Status Updates
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I’ve known about Neocities for many years now but had little reason to join considering their limited features as a free web host in comparison to services like Netlify or GitHub Pages. And at first glance it may be hard to see it as anything more than a gimmick for 90s-internet nostalgiacs and kids with no coding experience… but with the increasing commercialization of social media and the move toward A̴I̷, I am quickly changing my opinion on these more barebones social networks.
After learning more about the indie web movement I’m beginning to appreciate the unique communities offered by Neocities and its biggest peer, Nekoweb. They’re great places to find creative personal sites made by real people with pro-social values and unique interests. Can’t say how long I’ll stick with Neocities in particular considering their restrictive Content Security Policy which disallows almost all external content for non-supporters, but for now I’m getting by with my static site generator and having fun exploring the small-web community and helping people get started on their own journeys.
My Neocities page:
http://turtlemay.neocities.org/ -
To encourage myself to write more, I have begun publishing some of my thoughts, informal writings, and drafts in a simpler format which can be updated easily from my mobile devices. It is a static text-only format inspired by some alt web protocols like Gopher and Gemini, but without the superficial limitations.
I have created a separate website for this content, designed first for terminal-based browsers such as
lynxand also accessible from any normal web browser. I’m not yet entirely sure what to call it, but I’m referring to it presently as my “alt web site”.The project is inspired by the “Small Web” movement, which promotes lightweight, self-hosted, personal web pages, far from the mass commercialization of the modern social web. While my main homepage is already largely informed by those standards, I have taken the idea a step further and gone with a more 80s conception of the internet with pure text and static files. More robust content which does not suit such a format will continue to be posted here.
To visit the site, point your terminal or regular web browser to
tm.trtl.in. -
Preparing to launch my new private Minecraft server at
mc.trtl.in.I have been out of the loop for many years since my old crew stopped playing but I hope to get a small group together soon.
Our landing page and whitelist application info:
http://minecraft.turtlemay.us/ -
New blog/website launched at https://www.turtlemay.us/. This is the first personal site I’ve had in quite a few years and I expect will contain some tech-related articles, photography, and links to my various projects.
So far it’s a pure static build using the Astro framework, which I’m quite happy with. Single-file UI components with backend scripting feels so much like the PHP days but with fancy compile-time capabilities, hot-reloading, and the option to hydrate client-side UI. It’s the convenient workflow I’ve been sorely missing through a decade of Express.js and the like.