Over a year ago, I published version 3.0 of my website, breaking a nearly 2 year streak of no updates. It was released in an “open beta” stage as I wanted to show off what I had been working on and get the basic parts of the site out as-is, rather than keep and release it all in the future.

A few things have changed during the process of the website's development. Aside from the portfolio being consistently populated with content (something I previously couldn't do as frequently), I switched computers and static site generators, I implemented a few features I forgot about previously, and I had to fix a few bugs I either introduced or encountered along the way. There's a bit more, but that are the most relevant.

With that out of the way, let's not waste any more time.

something about fans and art

Back in June of 2024, I added a fan art gallery to the website. Prior, I've seen other folks keep a catalog of all the fan art they've received, whether it be saving them all to a folder or posting them in a dedicated channel on their Discord server or whatever. I wouldn't say I'm much different in that case.

Having then sifted through a lot of the ones I've preserved over the years, I thought it would be nice to share them onto my website for those who might be interested, especially if some of them are not readily available for one reason or another. So, I did just that. Did it really need to look like they're an exhibit of a museum? Not necessarily, no. Given I've styled other areas of the site previously, I'd argue it's on brand.

Initially, the gallery was available through the portfolio, but recently it was moved over to the miscellaneous section as I personally thought it wouldn't entirely fit in a category of stuff I mostly made. I don't want anyone to think that the fan of of my characters to be considered my own work, that would be pointless and redundant.

On that note, if you're interested in drawing fan art of my characters, there are some reference sheets over in the Character gallery. Unfortunately, they still have not been updated in quite some time, however I have been slowly in the process of doing updated references, alongside others I haven't yet done. (in the cases of Hayley, ELL-E, etc.)

draw something!

I wanted to do one of those things for october where people produced a piece of art every day throughout the month, however instead of flood my social media with a piece of artwork every single day, I decided to dump them all onto my website (with some exceptions.)

Then, I thought “Why stop there?” So, I further spun it off into it's own gallery in the off-chance I decide to return to this ever again. It isn't as complete as I had wanted it, but served good enough during the month of October. I'll likely go back and fix some issues as the event concludes tomorrow.

(Yes, I know there's already a term people often use to describe such an event, especially in October.)

On a semi-related note, the year before I did something fairly similar, but with Minecraft builds. Unfortunately for some, building things can be very time consuming, and as a result I only built literally three things over the span of the entire month. Compare that to drawing which can take me less time (depending on how much effort i put into it or the timeframe I begin doodling.)

dream on... (or off)

A month ago I purchased a new computer, slowly trying to adapt to my new environment ever since. around that time, I was introduced to Hugo, a static site generator written in Go. unlike Jekyll, not very many dependencies were required (i.e. an entire installation of Ruby) for one, so after a bit of interest i spent a good portion of September 2024 porting over the entire site's codebase over. There isn't much else to discuss besides for this:

During the process, I was reminded of when I almost got around to implementing a 'latest dream’ thing at the top of the dream log, with my reasoning being the initial plan seemed to be quite impossible to replicate in CSS (especially when taking smaller displays into consideration), so it never got implemented, leaving whatever I had implemented in the development stage unused.

Around this time, I was having troubles with porting over the code that separated the year and month from the dreams. As a result, I went back and implemented a simpler version of what i had envisioned before, almost simply by using code from the aforementioned fan art gallery as a basis. I also re-did the background graphic. Kind of wish I kept the initial aesthetic, but this version is okay.

Finally, I also implemented ‘dream visualizations’ for the dreams I felt like would've needed them, or have made previously. The plan was to release them along side the “latest dream” field, but instead both went unused! Whoops!

everything else

For a much more complete list, the site updates page is this way. Aside from layout changes, here are the things I couldn't write much about:

Over in the portfolio:

• I re-added the “webdev” category in the graphic design gallery. Previously, it was home to like one or two things, but there's been a few things I have worked on since then.
• I added a proper “builders” list to entries in the FrixCraft gallery, alongside removing the Twitter Collections link as they seemingly phased that out not too long after I published the initial version.

Meanwhile, over in the miscellaneous section:

• All background images were updated with more updated depictions
• the links page was cleaned up and updated
• the dream log was revised to fit on smaller displays
• the site updates page was re-implemented,
• the credits page was renovated and listed properly.

the blog

Something I really wanted to do with a blog post like is regarding the actual blog itself. For something that I call a “blog,” I rarely–if ever–use it for anything but talking about changes to the website. Even then, the last time i really used it for something like that was last year when I wrote that post about version 3.0.

The main problem with coming up with things for these blog entries is that it can be quite difficult for me to think about how I'm going to write about something. It might not be as relevant to consider for shorter format posts, however it's still pretty challenging to think about, even if I don't insist on writing about that much.

The same applies to the Articles section, where for the past year or so, the only article I have ever written was a guide to videotapes that i eventually i re-wrote last year, and since I haven't written anything new for that part of the site. I've had ideas about what I could write (I still do) for new articles, however it's often tricky for me to think about where I'm going to start or figure out a way to word it without stumbling over my words or constantly repeating myself. (it happened when I was finishing with this entry, believe it or not.)

You would think that now, once I've finally switched to using a static site generator, I would feel a lot better about populating the site with content on a frequent basis, and although that has been proven with the October 2024 “draw-a-thon” I previously mentioned, along with other instances, it rarely happens.

Lots of things can also happen “within the moment,” very much apparent with the actual site itself. In instances like these, I typically have to be in the “right mood” to make and apply these changes. One good example is that I only got around to implementing the “featured dream” thing after I had initially abandoning it was because I was already in the process of transitioning the pre-existing codebase over to the new SSG.

Now, that's not to say maintaining a website is without it's flaws (not even specifically to the problems I just mentioned), however I feel like that is going to be inevitable with most places online, not just limited to personal websites, link dumps, and social media platforms (or what have you).

With all of the recent news of social media platforms falling apart, (Twitter is continuing their streak of getting worse, despite literally being the place most artists share their work; all of the generative AI slop taking over it and other platforms, as well as cohost announcing their closure a few months ago), I think updating this place might honestly just be the way to go, regardless of their flaws.

One thing I certainly want to do is return to actually making blog posts (and articles) for this website, especially in the form of shorter-form posts, regardless of what I've already written. I was able to do them just fine for a period of time, so what happened?

Another thing I might consider is adapting posts previously written for social media if I feel it's worth the effort, though in those cases, I'll probably consider just hosting a separate archive for those posts. The only exception I'm willing to make is anything I've already put onto the site, particularly stuff already in my portfolio.

Now, this is not to say I'll be abandoning social media for good (subject to change). I would not have included links to them on the landing page, the about page, and the home page. I have also begun to resume posting on a few platforms, particularly my SpaceHey and Bluesky pages (especially the latter). It can be fun to check out from time-to-time (though maybe excluding Twitter) and things often get “cross-posted” from here to there, so the options are definitely still available regardless of how complete this site is.

Anyway, there's still a lot more I could go on about, especially in terms of stuff I could or plan on adding in the not too distant future, however I feel like I've already talked about those in the past. Maybe soon I'll make a proper roadmap for the site, but I also don't want to pad this entry any further. I feel that I've already gone on long enough.

To conclude, If you want to keep up-to-date with what I've been doing, you can follow this website's RSS feed, find other ways to contact me through my about page, or do both.

Have a safe Halloween and see you whenever the hell I decide to write something interesting. Take care.

-Sam (pjfrix)