11/30 – The Bulb’s Last Stand (of 2020!)

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We’re getting real close to the end of 2020 here, lads, and suffice it to say, Somnolescent is going out with a bang. I mean, what don’t we have to show off? New sites, another story, things brewing for ages finally released, infrastructural improvements, blog posts! It’s a goddamn clearinghouse of material–that I will now recap for your pleasure.

• Recaps

10/2 – The Ballad of the Comeback Kids

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This is a little more like it! With the weather cooling down (not here though, still 60s and 70s galore, guh), the Somnolians have been feeling vital again. borb and Caby are over their Art Fight fatigue, I’m back to writing after building that absurdly big Quake level (promise you’ll get to play it this year) and feeling damn good about it, and–what do you know? More Pennyverse! Much better recap than last month–let’s get into it.

• Recaps

7/29 – Giving Up the Gun

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Last month’s recap was a bit of a laugh and an admission that we just didn’t have too much desire to interact with the outside world. The world of MSN Messenger and IRC and chunky CRTs and old websites was more appealing to us, and I was on a self-imposed tech timeout after spending much of May fighting with Linux. (It still fucking sucks as a desktop OS and you know it.)

Not that we weren’t active, of course; things were drawn, sites were built, I write once more–all the good stuff you expect from us. I’ll try not to ramble, there’s much to get through.

• Recaps

Incomplete Eclipses and Muffled Screams

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I’m an artist who uses DeviantArt so I’m gonna tell you guys why you really shouldn’t force your site’s user-base to be beta testers.

• Essays

4/29 – Obsessive Little Moths

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You’d think after Site Month, the Somnolians would slow down, right? Not quite, we’re just getting started. More redesigns, blog posts, art! It all needs a recap!

• Recaps

4/5 – Sites! Sites!! SITES!!!

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Okay, so the March recap is technically a few days late, but that’s only because we’ve been busy. I mean it. If August is Pennyverse Month, March is Site Month, because damn near every site and subdomain on our network got a massive overhaul. I think it’s safe to say we’ve kicked the winter blues, the cabin fever, whatever you call it–and now we recap.

• Recaps

mariversary 2.0: I Actually Paid for This

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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~

• Retrospectives

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.

• Cult Activity

11/30 – Inspiration (or Self-Defeat)

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It’s been slower around here leading up to the holidays, but still worth getting a small recap out the door before the rush of blog posts lined up in December. Oh, and we gotta talk about that…

• Recaps

10/31 – Chunky Soup

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If you haven’t yet noticed, you’ve had 30 entire days to do so: it’s spooky month. This does not in any way call for a recap, but here we are nonetheless. Nowhere near as long as the last one, promise. Come! There’s Eevees!

• Recaps