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tomaspollak

@tomaspollak.bsky.social

Journalist turned software developer; rethinking ecommerce at onbolder.com and building stuff like pixeltune.org (chiptune player). Interested in history, music, open source, and saving the world-wide-web. Currently in north patagonia (Valdlvia, Chile).

286 Followers  |  502 Following  |  32 Posts  |  Joined: 23.10.2023  |  2.3901

Latest posts by tomaspollak.bsky.social on Bluesky

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now that Liquid Glass is all the cRAzE, I thought I'd share a clip of my own take on it. it's based on a shadertoy demo with a few additions (plus being able to fiddle with all the effects).

13.06.2025 00:05 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 3    ๐Ÿ” 1    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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Shadertoy

here's the original demo, if you want to take a look: www.shadertoy.com/view/WccXDj

13.06.2025 00:28 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 0    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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now that Liquid Glass is all the cRAzE, I thought I'd share a clip of my own take on it. it's based on a shadertoy demo with a few additions (plus being able to fiddle with all the effects).

13.06.2025 00:05 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 3    ๐Ÿ” 1    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

You might be wondering why stick to an old terminal emulator and not jump into the new GPU or AI-powered ones that have come out lately.

The answer is pretty easy: urxvt still stands as one of the fastest, snappiest terminal emulators out there. And it's getting better. :)

24.05.2025 02:39 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 0    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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GitHub - tomas/exoterm: An updated version of the great rxvt-unicode An updated version of the great rxvt-unicode. Contribute to tomas/exoterm development by creating an account on GitHub.

It's called exoterm and you can find it here if you're brave enough to check it out: github.com/tomas/exoterm

It has native tabs and scrollback search, truecolor and sixel suport, and a few other tweaks that come in handy if you're a heavy terminal user.

24.05.2025 02:23 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 0    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 2    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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This week I added a minimap to my personal fork of unicode-rxvt. It's a game changer when it comes to viewing diffs, log files, compilation errors, whatever spits a long chunk of text.

24.05.2025 02:16 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 1    ๐Ÿ” 1    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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Heads up: you can now filter search results by song format in pixeltune.org. This makes it much easier to find specific or weird/unofficial versions of tunes. Try it out!

02.03.2025 15:17 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 1    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

Quick pixeltune.org update:

a) The player now handles SunVox files!
b) There's now an option to turn off the reverb effect on NES/SNES tracks, aaand
c) PSF (PSX) songs should play at the right rate now (sorry about that)

New ideas or suggestions are always welcome. :)

15.02.2025 15:59 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 1    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

Great!

There's an icon at the top right of the sidebar that hides it. On desktops, you can also use the <tab> key for toggling it back and forth.

06.02.2025 01:10 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 1    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

I just pushed an update that fixes some of the layout issues in mobile, and that _might_ solve the bookmark button thingy.

Could you try it out and see if it's better now?

06.02.2025 00:49 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 1    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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Just pushed a small update!

06.02.2025 00:41 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 1    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

That is e-x-a-c-t-l-y the goal; I'm also that little kid playing DOS games with a SB16 in the early 90s.

So thanks again for the kudos. Building the archive has been a loong effort throughout the years, but it feels good helping preserve these amazing gems.

04.02.2025 13:45 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 1    ๐Ÿ” 1    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

Holy shmoly thanks for the kudos! This is the best message ever.

In fact, I think I'm going to frame this and hang it somewhere, so I can read it every day when I get up. ;)

04.02.2025 13:34 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 2    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

I was asking because if you're using a beefy computer, then you shouldn't get any pops *unless* (and this is _me_ just guessing) the sound card runs at a super fast sampling rate that the audio synth isn't being able to fill in time.

04.02.2025 04:29 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 2    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

Hmm, that's interesting. Do you have some special mega super sound card by any chance?

04.02.2025 04:24 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 1    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

Hmmmyes that's a bug right there. I'll try look into it this week, thanks for the heads up!

04.02.2025 04:22 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 1    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

That's weird, I don't recall having set any rate limit. Are you able to perform any other action after that?

04.02.2025 04:07 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 1    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

I'm guessing you're using a low-specced laptop to play the music. Is that so? It happens to me sometimes when I open the site on a Chromebook, and *specially* when it's in low-power mode.

Oh and remember that some audio cores require more CPU than others (FM synthesis tends to be heavier).

04.02.2025 04:06 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 0    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

I think "kinda" would be a bit too generous, haha.

04.02.2025 03:50 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 1    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

Pixeltune loops by default, so just make a playlist with that single song and it should play forever and ever.

If it doesn't please sound the alarm.

04.02.2025 02:05 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 2    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

Much obliged. There's a few other pending updates that should be up soon, so keep an eye on the changelog for updates. ;)

04.02.2025 00:43 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 1    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

Yup, the NSF backend does have a slight reverb, sorry. :S

There _is_ an option to turn it off but I haven't made it toggable on the Settings page yet. Maybe this week!

04.02.2025 00:38 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 1    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 2    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
Massive Google slop thatโ€™s all fake.

Massive Google slop thatโ€™s all fake.

Someone on Reddit searched for (the non-existent) John Wick 5, and Google spared no expense to lie to them.

03.01.2025 11:02 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 4922    ๐Ÿ” 1452    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 111    ๐Ÿ“Œ 296
Pixeltune โ€• online MIDI and video game music (VGM) player An online VGM, MIDI and module player with a searchable archive of over half a million chiptune songs. The best of demoscene & video game music.

I can probably tell if I played a game years ago or not just by listening to its song.
shout out to pixeltune.org

14.11.2024 09:00 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 1    ๐Ÿ” 1    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
Pixeltune โ€• online MIDI and video game music (VGM) player An online VGM, MIDI and module player with a searchable archive of over half a million chiptune songs. The best of demoscene & video game music.

I'm not sure what the answer is, but I'd be happy to try some of these ideas on pixeltune.org!

07.12.2024 17:41 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 1    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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Happy 30th birthday to the greatest sound ever created

03.12.2024 16:50 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 123    ๐Ÿ” 35    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 6    ๐Ÿ“Œ 3
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What dice, you say? The animated one that looks like it came from a 90's geocities website, of course.

22.11.2024 01:11 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 5    ๐Ÿ” 1    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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What dice, you say? The animated one that looks like it came from a 90's geocities website, of course.

22.11.2024 01:11 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 5    ๐Ÿ” 1    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

Now, the real challenge is to make those awesome freaky tunes easily discoverable, and that's why I've been adding different categories to help share good finds (like the Newly Spotted or Recently Saved lists).

There's always something good at the Random Tunes list too. If not, click on the dice!

22.11.2024 00:48 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 3    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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The music catalog now contains exactly 627.244 songs, and is the result of years of careful (and somewhat obsessive) archiving of different sources -- more than 100 in total, some of them no longer accessible.

If you try a few searches, you'll start finding crazy alternate versions of famous tunes!

22.11.2024 00:23 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 3    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

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