-
Somnolians
-
Categories
-
Archives
- February 2025 (1)
- January 2025 (4)
- December 2024 (2)
- November 2024 (1)
- September 2024 (2)
- August 2024 (1)
- July 2024 (1)
- June 2024 (1)
- April 2024 (1)
- February 2024 (4)
- December 2023 (7)
- November 2023 (3)
- October 2023 (3)
- September 2023 (6)
- August 2023 (6)
- July 2023 (2)
- June 2023 (1)
- May 2023 (1)
- April 2023 (1)
- February 2023 (2)
- December 2022 (5)
- November 2022 (4)
- October 2022 (2)
- September 2022 (5)
- August 2022 (5)
- July 2022 (1)
- June 2022 (2)
- May 2022 (2)
- April 2022 (7)
- March 2022 (1)
- February 2022 (1)
- December 2021 (4)
- November 2021 (1)
- October 2021 (1)
- July 2021 (1)
- June 2021 (5)
- May 2021 (1)
- April 2021 (3)
- February 2021 (2)
- January 2021 (3)
- December 2020 (3)
- November 2020 (2)
- October 2020 (3)
- September 2020 (2)
- August 2020 (3)
- July 2020 (3)
- June 2020 (1)
- May 2020 (4)
- April 2020 (6)
- February 2020 (1)
- January 2020 (4)
- December 2019 (9)
- November 2019 (3)
- October 2019 (2)
- September 2019 (4)
- August 2019 (1)
- July 2019 (3)
- June 2019 (2)
- May 2019 (3)
- April 2019 (5)
- March 2019 (1)
-
Meta
Category Archives: Show-and-Tell
Zip Drives!
It’s time for a pretty short blog post from me, mon! Made from an outline that I’ve had sitting around since almost a YEAR ago.
It’s well-known that I own a good bit of old Apple computers at this point. But along with the large-ish collection that I own, I also own a small collection of peripherals and accessories. I think the most notable out of these would be my two Zip Drives… Continue reading
The Clever Feat of PNG Optimization
I’ve become mildly obsessed with how compression algorithms of various stripes work over the past year. They really do make every bit of our modern computing existence work so smoothly, from gzipping packet data to speed up slow connections to storing vast archives of high quality music on flash drives the size of a ChapStick. Some simply rearrange the data in clever ways, and others take advantage of our weak eyes and ears to throw out 90% of what was once there–and we hardly notice.
Of the lot, the humble PNG is so ubiquitous, it might not even warrant mentioning. Every format has some magic up its sleeve, however, and in the case of PNG, the way they’re encoded usually makes it possible to shrink them after the fact to the tune of up to a few megabytes with no loss in quality. If you make sites, you might wanna take notes.
I recently decided to run a battery of tests to determine just how well PNG works, on what, and what optimizes the best. I’ll give you the rundown on how it works (in-depth but no math, no worries), and then I’ll give you some hard data and lovely charts to peek at, and finally, show you how to get smaller, lighter PNGs at home, no tricks, no catches. Continue reading
Ranking Spotify’s Top 50 Songs Named “Undone”
Song titles are funny. They’re usually hardly unique, and tons of bands from all across the music spectrum have songs with the exact same title. Spotify’s search is an absolutely useless landfill for this stuff; the song you want will invariably be so unpopular that 200 other identically-titled songs (and in some cases, artists and albums) will come before the one you want. Lovely.
The inspiration for this one came about when I realized I actually know three different songs with the title “Undone”: the Failure song, the Weezer song, and the Josh Joplin song. When I checked through Spotify search, it turned out to be a very popular song name indeed.
So in short, I got curious enough to add the 50 most popular ones to a playlist, listen through, and rank them. I originally wanted to do every single song on the platform named “Undone”, but that’s just not feasible. Even the top 50 was a solid three hours worth of music, and has been hell to put together.
Alas, the Joplin track didn’t make the top 50; if it did, it would’ve probably ranked at #2. Nonetheless, we’ve got a lovely mix of yeehaw music, white girl piano pop, boppy electronica, acoustic torment, Backstreet Boys, and even a few artists who might not even exist. We’re starting at the bottom here, so apologies for the rampant negativity at first. It does get better. Here we go… Continue reading
Vaders and Venetian Blinds: A Review of “Racing the Beam”
I’ve said before that I don’t read a whole lot of books. Not to say I don’t have a few on my radar, it just takes me a while. Same goes for video games; I have plenty to play, but I’m usually too busy off in my own world to try them out. Given that it looks like the US will open back up some time after the heat death of the universe (read: plenty of time to myself), I’ve been trying to rectify that.
Today’s topic is one that combines both these worlds in a really curious way: meet Nick Montfort and Ian Bogost’s Racing the Beam. Continue reading
More old Macs!
Old Macs. Also known as Old Macintoshes, Vintage Macintosh Computers, et cetera. Machines of which were made in simpler times, when Apple wasn’t as much of a shitshow of a company as they are today. Compact, distinctive from PCs of the time, maybe a tad yellowed – but that’s fine. Sometimes that’s what makes them beautiful.
Alright, here I am, at it again. I didn’t think I’d be able to make another one until after summer was over, but in surprising turn of events I got three new (old) machines up-and-running! Continue reading
Old Macs!
I still remember drooling over compact macs like the Macintosh Classic or the SE in my early years on the internet. When I rediscovered the hard drive from my first computer a little while back, I found (along with a shitton of malware) a good bit of pictures and MacOS “simulators” and multiple copies of Mini vMac.
…Which reminds me – if me from two years ago saw my collections now, he’d probably be pretty excited for the future. I forget to appreciate my belongings sometimes.
As promised, here’s my first update in a series of updates on my sizeable collection of vintage and not-so-vintage Macintosh computers. Feels good to finally get this out. Continue reading
Life ‘n Weeb Shit
Y’all ready for my dick in your ass? Just kidding its borb ready to kick gum and chew ass 0w< Continue reading
The mtlx Chronicle
“Is it even real?”
As real as you want it to be. Continue reading
End it Someday: Looking Back on With the Lights Out
It’s been 25 years, 7 months, and 19 days since the death of Kurt Cobain. You might remember him as the singer and guitarist for Nirvana, who later ended up trying pellet-flavored Pez in his greenhouse. He’s pretty much been canonized as the last great rockstar, and eh—I don’t care. I love Nirvana, but I don’t care.
It’s also been 15 years since a little three-CD-one-DVD Nirvana treasure trove of B-sides, live tapes, and rehearsals came into the world. With the Lights Out was the first official look into the home demos and leftovers that went into producing Nirvana’s three proper records. It’s a fascinating little document with a lot of history—and a lot of flaws.
Join me as I ramble about my history with the boxset, its highs, its lows, and where I think it sits in the Greater Nirvana Canon as a Sacred Text or something. Continue reading
Antigravity Freedom Machine
As of writing this I’m supposed to be asleep, but that’s not working out so I’m gonna write some nonsense instead. Sorry Cammy <:3c Continue reading