The First Proper Somnol Art Collab!

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I lined something dcb drew! Lining is fun.

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The Somnolescent Manifesto, Second Edition

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Today, the new somnolescent.net launches! It’s taken us a couple months, but we all love it here. Far livelier, far cuter, far better matching how we truly are as a group, and far simpler to boot.

With it comes a new manifesto, something I felt everyone should be able to weigh in on rather than the one I wrote in a few evenings back in 2018. While we elected to go with a simpler about page for the moment, I still think the new manifesto deserves a place in the spotlight alongside it. I’ll be looking for a place to link it on the site itself, no worries.

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How Do the Somnolians Organize Their Desktops?

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We at Somnolescent love old desktops. Not the fresh, factory Windows installs all the retrocomputing channels show off, but lived-in little portraits of someone else’s workspace from long, long ago. Whether it be DeviantART submissions showing off someone’s new, custom wallpaper or classic speedpaints with desktops and MSN Messenger windows incidentally in the background, we love seeing them and we post them in our Discords all the time.

The gradual move back to our chunky old PCs got us thinking about our own desktops and how they stack up to the workspaces of old, and honestly, to each other’s. As such, have a compilation of screenshots and a whole bunch of rambles about how we get around our machines and how we keep things organized (or not). Click the images for full-sized, lossless screenshots if you wanna peek at all our icons.

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Somnolescent Radio: Spring 2021

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A return to those magical posts about what we’re all listening to? It must be spring! Devon suggested bringing it back, and given how another person means an even wider array of genres to choose from (plus more of a chance for anyone with a bad case of shyness to sit one out–no judge, it happens), it only made sense. Excuse me while I remember how these are formatted…

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Somnolescent Radio: Spring 2020

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With three months or so to update the ol’ playlists, it’s about time to bring you another edition of Somnolescent Radio. As the first one went, each Somnolian has chosen a song dear to them at the moment and written a bit about it. Have a listen.

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Somnolescent Radio: Winter 2020

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We listen to a lot of music at Somnolescent, and we’ve been gradually sharing more and more of it with one another. It’s entertainment, inspiration, and something to pour over fansites and music sites hunting down. Indie rock, dad rock, things that aren’t rock, the lot.

Sometime towards the end of 2019, I got the idea to solicit a song from everyone in the group and compile them into something of a playlist for you to pick through. I asked each Somnolian to write a little bit about the song they picked to go along with their choice. With any luck, we’ll be making this a seasonal thing. Let’s get to the picks.

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A Year Under the Bulb: An Ode to DreamHost

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As you might be aware, when Somnolescent first got a web presence, it did so under a little site called Neocities. (No link, doesn’t deserve it.) As casual web hosting, it’s…fine. It’s hard to get excited about its lack of features, its style-over-substance presentation, how broken it really is, the abysmal Supporter’s plan, and especially its community, but for just getting a website online, it’s okay.

For our needs, Neocities wasn’t about to satisfy. We needed something sturdier, something with a better featureset, better support, and people who give a shit at the helm. The search didn’t last long, and the choice for us was pretty clear: only DreamHost would do. And we love it.

Over the past year, we’ve had nothing but good things to say about DreamHost. It’s been able to support nearly every little venture and idea we’ve had so far, and we’ve had many. Frankly, for what we get, it makes Supporter’s look like a ripoff. Come, as I rave about getting far more than you pay for.

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