Jack Shorenstein

Computer Geek in High School

Author: JackShorenstein

Making of the Miku & VOCALOID History Website!

April 24, 2024 / / 0 Comments

Introduction

Hello everyone. As I am writing this, I am stuck in a classroom, done with testing, and board out of MY MIND!!! So, I decided to write this blog post on the making of the website that WAS supposed to go with my history video, but that video has been delayed until I have time to work on it. Anyways, this website was my final project for my 2nd semester CTE class for Web Design and Development and it was entirely coded in HTML with Bootstrap. So, without further to do, let’s talk about the development process…

Part 1: Home Page and Info for History Pages

Let’s start with the home page, since it was the easiest to develop. All I had to do was create a jumbotron (easy enough…) with the title of the site (I chose “Hatsune Miku & VOCALOID: The History Behind the Diva), the video embed, and then a navigation bar for people to move to the different parts of the site. Unfortunately for me, the menu bar was one of the hardest parts of the site, all because I forgot to include code for jQuery to load… oops. So, after that was fixed, the menu bar was complete, and it was able to be condensed into a hamburger menu for smaller screens/mobile devices. Also, I want to quickly mention where I am getting the information for this, since it is a history site after all.

The info for the site comes from my research that I did in February of this year for a research project on, you guessed it, Hatsune Miku and VOCALOID!! This was one of my favorite projects to work on, and I got a full 100% on it. So, when working on the project, I pulled from two video sources, one research paper, and one student news article (all are linked on the site). Anyways, with that info sorted, let’s talk about the design of the history pages…

Part 2: The History Pages (Pre-Miku and Post-Miku)

These pages are where the history portion of this site lives. Pre-Miku encompasses the history from 1961, along with 2000-2007, while Post-Miku encompasses 2007-present. The design wasn’t that difficult, since I just laid out the information in an easy-to-understand manner, with pictures and videos sprinkled here or there. I showed a video of the IBM 7094 singing the song “Daisy Bell,” I showed some of my favorite/most influential songs on the Post-Miku page, and much much more! Trust me, it was fun to design, and it is REALLY fun to play around with the site and read the history behind one of (if not the most) influencial virtual singers/voice synthesizers to ever exist!! Anyways, there are more pages to go, so let’s talk about the impact!

Part 3: Impact Page

Pretty much the same type of deal as the last two. Info with video and images sprinkled in between. But, that’s not all.

Part 4: The Script and the About the Author Page

I decided later on to implement the original script into the website, and I think that was the easiest page on the whole site. All I did was use a Word to HTML converter, put in a few Bootstrap elements, and I was done! Easy stuff. But, the about the author page was a completely different story. The about the author portion was easy, but our teacher wanted us to implement a contact form into it. So, I thought “I will just use NodeJS… it can’t be that bad??”

WHY DID I SAY THAT?!?!?!?

I was dumb… Node just didn’t want to work, and my guess is that it was trying to run on port 3000, while my site was on 443 for SSL access to the internet. So, I just gave up on Node after an hour or two of messing with it, and I went straight to a company with an API that I could just implement onto my site, and my teacher was cool with that. So, that marks the end of development of the site.

Conclusion

It was a tough road to get here, but I did end up with a really good-looking site. I am very proud of myself for doing this in only a couple of weeks, and I hope you guys enjoy reading what’s on there. So, with that, thanks for reading, and as always…

3939!! (Thank you Miku!!)

Update: MAL Account and Miku Video

March 10, 2024 / / 0 Comments

UPDATE FOR MIKU EXPO: #JusticeForMiku for #MIKUEXPO2024 – https://www.change.org/p/give-us-full-refunds-we-should-ve-known-it-was-a-tv-miku-expo-2024-na-official

Original Post:

Hello everyone! I have two important updates that I want to talk about. One is that I finally have a MAL (or MyAnimeList) account! I will be updating it regularly with the anime I watch/already have watched. So please take a look!

The other thing I need to update you on is the Vocaloid and Hatsune Miku video that I have been working on for a while. I wanted to release the video on Saturday the 9th (it’s a Japanese pun, if you didn’t know), but I though about it, and I decided the video needed extra time in the oven so that you guys could enjoy it. So, I hope I can get the video out sometime later this month. I will try at least.

Anyways, thanks for reading this update and I hope you have a great day. Bye!

MAL Link: https://myanimelist.net/profile/JackShorenstein

P.S. Here is the Spotify playlist that I will be sharing with all of you during the video. This is a great Vocaloid starter pack, if you will…

Spotify Playlist (its an embed!)

Quantum Fiber: WHY??

January 18, 2024 / / 0 Comments

UPDATE TO THE UPDATE: So, a couple of days later, around 6am are so, and when I am at the airport to go to San Francisco for the 49ers/Packers game, their internet goes down again! So, when they get up, they call my father (we are in SFO, by the way) and tell him that the internet is down… go figure. So, my grandparents call QF and they said that they would send someone out that day. They didn’t. So, until yesterday, they were out of internet. So, when I got home, I helped them signup for Sparklight, another internet company that does cable. So, that means that the Quantum Fiber saga is over. THANK YOU GOD!

OLD UPDATE: So after a couple of hours, a tech came back out and guess what… it wasn’t the ONT or maybe it was? I really don’t know, but either the ONT or some part of their equipment before the ONT was busted, but that is now fixed and there have not been any issues since.

THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE:

Hey everyone! So, over the last couple of days, I have had emergency IT calls from my grandparents over their internet. They have Quantum Fiber, which was formerly the fiber-optic division of Centurylink, now Lumen.

The problem was that their ONT (Optical Network Terminal) was disconnected. Now, it used to be a simple fix, which was the classic turn it off and turn it back on again, but that has not stopped working, which, you know, sucks.

The ONT they have (Picture from QF support site)

So, we were back to square one. I called QF last night to schedule a tech; he came out today. And, of course, it started to work a couple of hours before he showed up… GREAT!

But it doesn’t end there. An hour and a half later, it breaks again! ARE YOU SERIOUS?!

So what do I do? I get back on the phone with tech support again, and I tell them that they need to get their butts back here so that they can fix it. Well, they told me that the soonest that they could come was tomorrow, and I said fine. This was also after they tried to get “dispatch” to send out someone today.

So, we are back to square one. I live in a different house with a different ISP, so we are OK. But my grandparents, on the other hand, are not since they actually have a lot of smart devices hooked up. So, until they come, they are screwed, and they can’t control their lights, they can’t watch TV since they have DirecTV Stream, and so many more things. LOVELY! 🙄🙄🙄

So, I just wanted to tell you that horror story as it is unfolding. If there are any updates, I will try to update this post so it doesn’t get outdated.

But with that, I want to thank you guys for reading, and have a great day! Peace! 🙂

If You Give a School District A School Bus…

December 7, 2023 / / 0 Comments

Hello everyone! So, this is not a normal post from me (you know… talking about West Ada). I have had great experiences with West Ada including the teachers, the staff, and all of the students. But, the infrastructure that powers all of it SUUUUUUKS! No, seriously. THE LARGEST district in the state can’t get they s**t together. So, I wanted to share a book a friend made for a class.

ON THE RECORD: I am not like SSSniperwolf, so she gave me full permission to use it and she would like to go by Ira Wren (that is her pen name). She worked really hard on this for a project, and she did a great job! THANK YOU! 🙂

So, let’s go through each part together and I will give some commentary about each problem.

PROBLEM 1: THE BUS

So, WASD uses CST (or Cascade Student Transportation) for their bussing needs. Now, according to one of my other friends, this was not a problem during the 2022-2023 school year. But, it now has become a problem, made even worse since I have to take the bus every morning. So, the problems began in the beginning of the year with our bus driver who picks us up in the morning from our community always being late. He would be scheduled to arrive at 6:30ish and he would not show up until 6:50ish, causing us to be late to school. This finally did end a month or two ago, but it was an annoyance for a long time. But, those were only on B days (they schedule 4 periods on one day and the other 4 the next day).

A days were (and still are as of writing this) weird for me because I go to a different school for two periods for CTE (or Career Technical Education) classes. To get there, I use WATS (the West Ada Transportation System) to get there and a shuttle (separate from WATS) also ran by CST and WASD. So, you might be asking “Are those bad too?”. Well, yes and no. The morning bus went well for a long time… until TODAY (yep, that is why I am writing this). It seems like CST is having a lot of turnover because it seems like our WATS driver quit. So, we had a sub who drove like a lunatic, almost ran me over while walking to my bus because he thought I was not there, and he almost missed kids at another stop due to them being inside the school were they were waiting so that they wouldn’t freeze to death. Yeah, NOT GOOD IF I HAD TO SAY SO MYSELF!!

My bus taking me back was great until our bus driver had to take off since she… got cancer.

**Side note: I am very sorry for her getting cancer and I hope she is doing better. Her being out is not her fault, and it is OK to be out for medical reasons.**

So, you would think that they would give us a sub bus driver. Well, sometimes they do, sometimes they strand us and we are waiting 20 minutes for a new bus to take us back.

But with that, that is it for problem 1. On to the next problem…

PROBLEM 2: THE COMPUTRERS AND BYOD

Now we are getting into something that I know way too much about. I will have to keep this as general as possible since I work for the district in their tech department. So, here we go.

The computers that they give us… suck! Shocker! They are the cheap bottom-of-the-barrel Pentium Silver based laptops that take forever to startup, have a bunch of bloatware, and block a lot of things… including portions of my website. Yeah, dumb.

As also seen in the picture, our computers are worse since they are not Chromebooks, but Windows laptops and we have to use Office and not Google Docs/Sheets/etc. Now, I prefer Office over Google’s offerings, but the computers that they give us really should be Chromebooks due to the processors being put in them. It is just very annoying to use them. And yeah, as the picture states, they send a bunch of useless emails that I just delete. Just… dumb.

Also, BYOD (or Bring Your Own Device) somewhat exists, but is generally NOT recommended. Personally, I would love BYOD to be a thing, but it is not and we are forced to use their own computers. Lovely…

On to problem 3…

PROBLEM 3: THE FOOD SITUATION

Yeah… I very much agree with this. Now, I don’t each school lunch (because it sucks) and I will just bring in my own or go out to a fast food place (see the correlation).

Also, as seen in the pictures, the food is expensive. Like, very. The economy sucks and we pay the price. By the way, I WILL BE ENDING IT THERE SINCE I DON’T NEED A POLITICAL DISCUSSION WHEN WE ARE TALKING ABOUT WEST ADA!!

But anyways, what can I tell you, that is how all school lunches are… they are cheap to get and they taste horrible. It is like a stereotype now. What can I say?

Finally, here is problem 4…

PROBLEM 4: FUNDING

Alright… we are at the last problem, which is funding. This is more about the condition of the school and not the departments since I really don’t know how they are doing. Ira Wren is in the Theater Department, so that is why it is mentioned here.

Funding will always suck when it comes to schools. OK, I will talk politics for a little bit. I live in Idaho, where it is very much Republican. A lot of the people moving here are from California, and they are also Republicans looking for a place where people believe what they believe with a cheap price tag associated with it. So, when a levy for the district went on the ballot, it almost passed, but it didn’t at the end. This is the problem with funding when it comes to schools.

Now, the state has Advanced Opportunities, which is one of the best things ever! It is allowing me to get my Associates Degree in High School while paying a lot less, and when I said a lot less, I meant it. It will cost me and my parents about $400 for all 60 credits. The rest is funded by the state. So yeah, amazing!

Now, back to West Ada. If it passed, it would of allowed the district to do renovations to schools that really needed it. But, now the schools will continue to get older with no attention to their condition due to funding.

SO, this is really not a problem with West Ada, but with the voter and taxpayers. Actually, that is the root of all of these problems.

Conclusion and My Reason for All of these Problems

Yeah, I am blaming the taxpayer and voters for all of these problems. Starting with the bus, there would be less turnover if WASD and CST could pay the drivers more. But, they can’t due to the lack of funding. Next, The computers could be upgraded, but the district does not want to spend that much on tech due to, you guessed it, funding. The food could be better if they had the funding.

Look, all of these problems are due to funding. So, let me say this: if you are a voter that lives in the WASD boundaries, when they put out a levy, vote YES! You will be helping people like me and my friends get a better education and school district in the process!

So with that, thank you guys for reading and have a great day! 😊

P.S. If you want to read the full book, here is a link to download it:

If-You-Give-a-School-District-a-School-BusDownload

A Sendoff to A Part of My Childhood: Scratch and their Wonderful Community

November 15, 2023 / / 0 Comments

So, today marks the end of the longest social media runs ever… my 8-year, 5-month-old Scratch account! Here is what I wrote for the description:

Hello Everyone,

So, this is it... the final project! I created this account in 2015, which means that this account is 8 years old (man, I am old...)!

Today, I had some free time because it was a break from school, so I made this and then downloaded all of my Scratch projects to have a backup of my work.

I want to say one thing.. from the bottom of my heart... THANK YOU! You guys are some of the best people on the internet, and it was nice seeing all of your projects and everything you created! Now, as I ride off into the sunset, creating videos on the Having Fun Studios YouTube channel and working to pursue a career in Computer Science, I will see you guys soon!

Sincerely,
Jack Shorenstein, aka Apple2007

As you might expect, this is very hard for me since some of my childhood was spent doing music projects when the teacher wasn’t looking or I got home from school. So, I also want to share the FAQ I also put on the project:

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ):

Q: Are you deleting this account?
A: NO! HECK NO! I want to use this account to memorialize my past years as a Scratch creator so that everything will stay the same!

Q: Can I download your past projects to my computer?
A: Absolutely! That's what I did! To make your life easier, I have made a GitHub repo available (https://github.com/Apple2007/ScratchProjectsApple2007), so everything is in one place!

Q: Where can I follow you now that you are not posting on Scratch anymore?
A: Well, you can go to JackShorenstein.com, and on the navigation bar, all of my social media profiles are listed, so you can follow me! :)

Q: Will you look at my comments or my remixes?
A: I might come back on Scratch to see the activity on the account, but I will not post any more projects!

As stated in the FAQ, a downloaded version of my projects is available on my GitHub account (https://github.com/Apple2007/ScratchProjectsApple2007), which will exist as long as Scratch does. So look at it for yourself and see what a younger me spent time doing!

Apple2007 Account on Scratch: https://scratch.mit.edu/users/Apple2007

Anyway, that is all from me since this was a quick post! See you guys later! 🙂

P.S. This is the final project embedded here for your viewing pleasure! 😉

A Server Change… (This is an update, btw)

October 27, 2023 / / 0 Comments

Hello everyone! It has been a while, hasn’t it? Well, there have been many things going on in my life that I just have not had any time to write a blog post. Well, I wanted to take some time and explain why the server has been going offline every so often.

If you want the short version, I made the switch from a Raspberry Pi-based server to an x86-based server will all of it being self-hosted!

Now, for the people who want an explanation, here I go. I used to use a Raspberry Pi 4 for all of my server operations (running my website, my VPN, etc), and it was getting a little slow for my liking. I was also wanting to run applications that required an x86 machine to run. So, I needed a change, and that came when I bought an HP EliteDesk from a recycler here in Meridian. Ironically, they most likely take computers from my school district, so this might have been at a West Ada school sometime in its life. Interesting, right?

The Raspberry Pi in the Case & Outside the Case:

I would like to point out the specs before I move on, so here they are…

Processor/Graphics: Intel Core i5-6500T @ 2.5Ghz with Integrated Graphics
Memory: 8GB DDR4
Storage: 128GB SSD with 2TB USB HDD Plugged In
Networking: 10/100/1000 Ethernet

Now, when I got it, I installed Windows 11, since my plan originally was to make this new computer cheap a somewhat decent gaming PC, but things did not go to plan. Windows was slow doing anything, and I was barely able to play a YouTube video. It also struggled even with light gaming. So, I knew I needed to change something. So, I decided to do something that no gamer in their right mind would do… install Linux!

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know… crazy! But, doing this was the best decision I have ever made. I decided on Linux Mint as my distro of choice for many reasons including being based on Ubuntu (which is based on Debian, which has APT, something that I am very familiar with), the support for software, and the community surrounding it. So, after 30 minutes of installing, I got things working where I was actually able to watch YouTube, and then play a game (on low settings, but still a huge win over Windows).

My Desktop on Linux Mint as of 10/27/2023

The next step was getting server things to transfer, and this took my hours. Actually, I did the first part the night before (along with Tailscale, my VPN solution), and this the next morning. WordPress was hard to transfer, but I eventually got everything over with some plugins and a bit of elbow grease with the command line. It also took me some time to get Apache configurations right for my subdomains (by the way, those are projects.jackshorenstein.com, old.jackshorenstein.com, dummies.jackshorenstein.com, and dreamsbyarlene.com for my grandma’s website). Thankfully, I was able to get everything all figured out, and everything was complete. I disconnected the Raspberry Pi and switched all of the settings on my router to use the EliteDesk as the server.

And… that was it! I just wanted to document the things I did over the last little while and explain why the website has been going offline. I just want to thank all of you for reading this blog post plus the others that I have posted (I know there are only a few, but whatever) and I hope you will come read the ones in the future. Until next time, surf up, see you on the net! 🙂

P.S. I just want to share this song with ya…

Lyrics:

On your mark, get set! We’re riding on the internet! Cyberspace, set free! Hello, virtual reality! Interactive appetite! Searching for a website! A window to the world, ’bout to get online! Take a spin! Now you’re in! With the techno set! You’re goin’ surfin’ on the internet!

Trip Report: Labor Day Weekend in Salt Lake City

September 3, 2023 / / 0 Comments

Introduction

Hello everyone! Today is a first for this blog. I am starting a new series of blog posts that will come out after a trip or vacation. As you can see from the title, this series is called “Trip Report” and I am really excited to share with you guys what I am up to! So, without further to do, let’s get started with this edition of Trip Report: Labor Day in Salt Lake City!

So, as some people know, I live in Boise, Idaho and buying clothes there is kind of a pain in the butt. So, since SLC is the closest major city with a bunch of stores, we decided to go there for one night (9/2-9/3) so that we could get clothes and get out of Boise for a while.

The Drive

For context, the drive from Boise to Salt Lake is about 4 to 5 hours (or about 350 miles):

Google Maps Estimation (9/3/2023)

But, the drive is very pretty and it really does not feel like 4 to 5 hours. Personally, I thought that the drive was not that bad. But, we have driven to Salt Lake a couple of times before, so that could have been why. Anyways, that is the needed context.

Shopping: Introduction

So, after driving into Salt Lake, we went and did some shopping, like we wanted to do. Before I start, I do want to mention one store in particular as, in my opinion, one of the coolest stores ever. That store was Scheels and it was really cool inside!

Shopping: Scheels – The BEST Sporting Goods Store… EVER!

So, my father needed boots (and my mom needed shoes and boots as well, but they did not have them), so we decided to go to Scheels, a Dick’s Sporting Goods on steroids (or as I would also say, if Dick’s Sporting Goods and Bass Pro Shops had a baby). It is, by far, one of the biggest stores, if not, the biggest store I have ever seen up to this point. They basically had everything a Dick’s or a Bass Pro Shop would have but much bigger and with a WHOLE FREAKING FERRIS WHEEL IN THE MIDDLE SPANNING TWO FLOORS! It was insane!

Image from Scheels.com

Oh, and the best part of all of this… next year, this will be in my backyard. Yeah, Scheels is building a location in Boise and we are really excited to be able to go! So, I just want to say that if you are in SLC (or Boise starting in Spring 2024), you should take a look and see what Scheels has to offer.

Note: Also, I was not sponsored to say that. I just wanted to say how amazing this store was!

Shopping: Everything Else & Dinner

So, before we went to Scheels, we went to Sur La Table to grab some things for the house. Then, after Scheels, we went to the largest Costco in the world (for now… they are building a bigger Costco in Fresno, but it is not open, so it does not count)! This Costco (located at 1818 S 300 W, Salt Lake City, UT 84115, for anyone who is wondering) is twice the size of the Costco we go to in Boise and when you walk in, it feels like the store goes on forever. They have everything a regular Costco would have, but there are even more products and even more quantities of them as well! But, we were there to buy clothes for the winter, to that is what we did! We bought all the clothes we would need for the winter, and we left with a really great haul! What an amazing store! 🤩

Image from Deseret News

After that, we went looking for shoes for my mom. Spolier Alert… it took many stores to find shoes that would fit my mom, and thank god that the Sketchers Outlet had shoes. Unfortunately, we are still on the lookout for boots, but we will figure it out.

So, after that mess, we decided to go to dinner at The Cheesecake Factory at City Creek Center. It was a very good dinner and very expensive (just like normal with The Cheesecake Factory, but whatever).

Hyatt Regency Salt Lake City in the Club Level!

So, we were staying the night, so we decided to stay at a hotel that we have stayed at before… the Hyatt Regency Salt Lake City, but with a twist! My parents birthdays (yes, their birthdays fall around the same time) just happened and since they knew this, they upgraded us to a club access room for no additional charge! So, after dinner, we went to the hotel, checked in, and soon after we got to our room, went to bed! Around 8 am this morning, me and my dad got some coffee in the lounge, and oh my god… this lounge was beautiful! Very open with lots of seething and a very good selection of things for breakfast. So, I would recommend it if it is available. Anyways, we were there for an hour, and then we got my mom to have breakfast in the lounge.

Conclusion and Thanks

After that, we went to HomeGoods that really did not have anything, and then we started making our way home! Actually, I am currently writing this on my phone in the car on my way home!

So, this trip was amazing and we had a really great time! Salt Lake is always a fun place to go and this time was no exception. But, before I end this post, I just want to say thank you to the people who have read this far! You reading and enjoying my posts means the world to me, so thank you! 😊

But, with that, thank you guys for reading, comment, like, and bookmark, and I will see you guys soon. Bye! 👋

Time for a Revival of the Blog! :)

August 10, 2023 / / 0 Comments

Hello, world and everyone who is reading this blog post! Back in December 2022 (really December 31st, 2022), I started a blog on this domain (JackShorenstein.com) and created my first two posts. One was an introduction to the blog, and the other was a repost of a blog post I did for my old high school’s journalism class (the link to that post is https://tahomanews.com/6731/student-life/whatistahomarobotics/). I decided to post on it more, but over time, I got less interested, and switching back to the old site would make me feel better about the website. So, that is what I did, and it has been like that for a couple of months. But tonight, I rented the movie The Social Network (2010) about Mark Zuckerberg when he founded Facebook. When watching the movie, I had an epiphany. I thought, “I enjoyed writing those posts on my blog, and I would like to do it more!” So, here I am, starting the blog again with a fresh new coat of paint and a rebooted brain to post more about my life, school, and everything in between. So, get ready, people; I will show you what I got, which will be very interesting!

So with that, thank you, guys, for reading, comment, like, and bookmark, and I will see you guys later with a new post! Bye! (Yes, that is a version of the outro to Plainrock124 that I made for the blog! I like his YouTube channel! Go check it out!)

P.S. I have many social medias that I will try link on the site, but if they are not there, here are the links:

P.S.S. Here is the new profile image I will be using from now on (even though I still have a lot to update):

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