Quinn9282
Blog Posts Archive (2023)
Blog posts that were previously displayed on the main Blog Posts page from 2023.
An "error message" I got - December 6, 2023
This is an "error message" I got while playing Golf Clash on my (Android) phone a few weeks back. I'm not sure what the actual problem was, but it looks like some sort of script error or loading error judging by the file name it gives (a ".bsh" (Bash?) file), also the fact that it gives you a "Retry" button. Pretty humerous to look at though, and a good reminder that even the latest "polished" Android version never gives you useful error messages 100% of the time (just like any other OS).
Roblox-related dreams (that I almost never get) - November 24, 2023
Despite having playing Roblox for close to 7 years now (since early 2017), I have rarely gotten any actual dreams relating to Roblox or Roblox characters. Whenever I do get them, they're usually barely related to Roblox. Perhaps at most they would show some random Roblox avatars or creations in a random/fictitious place, but it tends to be so loosely related to Roblox that it can be hard to even tell if what your looking at is even Roblox-related at all. Such dreams are also usually pretty short, which also makes it hard to tell or recall what was actually going on.An actual more notable Roblox-related thing that I saw occur in my dreams was how I ended or "left" the dream I was in. For a period of time (roughly between 2021 and 2022), sometimes if I had a bad dream (Roblox-related or not), I would "leave" the dream as you would if you were leaving a Roblox game (pressing the Roblox button at the top left to open the options menu, then choosing "Leave Experience" or "Leave Game", whichever the button text was). Doing that would usually cause the dream to end and I would wake up after that. As strange as this sounds, it was a real thing that happened in my dreams, but it guess in the end it did do what the "Leave Experience/Game" button is supposed to do (albeit for a slightly different purpose). This "Leave Dream" thing hasn't occurred again since late 2022, so it was obviously just a random thing that happened for a little while. Dreams are weird.
My take on LED streetlights and headlights - November 19, 2023
For all intents and purposes, I largely prefer the old-standard high-pressure sodium (HPS) streetlights, mostly from an aesthetic standpoint. I remember the countless times I was walking or driving in the car with my parents somewhere back in the late 2000s/early 2010s. Driving at night is an aesthetic of it's own, but the HPS streetlights added something to it that white LED's can't.I'm all for conserving resources, but I've seen countless videos, images, and discussions online about LED streetlight failures time and time again. Whether they're flickering, flashing, prematurely dimming, turning purple, not turning on at all, drooping or falling off poles(!), wire/pole connection access covers opening or falling off unexpectedly, among other things. I've seen it all. And a good chunk of these failures aren't happening 5 or 10 years down the line, these failures are happening within a few years, a few months or even weeks after they were originally installed.
Yeah sure, they may "last longer" than a typical HPS streetlight, but what good is it if the light has a good chance of failing within at most a few years after it's installed? I struggle to see any real significant "cost savings" in the long run given the amount of LED streetlight failures I've come across over the years (even just in my own city). I mean sure, there might be a "significant" cost savings initially (in terms of electricity usage), but as time goes on, that "significant" cost savings isn't going to live on forever once the lights start failing and the replacement/repair costs start piling up (especially if the LED streetlights your municipality uses aren't easily repairable, requiring an entirely new fixture to be installed every time one fails, which costs a lot of money in the long run).
I've come across many HPS lights over the years that just seem to last "forever" (or at least an extremely long time). The lights on my own street NEVER burnt out in the possibly 25 years they were in service for (~late 90s to mid-2021, when they were (sadly) replaced with LED's). There is a slight possibility they had a bulb swap done in the early or mid-2000s, but regardless, that's far longer than probably any LED streetlight currently out there on the market, and I'm doubtful to see any LED streetlight last that long. They might have even lasted at least a few more years if they weren't LED swapped in 2021.
In terms of brightness, yes they are pretty bright, yet at the same time feel inadequate (depending on the application). Some fixtures do an "okay" job at mitigating light spillage somewhat (i.e. light coming horizontally out of the fixture, right into your eyeballs). But a number of lights, especially cheaper ones shine right into your eyeballs the entire time you're walking or driving. Now you might be thinking "but didn't HPS lights do the same thing/had the same problem?". Yes they did, and it did become a problem as time went on. But the difference is that it's a lot easier to look at a warmer (amber) colored light than a white light, regardless of the application were talking about.
And no, LED streetlights in itself do not "improve safety". I mean sure, having brighter lights might deter people from going to said brightly-lit area, but in a world where more and more crime is happening in broad daylight, I'm doubtful putting a bunch of super-bright LED lights everywhere will magically solve crime. Unless there is any actual evidence to prove this otherwise, I do not believe that doing this solves anything (not to mention the environmental issues with putting super-bright LED lights everywhere).
***
When it comes to LED headlights, without question, they are a horrible idea, because they are just eyeseeringly bright. They also cannot be repaired, meaning that when the light inevitably fails, the whole headlight module has to be replaced.
It's made even worse when people (and also mechanics) "retrofit" older cars which are designed for incandescent or halogen lights with LED bulbs, which is such a common thing I've seen done especially over the past several years. The issue with doing that is that the design of the reflector in the headlight is specifically designed for light bulbs with filaments (incandescent and halogen bulbs). LED bulbs don't have filaments, thus the way the light hits the reflector causes the light to refract in a much different way, causing eyeseering brightness and spillage far beyond the edges of the road lane.
I've also occasionally seen LED "retrofits" done for with yellow lights or sometimes even blue lights (at least for DRL's). Doing that has all the same issues as white LED bulb retrofits, but with the added bonus of the fact that, because it's more of a "pure" yellow or blue, it makes it look (and probably function) worse than a white LED bulb in a way that makes it even harder to look at while driving.
***
In the end, the LED is a good technology in itself, but the way they are applied in modern ways (outside of indicator lights) is sub-par at best. The LED can be made to be good at these applications, but unless something changes with regards to brightness and reliability, I don't see a "bright" (no pun intended) future where the only lighting technology we have out there is LED.
Ranty post over (for now).
Bad Internet Bills - November 15, 2023
For those who live in the United States (I don't myself), this is something that shouldn't be taken lightly:
R.I.P Omegle (2009 - 2023) - November 9, 2023
As of yesterday night (November 8, 2023), Omegle has shut down. A lot of reasons can be pointed to it's fall from grace, but what I posted on Mastodon last night sums it up the best (in my opinion):
"It looks like #omegle has kicked the bucket after almost 15 years.
...
The TL;DR is that the founder had a vision, but ultimately, a particular chunk of society (especially in it's latter years) didn't follow that vision, and it made running the site a stressful losing battle between the constant slew of people who came to tear it down and making the site lose focus on it's vision entirely, and the people who were genuinely using it just to find someone to talk to."
...Which, for all intents and purposes, is what ended up happening to the website. While it was originally envisioned to be used by people as an anonymous way to communicate with strangers, it ended up devolving into a cesspool of people who were commiting illegal acts and discriminating people, among other more objectively questionable things. It is an unfortuante reality of the modern Internet. Perhaps in the future, a service similar to Omegle will open up, but given the "attacks" on such services in the past, who knows if something like that will last very long, or ever even come to fruition for that matter.
Though I never used the site myself (for good reason), it's definetly sad to see another website shut down in this manner. The founder wrote a long farewell post on the homepage of Omegle.com, and it's definetly worth a read.
Relaunching my old Roblox elevator game "Lifty Lifty Lifts!" - November 7, 2023
Hey everyone! I'm going to (likely later this month) relaunch my old Roblox elevator game Lifty Lifty Lifts!. The game has been broken since 2019 (due to Roblox updates), but I'm going to relaunch it once I fix some of the broken elevators (i.e. ones that get stuck, don't move, are glitchy, etc.). I will update this post once I open the game publicly.
Fun fact: the game thumbnail and icon (at the time of this post) shows how the game looked initially when I first created it back in early 2018. I had updated the looks of the game shortly thereafter, but I never updated the thumbnails for it. I will update it with newer thumbnails before I open it (and yes, the game will have a lot more elevators than what is seen currently in the thumbnail).
First Post, and a small tangent on websites today - November 5, 2023
Let's be real, making a website yourself is a lot cooler than using the many generic website builder templates out there. Most modern websites and wesbite builder templates a) lacks customizability in many cases b) looks generic and boring (have little to no creativity in many cases) and c) lacks actual EXPRESSION (i.e. what seperates your site from others). The actual creativity and expression of older websites from the 90s and 2000s is what made the web actually interesting to browse through, and I wish that were still the case on a large scale today.
I know there are people out there that will probably loath (hate) the idea of making their own website from scratch, and if you want to be that way, fine, but always remember that for every generic and non-creative website you make, you support an Internet of blandness and atrocity (as it already exists in many ways today). But it doesn't have to be that way! You have the capability to change that and bring back the expressive and creative web from the past into the "modern" world. Give it a shot, you probably won't regret it later after being stuck with so many bland and boring sites of today, it will seem like a massive breath of fresh air!
*End of post*