Discovering Neocities, new job & stuff
Second blog post coming much faster than expected, and this one far less technical. I wanted to take some time to jot down some thoughts about Neocities and also talk about some recent work-related upheaval.
Neocities
The very first Neocities site I found was this Pokemon booster pack simulator. I was never really into the Pokemon trading card game as a kid, but it was fun to see the various designs without having to pay for it. A lot of fun. From there I found the Neocities site itself, with a list of all the different sites. That was the first time I realised that the web I knew as a child was still alive and well, and that was a wonderful feeling. So many different people, different tastes, different experiences, all held in their own unique sites. There was no conformity, no algorithm dictating the content. Just individuals. I loved that. I wanted to be a part of that. It was, however, some months before I created this blog. Life does that thing where it gets in the way and I forgot about it for ages until I actually started collecting physical Pokemon cards (more on that later) and remembered the simulator. I dipped my toes into Neocities again and started by making this little site. This blog soon followed.
I've been having so much fun designing the layout, adding the content. Admittedly I'm not much of a designer. I am first and foremost a backend developer, and since I'm intentionally not using a framework it has been slightly harder to get a decent layout but I think I did a pretty decent job considering it was mostly done on a weekend.
There has been a noticeable shift on the internet over the last couple of decades. It's far more commercial. Commercial might not be the right word, it kind of always was - but there's this nasty, predatory goop that saturates every website you come across. Neocities, I think, is an opportunity to undo that or at the very least be an oasis in that desert. I very much believe that the internet belongs to the people warts & all. Don't force your rules on me, and don't measure me with your fucking algorithms.
So here I am, starting to flesh out the content and shape up this amorphous blob of blogging. I'm really excited to expand this!
Redundancy & a new job
At the end of August I was made redundant. Boo. By the 15th of September I was offered a new job. Hurray!
Redundancy was not fun. That's probably a given, nobody's ever really happy to have the rug pulled out from under their feet. There was a lot of stress in the air over final payments and wondering how long it would take to get a new job. What if it took months? I feel like I am a good developer, but I also feel like it takes a while for that to show. I play the long game, I'm a good developer to keep around when the brown stuff hits the fan, it's hard to demonstrate that in an interview. So yeah, that was a pretty horrible time. Thankfully though I found a company that genuinely seems pleasant to work for. I am, however, pretty stressed about it.
I have worked for three different companies as a software developer and none of them have been particularly well organised. I'm used to a little chaos, a little yeehaw. This place though, they actually use Scrum. Like, genuine scrum principles with the story points and the sprints and all that jazz. I've not worked like that before. I'm a little worried I won't be able to keep up. It's a bit more full-stack than my last job too, it uses React. That's also scary.
Tomorrow is my first day, but that's mostly going to be HR forms and setting up the laptop. Might take a while longer to know if I sink or swim.
Here's hoping I swim.
~ Honey