Yesterday, I implemented a number of changes to my site, including the weblog itself. While I tend to do this every now and then just for the sake of keeping things up to date, my reasons this time around were a little more specific: It turned out that the themes and plugins I was using for my site were horrifically out of date, making it impossible to even add new content. Strangely enough, I didn’t notice this until I found myself trying to update the “last date updated” on the front page to realize that the site was no longer giving me specific permissions.
As I’d created my site from scratch back in the day and integrated WordPress to help build a sustainable weblog, I decided to revamp the site, completely changing the theme and then slowly updating specific parts of the web page. As I made each change, I started to discover the incompatibilities with certain segments I updated, so I started removing and replacing content. It’s amazing how over the course of a few years so much technology can change and fundamentally destroy other parts of your content due to older programs not interested in talking to newer ones. Anyway, so if you see a change here and there, it just means that I discovered something needed fixing or updating, and I’m just getting around to addressing it.
As for current projects (that aren’t the web site), I’m currently working on two novels (1991 and a series with the working title of Return to Camelot). I’m also embracing the C# programming language to develop my latest game, which is universe where your actions affect the future course of the universe and the surroundings encompassing that universe. Think of it as Ultima’s avatar, except the avatar doesn’t change; the entire universe changes due to your choices and lifestyle. A better way to think of it is if you decide to be very violent in your behavior towards NPCs, the world starts to become equally violent towards you as a result. It took me some time to figure out how this could be coded, but then it dawned on me that multiple string variables that track your progress would then be coded into an algorithm where based on a scale of 1 to 1000, using different scalable metrics, you’d slowly start to see changes implemented slowly in an evolutionary process where just doing one nice thing for an npc doesn’t mathematically achieve change in background because it takes a lifetime of behavior to influence the larger picture, and people have a tendency to make year end resolutions that don’t translate to actual behavior modification. Anyway, think of it as using mathematics to explain the concept of friendliness; people incapable of understanding such modified behavior will always consider it magic rather than science.
Anyway, just a short update. Hope you’re all doing well. And from the web page metrics, it shows that people are visiting the site, so if you’re one of those people who never comments, please comment because I’d really like to know that what I’m sharing here on a regular basis is actually of interest to anyone who might be following. Like Barry Allen says in Zack Snyder’s Justice League: “I need friends.”