Annual Blog Post
Hey everyone! Welcome to the annual blogpost.
Yeah, ok, I know, I’ve been horrible with these blogposts, and pretty much nothing from the previous one became true. Lemme tell the whole story.
KAaNE
My personal application of Valve Time.
There’s actually been some activity since my last post, believe it or not. A couple months after I made that post, I made an announcement to the Discord Server. I think I pretty much forgot to post it back here for whatever reason.
The only thing you need to know (for right now at least) is that Ruby/Voice Edition was having major problems, which eventually resorted to me having to cancel it all together. (TL;DR explanation: IFTTT didn’t work, I tried to make it for TensorFlow, it wanted me to make it partly closed code and only use Google Assistant, the entire design also felt like a massive gimmick despite what I tried.)
I eventually decided to cancel all other announced versions and that I would only work on Java and Android until at least the next year (2021 at the time.)
And…well, nothing. What happened? Well, I’ll explain it a bit later in the post (since it’s mostly just stuff not a lot of people want to read) but in short, I have a new job (kinda) and I’m going into University after summer this year.
KAaNE was also always meant to be a learning experience for me - it was my first (official) project in software development and it’s where I learned new languages and whatnot.
But with that said - I have some good news. I’m going to make one last edition, made in Qt and C++. This will be the de facto version for desktop. Instead of random windows plastered everywhere on your desktop, you have a proper workbench window with a scroll menu (similar to the Android version) and whatever windows you have from modules/settings/whatever. You can also pop these windows out and drag them around your Desktop, in case you’re into the Java aesthetic…for some reason… It’s basically a similar design to, say, Adobe Photoshop, Paint.net or OBS. I’m fairly new into Qt and C++, but like I said before, KAaNE is a learning experience, and I’d love to learn how to do neat little stuff like that.
In case you hate reading, here’s a rather rough diagram of what I’m describing:
I will also be updating the Android version to have parity with the Java version. That includes mod support, which will absolutely be the hardest part out of all, so it’s likely that won’t be available for a while.
I’m planning on doing all of the above by August and finally stopping my own support. If I’m not able to, though, then I’ll continue it until I’m absolutely done.
Discord
“Discord” as in “discoordinated”, obviously.
Remember when earlier I said I made an announcement and I basically forgot to put it here? Well, one of those things was a main server that I intended to merge with the KAaNE server. I also had a couple of other project servers that I wanted to merge with that. I’ve since realized how remarkably idiotical that idea is.
Don’t get me wrong, I still want to reduce the amount of clutter, but I have four main different sides - my work/coding projects, my twitch, my youtube, and my personal stuff. What I was basically doing there was trying to combine them all into one thing, and with such drastically different things, there’s probably not gonna be a single person interested in all four to join it, and thus, the server has been abandoned.
So, I’ve decided to make a compromise. Within the next week, I’ll make a new server dedicated to my own coding projects - these are KAaNE, my Discord bot (I’ll talk about that later), this site, and anything else I have in the oven. I’ll make a blog post and update the site accordingly once that’s done. I’ll also be removing some of the original server channels that include stuff for my own projects, and thus that will be more so a casual server. Hopefully that means people actually come to both and won’t have to deal with the headache of whatever a ‘ggtylerr’ or ‘KAaNE’ is.
DSA Bot
Nobody knows what DSA means. Not even I do.
Another thing I mentioned is a new Discord bot named DSA Bot. This was the main showcase of 2020 and was my main venture into Discord bot making and JavaScript. You can check out its main page here, hosted on this website. In short, it’s basically a general-purpose bot with some neat esports related commands. It’s also completely public domain.
Oh, and while we’re on the topic, I might as well cover some other bits I’ve done in 2020 in a sort of speed round.
Dark Side SCP
SCP? Like the file extension?
This was a website tool that I created within a couple hours after being frustrated with the current state of the SCP wiki and how it somehow still doesn’t have a proper dark theme or working extension. Sure, there’s CSS styles and an extension, but those have to be constantly updated to work. So I quickly made this tool which you can check out right here.
It’s basically just a website scrapper that takes some of the styles from the original website, takes the original article text, and tries to apply a standard dark CSS style that I grabbed from Stylish. I have no plans to update this in the near future, but it’s open source and I’ll probably get the urge to update it the next time I read an SCP article.
Also, if an admin from the SCP website happens to read this, please make a proper dark theme, or at least add that website tool to the list ;)
mutat.io
Another .io game, I think…
mutat.io is one of the “various tools and software” that I mentioned in the last blog post and in the “Upcoming Projects” page. It’s in early alpha right now, and in a pretty rough early state, but it’s available on open source if you want to check it out. It also has a website and a ReadTheDocs. I’ll add it to the “Released” projects list once it gets to a suitable release state, though.
So, what is it? Well, it’s an All-In-One conversion tool that is supposed to be able to convert pretty much everything you want. Right now only basic unit conversion is available, but I’m planning on adding time zone conversion, file conversion, and even language “conversion”! I doubt I’ll be able to make a sophisticated enough conversion tool to be on par with Google Translate or Cloud Convert, but I hope it’ll gain enough traction to have its own open source alternatives. (Soon enough, though, I might just rely on making a “multi conversion” kind of thing, where if you convert one thing, it’ll convert it to multiple different reputable converters. Granted, it’s still pretty useful for the end user, but I would love to find a way to work on a proper converter as well.) There’s also an API coming out for it, which right now only has support for a bit of the unit conversion.
Wow, I written wayyy too much. I guessed I failed that speed round, lol. Let’s get back to normal stuff though.
Site Redesign
Okay, NOW I understand this… We’re talking about a building, right?
Okay, I lied, redesigning a website isn’t normal. But don’t worry, this is good. For a while, the site has been “WIP”, as in I’m unhappy with the state it’s in and will eventually get around to making it look better. Well, I have good news - I’m finally going to make it look presentable. I have a lot of ideas flying by in my head, and I don’t want to spoil any of it, so just be on the lookout - this will be my first project in 2021, and when it’s done, I’ll publish it and announce it in a blog post and in the new discord server. I think the only thing that won’t change is the homepage, I’m quite happy with that.
Personal Stuff
AKA: Excuses on why I haven’t done a lot.
Feel free to exit the article at this point if you don’t want to read this. Happy new years!
Okay, let me talk about it now. Since Mid-2019 I’ve been involved with an esports club named “DSA Esports” (hence the name of the Discord bot - DSA Bot. The bot was intended to be for their discord server.) Then, over time, I’ve been more and more involved with both the management side of the club and a bigger entity - Silver State Esports.
In case you don’t know who they are (I won’t judge, they have a bit of a niche audience), they are the “official” nevada esports league for high schoolers. They have partnered with nearly all high schools in Las Vegas, including my own, and I eventually got to meet with the owner, Davis Kong. Over time, I realized their technology side was incredibly lacking. I mean, they used Wix for their main website, which has partners with people like Microsoft and HyperX.
So, I joined their volunteer program, helped out with whatever stuff they needed, and over the course of the year, I’ve became the main supervisor in terms of their software development and minecraft server. Keep in mind, it’s a non-profit, so I earn nothing from it, just work experience.
How does this affect my coding projects? Well, while it does take time off of them, it actually benefits it greatly. Not only am I learning new things constantly on the job (right now we’re working with Wordpress to redesign the website), some parts are actually projects that are already a part of the site.
Being esports/game related, I’ve used projects like DSA Bot to help out. (Which I’m considering to change a bit after I graduate and leave their club.) I can also make new projects and put them into the website as a sort of portfolio. There’s also a good chunk of people who might come from SSE and get on to these projects. (If you’re from there by the way, welcome to the site!)
This does, however, mean that I have to take time off of projects like KAaNE and mutat.io. Which basically means at this moment, they’re free time projects, which I rarely have nowadays. This is when you guys can come in and help.
Every single one of projects has either been open source or are going to be open. If you have any ounce of programming ability, then you should take a look at the projects and decide if you want to help or not. If you want a start, KAaNE [JE] is the easiest, DSA Bot is the more supported (and more “proper”), mutat.io is the hardest but probably the most polished.
Conclusion
And with all that said, it’s time to say goodbye until the next year. Just kidding. I’m making a commitment right now that every update/new project made, I will make a blog post here. If I don’t, notify me a million times and I will film myself doing… something, I don’t know. Just know that these will get much more frequent and there will be actual activity happening. So, happy new year, happy late holidays, and I will see you all soon™.
~ggtylerr