Yes I’m alive! Though I seem to habitually forget how to write in this blog. It’s not to say that I’ve forgotten to document my life–the majority of my personal writing I’ve moved to more private docs–it’s just that I haven’t really figured out what I want to write about here in 2021. Though I suppose now that I’ve had this blog for over half my lifetime, it’s not surprising that my habits and style would change, long hiatuses included.

From Xanga to blog.skyrien.com

The world has changed quite a bit since I started this blog started in 2002 (nearly 20 years ago!). It started as a personal blog where, I posted quite random musings and conversed with my community (then of high school Naperville, Illinois folk). In doing so, I also cultivated my online internet persona and written voice.

I credit a lot to my sophomore year English classes for inspiring a habit of self-reflection and an appreciation for documenting my experiences in written form. The skill came in handy when I needed to write professionally, but I also furthered many useful skills — perhaps most importantly, metacognition–thinking about your thinking–in a self-reflective manner. At least, that’s how I remember it.

I still reflect fondly on the ‘publishing company’ we created for class–ours was called ‘4AM publishing’ which carried a number of meanings. It did give me an excuse to poke around and use more of the incredible 3d modeling/ animation tool that is 3ds max where I made our simple logo:

My amateur 3d modeling experience would come in handy in my near future in at least two ways: (1) CAD modeling props and environments for engineering school courses and (2) making my own models intended for 3d printing; and I’m still on Thingiverse!

Later in college, as I began to document more of my life and write more personal stories, I felt a need to share and document my story. I wrote quite a bit about my college experience (2004-2008) and writing continued up until around 2011. Through that period, I often had major thoughts and frequently would want to write them into a semi-coherent blog post. I experimented with several platforms outside of Xanga–including LiveJournal, Vox (different than today’s), WordPress.com, and probably a few more. Most I’ve merged back into blog.skyrien.com, which I claimed in 2008.

Over the decades, I’ve mostly reverted to simple commentary on other peoples’ created works. Actually creating new posts it’s much rarer and I’ve wondered why; it’s not like I have less to share. I do think it’s because I don’t really know the audience I’m posting to anymore; and perhaps more importantly, not sure what to write about. Incidentally, this is also why I’ve mostly been writing in my much more expansive journals elsewhere, where I don’t really have to wonder what reaction my posts may elicit.

I have expanded my tweeting though, but even that has been confused given the uncertain audience. I’ve often contemplated shifting more of my posting to anonymous social media–i.e. Reddit, where the security of anonymity brings out… shall we say a less inhibited internet persona.

Often it seems the internet is a permanent low-context environment; where anything you say can be re-twisted into anything. Or perhaps that’s just our political climate. Regardless, I think the essence is, what I’ve long believed to be the inevitable utopia (the future) of the internet, I wonder what the true impact of humanity earning this superpower will be. I still hope for the best, but I still don’t know what to write here anymore.

For me personally, I have perhaps, too many opinions and thoughts that could be construed in any which way. Keeping your own personal internet a safe environment for expression is critical. But it’s been said that the internet never forgets… and that can cost you; an election, job, friendships, or more.

Hmm… nonetheless, I do believe that the essence of sharing and connecting is innate in humanity, particularly when in a safe and productive environment that promotes the development of self-identity and a healthy, self-aware relationship with one’s other peers. The art of personal blogs seems to have become lost by many, who have reverted their online identities to things like their Twitter accounts and other private social media pages. To each their own; I’ve always loved having my own territory–here–with perhaps rules only set by my hosting provider.

Restarting this blog

So let’s do a quick catch-up… a lot has happened since my last post of September 2020, and doing a complete retrospective is quite hard. I’ve actually been accumulating a list of partially started drafts of posts over the past year since my Kindle ramble. I’ll keep them as drafts for now and quickly reflect on world events (that I may expound into their originally intended posts–

1. COVID19 – Has it really almost been 2 years?! Crazy… this is going to be a life era for all of us, regardless of our political persuasion. I wrote about it once back in April 2020 — by then, the depths of the sudden shock of shutdowns were setting in, etc… but I’m pretty sure if someone suggested we’d still be talking about COVID19 years later… well, I suppose there’s at least a lot to write about! But indeed life does go on, and I think I have mostly fascinations to expound on.
2. George Floyd, CHAZ/CHOP, and the Summer of 2020 — This itself deserves many books which I’m not qualified to write. Yet it has shaped the course of this nation and the discussion of race, policing, the boundaries of civil unrest, and one’s stand on the toughest social issues of our time.
3. Election 2020 — Yeah, wow, the country survived–but the ominous seams still seem to be there under the surface; what is the endgame from all this polarization? What would a more proactive role be in ensuring the survivability of liberal democracy in today’s climate? An important civil discussion to keep having in these United States.
4. Satisfactory, Dyson Sphere Program, and my newfound love of production simulation games such as these. I’ve admitted to a few that I somehow played 160+ hours of Satisfactory in the month of June; basically a full-time second job. Granted… much of that was spent accumulating resources while I slept, traveled long distances through hypertubes, or otherwise had very little engagement from me during those hours. But the hours I did play… very few games have encouraged such addictive yet beautiful game mechanics that make it such a joy to keep playing. I came upon this video yesterday and it very much sums up why I loved Satisfactory. Thank you Coffee Stain!
5. Gadgets I’ve recently accumulated — I’ve acquired a number of new toys / gadgets that I’ve integrated into my lifestyle — a folding smartphone, a new smartwatch, an “Art TV”, (yes I suppose I’m a Samsung fan?), my wfh setup, autonomous vacuums, a dining table, etc…
6. Cryptomining round 2 — I mined a bunch of Litecoin back in 2014; and now I’ve started on Ethereum with an RTX3080. Mixed experiences overall though in round 2.
7. Playing around with hair coloring — The hair colors I have today I’ve generally had since 2017, so at least four years now. I’ve almost come to identify them as part of myself/identity, in that it almost feels weird when my hair is mostly natural. (Not that I don’t like my hair, but I like playing with its canvas).
8. Seattle, Pacific Northwest, and how I became part of what I once fought–the Seattle Freeze… I guess after 12 years I’m maybe a local-ish person now?

And I’m sure more… but in any case, I’m writing all the above to move these ideas out of my mental space and start anew for 2021. I probably will write more about those issues eventually.

Decision: No self-hosting, yet…

One thing I’ve decided on though is to not yet try to self-host skyrien.com. I learned quite a bit and got the entire stack working locally, and even mirrored the MySQL DBs into MariaDB which Synology’s DSM seems to prefer. But really, the limiting factor was upload bandwidth by my home ISP.

And that ISP being Comcast in Seattle, the best reasonably priced up-speed only seems to offer an abysmally slow 6 Mbps. Not that I’m Youtube, but this upload speed is also shared by all other applications in my house, so even a single user uploading files would strain the available bandwidth.

So I’ll stay with Dreamhost for now.

But for now, my year-long blog post fast is broken! Tomorrow is a new day!