Wow! A blog! What revolutionary technology! This is just a way for me to put out some of my thoughts on miscellaneous topipcs. Don't expect there to be any unifying theme. Hah, I don't even need to spend 5 years writing, recording, editing, and publishing a full-length video essay! Hope you stick around...
Another update!? Wow, I've been working hard this month...
This time I drew up some banners for my social media links in the social tab, along with other minor edits and improvements. I also updated the blog so that each post has its own link I can share so that I don't have to keep scrolling down to view old posts as I write more stuff.
I also ran into an issue a few days ago when I was working on the portfolio section where the site wouldn't properly update on Neocities. Apparently, it's because my browser keeps trying to load the outdated files from my cache, and when I searched up how to solve this problem, I found a post on r/Neocities called "daily reminder to clear your cache". Uhm... Anyway, I will try to look into cache busting to get around this, but it doesn't look very easy to do. In the meantime, if it looks like the site hasn't properly updated, remember to hit Ctrl + SHIFT + R (or Cmd + SHIFT + R on Mac) to hard reload the site. But from what I hear, the browser cache refreshes on its own after some time, so hopefully it shouldn't be too problematic.
I plan to make a video soon on my initial experiences and process developing this site. I hope I can finish it fast enough before my college requirements start piling on!
Sincerely,
- ash (18/1/205)
Happy New Year! I finally updated the site today. Aside from some additions to the hobbies & interests tab, I now have a portfolio of my best artworks!
Implementing images in HTML is usually as simple as making an img tag, but my own actions turned it into a full day endeavor... By the way, I built a custom (and incredibly scuffed) static site builder from scratch in Python to make my site for me, but I initially didn't account for images because I had none yet, so that's what I did today. After several hours of work, I can implement images in a gallery-like format (as seen in the portfolio tab) by just writing down the image file paths in a text file. There are probably better ways to do it using actual professional tools made for web dev, though...
In any case, I'm proud of this Python program that I will probably never release anywhere and I think the final product looks really neat. I didn't even know you could do those hovering transitions without any Javascript! What a wonderful time we live in!
Next on the to-do list... make icons for the social media tab... finally get around to working on the resources tab... use Javascript for smoother loading!? Oh well, I guess I can figure it out as I go.
Regards,
- ash (13/1/2025)
Dear diary, today I am mustering up the strength to finally write a real blog post...
I was thinking for a while on whether or not I should continue doing a blog here. The setup is pretty scuffed and I'm typing this on a notepad to be integrated into the HTML file later. For a moment, I considered moving the blog elsewhere, maybe doing it on Tumblr or Wordpress or literally any other site that was actually made for blogs, because that way maybe I could put tags and have more reach. Then I thought to myself, why do I need reach? It's not like anyone actually sees my content in the first place.
It got me thinking about my social media presence as a whole (or lack thereof)... Trying to optimize my searchability and game the system to get my numbers up, quite frankly, sounds like a nightmare. Unfortunately, the internet is just a big competition for who can get the most attention. And it gets really tiring. I just want to make the things that I want to make, and if someone happens to come across them, maybe even enjoy them, wouldn't that be something nice?
Maybe I was born a bit late, but I still remember the days when my mom would let me go to an internet cafe and I would immediately get on Club Penguin, Poptropica, and Moshi Monsters. I remember the days when I wasn't doomscrolling social media or mindlessly grinding Clash Royale and I was actually having fun playing whatever new game I had discovered. I miss the days when people did things for fun and not for profit.
Hopefully, I want to keep that mindset in whatever I do. It sounds pretty pointless, creating things with no audience, but I can always be my own audience.
If someone somehow found this and is reading this, advanced happy New Year! I will be sure to create many more things for fun and not for profit!
Cheers!
- ash (29/12/2024)
This is what a blog entry will look like. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. According to all known laws of aviation, there is no way a bee should be able to fly. Its wings are too small to get its fat little body off the ground. The bee, of course, flies anyway because bees don't care what humans think is impossible.
- ash (9/10/2024)