frivalous fragmentations
Hey everybody. What's going on? It's been a while, but here we are with another blog post. Today's content is derived entirely from previous posts that never got off the ground, ones that I half finished, and just generally random ideas that never made it from my C drive to the internet. I came across most of these old files when cleaning up and reorganizing my documents folder last night, and I'm finally giving up on them and putting them all here for you. Enjoy!
A Start
As you may know from reading other posts on this blog, I'm sort of a programmer. I'm mainly versed in python, but learned the basics from PHP, a web serverside language. I love coding, and being able to write programs that will do stuff for me. I sometimes create life-based solutions to problems that I have. One time, I was writing an essay in notepad, because I prefer to just get my main structure down then paste everything into word and polish it up there. Notepad doesn't have a built-in word counter, so I went online and looked one up. It amazed me how much of word counters had other functionality, like spell checking, that I didn't need, and had pages and pages of other stuff that went far beyond pasting words into an edit field and hitting a count button. I hated everything about every one of them, so I just made my own, which you can find and use at
Senior Prank, no longer relevant ideas
Hey hey, folks on the internet. I am back. Is that important? Heeeeck no. But what is important is the content of this post. Today we talk about senior pranks.
Setting The Sceen
So, I live in a small town in Kentucky with an even smaller high school with your usual corrupt board of education, teachers having relationships with students, online learning with teachers babysitting and not actually instructing anyone... in essence, your basic 21st century high school. The year is about over, and we're in the third nine weeks, as they call it. For me, this means that my high school career is just about over, because I'm a senior. The end of the year means scholarship applications, college applications, cap and gown applications, yearbook photos, prom, and all those other good things you have to do as a senior. But it also means a senior prank is on the way, and that's the best part in my opinion.
My thoughts
In our school's past, we've had some pretty good pranks in May. One year, we had folks come in late at night with a bunch of cheapo dollar store alarm clocks and padlocks. All the clocks got set to go off at 9:30 A.M. and were hidden in empty lockers (which there are many of, because who uses their locker?) and padlocked shut. When the alarms all sounded, maintenence had to go around with bolt cutters and crack open the lockers to turn the clocks off, which was pretty dang funny. So there have certainly been some clever pranks we've had, including one where the seniors somehow managed to relocate a picnic table to the roof. But we've also had our fair share of stupid, messy pranks that cause no end of trouble for everyone and which are not really funny. You know, the usual: glue, hot glue, duct tape, vasoleen-coated door handles, all that kind of thing. Last year, administration got sick of people doing stuff like that so they made some of the seniors who did it clean up.
But now, it's my class's turn, and I'm trying to think of a good prank to pull. Vandilism is unproductive and not funny, not to mention unoriginal. All the good stuff has been done. But there's one area really that most people at my school aren't good at, and that's computers. Not a lot of senior pranks have ever targeted electronics, because they're costly to replace. And nobody is really all that good at them, beyond the basics of google chrome browsing and typing papers in MS Word. I'm a programming hobbyist though, so it's with in my interests to do something totally different that nobody will know how to deal with.
How I planned on going about this
Believe it or not, I've been thinking about this one for at least three years. The first time I witnessed the after-effects of a senior prank, I thought: "What on earth am I gonna do when it's my turn?" I played around with some ideas but none of them seemed right, until I thought about computers, which everyone in our school used. All students had chromebooks, and all staff had dell optiplex desktops. They all ran on one network, of course, so logically, I thought I'd try and take it out.
Taking out the network
After a couple years sitting on this idea, I had to finally drop it. It was dang near impossible to do, considering that my school had restricted everything with Lightspeed Secure Web Access, which is a suuuuuuuper secure system. My thought was that I'd obtain a teacher's login and simply access the dashboard of the routher and change some settings, notably the password, which would throw everything off. IT would go around trying to figure out the network password but be unable to, and all along it would be something stupid like "seniors" or anything really. But there were some problems with this plan, chief among them being that I never could get my hands on a teacher's login. Plus, there was nothing to stop the network guys from just resetting the router and using the default password to log in and fix everything. So I tried to come up with something else I could do.
Dismantling
This wouldn't be as effective, really, but it would be to some extent. If I were to open a desktop tower and take out the ram, it would be quite confusing for everybody non-tech-savy to figure out why their machine was running like it was. Or, if I simply unplugged the hard drive, the computer would turn on, but never boot. However, the first thing IT would do when diagnosing the problem would be to check out the pc's internals, so that probably wouldn't last longer than a quick call over to the right department in the office. But it's still something I could do. However, I wanted my prank to be more long lasting, and so I turned to development.
Batch Scripts
What better way to harm Windows whith Windows itself? If I wrote a distructive enough batch script that would contain some commands to run in the Terminal, I could do some serious damage. My first thought was to use the built-in file creation tool (used to generate files full of raw data for testing purposes) to fill up the computer's remaining hard drive space. Once a browser like Chrome would try to cache something, or Windows tried to add to pagefile.sys, there'd be a problem, as no way could this happen with a full disk. So I actually started writing a script, and here's what I got so far.
set %_dsk_q=fsutil volume diskfree C:% for /f "tokens=5" %%a in (%_dsk_q'') do fsutil file createnew c:
users
user
documents
1gb.raw '%%a'
I know, only two lines, but let me explain. First, we query the amount of remaining space, on drive C and then loop through that output until we get to the fifth column of data and assign that number to a variable. Then we use the create file command with the variable containing the number of free disk space left as the size argument, and specify the create location. In theory, anyway. I know nothing about shell scripts, and that was only written with a lot of research. The commands don't do what I want them to do, and I probably should work on fixing that. But even if I could get the commands to run, the create file command won't run without administrator access, which is disappointing.
A python Solution
Since I was a bit better at python than I was shell scripts, I decided to see what I could do about writing a program that would get the remaining disk space, in bytes, and then create a file that was one byte, and enclose the file creation code in a loop that would continue until the number of times it was executed was equal to the number of free bytes. Here's my working code:
(For any non-developers out there, # means a comment which is ignored by the computer.) Show Code
Absolutely nothing was wrong with this code. It ran fine. It created the folder and created the files in it. But due to the genius of the hard drive, even though my file was one byte, the hard drive was somehow able to group several byte sized files together to create a block or something, resulting in all my files not really taking up much space. I don't really understand the problem, but it's clear that this solution wouldn't work.
Now what?
Well that's a good question. I'm at a loss as to what to do, but if I ever do come up with any more ideas, I'll be sure and document them here. If you have any for me, or just want to advise me on how to actually go about fixing any of my current pranks, drop a comment on this post or email me at thatguy@that-domain.com.
Thanks everyone for reading, and I'll post at you later.How To Set Up Komplete Kontrol As A Blind Person
Yahoo! You just purchased Native Instrument's Komplete 12! Congratulations, you just signed yourself up for a really annoying, really time-consuming setup. And it's worse if you're blind. But, never fear, that blog is here. And we are ready to assist you with getting KK up and running on your lovely Macintosh computer and using it with Apple's even more lovely Logic Pro Digital Audio Workstation.
Before We Continue:...
As of December 26, 2019, you will not be able to use this application without a Komplete kontrol keyboard. As Native Instruments is a gay company and does not tell you anywhere on their site, at purchase, at checkout, or on your receipt that their software is %100 inaccessible without their hardware, you can accidentally drop anywhere from $100 up to $1500 before you realize you'll have to buy additional gear. If you already made this mistake, return the software while you can. You can buy a keyboard and get the software and sounds for free on select models. If you have not yet fallen into this trap, don't. Get a KK keyboard, do not buy the software alone. You will not be able to use it. Now, moving on.
Step 1. Aquire the Native Access Application
So, the entire setup of Native Instruments software revolves around this cloud-based app that basically tries to be helpful and go searching the internet for you, and gathering all the necesary sounds and such for you're recently purchased edition of Komplete to work like it should. Keyword here being "Tries," because for a blind guy, it's really frustrating to use. In either case, you kinda gotta use it to get yourself started. If you have sucky internet speeds and bought a hard drive with all the content already on it, woo hoo. You just reduced your setup time signifigantly. If you didn't, you just increased it significantly, especially if you have sucky internet. Prepare to start your downloads over, like a lot.
If you purchased Komplete on a drive, just go ahead and plug it into your macbook, macbook pro, mac Mini, iMac, or Mac Pro by using a pesky USBC adapter. Once that's done, go to the sidebar in Finder and find the volume labeled Komplete, or other Native Instruments associated words like that. Select it, then in the corresponding view, press CMD O on the Native Access.DMG file. It wil extract to a .APP file, which you'll need to copy to your Applications folder. You cannot install Komplete from that volume. Believe me, I tried.
If you didn't buy KK on a drive, well then click here to download Native Access. Then install it.
Step 2: Add your serial.
Lit. You've got yourself Native Access now, and you're all ready to go download everything else you need. But wait... it can't possibly be that easy. You're right, it's not. Native Instruments has no idea who downloaded Native Access and is now trying to obtain a copy of KK. So, in order for them not to get screwed out of a lot of money, they will require you to create an user account with them.
Once you have registered your name, email, and soul with NI, you can then use your new credentials to log in to Native Access. This part, at the time of this writing, is actually pretty accessible.
Once you're in, you can interact with the toolbar close to the top of the screen and select the Add serial tab. When you do this, Native Instruments will be like: "Oh, ok. You're this guy who bought this package on this date. Yep, we believe you now. And just so you never have to do this again, we'll do you a favor annd save this serial to your account." So if you bought KK online, there's a good chance your serial was either emailed to you or is listed on your NI profile somewhere. That's all well and good, but if you bought Komplete on a drive, your serial is listed on a flyer inside the box. And guess what? You get to read it and type it into Native Access. Oh wait, you're blind. HAHA, my mistake. Well then, time for you to call up AIRA and ask them to do it. But wait, it's still not that easy, because you probably won't actually be able to focus on the appropriate box with VoiceOver in order to input the numbers. Luckily, you can click and move your mouse cursor into the edit field, but, of course, you can't see where that is. So you may want to think about more than a five minute call on Aira because getting it right could take a while, even if they're doing it for you via Teamviewer. Now, if you're patient enough, you can call Apple Accessibility, and somehow convince them that you're having an issue with voiceover. We know it's actually NI's fault for not making their app accessible, but they don't know we do. They should request a screenshare, and may be more helpful in assisting you with getting your mouse positioning just right.
Please wait: ... ...
Food
Hell-lo! Welcome to another blog post in which nothing interesting will be written. Well, except for maybe. Today's topic is "Food!"
Boy oh boy. Food brings the world together... and tears it apart. No matter how much two people hate each other, they can always find common ground talking about food. ON the other hand though, lot of folks have a love/hate relationship with it as they are unable to consume certain types, such as foreign foods that are geographically unavailable, as well as things they are allergic to, such as peanut butter. It is a controversial topic and one which I can't even begin to cover fully. No matter how much I write, I can't sum up a million artiles and a billion scientific studies, and I don't want to. I just want to talk about food because it's a great thing to talk about.
What are my favorite things to eat?
Let's begin by examining some of what I regularly partake in. I eat this stuff as often as I can, but I am an athlete so sometimes I have to cut down on some of the more unhealthy stuff. But for the most part, I just keep on loving this what I consume.
Frozen Foods
Chicken nuggets are awesome, ar they not? Who doesn't just love to throw some in the microwave, air fryer, or oven for a delectable dinner or a succulent snack? Well, I'll tell you what, that kind of wonderfullness is not limited to the nugs. It applies to other frozen food too and a lot of people like it for its quick and easy-to-fix characteristics. Frozen food has so greatly expanded from, well, frozen food. It used to be when someone would freeze something, it was either to preserve it, or, well really just that. But there are two states of this food: cooked and uncooked. If a guy cooked some deer, for example, then froze it, then later wanted to heat it up and eat it, that's all he'd have to do. If the guy was heating up the deer for the first time and cooking it, he'd have to add seasoning if he wanted it, as well as anything else that might make it taste better than it already is. But nowadays, most frozen food can be purchased already in the cooked state. Those chicken nuggets already got everything you could ever want. Heck you can even buy some with the taste of ketchup pre-made in to them. Like, is that not awesome? Fun fact: ketchup is now a dry-rub they put on chips as well as the delightful sauce that everyone uses.
Ketchup
I never realized how much people like ketchup. Sure, it's really freekin good, dude. But some people... they just... like it's extreme how much they enjoy the stuff. I've seen people put it on pancakes, pizza, speghetti, even donuts! I kid you not, donuts! Why would anyone do that?
The iPhone Alarm
Yeah. You ever heard it before? I'm sure everybody has. It's a sound that has plagued the world since September 2013, when Apple released iOS 7, complete with this brand new annoying ringtone. It's the default alarm for anything you set through the clock app, so naturally, millions of people have left it that way and left everyone around them to suffer while they continue to sleep through it going off. It's extremely loud, extremely annoying, and it seems somehow to vibrate at just the right frequency to penatrate walls, doors, and whatever else stands between the phone it's imminating from and your ears. And we're gonna talk about it in today's blog post.
Why This Topic?
You might wonder why I'm deciding to discuss Apple's "Radar" ringtone above all the other things I could have chosen to, such as if a chicken nugget is a meatball or not. And I'll explain to you my exact thought process. I was sitting here at my desk, mindlessly scrolling through my hard drive an playing sounds, when I came upon this specific one in my "OS and Product Sounds" folder. Without even reading the title of the file, I clicked it and was immediately bombarded with that distinct modulating tone I'd come to hate. As I continued to listen to it reverberate in my ears, I began to recollect previous instances when I'd had to put up with it, and just what about it was so interesting to me, in an annoying sort of way of course.
I just wrapped up my fall2020 semester of college, and now I'm back home. But when I used to be living on campus, I would wake up about 5:00 in the morning to start my day right: with a workout. I'd get up, get dressed, drink my coffee, and otherwise complete my morning routine. About six I'd meet one of my friends in the lobby and we'd head over to the campus rec center for our daily exercise, and once we got back, it'd be around 7:45 or 8. As I'd be sitting at my table, listening to 840 WHAS and sipping another coffee, I'd catch the faintest sound coming in a little over top of the radio. And as I continued to listen, it became more pronounced, as "radar" wormed its way through multiple walls into my dorm room. 8:00 seemed to be the time most people in my hall decided to get up, so everyone's iPhone would be sounding the alarm, and I'd get the pleasure of hearing it too. If I stepped into the hall, I could pick out the tone much better, and I was always able to tell from behind which door it was coming. If I walked out of G wing to the main hallway traversing the circumference of my dorm building, I heard it on all sides. And I eventually became very, very tired of it.