@nic

pastelnetOS #9 - the completed version

After many hours of reformatting code, designing application windows, and crying over CSS, I’ve finally finished PastelNetOS. It’s been a long time in the works, but I’m happy it reached a stage where I feel confident enough to ship it.

Final Additions:

• I finished up the last three applications: the music player, notes, and gallery. I had some issues with the music player and figuring out how to get it functioning properly, but I soon figured it out after digging through a few GitHub repos and Google searches. I originally intended to make a dedicated Spotify-inspired MP3 player, but I ran out of time and just decided to make it as simple and functional as possible.

• The notes app is also a bit wonky, but what matters is that it works. It’s not completely unusable, but I don’t ever see myself using it in an urgent situation (lol)

Challenges:

• I mentioned it before on a previous devlog, but I was running out of motivation to continue with this project near the end. I realized I didn’t enjoy it as much as I’d hoped, and I found myself working on other projects instead. I think it was mainly my lack of creativity and the repetitiveness of the site, and realizing I didn’t have enough prior coding knowledge to achieve some of the things I wanted to build.
• School was also a huge factor, as I hadn’t anticipated getting so busy in just a few weeks. I kind of underestimated how much free time I’d have to work on side projects in the first place.

In conclusion, I’m glad that my biggest project for Stardance is finally complete, and I can get my certificate for 30 hours of approved work!

the dead internet theory is real

made a www-inspired low-stakes website with stuff from the y2k era. resembles how i would imagine my ten-year-old self to make a website if i’d learned programming twenty years ago.

some of the code is reused from my old neocities webpages, mostly for styling/css. sometimes you lose your passion for things but you keep moving forward regardless. this website is more like those crappy single-page websites you’d run into during the 90s, but no one was alive during that time to remember what it was actually like. also kind of inspired from old scam websites created by people who don’t know how to code.

i programmed all of this in one sitting and forgot to commit most of the time.

(if it wasn’t obvious, the site looks low-quality on purpose)

PastelnetOS #8 - calculator app!

Additions

• made my first fully interactive application for PastelOS (with some help from YouTube)
• learned a bit more about JavaScript

Challenges

• low-key kind of losing my motivation for this project; Stardance is almost over, but I’ve barely made any progress in the past month
• maybe set a time limit for myself? See how much progress I can make in (x) amount of hours and just finish it before it gets dragged on too long
• been too focused on making it look ‘polished’ instead of adding new features
• I feel like my devlogs have been pretty empty compared to some of my other projects, but that’s mainly due to programming feeling really repetitive and me feeling like I’m at the point where minor bugs and issues aren’t noteworthy enough to write down anymore. I see them more like a regular part of programming, and they can be easily fixed in a few minutes

doki-clicker devlog #1

made a simple DDLC-themed clicker game with some JS tutorials! also learned how to make my first animation ever in VS code

planned features:

• shop upgrades; for more dokis per second, decorations for Sayori, or change the character (Yuri, Natsuki, Monika)
• make Sayori cycle through different sprites the more dokis are collected
• background music toggle!
• wallpaper settings (?)

Power-bot Devlog!

• Created a Slack bot with four different commands, each with its own unique starting message!
• (/power-bot!)
• Built with Node.js in VS Code, and hosted on Hack Club Nest.
• The most difficult thing was setting up the bot and trying to figure out how to host it on Nest separately from my local terminal. The bot itself is very simple and mainly contains preset commands from the mission library, but I’m glad to have finished the project nonetheless.

pastelnetOS #7 - nothingburger

another long wait . . .

Additions:

• The user menu finally works. I wrote an entire JS script by myself for once and its functional!! the name that you input shows up afterwards when you recieve the welcome message.

Challenges:

• Learning JavaScript is very difficult. I have #code channel on slack and my 1 friend that knows JS on speed dial
• I tried making a sidebar but it still didnt work

I want the sidebar to have the mp3 player, calculator, and notes to make things look clean i might add a terminal but lowk idk how to program that

pastelOS #6 - refined UI (1.0.6)

PastelNetOS patch notes feat new icons (this one has like 0 progress done):

Additions:

• Made some new app icons for the main layout! I didn’t really like the old ones since the font and shape(?) felt a bit out of place, and I want it to look cohesive as possible
• Also fixed some colouring and styling errors here and there; trying to make it look polished (though there are still only 3 apps)
• fixed some internal code that messed up the CSS during bug fixing

Challenges:

• This was originally going to be a JavaScript-heavy update with more interactive features, but I still couldn’t figure out any of the code… I think I might need to go back to elementary coding classes because it took me an hour just to change the colour of the window when clicked and I didn’t even like it so I just reverted it back later 💔
• I still have to fix the z-index issue and make selected windows a different colour, but JS has genuinely been a pain to learn from scratch

so in the span of almost 3 hours i literally only changed the app icons. 😐 at least i got dynamic close buttons now 😭

chem.quest devlog 2!

some more CSS fixes since those usually take the longest…

• Challenges: as usual, i spent a lot of time fixing the css to make everything look nice. the colours before were super washed out and pastel, which made it a pain to look at without my usual night mode settings on. even as a web developer i have a lot of trouble using flexbox,, so that took a lot longer than i thought. i didn’t like how the div boxes were aligned previously, but i’m much more happier with how they look now.
• Additions: i want to add a new ‘study corner’ page, sort of like my version of those pomodoro chrome extensions except you dont have to download anything and can just access it on a site. this is partially added because i wasn’t sure if my initial idea would be enough to fit the Frictioness mission guidelines lol. i want to add a timer, some sort of sticky note system and custom background noises for people to listen to as they study. (kind of like a digital cork board where u can move elements around, like the WebOS mission)
• also fixed the weird sizing issues i had with the div boxes, but its all g now and should resize properly depending on the browser/window

chem.quest devlog 1!

chem.quest is in development!

• With school coming up in a few weeks, i thought that the perfect way for me to refresh on chemistry notes was to create a website for chem study guides!
• i always had trouble looking for review materials online when i was studying chem, so i thought i’d log all of the links i used for studying and share my own study notes for everyone to use forever.
• i’m mostly planning to add lesson reviews that sum up the most important info, so procrastinators (such as myself) can easily do some quick last-minute review before a big test.
• the ui is a huge wip (i realised the fancy filters i have on my monitor make it a pain to colour-correct, which is why everything looks so pale) but im planning to add more stuff in the future, like a pomodoro timer, flash cards, practice quizzes, and 3d models(?) !!

this project might be my most ambitious one yet (and im not even done my past 2 projects 💔 )

pastelOS #5 - 1.0.4 feat email

the messages/email app is now functional! if you click the scam link, it sends you to a fake blue screen page.

updates:

• finally fixed topbar font
• updated README file
• updates welcome menu text to match better with the OS theme and ui
• better hover indicator when selecting an app
• working user menu

i can’t believe it took me 12 hours to just make 3 apps 💔💔💔 i need to lock in for webOS 2

pastelOS #4 - (1.0.3 FIXED DRAG)

after many hours and days, i finally fixed it. the windows are draggable. what a journey

new features (alpha 1.0.3):

• text boxes are now transparent, inspired by liquid glass
• app icons are now presented in a list-type menu, similar to the cyberpunk 2077 menu in-game!!
• new background (old one was crusty)
• timer finally works
• DRAGGING WINDOWS FINALLY WORKS
• got rid of the goofy ahh ‘currently active’ text on the topbar

i dont even know how i got them to work. i made a thousand and one commits on github and somehow the stars aligned and my code is working. haha ha ha ha

it took me an embarrassingly long amount of time to fix this but like… as long as it works bro

pastelOS #3 - i hate github

years will be taken off my life for how long it took for me to fix my darn github page. i hate using it. i would’ve stuck to neocities if a git repo wasnt required for stardance projects.

anyways, i fixed the random merge issue i had where i accidentally opened too many branches and my dev branch and main branch were out of sync. im just gonna do everything on my main branch now. nuclear level threat incoming.

for some reason my github codespace preview is different than what shows up on my site so i gotta fix that. sucks because my window drag script finally works but it doesnt even show up properly 😭 ❓ but for now, im gonna take a break

• demo link (alpha 1.0.1: https://sodahaunted.github.io/pastelnet.os/)

pastelOS #2

still working on the os jam tutorial! got a pretty scuffed layout, the photos are wip for now i’m just playing around with the css to make it look nicer

heres the absolute alpha 1.0 version of pastelOS (its ugly ik)

• finally fixed the javascript file that didn’t let me close the window properly?? it was because my js file loaded faster than my index.html which was a huge problem
• this is why you code everything in one long index.html instead of breaking it up lmao

i want this to still be cyberpunk/vaporwave themed but im figuring out the ui and realizing it might be more advanced than what i know how to make

i made some physical sketches to try and find the theme and plan out apps i wanna make

• a type of fortune teller would be pretty cool based on an rng system, higher number results in a good fortune while low number results in a bad one
• maybe a scam email app based on those fake messages you get in cyberpunk 2077 (?)
• i want an mp3 player 100%, idk what songs to put on it tho maybe some 2022 drift phonk for old times sake 😭 😭 😭

TBH i dont even know what i’m going to name this OS yet, pastelnet seems kinda off but CyberOS already exists

its been over a week and im still not done this aaaa

Media Review Webpage #3

After a long time procrastinating, I’m finally done with the concept/prototype of my webpage. I wrote one full review for a recent movie I watched (Obsession), formatted it, added photos, and made sure the two lines of JavaScript code work properly. Not sure how to add more pages, though. I’ll figure that out for a future update (though if you know how, please lmk)

The fundamentals of this page are pretty much finished! It has a watchlist which I can use to track shows/movies I’m watching, a (mostly) responsive layout, and all the CSS features I intended to add. Unfortunately lost an hour or two here and there because I forgot to unpause my recording, but oh well.

The GIT repo for this page unfortunately doesn’t have many commits, since I wasn’t using GitHub to make this and was pretty unfamiliar with it when I started this project. It has all the code, just no visible edits/changes. Sorry about that. I used Neocities for the entirety of this site, which is what I mainly use to publish html/css projects.

pastelOS #1

playing around with github (first time using it) and css while finishing the jam tutorial

its coming along well but hopefully i can fix it so it looks better later