"FAQ"
Here are my answers to questions you probably didn't ask! But in all seriousness, this is content that used to be on the homepage and made it into a mess, so I moved all of that guff to its own page in an effort to clean that up and make its contents more meaningful.
So, why did you make a website?
I can give several answers to that!
- I've always wanted to make a website of my very own, even when I was a kid... but I didn't have much knowledge nor motivation to do so for the longest time.
That started to change slightly once I was 19, when I took a Web Design class in college - I have very mixed feelings about the class, but taking it combined with a buddy of mine developing their own website at the time gave me the idea to start writing my own once again. I never really ended up developing my website from that time, but two years later I would pick up on the idea again when the creator of MacDat joined a private group I'm in and started sharing his website - which is a very good resource for old laptops, and while it's not designed to work on old computers, it has the old classic HTML+CSS style to it that I wanted to do myself. Also, at that time, I was withdrawing from the public internet due to my social anxiety increasing - the YouTube algorithm was bringing in attention I wasn't able to handle at the time, and I had left Twitter, BlueSky, and Mastodon within the previous 6 months, so I wanted to find a place to jot down my thoughts and whatnot. While I did discover Cohost around that time, its whole party piece of no content algorithm felt counter-intuitive, and it didn't really feel like my own space... and that is also not to mention later that same year, Cohost shut down due to financial troubles that they were already reported to have when I joined the website. At that point, I really just had the idea to build this website as a backup plan, but never really went through with it. - I want a good place on the Internet to document whatever I feel like writing down or sharing. You can say that a BlooSky profile is yours all you want, but it doesn't hit the same as running your own website - even if they are not comparable.
- This could be a bit of a fun project to keep me busy when I have pretty much nothing else to do... that is, whenever I remember I have this website to work on.
Why didn't you just use the sponsor of many YouTube Videos, SquareSpace?
While website creators like Google Sites, Weebly, Wix, and yes, SquareSpace, are a lot easier to use and more beginner-friendly, that's the chumpy and boring way to do things! It just gives you a cookie-cutter website that looks like Literally Everything Else, and also doesn't feel as rewarding to build.
Also, a goal of my website is to target browser compatibility going all the way back to Internet Explorer 5, which used to be the gold standard target for browser compatibility. In theory, you could browse this website on Windows 3.1 if you wanted to! Not that I expect anyone would be doing that though, tell me the last time you saw a random nobody or someone who's not a hobbyist using a computer made before Madoka Magica.
Playing with legacy computers is one of my main hobbies, and a lot of modern websites either won't load due to increased security over the years, or if they do load, they are so script-heavy and ad-ridden that even the most powerful computer that money can buy will struggle to load a page.
As I am hosting this website on Neocities, I am currently unable to make this work. This website has legacy support part of its design, and even if my current host requires SSL/TLS, heavy outlink/large image notices will be on the website.
What's this website about?
Well, this is my website - so it can be about whatever I want. It will probably be about old computers for the most part, but really, it will just be whatever I feel like writing down.
What's the background you're using for this site?
It's Upstream 16 from Windows NT 4.0, though I ripped the image from Windows 2000 Build 1946 and added a red overlay to it in Photoshop.
You definitely didn't make this CSS yourself, where did you get it from?
I'm using a modified version of the andreas04 CSS template from the mid-2000's. My buddy alectrona6400 has used this same template on her own website since 2022, though she didn't modify the look as much as I did with mine.
Do you ever plan to purchase a domain name?
Yes! I want to buy a domain name eventually, I just need to be well-researched on that whole thing and start off with a free host before I eventually put money into this website. I do not plan to self-host, at least not without a VPS - as I really would rather not have my IP address go out to the public.
What's so Azu about the Sapphire?
This is just copy-pasted from the About Me page, but I'm going to put this here anyway
Azu - I always liked how Azu sounded and looks, like in Azure and Azul. My parents are huge fans of Avatar: The Last Airbender, and my mom would often use the name Azula - the name of one of the antagonists - as a pseudonym.
What really got me to take on this part to my username is Azusa Nakano - a K-On! character who ended up becoming one of my favorite characters in what would become my favorite show of all time.
Sapphire - My birthday is in September, which means my birthstone is the Sapphire. Pretty simple explanation, there's not much more to it - but I suppose we can also factor in that I chose Pokémon Sapphire over Ruby.
This, however, is only one of probably over a hundred usernames I have used online.
Why do you have so many drives in your computer?
I actually get this one a lot, and it's pretty annoying to be honest. If you see an ungodly amount of drives in my Task Manager screenshots, most of them are empty drives that are registered due to the presence of an internal USB multi-card reader. Even then, I still have 4 fixed disks in my computer because I hoard a lot of data.
Why do you use Intel?
Cause it's better.
A more serious answer to that question: they either have the better product or the better value proposition than AMD whenever I buy computer hardware. Either that, or it's just what I end up with. Also, my previous two experiences with daily driving AMD have not been the greatest - but we can blame dodgy early AM4 and an AsRock AM5 motherboard + AliExpress reject silicon for those fiascos.
What does WFDF mean? It's referenced in your tech pages as an operating system.
Windows F*cking Dumpster Fire 11.
Why did you stop shilling Windows Enterprise LTSC, and go back to big mean evil horrible mainstream WFDF 11?
I'm going to get the entirety of the indie internet to hate me for saying this, that is if using Windows over Linux isn't already enough of a warcrime, but: LTSC is not a magical solution to all the BS in modern Windows.
The second you need to load UWP dependencies that aren't included by default, or fail a version check due to your software demanding a newer version of Windows than the latest LTSC version, that's when LTSC honestly becomes more trouble than it's worth. Also, if you're installing LTSC on a n00b's computer, you'd be surprised to hear that a lot of n00bs (particularly, the tech illiterate who don't even know what browser bookmarks are) depend on a Microsoft account and OneDrive, and LTSC doesn't have full OneDrive functionality - at least not integrated.
I'm not defending Microsoft's insistence on using an online account, if anything I personally despise the online account insistence that come with Home and Pro versions of WFDF 11, but this is just the reailty of things - at least with the n00bs in my area.
Why do you still use Windows? The YouTube Content Creators say You Need To STOP USING WINDOWS RIGHT NOW!
The War on Windows has been going on since the beginning of time. I still use Windows, even in its current suboptimal state, because it is what I am most used to. Also, I use a lot of niche and/or badly written software that only works on Windows, and whipping out a virtual machine (especially with how not good modern hypervisors are in my experience) and/or another seperate computer just to run said software if it works fine under the latest version of Windows is too much trouble. Besides, I already know my way around the typical Windows troubles, so I don't need to take on the troubles that come with Linux or Mac OS. Also, some folks say that Windows went down the toilet with the release of Internet Explorer 4 and Windows 95 OSR2.5 in 1997.
Are you an unironic 16:9 revisionist?
If you've seen a take from me saying that moving back to 16:10 is a mistake and 16:9 is the perfect aspect ratio, it is purely banter. Although, I've admittedly done it so much to the point where I unironically start to believe the very things I make fun of at times. But to be honest, 16:9 is fine - it's not preferable for work when 16:10 and 3:2 exist, but if you're mostly consuming content, which is primarily produced in a 16:9 aspet ratio, then that's where it makes the most sense.