General Update II - Hi I'm Still Here
Welcome to the 2nd General Update. It's been almost a month since I've spoken here. In fact, it's May! Almost June?! My friend Nick has written an article for his personal updates to mark the start of a new month, so you should read that too. He's dealing with stuff like money, college, and lots of personal projects... just like me.
New general update means new button
I'm proud of my animated 88x31 button. I don't think my website has gotten any special backlinks yet, other than from Nick64's, but I still like it. What's a personal website without its own button, after all?
However, I promised something. I encourage webmasters including my button to hotlink directly to my website. This may sound bad, but my server, or rather, CloudFlare's extensive caching, can take it.
What this allows me to do is update the button and have it automatically change on all sites that include it. The button is a recording made in the classic Roblox engine, so I could just plop the "realjame" logo blocks into any classic map to keep it fresh.
Well, here you go.
Pop quiz: what map this is? If you want to know, it's in the name of the file.
How are things?
I don't want to get too in details about my personal life, but things are going OK. I still have a lot of ideas and plans to better myself for the rest of the year.
I haven't been totally following my plans from the previous general update but I've still been gradually getting better at life and stuff.
School's out, and I don't want things to slip away without school's rigid schedule to keep me somewhat normal.
I've already been using a calendar/to-do list to help guide myself day-by-day (blog post soon I promise), so I think that will really make this summer productive for me.
Oh, and another thing that may also help me... is a job.
I got an internship
It's a month-long (paid) IT internship at a health company! I got it through my school, and I'm really glad.
Since the start of this year I've been pressuring myself, maybe a bit too much, to get a good job. It feels like a weight's been lifted off my chest.
I am still new to working standard jobs, specifically tech-related ones. But I am confident in my abilities, both technically and socially :^)
Devlogs, a new addition to the site
realja.me now hosts mirrored copies of the teaser/announcement posts I make on Twitter and Mastodon about what I'm working on.
I bet that it would be annoying to scroll through my whole Twitter account, through all my random meme posts and other stuff in order to reach the important thing.
Also... you just never know what'll happen with Twitter.
I wonder if this site could act as a sort of "portfolio" of my work. I mean, I already have the quick links section on the home page. Now that would be something...
Click here to view all the devlogs!
The devlogs are short, usually just an image or maybe a video, and a description. Future devlog posts will probably have some additional information not contained in the tweet. For the devlogs, you'll see old Roblox games, websites, just whatever I'm working on really.
Not all the devlogs have been fully transcribed onto here. Some of the older ones are just a direct Twitter link and nothing else. I'll clean them up later, I hope.
By the way, the news and Devlogs section currently are in the same pool as standard blog posts. Hopefully you aren't too annoyed that I'm separating these articles if you use an RSS feeder... no one has complained about that yet, so I'll leave it as-is. Cuz I'm lazy.
So, what am I doing with the site next?
Travel Blog time?
I am taking 3 trips this summer: Tennesee, Seattle area, and Italy. After being unable to travel these last few years due to the pandemic, and trying to improve myself lately, I want to savor these trips!
Journaling
I plan to carry a small journal. In fact, I'm currently in Tennesee as I type this up, and I've been writing in it!
Journaling has been one of my favorite activities recently. This one is so beautiful, I had to save it for something special.
I love the insect-themed cover, it looks (and probably is!) straight out of an entomology book. In addition, the leather binding and metal corners are really well put together, along with the gritty feeling pages.
I got the journal from a local arts market. Support local businesses!
So, uhh... how
I don't know much about travel blogs. What are they about, exactly?
Do people just write "I went to X and did Y and then Z and it was fun" and throw up some pictures? I could do that.
I'll figure out my own way of telling the story. Because all 3 of these places mean something to me personally, in very different ways.
But maybe, I don't want to tell my full life story yet to internet strangers.
Pretty pictures are still guaranteed though!
New project: Farming game
I've been working on this project recently (very, very slowly).
It's a new game for classic Roblox! It's kind of like Stardew Valley at first glance, but a lot has been changed, removed, or added to make this game feel right at home with classic Roblox.
Stay tuned
Scroll through the devlogs to find more info.
Follow me on Twitter and Mastodon for updates.
There's also an ongoing update thread in the Roblox Client Search Discord server, so check that out too. (direct thread link)
Last update's article ideas
Here's the topics I guaranteed want to make into blog posts (I'll update them into links when they get written):
- Announcing the Old Roblox Wiki rehosting project
- The beginning of and being invited to the Novetus Creative Team (making old Roblox games "in-house" for the launcher as a small team)
- A modern Roblox project I spent a lot of time working on in 2021 but gave up on
- A 2nd failed project for modern Roblox that came before it
- My thoughts on something I've been thinking of acquiring for a while, it's mentioned in this article (if you want to spoil the surprise...?)
- Can a YouTube channel and a blog coexist?
- Making a ChatGPT plugin for old Roblox: because Roblox is putting AI in modern Studio, two can play at that game :troll: (mastodon alt)
- Modding a USB-C port onto a Nintendo DSi
So far, I have done NONE of these. Sorry. Most I want to do. Others, I've found, are brief enough topics that I can just write their full story here.
Roblox Legacy Docs
AKA the Old Roblox Wiki in the original article, but I renamed it since then. You can find it here.
I'm not going to make an announcement article. It's already been announced, a long time ago! Now that devlogs are here, you can access the original announcement post easily.
For those who don't know about it, Roblox Legacy Documentation is a useful resource for people making Roblox games on old clients in the modern day, like I am. It could also be used simply for people who want to see what the Roblox engine and community was like back in the day.
The wiki is built off an archive of the Roblox Wiki from June 2012, but we've been doing a lot of work to make it more helpful.
After all, website documentation isn't really necessary anymore, right?
I do want to make articles about the project though. Like how I started it in the first place, not knowing anything about MediaWiki (the server software used). Or our progress, including a newfound interest in April.
The CRT monitor
AKA "my thoughts on something" etc. in the original article, I didn't use the real name for a surprise.
The CRT monitor is pretty cool. I like it!
I'm using it as an extra monitor for my computer setup, so now I have 3.
Due to the small resolution, I find it useful mainly for displaying some information such as a terminal window while I am working.
Problems with it
However, it has a really strange issue with color on the edges. Degaussing, both through monitor options and rubbing a strong magnet over it hasn't done anything to help.
Maybe I'll try to manually degauss it in the future... either way, I do like it.
And hey, owning it and presenting it makes it seem like I'm credible. It's like having bookshelves in the background of your camera. Makes you look smart.
New article ideas/plans
- Improving my wellbeing and productivity by maintaining a calendar (timeblocking strategy) and to-do list
- Renewing the life of an unused Android tablet by flashing LineageOS (and also: why I hate XDA Developers as a source of information)
- Why do I have a NeoCities banner if I'm not using it myself? AKA: Why NeoCities is swag and epic
- Should new Novetus games be ported (fixing scripts, etc.) to modern Roblox? On that note, what about doing the same to famous classic places? Is that even ethical?
- (Half of) 2023 in review - note stats (new followers, blog posts, other more joke-y stats) and My Glorious Accomplishments
- A tribute to the Taft Test - a years-old tool no one's heard of that highlights web bloat in a funny way
Stay tuned for the Android tablet article.
Also, I'll be on Medium! (POSSE)
I like my website. But if I want people to discover and read it, a possibly effective way is by reposting the content on other platforms.
I'll try reposting future blog posts (that aren't exclusively about the website) onto Medium. Not much else to say.
Goodbye
That's all for now. See you soon!
