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tomaspollakon Show HN: Generate random gradients like on OpenAI's website

Great work! Maybe you can add an option to use the 'heightmap' method described by Justin in his blog post. And maybe let users add their own palettes? :)

tomaspollakon Ask HN: What are you working on (August 2024)?

Figuring out how to add game boxart and screenshots to my recently-relaunched MIDI and chiptune player: https://pixeltune.org/

It's a fun challenge, because I need to figure out how to reliably determine the matching game for files like /pub/johnny/midi/games/sc2kmenu.mid, and also to show them in a way that fits nicely in the UI.

tomaspollakon Show HN: Pixeltune, a nicer chiptune and VGM player

Ok I found it! For some reason those files have an invalid header. I added a workaround so they should play fine now.

tomaspollakon Show HN: Pixeltune, a nicer chiptune and VGM player

Thanks for the feedback. I _did_ fix a bug last night so it might be working already.

The "Invalid DataView length" error seems like a parsing error... maybe try using a different set of songs?

Anyway, I'll take a deeper look at it later!

tomaspollakon Show HN: Pixeltune, a nicer chiptune and VGM player

Ok, WebMIDI support is live. Try it out and let me know if it works. :)

tomaspollakon Show HN: Pixeltune, a nicer chiptune and VGM player

Oh wow, I just checked the prices on the MT-32 and IT IS N-U-T-S! Hope you can find a good one without breaking the bank. :)

tomaspollakon Show HN: Pixeltune, a nicer chiptune and VGM player

Yes, as I mentioned in other comment, Pixeltune applies a reverb effect on some of the cores. There's currently no way to turn it off but there will in the near future. :)

Kudos for sfc.fm by the way!

tomaspollakon Show HN: Pixeltune, a nicer chiptune and VGM player

Woot!

tomaspollakon Show HN: Pixeltune, a nicer chiptune and VGM player

Yes, track duration is on the TODO list.

I will also add an "export data" option for you, so you can rest safe that you won't lose your beautifully curated playlists. :)

tomaspollakon Show HN: Pixeltune, a nicer chiptune and VGM player

Oh, yes. That's because the Famitracker port I'm using[0] is a bit old and doesn't support the newer .ftm versions. So in case the player doesn't support a given song, there's a fallback to using FTMtoMID so you can still listen to it.

This was all done before I ported Furnace Tracker (that also supports the .ftm format) so I might just use Furnace for playing them. I have to check whether it can play the newer .ftm versions.

[0] https://github.com/nukep/famitracker-cx

tomaspollakon Show HN: Pixeltune, a nicer chiptune and VGM player

Good question. I was thinking of eventually putting the whole archive in a decentralized system like IPFS, but I guess archive.org is also fine.

However I want to wait a bit before doing so, because some of the archive sources haven't responded to the permission request I sent. And I don't want people to download their collections in bulk if they wouldn't want to.

tomaspollakon Show HN: Pixeltune, a nicer chiptune and VGM player

Will check. Thanks for the heads up.

tomaspollakon Show HN: Pixeltune, a nicer chiptune and VGM player

I still haven't tested the player on mobiles thoroughly. Do you at least see the oscilloscope running?

tomaspollakon Show HN: Pixeltune, a nicer chiptune and VGM player

Thank you. I have a few minimal/ambient playlists that are great for concentration. I'll include one or two in the featured section!

tomaspollakon Show HN: Pixeltune, a nicer chiptune and VGM player

That's precisely the source of inspiration!

tomaspollakon Show HN: Pixeltune, a nicer chiptune and VGM player

Chip Player is awesome. I love the retro-looking UI.

tomaspollakon Show HN: Pixeltune, a nicer chiptune and VGM player

Yes, as I mentioned in another comment, the player has a time limit on songs to prevent them from looping forever. I'll include an option to let you modify this, so you can listen to them _almost_ forever.

tomaspollakon Show HN: Pixeltune, a nicer chiptune and VGM player

This is actually possible already, but I couldn't finish the UI part on time. Give me a few days and I'll add the option.

PS. I also have a SC-55, nothing beats the original!

tomaspollakon Show HN: Pixeltune, a nicer chiptune and VGM player

Around 25 GB in total. Originally managed using a Git repository until it became unmanageable...

I just checked the song count, by the way, and it's actually 503305, contained in 441902 files (some files can hold multiple tracks).

tomaspollakon Show HN: Pixeltune, a nicer chiptune and VGM player

Ok case closed. The maximum option will be 30 minutes then!

tomaspollakon Show HN: Pixeltune, a nicer chiptune and VGM player

;)

tomaspollakon Show HN: Pixeltune, a nicer chiptune and VGM player

Yes indeed. Pixeltune adds a reverb effect on top of the output of some cores. I'll include an option to turn it off. Good one!

tomaspollakon Show HN: Pixeltune, a nicer chiptune and VGM player

Time, of course. ;)

Already at the top of the TODO list, though.

tomaspollakon Show HN: Pixeltune, a nicer chiptune and VGM player

And this comment improved mine!

tomaspollakon Show HN: Pixeltune, a nicer chiptune and VGM player

I didn't know about that one. Thanks!

tomaspollakon Show HN: Pixeltune, a nicer chiptune and VGM player

Thanks mate!

tomaspollakon Show HN: Pixeltune, a nicer chiptune and VGM player

You're right! This is definitely doable, but... wouldn't you eventually want to listen to _other_ songs?

There's currently a 2:30 min time limit on songs so that they don't loop forever. I plan to make this configurable, so I could allow setting it to a very long timeframe (something like 10 minutes or so).

tomaspollakon Qimgv – Fast, simple image viewer

A few months ago I wrote a small program to view and play animated GIFs, but letting you pause, skip, etc like it was a video. In case anyone's interested, here it is:

https://github.com/tomas/pixelhopper

Fun fact: it doesn't use QT nor GTK for the UI, so it's as lightweight as it can get!

tomaspollakon Ask HN: Best thing you've made in CLI

https://tomas.github.io/jix/

Yet another Git client for the terminal. ;)

It's been on "coming soon" mode for some time now, because I haven't gotten the time to finish some stuff that's missing (handling merges, conflicts, rebasing, etc).

Still, I use it on a daily basis! It really makes crafting commits much faster.

tomaspollakon South America is living one of the climate extreme events

> I googled for "chilean andine record winter temperatures" and there's not a single source claiming it reached over 30C this year mid-winter.

Maybe that's because chilean media outlets are written in spanish instead of english. :)