I have been a TA at University for around 3 years. From the very beginning, I made a website that serves as a 24/7 resource for students in courses I TA for. It contains lab hints, grading guides, files of code, etc that I write whenever I teach lab sections or host office hours.

However, the layout of the page has dated quite a bit since I first wrote it. Maybe it's time to give it a refresh? Sure! Why not!?

Introducing PENDUAL (In the event that this name choice isn't obvious...), a dual-theme setup consisting of a Light and (finally) a Dark theme! This isn't all I've changed though...

Almost yearly in the winter, me, my brother, and my Dad play a series of Half-Life games, which ends up being recorded and uploaded to YouTube. We call the series the "Christmas Deathmatch".

To me, I'm always up for a good game, but I'm also always up for a good media project. Christmas Deathmatch isn't popular by any means, but it is a good way to practice video editing and producing to me. So I'm going to show some behind-the-scenes stuff that went on with editing 2017's Christmas Deathmatch.

In the past years, I was very reliant on Adobe After Effects to do my work for me. As I went through 2016 and 2017, I realised there was a much more efficient and automated way to do the editing I needed without professional video editing software. I only used Adobe After Effects for parts of the video that I actually had to edit. The rest, I managed to actually automate. All rendering to x264 was automated into a few shell scripts and ffmpeg. It's going to sound complicated when you read this, but in the end, it's just simply setting up files so that the scripts can encode everything automatically.

So I'm willing to bet that a lot of Linux power-users out there use terminal multiplexers to increase their productivity.

The terminal, at first, can be quite intimidating. I like to expose my students to it whenever I am teaching them how to program in C or C++. This is because UTK Computer Science major students are forced to use it to do their lab assignments eventually (usually in their second year).

The terminal, put quite simply, is just a single session for a user to input commands. However, there are so many ways to change this that it is ridiculous. Let's look at a general terminal running zsh:

Note: This is actually a pretty outdated post now. YouTube has updated their video processing and audio support tramendously. Not only do they support higher quality audio, but they also support 5.1 surround sound! I'll keep the original post here for archival's sake. Do I support downloading from YouTube? No. But I'm not going to hide the fact they've improved in the past three years.

tl;dr - It's a terrible idea.

A frequent question I see on YouTube music videos is "How can I download this song?". A common answer to that question is to use a "YouTube to MP3" converter which will take the video and extract its audio stream (AAC), convert it to MP3, and then let you download it. Yes, you get the song, but let's be honest... The quality of that file is pretty shitty.

I feel like I am late to the party! With a busy semester ongoing and barely any time to try to enjoy off, Steam decided to update their "Big Picture" feature. Let's take a tour of this. Press the "English" and "日本語" buttons to switch language of the screenshots to English and Japanese respectively. Furthermore, you can click the images to see their full resolution (1920x1080).

I was welcomed to the "Big Picture" with this screen. It has changed since the last time I used it. Sadly, I don't have screenshots (that I took myself) of the older Steam Big Picture mode.

Oh my, look how Windows 10 grew! With Windows 10 already available for about 190 countries, I felt like it was time for me to show a few screenshots of what Microsoft went through in the past few Technical Previews of Windows 10.

I must admit, I enjoyed being part of the preview. I got to see how Windows 10 grew and how it changed based on people's input/opinions. It was fun even though I never got to actually develop software like applications for the OS myself (yet).

Let's break down changes over the time via screenshots. You can see how graphical instances have changed, etc. Like all images on this blog, click the images to view their full resolution (mostly 1920x1080 PNG).

So as some readers may know, I own a Japanese Keyboard. The layout is slightly different on Japanese keyboards compared to US keyboards. I would have expected Windows 10 to adjust to this automatically, as Windows 8.1 was able to, but unfortunately, it hasn't. I was able to fix this via registry edits (Same as what I did in Windows 7...). Let's break down how to fix the issue:

Deep into the heard of the operating system is the registry. If you mess the wrong value up, it could result in your computer's functionality being terminated! Ah whatever, let's proceed.

To open: Press the Windows Key and R at the same time. It will open a text box asking what program to open. Type "regedit.exe" (Just "regedit" will do too) and press Enter. It will open up the Registry Editor.

It’s been a while since I got my hands on Visual Studio 2013 Ultimate, but I have not used it yet to make Windows 8 Metro-style applications yet… until now.

I haven’t really used this software for much except for C++ Development of my mid2chart application. However, after some I decided (With some persuasion…) to develop with WPF and Metro and I regret not doing this earlier honestly. It is very simple to work with. The interface is nice, I see how everything works. It uses a language (Well multiple actually) that I have known for years. I am comfortable in the working environment this software gives me.

Anyways enough about me praising it. The application you see above is a rather simple one that many people made for the Windows Store already. The purpose wasn’t really to put it in the Windows Store (Even though I will do that soon) but to see if I could even make a Windows 8 app to start off. I absolutely loved making it! :)

I decided to wrap the project up since I was a bit bored of it

This application is extremely simple. Throw in a Rock Band 3 MIDI into the converter and it will spit out a chart file. You can also specify the output file’s name.

Usages

• mid2chart.exe <midi filename>
• mid2chart.exe <midi filename> <chart filename>

Spring Break is here and I already have other things to be doing… I was going to actually finish off Norg’s DLC pack but before I go for that, I noticed something about the DLC currently out for Keyboard Hero… One drum track per song rather than multiple…

This is changing. I have contacted Timaeus and Luigiblood and they have supplied me with separated Drum tracks… HOWEVER, they took the opportunity to also remaster the songs they gave me prior. Also some recharting will take effect soon. Take note, if you have played “Drop to Eventide” before, the intro will now have the piano track playing. Some other misc stuff is added in for playability. LuigiBlood’s has more powerful drums, making the sound much richer than before.