Tis the Season for Horror... Always

Thanksgiving is over so now it's Christmas time! I love me some Christmas. I loves taking the mrs and the cubs to the big city for snowflake lane. Getting peppermint mochas and wandering through a mall, Christmas music in the background. The lights, the snow, the carolling.
 

And the movies. I love Christmas movies. I love the classics, the new old classics, and the new new classics. And of course - Christmas Horror movies! Below are a few of my favorites:

Krampus
This is a new tradition in my family. I love how it isn't a horror movie at all... and then it is. My fav of the genre.

Rare Exports
This one hails from Finland. It's gritty and down to earth. It is super creepy and so well done. I'd say it's nearly tied for first.

A Christmas Horror Story
ACHS is an anthology of Christmas horror. They are all told together, so you get to see each story unfold together as opposed to telling one, then the next...
It's dark and well done.

VIM Shirts, Yay!

For all you VIM lovers out there, here are some shirts I've found:

:w! saves

Faster

Cheat Sheet

Elusive Theme

If you haven't seen or heard of it, BlackArch is an interesting Linux distro. It is designed for ethical hacking and it recently added more tools to its arsenal. I've never run it myself but, oh man, that theme!

I have an MSI gaming laptop, so it is all black and red, just like the BlackArch theme. It would be very cool to customize my OS to match the look of my laptop. So far I haven't found such a beast (Although the Twooten window decorations are pretty sweet). I'll keep looking.

If you haven't seen BlackArch, check it out:

BlackArch

Don't Fear the Reaper

I've been dabbling with music production since about 1994. Even before then I remember putting an instrumental Too Short track in one boom box and writing my own rap lyrics to it and recording my vocals over it using a tape recorder.

I started with a tape four track, bass guitar, and some effects pedals. I toyed with my dad's reel to reel, to get crazy sound effects etc.
 

Then I got an Akai synthesizer and a couple of Ensoniq EPS's. I made gabber and jungle with those, played some amazing shows in Vancouver BC and PDX.

Then I moved on to audio trackers on the computer - namely Psycle. VSTs really opened the door of possibilities. But I wanted to get a legit pro DAW, so I purchased Sonar. Most of my VSTs worked in it, and I was pretty happy with it. Until I decided to pay for an update. Then my VSTs quit working, most of my songs were rendered useless and I was over it.

That was when I encountered Reaper. It was nagware, that claimed to have an expieation, but happily let you continue using it beyond that date.

I was so happy with it I decided to pay for it. A measly $60 for the personal license and I haven't had to renew it yet.
 

Reaper happily loads all my VSTs and when one blows it up while scanning them it smoothly continues scanning.

It is full of great features - sidechaining compression, excellent pitch benders etc. I love the interface, and getting a pro quality DAW for $60 vs $300+ is amazing!

I can't recommend Reaper enough!

Must Reads 20171124

Today's edition of good reads is short,  but I believe a very bright spotlight should be shined on this one.

Modern Javascript Explained for Dinosaurs

I guess I'm a dinosaur (I don't think I would have gone with that title but meh), because this was a perfect explanation of the current state of Javascript development for someone who isn't a JS developer by trade.

When you don't work in JS everyday, it seems like a torrent of hip, new, trendy languages and tools are spewing forth incessantly. This did a great job of walking the reader through why. It is a definite must-read.

Your Python is Old

The other day I decided to update my version of Qutebrowser. I'm really loving it so far, so I wanted to take advantage of any bleeding edge changes to it. I was using apt to install it - mainly just because that's what I usually use. I got stuck on the Python requirements so downloaded a bunch of .debs attempting to get them all.

It was tedious but I was working my way through them. I hit a snag where one package didn't like the version I already had installed so I decided to uninstall my package. Bad. My terminal filled with notices that it was uninstalling core KDE apps. I knew I had just broken my system and sure enough.

I could have troubleshooted the issue, probably, but I just rebuilt it.

I tried installing the latest QB and had the same issue. So I hit IRC. It turns out LinuxMint has some old Python dependencies deep within the system. It was suggested I install QB using tox. The process was very painless, just a few console commands. I made a script to launch it and made a link to it in bin and I was golden.

I still love LinuxMint but beware of its Python issues.

A Non-Planner's Attack Plan

I am a terrible planner. So I'm constantly just charging forward. If it's a book idea, I just start writing. If it's game development, I start coding. Maybe I ponder the project a bit, get some ideas as to what the end will be like.

This is bad. Unless you're an improv artist or freewriter, some planning is necessary.

I ran into this fact while building Escape Apsis, the demo game for my World Weaver IntFiction game engine. It became too large for me to see it in my head. I didn't have a map of the ship so had to mentally picture where the rooms were, where the vents were, and what I had or hadn't already done.

The game's over all plot seemed to be collapsing. It was time to start fresh, with a map and some planning. So now I have the first 'level' mapped out and basic rooms coded. I'm building up the logic and puzzles now. In doing it this way I am only dealing with a small set of rooms and puzzles etc.

I will begin planning the other levels as I work through the first one. So far I think this is a much better approach.