I've made my own website for fun, at H Square. That website will serve more as my personal blogging site, while the blog here will serve specifically on themy projects pertaining to the Randomeer Studios.
Wow! HTML/CSS can be very annoying to work with when you first start off. I've spent a couple of hours trying to rework the homepage's background (it's fixed now!). If you're looking at the homepage at around the same time I write this, then you'll notice about everything is currently under construction. Unfortunately, it's gonna stay that way for about a few more days, until I can host an in-person Randomeers meeting to collaborate on website gifs, layout, etc. This also gave me an idea. I really like designing websites apparently, but this is taking quite a long time to get everyone on the same page in regards to actually collaborating on making this website a thing (it's nobody's fault-- I understand when people are busy, and I just happen to have a lot of time on my hands this week), so anyway, I may also create my own website here on neocities. I've been treating this page on randomeerstudios as my own personal page, but I think it'd be cool to have my own website as well. This page is supposed to serve primarily as my Randomeer Studios project updates anyway. I am really into this idea of having my own personal website, but for the time being, I'm going to mostly design it on paper before starting anything online.
In other news, Sean is working on his page as well.
Edit: I forgot to mention, I programmed the scrolling text on the homepage yesterday! How do you like it? I can't hear you at the moment so I'll assume you like it a lot :D
You've probably heard of Scratch. Wait, you haven't? Well, you better click on that Scratch button on the side and check out my projects! I'm just kidding. But anyway, Scratch uses something called "block coding" to let users program their projects. It's a really neat way to teach people the basics of programming, and I "took it up" before Python, back in 6th grade. As I've mentioned earlier, I fell into a rabbit hole of functional programming about a year ago. It's like regular programming...but FUNCTIONAL! Again, I'm just kidding. Functional programming is a different "kind" of programming where there is no "state" (e.g.: no variables, loops, etc.). It's a very simplistic and neat way to do logic.
So about a month ago, I interned for this video game company that makes educational games. As a sort of "final project," we were tasked with designing a concept that can be integrated into a video game to teach players something. That's when (on the toilet, naturally) I came up with LambdaBlocks: an entirely functional block coding language.
Basically, all functions and data structures are blocks, and you connect them to make "stacks," which, depending on the context, become functions (e.g., a brand new block) or a new value (like 5 or something). Unfortunately, programming an interpreter would be really hard, so it's definitely a long-term project for me. I may keep you all posted on it, considering it is some form of "creative project" of mine, combining the intuitiveness of block coding with the simplicity of functional programming. If you have any questions, I'd LOVE to answer them, and there'll probably be a way to send me questions very soon. When I am able to share updates on LambdaBlocks' documentation, feel free to ask or throw ideas out there-- this is a creative project of mine but having input from others would be cool.
When I first learned about website-making a couple of months ago (this was when I first learned about HTML and CSS), I never thought much of it. It was cool to have my own website, and I liked the idea of making websites for the express purpose of sharing niche interests, but I guess the...uh...lack of visual appeal of basic websites (bare bones HTML kind of thing) didn't really show me the true capabilities of what the internet could be again. Yesterday, I was strolling through W3Schools to learn more about HTML and CSS basics, to make my website more functional. I saw gray, square examples of what a blog can look like, etc., etc. Then I started looking through the websites on Neocities. Always Your Pal, Melon! immediately caught my interest, and after looking through it, and reading some of the articles 'n stuff on it, it showed me that there's more to websites than pure functionality. I've sort of adopted this philosophy that form must almost always follow function, but the internet is definitely an exception to that. Everything already functions. It's like a blank canvas, and I've been ignoring the fact that the reason for a canvas to exist isn't to merely exist. Anyway, I was strolling some more on the same website (there's just so much!) and realized that there's a pretty cool underlying theme (well, not really "theme" but sort of) involving what I've taken in.
Looking at the Site Map of melonking.net showed me how websites and the internet are like towns and cities (not respectively), and I've realized the internet is almost like a utopia where netizens can do whatever they'd like on their own websites (or on others' given permission). Basically, the internet seems like the closest we've ever been to absolute unity between all people.
Of course that ignores other flaws of the internet, specifically pertaining flaws we have in the real world. Not everyone has access to the internet, whether that be physical isolation or government mandate, not everyone is as cooperative and friendly everywhere (online video games, but competition and gaming is still fun!), and maintaining the internet requires literal, physical work to be done.
Realistically speaking, the real world seems to have too many flaws to reflect the apparent perfection of online communities (and I won't dismiss the fact that in-person socialization has its perks over internet-based communication), but, concluding now, I find it very, very cool that we have this medium for creative expression.
This is cool, I can just write about things and people (like you!) can read these things for fun. I have mentioned (unless I edited something) that I'm learning HTML, but I'm already somewhat-versed in other languages. I've first learned Python, and basically a year ago, I took up learning Haskell. Naturally, this came from falling down a rabbit hole of functional programming, which I may reference here from time to time. Several months ago, I've learned Javascript, and pretty soon, I'll be learning Java (y'know, an "actual programming language."). Aside from pretending to be good at programming, I like to design shapes (especially platonic solids) out of index cards. That'll definitely be a topic I'll make a webpage on. I also like to draw (mostly doodle little cartoons, I'm not what you'd really call "an artiste") and I've made goofy little comics before. That last bit about me is the main reason why I'm contributing to Randomeer Studios-- we've decided to take an old comic series from around the 4th grade (?) and create something new from it. I've been rewriting lore and drawing up scripts in case we take up animation and create a little show about it. But that's all very far into the future. Right now, I'll focus on adding paper icosahedrons onto the website.
You're probably wondering what this place is all about. Okay, to be honest, you're probably not wondering that. Anyway, we, the Randomeers of Randomeer Studios, are a small group of friends who come up with creative ideas that don't usually get finished (until now [maybe {although I'm not too sure}]). I'm here to see the website gets built, as well as providing ideas and projects to work on with the Randomeers. Although none of them are close to being finished, I will still provide other creations of mine on my page...here. Basically, this is gonna act like my blog for things that interest me (that's what a blog is, right?).