migrate blarb posts

Author: ducdat0507

package-lock.json

@@ -16,6 +16,7 @@
 		"@sveltejs/adapter-auto": "^6.0.0",
 		"@sveltejs/kit": "^2.16.0",
 		"@sveltejs/vite-plugin-svelte": "^5.0.0",
+		"mdsvex": "^0.12.7",
 		"svelte": "^5.38.1",
 		"svelte-check": "^4.0.0",
 		"typescript": "^5.0.0",
@@ -24,6 +25,7 @@
 	"dependencies": {
 		"@sveltejs/adapter-static": "^3.0.8",
 		"dompurify": "^3.2.6",
+		"mdsvex": "^0.12.7",
 		"planck": "^1.4.2",
 		"svelte-focus-trap": "^1.2.0"
 	}

package.json

@@ -0,0 +1,15 @@
+---
+title: blarbs!
+subtitle: hi, I guess
+---
+hi!
+
+just testing out jekyll for myself
+
+maybe this will actually have content one day, idk
+
+## status update (28 February 2025)
+
+yeah, I should really get myself to write blarbs
+
+one day, maybe one day, this will no longer be the only blarb in my website, just maybe

src/data/blarbs/2024-06-26-blarbs.md

@@ -0,0 +1,63 @@
+---
+title: Collecting Advertisements
+subtitle: my old weird hobby
+---
+
+I've had a love/hate relationship with online advertisements, especially those that promotes mobile games. First, I should set things straight:
+
+## Me of today says: you should totally get an ad-blocker
+
+Like, really. I believe everyone should get at least 1 method of blocking ads set up on any device they have, be it [Pi-hole](https://pi-hole.net/), [AdGuard DNS](https://adguard-dns.io/), or [uBlock Origin](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock). 
+
+(the content of the rant was originally meant to be here but since I wrote a little bit too much [I've move it into another blarb](/blarbs/2025/03/02/get-adblock.html). This one here will just be about the fascinating things I found with mobile game ads, like:)
+
+## Collecting ads was my hobby
+
+During the early days of COVID-19, I've found myself into an unusual hobby of collecting online advertisements for a lack of a better thing to do. Now in the year 2025 as of when I was writing this, it served as a time capsule on how things in 2019~2020 used to be like, and when I finally get myself to music-making, sample them to make a goofy song perhaps (?)
+
+### Using a VM to collect ads
+
+The first thing I discovered is that ad services like Unity Ads save a copy of the ads on a cache folder (conveniently named `UnityAdsCache`) which means I can move them somewhere else, like the hard drive of my computer. 
+
+With that in mind, I set up an Android VM in order to let the ads play and load in the background. The ads are then moved and "collected" to my computer. Want to see how ads in 2020 looks like? Here you go:
+
+<p>
+    <video controls>
+        <source src="https://file.garden/X9Xrm_GIBmpbTDCZ/ads/pull%20them%20pins" type="video/webm" />
+    </video>
+</p>
+
+Yeah, it was your standard pull-the-pin-puzzle ads, from Evony out of all things.
+
+I also used a VPN in order to get ads in other places that I couldn't have seen otherwise, especially those from Japan that I found the most interesting. I was able to save gems like this:
+
+<p>
+    <video controls>
+        <source src="https://file.garden/X9Xrm_GIBmpbTDCZ/ads/stronk%20woman" type="video/webm" />
+    </video>
+</p>
+
+(I also saved a YouTube link to the 30-second version of this thing which is much more hilarious but they privatized it and I couldn't find a copy of the video online. Oh well, by the way, speaking about YouTube)
+
+### Saving YouTube ads into a playlist
+
+I also found a way to extract the YouTube links of ads on my YouTube phone client which I can then save into a YouTube playlist. Basically, the process goes like this (for me, YouTube probably do things a little bit differently for you since they love A/B testing):
+
+- Enable stats for nerds (go to "You" tab → press the cogwheel on the top right → go to "General" → scroll to the bottom and turn "Stats for nerds" on)
+- When an ad appears, turn the stats for nerds panel on (by clicking the 3 dots at the top and check "Stats for nerds") and copy or screenshot the video ID
+- On my computer, go to the playlist URL, click the plus next to the "Play all" button, type in "https://youtu.be/" + the video ID that I extracted, and add the video that appears
+
+With this method, I was able to add any video ad I see into a playlist of my choosing. [Here's the link to the playlist itself](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEgqaIp00mGDRm-J2GD4qkd_Tmvp-_fWl), but I must warn that you should not watch it in public (I try to save every ad that I saw, and you've probably heard people complain about YouTube ads being a bit too suggestive on the unofficial subreddit)
+
+<p>
+    <details>
+        <summary class="button">YouTube embed (you've been warned)</summary>
+        <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/videoseries?si=_7C67IWf8H6BFgVW&amp;list=PLEgqaIp00mGDRm-J2GD4qkd_Tmvp-_fWl" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen style="fill-width"></iframe>
+    </details>
+</p>
+
+### Why?
+
+Simply say, because I can!
+
+...And also, maybe, in the rare event of me getting banned on platforms like YouTube because of the ad playlist, I could point to it as proof that the advertising scene has gotten so bad the platforms themselves doesn't even like the videos they got paid to promote.

src/data/blarbs/2025-03-01-advertising.md

@@ -0,0 +1,44 @@
+---
+title: You should totally get an ad-blocker
+subtitle: ...and find a different way to support things without having to watch ads
+---
+
+Warning: this blarb is a long rant. If you want to read less heated content, you can read [my blarb on my ad collection](/blarbs/2025/03/01/advertising.html), but anyways, what I mean is:
+
+***You should totally get an ad-blocker.*** 
+
+Like, really. I believe everyone should get at least 1 method of blocking ads set up on any device they have, be it [Pi-hole](https://pi-hole.net/), [AdGuard DNS](https://adguard-dns.io/), or [uBlock Origin](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock). 
+
+Let me explain:
+
+## Ads are becoming increasingly malware
+
+By becoming malware, I mean they have become so intrusive and annoying it pushed me to start using an ad-blocker.
+Ads that auto-play music. Ads that appear on the middle of the website that I have to wait to dismiss.
+Even people nowadays are designing their website to have more ads than actual content.
+
+The biggest offenders have to be the ads on mobile games (yes I play these things.) You have to wait like 15 seconds and click like 3 different buttons in order to dismiss them, and somewhere, someone in these ad companies thought it would be a good idea for ads to just *open the App Store automatically.* Needless to say I have AdGuard DNS set up to stop these ads from appearing in my phone and if I ever find any ads that sneak into my phone and does these kind of tricks I'm instantly uninstalling the app.
+
+The ads that I can't really block from my phone comes from YouTube which, to this day, still has this bad habit of inserting ads directly in the middle of a sentence when the person in the video is talking. Oh, and also the Reddit app. Ads can appear in the middle of the comment section now. Great.
+
+I also can't help but notice the trend of social media sites making ads more and more similar to regular posts that the only visual cue you can use to differentiate them is *one* single very faint word, which allows them to mislead people that ads are genuine posts while adding *just* enough to make them not get sued for doing it.
+
+If you could handle all of that and still using the internet without an ad-blocker or found all of these don't describe the ads that you saw, good for you. But wait, it actually gets worse:
+
+## Ads are becoming increasingly malware (this time literally)
+
+I can't really say anything about the experience of other people, but as the more "tech-savvy" person in the neighborhood I've encountered situations where people would come to me asking why their phones are having popups telling them that "your storage is full" or "your phone is infected with viruses" while failing to realize the "popups" are actually ads that *at best* make them install a barely-functioning phone cleaner app that consumes more storage than it can save, and *at worst* actually infect their phones with viruses. In fact, malvertising has become such a common practice that [even the folks at the FB of I themselves felt the need to put up a PSA telling people to install ad-blockers on their browsers](https://techcrunch.com/2022/12/22/fbi-ad-blocker/) that let me know that ad moderation has gotten even worse nowadays.
+
+I do not want to support behaviors like this, and over time I start to consider website popups that tell me to disable my ad-blockers just like Windows program installers that tell me to disable my anti-virus program's real-time protection feature because it may "interfere with the installation process": *No sane person should do this,* and if a website/installer really doesn't work I'll just find another one on the internet that does the same thing.
+
+Yes, this will mean sites will not be able to earn money by showing ads to you, which can be used to cover costs needed to keep the website function. But, to respond to that, I'd say:
+
+## You should consider other means of support other than watching ads
+
+If your website/app/YouTube content creator have another mean to support them, do it. Tip them, buy their merch, subscribe to their Patreon, anything but watch ads that might expose you to bad advertising practices or malware. If you don't have money, try spreading their works or talking good about them on social media. Whatever you do will be a lot more supportive to them than watching and clicking a thousand ads.
+
+## It doesn't have to be like this
+
+I believe that the reason why people start blocking ads is not the act of advertising itself, but the fact that the online advertising space have gotten really bad in the recent years. They start behaving like malware with all these annoying behaviors, the intrusion of privacy with cross-site tracking, and the fact that they can actually give you malware and have little to no intention to moderate stuff like this. It does not have to be like this. If rewarded ads on mobile games only last 5 seconds like how Google ads on them used to be, I won't feel the need to block them on my phone.
+
+So that's it, rant over, and please, get an ad-blocker.