HawkbitAlpha

My little underground zen retreat.

LET'S GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

WE'RE BAAAAAAAAACK! It's been a bit since our last go-around on this project, but it's time once again for the next iteration of the SBC Community Mixtape, the greatest music sharing series this side of Bikini Bottom. As we really get the momentum building on the halfway-point year of this decade, I say we ought to take the opportunity to bring some piss and vinegar into the moment. That is to say, it's time to... FIRE IT UP We've done at least one Mixtape that was all about chill music. Now, think that, but the complete opposite: songs you listen to when you want a pure adrenaline rush. The kind of stuff that makes you want to throw double middle fingers to the sky and scream "HELL YEEEEEAAAAAAHHHHH!" Or, in the parlance of the youths today, "LET'S FUCKING GOOOOOOOOO!" If it makes you feel like you just shot a mound of cocaine straight into your veins while chugging an entire water cooler's worth of Monster, and you now feel the urge to utterly crush it in the gym, it belongs in this mixtape. Bring your best! The rules: There's no set length limits per submission, but try not to go too overboard. Try to post your submissions using a Spotify playlist. If this is not possible for you, at least make sure that all of your submissions are available on Spotify. Joke/troll entries can and most likely will be excluded. No repeat entries (can't submit the same thing as somebody else). The deadline for submissions will be Saturday, January 25th. Now, do any of y'all know where I can buy a hell of a lot of Red Bull?

Small update: instead of updating this thread, going forward, I'm going to be updating a Github Gist copy of the list, one you can share around without it being tied to SBC. Click here to see the new page!

I genuinely appreciate the chaotic madlad energy of appearing on a Spongebob fan forum to share death metal and absolutely nothing else

Something I've realized in my time on the internet, especially over the last few years, is that there's a lot of programs and apps that I recommend to people on a regular basis, and for some of them, I'm the only person in my group who's using them. It didn't occur to me until now that it might be worth gathering all of my "special resources" into one big list. How about we solve that problem right now? Everything I'm about to list below is something that I use myself on a regular basis, and can generally vouch for as being safe. Still, especially when it comes to certain sites, always exercise caution with what you download, and always come armed with a good content blocker (hello, uBlock Origin). This list is also liable to grow in the future if I find more things worthy of recommendation. Let's roll! HAWK'S SPECIAL RESOURCES Le Internet Discord - If I have to explain this one, what site are you on? Floorp - My current main browser, a recent Firefox fork with some neat Vivaldi-like bells and whistles. Waterfox - My previous main browser for about a year until very recently, and an older Firefox fork with some additional privacy protections. Steam - DOOOOOOOOONG Browser Extensions (These are for Firefox. Equivalent versions may or may not exist on Chrome-based browsers; I'll link to the devs' own sites where possible.) uBlock Origin - The last truly good adblocker/content blocker, still capable of shutting down ads from Youtube and many other sites. Dark Reader - Dark mode converter, works on most sites. Your eyes will thank you for getting rid of so many white backgrounds. Shinigami Eyes - If you've ever seen Death Note, you get the idea: this extension color-codes sites, pages, and social media accounts that are known to be either pro-trans (green) or transphobic (red). OneTab - A nice tab organizing and grouping tool. I Don't Care About Cookies - Do you ever get tired of those popups that ask you to approve or reject browser cookies? Say goodbye to them! Return Youtube Dislike - Needs no further explanation, I think. Save WebP as PNG or JPEG - An antidote to the most hateful image file extension in existence. Reverse Image Search - Adds Google Lens and multiple other search engines as an option in the context menu when you right-click on images. Simple Translate - Allows you to use Google Translate on any page or selected block of text. AHA Music - Sadly not available for Firefox, but I used this heavily when I was still on Brave and Opera. Lets you identify a song by a snippet of whatever is playing in your current tab. You can also upload a clip to the website itself. Security Bitdefender Free Antivirus - After trying multiple different AVs over the years, this is the one I settled on back in 2022. Quite robust, if you're not a fan of using the one that comes with Windows. ZoneAlarm Free Firewall - My go-to firewall since 2010. Malwarebytes - Another very good AV, but instead of using it for actual real-time protection, I find that its standout feature is its free file scanning system. I've used it to clean all of my comps since 2011. Media Usage Winamp - My daily music player of choice since 2017. It's pretty old, and looks the part, but still gets my love for being so visually customizable, including in the window layout. Media Monkey - Less of a music player, and more of a full music library manager for professional applications. VLC - The best video player. DJV - Annoying to use as a daily driver for watching videos, but great for scanning video files frame-by-frame. ImageGlass - Image viewer. A more capable replacement for Windows's built-in Photos app. Media Creation Kdenlive - A fantasic video editor, basically a free alternative to Vegas. OBS - The reigning king of screen recording software. Handbrake - A video encoder/transcoder. Very useful for compressing, cutting, cropping, or converting videos. Audacity - The classic audio editor. Voicemeeter - A real-time audio mixing console. Equalizer APO - Program for real-time modding of your audio for both input and output. (If you've ever wondered how I keep my mic clean of background noise despite having fans on all the time, it's by using this plugin on my mic in Equalizer APO.) Kenku FM - A Discord-based program for streaming music, sound effects, and more through bots. Made for D&D and other tabletop games, but you can use it in a lot of different situations. If This Part Were Longer, It'd Probably Break Site Rules qBittorrent - Ever used uTorrent or BitTorrent and wished they weren't loaded with ads? This is your answer! Soulseek - A peer-to-peer file sharing program. Most useful for searching for files of obscure songs you can't find anywhere else. JDownloader2 - Bulk downloader. This thing has made my life much easier on multiple occasions. Universal Cyrillic Decoder - In case you download something from a Russian source, and all of the info is written in text you can't read. Miscellaneous LibreOffice - A great free, open-source alternative to MS Office. Notepad++ - Powerful, coding-oriented alternative to the standard Windows Notepad. I love it mainly for its multi-tabbing and advanced text search functions. f.lux - A program that changes the color tones of your screen to adapt to the time of day, and heavily reduces blue light. TeamViewer - For PC remote control. I use this when I need to control my computer away from home, or when someone else needs remote tech support. Parsec - Like TeamViewer, but more oriented toward gaming, and less likely to scream at you when it thinks you're using a PC for "commercial" purposes. 7-Zip - File manager, unzipper, archiver. Great for working with .zip, .rar, and other compressed files. Pretty much exactly like WinRAR, but utterly free. Iriun - Lets you use your phone as a PC webcam. Defraggler - For all of your defragging needs! TreeSize - Storage space usage analysis program. If you ever want to free up some space on your drive, and need to identify what's hogging it up, this is what you need. Fast Clicker - I don't remember where I found this one, but I've been using it since 2018. It does exactly what it says in the title. Borderless Gaming - Sometimes, you get a pesky game or program that refuses to run in the screen setup you want. This usually solves that problem. AntiMicroX - If you ever want to use a controller for a game, and said game doesn't support controllers at all, AntiMicroX lets you map your controller's inputs to your mouse and keyboard. Quality-of-Life Improvements Open Shell - Replaces the awful "not-quite-mobile-UI" Windows start menus from 8 onwards with one more similar to the menus from Windows 7 and before. Microsoft PowerToys - A utility suite for Windows power users. Vencord - A plugin suite for Discord, absolutely loaded with useful features (including, as I mentioned in our server earlier, the ability to skip Youtube ads in the Discord embedded player) and QOL tweaks. K-Lite Codec Pack - Makes it much easier to use a wide variety of video file formats in different programs, including Windows's default video players. Also comes with Media Player Classic (MPC-HC) as an optional extra install. Visual C++ Redistributable Runtimes All-in-One - If you've ever been annoyed at having to install some version of VCRedist for a program, this bundle includes every single one in a single download, with one install program. Windows 7 Task Manager - Replaces the default Windows 10/11 Task Manager with the one from Windows 7. Process Explorer - If the Windows 7 revival version just isn't enough, this is an even more powerful alternative to the Task Manager.

Is this a dumb question?

BOO! I think I did the assignment right.

Hey, y'all! I've just finished several hours of file transferring and testing on SCF, all in the name of adding a couple of new treats to the server as part of our anniversary events. So, what's new? The first, and smaller of the two new additions is the Custom Heads plugin, which allows players to wear customized graphic blocks as helmets. This was a staple of classic SC, and one that was requested for SCF during our recent revisit of Spongecraftia. Which, speaking of... The much more important addition to the server is the Multiverse Core suite of plugins, which allows servers to utilize multiple maps, Nether and End counterparts included, as separate dimensions. This means that, while Outlandia has been restored as the server's primary world, we are excited to announce that... SPONGECRAFTIA IS BACK TO STAY! This was something I had thought of pursuing when we first launched SCF, but didn't dare to try until now, thanks to everything I'd heard about the dangers of messing with Multiverse. Well, there would hardly be a better time to give it a shot than at this point in our community's history. With it done, the classic Spongecraftia, its Nether and End dimensions included, is now here for the long haul, and free for everyone to explore at their own leisure. Its main access point from Outlandia is a portal room hidden in Meko's Batcave beneath Twinleaf Town. Enjoy, y'all!

Get ready to enjoy your bottles and models, shawties, because it's time for the 20th iteration of the SBC Community Mixtape! This, of course, is a special edition, as it's coinciding with our celebration of 15 years of good old SBC. While Steel's Block Party 6 has taken on the theme of music over that span of time, here, we're going to parallel it with something slightly more specific: PARTY LIKE IT'S THE AUGHTS The late 2000s and early 2010s, when SBC first hit the internet, were the peak era for the kind of loud, pumping, synth-driven kind of party and club music that still rules dance floors and cruise ship deck parties to this day. Artists like Gaga, Katy Perry, Rihanna, Flo Rida, and Pitbull ruled this particular sound, and it traveled so far that even my run-down little home water park was blasting them on the daily. You couldn't escape it back then, and so, let's celebrate the sound of endless partying here! (I swear, we're going to do something other than a time period theme for the next one) The rules: The goal for this theme: "party pop" from 2008 to 2013. There's no set length limits per submission, but try not to go too overboard. Try to post your submissions using a Spotify playlist. If this is not possible for you, at least make sure that all of your submissions are available on Spotify. Joke/troll entries can and most likely will be excluded. No repeat entries (can't submit the same thing as somebody else). This one will have the same submission deadline as Block Party 6: Friday, August 30th. Until then, I'm gonna ask the DJ to play something other than Dynamite.

Vaccinate me, baby!

Good morning, world, and all who inhabit it! [falls down stairs] ...okay, ow. Anyway, welcome back to the SBC Community Mixtape, where we bring together only the best musics our members have to offer. I've woken up this morning feeling oddly nostalgic for a fairly recent point in time for music, and that's led me to finally decide on our next theme. At the risk of jinxing things, I've decided that, this time, we'll be recapturing the mood of: QUARANTINE BLUES No matter who you are, I think we can all agree that this time 4 years ago was some degree of exceptionally miserable. For that exact reason, one of the earlier Community Mixtapes was all about music we used to keep our stress levels down. This is a similar idea, but more specific: I want to get an idea of what all of y'all were listening to in order to preserve your sanity during the suffering that was the lockdown spring/summer of 2020. Whether it was new songs from the time, or older ones that you found yourself revisiting more than usual, our idea here is to make a bit of a time capsule. Let's have at it! The rules: There's no set length limits per submission, but try not to go too overboard. Try to post your submissions using a Spotify playlist. If this is not possible for you, at least make sure that all of your submissions are available on Spotify. Joke/troll entries can and most likely will be excluded. No repeat entries (can't submit the same thing as somebody else). The deadline for submissions will be next Saturday, August 3rd. Until then, I need to file a lawsuit against Pfizer for not giving me the 5G receptors that anti-vaxxers promised me.

Considering that I just took 2 months to respond to this post, that should tell you how good I am at committing to certain things, Breaking Bad included

Until now, I thought the Frontierlands map from the original SCF had been totally lost, but it looks like that isn't totally true. As it turns out, a few weeks after the server launched, for whatever reason, I had downloaded a local copy of the map to my PC, and I've now been able to retrieve it from my old hard drive. Dated July 24th, 2023, this is, as far as I know, the only surviving copy of the map to contain any of the builds that we made on the server. This is obviously a much earlier copy than we would've liked to have, but it's better than nothing, I'd say. If y'all want to indulge in a little nostalgia from last summer, here it is! DOWNLOAD HERE