The ads for Grammarly are slowing but surely gnawing away at my soul with their frequency… I’ve seen numerous people mention some fancy ‘AI plugin’ for VS Code that helps you with your coding and now Speechify, which helps you by reading your documents and emails using AI so you can get more done.
Great, some useful applications of technology that can clearly help you out. But in my mind, these apps and similar raise nothing but security concerns for me.
Continue readingFirst up, I’d like to be clear… I moved from StreamLabs to StreamElements because I felt it offered a better overall product offering. This is not a complaint about the portion of their product that most people will use (i.e. the overlays, the store, merch etc.) but I do have a big gripe about the API, specifically the lack of good, clear supporting documentation.
So, if you’ve tried to engage with their API and have been struggling, read on as there may be some nuggets here that will help you. This is by no means a comprehensive reference, but it is a rundown of the issues I’ve faced and overcome in writing my StreamElements interface for Delphi.
Continue readingWell, it doesn’t seem like 5 minutes have passed since I was complaining about case sensitivity in software source code and here we are over 12 months later… time for an update I feel.
Continue readingIf you’re planning on using the Streamelements Websockets service to receive realtime notifications of things like tips, merch purchases and stream store redemptions (it can also do follows, cheers, raids, hosts and subs for Twitch), you may find information is a bit thin on the ground, so here’s a quick guide to getting connected using TypeScript and Node.js.
Continue readingIn case it’s not clear from my moniker, in the world of software development Delphi is my preferred weapon of choice and if you’re not familiar with it (you should be), the underlying language is Pascal. I’ve been using Pascal for over 30 years, in this time of COVID-19 lockdown I’ve been using my time to learn Typescript, brush up on modern Javascript and familiarise myself with the Node.js ecosystem.
Continue readingThe year, 1995. Windows 3.1 was the current Microsoft operating system running on the family’s 486sx 25MHz with 4MB of RAM. Turbo Pascal 7 was my weapon of choice but of course it couldn’t produce Windows applications… yes there was Turbo Pascal for Windows and Borland Pascal but they both required lots of boiler plate code to make windows and interact with the OS (Nightmare). And then it happened…
Continue readingSo, I’m working on some of the rendering classes for my latest project and I’ve encountered an interesting issue that I can’t explain and I’d greatly appreciate it if someone could explain to me what it is I’m doing wrong because I just can’t see it.
Continue readingIt’s all been a bit quiet on the blog and stream front, this was due largely to business getting in the way, but my mental well being has also played a part.
Continue readingFor our new game, the current plan is to use Lua to provide content and control, with Delphi doing most of the heavy lifting (rendering, game state saving etc.). To achieve this, it’s necessary to establish an interface to Lua (for this, I’m using the excellent interface by Dennis Spreen – VerySimple.Lua – this is specifically for Lua 5.3) and then to get the data out of it. This article is going to focus on the later as VerySimple.Lua is very simple to use (excellent job Dennis đŸ™‚ ).
Continue readingThere are some tutorials about using named pipes in Delphi but after much searching during my own use of them, I wasn’t able to find any information to solve my problem, so here is what I learned.
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