All posts tagged Blog

U+1F92A

 Martin · 2 years

A while ago I tried making a post here with an emoji in it, because WordPress supports that now, and the characters always came up blank after I submitted the form.

Investigating why this was happening sent me down a WordPress rabbit hole. The cause I arrived at is that, because my WordPress install has some long roots, the underlying database didn't support the character set required by emojis. The solution was to update the database, which isn't something WordPress can do by itself.

Being a DIY guy (when it comes to tech, anyway) I read a little more about what was involved, backed everything up, and dove headfirst into the database. Not long after, I resurfaced from my edits, made a post with an emoji, and basked in its glory. I checked a few other posts to make sure the rest of my database was still intact, and satisfied with the results, left things at that.

You can guess where this is going: unseen problems were afoot. Technically, they still are, I suppose.

Not long after the update, I noticed that one of my main pages was almost entirely blank. WordPress couldn't recover it, so I loaded up my backup and dug through the SQL code to find the post and restore it. It took some time to sort everything out (this particular page had a lot of formatting), but it was fixed.

Curious, I started looking through other posts/pages. Most were okay, but the further back into my blog's history, the more missing pages I encountered. Many of these posts contained characters that didn't survive the database edits, and they got cut off at random points.

So now I'm aware of this problem, and I've been slowly combing through the dusty, cobwebbed corners of the site, cleaning things up and restoring lost posts when necessary. Most of it isn't really worth preserving, honestly. But I feel bad leaving it in such a rough state - and I've been mildly enjoying following my own path as I read things I wrote 15 years ago.

Good grief, I'm feeling old! 👴

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So long, Twitter

 Martin · 2 years

Yesterday, Twitter was bought out by a private investor - or at least, it's in the process of being bought out right now - and I'm outta there so fast I'm leaving a Marty-shaped hole in the wall.

I've never really liked Twitter, honestly. It's not a bad platform, from a feature perspective, but I have never liked the short-form text format for expressing thoughts.

I can't have been the only one because over the years, Twitter expanded its Tweet size from the original 140 characters (designed for texting in a pre-smartphone era) to 280. Eventually, they added the ability to link together/post multiple Tweets at once, so you could more easily write something much longer. But the platform still encouraged you to distill your thoughts down to something bite-sized, and I just don't think that's good for having real, interesting interactions with people. I never have.

Ads became a more prevalent part of the experience over time as well, with every Nth Tweet a promotional message. Then a bunch of grifting losers flooded the platform trying to hawk bad products, bad people, etc. The scourge of NFT clowns and lying, political hacks twisted Twitter from a sometimes interesting and intimate experience to something rotten and awful.

I had a few fun moments connecting with people I already knew in person and from other platforms, and I saw (and shared!) lots of cool art there. But engagement with people I care about really fell off a cliff over the last few years, and watching the company be acquired by someone who doesn't seem to have any interest in the things that made old Twitter fun and useful is enough for me.

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Standing on the Precipice

 Martin · 2 years

I've been kind of wanting to do another month-long art project for a while, but every time I start one it immediately begins feeling like a burden every day.

It's weird, because when I'm actually doing the work, I'm in the creative zone and genuinely enjoying myself. But the brainstorming leading up to each piece - especially on days that are busy - can give me low-level anxiety.

So March begins tomorrow and I might just start a new project. We'll see how I'm feeling then, I guess!

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Streaking

 Martin · 3 years

Well, I'm a little disappointed in myself - I had a 109 day streak going posting on my blog here, and I accidentally broke it yesterday because I forgot to post something!. It had been going since August, when I started doing my Drawgust posts!

Oh well - so it goes. Now the pressure's off, I guess!

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Drawgust Is Done

 Martin · 3 years

Now what am I supposed to do with myself - draw for fun?

Well, yes, of course. But I have to take a small break. Chalk It Up 2021 is coming up soon too, so that'll be my next thing for now!

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Taming Gutenberg

 Martin · 3 years

My work on the next iteration of this website is coming along well! My to-do list has been steadily shrinking, and most everything is looking just how I like it. As always, I've started having misgivings about the new color scheme, but I can tweak that as I go - no use getting stuck on that at this late stage of production!

Really, all that's left now is to tie up a few loose ends here and there, make some last-minute adjustments to my template names, make sure everything works alright on mobile... and hit the big, red Activate button. The closer I get, the more tempting it is to just push it and clean things up later, but I will control myself (for now).

I know nearly nobody is reading this, but I don't care - I like shouting into the void. If you're out there and reading this - thanks!

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Jib Jabbed

 Martin · 3 years

I got my second COVID-19 vaccine shot yesterday - and though I'm feeling quite tired today, that seems to be the extent of the side effects for me.

Even though I've been lucky to work from home during all this (that's my normal routine), and my family and I have remained safe, it's been a long road to this point. It feels like the world has turned a corner on this and I hope things will get back to some semblance of normal soon.

If you're not vaccinated yet, please do so, if you can. And please continue following safety guidelines until it's safe to stop. We are getting there!

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Working on WordPress

 Martin · 3 years

Making new themes for WordPress is fun and always a surprisingly complicated affair. The amount of pages you have to edit seems like not so much at first - and then you start tearing into the logic and stuff that's going on behind the scenes, and things really start getting crazy.

Anyway, the new theme for the website is coming along. I hope to have it done in... a month? We'll see.

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Immortals Fenyx Rising is just too much sometimes

 Martin · 3 years

After completing Assassin's Creed Odyssey (along with all its DLC) late last year, I've been sort of put off starting any new long games. Aside from a semi-brief Watch Dogs: Legion run, which was largely just about putting my new Xbox Series X to the test, almost everything I've played so far in 2021 has been smaller indie titles and adventure games.

Except for Immortals Fenyx Rising, which I became intrigued by after watching people play a bit on Twitch. I downloaded it and played a while right after completing Odyssey, but it felt too similar to that (and I was suffering from an overload of Greek mythology) so I shelved it until a few weeks ago, on a quest to finish it anew.

I actually really like Fenyx - it is very obviously built on top of Assassin's Creed tech, and so it feels quite similar - but the cartoonish style and silly humor suit it well. The combat is fun and once you gain more powers, it's a blast to vanquish hordes of enemies and traverse the terrain quickly.

At 47 hours, I'm at the point where I could trigger the end sequence and finish the game, but for now I am picking through all the stuff I missed and collecting achievements. I'm probably about 80% done with the content in the base game.

My problem is that, at about 20 hours in, it felt like the game could've been more focused - and that feeling has stuck with me since. Fenyx never gets boring really, but as I unlocked yet another map region full of icons to visit and complete, I couldn't help but wonder how much better the game could have been if Ubisoft had just kept the scope a bit smaller. Like, why not cut a region or two and spend the extra time/money on a more cinematic story? Better animation?

It's mildly frustrating because I feel like this game could've given The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild a run for its money. It's a good game that is so, so close to being a great game.

Sadly, Ubisoft seems unable to help themselves when it comes to giant maps and too many objectives. It's cool that they can create such expansive content for every one of their franchises - but I wish they'd just show some restraint sometimes. It makes me think that games like Splinter Cell haven't seen new entries in a while just because they haven't yet figured out how to drop Sam Fisher on a Skyrim-sized map.

Anyway, that's my rant. I shall continue my enjoyable slog now.

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