Starting 2023 By Checking In On Which Emulators Are Currently #1 🏆

blog dedicated to categorizing and saving various posts i find helpful. main blog @venomgender ;

newly rbed posts almost definitely won't be tagged, but (in theory) they'll all be tagged within the month

tag explanations below cut:

#piracy - self explanatory. has both piracy tutorials and masterposts of pirated media

#digital privacy - posts dedicated to resources on digital privacy; has things ranging from browser extensions to google product alternatives

#cooking - cooking resources. both general how-tos and actual recipes

#trans - trans resources. more dedicated to transmasc than transfem posts just because im transmasc, but has several generalized posts as well

#art resources - self explanatory. has both tutorials and things like resource packs and stuff

#writing resources - self explanatory

#learning - learning resources, typically dedicated to masterposts about learning a specific "thing" (language, sewing basics, etc)

#media rec - media recommendations

#sewing - sewing resources. has both tutorials and sewing patterns

#tech - technology resources. stuff like removing windows 10 bloatware, switching to linux, improving pc performance

#video game resources - resources centered around making video games

#coding - coding resources. from basic language how-tos to how to make your own websites

#save - any other helpful post i see that doesnt easily fit into the above categories. typically has things that help with "adulting" but i dont like that word so im not making a tag for it.

#megathread - any post containing large amounts of links for different things. contains a variety of categories. mildly depreciated in terms of how often i actually tag things this...

#tutorial - posts that teach you things. normally will also be tagged with a more specific category. also mildly depreciated...

additionally anything tagged 'kinda' means it only sort of falls into the tagged category. i tag these things to in theory go through later and see if theres enough similar items to have them been grouped into a new one

Is Google Docs bad? Do you know of a good / safer, free, word processor? Thanks!

All Google products are bad!

There is an EXCELLENT free desktop office suite called Libre Office that you can download and install by clicking here: https://www.libreoffice.org/

If anyone reading this is a college student and thinking about purchasing microsoft home and student or an office 365 subscription please just install Libre Office instead. It is WONDERFUL.

If you’re looking to do something browser-based you should check out CryptPad, which is a zero-knowledge, encrypted online office suite with document storage and a spreadsheet maker and a complete boner for security. It allows for collaboration like gdocs does but it doesn’t track your data or store information about you because it *can’t* because all of your work is encrypted. Check out cryptpad here: https://cryptpad.fr/

And, as usual, if you want to ditch gmail check out protonmail.

Made a twitter thread of the brushes and textures I use!! Wanted to share them here too

Links for everything can be found here

Links to my free sewing patterns! - big manta ray - smaller manta ray - monster friend (those monsters with horns I’ve been making lately, but without horns) - pie slice - Fred, the Fish of Minimal Effort - tiny cat (aka Jiji) - mini mothman - whale shark/donut whale shark - juggling frog/toad (aka my smallest, simplest frog pattern of the three I’ve made) - large frog - tiny hedgehog - minecraft bee

HEY, YOU!

DO YOU LIKE OLD COMPUTER GRAPHICS?!

did you like ANY of these photos? would you like to see HUNDREDS MORE OF THEM?! with THOUSANDS OF UNIQUE TEXTURES?! ALL FROM FUCKING DECEMBER 15TH, YEAR 2000?!

NOW YOU CAN!!!

THERE'S ALSO A BUNCH OF CLIPART FROM 1997 IN .WMF FORMAT. I DON'T KNOW HOW TO USE THAT, BUT YOU MIGHT!

STILL not convinced???? LOOK AT THE DISC THEY CAME FROM!

WHAT THE HELL IS THAT!??!?!?!?!?! DON'T WAIT! GO LOOK AT THOSE JPEGS... TODAY!

i have no idea how unknown or not this advice is, i might be saying 'the sky is blue', but if you're ever in a situation where your car needs work or replacement parts and you either want to buy those parts yourself or have a baseline idea of what those parts are worth when looking at a quote from a mechanic, i highly recommend taking a look at rockauto dot com first.

HEADS UP im starting on a how-to googledoc for absolute beginners on music making!

Hey I saw your tags on a prev post, can you tell me how you pirate content safely? (you can publish privately) thanks!

ok im going to start out that im not the 'end all be all' of piracy im like. constantly improving my craft (lol) but i'll explain everything i do to make sure i dont get caught while extensively downloading media

before that though if you just want to stream media and not torrent it you can just go to r/piracy's megathread and click the links through there

i WAS going to put this all under a read more but i was trying to link additional resources and this post has most of their explanation under a read more and since they deactivated their account you can't access it anymore. so on the off chance i deactivate i want to keep this post accessible, sorry its so long lol

some of this tutorial is only truly accessible if you have a computer that can stay on 24/7, which i know is not viable for everyone, so i went ahead and highlighted the things you need a computer thats always on for in blue

(honestly, you probably do all the things you need an always on computer for with a raspberry pi but i dont know jack shit about those (yet) so you'd have to look elsewhere on how to do that) i do all of my piracy on a windows desktop computer

1. the first thing you want to do when beginning your torrenting life is purchasing a good vpn.

i personally don't trust any vpn sponsored by youtubers to not sell you data to companies for profit, so i use ProtonVPN since i use their mail service and their servers are based in Norway i believe which has EXTREMELY strict privacy laws. they have a free version of it but it doesn't allow you to torrent.

NEVER USE A FREE VPN FOR TORRENTING EITHER! they are like. the least secure vpns in the world . a vpn is expensive but basically all of them are for plans that last well over a year so its a worthwhile investment

2. the next thing you'll want to do is select and set up your torrenting client

i personally use qbittorrent and it works great. DO NOT USE UTORRENT. while their are some versions that don't have a cryptominer attached to it, basically all of the versions do at this point so its better to just steer clear

once you have your torrenting client downloaded, you will want to set it up to only be able to connect to the internet through you're vpn. the images below show you how to do it in qbittorrent

(image descriptions available in the alt text)

once you've done the steps in the image, click "apply" and then "ok" in the bottom right of the settings tab

the next part is only necessary if you are going to seed torrents (which i recommend you do if you can)

if you ARE going to seed torrents, you are going to need to enable port forwarding in your vpn and connect your torrenting client to the port specifed. the following images will show you how to do that with ProtonVPN and qBittorrent

(image descriptions available in the alt text)

once you've done the steps in the image, click "apply" and then "ok" in the bottom right of the settings tab. you will want to make sure that connection status button, located two buttons to the left of your displayed download speed is a GREEN electrical cord plug. if it is red then you cannot download or seed. if it is yellow then you can download, but you cannot seed. it will take a couple of minutes for the specified port to update and the connection status to turn green.

3. now that you've done the hard part, its time for the EVEN HARDER part (this is, however, all completely optional). it is now time to set up tracked tv shows, movies, etc to automatically torrent when updates or a better quality becomes available

you do this using Radarr (for movies), Lidarr (for music), Sonarr (for TV shows), and Prowlarr (as your indexer to manage what torrent hosting clients you want these applications to use). when you download these applications and install them, you are going to want to

you first want to download all of these applications using the links above. you can choose which applications to download based on the things you're going to be downloading, however for any of these applications to work you are going to NEED to download Prowlarr. for simplicity sake i will walk you through setting up all of these from the beginning of my list to the end, except im starting with prowlarr first because that's what you need to set up the rest.

however, when installing ANY of these applications, you are going to have to choose whether to install it as a system tray application or a windows service. I'm going to copy and paste from the Prowlarr wiki what the difference means, though it applies to all of the applications

A Windows Service runs even when the user is not logged in, but special care must be taken since Windows Services cannot access network drives (X:\ mapped drives or \\server\share UNC paths) without special configuration steps.

Additionally the Windows Service runs under the 'Local Service' account, by default this account does not have permissions to access your user's home directory unless permissions have been assigned manually. This is particularly relevant when using download clients that are configured to download to your home directory.

It's therefore advisable to install Prowlarr as a system tray application if the user can remain logged in. The option to do so is provided during the installer.

now that you've installed the programs you want, its time to set up prowlarr. i am once again going to show you how to set it up using pictures

(image descriptions available in the alt text)

that is how you add what torrent indexers (the websites that host torrents) you want to use to prowlarr. I only used TorrentGalaxy as an example, I don't actually use that site. I recommend being VERY careful and selective with what websites you use if they are a public tracker, as any of their torrents can host viruses. do your research before adding them. for convenience, however, I will list all of the public trackers I use so you can add them to Prowlarr if you like:

1337x

IBit

Internet Archive

Nyaa.si

Rarbg

Shana Project

SubsPlease

Torlock

YTS

you can also add private trackers, which is basically the same setup except you will have to input your username and password and/or an api key to allow prowlarr to access your account. I will explain private trackers later.

i will now show you how to connect prowlarr with the other applications you downloaded, once again with images

you want to do this with every application you're using.

that's the basics for setting up Prowlarr. you can further customize it with the help of the Prowlarr wiki if you'd like, but this is all I'll be covering in this tutorial.

setting up the other applications pretty intuitive if after setting up prowlarr, however if you do need help this is the video i watched to set up the rest. you only need to watch how to set up one of these applications to know how to set up the rest, and you can ignore literally everything this person is saying besides how to set up sonarr radarr and lidarr. seriously, don't listen to the rest of what this person has to say it will only confuse you. i have the video hyperlinked to where you need to start to learn how to set up these applications (the one she walks you through in depth is sonarr)

4. now that you've set up the torrent trackers (or skipped that part, those are, again, optional), it's time to go back to your torrenting client and configure how it handles your torrents.

you can only download so many megabytes a second, and when you have a million torrents downloading at once it makes every single torrent download at a snails pace because of that. so, what you're going to want to do is set it to download only a certain number of torrents at a time, and queue the rest to download once one torrent finishes.

this setup is pretty self explanatory, so I won't use images and just explain it.

go back to the settings of your torrenting client, and click on the "BitTorrent" tab (this might be a tab specific to qbittorrent, if you are using a different client look for a tab that is called something similar) (you can alternatively just google how to set torrents to queue for your specific client)

click the checkbox next to the option "torrent queuing"

customize how many active downloads and uploads you want. I personally recommend having no more than 6 torrents downloading at a time so that way they can all download relatively fast. i have my seed (upload) limit set to 60 because I'm in private trackers (which i will explain more about later), but if you don't want to seed for whatever reason you can set that to 0 and it SHOULD (don't quote me on this) automatically stop your torrent once its finished downloading. this could also potentially throttle your download speed because torrents don't like it when you're not uploading them while downloading them, don't quote me on that either having downloads set to 0 is not something im familiar with at all

you can optionally also set your download and upload limits in the "speed" category of settings, though i recommend keeping them both at infinity

5. setting up your downloaded media so you can watch it

this part is really easy and ALSO technically optional but it makes your life so much more convenient so i really recommend doing it. we're going to set up Plex Media Server so it can auto sort through your libraries and organize everything.

download plex and create an account

launch the server and go to the settings page, indicated by the wrench icon in the top right

scroll all the way down the settings directory until you get to the 'Manage" subheading and click on "Libraries"

assign your media libraries to the folders on your hard drive. for this you are going to want to keep movies, tv, and music all in separate folders, and you are going to want to keep your tv shows within your tv folder separate as well.

click 'scan library files' and watch plex update your library in real time

there will be times where plex isn't able to grab the metadata for a piece of media you have, but i can tell you how to (hopefully) prevent that from happening:

in the settings menu, go to the "network" tab under the "settings" subheading

uncheck the box next to "Enable server support for IPv6"

thats it! it should be able to get the metadata for all your media now

6. joining private trackers

this is honestly some Advanced levels of torrenting, and you shouldn't join them if you don't have a device that can be on and seeding 24/7

private trackers are torrent trackers that you can only use if you have a registered account with. they generally have a higher quality selection of torrents with faster download speeds due to a higher seeders to leecher ratio. each tracker has their own rules you need to follow, but they all have similar baselines

maintain your download-to-upload ratio (this will be specified in the trackers FRQ)

after you finish downloading something, you then need to seed it for a certain amount of time (normally a week) or else it will be considered a 'hit n run' and you will face the appropriate consequences

some things are free leach, which means you can download them without it contributing negatively to your ratio. if you seed and upload free leaches they will count to your ratio positively, however

most private trackers are invite-only, but some do occasionally have open signups which you can track on r/opensignups

when joining any private tracker, i recommend only downloading things that are free leach until you have built a good buffer between your upload to download ratio.

this is barely a drop in the water explanation of private trackers, but it's a part of torrenting that i feel like most people don't know about and/or don't know how to get started with, so i felt like it was worth mentioning. r/piracy has a more in-depth explanation (and a better "how to get started" guide on their megathread

and that's it! this is my indepth beginners guide to torrenting and piracy. i will maybe come back to this later and add more / make the formatting better (tumblr post formatting has such bad options...)

linked below are some useful resources for torrenting and pirating in general that i have saved.

my favorite public torrent tracker

r/piracy megathread

r/roms megathread for video game console downloading (direct downloads mostly, not torrents)

r/FREEMEDIAHECKYEAH megathread

r/FREEMEDIAHECKYEAH beginners guide to piracy

nintendo switch roms (direct downloads)

nintendo switch emmulator

ns emmulator setup guide

sideload apps on an apple device

hacked spotify ipa (ios app) that you can use above link to sideload

a less convient way to sideload apps onto apple if altstore doesnt work for you

obtaining roms

edge emulation (missing some consoles; CD-based games come in compressed formats such as CHD; very fast DL speed)

cdromance (mostly has games for CD-based consoles; games come in uncompressed iso or bin/cue; has a lot of pre-patched rom hacks; medium-fast DL speed)

alvro collection spreadsheet (pretty much everything, including many newer consoles; slightly inconvenient to navigate; download site limits to 1 download every 30 mins, can be worked around with vpn; very fast DL speed)

planetemu (largely in french; has a lot of obscure titles other sites lack; fast DL speed)

script that lets you download from emuparadise post-shutdown (pretty much everything; medium DL speed; can occasionally be uncooperative)

ROMs Megathread/Archive (everything, really; slow DL speed; usually a last resort if you can't find something anywhere else)

i don't currently recommend vimm's lair due to very slow speeds and offering nothing that isn't on other sites

sites offering 3ds/switch games get shut down very frequently so i won't be linking them in order to keep this post from getting outdated but you can find them if you snoop around reddit (the 3dspiracy and switchpirates subs in particular) a little

softmodding and loading roms on some popular consoles:

Switch

Wii

3DS, Vita, Wii U

PS2

PSP

recommended emulators and emulation guides:

Emulation General Wiki

games are great. go play some games.

Fumo plush pattern I made for customs making

This is a pattern I made from scratch and that I use for making my customs. It is based on the v1.5 models. Its the definitive version since I made tests before, as I said its from scratch, I could never sacrifice a legit fumo and bootlegs arent reliable for patterns snatching imo since their quality varies.

This is mainly for hand sewing and fairly beginner friendly. I havent tried on a machine because I dont trust these for such small details so I cant garantee you it will looks good if you assemble it with a cheap machine.

Seam allowances and other guides to match the pieces are included there.

I didnt include more hair pieces like the bangs because it would be too specific and this is a general pattern, not one for making [specific character]. I do these parts from scratch as well. If anyone would like help with hair of a specific character I can help (as long as its a character I know, else it would require me to use more time studying the design).

Make the design of the face before cutting the pattern. Methods I recommand using are: machine embroidery (the best), hand embroidery and heat transfert vinyle (require some skills). Ive made a hand embroidery tutorial a while ago. You can also maybe use the face of an existing fumo but its either very costly if you use a legit, or might not get good results if you use a cheap bootleg.

This PNG should be 1:1 scaled but ive added a square on the corner for good mesures. I dont use foot mesures (and i dont know how to use it) so its only cm sorry.

For any additional question, anyone is free to message me.

Customs ive made using this pattern:

Hand embroidery tutorial I mentionned (not at all lazy to link my post):