optimization

About FooGallery Video.

February 22, 2023 by S-Config

S-Config will be going back to HTML5 markup.

When we started this site we became beta testers for FooPlugins. Originally, we paid $60 for a license which then became a lifetime after the beta program was complete. This enabled us to get a free lifetime license for both “FooBox” (Which let’s be honest it’s just a javascript lightbox with a coat of paint) and “FooGallery”. Instead of spending stupid amounts of money to present videos and artwork to you the viewer. It can all be done for next to nothing. We were happy customers of FooGallery for a long time. However, as the years went on we started to see less and less value in the product as it stands today. This especially hits home for our video blogging where we self-host every video for every blog.

In part because we threw the middle fingers at YouTube. But also in part that this website is reachable on protocols beyond the clear-net as our black-mirror page informs everyone.

The licensing policies have changed. Video encoding has changed to make the entire plugin too rigid. And finally, because of how much JavaScript is involved with that program, it’s time to slowly sever ties with FooPlugins.

Read on if you would like to hear my web-admin diatribes:

AVIF and WEBP is now being hosted here.

September 2, 2022January 30, 2021 by S-Config

First there was AV1. Now there’s AVIF

A while back during my video encoding sessions, I toyed with the concept of serving AV1 videos on my site. The results were not great out of respect that we could not find a great way of detecting the client’s capabilities of video decoding without writing some shitty JavaScript system to snoop around and break privacy rights all the way. However, there’s a branch of the Av1 system known as “AVIF” which is designed to use for still images. It boasts about getting better compression ratio’s to that of even WebP images that we discussed a while back.

Why did we implement AVIF here? Read on if you want to know more.

Video web crawlers and the Google Monopoly over them.

February 22, 2023January 24, 2021 by S-Config

Happy 2021 – Web crawling only gives you YouTube first, last, and always.

Back in 2016, we made an article about asking YouTube “Where is the fair use?” which was a slogan that the Nostalgia Critic was behind as parodies and criticism of film and literature is a form of free speech. Despite all of the Drama-Lama action that his agent “Channel Awesome” happened which is beyond the scope of this article. The statement was a valid question to ask YouTube. To the point where we even got hit with a copyright strike over the song “William Tell” which is a classical music song that falls under the category of public domain.

Read on if you want to know more.