Wow, its been four years since since I made a blog post here. I'm sure a lot of people have missed me. I'd like to thank everybody for appreciateing my site. As you have probably figured, I haven't had much interest in adding more to this site. I basically got caught up in learning other other fields of coding like React web development, data science, app development, and other stuff. Part of it too is that I got really used to Git and developing in VS Code, and to be honest, coding in Neocitie's coding environment isn't for me. It was really great when I was a beginning web developer. Another thing was that the code I've made for this site, isn't good, and I don't like looking at it or dealing with it lol. I mixed HTML4 with HTML5, and made my own HTML tags like "dig". I mean wtf lol. Lastly, I stopped developing this site because I knew that if I wanted to make it in the industry I had to know how to code modern looking webpages.

So what have I been up to? I have my degree in CS and have worked as a full stack developer for a startup (that unfortunately closed). Things are alright for me other than being unemployed in the rough job market. I have thought about returning to Neocities and making new stuff, but I'm not sure what to make just yet.

I missed the cut-off date to be considered a Millennial by just a couple years, so I'm not like the majority of the Zoomers out there. It just feels awkward that I'm grouped in with this generation when I read about my generation online. Here is why:

Many current teenagers (I'm no longer one of them) have never used a CD for music ever in their life, and this is including teens from 1st world countries. Those same teenagers often were gifted tablets for their 8th birthday. They do not remember a time when Bush was president, never watched Dexter's Laboratory, and worst of all, never played on a Game Boy. What I just described is the total opposite of myself. I could go on and on, about how different I am, such as how I grew up with a tube TV, used VHS tapes, bought BRAND NEW Playstation 1 and 2 games, etc, etc.

I think part of my problem is that I'm not very consumerist. I never really cared about having the popular brand of clothing, or having the latest and greatest video game console just for the sake of it. Honestly, most of me not being consumerist comes from my parents not having that much money growing up. I had absolutely no cable TV after 2nd grade, and never really watched any of the new kids shows. People would talk about Jesse McCartney, and I would think "It that Paul McCartney's daughter?". My taste in music is very very boomer, and that is an entirely different topic. My parents never bought a flat screen TV, but eventually did buy a 27" 1080p monitor in 2015, which in my opinion, is as good as a small flat screen TV. I also never had a cellphone until around 2014. This cellphone wasn't the smartest to put it nicely... alright, it was a feature phone. You get the picture now; I was (probably still am) behind the technology in almost everything. Being lumped in with young kids who were raised on Mommy Finger playing on YouTube, coupled with me growing up with practically the same technology as a Millennial, makes me feel distant from Generation Z.

To add fuel to the fire, I'm addicted to watching YouTube channels about old boomer technology, such as LGR, Nostalgia Nerd, and The 8-Bit Guy. Plus, I'm addicted to updating this site which has a 90's aesthetic that is before my time. 99% of the music I listen to was made before 1995. I have issues.

12/10/19 Edit: I thought of a few more things that set me apart from Gen Z, so here they are:

I write in cursive almost every time I have to write something. I don't see why the "Zoomers" complain about it so much. It's literally faster than writing in print. Zoomers and Millennials (to a lesser extent) keep touting that "cursive is outdated! Typing is faster than print!". If you say that cursive is outdated, then why are you still taking notes in paper notebooks in class? If you prefer to type out all your notes, good for you, but I'd be really impressed if you could sit through a math class typing out notes. Paper notebooks could one day be a thing of the past, but people will continue writing, even electronically. I know you've heard of those newfangled Surface Pros and Ipad Pros.

One piece of technology I absolutely abhor is those Apple Air Pods, and any other type of wireless earbuds. Those things are a step backwards in technology. With regular earphones, you don't have to charge them, you don't have to fiddle with paring them to bluetooth, and most importantly, you don't have to worry about losing one pod and being stuck without a pair. The headphone jack is not outdated. It's just like the wheel, and you can't reinvent it.

I find the evolution of various logos for brands very interesting. How a logo looks in a certian time period usually is telling of what graphc design trends were going on when it was designed. Logos seem to either become better over time, or become worse. Lately with minimalism being a current trend, logos have become very boring in my opinion. I prefer to not follow trends, and you can be assured that this website will always look like it came straight out of the 90's or some strange alternate future where 90's trends continued far into the future. I have changed the logo on this site several times just to make it look better, but not to "keep up with the times". Anyway, here's a visual history of how my logo has changed:

The very first logo. I use CAD for making many of the graphics on this site, including the original logo. CAD isn't an image editor, so I take screenshots of what I make in that program and import them into an image editor. Then I finalize the graphics there, by adding color, effects, fixing pixels, etc. In this logo, I didn't do much to it after making it in AutoCAD, and it shows.

The second logo. It looks so much better. I tried to make the '2' look more like a two by stretching some lines, and I did the same with the 'B'.

The third logo. This is the longest used logo as of typing this. I totally redid the logo because I wanted to make all the leters look more unique, plus I was tired of the '2' looking too much like an 'a'.

The logo I'm using right now as of making this blog post. I did a minor change to make it pop out more. I'm most likely going to update the logo again in the future to make it even better. I might change the octagon in the 'I' to a revolving rhombicuboctahedron, or I might add a dithered gradient to the diagonal stripe. Those things would take up too much of my time to do right now anyway, since I'm trying to get through college. Oh and by the way, this site just turned four years old!

This semester I'm taking my first actual computer science class, and it has surprisingly turned out to be boring for me. Technically, it may not be totally a computer science class, but a "computer engineering" class, since the name of the course is literally "Intro to Computer Engineering" (still a required class for a CS degree). This class I'm taking right now, is not focussed on programming, but is instead focussed on the workings of logic gates, boolean algebra, and designing circuits. I thought the class was going to be my most interesting class of the semester, but it turns out my dreaded Calc II class is actually more "interesting" than Intro to Computer Engineering.

I never would have thought working with just zeros and ones in math would be soooooo boring. In some ways, it feels like I'm going back to Kindergarten and relearning basic math, but unnecessarily convoluting it and there is no cookies or apples involved. With what I know currlently in this class, I can only apply my knowledge to simulating a combination of logic gates that change a couple outputs to a zero or a one. Exciting right? There's not many cool things I can do with what I'm learning. In order for me to be able to build a simulated CPU, (which is something that interests me) I would have to learn more of this boring boolean algebra. I don't think majoring in Computer Engineering is for me. Probably Computer Science is the best, since it seems programming is what's interesting to me. I just worry I would find high level computer science concepts pretty dull too, such as computer algorithms. I still have time to change what major I want to be, without it wasting my time, and my parents money. I could suddenly change my field of study to mechanical engineering if I wanted. Time, will eventually sort this all out for me.

Recently an epiphany has occured to me regarding my collection of Gameboy Camera Photos which I have on display. I have realized how impermanent the internet really is, and how easily information and media can just vanish. The old adage of "one it's on the internet, it's there forever" is not entirely true, especially with old public domain things on the web that barely anyone cares about. I have learned that I haven't done my part to properly archive Gameboy Camera photos on the web, and that I could have saved a bunch of them from disappearing forever. When I was first uploading Gameboy Camera photos to this site, I didn't bother to keep track of all the sources they came from. The thought of historical preservation never really occured to me, and I just wanted to have a fun little photography gallery. Plus, I was too lazy to add hyperlinks to every single Gameboy Camera photo on my page.

Recently, I decided to go back and link every Gameboy Camera photo to its original source, (mainly so I could just easily find more to display). However, when doing so, there were a handful photos I just could not find the original source to. I've tried the reverse image search on Google, searching by exact resolution, and more. These are some photos where I can't find there original source at all:

When looking for new photos to add to the page, I used the feature in Google image search where you can search by exact resolution, and happened to find a Gameboy Camera photo by its self on a news article. The Gameboy Camera photo was sourced from someone else's Flickr album, but when I tried to click the link to the Flickr album, I got this message: "404 - This is not the page you're looking for. It appears the photo or video you seek no longer exists." I did try Waybacking the URL and it turned out the original source was archived... just not very well. As you can see, the original photo will not load at all. There are several preview thumbnails for Gameboy Camera photos the photographer also uploaded, but the Wayback machine never archived them, so the full resolution versions of those photos appear to be lost on the internet.

Because of what I've seen, I have decided to Wayback Machine archive every single known source my uploaded Gameboy Camera photos come from. Plus, I'm now keeping a list of sites with known Gameboy Camera photos that I haven't copied photos from yet. It's kind of sad that my Gameboy Camera page may be the only page on the internet where some of these Gameboy Camera photos are displayed. What is even sadder is that there are probably a ton of Gameboy Camera photos archived on the Wayback machine that I can't access, since you'd have to know the exact URL of the original long-gone webpage they were hosted on.

Also, I don't know if anyone has noticed this, but many of the Gameboy Camera photos I have on display were originally saved in JPEG and losslessly compressed GIF formats, meaning that the quality is lower than how they originally appeared on the Gameboy. I have had to restore these photos so that they are back to being in 2-bit color. Some photos I wanted to add, just couldn't be restored well, so they ended up not being added to the page. Seriously, don't save your dinky pictures as JPEGS, you're not saving much more space on your 750 TB hard drives. I can confidently say that I have restored these compressed photos to how they looked by at least 99%. Even if they are a few pixels off, they still look much better than how they used to look with compression artifacts and blur.

Well, it seems like I've turned into someone who works at the Louvre. Honestly, if I could get a job at that place, I'd love it so much since I'm kind of an art history nerd. Anyway, the importance of internet preservation has become more important to me, and I think there should be much more advocay for it. There is a Kickstarter project I found where a guy named Stevie Boyar, bought a bunch of Gameboy Cameras and transfered the photos already on them to his PC, and then published them into a book. Almost all of these photos were never ever going to be seen outside of a Gameboy, which is quite interesting.

Some people have said that this computer listed on my hardware page did not display its graphics in 2-bit color, which they are half right. It turns out that the earliest editions did in fact diaplay 2-bit color, but the later one could display many more. I updated my hardware page to make the clarification. Look at this screenhot of its OS:

It's pretty aesthetically pleasing, and looks better than Windows 1.0 (and Windows 10 too) in my opinion.

September 20th is approaching fast, and I haven't even prepared to... get ready for moving to a new house. I have a strong feeling that at least ten people will attempt to seriously storm area 51, and it won't end well.

Speaking about Area 51, one of my most favorite conspiracy theories comes to mind, which is a theory that humans did not invent the transistor by themselves, but instead got it from a crashed flying saucer. It is said that the transistor was invented on December 23rd, 1947 by Bell Labs. Can you guess what happened six months earlier? The Rosswell UFO crash! This invention is thought by many to be mankind's greatest invention since the wheel, and we probably would have no Information Age without the transistor. Could it be possible that we reverse-engineered some alien's equivalent of a Gameboy found on a crashed UFO? Who knows?

I took a pretty long break from editing this site, and it seems I only ran out of ideas temporarily. I have been editing my site again by improving and adding some minor stuff. I also want to make some more Gameboy game reviews soon. V-race II isn't going to happen it seems (for anyone who cared). I do plan on making a much more polished game with a similar concept in the distant future, but it won't be in 2-bit color.

College has kept me busy, and my major is computer science unsurprisingly. When the Fall semester comes up, I will be finally taking a real computer science class. I really look forward to it, since I'm getting sick of all the monotonous calculus and physics I've been doing. From what I keep reading on the internet, many people with computer sceince degrees never have used calculus on any software developement jobs. It just so happens that I have to take three years of calculus. The basic fundementals behind calculus I find interesting actually, but the other highly abstract stuff involving stuff like the derivates of logarithms and integrals of trig functions I really dislike. I'm only tolerating this calculus so I can get a pretty prestigious degree. Then again, even if I have hardly any use for calculus outside of college, this complex math is going to build my brain and give me more inspiration for developing algorithms.

Once I learn some serious computer science stuff, I think this site will get much more interesting. I just looked at an old blog post of mine while typing this (I think its slightly cringey looking back), that promissed a similar thing. I soon found out after making that old post that my college only allowed you to take computer science classes only if you took Calc I. These included programming classes, which is pretty stupid considering you only need basic algebra to start off with programming. I don't have to worry about that now anyway thankfully, and I will definitely be taking my very first programming class in th upcomming semester. So, this blog post was pretty much a ramble about college and a small update about me.

I'm starting to run out of ideas for this site. I'm going to make more pages like the Fresh Prince one but with different TV shows from the 90's. I'll release V-race II probably next year or something and then I'll mostly move on from edting 2Bit.

The next page I plan on making has Quark from DS9 with the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition BTW.

Since single file EXE games are so 90's (not to me they are) and that not everyone has a Windows computer, V-Race II will be 100% HTML5! You can click here to see a quick test that I did to make sure HTML5 Game Maker Studio games are compatible with Neocities. I wish I could export the first V-race to HTML5, but it was made on GM 8.0, and much of the programming is not compatible. V-Race II will be in a much higher resolution (720x540), and will have much larger sprites. Hopefully It will run more smoothly than the first V-race; even though it was a 2D game with the literal resolution of a Gameboy, an average gamming laptop could only run it with lag every 10 seconds.

This is just going to be a breif post. No longer will I be a NEET when I take a quick certificate course at my local community college. Web developement or computer scripting might be some of the classes I'll take, and if that's the case, 2Bit might become a bit more fancy. Currently I guess you could say that I'm a "script kiddie". I practically know basic HTML by heart, but I still don't know CSS very well. It's even worse with JS; it's Greek to me. After community college, I'm going to a university to study in a completely different feild. Most likely it will be some kind of engineering.

Anyway, Merry Christmas. Merry Kwanza. Merry Hanukkah. Merry New Year.

I'm 19 years of age on the date of this post, and I was not the most mature years ago, however, I still made intereseting stuff back then. I found this flipnote as I was going through an old hard drive and I thought it would be neat to share here. Yeah, I was an edgy, anti-Illuminati, borderline-emo teen back then. The animations of me in the flipnote are neat, but all the quickly flashing "evil subliminal messages" is the cringy part.

Enjoy this odd little thing.

Þe letter þorn (pronounced "thorn" for you buttheads) is an archaic letter of þe English alphabet þat made a monk's life easier by having to occasionally write one less letter in his words. When þe printing press came along, someþing someþing Germans didn't have þe letter þorn or someþing and used þe letter 'y' instead. Everybody knows German people are smart most of þe time. Þey didn't try to make þe Englishmen's problem more complicated by replacing þorn wiþ two letters.

Well, þe English made a dumb decision. When þey stopped using þe 'y' for "th" sounds and used 'th' instead; it was almost as if þey were afraid þat þe English alphabet had too many letters serving multiple phonetic sounds (which is in fact still a problem). Making 'th' mean þorn, did not solve much. Þe letter 'y' still makes multiple sounds including "yuh", "ee", and "eye". IT'S NOT ÞAT HARD TO LEARN ONE EXTRA LETTER OF ÞE ENGLISH ALPHABET! WE HAVE IT EASY COMPARED TO ÞE CHINESE! Seriously, I doubt it was þat hard to make an extra type block for þe letter þorn, and I highly doubt any of you have trouble singing þe ABC's.

Since we live in þe Information age, it has become so easy to quickly replicate texts in any language and in any alphabet, all þanks to Unicode. But what do we use þis technology for? EMOJIS! GOSH FORSAKEN EMOJIS! Despite þe introduction of emoticons, texting lingo isn't all þat bad. We can all agree þat writing '4' is easier þan writing "four". Academic scholars may disagree but "lol I luv u" is innovation... plain and simple innovation to þe English language! After all, þou no longer speakeþ likeþ þis. Þe English language has changed and subsequently improved since its birþ, and I find noþing wrong wiþ changing it even furþer! Texting lingo is probably going to be regarded as slang for a long long time. But before þat happens, let us all bring back þorn since it will sound more "academic".

Þe only obstacles preventing us from using þorn is our publishers, teachers, and employers. Oþer þan þat, no one is stopping you. Contrary to popular belief, þere is no official way to use English. Unlike French, we don't have a governing body þat makes laws on our language. Proper grammar only exists because most of us universally agree upon what constitutes "proper grammar". Þe Brits have different grammatical ideals þan þe Yanks and because of þat, we have British English and American English.

V-race has officialy been released! Click here to download it.
Here is some info about the game:
Controlls:
Just move the left and right arrow keys to control the car.
Press enter to start the game.
To enlarge the game, press and hold the the window key and press '+'. (I couldn't find any other good workarounds.)

Credits:
All programming and graphics created by Mark Valentino
Music by Nikku4211
Explosion sound effect credit- http://audiosoundclips.com/8-bit-explosion-blast-sound-effects-sfx
"Lose race" sound effect was ripped from F1 Race for the Gameboy

These are the cars that will be in V-race, and I've listed their stats as well. V-race is going to come out very soon I promise.

Video not playing? Download it directly.

Bandicam captured the gameplay choppily, but it is a lot smoother in person at 60 fps. I have completed 4 levels of the game and I am currently working on the fifth.

Track listings for the game so far:

Nikku4211 - Bunsie (Full version)
Nikku4211 - Skidrow Remix
Nikku4211 - Tanishq

I am currently in the process of making a videogame that is designed to look as if it were made for the original Gameboy. The name of it is V-race and the gameplay involves you driving a car at high speeds through a racetrack while having to constantly make split second decisions. I did some calculations on the speeds of the vehicles I have made so far and they came out to around 120 mph and 144mph! You definitely need to have an above average reaction time to progress far in the game and you definitely can't expect to win while drunk either since it's harder to drive in V-race than it is in real life! No joke.

All of V-race's music was made by Nikku4211 who is also a prominent Neocities member. Nikku's music is very upbeat, catchy, and chiptune-y which is perfect for this game. You can check out his YouTube channel which features his music.

So far I think I'm close to being halfway done with the game. I have completed three levels and V-race will probably have around eight levels in total when I release it. V-race is going to be totally free and you will be able to download it on this very site.

Forgive me. I'm bad at talking on mic.

Video not playing? Download it directly.

This is the first and only mention this site has gotten so far outside of Neocities. Kuro pixel wrote an article reminiscing the old Geocities sites from nearly twenty years ago. The author brought up Neocities and said "It's a really neat looking community that takes me back to the early web days". Here is the link to the article.

My site was also mentioned in a brief paragraph reading, "A website with the theme of having everything in 2-bit color. The person that made the site is really dedicated to this theme, because all graphics follow the rules of being 2 bit. Not a lot of real content on the site, but it's pretty unique so I thought I'd mention it". 2Bit at the time, did in fact not have a lot of content; it just had maybe 5 or 6 pages to it. This site has grown so much, I have now lost count on how many web pages this site actually has LOL.