serpentinemalign: my self-insert smoking a cigarette. (mat finish)
[personal profile] serpentinemalign

hello! things have been a little weird lately. very very busy which is good, i think i have been understimulated for a long time and i am finally at a more appropriate level of stimulation for me. but in short...

this is the most thrilling one for me. i thought that installing one would mean giving up control of the site but it has just made it MUCH easier. while i wish i had built it like this from the start, because i have a LOT of pages to update in the new generated version, i now have a fighting chance of updating my site in a timely manner, making more shrines, and adding to my existing shrine.

also, my existing shrine can probably be rewritten in markdown which i am VERY excited about because i think it's going to make a live updating word count feasible!!! everyone can bear witness to my tribute to hugo strange, which is already longer than my bachelor's thesis was, but clearly we wanna add to this over time.

(this reminds me, i decided on hugo's birthday so i can celebrate it this year. it's going to be november 13th. he's a scorpio in my headcanon, and i was sad about how my main blorbo doesn't have a birthday so. i fixed it lol. you can just make a birthday up and then it's real. i pored through a psychology 'on this day' page and found out the 13th was the day of an early mesmerism demonstration that would later lead james braid to coin the term 'hypnotism'. the day before was the first modern frontal lobe surgery - not a lobotomy, but unfortunately the first lobotomies were soon to follow, which i suppose is why i opted for the slightly less loaded but still hugo-related one.

on that day i will probably release some art, buy (or perhaps even bake) him a cupcake with a flavour i think he'd like (i think he would like floral flavours. earl grey or rosewater or something like that.) of course, i will be the one to eat it. celebrating f/o birthdays is really like having two birthdays in a year but you gift yourself all the presents lol.)

if you're not already familiar with static site generators, basically they try to get you building as much of your site in advance in layouts and components (e.g. you could have a two-column layout, a gallery layout, a header component that goes on every page). then, rather than copying and pasting a huge chunk of html every time you make a new page or update your header, the generator will update it for you. usually you can either generate a site locally, so you can export the whole site in regular html/css/js and upload it somewhere like neocities (which is what i'm doing, although im pretty sure you can also update neocities via git. i just. am not there yet lol.), or you can run the generator on a server with version control, and it will generate live pages whenever someone visits your site. (this is my rudimentary knowledge, please tell me if i have any of this wrong lol.) SSGs vary, to my knowledge, in the amount that you get to control and how optimised the final output is for loading speeds if you're incorporating a lot of multimedia or javascript.

the generator i am using is called astro and it's! amazing! (i had initially thought hugo would be funny to implement because it's called fucking hugo. but, astro was recommended to me in the fandom coders server. it was definitely a good choice for like, converting an existing website that is held together with sticky tape lol.) i followed the basic blog tutorial in the docs and it was pretty much perfect to get me up to speed. if you know a tiny tiny amount of javascript (basically just... understand how to declare a variable and how to import other scripts into your code) you will be fine.

i've got a long while to go but i am so incredibly excited about it and i don't think i can go back to building sites without it now lol

i have an ancient beast of a desktop pc that was pretty good at the time, as a factory gaming pc, but it ran windows 7 so i couldn't use it anymore due to the security risks. but with the new private office and stuff, i had a tiny amount of desk space going at home, so i was like. okay. i will figure out how to make this work. i missed it, it was still doing pretty good even in like, 2019 when i last had it out of storage, it has a lot of nostalgia attached for me. it lived up in my room, so it felt like a little miniature space of its own that was Mine. i remember all sorts of late night gaming sessions, but i also made a lot of art and writing and music that solely lived there.

no idea how long it will last! i guess its mileage will be a little better than it could be, because of the long break in usage, and because i also was running a laptop at the same time from about 2015, so past that point it was only on less than 50% of the time. it's also probably questionable because i have selected a relatively 'modern' distro which will probably wear it out faster. originally i had intended to go for something lightweight but then i thought about how actually my graphics card was pretty good at the time and could deal with games up until, like, the mid-2010s decently well. (again. it would have been EASIER to run a gaming pc on windows. but i wanted a challenge. also because of the optimisations, it will probably run sims 4 better than my poor laptop.) i am running manjaro (i learned in this process that linux distro debates are fiery and manjaro is divisive. but im not planning on doing anything that would be a massive security risk here, i just chose it because it looked pretty and would detect my hardware for me lol :')))), and im running it with plasma kde. both are pretty resource hungry. like im just writing this blog post with a few firefox tabs open and it's on... 30-50% of my cpu and memory consistently. but then i think about how im running windows 10 on a 4-year-old laptop and it's like probably around there too lol. so. i guess the more things change the more they stay the same.

anyway, the installation process was a little scary but deceptively simple especially as i do not intend to dual boot two operating systems lol, i just wiped the whole thing. but, it was exciting to get past the initial 'oh god i have no idea how to do this' and just do it! however, i was halted in actually booting the damn thing for a solid two days because i didnt realise i could use the installation stick to detect my existing OS. so i was hunting down my boot volume and changing the boot order, trying to trick it into booting 'windows' and getting a little worried i'd bricked it because it kept coming up like, 'no operating system found!'. (does it count as a brick if it's a pc tower? i guess bricks could come in that size. it would be more like. a giant's paperweight.) but we got there in the end, thank fuck! and now i have the PRETTIEST operating system :D it is sooo gorgeous and form over function (my firefox is currently running an animated neon pixel cyberpunk city theme lol. i can't decide if it's distracting or absolutely perfect and counterintuitively making me more focused because it's so pretty.) and it is sexy as fuck

screenshot of linux desktop running plasma kde, with neon icons and wallpaper

i accidentally replicated the windows 11 taskbar layout, but im still tweaking things. we'll see if it sticks.

anyway, unfortunately, amidst these distractions, i got some distressing news. my abusive father's condition has accelerated and while doctors are doing their best at the hospital to keep him going, none of my family has much hope left. we are all pretty sure he is going to die soon. i am a mess of feelings about it and that probably reflects in this entry. it sucks because i feel like im doing a lot better and im keeping busy and im doing my recovery stuff but when it happens it's probably going to unlock a bunch of shit i have shoved down.

im strangely relieved to have the pandemic as an excuse not to attend the funeral. let alone the personal risk and how furious i would be if i got covid because of that, like a final 'fuck you' from beyond the grave, i dont think i can bear hearing other people eulogise over the man who neglected and emotionally abused me for my entire childhood. such an event is not for me, not for anyone he hurt, unless we have risen above it and can express love. i cannot possibly be welcome because my trauma has always come out in anger. in my attempts to express my own hurt, i will hurt the feelings of others, whose impressions of my father were good. i think time and again about 'free churro'.

but, i'll be alright. i will step back from any need for performative grief, anticipatory or otherwise, and extend my love to the people in my family who loved me. i will take care of them, because they took care of me.

Date: 2023-07-06 03:18 am (UTC)
From: [personal profile] kavyina
First of all, very nice work on your site! I am also (relatively) active in the fandom coders server, but my sites are all very simple affairs. I haven't touched any sort of SSG or anything yet; I can barely muddle around JS.

And with regards to your abusive father's decline... It's hard, when you're expected to mourn someone who treated you so awfully. Especially with how many societies treat "speaking ill of the dead" and such. I'm glad to see that you have a good outlook on it. I think it's incredibly mature and healthy to focus on the people who are good to you and who did take care of you.

Date: 2023-07-06 08:57 am (UTC)
pendulumscale: (Default)
From: [personal profile] pendulumscale
Hooray for SSG and the new OS! Working on desktop pcs like that always feels like performing surgery lol. I've always been interested in Linix, but scared I'd majorly fuck up in the process. You're very persistent to keep going with it over a couple of days!

I totally get celebrating a character's bday. I've done the same a couple of times and you're right that it almost feels like two birthdays. I'd love to know what kind of cupcake you have for Hugo :).

Good on you for being kind to yourself and not forcing yourself to go to that funeral! I can imagine how complicated the emotions you're feeling are.

Date: 2023-07-06 07:20 pm (UTC)
pendulumscale: (mirror)
From: [personal profile] pendulumscale
Having an old computer definitely would make that feel less risky!

I used to celebrate a LOT of yugioh characters birthdays. Mostly Yuugi and Bakura (any flavor heheh). There was one year I also celebrated Pegasus' birthday cause me and him are so close with our birthdates. I made a lil cake one year for Bakura and used to have more time to make lil fanworks for him & same for Yuugi. With Pegasus I had to buy some port and cheese lol. I think the YGO fandom is a lil more open to celebrating character birthdays, so it's not uncommon to see fans all around the world making cakes and serving it to their YGO shrines. I think that kind of thing is really sweet :3

Date: 2023-07-09 12:20 pm (UTC)
tropicsbear: An eye with a circuit board pattern (Technology)
From: [personal profile] tropicsbear

That desktop layout is pretty. I've always admired highly customized computer layouts/UIs, but I could never bring myself to actually figure out how to implement one on my own machines.

Date: 2023-07-14 07:11 am (UTC)
From: [personal profile] ihearviolins
Your desktop is gorgeous! Just from experiencing your ~vibe~ here, it feels fitting, too. You did a great job with it.

And I'm so sorry about what you're experiencing with your father. It sounds like you're keeping a level-headed outlook about it, and doing what you need to do for your own sake. You sound extremely mature, and you're thoughtful too to think about the others around you the way that you are. Sending lots of warm wishes your way, along with e-hugs if you want them ♡

Profile

serpentinemalign: two hands belonging to people offscreen cup the head and face of my self insert, mat finish. (Default)
serpentine malign

December 2024

M T W T F S S
      1
2345678
9101112131415
16171819202122
2324252627 2829
3031     

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jul. 5th, 2025 12:01 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios