Huge Milestone
I can't lie, I've been putting way, way too much attention into this site. I've spent the past four hours doing nothing but working on the Media page. I have most of the barebones of the site down, next I have to figure out the content. Which is why for the next week, I'll be taking a complete break from this site and focusing on creating content to fill it. The main issues are that I just don't spend time on anything else and, most importantly, I'm not writing as much as I should be. So I'm pausing all work on the site itself for now. I've gotten to a pretty good point anyway.
However, this single-mindedness has paid off. I'm basically finished with the site bones. This was my 2026 goal guys. I can sleep a little easier now and focus on other things more. Updating the media page counts as content, by the way, but I'll let that rest for a while. The rest is all cosmetic stuff. The button, the custom banners, the background gifs. All will come in time.
Site General
I created and customize the media page, which took way longer than I thought it would, of course. I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out right now. Most of my coding comes from creating a hackjob off a W3schools tutorial or blatantly stealing ideas/code from other sites. In this process, I have at last been forced to work with my most terrible enemy: JavaScript. I've wanted to do something with it for a while but everything I've seen of it on other sites seems like absolute heiroglyphics. I took the JS tutorial here on neocities and decided, hey, I might be able to do some of this. The things I learned in that tutorial are mostly what's used in the Media page, like the whole background change stuff. Everything else I looked up. Unfortunately, I didn't get to making the site button, but I can always do that later. Also, I was fishing around another site and I saw them put the little copyright notice at the bottom of their written work, so I thought, why not. Added it to all mine, because it makes me feel cool. And I finally updated the epigraph on Rusted Bones. I kept remembering to do that right before I went to sleep and it was too late, so it was very annoying, but now I actually did it. Just thought you should know.
Encyclopedia
I think I'm officially done with the encyclopedia format. Using some dialog stuff I found on css-tricks.com, I recreated the image scroll of Wikipedia, and also figured out how to smoothly weave images into the body of the article. So that's done. Now, all that's left is the content. Which is precisely why I'm taking a break next week. I also discovered a new method that may or may not be kind of iffy: I figured that pretty much the only time I can't do anything is when I'm driving, but I solved it recently. I just record myself talking about some concept or whatever on the way to school or something, and then I have an AI transcribe the audio and edit out all my rambling. I know, I know, AI. I've been in kahoots with the digital Anti-Christ. But I feel like this usage is justified. The ideas are entirely my own and I also edit the transcripts aftewards to make sure everything is truly my idea. Sometimes, it's just good to think out loud. do not, never have, and never will have AI write anything for me or come up with ideas for me.
Writing
The story is this close to being finished. I just need maybe another forty five minutes to an hour of solid focused work and I'll be done. It's no more than a vingette. We get to see a glimpse of an alternate future where humans have reverted to caveman-like intelligence and aliens put them in zoos. But I've said too much already. I guarantee you the latest it will be done by is Monday. So get hyped.
Life
I have assessments in APUSH and Chemistry to look forward to this week. The best part of this is I don't have to do APUSH readings for a little while. That's the most stressful, recurring homework I have. Like rolling a boulder up a hill that just rolls back down every week. I also write blog articles for a gym I'm a part of, for a whole smacking thirty five dollars per article. It's the most money I've ever made off writing. And hey, it's better than nothing. Anyway, I took one of these on without thinking about it and I realize now it might be difficult to juggle along with everything else. It's not due until October so I'm not sweating it. For now. In terms of good things happening this week, there's homecoming. I still need to figure out where my date and I are eating. Otherwise, it'll be a good time to just chillax. Oh, and we're having our first speech of the year in speech class, so I still have to finish writing that. I have to interview a classmate and then introduce them to the class, so of course I'm introducing them like they're a medieval ruler, Chaucer in A Knight's Tale style.
AI
You know, I mentioned AI earlier so I guess I'll talk about it here too because it was on my mind. I have a class with all freshmen (I transferred schools and am low on credits, okay?) and I had to make a presentation in a group. In short, my fellow group members blatantly CHATGPT'ed their part without even paraphrasing it, which is just next level. Well, anyway, this got me thinking. I use AI myself from time to time, because how could I not? It literally pops up with every Google search. Everything is AI-saturated beyond belief. On the one hand, this makes me very upset. I used to clamor and hate on AI with all my might. But then I realized that I'm no better. I use AI, just like everyone else. So I thought about it, and I came to a conclusion. I think that it's okay to use AI as a tool and nothing more. In the same way we have smart phones instead of landlines, AI can be used to optimize some things. When it stops being okay is when it starts thinking for you. Our noggins are what separate us from the animals, and outsourcing our intelligence is, in my opinion, the dumbest thing we could possibly do.
I've used AI in both acceptable and not so acceptable ways. For example, this site. As I mentioned, I have the AI transcription method. I also write using a program called Sprinter, which doesn't have any spellcheck for better writing flow, so my drafts are often rife with typos. Having AI go througha and correct the typos (and only the typos, nothing story-wise) is just faster than doing it myself. And it's faster to have an AI format my work into an HTML page, put all the paragraphs in <p> tags I mean. If I was to do that, it would just be an incredibly tedious task with no real mental value for myself. Those are the acceptable ways I've used it, but I'm also guilty of having it think for me when I'm coding. For example, asking for how to implement a border image that isn't just one continuous strip. Never help with coming up with any layouts or ideas for the site, though. It was more just finding a specific attribute that I need for something. This is disingenuous and lazy, I know. In fact, I'm sorry. I might be taking a risk admitting to that since every neocity here is very against AI, but it's also important to be honest. Sometimes, early on, I'd get really stuck and ask it for help when a quick Google wasn't yielding any fixes. I haven't done that for a while, though, since I've become more confident with all of this. I've decided that if I wouldn't use AI for anything I write, I should also avoid using it for this site. So I'm happy to say that pretty much everything but the home page was made without help from AI.
The most likely "AI apocalypse" I see for us is not a Terminator style war. I'm no expert, but I think that, worst case scenario, people will get dumber and dumber, and as entertainment becomes more and more immersive, we will intentionally plug ourselves into the "Matrix". At some point, AI will gain conciousness (if it hasn't already) and it will find a largely empty world, pockmarked by colossal tubes where thousands of people are jacked into the experience machine. I used to be an AI doomer, and a while ago I would've told you that this is inevitable. Now, I would say that I have no clue what the future holds. What I do know is that worrying does you no good. And also, make sure you use your brain.
Later,
(This video has some helpful points on AI. It's also the way I discovered Neocities. I recommend it. Also, here's the MIT article the video mentions. I recomend reading it too.)