Category Archives: Retrospectives

The Somnolians waxing about the events and personal works of their lives so far.

Somnolescent’s 2020 Traffic Report

Happy New Year, everyone! Now that 2020’s over and I have a full year’s worth of data, I figured it’d be fun to look back at how we did as far as our Google rankings and traffic across our network goes. Of course, nothing here is especially mind-blowing as far as the numbers go, but fuck the numbers, it’s just curious to see what people are looking at. There’s lots of line graphs and pie charts too, if you like those. And…I might… Continue reading

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Two Years Glowing: 2020 in Review

Things were much different around Somnolescent when I wrote 2019’s yearly recap. For one thing, I was stuck in a dirty bedroom in Ohio, but mostly, the group was still growing, still trying to sum together our edges. We were close, but still guarded. Emotions were high. We knew there was more to get out of the bulb.

And yeah, here we stand! Five days ago passed the two-year anniversary of Somnolescent. We’ve never been more confident, comfortable, productive, focused. We have someone new aboard. We’re constantly expanding our empire and exploring new ground–I even just took up drawing somehow!

While we’ve been mostly good about our monthly recap series this year, Christmas always marks the time to gather it all up and speed through it–and we still have a ton to get through. There’s art and philosophy buried in the pile too! It’ll be fun. Come celebrate! Continue reading

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Caby Chrimbas Update

Quick Christmas update from the resident cabybaba here. It’s 9am and we’ve finished unwrapping presents, we’ve done all the Christmas morning calls and webcalls, and now I’m sat in my room with far too much chocolate, patiently waiting for lads to wake up in Somnol. Timezones and all that,,,, Continue reading

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Borb rambles about 2020 & emotions

It’s that time again! It’s time for me to vomit into a text block about my year and how it went and all that good stuff. It’s gonna be a bit of an emotional one so just heads up. Continue reading

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A circus or a seaside pier, a sausage or a can of beer

Rambles about my childhood, triggered by the worldwide pandemic. Continue reading

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mariversary 2.0: I Actually Paid for This

Last year, I wrote a semi-sappy, emotionalish retrospective of my time spent on Neocities and how it lead to me meeting Caby. I think I sounded more guilty than I actually felt. There’s a lot more that went into “orange fox bad” than you can just sum up as “angry me” or “dumb kids”. Frankly, it was kind of the perfect storm of insanity. We still giggle about it.

This year’s mariversary (two entire years since I made my site there!), I thought I’d do something more fun. Every so often, I’ll see someone hold up Neocities as an example of the spirit of the old internet kept alive. I’ve talked at length about how bullshit that is, no, we’re not getting into it again. What never gets brought up though is how utterly broken Neocities actually is. Neocities is best described as a second-week Ruby on Rails prototype, yet Kyle Drake was ballsy enough to get people to pay for it anyway. Including me.

And prime example of why it’s so fucked: despite me getting banned, all my Supporter’s sites are still active. All of them. I thought it’d be fun to go back through all the ones I can remember and explain why I made them. Time for memories~ Continue reading

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Good Influences – My 1-year Anniversary Blog Post

Hiya, it’s mon, ringing in at around 7pm on January 21st… Not sure why that’s notable, but whenever I write little journal entries for myself, that’s usually what I do before I get to what I’m talking about. (Hopefully I can start writing less of this for myself and more of this for the blog.) Continue reading

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Auld Lang Syyyne

Caby enters the new decade~ Continue reading

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A Year Under the Bulb: Our Upgrade Plans

The first official year of Somnolescent has had me figuring out little webmaster things I’d previously had no experience with. So far, it’s been really good, no doubt helped by our excellent hosting and a little bit of common sense on the part of all the Somnolians.

Nevertheless, we’re really only just getting started here. As the world continues to churn around our collective, I’ve a few major upgrades I’d like to perform on our internal and external server infrastructure going forward. I’ll explain more under the cut. Continue reading

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A Year Under the Bulb: 2019 in Review

And so, 1998+1 has come and gone. The first official year of Somnolescent. The first year out on our own, our own hosting, in our own group. People came, people left, projects were started, and love blossomed.

2019 was a year of change, of growth, and of optimistic unease. It was the start of us as Somnolians realizing what we had and what we didn’t need. It was the year of itemizing fears and coming to terms with realities. (You might say it sounds dramatic and pretentious, but so is life.)

Don’t worry, though. We got a lot done that people outside the group can enjoy too. If you missed anything, it’s more than likely here. Continue reading

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