Entries tagged 'cat:incomplete' (Page 1)

Entry created on 2024-11-01 Authors: steeph (338) Categories: #100DaysToOffload (41) Search Engines (1) Web Browsers (5) Web Sites (6) World Wide Web (10) cat (1) incomplete (33) Languages used: en (189)

I've been thinking about what exactly it is that is wrong with the WWW and what to do about it. It feels like it became worse over the years. It's easy to make out individual reasons: Walled gardens, ad-centric web sites, bad mass-generated and LLM-generated at the top of all web searches, the lack of search results from small, personal web sites without an SEO budget or the malicious will to implement all the SEO tricks for the sake of it, egoistic algorithms (that push harmful and hateful content because it makes them feel good). Thinking about how these things became the way they are is sometimes interesting and may help by teaching a lesson. But it doesn't really bring us closer to a solution. I've had a few thoughts about what does, though. It's not as complicated as I make it sound here. It's just that I needed to think about it to be sure what I even want. And that is for the web to be made of documents with hyperlinks. If it is a text document, a searchable database, a set of image, a list of things, an article with pictures and audio samples, a video file that I can download and play, a tree of links to other documents or something similar to those, then it is something for the world wide web. If it is an application, it's not a document for the web. It's impossible to draw ab exact line here. But that's the general rule for me now. It's not that web apps shouldn't exist. People make then and people like using them. So that's fine. But that's not what the web was made for and not what I personally want when browsing the web. It's one thing that photo editors, t-shirt designers, CAD software, action games and all those things exist. You can use them or not. But it has become so normal that web sites are huge and require JavaScript to even load that sites started being huge and require JS even though it's not necessary to serve their purpose. And that has become normal, too, by now.

What can you do?

I've came to believe that there is no route to turning the web into the web that resembles my vision of a good web. It's not even just that I don't think that I (together with similar-mimded people) can't obtain the power to force the usage of certain software or to form habits in others. I don't think it would be a sustainable way with a lasting positive effect on the web. That doesn't mean that there aren't ways to bring others to use better alternatives to walled gardens, closed networks, sites with lots of ads and only 10 % content, sites that use dark patterns and search engines of the oligopositic type. You can promote small projects, share links to useful and interesting sites, talk about how you use the web, make it normal to use a search engine that doesn't only find bloated, commercial, SEO optimised sites. You can start your own projects, enrich the market with libre and other non-commercial software, submit pages to search engines with a curated index, create good content for alternative search engines to find. In this entry I'd like to talk about what I do to change my own experience of the web to the better, though, not about making the web better for everybody.

What I do for now

I needed to think about web things a lot before I realised how much of my own web experience I can change by making certain choices and how viable it can be to simply not use certain services. It's not a new idea to me. I don't do Windows, I use alternative front-ends to YouTube, I've used various unconventional operating systems on PCs and phones. But in regards to the web I thought that it's not that simple. Web sites are how they are and even nice web sites link to bloated pages with megabytes of unhelpful CSS and megabytes of maliscious JavaScript. If I use a browser that is fast and doesn't do JavaScript, my web experience is worse than it is with Firefox (I prefer LibreWolf, btw). Whenever I tried Dillo, Nersurf or something similar, or when I disabled JavaScript in Firefox, I didn't get along with at least some pages. It doesn't appear to be easy to simply decide accept that some pages don't work and just go on to the next one. There surely are use cases where this is not acceptable. But for the usual usees - everyday browsing and casual research - that shouldn't be a problem considering I already accept that some pages aren't accessible because I don't want to register with them. In a sense it's my fault that I don't like how the web is today. It's me who keeps visiting web sites that are like that. And I can stop that by doing some simple changes: Disable JavaScript and use a search engine that prefers non-commercial web sites in its search results.

Really?

Don't get me wrong: I doesn't feel like an improvement to disable JavaScript entirely. There are browser extensions that let you control what page is allowed to serve scripts and what you want to execute. I've tried that, but it's complicated to get it right and frustrating because you always have to configure stuff while browsing and that never stops. But maybe it is an improvement despite not feeling like one at first. I mean, quitting to take drugs to which your brain has developed a strom chemical dependency also is often a worse experience than continuing to take them. But also often it's worth getting used to not taking them anymore. It also doesn't seem like an improvement to only use search engines with tiny indexes that rarely return with the ideal search result you hoped for. Maybe this isn't a viable choice. I think there is no search engine of that type with a large enough index to recomment it for daily use. Those projects just aren't there, yet. But that may just be one more reason to use and support them more. And since they do get rid of all the sites that do things that I don't like, it could be an improvement to get used to using them.

What does that mean in practice?

Some web sites don't have any images anymore, some web sites only load ads and recommendations, but not the actual article, modern closed-plattform chat apps don't work, just as most other sites that can be calles web apps, keyboard focus doesn't start at the main input field, some sites aren't readable because all their styles are missing, burrying the content between or under thousands of things that should have started out hidden, on some sites certain links aren't working anymore, many audio and video players don't work because of attempts to prevent permanent file downloads, there are pretty much no ads. If you use a browser with a less than very popular rendering engine, add misaligned elements on many to almost all web sites, unreadable elements on some sites with unconventional styling and missing elements if they use unusual positioning options. If you only use a search engine that doesn't do commercial sites or whitelists desirable sites, add to that the feeling of trying out the web in 1995 unless you navigate to specific sites that you know contain what you are looking for. The web feels relatively small with a search engine like that. But even then it's huge. Maybe it's a quiestion of what you expect. If you really don't know what site you are looking for, use a universal search engine. If you have an idea where to find the information you are looking for, start at that site. It might be Wikipedia, Slashdot, Toms Hardware, an Invidious instance. The web is totally usable if you don't enter everything in the same search engine as a lefrex. I thought it was great at a time where we didn't do that. And for the rest (missing content, non-working sites): Those tend to be the sites that I wanted to filter out in the first place. So the endeavour seems to work as intended.

There are also sites that I would like to read that just happen to use a CSS trick or JavaScript that isn't supported by all browsers. Those are sites that don't pay a lot of attention to accessability design guides but don't have any bad intentions. I've made sites like this before. This article is being posted to sites that fall in this category. Feel free to contact makers of those sites to let them know that you would appreciate being able to read the pages. I know I should test a site in text browsers before publishing them. I never do. Nowadays I don't even test in any other browser than the main one that I'm using (except when using engine-specific style rules). We came to accept that it just looks the same in all browsers. That is something that web designers always wished for. And when Microsoft's browsers improved in this regard it felt like we were there. But it is also true that most users of the web use a browser with one of two/three engines (depends on where you make the cut and call it a new engine after a fork). I think it does still make sense to test a web site in different browser engines. It doesn't have to look great in a text browser (although that would be the best), but maybe Dillo and NetSurf. If you cover those two, you cover pretty much everybody and you don't even have to test the site in Firefox or Chromium.

So, what did I change? For work: Nothing. Corporate dictates what software I use for what. On my private laptop, I currently use NetSurf as my main web browser. I use LibreWolf for two purposes: Copy individual bookmarks or URLs from open tabs, and go to sites that don't work in NetSurf when I don't have the time to find an alternative solution. For chat apps I use their "native apps" although I suspect that they are all just the web app shipped with their own browser. For social media I'm trying out different mastodon/fediverse clients for Linux, which I wanted to do for a while anyway. For search I'm currently using various Searx/SearXNG instances. (I know, not that alternative. I don't want to ruin everything at once for me.) More than recently I deliberately navigate to a specific site instead of using a search engine and ending up on a site that I already knew. When looking for something on eBay, I don't find as many interesting things like before because the pictures are missing and I don't needlessly buy things as much now. When searching for some random information or doing some curiosity research I close many search results directly or very soom after opening them because they aren't displayed properly. So far that doesn't bother me much. I'm already used to having to close tabs again right away because of cookie banners and other popups that make it impossible to get to the content without finishing a maze and reading a bunch of things for at least a minute. Not I open and close more search results, but get my ansers anyway. On video platforms, I open the video in an external player. It's nicer to have the player of my choice with my prefered UI and my custom configuration anyway. Some sites simulaniously look worse and better at the same time. I may have to scroll a bit to the content and it is obvious that the page wasn't designed to look exactly like that. But at least I don't get any grafical animations, lots of side-loaded unrelated content or ads. For shopping my options are very narrow. I already stopped using Amazon for other reasons a while ago. It's really not as much of a hassle as people seem to think. But much more shops than I expected rely on JavaScript for purchasing or logging in nowadays. (Probably at least for a CAPTHA.) It's pretty much all, actually. According to my rule from earlier, those are apps though, and there would be better ways to implement those. So, I don't have a solution other than switching back to LibreWolf or an app on my phone when I need to buy something online. So far, I didn't actually need anything, though. For online banking, sending a message to my insurance, using the Wayback machine and I predict much more, it is the same. For some things I will try to find alternatives. For others I will realise I don't have to. For some sites that I want to consume for enternainment it's disappointing when they don't work. There are so many alternaives for entertainment in all categories. I have so many ebooks, web books, audio books, lecture recordings, podcasts, … that I would like to consume when I get the time and energy to, I really don't need whatever interesting thing I've just found or somebody has just recommended. But now that I know it's there, I don't want to miss out. So far, this has been largest part of my negative experience after switching. But I haven't been at it for long. I'm curious to see how this will go for me.

(tba:links to previous entries, external links)

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A Really Very Good Laptop

Entry created on 2024-09-04 Authors: steeph (338) Categories: #100DaysToOffload (41) Computers (15) Laptops (2) ThinkPads (2) incomplete (33)

This is a continuation of my recent entry about what I think makes a good laptop.

Display And Keyboard Size

I used to think a larger screen would be better, because you could see things better. But when sitting directly in front of the thing, it doesn't really make a difference whether the screen is 12 or 15 inches across. Larger screens tend to be available with higher resolutions. I think my preference for 15 inch laptops come from a time where there was a notable difference in price between laptops with screens with hardly acceptable and good resolution. But I've come to accept smaller-than-HD resolutions even though there are tasks where it really makes a difference. But with 15 year-old laptops, an HD screen doesn't have to make the thing much more expensive. So there are options, even with 12 inch devices.

The other thing is the keyboard (again). A larger device has more room for a more comfortable keyboard. HP makes use of the extra room. Dell didn't, at the time the laptops I'm interested in were made. In mobile workstations with a 15.6 inch screen can have a numblock, a 14 inch one can be less crowded (no half-size keys, spaced out special keys, extra rows). EliteBooks used to do a good job at that up until the 3rd generation. 12.1 inch Thinkpads (or the newer 12.5 inch ones) are a good example for crowded laptop keyboards. Not a bad keyboard. But there just isn't enough space to include and position all the keys one might want to have where one might want to ghave them. The thing is: 14 and 15 inch ThinkPads and Latitudes use the same keyboard layouts as their 12 inch counterparts. That's another plus for EliteBooks if you want a larger than 12 inch device.

So, since I'm on the ThinkPad bandwagon right now, and somebody gave me a ThinkPad X201 from their scrap box, I think that might be what I'm going to use next. I wouldn't have considered a 12 inch device. But, internals aside, it's just as nice to use as a T400, but ligher and taking up less space. I think if I had been introduced to ThinkPads through an X201, X200 or similar, I would have understood the hype much quicker. I will not go much into other manufacturer's counterparts to the ThinkPad X2xx series. But it is worth mentioning that both HP and Dell had similar devices to the X200/X201 both in clamshell and convertable/talet versions and their keyboards aren't worse. The Dell XP2 has a little fan in me. But those might be a topics for another entry.

Old Case With New Oragns, Frankenpads

I don't have anything agains newer hardware. I'm just not ready to give up on laptop keyboards that feel nice to use. The trend of thinner laptops with larger batteries in recent years has been made possible by smaller mainboards with highly integrated CPUs or SoCs. I imagine that the size of modern laptop keyboards is very helpful if one would decide to build a newer PC into an old laptop case. The X201 doesn't seem to be popular for this anymore. Most people seem to preferr newer models for some reason. I would have thought that is one of the most popular devices for Frankenpads, even if it's a bit more work. The keyboard is of the old style, small case still with a lid latch, but there already was an option for a track pad. I have not gathered too much information about doing this myself. But there seems to be enough resources and support in forums to make it a doable project. But you don't even have to. There is a commercial offer for X201s with 10th generation Core i CPU.

I did think about getting a 486 laptop with a really nice keyboard and mod a newer board into that. It would be a nice project. But not as practical as an X201 or similar. After all, the case would be much thicker. Most 486 laptops were about twice as thick. That would make it easier to fit a different board into it and position connectors in the right spots. Most designs wouldn't have room for a trackpad. The availability of replacement parts for ThinkPads is also a good reason to use a ThinkPad for this. But it would be a nice project. Maybe even with an ultraportable electronic typewriter. But for a laptop to buy, the X2100 si the best compromise for many reasons; and you can get it readily built by someone with experience in doing exactly that.

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The Bad Web

Entry created on 2024-07-19 Authors: steeph (338) Categories: #100DaysToOffload (41) Computers (15) Open Web (1) The Small Web (2) Web Browsers (5) World Wide Web (10) incomplete (33)

A lot has been written about the declining usablity of the World Wide Web due to web sites not respecting what visitors really want or need. So I'll just summarise here before I'll try to get to the point.

Megabytes of CSS and JS to display 15 Kilobytes of content and another few megabytes of ads and other bloat. It has become completely normal to have a hundret and more tracking cookies installed for wisiting a single web page. Many popular sites can't be read by at least some people because the distracting ads have become too much. Thise are the first major problems that come to my mind. Depending on who you ask the problematic development has started in the last couple of years, about a decade ago, in the mid-2000s or even in the 1990s. But most people above a necessary age to have experienced the difference seem to agree that the web experience was a better one in 2005 than today. Back then RSS was integrated by many popular sites. You could use it to read Twitter and subscribe to YouTube channels, for example, and sites that still offer it in the background used to place links to feeds visibly, not hidden in the source code for browser extensions to discover them. Web browsers themselves could not only display RSS feeds but placed an icon next to the address bar when a feed for the currently viewed page was available. RSS is often used to show how the web was more open in general. Even commercial web sites were created with a more open approach. A site were you had to register before you could view its content was an exception for which privacy was the reason, not monetary expectation or greed. This is the time to which most people seem to want to return to. When I say most people, I mean most people whose thoughts on the open web I read, which is those who post to the open web and are interested in such things to a degree that they want to write about it. So what I probably mean is "most people who are dissatisfied with the current state of the web". It's possibly that most people, or most internet users, love the way things are going now and hate the ideas advocated of the open web have, whether that is for or against their own good.

Sometimes I boost thought-out or new takes on the subject, well formulated demands or promotions of software solutions on the fediverse. And I often think about this myself. Because the web has brought me so many nice things and I want it to be a positive thing in society as well, which, overall, it doesn't seem to be anymore. What does the web need to make it better again?

First of all, the open web isn't gone, nor has it shrunk in size. There way more personal blogs, open networks and non-commercial projects out there than 20 years ago. Even new web forums open all the time. But it's less visible below the very very loud, commercial web. Maybe the greedy web is a good name for what I mean. Not every commercial web site is an example of how the web is devdeloping in a bad direction in my view. I want to be able to get information about a business from the business-owner themselves when I'm interested in their services, for example.

A search engine that returns links to non-commercial sites first, unless you really need information that can only be found on a page of a greedy site. I think- let's just not talk about the many problems (not even just challanges) that such a search engine would introduce if it is to be useful in practice.

A browser that only links to non-bloated/non-tracking/non-greedy/open web sites or warns when a link leads to a less-nice site. Again, I don't have the time right now to list all the problem that there would be if an attempt to implement this would be made. Maybe I'll write another entry about my deeper thoughts on the technological solutions that I mention here. But these thoughts don't contain any real solutions. So I don't know.

Create a literal small web, that only uses resources from and only links to, web sites that are following the same standard (e.g. only (X)HTML4, maybe only CSS2, possibly restriction on JS usage). That is in principle similar to building a whole new network, as is Gemini and Gopher doing. (I know Gopher isn't new, but I reckon the majority of sites is.) I forgot what other protocols with similar aims are there. As far as I know none that are widely used. There are initiatives to restrict the WWW to a smaller or older set of standards. Those probably influence site builders (mainly in personal web sites), but won't change the web as a hole. And so you'll eventually while browsing come across a site that doesn't restrict itself it what it's linking to, or you'll catch yourself linking to a bloated site because it's important to link to the original source of something.

JavaScript needs to be optional again. I've recently come to think that this is actually the one major goal among the technological changes that the current web would need to undergo in order to make it user-friendly and more usable again. In a time where you couldn't 100% expect that visitors were using a client that understood JavaScript, and had it enabled, web developers didn't have much of a choice and built in fallbacks so that a site was still usable without JavaScript. But the number of visiting clients without very good JavaScript became so small that it started to look optional, and in reality became not only optional but even rare, that fallbacks are included. JavaScript really took over the web. I could make so many words around this but don't have much time left this morning. Not only are there sites that are empty without JS loading the entire HTML. Such a thing isn't even special anymore.

If you are creating a new web browser, please include a switch in the GUI that allows to enable/disable JavaScript permanently (until deliberately switched on again) either entirely or for the currently viewed site. Or, maybe make it off by default.

tbd:this entry needs some links;write follow-up entries

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Pinkie Pie Laptop Back Light Mod

Entry created on 2024-05-14 Authors: steeph (338) Categories: Case Modding (11) Computers (15) Pinkie Pie (3) incomplete (33)

I once had an HP Compaq 6710b. A typical 15 inch business laptop from 2014: A Core2 Duo, 4 GB, thick and reliable. Thin laptops are nice. But I like about thick, older laptops how well they took a fall on a hard object or a hit with a hard object. There used to be a thick plastic cover followed by an even thicker layer of space before the backlight and the actual LCD panel start. Enough room to make all sorts of fun case mods easy.

Those were the laptop screen covers.

So, what I wanted to do is put a piece of transparent plastic in there, engrave something onto it and light is with colouful LEDs from the side to make the engraved lines light up.

This is the type of look that I initially had in mind. The light from the LEDs enters the sheet from the side and becomes visible to somebody viewing from the front, in places where it is refracted by a rough spot.

I removed the cover and used a Dremel-like tool with a thin burr to cut along a line that I had drown on with a felt pen. But before I continued I learned that the way the LCD backlight apparently works is that it not only lights through a diffusor sheet to cover the whole LCD evenly, but also towards the back, where the light gets reflected by a sheet of aluminium back towards the front. So, in order to make the whole light up pink, as I intended, I had to cover the backlight first so the white light from the backlight wouldn't drown out my pink LEDs. I decided to go the easier way and use the white light and forget about my pink LEDs.

The piece that I cut out. (The scrap.)

After I had cut out the hole in the back cover in the shape that I wanted, I put the cover back on the screen to see how the image looks with a whole in the back cover. I couldn't notice any spots or any difference to before whatsoever. So instead of thinking of a way to mount the LEDs and bring a wire up to them, I found a pink piece of transparent plastic (a slim CD case), cut out a piece a bit larger than the hole that I made in the cover, and engraved my picture into that.

White shines the light of the back. Of the light shines back the white shine. Shine of white light shines back the shine. Shine, shine, white light; back of the shine, the shine. Shine shine the shine shine of the back light white shine.

I don't remember exactly why. But additionally to the pink plastic with Pinkie Pie engraved into, I put in a piece of linen-ish cloth. That's where the line structure comes from.

This is how it looks like after glueing both pieces onto the inside of the screen cover and putting the cover back on.

And this is how it looks like turned in, from the view of someboding sitting across of the opened laptop, looking at the back cover of the screen.

I used this laptop for some more time, then gave it away when I got a new one. (I think it was because the keyboard started to fail and I felt it was time for a new one.)

That was the first anything that I engraved into a plastic sheet with the intention to light it. Next in the evolution of me engraving things into sheets of plastic with the intention of lighting them are these LED pictures of My Little Ponies

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Distinguishing Line Separation in Texts

Entry created on 2023-12-30 Authors: steeph (338) Categories: Reading (1) incomplete (33) Languages used: en (189)

When reading an article or a book I often accidently read a line several times because I slip at the moment where my eyes run back to the beginning of a line. I thought maybe there could be a solution to this. My need for a solution for this problem may be unique. Probably almost everybody knows from expereince what I mean by slipping into the wrong line on a line break. But it sometimes really prevents fluid reading for me. So I thought of a few ways of formatting or presenting a text in a way that prevents this slipping.

The basic idea is to separate every other line visually so that it is intuitively obvious which line comes next when jumping to the beginning of the next line after a line break. An interlacing pattern that does not disturb the reading but just slightly guides the reader into automatically falling into the correct line after a line break. This may be an alternating pattern, marking every second line, or a more elaborate one that repeats overy three or more lines. In theory any such method should be possible to implement in a e-book reader. Maybe that would get me to switch from paper books to a tablet-like device.

One already commonly used mothod to achieve the same is alternating white and gray backgrounds. For some reason this is only commonly used with tables. Any colour combination could be used.

Another idea is to mark the line beginnings and endings in the free space left and right of the text. I like the idea of different shapes, e.g. a filled circle, a cross and a square outline; three symbolds that aren't easily confused on first sight.

The following I like best, visually, but it interferes with existing common formatting. The end of every second line becomes bolder at the end; the beginning of every other line starts out bold and becomes less so towards the middle of the lin, creating alternating lines of bold at the beginning and bold at the end. This way when you reach a line break on a thick line, you should continue on the next thick line after the line break. You may keep any typos that you may find in the following example.

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Not Yet Written Posts

Entry created on 2021-04-19 (edited 2022-12) Authors: steeph (338) Categories: incomplete (33)

This is just a list of topics I may want to write a post about at some point. I'll refer to it in the unlikely scenario that I want to take some time writing something but don't know what. I don't really know why I made this public. I'bve read a good argument recently on not keeping such a list. And it's neither complete nor up to date anyway. I think I'll remove this entry. But not today.

Posts that I wrote for other web sites that are not online anymore
Sharing posts that I wrote for other web sites that are still online
Web sites that I started but that never went online (casemodding, t-shirts, ...)
A generic post about programmes that I've written that nobody ever saw because it never got into a state in which it would have been worth sharing before I lost interest in the project. (DOS and Windows software)
Zeitraffervideos (RdB hauptsächlich)
RGB mood lights
old crappy case mods
Generating BMP files with bash
https://winworldpc.com/home
http://toastytech.com/guis/
Reverse Proxy Services: localhost.run, ngrok, serveo, sish
My Serendipity
GalaCon 2022
Lucid Dreaming Electronic Devices
YouTube Clients
Klik & Play Games
short post about blucid intro recognising the musician

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My Favourite Movies

Entry created on 2022-04-03 (edited 2022-07-24) Authors: steeph (338) Categories: Films (16) incomplete (33) Languages used: en (189) Topics: Films (13)

I've been meaning to put together this list for years but never took the time to do it properly. I'm not taking that time right now, either. But I'm starting with a few titles and am hoping that I'll find the time to fill this list peace by piece over the next ~~weeks~~centuries.

These aren't really my favourite movies and shows. It would be nearly impossible to compile such a list. Some of them I enjoyed very much, some of them probably are among my favourites, but some I'd just like to share because I think more people should be aware of them.

Movies made me cry and are actually dramas

Title	Year	Genre	Keywords or reasons why I like it
And Then I Go	2017	Drama	empathy, youthful, drama
The Cure	1995	Drama/Comedy	sad, adventurous, sickness, drama
Pay it Forward	2000	Drama/Romance	sad, drama, naivety
Die Beste Aller Welten	2017	Drama	Austrian German Language, drama, drugs, small child
The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things	2004	Drama	sad, fucked up, drugs
Honey Boy	2019	Drama	sad, emotional abuse, mental health
I Know My First Name Is Steven	1989	Drama	Child Obduction, Abuse,

Movies that made me laugh a lot

Title	Year	Genre	Keywords or reasons why I like it
Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy	2004	Comedy	funny, absurd, drama, romance
Airplane!	1980	Comedy/Romance	absurd, funny, romance
Ace Ventura: Pet Detective	1994	Comedy	Silly, Cheap
Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls	1995	Comedy	Silly, Cheap
Office Space	1999	Comedy	Rebellious, Non-caring, Revenge, Crime though

Child psychopath movies and movies that I put in the same category despite not being about psychopathy

Title	Year	Genre	Keywords or reasons why I like it
The Good Son	1993	Soft Psychological Thriller	interesting, tragedy
We Need to Talk About Kevin	2011	Psychological Thriller	emotions, tragedy
The Boy	2015	Light Horror	suspense
Luminous Motion	1998	Drama	fun, adventurous, fucked up?

Sweet movies (Wholesome movies)

Title	Year	Genre	Keywords or reasons why I like it
Harold and Maude	1971	Comedy/Romance	sweet
Chef	2014	Comedy/Drama	sweet
The Queen's Gambit (miniseries)	2020	Drama	sweet
Malcolm	1986	Comedy?	sweet, criminal though
Once	2007	Drama, Romance	Music, Charming, Mellow, Sweet

Weird movies (Movies that I find or found confusing or hard to understand or that have a very unusual way of telling a story and that I like for it or that I like despite telling a fucked up story or showing some fucked up stuff)

Title	Year	Genre	Keywords or reasons why I like it
Stay	2005	Drama(/Mystery) (Thriller?)	Dreamlike, Mental Health
I'm Thinking of Ending Things	2020	Drama, Thriller	Dreamlike, Serious
Memento	2000	Mystery, Thriller	Crime, Violence
Tideland	2005	Drama	Death, Trauma, Innocence, Love, Decomposition, Childhood

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Klik & Play

Entry created on 2022-07-19 Authors: steeph (338) Categories: Computer (75) Retro Computing (6) Retro Tech (5) Software (50) Video Games (3) incomplete (33)

I have been wanting to write about this piece of 16 bit Windows software for a quite a while. I don't know why.

I'll just start this entry and continue whenever. Just want to have it started for now…

When I got my first own computer - that must have been around 1996 or 1998 (probably closer to 1998) - I got most of the software that I used for free from magazines that came with diskettes or CDs. Because it was cheap. I reckon the publishers didn't really pay for the software that was on them, or may even have gotten payed for including restricted freeware/shareware on them. Because most of these magazines weren't even pricey for the magazine themselves, and you got the software for free. One of these disks included a demo of "Klik & Play" (That's how it's spelled everywhere. I'm pretty sure it was spelled "Klik 'n' Play" in the logo/intro animation, though. But whatever.) A programme that promised to enable the user to create computer games without previous knowledge, without writing any code, without knowing how to programme at all. I checked it out just because it was there. I remember thinking "who are they trying to fool with that language and why?" because of the slogan and promises (that I don't remember word by word). But after playing with it for a while, I was positively surprised by how true the claims seemed to be. You could really create a video game without knowing how to code.

I thought this piece of software genius back in the day. I was - idk - 12 and hadn't really thought of writing my own software. Computer software, in the minds of the people that I had to do, wasn't something that you wrote or edited yourself. Creating your own programme, writing your own code wasn't really in the realm of possible things to do with a computer. Almost as much as it is viewed now. I mean, editing a .BAT file in DOS was the hackiest one would get among my friends, and even that was rare. So the fact that the developers (Europress Software - Wikipedia credits Francois Lionet and Yves Lamoureux) managed to allow me, to create a simple, 2D, actually playable game, and the way they managed to allow this by using mostly to only the mouse, impressed me.

I think I don't want to explain how creating a game with Klik & Play works in detail. You can search the web or watch a video for that. But to get an idea of what it was like, and of how simple it was: On any given screen ("level") you can click an icon to add an object. You can select from a number of categories or add your own graphics and GIF animations. Then you could choose whether that object is just a background object (not doing anything, not moving, not interacting with other objects, not changing, ...) or if it represents one of the players. If it's a player, you can choose a set of controls. Most of the actual programming takes place in a table. On one axis are all the objects, on another axis something that can happen to or with them. And in the fields of the table, you choose what's supposed to happen when this circumstance ever comes true. So the table sort of represents a huge set of possible interrupts. Common things that can be acted upon are: An object touches an edge of the screen, an object touches another object, a key has been pressed and released, ... And examples for possible actions are: Move an object by incrementing/decreasing coordinates or by setting them to a fixed value, changing an objects velocity, jumping to the next or a specific screen ("level") in the game, increasing the player's points by 1. Just with there few examples, you could: Make the player object jump when you hit the space bar (e.g. in a jump&run style game), make it stand on the ground object and platforms (e.g. in a platform style game), make it move left and right when you hit the arrow keys, make it reappear on the other side of the screen when it leaves of side (like in Asteroids), make it collect and count coins, make it die when it touches a deadly enimy and only one life was left on the counter, go to the next level when this one is won, ... and much more.

Note that this is all done by only clicking on objects, buttons, lists, menus. Once you got used to the interface and know what's available, it's really easy to use. There is a feature that makes getting started with a new game even easier though. You can run the game in a mode where every event for which an action can be defined, interrupts the game and lets you choose an action (or choose that for this event it shouldn't ask/interrupt again) and then continue the game. The ball touched a stone, what do you want to happen? Bounce the ball, delete the stone object, increase variable A by 1, play CLICK.WAV. The ball touched the left edge of the screen. What do you want to happen? Bounce the ball, play CLACK.WAV. …

I think I could have handled writing code myself at that age, at least after having created some silly game-like things in Klik & Play. But nobody showed me and teaching myself seemed overwhelming. (It wasn't really. Good books and reference guides existed back then. But I didn't know.) Anyway.

You could play the game file by opening it with Klik & Play or you could compile it, which produced two files: an 16 bit EXE and a game file. I think the latter contained all the graphics and sounds and the executable was the actual game. But I'm not sure.

There were a number of programmes around in the 90s that promised to let you programme and/or create your own games without knowing anything about computers first (or that made some similar claims of that sort.) I tried two others, that took a completely different approaches. But I think they deserve their own entries. I could probably plan to make a series about these sort of tools where I start with the goal to create a complete list of functional, worth mentioning programmes, and end up with a pile of unexpected feelings of resignation over the fact that there are too many products to mention, like I did with alternative operating systems.

(tbd: proofreading, add links, add screenshots, fix misremembered details, write continuation about Klik & Play games.)

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