Hello,

Fun Stuff:

• 3D Printer:
  • Ender 3 Neo
  • PEI Bed (Must have)
  • Bimetal heatbreak (Must have after failed replacement of the teflon tube)
  • Marlin 2.whatever firmware reflash
• PC:
  • Windows 10
  • Ryzen 5 3600
  • 1050Ti
  • 16GB DDR4
  • Not enough storage (128GB SSD boot drive, 1TB 2x HDD internal, 2TB HDD external (3/4 of those drives have < 3GB remaining))
  • Logitech MX Master 3 mouse
    • AKA the gunk magnet
  • Some LG TV and Acer monitor that are a decade old, horribly uncolourmatched. I assume they're HD
  • Some speakers I've had since I got the PC that are finally starting to fail
  • Some sort of Cooler Master mechanical keyboard
    • No I'm not going into more detail on my monitors, speakers, or keyboard because I can hardly recommend on a sample size of 1

Software:

• GIMP 2.10.14
  • Later versions screw up the toolbars at the top of the windows of the toolbox and layers and such for some reason
• DuckDuckGo on Chrome
  • I've been poking around the free trial of Kagi, and it's sorely tempting
• 11ty 3.0.0
• Adobe Premiere Pro 2020

Warning: the following piece is best understood by asking someone to stand on a soapbox and read it to you.

This site is intended to showoff projects, share resources, and generally be a personal place to make things, distanced from comment sections and judgement.

Getting myself a website I liked is akin to the blue Mini in The Italian Job. It took a few runs at the ramps on the bus, but now it's up there after a few failed attempts using WordPress and an increasingly strained analogy. The free, easy access version of WP is fine if you're interested in content. If you've got a vision of words to write and share with no further concerns, just use one of those free sitebuilders that give you boxes to type and a button to make the text go bold.

Unfortunately for the part of me that wishes I was a pure productivity machine, I have far too much pride in the process of getting something out there. Wordpress was asphixiating in how tightly it restricted me. Simply picking a colour scheme that didn't clash, setting the right hex codes across the site, placing menus and ordering them in a way I wanted, or sorting out the posts or moving them under a different heading, was far too much effort because I had to do it within their systems.

This whole, handcrafted html experience, is far easier for me to wrap my head around. There's a simple list of file structures and a way to engineer around problems. You can't box me within UI constraints or a premium plan when I can tell the site to look and say everything I want it to. If something doesn't look or feel right, I can move it.

Aside from the, "I want my site to be its own special snowflake," angle, I can't say I totally like how Wordpress operated. I'd like to be as independent as possible. This is my place to exist online. Away from the algorithms, in a place where everyone is here to express themselves, be damned if there's an audience. I think this has been a long time coming.

The seed that's finally sprouted into producing this webpage started about mid-2023. "Everything Is Sludge: Art in the Post-Human Era" was my first subtle nudge and reminder that the way I was using the internet wasn't right. Reddit was my timesink of choice, so replace the TikTok Subway Surfers videos for endless cat Subreddits or r/Formula1 posts that didn't really add anything of value. Twitter was a similar story of endless scrolling, and little to no net benefit. Arguably the worst was YouTube, where I'd desperately hunt for noise in lieu of thoughts. After watching the video, I uninstalled the apps, and attempted to relagate them to an occasional peek on safari. This worked for Reddit, where I still haven't used for more than the occasional question, but the other two still have reasonably good mobile browser experiences and keep pulling me back.

More recently, the videos that I suppose gave me the final spur forward were "The Importance of Real Things" and "Death of the Follower & the Future of Creativity on the Web" that reminded me how strange it was that anything and everything I made was effectively stranded on someone else's server, being promoted by a mysterious algorithm responsible for so many trends I hate. I use Google Docs for everything, the day Spotify goes down is the day that I forget 1900 songs, my videos are so throwaway that I don't have copies of most of them anymore, all my closest friendships are reliant on Discord keeping their lights on, and my Tweets and Reddit posts, no matter how minor and insignificant, aren't kept close to me. There's a fine line between hoarding and preservation. I do think tweets should be throwaway, I don't think every comment needs to be kept and saved.

Let's not get conflated with me hating every single large service. There's a reason they thrive, there's a reason we all still use them. I'm not going to stop. But I want a place of my own. Where all my pages are backed up on my own harddrive, where I'm not trying to hold my position in a rushing rapids of the algorithm. And somewhere that's hands on, freeform, experimental, and permenant.

Most recently, I've gotten into extensions to make the internet less addictive. Chrome extensions unhooked for YouTube and Twitch work a treat, and on iOS £3 got me a safari extension to do the same thing in my browser. Together they've really got me less distracted, or at least more exploratory. Feels like I'm watching more than I'm scrolling at least.