Start of a RE-volution

Posted on March 24th, 2013 21:48

Ah, now, back to business.

It has almost been a year since I posted an update on this site regularly. Sure, I meant to post this particular update at exactly one year (thus this being late and last week being filler and also late), but not being bound to an arbitrary and largely symbolic schedule is one of the reasons I gave up following an arbitrary and symbolic schedule. Or, y'know, all the reason.

But like I said in last week's update, I have been working on the site. What you are looking at right now in the fruit of that work. It might not look like much, but updated updates (with comments!) mean that there can be a lot more communication around here, and that is what has been sorely missing in recent years.

See, I have always held the stance of anti-blogging. I disliked social media before it even was labeled such. I just hate people who try to talk about themselves all the time. This site is supposed to be about what new fun distractions are being offered up to you -- not the weird, scary dude who coded them.

But now, I gots some talking I gotsta do.

The year-long silence has been one I predicted quite a while ago. I knew that one day, my programming ventures would drift into projects with a longer development time. Remember that for years, I would update this site every week. That is because there was always a lot to do because everything was new, undeveloped, and often, very broken. Weekly became monthly became yearly. I never stopped making stuff for this site, although I did hit some long patches of not releasing stuff for it.

In fact, I can't even remember the last thing I released, and I have been on a nostalgic kick through the previous updates, too. In fact, years ago, I stated that I wanted to release more stuff and complained about how much apathy was abound at this site on the patrons' part. I guess I cannot blame them, however. It should be noted that this downfall of the site corresponds to me getting a "real" full-time job.

So even though I first mentioned wanting to make an HTML5 Canvas game (which will be an old hat technology by the time I get to releasing one of many I have made) back in -- get this -- 2010, I have yet to do so. I also mentioned back then that I wanted to use such things as tutorials for any members wanting to learn. I started trying to shape up the site, and shaped it has become more and more. However, something else has made me put the extra effort into not releasing one of those games and instead working on the site.

I believe it was in the second half of last year when I looked at the site's records. I was checking the search engine hits and saw something surprising: a big source was "linux java sound".

I had written a little diddy a while back for Kirbj about the difficulty I encountered getting the Java Applet to play the background music and sound effects. This is a common problem, and Google is apparently a common solution. Makes sense; that is where I turn whenever I hit a roadblock, and when it doesn't help, I power through it.

And when I power through, that knowledge dies with me. And therein lies the problem.

I'm a Linux guy. My job title is actually "Linux Engineer". Figuring out open-source software is what I get paid to do. Not sharing the useful stuff I find out is tantamount to a crime. Like I said, I've been working with Canvas for years. I have found out a ton of tricks that I have been unintentionally hoarding. I have some embedded devices I've been meaning to hack up. Hel, I even have those food articles and recipes I have wanted to do for about a decade now!

Which brings me back to the simple start of these things: new updates. There was a lot more effort just to get to this point (but I'll rant more on that later), but for now, I'll just say the update page has been increased in navigability. These Site Logs (the thing you're reading now) have been added to keep the main page nice and tidy. Being limited in writing on the main page has kept me from writing on the main page altogether. Now, I have a specific little place to stash my non-site endeavours: tips, tricks, and thoughts can now be easily added whenever I discover them. These logs are separate but integrated inside of the main page news and site updates. It is sorta like the devlogs I did for Kirbj, but integrated into everything.

Last week was retroactively implemented with this system, but I don't want to go further than that. There is no reason to have a bunch of news articles with zero comments. After all, that's what the future is for~!