Alice Averlong🏳️‍⚧️

Mad Scientist and Necromancer
AuADHD creature of elemental internet
collector of keysmashes

Used to be called Foone, before the war

pronouns: she/her
website: https://wiki.averlong.com
location: San Leandro, CA, USA
ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/fooneturing

Public Key

npub1g8xss90hlwac30xt8f53wnczr3mnr6mud4js95qwtyfy6nd95r0q9r7wul

NIP-05 Address

[email protected]

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsyrnggzhmlhwughn9n56ghfuppcae3ad7x6egz6q89jyjdfkj6phspz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dspntvlj

Publishing to

relay.damus.io

nos.lol

Author Public Key

npub1g8xss90hlwac30xt8f53wnczr3mnr6mud4js95qwtyfy6nd95r0q9r7wul

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Last Notes

2026-05-19 01:32:04 CEST

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I also like how Nixifying this program has made it take much longer to launch, which is just great because I already was annoyed at how slowly it launches, given that one of the required maneuvers is to repeatedly launch it as you binary-search the starting parameters

2026-05-19 01:29:10 CEST

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it turns out mid-migraine is not the best time to do linux software installation

2026-05-19 01:23:49 CEST

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if I was like 15% more angry and spiteful I'd be forking this software and the other software it relies on.
but I'm not, so I'll just complain instead

2026-05-19 01:22:44 CEST

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it's really great that this python script now requires me to run a nix daemon to use it
definitely an improvement on the previous version where you had to, like, set up a virtualenv and compile a module

2026-05-19 01:19:45 CEST

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instructions: "just run nix build!"
actual nix:
$ nix build
error: experimental Nix feature 'nix-command' is disabled; add '--extra-experimental-features nix-command' to enable it

2026-05-19 01:11:31 CEST

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coming back to a project I've built before (and even sold hardware for!) only to discover their main repo is now partially vibe coded AND you have to install Nix to build it now

2026-05-19 01:11:02 CEST

there should be a word for that specific experience where you need to do a computer task you've done a couple times before, but it turns out they've made it way more annoying since the last time you did it

2026-05-18 23:53:38 CEST

one of the many ways you can be really annoying to your loved ones is offer to log into their accounts to do the car payments or whatever and when it sends their phone a 6-digit code to verify your account, let them read it out to you and then go "BUT HONEY, IT SAID TO NEVER SHARE IT WITH ANYONE!"
I've done that three times today, and I'm somehow still married

2026-05-18 23:02:15 CEST

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the four canonical bool values are, of course:
tNo,
tYes,
tMaybe,
tLim

2026-05-18 12:49:37 CEST

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- cb += (1 << cbit) + ((luCur >> (cbit + 1)) & ((1 << cbit) - 1));
+ cb += (1 << cbit) + ((luCur >> (ibit + cbit + 1)) & ((1 << cbit) - 1));
ahh, of course. such an obvious mistake

2026-05-18 12:40:16 CEST

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the worst part is that I have no guarantee that this C++ decompression code has ever worked.
the original programmers write an x86 assembly version and a cross-platform version, but this program only ever came out on x86.
So did they ever test this code? Did they ever even RUN it?
dunno!

2026-05-18 12:33:33 CEST

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oh it was also trying to load MIDI files backwards because it thought not being on a 386 meant that we had to be big-endian

2026-05-18 12:24:59 CEST

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I also have C++ code that supposedly can compress.
is it broken? who can say

2026-05-18 12:23:18 CEST

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it's also EIGHT THOUSAND LINES of assembly because why not manually unroll your loops?

2026-05-18 12:20:51 CEST

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why is it that I always end up having to reverse engineer compression code?
There's something like FIVE implementations of this decompression routine:
x86 assembly
C++ (broken)
C#
Rust
Python
naturally I need a working C++ one, but that means having to figure out what's wrong with the existing code
For bonus points: there's actually TWO compression routines, each slightly different. and potentially broken

2026-05-18 11:03:01 CEST

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oh sweet jesus, they handle displaying the splashscreen by busy-looping the CPU for 4 seconds.
I KNOW PROGRAMMERS WHO CARE ABOUT MULTITASKING AND THEY'RE ALL COWARDS

2026-05-18 10:25:57 CEST

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IT'S CRASHING ON BOOT BECAUSE THE BOOLEANS ARE TOO SMALL

2026-05-18 10:22:31 CEST

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I did get the debugger working. One minor issue: it runs at 640x480.
https://digipres-club.s3.bhs.io.cloud.ovh.net/media_attachments/files/116/594/607/031/621/753/original/53be184a1c5a34d4.png

2026-05-18 10:08:57 CEST

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I have 31 errors and all of them are failing to call this NO-OP

2026-05-18 10:08:40 CEST

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so if DEBUG isn't defined, this function is never called. and if vcactSuspendCheckPointers isn't 0 or cb is 0, this function's main code block doesn't run.
and if it is 0, and cb isn't 0... IT DOES NOTHING
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
https://digipres-club.s3.bhs.io.cloud.ovh.net/media_attachments/files/116/594/550/865/758/161/original/9731d40b8f761358.png

2026-05-18 10:00:43 CEST

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I'm starting to think this code was written by someone with a deep and unrelenting grudge against the C standard library

2026-05-18 10:00:20 CEST

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we can't use memcpy/memmove, we have to reimplement it as CopyPb and swap the order of the pointers!
obviously it's src, dest, not dest, src

2026-05-18 09:58:29 CEST

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this is fun. I am down to like 8 errors, and I fix the first one.
This changes the number of errors left by random.randint(-80,80)

2026-05-18 09:46:03 CEST

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GST::FAddRgch ahh yes, methods written by people who were scared of vowels and thought the solution was Hungarian notation

2026-05-18 09:42:57 CEST

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surely it'll be easy to fix this
oh that had some downstream impact, it's calling methods that aren't const-clean.
surely that'll be easy to fix
oh
I'm up to 119 compiler errors (from 1) now

2026-05-18 09:31:09 CEST

some punk 31 years ago was tired of dealing with "correctly matching const char* vs char*" so they just did
#define CONST
and now it's my problem

2026-05-14 04:45:38 CEST

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yet another day of "are they intentionally developing this shit with anti-debugging features or is it just a side effect of their frankly insane software stack"

2026-05-14 04:31:22 CEST

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I have no idea what monitor ever supported both DDC and software-triggered degaussing. I'm guessing the answer is "not any monitor you could ever afford"

2026-05-14 04:30:48 CEST

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fun fact: did you know you can call a win32 API to degauss a monitor?
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/highlevelmonitorconfigurationapi/nf-highlevelmonitorconfigurationapi-degaussmonitor

2026-05-14 04:30:22 CEST

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anyway the reason I was hacking this is that I want to know how it communicates with my monitor, so I can do it myself instead of using their weird abomination of an app.
Answer seems to be SetVCPFeature & GetVCPFeatureAndVCPFeatureReply from the DirectX Video Acceleration (DXVA) API

2026-05-14 04:25:59 CEST

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they wrote the app in C++
in MFC
so they're using some embedded COM HTML view
this isn't Electron, it's a DIY Electron clone

2026-05-14 04:22:00 CEST

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so the program is by Portrait Displays, Inc. with a copyright date of 1993-2023.
And I was wrong. It's not electron. It's worse.

2026-05-14 04:11:32 CEST

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welcome to 2026 where it's normal for your monitor control app to be implemented as half a million characters of javascript

2026-05-14 04:04:32 CEST

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yep it's electron. The monitor utility is a webpage. why not

2026-05-14 04:00:57 CEST

today in "huh, they built it with THAT?"
Asus ProArt ChromaTune. It's a little app that sits in your windows tray and can switch between your monitor's color palettes. You can either do it manually, or you can tell it to automatically switch when you run certain programs, so you can do things like "always use sRGB mode when I'm in photoshop".
Wanna guess how they built this?
https://digipres-club.s3.bhs.io.cloud.ovh.net/media_attachments/files/116/570/451/316/488/674/original/a04af502a369a944.png

2026-05-13 06:36:21 CEST

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traditionally I've been a sort of hybrid, doing most of my programming from a seated position, other than back in the early 2010s when I experimented with a standing desk.
Since the whole bedridden thing I've written more and more of my code horizontally, but I'm slowly working my way up to hybrid stances

2026-05-13 06:35:18 CEST

are you a horizontal or vertical programmer?
https://digipres-club.s3.bhs.io.cloud.ovh.net/media_attachments/files/116/565/403/077/710/657/original/13b1fd7557f48cfd.png

2026-05-13 02:56:21 CEST

So I was bedridden for 16 months, and I've been focusing on getting employed since then. I'm making progress but I'm still up to my ears in debt from being sick for so long, and I'm out of food & rent money.
If you've got a couple dollars, it'd really help. Thanks so much!
https://ko-fi.com/fooneturing #mutualaidrequest

2026-05-07 23:05:35 CEST

Setting up age verification for my BBS
It's simple: if you know what a BBS is and manage to connect to it, you're clearly over 18.

2026-05-04 22:45:46 CEST

It's time. Fetch me the Jar-Jar mouse.
https://digipres-club.s3.bhs.io.cloud.ovh.net/media_attachments/files/116/518/258/581/505/990/original/5e2c4249239511ab.jpg

2026-05-03 23:25:17 CEST

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It has been located. Windows 98 install files are being copied now

2026-05-03 22:46:21 CEST

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the moral of the story is that when something about computers seems too good to be true, it probably isn't true.
Computers never make THAT much sense

2026-05-03 22:45:34 CEST

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NOPE!
It's physically but not electrically compatible with CompactFlash!

2026-05-03 22:45:13 CEST

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which frankly makes so much sense that I'm amazed I've never seen another laptop do it. the CF connector is designed to be compatible with IDE! why didn't every laptop do this?
Also, I'm adapting a CF card to IDE44, and the drive sled PCB seems to be adapting it right back to CF. Can I skip the adapters and just plug the CF card into the laptop directly?

2026-05-03 22:43:28 CEST

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so back in the pre-sata, pre-m.2 era, laptops usually used 44-pin IDE, which is a terrible connector. So to fix this, they'd have a little adapter in the drive sled that'd adapt 44pin-IDE to some more sturdy connector.
This laptop seems to have used the CompactFlash adapter for that connector

2026-05-03 22:40:40 CEST

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BUT THEN IT GOT WEIRD
https://digipres-club.s3.bhs.io.cloud.ovh.net/media_attachments/files/116/512/573/564/652/624/original/b579e211666b3b45.jpg

2026-05-03 22:39:22 CEST

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So I got the 44pin to IDE adapter, stuck a CF card in it, and shoved it in the drive sled.
https://digipres-club.s3.bhs.io.cloud.ovh.net/media_attachments/files/116/512/567/360/322/765/original/1d4b6019f402542d.jpg

2026-05-02 10:49:25 CEST

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alice! hey alice.
future alice listen to me: when you do set up the CF to 44pin thing, partition and format it using the DOS disk in the laptop, then remove it again connect it to your laptop and just copy over windows 98 or whatever. don't deal with serial or floppies

2026-05-02 09:13:30 CEST

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so probably I copy over something that'll let me null-modem the serial to my main laptop

2026-05-01 08:36:41 CEST

it's kinda hilarious watching bluesky users talking about how they have to stay on the site, even as it gets worse, because they can't go back to twitter!
which is the only other option available

2026-04-29 00:01:30 CEST

It's amazing how fast attitudes to security in the industry has changed. Like, I remember in 2023ish spending a while working on a system to securely trigger remote builds, because we couldn't have our slack chatbots on the same network as our Jenkins server
And in 2026 they just give a 3rd party LLM write access to both + the git repo

2026-04-22 22:19:07 CEST

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Closest I've found yet is Logitech Signature Slim K950 at 685g

2026-03-23 07:04:18 CET

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sadly my PCjr can't run windows 95

2026-03-23 06:26:01 CET

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BTW with the "pop quiz" my current best solution is 13

2026-03-21 00:35:45 CET

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yeah but "sage" in the 2ch/4chan context is the japanese word 垂げ, meaning "down".
It's "sah-gay"

2026-03-12 01:32:50 CET

I think I need more coffee, I just wrote this code:
line=line.rstrip(line)

2026-03-05 06:45:08 CET

Donk. This Foone is under new management:
I'm Alice Averlong now.

2026-01-02 13:59:58 CET

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maybe I'll plug both [fox|flux][flux|fox] into my program, so there's a 50% chance it tries to render your floppy disk using a half naked furry

2025-11-29 05:58:59 CET

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I've not experienced the fancy new haptic feedback things in modern video games, maybe they're good enough that just haptic motors would be enough

2025-11-29 05:56:55 CET

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maybe use a metal mousepad and then electromagnet the mouse to it

2025-11-29 05:53:47 CET

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maybe make an optical mouse that's got a ball, so the ball rolls freely until it turns on an electromagnet?

2025-11-29 05:53:17 CET

I want a mouse that has brakes.
You could make it have resistance to crossing over button edges

2025-11-21 02:28:51 CET

"You can download EnVision Publisher for Windows from our hidden page. To obtain the URL to this page you need to contact us by phone or email. "
what

2025-11-11 06:03:31 CET

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https://digipres.club/system/media_attachments/files/115/529/308/712/475/191/original/eeba9373e79457ac.jpeg

2025-11-06 09:02:46 CET

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hey 2001 foone: save yourself a lot of time by scripting a jpeg resizing/recompressing tool so that you can tell it "give me this jpeg under 75k" and it'll compress it for you at various sizes until it finds the best-quality-without-going-over-75kb file.

2025-10-15 13:26:07 CEST

I have resumed the folly of 3d printing after a nearly year long hiatus
place your bets until how long it'll be until I'm ranting about how printers are a sin against man and god

2025-10-09 13:33:49 CEST

Well, I'd like to at least extend my thanks to Framework for finally helping me get over my disappointment that they didn't hire me last year.

2025-04-15 21:21:54 CEST

4chan's dead, tumblr is NSFW-warning people for posting arms, bluesky didn't upload the screenshot of tumblr censoring the arms, only mastodon still functions!

2025-03-06 21:45:34 CET

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I swear to god if there's quadruple packets I'm going to.... return this device to the video game history foundation

2025-03-06 21:42:28 CET

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yes lets read all 3 button presses from a 2 button packet
I'm sure that won't desync the everything

2025-03-06 21:28:51 CET

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oh god it might not be corrupted. I might just be misunderstanding the protocol. it might be saying "hey this packet has two keypresses"

2025-03-06 21:27:55 CET

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I could solve the protocol problem by just accepting corrupted packets, EXCEPT one of the header bytes for the packet is also a position on the wheel, so every time you glitched the protocol by pushing keys too fast, it'd think you yanked the wheel to the right

2025-03-06 21:17:49 CET

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this mainly is going to make the joystick a nightmare to program. it keeps getting stuck thinking I'm doing like, up + down + down-left

2025-03-06 20:38:02 CET

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oh hey this has a coin acceptor. I should play a mame game with it. pole position, maybe?

2025-02-24 18:23:13 CET

Sometimes I wish I wasn't a retrotech reverse engineer.
Because see, if you're not one, you get to live 2025 without any chance of having to ever think about fucking MFC

2025-02-17 21:28:31 CET

I wonder how bad an idea it is to mount a raspi pico at a 90-degree angle to a PCB

2025-02-08 04:27:02 CET

an image from the alternate universe where USB never existed so our parallel ports just kept getting bigger
https://digipres.club/system/media_attachments/files/113/966/133/650/241/014/original/cf1d9c5a0e0eb759.jpg

2024-12-14 23:20:11 CET

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(I'm a pope, so that's okay)

2024-12-05 02:38:23 CET

I decided to foolishly glance at the service manual for my current Fucking Laptop and YOU HAVE TO REMOVE THE CPU HEATSINK TO SERVICE THE KEYBOARD!?

2024-10-28 03:42:03 CET

The next big thing: VGA-C.
analog video, but you don't have to flip the cable to make it fit!

2024-10-03 01:42:38 CEST

Huh. I just snipped a VARTA battery out of a 486. It reads 3.0v and hasn't leaked.
This thing is nearly 25 years old!

2024-10-03 00:07:27 CEST

why did we invent a new kind of battery that can burst into flames when punctured or bent and then started GLUING it into everything?

2024-09-17 00:05:58 CEST

I keep seeing webmasters talking about how to block AI scrapers (through user agents and IP blocks) and not enough webmasters talking about the far better option of rigging their site to return complete gibberish or transgender werewolf erotica* when AI scrapers are detected.
*depending on which one you think is funnier to poison the AI models with

2024-09-11 05:01:44 CEST

I think Samsung should really taunt Apple and have the Galaxy S25 phone have a 1/4" headphone jack

2024-08-30 04:55:36 CEST

Do they actually make reliable microsd cards, or are they all just shit that'll die after a few months of use?

2024-08-23 23:03:44 CEST

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So this was a computer designed for people who just needed something cheap to do word processing and the like. The details on the specs are rare, but apparently it has 5 megabyte of ROM, 4 megabyte of RAM, and 1 megabyte of flash storage.
Since this is the NB-80C, it's got a 10.4" 640x480 color LCD. (the NB-60 has a 9.4" 640x480 greyscale LCD)

2024-08-21 21:34:43 CEST

I got a bulky tablet computer from ewaste and it turns out the operators of this tablet created an add-on which involved INJECTION MOLDING a piece to hold a USB serial adapter and USB HUB to the back of the tablet.
so much work and expense for so little results
https://digipres.club/system/media_attachments/files/113/001/678/161/417/162/original/d4b183f74c2f058f.jpeg