fixing geocities animated gifs
I've been using internet since the mid-1990s, so of course I remember Geocities and even had a page there once (which I think was under the "TelevisionCity" category). A very common thing was to use animated GIF images.
Were those images saved somewhere? Yes. Internet Archive has GifCities, which has hundreds of thousands if not millions of those GIFs, all searchable, and in original form...
...and that's the problem.
Many of those old crusty GIFs never had a frame rate set, and I know exactly why.
Mid-to-late 1990s PC specs meant you either had a CPU that was a 486 or a Pentium. It was unlikely you had a Pentium II unless you had serious cash for it, and you absolutely did not have a Pentium III since that didn't exist until 1999.
Combine that with using Microsoft Windows 95, and using Netscape Navigator 3, Netscape Communicator 4, Microsoft Internet Explorer 2, or Microsoft Internet Explorer 3 as your browser.. and yeah, things were slow.
Oh, and let's not forget WebTV a.k.a. MSN TV, as in the thing you connected to your television for internet use. That was also dog slow, both for hardware and software. I never had one of those, but I knew one person that did back in the day. Just one. WebTV never sold all that well.
An animated GIF without a frame rate set means it will go through its frames as fast as possible. On a mid-to-late '90s era PC, the GIF looked fine because even at the fastest the browser could display an animated GIF, it was still "normal" speed. But on a modern computer now, it's way too fast.
Two animated GIF examples from Geocities pages in original form to show the speed problem:
There are two methods to fix this.
Method 1: gifsicle
The easiest way I found to introduce a proper frame rate with gifsicle is to explode the original GIF into separate frames, then recombine.
Put the GIF into a folder.
Run this:
gifsicle -e file.gif
A bunch of frame files are created, starting with .000 and counting up from there.
Move the original GIF out of the folder.
Run this:
gifsicle -d 1 -m * -o fixed.gif
This tells gifsicle to set a delay of 1/100th of a second, merge all frames into one file, and output the file fixed.gif.
And we end up with this:
Method 2: GIMP
This is way more involved, but may be preferable if you need to set a more precise frame rate and/or fix other things on a per-frame level.
Open the GIF in GIMP.
The first thing to do is "unoptimize" the GIF to eliminate weirdness (mostly to do with transparencies, should the GIF have any).
Filters > Animation > Unoptimize
If there is nothing to be done on a per-frame level, you can just export as this point.
File > Export As...
Yes, Export As... must be used and not Save As...
Title the file fixed.gif and click Export.
Now we set the frame rate. Using 100 for all frames is the one that usually works. If you notice it's too slow or too fast at 100, just export again and adjust until it looks right.
The end result:
Dealing with GIFs that have varying frame delays
An example of this is a GIF animation has some frames at 100ms, but then a half-second "pause" with one frame at 500ms, then loop.
The vast majority of Geocities animated GIFs don't have any of this going on, but on rare occasion, some might.
GIMP is the easiest way to deal with this. In the Layers list is where all the frames are. Each frame will show how many milliseconds of delay it has, identified with parenthesis. Using a 10 frame animation example, let's frames 1 through 9 have a delay of 100ms. You'll see each layer as something like Frame 1 (100ms), Frame 2 (100ms), and so on. Now let's say the tenth frame is where the animation "pauses" for one-half second before looping. The name there would be Frame 10 (500ms).
Any Layer, which in this case is any frame, can be changed just by double clicking it. For example, if I wanted to make the "pause" on the tenth frame longer, I just double-click and change (500ms) to (1000ms), and that increases the time just for that frame from one-half second to a full second.
Yes, it is possible to adjust delays on a per-frame level using gifsicle, but way more difficult. In GIMP I see a nice tidy list of everything in Layers, and can quickly find which frame(s) have different delays.
Convert the GIF to MP4
Some may want to do this to put the GIF in a video. Use FFMPEG for that.
Fix the frame rate of the GIF first and export, then do this:
ffmpeg -i fixed.gif fixed.mp4
You only get one animation loop from this. Take your fixed.mp4 and create another file that has the loop repeat 20 times:
ffmpeg -stream_loop 20 -i fixed.mp4 -c copy fixed20.mp4
Done.
If the resulting MP4 has a frame rate running way too fast, it's probably because you used gifsicle. Try exporting from GIMP instead to make your fixed GIF, then make your MP4 clips.
i live in a world where chicken tenders and fries are 18 bucks
While I totally understand inflation is real and there's no such thing as eating out cheap anymore, the prices of some things legitimately disgust me.
So I'm looking around the online map and thought hey, chicken. I could go for that. With me being me, I see three chicken places that might look good and read the menu for each to see what they offer and what the prices are.
Side note on that: If the restaurant doesn't show a menu WITH prices right up front when I go to look them up online, I don't go there.
I look at the menus, and see the prices.
This is when the disgust happened.
The places I picked were just slightly upscale compared to typical fast food joints, as in places where a small amount of effort is put into the atmosphere and the food is of a better quality, supposedly. However, this is nothing that would be considered fine dining. This is chicken tenders we're talking about here.
All three places had chicken tenders where after tax, the damage was $18. For a large amount of food? No. Just three tenders and a handful of fries NOT including any drink.
I went to the grocery store instead and got sushi. The one I frequent actually does a good job at it. And the price? Three full rolls for $10 out the door. The rolls were Philly, "Caterpillar" and "Shaggy Dog", and were only sitting for maybe an hour at most before purchase. Were they good? Yes.
All of the disgust I had for the chicken places was due to two things. The price, and knowing what it is I'm being served. I know that chicken is bottom tier frozen crap, and the only thing making it "better" compared to fast food slop is sauce and/or seasoning and nothing else. Same goes for the fries.
I can buy that same bottom tier frozen chicken, the same bottom tier seasonings, the same bottom tier sauces, and the same frozen cheap-ass fries myself at the grocery store for a price significantly south of $18. And it doesn't take much skill to whip up tenders and fries.
Sushi, on the other hand, does take some actual skill to make. That's a skill I don't have (yet). Are bottom tier ingredients used to make the sushi? No. This isn't to say highfalutin premium tier ingredients are used, but it is a notch or two above whatever the chicken places use.
Ultimately, the sushi is more difficult to make, has better ingredients (at least for the grocery store I go to), and most importantly isn't overpriced. Getting three rolls for $10 is a decent deal because that's $3.33 (and a true $3.33 at that) a roll.
At the chicken places, it's $18 for overpriced bottom tier crap that anybody could make. These chicken places have no view (a parking lot doesn't count), no real atmosphere to speak of, and... yeah, sucks. Pass.
What does it take to make decent tenders?
Any frozen chicken tenders bought at the grocery store, canola oil if frying (doesn't mess with the flavor as much), salt, pepper, garlic powder, paprika.
And if you want that "secret country flavor", if you bake, pour a little pickle juice over the tenders after baking while they cool. I'm not kidding. While that's not the correct way to add the pickle flavor, it works in a pinch to get bottom tier frozen crap to taste better.
If you fry the things, you'll need a decent frying pan set. Preferably a set with glass lids so oil doesn't splash all over the stove. Fry at medium heat.
the oldest usable garmins
As time goes on and more people realize that navigation on a phone is complete garbage, they're turning to Garmins. I own a bunch of them. Got the newer stuff with the 53, 66 and 76 (yes, I do own all three), older stuff that goes as far back as two decades ago, and many models in between that.
Over the years, I've seen things happen with all the screens I have as they age. Some are definitely better than others.
But before I get into that, I'll answer this question: What is the oldest usable Garmin?
Answer: Garmin nuvi 200*
Yes, there is an asterisk there, because this is a conditional answer.
The conditions are:
- It absolutely has to be a white-sticker serial and not a gray-sticker.
- A 32GB microSD memory card and no larger is absolutely required to store the map data.
- The map data absolutely has to be OpenStreetMap and not Garmin-issued.
- You absolutely have to know how to get GPS coordinates for locations.
- You have to know how to punch coordinates in manually to get anywhere.
When people read over those conditions, they usually run away screaming.
Whatever. Not my problem. I put in the effort and figured all this stuff out myself, and if I can do it, so can anyone else.
Technical crap aside, the reason a nuvi 200 series has stood the test of time is because of the simplicity of how it was made. Most of them have no Bluetooth, meaning no stupid phone is ever involved that would screw things up. None of the 200 series models ever had that nasty rubberized coating crap on the case. The mounting clip for it is thick and sturdy. It never had a proprietary cradle, meaning it absolutely works when powered by a Garmin charger cord or generic USB power cable (which matches the Garmin cord pinout so the board doesn't get fried).
With a white-sticker 200 series model, I can still get GPS accuracy of under 40 feet. True, that's not as good as newer models that get accuracy of 10 feet or fewer, but considering the age of a 200 series, anything under 40 is still really good.
Where 4.3-inch "widescreen" models are concerned, the nuvi 42 still works well. It's actually a redesigned nuvi 40, but what makes it nice is the case redesign. The 40 had a power button that liked to crack off as it aged, and the 42 fixed that. Also, finding replacement circle-style mounting clips for it is really easy (and cheap).
For the 5", nuvi 52 and Drive 52. Similar model number, but years apart. The nuvi 52 is just a 5-inch version of the 42. Drive 52 is much more advanced, some are still on Amazon at the time I write this, and it was the very last matte screen model from Garmin.
Capacitive screen 5" models are hit-or-miss. Best of the lot was the nuvi 2599 for brightness and legibility, but the screen can go wonky on it over time.
6" matte models never had truly bright daylight-readable screens, unfortunately. I'm talking about nuvi 65, 66, 67, 68. And the capacitive screen models didn't fare out much better. The only truly good daylight readable capacitive model is the current generation DriveSmart 66.
7" models is when things got good for capacitive, starting with the DriveSmart 61. Very nice. With the DriveSmart 65, whether you get true daylight readability or not directly depends if it's a "with Alexa" model or not. If it's not, slightly dimmer. If it is, full brightness. Doesn't matter if you use the Alexa feature or not, because the brightness is what matters. The current generation DriveSmart 76 is also truly daylight readable.
Back to the 200... is it okay to use now?
This is the oldest of the old for usable, so let's talk a little more about this.
200 series nuvi models are very, very plentiful. Tons of them available for cheap on eBay, and tons of people have one kicking around in the garage or put away in a closet.
Assuming it's a white-sticker 200 (meaning the serial number printed on the bottom is literally on a white sticker and not gray) where the USB port isn't wrecked, a proper power cord is used, new 32GB card is acquired, OSM maps are installed to said card, and some locations are manually saved using GPS coordinates to Favorites list (like Home, maybe a few stores, bank, whatever), yes, okay to use...
...as long as you're realistic when using it.
Being realistic means being comfortable that a 200 series is just an A-to-B navigator. No phone crap, no Bluetooth, no Wi-Fi, no traffic reporting, no ability to create custom routes, no ability to send/receive locations, minimal options. It is its own island, so to speak.
A 200 will get you there. Sometimes you'll have to ignore the directions it gives when you know a better way and let it recalculate the route a few times. Sometimes the GPS signal will cut out when entering a large parking garage (but will get it right back when back out in the open). Sometimes you'll notice it's a little slow. But again, it will get you there.
The nuvi 200 series is old, but yes, still works when set up properly.
it's now dangerous to edit text in windows
It is legitimately dangerous to edit plain text in Windows now. Yes, you could be forgiven for thinking I'm completely making that up, but unfortunately I'm not.
Microsoft incredibly found a way to break Notepad so bad that one of the very recent 'updates' for it resulted in the software having a remote code execution vulnerability. That is INSANE.
I could understand (but not condone) if this happened with a web browser. But a text editor, and frickin' NOTEPAD of all things? Really? Yeah, really.
You might think okay, just use Notepad++ and then and all is well, right?
Wrong.
Notepad++, a software I used to swear by, had its updater compromised for six months.
Never in all my life have I ever seen anything like this happen on any operating system in the history of personal computers for text editor software.
Again, I really have to drive home the point that this crap happened with text editors, meaning not document editors. Decades ago, macro viruses used to happen to Microsoft Word, and that goes all the way back to 1995. But Word is a fully featured documented editor. Again, I'm talking about text editors.
I dodged this disaster just by good timing
I switched my secondary computer from Win11 to Win10 IoT LTSC recently, and did put Notepad++ on it.
The timing of when I did that was amazing, because I had installed Notepad++ a day after v8.9.1 was released after all the security stuff was taken care of.
I've since uninstalled Notepad++ and won't go back. The only text editor on my Win10 now is notepad.exe, as in the old one that never had a problem before Microsoft 'updated' it...
...although I may consider Kate, since that's my go-to text editor in Linux, and a Windows version does exist for it. I'm very used to Kate at this point.
the spam solution i can't use
I decided to regex everything to keep my email inbox clear of spam, but I have looked into other options.
There is one and only one way that is absolutely guaranteed way to stop all spam, and it's on-the-fly email aliasing.
What this basically means is that everybody, be it a person or business, gets a separate alias address to email you with. With on-the-fly aliasing, you can create an alias whenever you want and immediately start using it. Also, if any alias starts getting spammed, you can delete the alias, make up another one, and that spam problem is solved instantly.
But there are three huge problems with this, even though it absolutely does work to stop spam.
First, with an alias service, you're putting trust and faith that the service won't be blocked anywhere or suddenly close shop. Doesn't matter if it's Firefox Relay, addy.io or any of the others. Just because they work now doesn't mean they won't in the future.
Second, using aliases can turn into a management mess in short order.
With the existing web/email hosting setup I have, I could, if I wanted to, configure on-the-fly email aliases. The nerdy technical details of it is that I would set one master address as a catch-all such as me@example.net, and then use some regex magic so me[anything]@example.net would deliver email to me@example.net. Also, I can send mail for any alias I make, so if I had mesocialmedia@example.net, I can send as that address. And should any alias get spammed, I can filter it right out with regex and create another alias on-the-fly instantly. Not a problem... except it is. More on that in a moment.
Is this the same as plus addressing? Pretty much, except my aliases would work anywhere since some sites don't allow email addresses with a plus in them. Social media is a good example. Some social media sites would allow me+socialmedia@example.net while others would spit back an error on attempt to use that for an account email address.
Even with "100% compatible" addresses, micromanaging is a very real thing when using email aliases. Yeah, you're still using just one email account since all the aliases deliver email there, but now you have to keep track of all the aliases being used.
Setting up aliasing is easy, but switching over every account to a separate alias is the very tedious, very annoying part.
If I have an account at Big Ass Bank using me@example.net and want to change that to mebank@example.net, I have to login and do the song and dance of changing the email address, get the verification email, confirm, and okay, then I can use it.
But then I have to do the same thing for every frickin' account I have. Not quick. That could take the better part of a week to get all that done.
For giving out email addresses in person, I'd have to carry around a field notes wallet. On one of the pages I'd have a few short words written down for email alias use (sky, cloud, sun, moon, star, etc.), then cross one out whenever it gets used. True, field notes wallets are cool and damned handy for having a right-now way of jotting down a note wherever I am. But for email alias management, it's a little ridiculous to use a notepad to help manage it all. (Then again, if you consider it a good idea, go for it.)
Any why do the aliases have to be managed like that? It's so I don't accidentally use one twice, because if I did, and the alias starts getting spammed later, two people or two accounts are affected if I delete it. I'm not going to remember which two they were, so to avoid that trap, every alias has to be for just one account or one person.
Third, dealing with The Email Cabal isn't fun. At all.
The Email Cabal are those "free" email providers that start with G, H, O or Y. You know what those are. And they don't like it when people send messages using aliases even when all the checks and balances are "OK". The alias service could be free of all blacklists, have proper SPF/DKIM/DMARC/whatever configured and whatever, but it doesn't matter. You try to send any message using an email alias to a cabal-run email address, and it could be false-flagged as spam at any time.
Oh sure, you can receive emails all day, but sending to any email address run by the cabal is a totally different story. Not only do you have to worry about whether the alias service will stay up and running, but also worry about whether the cabal is "in a mood" that week or not. Ridiculous.
100% effective to stop spam, but...
Let's say you have no intention of sending mail as an aliased address and just want to receive. Let's also say you're relatively confident that the company who runs the alias service won't screw you over. Okay, fine.
There's still that whole micromanaging thing going on that cannot be avoided. Every time you use an alias, that's effectively adding another email address into your life that you have to keep track of.
Ultimately, just the thought of micromanaging email steered me away from using email address aliases.
Is aliasing worthless?
No.
Aliasing doesn't work for me, but I understand people like having a handful of "throwaway" email addresses that they can use whenever they want to receive newsletters or whatever. As long as it's just a few addresses, that's manageable. And by a few, I mean fewer than 10. Going anywhere beyond that into double digit territory is where the micromanaging creeps in, and that would be bad.