downloaded Clonezilla to just mirror the Hard Drive to the NVME drive, which worked, but things would not boot.

There are plenty of possible solutions online, with recovery mode. I tried a few of them. But in the end, I have opted to just, reinstall Windows, again.

Which means redownloading drivers and shit… again….

I might be able to pull the Steam Downloads over before wiping the secondary drive, but I am not sure Epic will let me do that. Unfortunately, the larger games are from Epic, with Fortnite, Death Stranding and Final Fantasy 7R in that list.

It’s all, very easy.

It’s just all, very inconvenient.

Also, just because, and maybe for future reference, the install needs:

  • Network Driver – For some reason it doesn’t work on the generic.
  • TUF Gaming Amoury Crate – The motherboard seems to load this, and it find and installs all the drivers, which is nice, despite the cheesy name.
  • Windows Update
  • Color Scheme to Dark, no transparency
  • Firefox – Browser of choice, then log into sync and let it pull all my stuff in.
  • Steam
  • Epic
  • Visual Studio Code
  • Change One Drive settings to not sync everything but only some things.
  • Log into the Microsoft Account so One Drive and Office work, since no network driver means local account log in only at first
  • Share X – For Screenshots to folders
  • Display Fusion – For rotating desktop wallpaper
  • Synergy KVM – So I can connect to my other PC\
  • EVGA Flow Control – For the cooler
  • Remove all the cruft from the start menu, remove the apps list and recent files
  • Add a dozen network drives to File Exporer
  • Discord
  • Firestorm Viewer
Link List

Wednesday 2023-04-12 – Link List

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Blogging Intensifies Link List for Wednesday 2023-04-12

12-Apr-2023 – NPR Says Enough Is Enough: Quits Twitter

Brief Summary: “The only surprising thing here is that it took this long: NPR has officially announced that it has quit Twitter. This is in response to Elon’s chaotic”

Link List

Tuesday 2023-04-11 – Link List

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Blogging Intensifies Link List for Tuesday 2023-04-11

11-Apr-2023 – The Marvels’ first trailer is a cosmic game of musical chairs

Brief Summary: “Captain Marvel’s surprise appearance at the end of Ms. Marvel was a reminder that the MCU’s strongest pinch hitter only ever comes down to Earth eithe”

11-Apr-2023 – ‘Rogers: The Musical’ From ‘Hawkeye’ Series Premiering At Disneyland

Brief Summary: ”
What started out as a bit in the Hawkeye Disney+ series is now becoming a reality! Rogers: The Musical is coming to Disneyland this summer.

In th”

11-Apr-2023 – Python on Microcontrollers Newsletter: New Raspberry Pi Code Editor, PyCon US This Month and much more! #CircuitPython #Python #micropython @ThePSF @Raspberry_Pi

Brief Summary: “View this email in your browser. Warning: Flashing Imagery
Welcome to the latest Python on Microcontrollers newsletter! This is a rather large issue a”

11-Apr-2023 – Google is Coming for Your Fitbit Account

Brief Summary: “Google announced today that it will begin transitioning Fitbit accounts to Google accounts this summer, with the transition mandatory by 2025.
The pos”

10-Apr-2023 – Raspberry Pi Introduces a Code Editor for Kids

Brief Summary: “In keeping with its mission of bringing computing to the young, the Raspberry Pi Foundation has released a beta version of a web-based software code e”

11-Apr-2023 – Sailor Moon Cosmos Shares Eternal Sailor Mars and Eternal Sailor Venus Trailer

Brief Summary: ”
The two-parter Sailor Moon Cosmos movies are going to tell the story of the manga’s “final battle.” The first movie will hit Japanese theaters on Jun”

11-Apr-2023 – #4440: Nissin Cup Noodles Breakfast Ramen Noodles In Sauce – United States

Brief Summary: ”
Well, I got one. More coming. There will be a definitive guide. That being said, it’s spring break and the kids are home with me. I’ve been walking t”

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