ICastFist

cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/47341163

Remember Win Elvis-n-Space? Or Lemmings Paintball? Or even Odyssey Legend of Nemesis?

Found this little gem of a site recently. Unfortunately, it hasn't been updated in a while (last blog post is from Sep 2025)

Remember Win Elvis-n-Space? Or Lemmings Paintball? Or even Odyssey Legend of Nemesis?

Found this little gem of a site recently. Unfortunately, it hasn't been updated in a while (last blog post is from Sep 2025)

Don't invite the math nerds here, they'll count the actual time since

Greeks and Romans would frequently curse anyone they didn't like, writing it as a curse on a lead sheet, roll it up and pierce it with a nail and put in a specific place, depending on the curse.

Given the amount of such tablets found, they probably cursed someone every other week.

For extra photos - https://www.romanbaths.co.uk/roman-curse-tablets

cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/46122408

I was looking for youtube alternatives and came across this site. Looks like a good place to post shitpost videos and all other sorts of crazy stuff.

For every video link, the upper image is the video preview, the lower half is the uploader's profile pic

I was looking for youtube alternatives and came across this site. Looks like a good place to post shitpost videos and all other sorts of crazy stuff.

For every video link, the upper image is the video preview, the lower half is the uploader's profile pic

Decided to bite the bullet and learn PHP, which is used for nearly everything at my job. My starting voyage was to mess around with "pure php", as in, no frameworks, no libraries, not even javascript, just the basic server with v8.3 running and some (currently very shitty) CSS styling.

So, I decided to go with a 2 step process: first, a site for me to post my stuff, with the possibility for external users to make accounts and leave comments. Step 2 would be making a forum where said users can interact. Before I began coding anything, I wrote down the database specification, though it's still "open for debate". I also didn't pay attention and made all tables as MyISAM initially instead of InnoDB, which made me lose all foreign keys, thankfully easily remedied given the small size of the project.

Thus far, I've got the user creation, listing, login (with hashed password), post creation and post viewing working. Visitors, normal users and admin see different links and forms, depending on pages, all with inline php code in appropriate pages - for instance, (unlogged) visitors don't see a comment box when reading a post. I'm currently working on the user edit page.

Anyway, why do I think I'm doing a lot of "wrongs"? For starters, I'm not using classes. At all. Functions are being added "globally" to one of 3 include somepage.php; that are in every page; every database related function - select all, select 1, update, are all in the db.php file. So, every page load is also loading the entire list of database functions, plus a bunch of html-automation related functions, even when none of them are used. Since PDO::fetch() returns an array with mapped keys (ie: $result['column1']), I feel like I have "no good reason" to use classes, especially as I'm still putting some finishing touches on the tables. I mean, I can access the relevant data with $bla['column_name'];, which is all I need thus far.

A lot of the resulting html comes from echo, some of it from functions to handle it more easily, like passing an array so a "global" function of mine returns it as neatly organized <td> elements.

There is no MVC, just good ol' <a href> and <form method=post> where they need to be. All my forms' actions call a separate php page that's just code to handle the form, always as POST, in order to check blank fields, size and character constraint, etc.

I've no doubt that, as is, my project has a number of security holes, though cross-site scripting and session poisoning are not among them. I did try sql injection and couldn't get it to work, so good on me.

As awful as this project might be against "the real world" use, I feel weirdly proud of what I'm achieving. Is there a name for this feeling, of pride for something you know is subpar?

Wondering if there's some sort of big list of channels whose videos are known to be mostly or entirely AI stuff, whether the text, the narrator or other details. It's really annoying to start watching and noticing something "off", only to check the channel and notice that it's been pumping out 25-30min videos every 2 days for the past year.

It's easy to avoid the AI animation stuff, but it's annoying when you're looking for history, psychology, science and other stuff.

Sauce - https://xcancel.com/funscubatuba/status/2023229308416778355

I saw that Indie Gala has a royalty free music bundle for sale of this - https://www.arcade-origins.com/

Thing is, checking their site, there's no way to actually buy straight off them, which is super weird. All "covers" are AI images and every video on YT channel was posted after Jan 2025.

I don't know enough about music other than listening to it, so I have no idea what cues, if any, to look out for when it comes to AI music. I also do not want to spend a single cent buying something done with AI.

tldr; A budget shooter that goes from tolerable to insufferable real quick

Chaser is a 2003 FPS from Cauldron, who would go on to create all time classics like Secret Service (2008) and Cabella's Dangerous Hunts 2011. Clearly a household name synonymous with quality. This game is also billed as having "A gripping story full of intrigue, plot twists and believable characters."

In this game, you're John Chaser, an amnesiac protagonist who escapes a space station and crash lands back on a futuristic Earth city. Shortly afterwards, you find yourself working for the local mafia because Chaser's too fucking stupid to take a hint. No, seriously, there's this dude in the cutscene that says "If you got any sense, you'll turn around and head as far away from this city as you can" and mr. protagonist goes back to the mafia owned casino. You also get some flashbacks in the first couple missions, but they go away. Don't worry too much about the story, everything done on Earth is like a sidequest until you get back to Mars. Overall, the game can be divided in 3 thirds: shitty city, soviet part, Mars. The latter 2 drag on for-fucking-ever.

For the story, here's a rundown of it:

But it's a first person shooter, so how's the shootin'? Kinda decent, most of the time. Ironically, the futuristic weapons feel like the worst ones when it comes to killing enemies. While a M4 rifle will typically kill an enemy in 1 or 2 shots, the futuristic HK11 might take 10+. Sometimes fucking explosives to the face won't kill enemies outright. Hand grenades are the worst, you don't click and hold to throw, you click and he'll do a fixed distance throw because fuck you. Fucking Quake 2 and Medal of Honor let you hold the grenade to throw it further or drop close by.

One of the main problems of the game is that a lot of the time you won't even know you're losing health. Save for a few situations when you're shot from the front, you'll have a hard time knowing if there's an enemy shooting you from the sides or from behind. There's nothing to indicate you took fall damage, not even a grunt or crunch sound. Savescumming is essential not only because of that, but also due to the likelihood that you might end up stuck somewhere in the scenery. Ladders are one of your biggest enemies, too.

Level design goes from "eh, ok" to "oh, fuck you" - the latter especially on levels like Lighthouse, Submarine, Cosmodrome and the entirety of Mars. Levels become overly long for no reason, with enemies spawning in places carefully designed to piss you off the most, sometimes behind your back and where you already went through: in some situations, you can literally see them popping out of thin air in front of you because now you stepped on the trigger!

The game has multiplayer and I wish I could test it, but I don't wish anyone to suffer through this game. Still, I suspect the multiplayer is leagues better than the singleplayer experience simply because it's not the singleplayer experience.

In all seriousness, if you do decide to check this game out for whatever reason, like morbid curiosity, don't be afraid to put it down and give up for good before you even . It does not get better. It gets more tedious and more groan inducing. There is no fair challenge, nothing that will give you any sense of satisfaction.