Tag Archives: Internet

Lucky Sevens: How Did People Get to somnolescent.net in 2025?

Posted on January 1, 2026 by mariteaux

Happy new year to all the faithful Letters readers out there! As dcb said in his closing out the year post, groups like ours don’t usually stick around this long, but as we go into eight years of humbly posting obscure shit for your edification, the lights are on bright as ever here.

I thought I’d start up a new year’s tradition this year (which, turns out, I did back in 2021 but I guess gave up on) by giving you a peek behind the curtain. While somnolescent.net doesn’t track you (not just for privacy reasons, more because we like lightweight pages and clean HTML), I do have a lot of data courtesy of Google and Bing about where our pages get linked out online and what search terms bring people to what pages. While “Five Neat Things From the Somnolescent Archives” and follow-up were meant to bring you what I think are some interesting draws to the site network, this one’s gonna be all about what actually draws people in.

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The New HTTP Order

Posted on January 1, 2025 by mariteaux

Happy new year to all our faithful blog readers! January is always the time for reflection and looking forward to the future, and while I do the personal talk on my personal site, I want to discuss the future of you connecting to this here site network here today. I’ve beaten this drum before, but I’m about ready to puncture a hole in it today, because I’m pretty sure there’s not going to be a drum to beat in the next few years.

I am seeing the death of the HTTP-only connection coming in the next year or two, and I am pissed. I will have to force HTTPS on somnolescent.net, something I have resisted at every turn so far, if we want to remain accessible to the wider Web. Think this is hyperbole? Here’s a nice throwback to ring in 2025—have a steaming hot marf rant to keep you warm in these winter months.

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Posted in Happenings | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

How to Host a Site Network for All Your Friends

Posted on June 2, 2024 by mariteaux

So about a week ago, I got a very nice email from a Somnolescent reader named Cyrano. I don’t normally post reader mail–for starters, I don’t get enough of it to make mailbag posts a thing–but this time, I got a mailer daemon every time I tried to reply. There’s nothing personal in it, so I’m gonna take the risk and post things on the blog. Hopefully you see this, Cyrano, and you don’t think I simply ignored you. Your reply address isn’t working is all.

Somnolescent has a pretty unique setup as far as little amateur indie Web stuff goes. Everyone on somnolescent.net has their own account where only they can access their subdomains’ files, and potentially the files of domains outside somnolescent.net. Because I know Somnolescent attracts people who are in little online art collectives and Web groups and sometimes would like to know how to start their own site like ours, I’ve elected to lightly edit the book I wrote for Cyrano and post it here to Letters instead. Hopefully, someone finds the information useful.

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Posted in Projects | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Promptly Forgotten: Remembering MyGameBuilder.com

Posted on February 2, 2024 by dotcomboom

“Hi! Welcome to this quick demonstration of My Game Builder, a new tool to allow you to build games for yourself and for your friends, online, using just a web browser. The tool is free to use, and free to share with your friends.” Continue reading →

Posted in Show-and-Tell | Tagged , , , | 15 Comments

The Death of HTTPS (on somnolescent.net)

Posted on February 2, 2021 by mariteaux

One of my biggest pet peeves with being a webmaster is HTTPS. The way that HTTPS is handled on the backend is so invasive, so exclusionary, that it regularly gets in the way of some very basic things I’d like to be able to do around here.

By the end of this year, with few exceptions, somnolescent.net will be going HTTP-only. I’m writing this post in the hopes of staving off any upset or confusion on behalf of you, our loyal readers (and also you, the Somnolians). Continue reading →

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Somnolescent’s 2020 Traffic Report

Posted on January 1, 2021 by mariteaux

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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Tools, Toys, and You and I

Posted on May 9, 2020 by mariteaux

Been thinking a lot about simplicity, entropy, and how we’ve come to rely on computers in the past few decades. Here’s an essay about how technology should augment us in being people and nothing more. Continue reading →

Posted in Essays | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

How the Feed Killed Creation

Posted on September 7, 2019 by mariteaux

Let’s start with a premise. We have a creator. She’s a writer, maybe, or maybe a visual artist. Maybe dabbles in animation. She’s got big ideas and the drive to see them to fruition. Might even be months into a grand project right now. Yet, she’ll post her stuff online or in a Discord server, and no one gives a shit.

The internet’s built on user-generated content, stuff ordinary people (people like you, perhaps!) create. And yet, with all these sites for it, where’s the support? Let’s talk about the feed and how it’s killed independent content. Continue reading →

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Gopher is Not the Web

Posted on June 27, 2019 by dotcomboom

Every now and then, I see new Gopher clients and sites popping up. And that’s great—we’re keeping this protocol alive for the next generation. However, I can’t help but think some of the methods of doing so is restrictive, only … Continue reading →

Posted in Essays | Tagged , | 1 Comment

The Web is a Shitty App Platform

Posted on May 9, 2019 by mariteaux

I’m a big believer in implementing as little as possible to get the task at hand done. I’m as minimalist as it gets. Proprietary, open source—ultimately doesn’t matter to me so long as it gets the job done as simply as it can.

So why in fuck’s name did we give everything away to the web? Continue reading →

Posted in Essays | Tagged , | 7 Comments