ACBob's ZimZam - Blog A personal site is a big commitment. It is supposed to encapsulate everything you want it to, it is your little corner of the interwebz that you have to your full arsenal. And yet, when presented with this potential, I do not have anything for it.
Sure, I could host a blog and write all about things! What things? The sort of things you write blogs about, of-course! It doesn't get any deeper than that, that's what blogs are for, writing, never-mind if you actually have anything worthy of comment or to write about.
Maybe, like many others, I could write a webcomic! People who create never have concrete plots or stories they want to tell or show, surely, so I should just be fine making it up as I go along. And, at worst, I can just re-do the entire thing with a new coat of paint. Surely I'd be able to get it further for people to click through. Why would a webcomic have anything else behind it other than it being a neat idea to create?
The design and the layout of the website should be navigable and easy for everyone. After-all, so many people are bound to see it. Where so many others have fun, they have such silly limitations like perfect screen sizes, or desktop only, my fun is surely wrought through perfectly following standards and intense platform support in the same perfect quality sheen of the site's design1.
My first personal website, in whatever form it exists, was created because someone else in my peer group was making one, and I thought it'd be a neat idea to copy it. The second attempt was created as I'd found a much better host, something that didn't seemingly conform me to professionalism such as GitHub or FreeWebHostArea. It, of all of these, probably has the most claim to the fame of being a personal website. It's loaded with me.
The design of "ACBob's Personal Website" is incredibly basic, the markings of an ametuer with web technologies, but it has more information about myself2 than the furthest this website can get to. Links to different Neocity websites that I liked one afternoon, links to various social medias, a (more) fully fleshed out about me that isn't a cop-out to be about the website. It's still not perfect, of-course, the blog only exists because at the time I'd felt like a good personal website has to have a blog. Because a personal website is this strict set of guidelines you follow, and you must follow them to be in that special 'in' club where you have a personal website.
Because, it seems, to me that having a personal website is the act upon itself; you have a personal website to have a personal website! This probably stems from the very first site, where I realised you could do XYZ so why wouldn't I. It's also an incredibly social media centric idea. Anyone and everyone can have a MySpace page, so you should too! Go on and get one to show your friends, or invite your friends, or blahblahblah... There doesn't need to be anything to show off, just go get a MySpace page.
I've inspired others in my circle to create websites because I've shown it's not a difficult task. Anyone with a text editor and some passion can do it. But what I've come to realise is these people have far more passion or creativity for web than I do. This website, because of its very roots of existing to exist, has stagnated and is no longer (or ever was?) a space for me. It's a space for showing off. Look what I can and have done, look upon my website with its perfect pristine standards! ...And then you look at anyone else's and they're doing things I would've never thought of, like integrating pre-rendered graphics or doing spirals for navigation.
Today3, I realized that I don't like my website. Sure, I like it from the perspective of look at it, it's perfect, but I don't like it. It's supposed to be my space, and I've turned it into some kind of portfolio, like some monster looking for a job in computers4. I've sat and thought about how I could better it, and I realised I don't really exist in that form.
I am an artist through-and-through, and I create anything I want to as my artform. I program not for myself or for the end product, but because the programming is fun and I think it looks neat5. But this capacity I create in cannot be transferred to the world of having a website. I do not have a consistent art style in a sense, I recreate or redo for whatever I need to. Sometimes, I draw with a thick brush in smooth cartoony shapes and naïvety. Other times, I have a messy, noisy, brush with a more lenient approach to things - need some eyes? Put 'em off-kelter from another.
Privacy is huge for me, and I'm sure it's a factor. I can't answer the question of 'who am I', as it depends from where you ask. In my circle of friends, I am my name, the struggling and sufferer, who shares as much as it wants without much concern, and a huge rambler. Flowing out I am hidden amongst the online world, I've consolidated different online spaces through username6 and varying amounts of info. And in person, in the real world, I'm not very much at all, with no desire to share.
And yet I can still create. Squonker, ViewMan, these are projects that I can make and aren't the same as other art (in the sense of being for me) yet I can make them. How do I turn this website into a ViewMan? I don't have an identity to fill it with.
Of-course this point is caveated with the fact that yes, I do enjoy that, and I do think more people should focus on accessibility in that regard. Maybe just not as much as I do, I go a bit overboard for the average Joe.↩
At the time.↩
Or more accurately yesterday, 'tis 1 AM.↩
I don't mean this negatively. Computer folk are awesome. I just don't fancy doing that.↩
E.g. that time I hand-wrote a GLSL transpiler or an entirely compile-time lua binder.↩
Largely on accident, without much thought. No, I won't confirm what is me.↩