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So on an actually serious note

I decided I am going to build yet another web application. This will be my second flask web application and will be a growing of a couple of eve online game tools that use the game's API. Flask is a really cool lightweight web application framework using python language and it's often used for constructing API's. It seems to me to only make sense that it should be well suited to work with API's all around. As well it does have some JSON commands embedded into it that simplify API calls. I want to pursue my lust of web application building and along with building this new project I also plan to try and seal the deal, per say, or rather finish musicplace.vip. It's mission in life, that web app of mine, was always simple and of a certain point. It has basically served to create the solution I sought.

o about the new application I need to solve two eve online game problems. One is the tiers of industry materials/items and their interconnecting complexity. It is very difficult to perceive what is needed for what when the blueprints, materials, minerals, etc are cascaded on multiple tiers and have, although a fixed structure generally, a non linear structure that differs for all end result items. I've used a couple of other "industry calculators" and indfustry tools but I want one that will just simply programmatically spit out a tree of what is needed, what is given, what is next and make it printable so a guy can upload the text file to eve and use it to purchase on the market. I actually have a vision of this, as I've thought about it for most of my time playing eve. I love that this game has such a detailed API access for all players.

Another thing, thought for some reason I cannot see it anymore, my one character's networth balooned to well over 100 billion isk and I do not know why. I would like to be able to search my inventory, which can be listed with some details (I would iagine), but based on estimated value like it shows in a tooltip in game when you hover over it. Imagining that somewhere, somehow, a publicly available subset or aggragate of market data exists I might use it, and keep it's regularly updated data refreshed in my application then program a method to search by value of item. That is according to estimated value or perhaps Jita/Amarr (faction trade hubs) buy/sell price at the time. Now I just thought here that I could probably get away with even only using data from the major hubs, or a selection of hubs, or depending on the complexity of information I could grab even a customizable set of data of market prices. Whatever.

Suppose that this can be a learning exercise for effectively coordinating API calls, a unique web front end and a considerable size of data. Plus not forgetting the logic involved in these functions is kind of extensive.

I'm not going to place high expectations on myself at the moment, due to a great discomfort with my life's situation lately and that being volatile to my ability to focus, but, if only I started then I should finish it at some point and be damn proud.

As a last piece of interest: I've stated a new goal today that is to be working effectively in the IT industry by my mid 40s (less than 10 yrs or approx). So if such a project idea as this one sustains and is maintained then it might help me down the road :) Cheers to beers friends!

Tags: flask, python, goals, seriously, webapplications, webapps, programming, computing, webdev, APIs, JSON, frameworks, projects

Lenovo USFF Project News for May

Greetings TCP farers. Did you know? Neither did I! That is a multitude of things LoL

I have not been on my keyboard for programming so much lately but instead playing games. I ordered a Lenovo ThinkCentre from Ebay that was stuck in that damn ebay global shipping program, which I honestly can't stand. After waiting a full month I got my refund back yet still the (expensive) thing came! I truly did feel blessed in a time amidst multiple hardships. This enabled me to move right ahead and get the project done as it were simple from there. What I needed was a PCIE 8x (proprietary) Lenovo riser that provides a PCIE 16x port on a 90 degree angle. In case you aren't aware this computer is very small. It's like 7x7x1.5 inches and can be mounted behind a monitor. Maybe you've seen such a device, about the size of a thin client. Anyways, then to get a GPU for that slot. The computer's CPU is actually not bad at all and has quite appreciable graphics without a dedicated GPU but my friend on XMPP found one that meets my hardware constraints and actually boasts real performance. Hardware constraints such as not using too many watts for the PSU cable, which I've upgraded to 230w from 135w demand stock, size for the sake of fitting in the case (this is a large portion of the appeal for this project) as well as not needing external SATA or PCIE power.

So I bought this literally TINY half height AMD Radeon RX 6400 that doesn't require external power and is about 157mm in length and fits into the already tiny computer I have on that riser I mentioned. I have been able to play Need For Speed Unbound and even made a few screen recordings and posted on my YouTube Channel. It's not quite as good as my previous gaming MSI laptop but it definitely is appreciable for what it's worth. Being tiny and, although loud, not producing really serious amounts of heat.

I have had about ③ weeks of fun with this, and a lot of fun as I was missing NFS Unbound's Volume 6, however unfortunately I had to learn something and had made a costly mistake. The mistake was not knowing, or thinking when I installed it and seen the GPU's pcb board resting on the metal housing of the USB jack on the rear, that some metal contacts on the GPU's board might short by bridging across the metal housing of the USB port. I honestly didn't think much about it at the time and when I was playing on it for the first while the performance was literally really good but (and only after noticed) eventually slowly degraded to a point where it seemed I couldn't tweak settings to achieve what I had before. After a while it had did something weird my computer reset on me, but wouldn't actually boot then. It did a few more times in shorter intervals and at last after doing it twice in shorter time caused my computer not to boot.

That caused me much sadness, so much sadness that I wouldn't even mess with it for ③ days. I had to get in a good mood to bother cracking it open and popping the GPU + riser card out and alas! It booted! I had noticed that while not booting no fans would operate and the lit up ends of my HDMI cable wouldn't light up BUT the power light on the machine did. This is how I thought it may be a power fault.

What I eventually seen while inspecting the GPU's board was an odd light discoloration looking vaguelly like a burn that was sort of through the board and seemed to travel from the HDMI slot on the GPU towards a capacitor on the other side of it. It was at that time that I declared officially my (not so cheap but fortunately not that overly expensive either) GPU dead. Sad, I see it on one of my shelves, so new and only 3 weeks of life, it's dead 😔

Now my only remaining concern was if somehow I burned out a component on the riser. If I did, and I'm honestly not sure exactly if I'd be able to determine, then I would need to pay another approximately 350CAD to redo this all. I am not rich, not even close, I am dirt poor just about I won't lie so this deepens my sadness but I am still extremely grateful this little beast fired up again, the computer I mean. At first I really worried that it had died but fortunately it wouldn't have been that humongous of a loss, if so, because I did acquire it free. Thanks capitalism! You finally did me a solid but I still hate you! 🖕 LoL ... I actually like ebay, for the most part, and definitely with the exception of the ebay global shipping program.

If my home life wasn't so damn terrible, er, lack of a decent home, whatever, I'd consider redoing this right soon and getting another GPU but it will be postponed for the sake of leaving this entire civil district and getting away from a doomed mission to live in a place that I cannot be free or comfortable. Always losses in life and that will cost too (A LOT). So perhaps I will also postpone pictures and a more detailed post until I am able to make it work under the best conditions. Here's hoping that happens, and soon!

Here is a sweeeet forum post with a MASSIVE amount of details related to computers like this, you might probably find this interesting .. and some more related .. 🎲

Tags: tinyminimicro, lenovo, thinkcentre, project, computing, the8woodcutter, amdradeon, nfsunbound, thestonewall, hardware, gaming, life

Happy updates to mrBot's doghouse!

Greetings internet! I thought I would explain about some of the updates I've done to my XMPP chat bot mrBot. It's funny, at one time mrBot was probably more famous than I am in XMPP world. In case you still don't know what XMPP is, that I continuously refer to, allow me to explain shortly:

XMPP (eXtensible messaging and presence protocol) is not a web program, persay, as the "web" runs primarily as websites using HTTP on ports 80,443 in the internet network among the world. So websites are the "web" and this is a chat protocol that is open source, fully open and standardized, and has matured over 22 years since the days of yahoo messenger, icq, aim, aol, etceter, those 90s chat programs you used to have to chat with people from around the world. Well, all of those are dead, except for XMPP and IRC, which in my humble opinion will never die. IRC (internet relay chat) has been around quite a lot longer than XMPP however THE CLOSEST thing to IRC that exists today is XMPP and XMPP is extensible beyond comprehension. It has what are called XEP sub protocols for features used within the XMPP master protocol and can do things that IRC typically can't or won't do, or not typically, like HTTP file uploads, publish subscribe (pubsub) services for infinite blogging, status, real time syndication type of stuff. If you've ever used Discord (gross) then you are aware that you can see your mates' status lines (under their name), whether they're online (green), away (orange), or invisible, etcetera, this is called "presence" and XMPP pioneered it FIRST.

One of the common things about open source stuff, especially as massive as XMPP as a protocol and a realm in which folks have build many many open source projects for use of it, is that rich fucks like Google and Facebook (yes, both have and did) have used the XMPP protocol for their google chat, facebook messenger, and once upon a time not too long ago you could actually connect to their networks using XMPP but not anymore! Embrace, extend, extinguish, was their intentions. Fail. The awesome thing I love about XMPP is that A: you can host your own instance, on your own domain, quite easily with a bit of linux skills, B: the entire scene is federated, just like email. You have what's called a JID (jabber ID, because XMPP was originally called Jabber) which is simply a username@domain and unlike IRC, and some other platforms, that are newer and far inferior, you can TOTALLY expect to get access to the entire federated public realm of chats. However there's a great many security features as well, and instance operators can choose to make their MUCs (multi user chats) private, moderated (require voice to chat), members only, and even enable E2EE (end to end encryption) in group chats. So it's pretty covert if you want it to considering putting your instance on the tor or the i2p network.

Yes XMPP is fully open and public and it's beyond comprehension how extensible it is, and if you get to know the folks on there you can get to know how to make the most of XMPP. A lot of folks become rather interested in computing, linux and self hosting services on linux servers. A perfect place for me.

So I've made a bot, I started building mrBot about 2 years ago with the ErrBot multi protocol chat bot framework but I was dissatisfied with the errors and the bugs. I eventually went with SliXMPP which is a mere library fully suited for XMPP bot building, among other amazing things. This has enabled me to grow my python skills a lot!

So what I am happy about today is that I have polished up some bugs with mrBot. Namely his awesomes function where he can accept a count, positive or negative, for any string almost. I also finished rebuilding some functions that I had him doing when I was using ErrBot like the rolling of dice. When you write "Roll 55" for example he'll output this:

⚂ ⚁ ⚄ ⚂ ⚄ ⚅ ⚁ ⚅ ⚄ ⚁ ⚁ ⚄ ⚁ ⚀ ⚀ ⚅ ⚃ ⚀ ⚀ ⚅ ⚄ ⚀ ⚄ ⚁ ⚃ ⚅ ⚄ ⚂ ⚀ ⚅ ⚄ ⚁ ⚅ ⚀ ⚂ ⚁ ⚂ ⚂ ⚅ ⚁ ⚁ ⚃ ⚅ ⚄ ⚁ ⚄ ⚅ ⚀ ⚄ ⚁ ⚀ ⚁ ⚄ ⚅ ⚃

A totally randomized dice for as many as you specify. I realize it's kinda dumb, but it's entertaining to me, and mrBot's entire purpose is to teach me Python language. Another thing I finished up was his "Food {food}" function where I've written pretty long lists for things you can "feed" mrBot and he'll have a cool answer to depending which category of lists you select what you guess for feeeding him. Yea mrBot is kinda like my pet, in fact he's "my dog" and I do get pissed off when people kick him from the chats LoL...

SO aside from these obviously fully useless non-utility bot functions, tht are merely entertaining at most, I have finally done something, and begun to build actually useful bot functions for mrBot. Namely network utilities. Once in a while, like today for example, we'd be in a chat talking about how another operator has got a configuration issue where his server cannot reach mine, for example. One of the common routines in this is some network command tools like ping, and some dns lookup tools, etc, that can help diagnose the network and come to a solution. Well it's sure handy, if you think about it, to be able to search DNS records, with record types, and also to be able to ping with ipv4 and ipv6 another host, via a bot in that very chat, it makes things transparent and easily accessable. So I've created today a host, a ping and a ping6 tools for mrBot. Tomorrow, if I'm feeling up to it I'd like to make the harder one which is the dig command so that that pretty much covers the basic most common tools for initial network probing.

I think, though honestly more like a really long time ago, this definitely permafries me as a NERD. Ahahaha, which is awesome, cuz I love to do this stuff and it's functional uses are fun for the future too. It's worth it to me to have spent numerous hours today to make this collection of bot upgrades, as I'm also expanding my python skills and learning new concepts and better use of the language and it's syntax ^^

A veteran web developer named Sam from Scotland, who somewhat mentored me a few years back over skype, taught me to have a practical use example for things you study if you're having a hard time understanding them. You honestly can't just brute force learn stuff without such strategies, I'm serious. You'll never get hands on experience. This is how I've enjoyed over past years creating stuff, and then going slightly really astray and building my own custom stuff that impresses, all from learning.

That's enough rambling. I had a certain long time friend in mind who I wanted to read my blog, I'm pretty sure he's not aware of it, he may not even be interested in it, but I had you in mind coatrack buddy for this cuz I think u'd be stoked. pEAcE !

Tags: chatbots, mrBot, bots, slixmpp, python, xmpp, nerd, computing, programming

For those that use autism as a prejudicial slur

Greetings! It is I, the mystical Woodcutter, who as it has been said he came from the forest.

I am going to attempt to convey a particular perspective I have of myself, so that it might be of some perspective to others as to why I am the way I am plus why you should not insult autistic people by using the nature of their disabilities as a prejudice term. I have seen people say shit like, "i see the room here is autistic", or on Eve Online of all places, "that alliance is spergs", and that means asperger's syndrome people.

Allow me to give you my definition of a person who has traits of the high functioning, autism spectrum, disorder called asperger's syndrome. Their brains and their mental powers have a bias, one weaker sway than is to a much stronger sway. In fact the weaknesses can cancel out the strengths, and vice versa because these types of people are known to have curious areas of inherited extreme intelligence. Meaning that for maybe NASA type shit, they engineered something impossible just because that strength they had was able to see through what an ordinary person could not perceive. The downsides, as far as I know, of people with this illness have a tendency to be unable to relate to emotion well, connect to others socially maybe without purpose, like small talk is meaningless to them, and they fail or have difficulty getting along with the other folks uninhibited by a mental condition. It's pretty clear cut how I see it, considering that in my past I was considered to have this illness but never for sure, that people like this can definitely power excel at things like software, intercommunicable things, abstracts, highly complicated systems like networks or server racks, understanding software stacks and becoming quickly and easily fluent with such things beyond that of a regular person.

I do not think it is because of any passion risen out of lack of satisfactory human interaction, I think it is a literal factor of imbalance but a beautiful thing because these people might be a little weird, a little offputting even (at worst), but they'll generally have you fixed up ASAP.

I've always thought of life this way: people think in images, words, emotions and logic, only one of these. I personally think logically, so I can route a quick way to a solution if abstracts are clear to me but I'll get frustrated without clear abstracts. I am also going to tend to find solutions in, erm, everything. However I am limited by my ability to empathyze, rather, show empathy where that shown empathy gets reciprocated to a healthy human interaction. So though you said your old neighbor, R.I.P. Chase G., you were fucking wild buddy, had he died, I will likely struggle to show you what your emotions beckon from me. This DOES cause problems with me and others because they get wrong impressions ALL THE TIME. It's just not in my mental capacity to act on that tether of humanity, but give me some creative web design project, holy shit, I'll make that shine! Or die tryin! Not because of devotion, or motivation but because of my alley of success.

I've seen people use autism as some prejudice terms in chats a I would like to flame them every time because they don't realize some autistic people can wreck their house up from across the globe if we wanted to. I've found in XMPP numerous people that exhibit this sort of mental paradigm and they are indeed hackers, and possibly very dangerous people if motivated. Speaking of the keyboard and of myself also. Not always the case though. Autistic people can be really good at anything they set their minds to.

I like to combine segments of software, in use and in idea, figuratively and factually, to enjoy my time most of all creatively. I define creative as "as to create" ... create anything. If computing is about solving problems, purely plain and simple you might have noticed, I break that boundary, with creativitiy. Yet I still happy to write a python script that solves a problem, then back it up to my /home/$USER/bin directory export PATH=$PATH:/home/chunk/bin and execute it again and again by it's name. I thrive on complexity.

Tags: psychology, skillset, ideas, autism, computing, gifts

Chillin' Codin'

Tags: computing, programming, photo, art

My friend has gotten a PinePhone!

My friend on XMPP chats, shokara, has gotten a PinePhone recently and I had one question in particular for him, knowing the PinePhone is a FOSS hardware and runs Linux, was if it can run Gajim. Gajim being my favorite desktop XMPP client :)

This is what he returned as an image and it's amazing! Because it literally is just like the desktop client! For sure PinePhone can run normal Linux software!

Tags: computing, linux, pinephone, xmpp

A quick note about a bash blog extension idea

Hello again ! Here's another quick post for today about a sweet idea I've been curing in my brain about how to extend bash blog. Bash blog is what this blog is made with. It's a single, yes one, bash script on command line that manages and assembles this entire blog :)

I thought, and though this isn't keeping with the theme of bash blog, about a PHP extension that where a link posted can take you to a web form that you can subscribe to this blog and a mail server running on the host will send a preprogrammed mail to each email in the list. When a new post happens, and/or if any mailing list type like thing, such as an announcement or off the site news, happens. It shouldn't be honestly very very difficult. It would be comprised of a configuration file for environment variables such as mail host, to and from addresses, subjects and layout email templates. Also signatures. All the stuff one would expect in a mail out type of function :)

For a little while I hosted an old school telnet BBS system on battlecruiser.co but it wasn't long before it was getting attacked and it didn't really appeal to me. The BBS reminds me of the simple mail server that I also have, and a good amount of like minded people I've met on XMPP/IRC have also. It would work on a very simple postfix smtp send only setup and it's possible it might not require an actual mail system at all!

I can't be too sure when or even if this will happen but I like the idea and if you want to try to do this up then I should have a contact page eventually and I'd be willing to help :)

Tags: git, repository, bashblog, hostnamectl, modules, customization, computing, PHP, email

I got a BulletPlus-NA2! - LTE Modem Router

Ordered one of these off of ebay for a good price considering what they're worth:

Here's a >spec sheet< on >this unit<
I am thrilled to have this with me now such a cool littel electronic thing. It does soooo much too! Since I"m currently living in a remote place with very very shitty wifi and basically useless wifi at that, this thing makes life a tiny bit easier :D And is neato :3

Tags: computing, stuff, networking, IoT

Home away from home in my Debian 10 VM

Tags: computing, desktop, screenshot

A mission in life?

It's one mission in my life to help out in the open source community. For starters on this mission I helped g1n with his GRU homepage for his Unix project. You can check it out >here< as it is also made with a bashblog. His devlogs are of the >bashblog< use and that's where I learned bashblog here as this blog, is from designing that site from the old text only it was. This was my honest open source contribution for the new years so far! I was very happy with it now I'm very happy with this one too :D

So the mission is to find people to collaborate with. I know PHP, BASH, HTML/CSS, enough about MySQL to implement it, LAMP servers and various other things like networking and system administration. Hoping one day soon this year 2022 I can work together with others :)

Tags: goals, opensource, computing

My favorite device right now

Lenovo Small Form Factor Mini-ATX PC:

Tags: computing, stuff