Poste d'Anniversaire ∇ 5

They make websites

publié sur 2024-01-22 22 min de lecture

I've realised that a lot of people who aren't programmers don't really know what it is I actually do. Often times when I hear my parents try to explain my job to someone else, it'll be something like this:

He [sic] makes websites.

This is a sure-fire way to offend me. So then I make the correction.

Um actually, I'm a software engineer.

This time of year (Dec to Jan) is normally a little difficult for me as it is always when seasonal depression starts to flare up.

Firstly, it's summer here in Australia. I hate warm weather because I hate sweating and not being able to wear more clothes. This also is the only reason I'm against climate change.

Secondly, it's the holidays, and everyone gets really happy about that. I don't like being around cheerful people, it just makes me more depressed. ⁽¹⁾ ⁽¹⁾ This is a "normal" thing for some sad people to feel, don't worry about it too much. I'm working on it. I think.

Thankfully, I have the option to just lock myself in my apartment and play video games until I go back to work and distract myself with that.

But I've never been sure that this is a very healthy way of living, so last year, I tried going to Tasmania because it's the coldest place in the country and somewhat remote for Sydney standards.

That didn't work. You can still be depressed when climbing a mountain. Celeste lied to me.

So this year I went back to the tried and true method of ignoring basically everything, and finding a nice video game to play.

Part 1: Kerbal Space Program 2 Made Me Suicidal

There's a certain type of game I tend to get extremely addicted to for a short period of time. I call them "games about jobs I think it would be cool to try."

These include games like Motorsport Manager, every Zachtronics game, Stellaris, City Skylines, and of course, the fabled Stardew Valley. ⁽²⁾ ⁽²⁾ I don't know a single programmer who doesn't sometimes think about leaving all this shit behind and moving to a farm.

The most recent addition is Kerbal Space Program 2, which I had recently heard became good after it's "For Science!" update on the 20th of December. Great timing for dealing with seasonal depression.

I was going to take the Steam store page blurb to explain what the game is if you didn't know. But I don't think it explains it very well if you didn't know about the first game, so I got our favourite chatbot to do it instead. ⁽³⁾ ⁽³⁾ It also described the game assuming you knew what the first one was, so I had to tell it not to do that.

"Kerbal Space Program 2" is a space flight simulation game where players design and launch spacecraft in a realistic aerospace environment. Players construct vehicles to explore planets and build space colonies, facing real-world space travel challenges. The game combines education and entertainment, teaching aerospace engineering and astrophysics in an immersive, graphically detailed universe.

Look buddy, I don't know how to explain what the sheer euphoria of landing Penis Rocket MK-III ⁽⁴⁾ ⁽⁴⁾ Okay look, it's a game about building things. IT IS A REQUIREMENT to make a penis at least once. I'm probably not doing it ever again, I've realised that there a much better designs to be honest. on the Mun (Kerbal's version of the Moon) for the first time is like. But holy fuck. It's good stuff.

I mean all it took was to get into orbit once, and two days later I had 15 hours in the game and just left for Duna (Kerbal's Mars).

I'm not entirely sure why I get so compelled by stuff like this. I don't think this is a Dark Souls situation where I'm attracted by the difficulty, because to be honest, it wasn't that hard. ⁽⁵⁾ ⁽⁵⁾ You heard it here first: Rocket science? "Not that hard."

My best guess is that it's all the preparation, the planning, then the uncertainty of the execution. And when it's finally done, your little Kerbal jumps out of the spacecraft, plants a little flag on a rock far from their home, and then you think: "I did that."

I strapped my little buddy into a cylinder propelled by explosions and just fucking shot them into space, then used the gravitational mass of their own home to slingshot them towards a completely different planet millions of kilometres away.

I DID THAT.

AND THEY'RE NOT DEAD.

IF GOD EXISTS I MUST BE THEM.

It's just cool as shit.

Anyway, I said I get addicted to these for a short period of time. Well, as usual, the inevitable happens.

What the fuck am I doing with my life?

I often start feeling guilty for even attempting any form of escapism when I could be working on any one of the multiple problems in my life right now.

Especially when one of those methods of escapism is kind of linked to one of my anxieties. Like yeah, making rockets is cool - but this is just pretend, it's not going to help me in life.

Because in real life, I make we-

Part 2: Sometimes to confirm the difficulty of being alive, I consider the possibility that I'm actually a girl

One of my first multi-month long programming projects was a search engine I made for my high school software class's major project. It's also one of the earliest things I've written about on this blog.

I don't really remember what made me choose such an "ambitious" project. There wasn't really a need to try that hard when my classmates were making stuff like pomodoro timers instead. ⁽⁶⁾ ⁽⁶⁾ I guess that was just the difference between the rank 1 kid and the rest of the them. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

But I do know that this project may have been what determined the path of my life for the past seven years. I was basically trying to make Google, so I gained a lot of experience in making what I believed Google to be.

This experience then led me to getting my first job a few months later. That basically further solidified the path, and so here I am now, someone who argues with random people on the Internet on how best to do UI state management for a CRUD app.

Because the obvious answer to that is -

DON'T DO STATE MANAGEMENT IN YOUR UI.

FUCK YOUR JS FRAMEWORKS.

DO EVERYTHING ON THE BACKEND.

IN RUST.

…

Recently my boss sent this meme to me on Slack out of the blue, without any context.

meme with goose

Ah shit, he thinks I'm the goose doesn't he?

Interlude: Can sim-racing turn me into the next Max Verstappen?

For the past few years I've been building out a nice little ⁽⁷⁾ ⁽⁷⁾ By little, I mean costing thousands of dollars. sim rig for sim-racing. I don't actually sim-race that much, so it seems I've mostly been doing it just of out the joy of building and putting it together. It's kinda like doing Lego for me.

But recently I've realised I have kind of ran out of things (that I could reasonably justify to myself) to upgrade. Everything on the rig is basically top of the line, and I don't really have the space required for the next "level" of upgrades, that being triple monitors and a motion simulator.

So it looks like I'm going to have to start "using" it now instead of just endlessly tinkering with it…

I'm normally into rally games but I've been trying to get into circuit racing with iRacing (the sim Max Verstappen seems to play a lot), which has made me come to a startling realisation.

I'm not very fast.

But that's okay! It's all about having fun isn't it? ⁽⁸⁾ ⁽⁸⁾ Well, I'm normally only happy when I win but w/e.

I've also been recently trying out the "Low Fuel Motorsport" (LFM) community run service for Assetto Corsa (AC). It's basically a way of getting an iRacing like experience in AC. I generally prefer AC's driving physics and staying away from iPricing's egregious business model keeps my wallet happy. ⁽⁹⁾ ⁽⁹⁾ This is a very expensive hobby. But at least it's still cheaper than real motorsport.

Also, they don't enforce a real name policy (you just need a name that looks real, not your actual one), which I prefer over letting random gamer dudes on iRacing know who I am.

And it lets me pretend I'm a girl.

So far, I've been enjoying it quite a bit - Uh, a propos Assetto Corsa that is. And apparently I'm much better at it than iRacing given I somehow have an Elo rating of 2100 which puts me in the top 2 percent of the playerbase. Not sure how that works since I'm around 1 to 1.5 seconds slower than the really fast drivers, but it probably has something to do with the fact that LFM doesn't have a very big userbase. The AC series only has around six thousand rated drivers, according to their website.

Wait, website?

Part 3: They make war crimes

The closest thing I've ever had to a "dream job" ⁽¹⁰⁾ ⁽¹⁰⁾ I don't dream of doing labour. is working at Valve (and Oxide in recent years, but let's keep with Valve for now). I've never seen someone who works or once worked at Valve and didn't consider them an incredible engineer (or artist, but I don't have much of an authority on that). I read the employee handbook when I was 15 and basically became a life long fanenby.

I know a lot of people see the lack of games coming from Valve as a sign of a lazy company, not really doing anything, and just coasting by with their cash cow that is Steam.

Valve, at least from what I see, isn't a video game company - they're an engineering company that is video game adjacent. That infinite money glitch they found with Steam has enable their ""flat"" company structure to just allow their employees do whatever they want. When you get a group of extremely passionate engineers (and artists) all the time and money they need, you have Valve and a guarantee that anything that comes out of the company will be the best of what anyone could have come up with.

I fanenby over them this hard, fully knowing that they aren't a perfect company. ⁽¹¹⁾ ⁽¹¹⁾ Oxide might be though, which is why I'm not going to talk about them.

I saw a Mastodon poll a while back that asked the question of if you'd rather work for Blizzard or Lockheed Martin. For me, that was an easy answer that I voted on almost immediately - Lockheed Martin. This isn't really a "if you HAD to work for one" situation, I'd probably be fine working for them out of my own free will. But thinking about it for a little more time, it seemed a little strange.

Lockheed Martin is a company (at least in part) responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, they contribute to the "industrial military complex" like no other. Would I really choose them over a company that yes, treats it's employees very poorly but otherwise makes harmless entertainment? Not to undersell the shit Blizzard does, they're certainly one of the worst companies out there, but people use the things Lockheed Martin creates to LITERALLY KILL OTHER PEOPLE.

This section of the post has gone through many rewrites. And I'm telling you this because a previous draft had these lines.

Over the course of my life I've seen the tech industry most closely aligned with web development consistently introduce more exploitative, anti-consumer, emotionally manipulative bullshit year after year.

I don't work in FAANG, and probably never will. My workplace doesn't do anything like this (yet), but even still, I feel kind of responsible just for even being near any of it.

What!!?!?

How can I hold that opinion when I also think, and to quote three paragraphs ago.

I'd probably be fine working for [Lockheed Martin] out of my own free will.

AM I JUST OKAY WITH WAR CRIMES?

No, I'm pretty sure I'm not actually okay with war crimes. I think. I wouldn't actually ever attempt to look for a job there (but that may be in large part due to me wanting to avoid working for big companies).

To me, the difference between Lockheed Martin and let's say - Google, is the F-117, the F-35 - that is, basically anything that has come out of Skunk Works. The difference is "Cool Engineering™".

There are few things in my life I desire more than "Building Cool Shit™" and being good at it.

Websites aren't cool.

And I'm embarrassed that people think I make them.

Which is kinda interesting because I think this website is cool, and I'm actually quite proud of the work I put into it (even though the vast majority of it is never seen by you). This also goes with a few things I've done in my many years of work as well.

So I don't really understand what's going on. I appear to be a giant ball of contradictions.

According to a person who's opinion I often take to become my own, "The Website vs. Web App Dichotomy Doesn't Exist" and yeah, I'd largely agree with that statement and with what the author says in the post. I was thinking that my confusion came from this categorisation, that there's a certain subsection of Internet connected web-based services I find "cool" and "uncool".

It doesn't seem like that's the case though, and the things I think are "cool" on the Internet don't seem to be correlated in that way.

I've gotten like six pieces of fan-mail since this blog went online. They'll say things like, "I enjoy reading your blog", "it inspired me to write my own", and maybe a question to clear up something I said in a post. Every single time I've received one was a "OH MY BIDOOF PEOPLE READ THIS FUCKING WEBSITE???" moment.

I genuinely believe that this blog is the most useful thing I've ever made. The fact that people find value in this astounds me.

I know even with how much I like what I've done, that making weird nginx modules that can change the background colour of a page just to avoid using JS, and writing fucked Rust programs to create your own DNS nameservers aren't actually all that interesting or difficult of engineering challenges. But it still feels really nice to know someone is getting something out of this.

I've always said that this blog is for me. And… that hasn't changed, it's still and always will be for me. But I guess I can share it with you too :3

Maybe I don't just want Cool Engineering™ but Useful Engineering™.

Epilogue

Solipsism is a young enby's game and I'm honestly not sure how much longer posts like these can keep coming out. Not saying I'm getting old, but every year before starting to write a new one of these, I re-read the previous years starting from the Stardew Valley one. Every time I do this, I'm always surprised about how vulnerable they are.

I don't particularly understand why I am comfortable writing all this out in public, especially under my real name. It does not feel like something anyone who knows me (including myself) would expect me to ever do.

Like if you asked me in real life how I was going, the best you're probably going to get is a picture of a red panda, either scared ⁽¹²⁾ ⁽¹²⁾ As in, doing the cute red panda thing of standing on two legs with their arms above their head to appear more "menacing" when they feel threatened. Look it up, it's adorable. or sleepy. This is honestly one of my biggest mysteries. I dunno, maybe the day I figure out what lets me write this will enable me to figure out a bunch of other stuff about my mental space. It probably won't, but it's a nice thought.

Either way, these yearly posts may need to stop being about this, especially with how infrequently I post now, I don't want this blog to just be about depression or some shit.

But I don't want to stop the "postes d'aniversaire", so I'll think of something else to write about. Since these come out in (late) January, it's probably still okay to do a "year in review" sort of thing like with what I see other people do.

I don't really know though, those sort of posts - and I mean this in the most inoffensive way possible to those that do it - are just a bit lazy for what I want on this blog. I don't want to just recount the crap I've done and seen.

Though I guess I kinda did that on last year's post, but there was a "narrative" reason for that… Okay maybe I'm just too pretentious, let's try it out a mini version of that right now and see how I feel about it.

Epilogue 2: Electric Boogaloo

I've been writing and deleting drafts about things I've done and seen the past year for the last 30 minutes. I don't know how to do this in an interesting way. But I promised you I would do it, so I'm going to do it. In quick and easy bullet point form.

Video games that came out last year, in descending order of most liked. Ones I didn't like or didn't finish (if they have an ending) aren't included.
- Chants of Sennaar - "This game caused me to memorize the grammar structure on how to call someone an idiot in a fictional language rather than study for my finals next week." - Steam reviewer.
- Hi-Fi Rush - I think this game was specifically made for me.
- ARMORED CORE VI - Big robot fly, shoot gun, and talk to imaginary girlfriend.
- Slay The Princess - I can fix her.
- Kerbal Space Program 2 - You already know what this is.
- Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty - It's good now. Yes, I'm counting this as released this year, it's basically a new game. Well, not really, but this is MY list.
- Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom - Didn't fix any of the problems with BOTW, but made the good parts even better. Would be so much better on actually good hardware though.
- Street Fighter 6 - There will probably be a post about this at some point.
- Bomb Rush Cyberfunk - Cool skateboard (and other human powered methods of transportation) game, great music.
- Rusted Moss - Any game with a grappling hook is good.
- Honkai: Star Rail - Kafka and now Ruan Mei (pictured) are my new mums. Source: nyeppu
- Mosa Lina - Very well designed puzzle game that doesn't feel like it was designed at all.
- EA SPORTS WRC - Kinda disappointing, but it's still a rally game, and rally is intrinsically fun.
- OTXO - If Hotline Miami was good. Yeah, that'll get some bites for sure.
- Graze Counter GM - Pretty good shmup, I like the graze mechanic, but I only play shmups with Sakuya (pictured) in them (not a joke, only reason I haven't played Ikaruga or ZeroRanger much). Source: モ誰
- Risk of Rain Returns - I didn't really like going to 3D in Risk of Rain 2, so I'll gladly take a game that's just the original Risk of Rain but with more stuff.
- Cities Skylines II - Good, but needs more time in the oven. In a similar place to where KSP 2 was before the update.
- Turbo Overkill - Every time I play one of these movement shooters I just start thinking: "I can't wait until ULTRAKILL is finished."
- Touhou Juuouen ~ Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost. - No Sakuya, didn't play much.
Video games (misc). Video games are the only form of media I know how to critically think about, so they're the ones I spend the most time with/can talk about the most.
- Furina (pictured) almost made me start playing Genshin Impact. But I don't know how long it will take a new player to get to Fontaine, and I can't really be bothered. Just wish she had a French accent though, that'd be nice :( Source: 雨傘ゆん
- I played Assassin's Creed Unity before going to Paris. I like the game version more (less cars). No but actually, it's an incredible recreation and is the closest thing I'll ever get to seeing the Notre Dame. The game itself wasn't that good (but I've never liked an Assassin's Creed game before, so maybe my opinion is invalid).
- I also played Steelrising but there wasn't a French voice-over language option (EVEN THOUGH THE GAME IS MADE BY THE FRENCH), so I didn't get far in that game. Was pretty good though, but that's probably because every time a historical person was introduced I could go: "HEY I KNOW THAT PERSON!!" Although with almost every person involved with the French Revolution being an old white dude, it was hard for me to tell the characters apart during cut-scenes, so it's good they included people like Julien Raimond because he was basically the only person I could recognise without the subtitles telling me who he was. But at some point I just became sick of hearing their English accents and had to stop.
- Lies of P is not French enough, so I also didn't get far in that game. I could excuse the game for not having a French voice-over because it's made by Koreans, but when I get told the game is "French Bloodborne with a femboy" I expect FRANCE. Delivered on the femboy front though.
Anime.
- Frieren: Beyond Journey's End - She (Frieren (pictured)) is just like me frfr. Source: yadon
Books.
- ~~I don't read books.~~ I didn't read anything that was published last year.

I'm going to ignore that and break format for a bit because I actually really want to talk about The Fifth Science by exurb1a of the YouTube channel "exurb1a." Originally I was a little apprehensive about it because it's written by a "YouTuber", but I'm glad I gave it a try, because it's really fucking good.

In 2020, ⁽¹³⁾ ⁽¹³⁾ Just one year after the book was published. I definitely would have enjoyed the book even more back then with this stuff fresh in my head. I made a series of two posts: "« My Favourite Shows Are Supernatural, And Star Trek TNG »" and "An Anime Made Me Rethink My Entire View On Cognition." If you are even remotely interested in the ideas I put forward in those posts, you will like the book. It's a great work of speculative science fiction.

I wouldn't say every short story in there is a masterpiece, some did make me roll my eyes. But there were enough good ones and some very good ones to keep me engaged.

Holiday in Europe.
- France
  - Paris - Certainly one of the cities of the world.
  - Le Mans - Spent a day at a nice race car museum.
  - Dijon - Rented a Ferrari to drive at a race track. Sim-racing has not turned me into the next Max Verstappen. Yet.
- Belguim
  - Liège - Went to go watch the F1 race (my first one in person). Was feeling a bit sick and spent all day walking and standing in the rain just to get a glimpse of race cars for two seconds every two minutes. Fucking great experience, would do it again.
- Germany
  - Oopie, turns out I (pictured) had the rona. And walking 12 km every day for 3 days straight probably made it a lot worse than it should have been. Felt okay during F1, but the day after it ended I was basically bed-ridden. Remaining time here was a complete fever dream and I don't remember anything. That's okay though, I don't give a shit about Germany. I got everything I wanted out of the holiday once I stopped hearing people speak French.
Blog.
- Started work on the next interesting project. Will probably take a while to come out because it requires me to know smart stuff and I am bit dumb.
- Since the entire time this blog has been alive, I've kept all ideas for posts in my head under the assumption that if I forgot them, they weren't very good to begin with. But thinking about it now, with how the blog doesn't take up the same amount of space in my brain as it used to, I believe I've been forgetting more post ideas than I should be which may be a reason for why I only had 6 posts last year. So I've just opened a text file and dumped all the ideas I could think of right now for future reference. Maybe it will help.
Life.
- Completely settled into my apartment, but my sim-rig has started to talk to me at night. It yearns for more space. I think I need another bedroom to put all my computer shit in. May start looking to buy a new place next year when I've saved up for another deposit.
- I've learnt that I get too scared to deal with cockroaches. I think I should get a boyfriend.
- My French teacher seems to get slightly less disappointed in me whenever we meet now. This is good I think.

I didn't mind doing this, it was actually kinda fun recapping everything but I don't think it makes for an interesting read, so I still don't really know if I should do it in the future. We'll see.

Okie that's all, bye bye!

Oh Bidoof, I forgot that I still have to write that Bocchi The Rock! post I meant to do last year.

Poste d'Anniversaire ∇ 5