The First Post Always Sucks
The humble beginnings of a fucking blog in the year 2022
Welcome to Bitty Bits! This will be a blog for basically posting about what I have been up to, without having to dig through my Twitter for it. Essentially a small "digest" type thing, with some personal thoughts as well.
Oh yeah, this is also still Tumblr which means you can do all the... Tumblr things.
Finally, regarding the newsletter button at the bottom - I have no idea if that will even work. Not many people want to do that these days. But if you'd like to help me figure that out... subscribe to it and next month we'll see.
That said you can still use the RSS feed with no problems.
Now on to today's topics...
Ninjin Cartoon In English - Preservation Efforts
Alright, so who or what is Ninjin, and why should I care?
After only having known the series because of it being of brazilian origin, I finally decided to see what it was all about this year, and maybe have a hyperfixation on it as it usually happens. It all started with a humble little indie game, called Ninjin: Clash of Carrots (available on most platforms).
It managed to be enough of a hit that an animated series even got picked up by the Latin American division of Cartoon Network! Things were getting exciting. It would take a while for the show to solidify itself though - starting slow with 1-to-3 minute shorts, then later having "full episodes" each with 7 minutes, consistently. The first five of them are publicly available to watch for free on the official CN LA/Brazil YouTube channel, much like the other shorts. The rest of the series, now also known as "Corta Essa, Ninjin!" (which roughly translates to "Cut It Out, Ninjin!", and can) would then air on Cartoon Network, and be streamable on HBO Max. But there was something curious that I noticed at the end of some of these episodes - dubbing and voice acting credits (much like most streaming services), and that included an American English dub.
Curious about it, I tried to find any information about it online, but got nothing out of it. This was starting to look like a lost media case. But once I figured that there was more to this series than just the content posted on YouTube, I knew I'd have to do one thing - get an HBO Max subscription... and that's what I did. Not to my surprise, the English dub was there... ...but who in Latin America would be watching it over the Spanish dub or the original Brazilian Portuguese audio? That was the question I had, and still have. But at least, the dub was found.
...now whether or not it was worth finding it is probably something you can draw your own conclusions about. But efforts have been made into preserving this dub, and making Ninjin media in general more accessible, all right here in this MEGA folder. It's still, of course, highly recommended that you (if you have an HBO Max subscription) just use a VPN instead to get access to the show legally, but there are also no subtitled versions so...
Startpage vs. DuckDuckGo in 2022
(Images: Startpage.com/DuckDuckGo.com)
I am very much not a "privacy neat freak" like many people when it comes to , but alternatives are always welcome.
So it was pretty cool to know that Startpage.com was basically Google without... the not so great aspects of Google. To be fair I knew nothing about that website period, and thought it was some sort of homepage speed dial/link collection thing that you'd see in the 2000s, maybe I was getting it confused for something else entirely.
I've also heard elsewhere that DuckDuckGo was basically the same but with Microsoft Bing. Now I'm not sure how true that is, but it would make sense too.
But of course, having used Google for the longest time, I was more inclined to go for Startpage.com - and having tried to use DuckDuckGo before, I would definitely miss some of the more "convenient" aspects of Google search, even if it meant being tracked in a very not "Don't Be Evil" manner - But then I quickly started to have problems regardless.
As a researcher of lost content and more specific things in general, using search operators (such as using quotation marks) was essential. But Startpage would always, and it still does, to this day, prevent me from doing so. I'd be greeted by a quite threatening looking screen, misidentifying me as some sort of robot, or search request abuser. All I did was add quotation marks to my query...
Filling in the help form or reaching out to them on Twitter did nothing to help.
I really don't know if I am the only person having this issue. I am not doing anything that is listed over there. It also does not seem to be an issue with my Wi-Fi connection, as this still happens to me with mobile data, and in every browser I've tested.
It is probably worth mentioning the controversy that DuckDuckGo got into fairly recently, when they decided to downrank "russian disinformation" from the search results, which made all the heavy users of linux and wojak memes (this very specific demographic) very upset. #StandWithUkraine
What can be upsetting to me about this though, is the inconsistency with claims, as DDG had flexed their "unbiased results" feature in the past more than once.
I could also go on for quite a long time talking about how the heavily advertised "Brave Browser" is probably one of the worst and most shady things that the internet of recent years has seen (and why Vivaldi is much better in every conceivable way, not sponsored btw) but that might be a topic for another day...
My April Fools Thing Will Probably Be Very Predictable
I don't think that's funny!
(Image: Popeye - Cookin' With Gags/Famous Studios 1955)
And very hexagon shaped. That is all.
End of Post
Initially I wanted to have a lot more in this post but quickly realized how tiring it is to write all of this, so I'm going to try to summarize a lot of it.
Paused Gaming™
For most of my teenage years the times I actually sat down to play a video game were not many.
Most of the time I'd play the games I already knew, and newer things would usually just be "one-offs", and I'd also playtest stuff I'd make myself more too. Not a lot of "unfamiliar games" that I've finished. And during the pandemic that got worse. As such the last "actual game" that I still haven't finished was... SpongeBob Battle for Bikini Bottom. Hopefully that changes this year, and after that I'm playing OMORI. I'm not a real gamer. I only play mobile games
New Snap On Redbubble Soon
Enjoyed this one for whatever reason? I'm adding it to my redbubble shop... eventually. Not now.
A.I. Voices - Where Are They?
I still do want to bring more fun text-to-speech voices to Uberduck but my focus and priorities kinda shifted a bit as I got tired of going through the entire process of training voices. Sorry. It's a neurodivergent thing. One day the interest will be reignited.
Content Creation
If you haven't heard, I've reopened my music commissions on YouTube. That's one thing. But as said in many wall of text™ videos that I posted on my main channel, I want to do more varied stuff, and especially use my voice more. But it's hard as an autistic individual and "vocal underdoer", who speaks for probably less than an hour total in a single day.
One day I just hope to get just enough motivation to step out of my comfort zone!
Conclusion
As rough as life is right now, especially in my country, especially in my position, I've been having some small victories here and there, and making this blog was probably one of them. (Either that or a mistake)
Bitty's Message of the Day
Keep on dreaming! ...I couldn't think of anything better
