T w e n t y S i d e d

Besides sulking, ranting, and pacing restlessly while my site was down, I spent the last several days updating bits of the site that have been neglected for ages. Most of this is probably only interesting or useful for new readers, but just in case you’re curious what I did:

There’s a new front page. Yeah. When was the last time anyone looked at that thing? I don’t even know.

Also, I updated the favicon for the site. I liked the old one because it was a blue die, but it looked terrible when mashed down to 16×16, which seems to be the norm these days. The new one isn’t as cool, but it’s more visually clear.

I’ve revamped the System Shock novel. Some PHP updates broke it ages ago, but now it should work as intended. Also I got rid of the archaic IFRAME-based design.

Heads up, you’re not at the end of the post. The next thing after the jump is an image of the thing we usually see below a post, which makes this feel like the end. But keep scrolling.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “What’s New?”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

If you see this post, then you have joined me on the new webhost. Welcome. If you look around, you’ll notice everything is basically the same. That’s actually kind of disappointing, considering the work it took to get us here.

(If you’re curious, I went with 1And1 Hosting. Seems pretty fine so far. Good speed. The control panel makes sense, although it has some annoying upsell features I keep bumping into when looking for controls. I got the low-level access I wanted and I even managed to use the Linux shell without killing anyone. I’m so proud of myself.)

What’s really strange is that there are still people seeing the old site. They can’t see this. The old blog is still running, even though I can no longer get to it. I can’t moderate the comments or post updates back there. The people left behind are like the folks that end up trapped in ghostly Silent Hill: Inhabitants of a purgatorial realm that have no idea they’re trapped.

I’ve still got a bunch of fussy housekeeping to deal with. I’ve taken the Wolfenstein post and pushed it off until next week. I’m sorry this entire week has been nothing but boring maintenance announcements. If it makes you feel any better, you should be able to edit your comments again. I mean, there’s no content to talk about this week, but if there was just imagine the typos you could fix!

The forums should return soon. Let me know if you’re still missing any features / plugins.

UPDATE: I’m doing the domain transfer now. I thought this would be quick and painless, but aparently it can result in days(?!WTF!?) of downtime. Hopefully it goes quickly.

(I don’t know why I’m posting this, if the site goes down you won’t see it.)

UPDATE 2 DAYS LATER: I fully retract any endorsement I gave this host. If you signed up for their service based on my recommendation, I sincerely apologize. I’m monumentally unhappy with how they’re handling things. I’ll have a more complete rant up once I’m done fighting with them. I’m torn between dropping them and moving to a new host, or staying with them and hoping nothing else goes wrong. On one hand, I don’t want to move AGAIN because I can’t tolerate any more downtime. On the other hand, my account is only three days old and I’m already feeling angry and powerless. How much worse will they treat me once the “money back guarantee” period is over? So I dunno.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.