Brain Comics #318

This is the first Brain Comics to be released in HIGH DEFINITION.

I noticed my comics looked blurry on my high-density display, so I created both 1x and 2x variants. Your browser should automatically select the appropriate resolution.

This required some small tweaks to my static site generator, which already supported doing this automatically for my blog, but not for my comics, where I want more control over the image files. Thankfully it was pretty easy and only took a few minutes to add.

Almost all of Brain Comics was originally authored in SVG using Inkscape, so in theory I could go back and add HD variants to the rest of the strips as well. (And in fact, I've already done so for the previous strip.) The fonts I'm using now have slightly different metrics than their old versions though, so I might need to tweak some things. If I can do it without compromising the original look of the strips, I plan to slowly add HD support to the back catalog.

This past Friday I released tycoon 1.0. Tycoon is the server that powers my Gemini capsule. I had a lot of fun writing it. My entire philosophy while writing it was that I wanted to write a fun, small thing, and learn the protocol at the same time, and in that regard I consider it a smashing success. It also gave me an excuse to try out the KDL format, which I've been looking to use in a project for a while now.

tycoon config files are very simple and hopefully easy to pick up if you've ever configured a web server. A typical entry looks like this:

capsule arjache.com {
    root "/path/to/my/capsule"
}

Naturally there are various other options, though. It's all fully documented.

The other fun thing about tycoon is that it includes an (optional) builtin finger server. I noticed some Gemini capsules included links to .plan files via finger, and that my Gemini browser of choice included first-class support for finger. So it seemed a natural choice to add. I've currently got my own .plan file up here, in fact, though I might move it later. I like updating my .plan. It's very easy to do and has a bit of that old-school charm to it, even if I am pushing mine via git instead of directly editing it on the server.

If any of this interests you, consider checking it out on Codeberg! I'd be very curious if anyone else ends up using it.

ME: It's probably not worth even asking, but do you offer additional IPv4 addresses for a fee?

HOSTING COMPANY: No. Not unless you have a very good reason.

ME: I don't, no, not really. How about IPv6?

HOSTING COMPANY: Certainly. That one's free of charge, but we only offer it in bulk. If you want an additional IPv6 address we can allocate you our default range of...eighteen quintillion addresses per data center.

ME: ...

HOSTING COMPANY: In addition to your existing IPv6 address, of course.

ME: Eighteen quintillion...

HOSTING COMPANY: If that's not enough we do have a slightly larger range for special applications.

ME: Do-

HOSTING COMPANY: That one's four sextillion.

ME: Doesn't that seem like a bit much?

HOSTING COMPANY: Oh, it only seems that way because we're using American units.

ME: I suppose that is a relief.

Like a lot of other folks, I've been slowly disentangling my computing life from Microsoft over the past year. I didn't have a lot to do here -- I don't think I've daily driven Windows since Windows 2000, for one thing -- but it's enough that I thought I'd write up a list.

Operating systems

I've replaced Windows on my gaming laptop with Bazzite. There are some issues now and then but largely it Just Works, which is what I want for PC games. I've been using KDE Plasma and at times it's almost indistinguishable from the previous Windows setup. Especially when I've got Final Fantasy XIV going fullscreen, which, let's be real, is my primary use case for that system.

Editors

• vim or some variation on it has always been one of my editors of choice, but in recent years I found myself using VSCode more and more for certain programming tasks. I've now stopped using VSCode and gone back to using vim exclusively, or rather neovim. I've taken it as an excuse to clean up my configuration and get a more up-to-date setup when it comes to plugins and LSPs, and it's really nice now.
  • I use a combination of neovide on the desktop and plain neovim in a tmux session over ssh.
  • Updating my neovim configuration to get a more VSCode-like experience was incredibly daunting to set up, so I don't recommend this for most folks. If I weren't using vim, I'd probably go back to Sublime Text, which is what I used before VSCode.
• For previewing markdown, I've gone back to using Marked. It's a great app and a good way to support an independent developer.
  • There is apparently a Marked 3 in the works, but I've only used Marked 1 and 2. Marked 1 and 2 were standalone purchases; Marked 3 looks like it might be a subscription. But you can still buy Marked 2 at the time of writing, and it works for my needs.

Code forges

• For git repos, I keep my private repos on a locally hosted Forgejo (previously gitea) instance.
• I have a program I'm planning on open sourcing soon, and I plan to put that on Codeberg.

I've added a light theme to the blog's CSS which should be automatically selected if your system is set to use light mode. The original dark theme will be selected if your system is set to use dark mode.

This is something that improves accessibility, but there's also a practical reason: I myself use light mode. Like many folks with astigmatism, I find dark mode more difficult to read. The effect is worse with high contrast. I initially went with a darker color scheme for the site because I was going for a specific aesthetic, but chose a low contrast set of colors to minimize the impact. That was okay for a while, but I realized that I want a blog I can actually read even when my eyes get tired. And if it bothers me, there are almost certainly other people it bothers as well.

The new theme uses a paper-inspired color scheme to match the logo and overall site design. It's the sort of color scheme that I've started using in a lot of my text editors as well; I find it incredibly comfortable to read. The links are a dark red: an homage to my favorite color of fountain pen ink. I'm really pleased with how it came out.

This week I've been contemplating a little marathon in memory of Val Kilmer, as one does. Almost immediately I came up with five movies I'd want to watch, which is kind of a lot! It really speaks to his work as an actor, I think. I might easily come up with a list of that many movies for a genre actor, but not so much a general actor.

In release order:

• Real Genius (1985) - I have, shockingly, never seen this movie. Friends and loved ones have been on my case for years to see this movie. I have no strong objection to seeing it; I just never got around to it. I guess I should get around to it now. (I'm sorry it took me so long!)
• Top Gun (1986) - I think this is the first movie I saw Val Kilmer in, but since I didn't know him from anything else, I didn't conceptualize him as Val Kilmer until much later. It's a great movie though. I know he made a brief reappearance in the sequel, but I don't know when/if I'll get around to watching it, so that one doesn't go on the list.
• Tombstone (1993) - I recently read an article about the tourism industry in Tombstone, and it reminded me that I've never seen this movie. I've been aware of it basically since it came out (and my goodness were the 90s a good decade for movies), but I've never actually seen it. So even before I heard the news about Val Kilmer, I was considering watching it soon. As I write this post I realize that the most difficult aspect of this movie is probably that as a Final Fantasy XIV Online enjoyer, it is almost impossible for me to write Tombstone and not Tomestone.
• Batman Forever (1995) - This is the first movie I saw Val Kilmer in that I thought of him as Val Kilmer. Mostly because that was how everyone presented it: There's a new Batman! They cast Val Kilmer as Batman! Who's Val Kilmer? Batman, apparently. It was the first Batman movie I ever saw in theaters, and it was a big deal at the time. Tommy Lee Jones! Jim Carrey! And...Val Kilmer. Who's Val Kilmer again?
• The Saint (1997) - Perhaps fittingly for The Saint, I have no idea if I've seen this movie or not. I think I've seen bits of it? Possibly out of order. Possibly I've seen a little bit of The Saint, and then mentally filled in the rest with Conspiracy Theory (1997), starring Mel Gibson and Patrick Stewart, and The Phantom (1996) starring Billy Zane. Is Billy Zane as The Phantom sort of like Val Kilmer as Batman? I don't know, really. I do know I probably shouldn't add The Phantom to my Val Kilmer movie marathon list.

We're back

After almost ten years, Brain Comics has returned!

What's changing? Probably not a lot.

The original comic ran for about five and a half years from 2006-2012, with regular updates for most of that time. To stave off the risk of RSI, and to free up my attention for other creative works, I ended the comic at that time.

Over the years since then, I added two additional bonus strips, commemorating the discovery of the Higgs boson and the first controlled landing of a rocket first stage after launch.

Flash forward to 2025. I no longer want a comic about SpaceX on the front page of my old webcomic.

Time to update!

I think every web cartoonist is at least a little scared of their archives. The longer you keep at it, the worse your old stuff looks. Virtually every mistake I ever made with Brain Comics is in those archives. But there's a lot of stuff I still like, too, and I think it's worth keeping up.

In any event, I couldn't let Brain Comics end on the strip it did. So return to it I must.

Castle of the Winds is one of my favorite games of the Windows 3.1 era, so I was thrilled to see it get a shout-out on the latest Cathode Ray Dude video. It's a great game, and kind of obscure, so I'm always excited when I find out other folks also have fond memories of it.

In the video he touches on playing it growing up without really understanding that it was a roguelike, and that was my experience as well. It's funny; I can't stand the modern roguelike genre, but I loved Castle of the Winds. I really want to dig into that one of these days and figure out why that is.

Coincidentally, I recently went to the trouble of installing Windows 3.1 in a new DOSBox environment to get the proper Castle of the Winds experience, with Windows 3.1-style controls. Now that I have it, I find myself wondering what other games I could install to build a fully-stocked pretend Windows 3.1 gaming PC. If any of y'all have suggestions, shoot me an email! I'd love to hear them.

GEOS had incredible aesthetics. I gotta do something with this.

• Permalink pages for blog posts now support the h-entry microformat! For an example of what you can do with this, check out this blog post by Natalie.
• There are now more clickybuttons to click.