Giantpaper.org

Blog

  • Star Wars: The End of an Era (No Spoilers)

    Star Wars: The End of an Era (No Spoilers)

    I’m probably being overly dramatic, but I finally saw Rise of Skywalker. 🥺 I’ve heard a lot of people were disappointed, that it didn’t answer all the questions or it created more questions. But you know, I kinda don’t care! I think it was a great end to the “main” Star Wars movies.

    It scored a lot of nostalgia points for me. In particular seeing returning characters we haven’t seen for a while aaand had a few callbacks from the prequels1. (And Rebels and Clone Wars but I didn’t watch Rebels till after, still finishing Clone Wars after a giant hiatus.) Which was 🥺 complete nostalgia fuel for me.

    If you’re uber into Star Wars2, you might enjoy it just because of those reasons.


    1. Being one of few, probably about…20? people on the planet who actually liked the prequels.
    2. As in, Wookieepedia is your Bible, you know the backstories or at least the names of even the background characters who are seen for 10 seconds, etc
  • Account security, baby!

    Account security, baby!

    1. Use a strong password (16+ characters, combination of letters, numbers, uppercase and lowercase and special characters).
    2. Get a password manager like Lastpass, Dashlane, 1Password or Keepass, so you don’t have to memorize 100 passwords.
    3. Use 2 factor authentication. Most places offer SMS 2FA (where they sent a number code to your mobile number), but using Google Authenticator/Authy is more secure, because phone numbers are hijacked more easily.

    These won’t keep your account from being hacked*, but it can make it harder for bad guys to break in.

    *Your account can still be broken into if there’s a security exploit, or the software/online service does something stupid like store passwords in plain text. But even if the online service stores people’s passwords correctly, it’s still a good idea to change your password. Better safe than sorry. (Choosing a new password is easier if you have a password manager.)

    (Also I’d like to note that people throw the word “hacking” around too lightly. If someone’s account was broken into because they have a weaksauce password, it wasn’t really hacking. Their account just had a weak password. 😐)

  • Warframe: The War Within Reaction

    Warframe: The War Within Reaction

    [No major spoilers for Warframe, Dreamfall or Dreamfall Chapters]

    Just finished The War Within in Warframe. The entire game is mostly sci-fi with fantasyish elements, but TWW went into full-on Dreamfall mode. The mountain pass segment in particular–not just the snowy segments1, but there was also the “battle in the center of your mind” bit, with the Golden Maw, that was a lot like the scenes in DFC that took place in Storytime and other planes of existence. It made me nostalgic for The Longest Journey series. 🥺

    1: referring to one of Dreamfall’s ending scenes with the Black House

    Btw, if you’re interested in playing Dreamfall or DFC, definitely start with The Longest Journey. Reviewers say you don’t need to play it in order to under either of the Dreamfall games. But because TLJ is the first game in the series, both Dreamfall and DFC make a lot of references to TLJ and basically picks up where it left off. Also the very last scene of DFC will have more meaning.

    I saw a Youtube video with said-last scene. The ones who didn’t play TLJ were mostly annoyed and didn’t understand it all. While the ones that did play were all feelsy, because it officially answered a long standing question everyone had when they played TLJ.

  • Btw, Interactive forms that validate as the user types are annoying

    Btw, Interactive forms that validate as the user types are annoying

    Dear Ubiosoft… (and anyone who thinks online forms like these are a great idea).

    DON’T VALIDATE MY INPUTS AS I TYPE!!

    Example: For email, I enter my email…”h….” and the form screams at me “USE A VALID EMAIL ADDRESS”. Like…yeah it’s not a valid email, I haven’t finished typing it!! 😤😤😤😤 >:u

    Alternate solution for those curious: validate when the user is no longer focused on the form field (in Javascript, that would be when the blur event happens, don’t know the equivalent for computer programming languages, sorry).

    // With jQuery
    $('.element').blur(function(){
      // validate inputs here
    });
    // With vanilla JavaScript
    document.querySelector('.element').addEventListener('blur', () => {
      // validate inputs here
    });