Welcome

back to Not great decisions I make while sleep deprived with Logan Cole!
Like, for instance, making this blog entry! Or making this blog at all! Well, maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration, but still. It's kinda true. Anyway, this just feels kinda weird. It's been so long since I did anything with my site. I started this site when I was 12 (i think), (you can even see what the site was like back then) and since then I've changed a lot. My opinions have changed, and my body has changed. (puberty... yay.) But, I just want to take a moment to talk about the cringe I experience reading my site, and talk about how I feel and what I'm doing right now.

So first, the the nav bar. Specifically, the entry "Campaign Zero." I feel more uncomfortable about having that button there. While obviously police violence and racism in general are terrible, I am definitely... uninformed. (if you're confused about why, maybe check out the image at the top of the "Home" link.) But, everytime I see that image and that link I'm reminded of how uninformed I am and I feel like the kind of person Republicans make fun of as "Social Justice Warriors," or at least the most racist televangelist extremes of it. A crusader blindly pushing for a cause they don't fully understand, nor do they fully understand what changes are necessary to achieve their objective. While, again, the end of racism is obviously a worthy, nay; necessary and rightous goal, I just feel like I'm talking out of my ass when I discuss the subject.

My lack of knowledge about racism in America aside, let's get into my next "How my opinions have changed" piece! The previous blog post! At the top of the article, I called President Biden "my personal lord and savior". And also 8 words before that I made a typo.

"expireed"

But anyway, I just don't feel that way about President Biden anymore. After 2 years of a Biden presidency, I just kinda feel "Meh" about him. About the entire Democratic party as a whole. Biden feels less like the leftist crusader I dreamt of during the hellish Trump Presidency, the kind of wishful thinking that led me to call him "my personal lord and savior", and more like, to borrow an analogy from Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, which is a great show btw,
"A white bread sandwich where the middle is just another slice of white bread."
He's just kinda "meh". I wish Biden would take a stronger stance on things, or more specifically, social justice and welfare. Now, to President Biden's credit, I think his handling of the Russo-Ukrainian War has been excellent. The strong, uncompromising, "For God's sake, this man cannot remain in power," leader America needed. But, if I had to describe his presidency in 1 word, it would be "Average," and I just, I was wishing for more.

But, now that that's done, I'm gonna talk about what I've been up to! That being: s̷̫͇̱͐͐͜c̵̱̭͇̱̒ḩ̸͎͕̀͋͋͘ͅô̵̝̻̜̅͂͝o̸͇͈̟̓̈́͌͜l̵͉̣̳̝͝ and web development! Specifically, I've been getting into developing Javascript applications with HTML and CSS frontends. Over the past year or two, I've been developing all sorts of things in HTML, CSS, and Javascript. For starters, I developed a port of my whacky encryptor I'd been maintaining on Scratch for years up to that point, but in Javascript! It's the LCODE encryptor seen on the "A project I've been working on!" button on the home page. It's since gained more and more features and at this point most of the code, if I remember correctly, isn't for the actual encryptor, but for all the extra features surrounding the core code. And since then, I've discovered just HOW MUCH better Javascript development is compared to Scratch. Oh sure, for simple things Scratch is faster, but try to develop any complex code and good luck keeping your sanity trying to optimize the code speed. Or, maybe I'm just a bad Scratch developer. IDFK. All I know is I much prefer Javascript development to Scratch development. That might also be Javascript looks, and is, more legit then Scratch. It looks and feels more impressive then Scratch. So, it carries more bragging rights. A quick shout out to all my Scratch game devs and 3D engine devs, rest in peace.
But, all that being said, lately I haven't been working on my encryptor. Instead, I've been working on a new project! One that I've annoyed every single person I know about with: Steam-Powered YouTube! _{here's a secret: it's not my idea.} Yup! The version I've been developing is just a recreation of the original. The original Steam-Powered YouTube was a flash game developed by a guy named Mark Lacher, but of course, flash is no more, and so the original is dead. This, I set out on a quest to rebuild from scratch _{and whatever code I could steal from the internet} Steam-Powered YouTube. That culminated in >700 lines of beautiful Javascript that comprises the current code base of the game you all (hopefully) know and love. For the last month or so, I've been working on it a ton, and I've learned a lot about how to develop applications in Javascript from it. Lo0k MoM, i'M a WeB dEvElOpEr NoW!

So yea, that's mostly it. I just want to talk about one more thing. As I've been writing this, I've found myself being very open and treating this kinda like a diary. Which is, frankly, bizzare, considering this is the exact opposite of a diary. I'm writing about my feelings to put on line for everyone to see! And yet, that's how I feel. Funny the way the 2 pounds of mushy neurons we call our brains work?

Oh, one last thing. I have a very strange thank you to give out. I need to give thanks to the 4 key turning points in my life that have led me to persue web development. In no particular order, the first of those is a YouTube video from a YouTube channel I used to be very into at the time this video was released OSFirstTimer. (that was 5 years ago, god I'm old.) Anyway, the video in question was Mum Makes A Basic Website in HTML using HTML-ive 0.5.7 (2010). I saw in that video HTML and how simple it was and thought ("I can do that!") I even download the tool used in the video, HTML-ive (before I knew about the w3schools Try-It editor and other online HTML editors / live testers.) That sent me down the path of exploring what I could do with HTML, and, eventually when I wanted to make my HTML not look like poop, I asked my dad about and began learning how to use CSS to make my sites look like, well, this! Great!
The second thing is PayPal. They hosted a Scratch Class in Omaha, Nebraska (where I lived at the time). For those who don't know, Scratch is a simple visual programming language for kids where you make programs by dragging colorful blocks together. While obviously Scratch wasn't gonna help me make anything useful, I did learn about variables and it exposed me to programming. Also, it was supposed to lead into a Python class, which is an actually useful language. However, after the summer of 2017, Paypal decided they would turn the class from a morning class over 3 weeks to an 8 hour class over 1 week. I decided I didn't want to spend 8 hours a day learning Python, which in retrospect was probably (definitely) a mistake.
Regardless, I continued, making stuff in Scratch, teaching it to my friends, etc, until some time around 2019 or 2020. At that point, in comes the 3rd thing I need to give thanks to, Windows93.net. Windows93.net is a parody of Windows 95/98, but what's important here is that it can be styled. Windows93 has a feature where you can upload files to the program, which will be stored in your browsers local storage. The next time you load up the page, it will execute whatever code you put in there. I loved this feature, and used it to make Windows93 look like the Windows Vista/7 Aero theme. However, there was a problem: THE START BUTTON. I couldn't figure out how to change and animate it using CSS alone (only later would I learn about CSS animations). But, undeterred, I instead started Googling solutions. I eventually discovered: Using Javascript! Using Javascript, I could get the Start Button element, change it's source to a copy of the Win7 start button I found online, and then, using .addEventListener(), I could make it so that when someone hovered over the button, it would switch to playing an animation of the button animating! That was my first exposure to using Javascirpt in a web page, and about a year after, I would dust off my rusty Javscript knowledge when LPS decided to block Scratch, which meant I couldn't use my encryptor anymore.
Yep. What may turn out to be the most important decision of my life was a petty response to a change in a school districts filtering rules that made it harder for me to do anything but my schoolwork that was eventually recinded a few months later.

Thank you Lincoln Public Schools!

Oh, and by the way. C̴̬̮͕̋̐̑͘͠K̵̫͇̻̂A̷̳͆̈́̈́ṷ̸̹͋t̶͓͔̣̳̣͠ḥ̵̫̀̈́̅̍͐͘ȇ̴̺͕͂̈́̔̔͝n̷̲͓̪̒̚̚͜ͅͅṫ̶͔i̵̧̡̍͌̐̕c̴̭̏̉͝a̵̧̝͈̫̪̎̿̏̇̅t̴̛͎o̷͔͂͐͌̽r̸̻͗ ̵̬̇͆̒̆͝͝c̴͎̹̣̔ͅa̴̢̖̩̦̺̙͛́̐͝ņ̷̰͙͙̐͐̍͂ͅ ̶̨̝̭̦͙̝͋g̸̭̮̮͓̾͊̽͆̚o̵͍̯̐͋ ̴̧̛͖͝b̵̧̜͇̝̦̘͌͑̏͝ǔ̸̺͔͍̚̕r̵̡̥̙̩̼̖͒͑̋̎̃͛ń̴͈͆ ̸̛̘͓̎̐i̴̢͍̗̳̤̳̒͋n̶̞͊̀̌̆̿͊ ̷̜͎̲͊̇͜h̷͕̟͚̬̐͝e̸̫͆̀l̴̰̇͜l̴̛̞̞̬̼̊̄͆̐̓