If that wasn't the longest pause on journal entries yet, it's probably close. I'm so out of practice with these! For a bit, it was because I genuinely didn't feel like updating it, and now I have a bit of a pileup of stuff to cover, so let's not let that put me off further. I'll split them up into sections. Let's go!
Protoweb!
I've already posted this literally everywhere, but my first Protoweb restoration has been accepted! I restored imax.com, circa 1998. It was in incredibly good shape for a Wayback grab, and it was fun recreating what images were lost and learning how server-side imagemaps work for backwards compatibility. Read the full story over on the ProtoBlog, and look out, because I've already got my next site lined up.
At a crossroads with cammy.somnol
Part of the reason I stopped with the journal entries for a bit is because I've suddenly grown a little dissatisfied visually with it and with the site in general. It's not the aesthetic necessarily (love the cuteness and the textures), and it's not even that the art is approaching two years old now in some cases. It's just that I draw Setter differently than I used to, and that makes any new pages with him not match the old ones unless I intentionally stick with some of my old, wonky ways of drawing, say, his ears, or the dot eyes.
That leads me to ponder that, if I do redraw everything, if I should stick with Setter or replace him with Cammy as was the original idea (I just couldn't draw him yet, and now he's got a design I love drawing). Aesthetically, do I want everything to stay hand-drawn, or do I mix in some Bryce 3D primitives and lattices for the islands? Do I stick with fullbodies, or do I go with proper bordered banners a la Netscape's old site (or Districts)?
I'm still feeling out what I want to do, but I probably will redraw everything and finally get everyone else's sona on here like I've been meaning to. Back when I started illustrating cammy.somnol, everyone was very drawn out in full, head to toe, no real stylization, no effects on anything, and I dunno, I might be in the mood to do something a little different. Plus, the posing fullbodies as decoration was roughly what I had in mind for mari.somnol, now that that is coming more into focus for me, so giving cammy.somnol something unique might be in order.
Various server shenanigans (ZNC, vhosts in Apache)
Whatever I decide to do with cammy.somnol, I've started to expand out what I use my little beta testing home server for. Apache can actually support running many servers on one instance through what are called virtual hosts. I've been meaning to set up more of these for a few months now, because it's actually really fucking useful for site debugging in ways that editing local files isn't. For one thing, you can experiment with .htaccess settings or anything without disturbing your live setup, but you can also run link checkers and spiders across your site to find broken links, which came in super handy when I was working on imax.com for Protoweb.
I also put together a cute little index for easily linking people to all the sites that I'm currently working on. Not everything has been uploaded yet (because I haven't started those projects, generally), but my next Protoweb project is up there, ready to be worked on, plus cammy.somnol as before.
As a bonus, now that I'm spending a lot of time in IRC, I figured it'd be a good time to finally set up a bouncer! Bouncers let you share one IRC login across multiple clients and keep track of chat history, even when you're not connected to it. Basically, it makes IRC feel a little more like a modern group chat app, but in the ways you'd want and none of the ones you wouldn't. I'm quite pleased with the setup; now, I can close MegaIRC when I'm playing a game or off to bed and not miss anything that happened while I was offline, and no one can tell I'm not there. Win-win!
Whoops Cammy might be working two jobs soon
I'm leaving details of this a little vague until stuff starts landing, but it just so happened that I've applied for two jobs, one in real life and one remote, that are both interested in hiring me. I've never worked two jobs, and both of them alone pay better than Staples, so hey! Infinite money cheat??? (I'll see how I like both jobs and the workload of having two jobs once I've got them. It sure would be cool to be making so much money though. I'll finance that car and those certifications I swear I will focus more on in a bit in no time, with money left over for stupid shit and computer upgrades, maybe! My daily driver is turning ten this year, I should eventually look into a properly new PC...)
