Posts

Gamifying Chores, and the issue of rewards. I’ve had to do a lot of ‘chores’ this week. Not really like difficult things, but phone calls, dinners to book, making food for family, excercise, dog training, car MOT prep. I get overwhlemed by this sort of thing very quickly, and tend to loose track of what needs done. All that to say, I was really proud of myself tonight for getting through the big todo list I had made on Friday. I was standing in the shower thinnking about what I should have as a treat to reward myself for getting everyhting done, and then it occurred to me. I couldn’t have anything. What the use of excerising and dieting if I reward myself with snacks? Whats the point of trying to work my way through my hobby backlog if I reward myself with buying more stuff? Treats tend to be indulgences and the truth is, I’m trying to cut down on a lot of that. ...

This is my latest attempt at pixel art. I do like it. I originally used opacity which feels kind of like cheating, but it looked great. However I couldn’t make Aesprite export with the opacity so I redid it with dithering, which feels more proper.

I can’t believe it took me so long to see this movie. I didn’t realise it went as weird and lovecraftian as it did, and now I am obsessed. I should make a list of horror movies that I love, like the Inspirations page but for specific movies rather than artists. I’m not good at articulating why I like a specific bit of media. There’s just something about the ambiguous and dreamlike storytelling, the horror that comes from ideas and tone, it really sticks with me.

I’m done with the monochrome, time to decide on some colours for the site. If we’re sticking with the magpie stuff then blues, purples, and greens all work. The quetsion is do I want to stick with the cleaner more modern style, or, go more pixelated. I’m going to look at some more OSR art and websites and see what I liek from there.

Logo progress so far… trying to decide if I like the letters or not. They look ok until they’re in the site and then they start to look weird. Unfortunately I did loose the eye dots, they’re just completley unreadable once the logo gets smaller. See below both lighht and dark versions, but depending on the theme mode you’ll only be able to see one or the other. Dark Mode Light

Boring stuff I’ve made life a little easier for myself by setting github up to deploy to neocities automatically. No more drag and drop! Logo I’ve also started on the logo properly. I considered making a vector image (and I might still), but I switched to pixel art to try and stick with 1 new thing to learn. It’s not terrible so far, but it’s not quite how I’d like it to be either ...

I’m not sure I like pixel art Or rather, I like looking at it, but find it infuriating to make. I’ll keep trying to see if I can get more into it, but for now I’ve made a little campfire for the home page. I’m quite proud of it, all things considered. I can’t imagine making a whole website of pixel art, I’d legit loose it. I also found a neat CRT effect on this site. I’m going to try and apply to the campfire and see if it’s better looking?

My Boi I started sketching a mascot / logo kind of thing. There’s lots of magpies in my area so I have loads of reference photos. This cutie has a little white dot next to their eye. The sketches I’ve kept the white dot and used the pics I took as a ref for the pose. I thought it would be neat if I could generally fit them into a sort of square shape? Like it might make it easier to create a logo if the dimensions are regular. It almost works, and if you fill the top left corner with an icon it fits nicely (moon / start / sun / ‘TFJ’ could all work). ...

Rats, cats, magpies Trying to define yourself online is a minefield. Even just picking a name feels impossible. Trying to find something that resonates with you is difficult, trying to find something that resonates but isn’t cringy is very difficult, and anything that fits that brief is guaranteed to be taken already. It’s a very annoying horrible venn diagram. I almost always come back to animals that I identify with. Cats, rats, and birds all appealed to me. Yet all attempts to fit these animals into a name failed miserably (see afformentioned horrible venn diagram). That being said, I feel good with what I’ve settled on. The second line from the magpie nursery rhyme “One for sorrow, Two for joy”. Magpies are definitely in my top 3 birds of all time, and their tendency to pick up shiny things is an accurate parallel to how I pick up new hobbies. I like the idea of a two headed magpie, one head is more reserved, sensible, maybe a bit gloomy. The other head is more eclectic, hopeful, maybe lacking common sense. One head finishes WIPS, the other starts new ones. I’ll try an make a wee logo of them, it’ll be cute. ...

Where else can I go? I’ve always found the wider social media landscape a bit intimidating. I was too young for MSN, never warmed up to facebook, snapchat, insta or whatever came after. I liked youtube, reddit, and discord, where I could enguage in hobby communities without wondering if my family would stumble across a comment I’d written. I never considered myself a heavy social media user. And yet as we come to the halfway point of 2026, the UK faces wide sweeping changes to the social media world. A flat ban for under 16 year olds and, consequently, a requirement to prove that you’re over 16. Given I am not prepared to dish out my government ID to any backwater data broker on the net, I will be using a VPN for as long as that remains an option, and dipping out entirely otherwise. It made me think about how such an important commodity has come to rest in the hands of some of the greediest, most irresponsible people in our society. Big Tech holds the keys to so much of our lives, and our governments have done a historically shit job of protecting us from the greed and irresponsibility of these corporate giants. ...