Welcome to the new website. My website has been rebooted a number of times since the SAIT years in 2006–2008, and a web developer pays about as much attention to their personal website as a mechanic does to his car. So it has just kind of existed, without any real purpose. I did write a couple articles on the last iteration of the website (2015 redesign?), but I'm starting this fresh. I have included a page for Projects I've done, both active and defunct, including those that I do under the banner of my corporation, Neon Engine Interactive.

The website refresh was born out of two reasons. The first is that I was sick of being shut out on Facebook, not being able to get posts out to or receive posts from Facebook friends. Even my non-political posts get little traction at this point. So I want a place that I can write and that people will have to specifically come to to read. There's nothing really wrong with that filter for the kind of stuff I may wish to write. Good content should require a little work to get to rather than being fed to you as corporate slop in a scrolling feed. May the days of personal websites return! Everyone who has their own website: it is time! Time to do the linking back and forth between people's blogs too. I'd love to throw someone I know's site on a Links page.

The second reason is that I went through an unexpected conversion to Christianity after a very real and difficult-to-explain experience, so I wanted to write up my Testimony to attempt to explain it anyway, should anyone have any confusion about what happened to me. “What happened to me” is actually formulated incorrectly. I was a willing participant in the process. Anyway, yes I am a follower of Jesus now, and believe in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ of Nazareth as told in the Gospels. Feel free to read my story about that if you're curious.

Also, I intend to load up this site with Easter eggs to look for. Fun “title” text on images (when you hover your mouse over on a non-mobile device), Error 404 pages with randomized messages, and whatever else I can think of. I miss the “Fun Internet” of 2007–2011. “Corporatized Internet” has its place (real work is done over the Internet at a significant rate in 2024), but the real “Social Web” has died. We shouldn't have let big corporations take over that space. So I'm bringing back fun in my own little corner of the Web. I may even do a classic Guestbook like the good 'ol days. Remember Guestbooks? What about Hit Counters? Mostly in the modern day, organizations don't want you to see how few visitors they actually get, and so the Hit Counters naturally went away. But I could have one...

Also, I'm building this all as custom software (as I have for 15+ years), and using the Laravel 11 PHP framework to do it. While it's going to be super custom, if it ends up working out well and other friends of mine wish to have websites again, I could refactor it into a generalized package so others can benefit. The way I see it, we could all have private websites (blog articles don't have to be insane efforts, they can be just like your Facebook posts), link back and forth on Links pages as friends, visit each others websites, and use something like Disqus to make it easy to comment back and forth. It is much better. Tom's MySpace was super customizable (which in practice meant a lot of ugly websites with flashing colors that screamed at you), but your Facebook or X profile is not. It is streamlined for mindless scrolling, with little uniqueness that can truly represent the unique people we all are. If, at a later point, you decide you'd like to have something similar, let's talk. As you'll see on the Projects page, I've done plenty of work for free in the past, haha. You could also just set up a WordPress site. But if you do, and you know me, send me a link!

So yeah, that's my big idea. It's a small idea from a prior era. A personal website. And yet... quite a novel idea in 2024 it seems. I'd especially love to see all my creative, artistic friends build themselves microplatforms and just use the main ones to share their stuff. Something has gone very wrong with the trajectory of Internet trends, and what they have been doing to us.

As for subject matter, I'll be all over the place. I am a forever interested man with many areas of interest. My first article is on a small piece of evidence in the Solar System for Intelligent Design that I haven't heard explained well in a very long time. Sometimes posts might just be short musings. It is, after all, intended to be a social media replacement of sorts for myself... but with the added benefit of my posts not falling into the abyss never to be seen again. Astute Internet Surfers (remember when people surfed on the Internet?) may even notice that all my URLs are super short and simple. The ones with dashes also work without the dashes, so I can refer people to articles in verbal conversation (potentially, should an appropriate opportunity ever arise). I imagine I'll have to record some music to fill up the Audio page as well, seeing as I only have that very simple song from 2007 as a placeholder.

I'll be writing even if no one is reading. And performing music even if no one is listening. I hope someone finds some value in what I do. But even if you don't, I will continue on like you do. I have many unachieved aspirations and time slows down for no man!