Random Updates about Greg

So because I dont want the GT6 Main Thread to be flooded with my personal Life Stuff whenever I do Patreon Posts, I decided to make the Blogs Category and this Post in it to split Dev Stuff and Personal Stuff in some manner, or I might end up putting/copypasting the content of my Patreon Posts here too. ^^

Press the “END”-Key on your Keyboard to get to the most recent Post.

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And while I am at it, I’ll do a first actual Post here too.

Today was a shit day, 32-34°C outside and almost got a heatstroke on my way home… If the Weather Forecast is staying like this until Friday I will not go to that “Life Quality Improvement” thing at that day because it would be too dangerous for me to be outside at that time. But hey I did beat Treasure Knight (Shovel Knight Stage) on my way home (or to be precisely while waiting an hour for the damn Bus).

I will likely also spend a lot of time in the basement considering how hot it is. Luckily I didn’t get to watch half of the D&D campaigns that TeamFourStar has put out over the last two weeks, so I got something to listen to.

Also the Basement Paperwork is now 100% done, so only Paper Trash has to be taken care of for a couple months to slowly decrease the mountain of Paper that is resting on that one Desk every time the Paper Bin is being Garbage Collected.

And since the work is done, and I also tested if the Scanner in my Canon Printer works with Linux while copying a random Document for my Mom (which it does, and even as PNG, yay :D), I will probably start drawing Stuff again, at least during the Heat (It’s been a long while since I last did that). It’s probably gonna be much easier for me than drawing 100% digitally in GIMP, since I wont rely too much on straight lines and such.

I mentioned it before, but I did look at a lot of Raspberry Pi Stuff recently and consider getting the Pis 0, 1, 2 and 3, so that I can Test my Game on those later, yes I plan on it being possible to host a simple Game Server on a frikkin Pi 0 which costs just 5 Bucks, that’s how much performance I hope to achieve (I really hope that one works out). I do not know if I go with the A or B Models or a Mix of them, though I do know that it’s gonna be the Pi 0w for the Zero due to WiFi Support. This is also a good way to find out Graphics Requirements when it comes to Hardware, since I doubt the Pi Zero can do Clients on its very limited Processor.

Also I know the Pi 4B just came out, but there is some Heat and USB C related Firmware Issues I plan to wait out, and if the Heat Issues dont get fixed I might get that Power-over-Ethernet HAT just to have its Fan in a nicely mounted fashion.

Speaking of Pi Peripherals I also looked at a bunch of those and damn there is a lot of them. I might get the whole Desktop Kit when I buy the 4B, which however also means that I could use the Charger of said Kit for the other Pis I am gonna get, though having a spare Charger might be a good idea anyways so it wouldn’t be much of a waste. All the Pi Stuff is usually very cheap so nothing to worry about.

I did see some Pi Spinoffs like the ASUS variant, which also seems promising with a 1.8GHz ARM Processor, but I don’t get the Pis for CPU performance, so I will not get that one. Though the 4B is gonna have nicer IO performance so I can make it into a way better NAS (Network Attached Storage) than the 3.

Well that ended up being a Long Post. XD

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Here’s a followup to some of the Stuff I mentioned earlier:

I have setup the Lenovo T61 in the Basement so my Mom has something to Play Age of Empires II and Sid Meier’s Pirates with. Both Games that I had bought again on Steam just to have it easier to make it work with Proton. Interestingly those games ran better on the slow Dualcore T61 with crappy HDD than on my faster Quadcore ZBOX with SSD, which is weird, but I guess having a dedicated GPU can do Stuff that an Integrated one can not.

I also improved the Boot Performance of the T61 by just disabling “/usr/sbin/update-apt-xapian-index” and “/usr/lib/apt/apt.systemd.daily” (which are both absolutely useless performance and CPU Core munching auto update checkers that dont actually do anything, especially if you update manually anyways) using the good old “add system exit to the begin of the file” Method. So now it only takes 2 mins and 15 secs to get into the Login Screen and from there another Minute and 15 secs to get to the Desktop.

What I definitely did not think about in advance was the fact that I have set up the thing in the Basement, as my Mom requested. And guess who now has taken over the only chair in the Basement, that I could use to hang out down there while it is hot? Yep, my Mom. XD

As for drawing Stuff, I got very far with the visual Design of yet another alternate Version of me, (some may call it an OC) XD, though this time looking quite a bit different than the regular ones. I already started “translating” the Image into GIMP manually, yes I know I said I would scan it (but not for publishing the raw thing), but in the end using the paper for reference while redrawing from scratch seemed better, because I ended up experimenting with a few designs, especially haircuts in this case.
So soon there will not only be Classic Gregorius (armored), Modern Gregorius (Eggman alike) and Gregory (Floating Greg-Head Robot similar to Orbot), but also the Bullet Hell Variant of Greg that probably does not look like you expect, but when you see the Image you will likely say “OFCOURSE IT’S THAT!”.
After that I will probably somewhen go for a Metal Sonic alike Version of Gregory.

And ofcourse it is still 30°C inside while its 29°C outside. The heat just doesn’t want to go outside. At least I added the Tachometer for Axles in GT6, and while I was at it, I fixed some Sensor timings so they are more consistent.

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Sorry to hear about the heat still, that temp just cooks my noggin and puts me out of action.
Could it be that AOE II and pirates are doing some sort of cycle counting and the faster processing power is messing with their internal timing? Classic games by the way, nice choice.

You’ll need to post your images once you’re done.

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Nah that cant be it technically the processor has a higher frequency but less processing power, which makes GHz a weird way to measure processors. And AoE II is fine, only Pirates has the supposed GPU Issues, its always when it loads a “new” scene that it hasn’t loaded before, otherwise it wont lag.

And yep I’m gonna post them once they are done, just like the others. ^^

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Wait. Is there no air conditioning in Germany? I think I’d better put on one to survive this summer, or heatstroke will be in trouble. fucky global warming…
I heard that air conditioning in Germany is very expensive?I don’t know if your family can afford… But it’s better than heatstroke.

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Only for public places most of the time, regular single family houses in small towns often dont have it. Especially if the Houses are older, like the one I live in.

And the almost Heatstroke was while walking Home, so I was outside when that happened.

Also we could afford it but you need to be able to fit it in SOME window, and there is no Window that could hold it in my Room, because i am in the Diagonal Roof portion of the House.

In general, I can afford everything I want or need, money isn’t short for me because I know how to manage my finances and i also know how to not buy shit I don’t need.
Sure I live off of Welfare because I simply am not suitable for most typical Jobs due to being more of an artisty person and having some medical Issues, but this does not mean I am poor, technically apart from having more peace of mind due to what I get from Patreon (and the ability to order Stuff online much easier), I never used up enough money to actually make use of what I got from Patreon.
It just gives me more leverage and time in case some bureaucratic thing screws me over temporarily, or the ability to say NOPE and get the welfare cut by 30% or 70% for a couple months.

Speaking of Nope, the thing the Jobcenter has sent me to this time (since beginning of July, and spanning a whole year) is starting to go into the direction of “sit there and do nothing useful” again, and if that continues to be the case yet a third time, then I am no longer accepting anything they send me to at all, because they sent me to three “Activities” each under a different Company managing them, and the first two of those ended up being “sit there and do nothing” or “sit at a dangerously outdated Windows XP Computer that only has Internet Explorer installed, and then do nothing”.

Also fun fact, it takes me 4 frikkin hours to get there and back home afterwards and the whole thing is 3 hours 45 minutes long (two days a week), so I spend more time traveling there than actually being there!

And speaking of mismanaged time, the Cities Bus Plan is the worst in the entire Area right now, there is one central Bus Station for all the Busses that only go through the City, another “central” Bus Station for all the Regional Busses (you know the kind I use to get in to and out of the City in the first place), and then there is a THIRD huge and mostly not even used Bus Station at the Train Station, where a City Bus only arrives/departs every 30 fucking Minutes! Yes at the motherfucking Main Train Station!
HOW THE FUCK ARE YOU SUPPOSED TO GET ANYWHERE IN TIME!?!
The distance is short enough to have one single Bus go between all three of those important Stations every 10 minutes! Yes 5 minutes back and forth by Bus! Lets make it every 15 minutes so the Bus Driver has time to actually catch a break and stuff, oh wait that is how it was about 2 years ago but with two Busses!

Should I mention again that due to the Light Sensitivity of my Eyes I can’t make a Drivers License? The Jobcenter expects me to at least apply to 4 Jobs a month, but with this Bus Plan I cant fucking get anywhere, so by now I am basically forced to apply to Jobs that I couldn’t even attend to, not to mention that before the Busses got worse, I had to sometimes apply to Jobs I wasn’t even qualified for in the first place. I’m an inspiration driven Artist, I don’t fit into the “can do job” or “can execute orders properly” category! If I could I would already do something like Freelance Programming or shit!

Meanwhile during all of this shit, Patreons Website is starting to break apart more and more, and it’s been 2 days since my Support Request and still no Reply at all (apart from the automatic “Here is your Support Ticket!” one).

Here a Summary of what is broken so far:

  • First Onebox Support broke, as can be seen on the GT6 Main Thread where my Patreon Posts aren’t nicely Boxed anymore due to Patreons Website no longer allowing it or being broken in another way.
  • Then eventually a week or two later the Post Editor broke, and I was no longer able to Paste Text into it at all without causing it to crash.
  • The same Day I also noticed that I cant select Text with my Mouse or the Shift + Arrow Keys without having a Risk of also crashing! Not a 100% Risk but some Risk. I was able to link something.
  • And two days ago, right before I wrote my Support Request I was no longer able to post any Images whatsoever, because the Editor did not recognize that I pasted a fucking Image URL into the Bar (The URL Bar was not crashing on Paste, just the Editor was).
  • So and while I filled out the Support form, there was nothing to select “Bug Report” so I left it as “-”, which apparently was a mistake and when I submitted, it ended up asking me to select something for that Field, so I did and IT DELETED MY SUPPORT REQUEST SO I HAD TO RESTART FROM ZERO!!! I am glad that I copied the Report before I have hit Submit because I had the feeling it was gonna be just as broken…

If they let this shit go on for longer than 1 or 2 months I might consider just ditching Patreon in regards of Posting Updates and just go full on my Forums, so that Patreon will only be a payment processor and nothing else.

Hrrm what else got broken, oh right youtube-dl broke but at least they fixed it quickly. It wasn’t able to retrieve the Title of the Video, so the Files ended up as “_.webm” without a proper Name. This taught me to finally contain the Video ID in the Filename, aka the 11 characters after the “?watch=”, just to make sure nothing gets overridden by accident. Also I noticed youtube-dl can be updated without sudo once it is installed, so I guess I can put an auto-updater into the Script.

What else could I mention, I did not continue the Drawing yet, so that isn’t newsworthy. Guess I will close off this very rambly Post then. ^^

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About that heat ther is som idea how to cool air without clasick Aircondicioner. In YT is a How To Turn Your Fan Into An Airconditioner AC - Easy DIY videos :slight_smile:

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Yeah but I already have a fan and it works fine fanning me. XD

I do know the place a bunch of ice/water in front of fan trick to cool you down, but I prefer going to the basement to cool down instead because that is easier and doesn’t risk an electronics malfunction.

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That sounds so crazy! But then again I live in a desert, everything has A/C here… ^.^;

In the USA you get paid for your travel distance if it exceeds a certain range, like 5 miles or something where I am. ^.^

They did ‘something’ and it’s not oneboxing in a variety of sites I’ve noticed lately.

And all this is just wtf, what did they do?!?

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Its 25 kilometers, yes its that short, so overall 50 kilometers. Yes the whole thing essentially runs at 12.5 Kilometers per Hour due to the huge chunk of waiting time.

Yeah I told them that too, btw they replied about an hour or two ago, I sent them the Screenshot with the inspector open while the Editor Bug happens.

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So they at least pay you for the travel distance then yes? :wink:

Blegh, not a fan of react…

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They pay for the Bus Ticket but not for my wasted time.

Of React to what ??

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React is the name of the javascript library they use. I really don’t like it… ^.^;

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That one I found is having a close loop, so no risk of electronics malfunction

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I was in Berlin this weekend. It is a beautiful city but holy hell, no AC!

No AC on bus, no AC on the U-Bahn not even in most of the restaurant or pubs :joy:.

I think I found only 1 place with AC.

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Traditionally speaking there hasn’t been a need for AC. Average July high temperatures in Germany generally haven’t strayed far from 20 degrees C according to online statistics, aside from 2006. This year and last have been exceptionally hot comparatively.

EDIT -

Personally I feel the summers are far hotter now than when I was younger.

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Yes I was thinking about that. I think this is reasonable for restaurants and pubs not having AC but on public trans. I would use them anyway because it can get very hot when crowded, even if outside temp isn’t that high

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Our Busses do have AC, its called “Open the Front Door while driving”

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And the other Version of AC is “have the bus be not air tight at all no matter if summer or winter”, which tends to be more common than the (true, but rare) joke I did above. XD

So the Patreon Support Request is very much dealt with, now it is up to them to finally fix the Issue I have.

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