What's Happening In The Now
- Writing: The Textbook Case Part 4
- Watching: Fallout Season 2
- Playing: The Outer Worlds & UT2K4
- Tinkering: Building /codex; refactoring the front page post listing.
Same shit, different day(s). There seems to be some sunny skies ahead, but on the whole, the struggle is still very real. And while all of that is going on, this site has seen some pretty massive changes, many of which have been in the works for some time.
New Job, Who Dis?
I finally snagged myself a consistent gig. The hours aren't great, the days off aren't consecutive, and the travel distance isn't exactly close, but the hourly rate is decent. I still have other logs in the fire, so I'm not jinxing this new venture by being public (and frankly, a bit relieved) about it.
I actually worked for this company in the not-too-distant past; during COVID, working here put me under the "essential worker" umbrella. I don't really see it as "going back" or "moving backwards", seeing as how this is a different facility, under a different subsidiary. And even still... I currently don't have a consistent income. Any work is good work right now.
So, we'll see how this goes.
A Hero's Facelift
If you've been following this site for any point in time, you'd no doubt notice that the front page has gone through some recent changes. For one, it no longer catalogs every single post; the full post listing has been migrated over to a new page: /codex. And this new page comes in three different flavors: Desktop, mobile, and CLI. Off of a modern computer or your phone, you'll get the full ASCII art experience. However, in a command-line browser like Lynx, you'll just get the post listing, similar to how they're displayed on the front page. Once The Textbook Case is fully completed, the story's full omnibus will be cataloged there, just to give you an idea of its concept.
Also, the Lucky Lead hero section came down. I know, I know; you're wondering why I would take down a hero section that was so compact and neatly-formatted. Given that the CTA had the word "Holiday" (and later, "New Year") in its title, it was time to change it to something else.
...Of course, that "something else" is mostly just the hero section that was there before, but that's beside the point. Other stuff was built around that, and while the hero section will rotate over time, I'm happy with the general visual concept that now exists around it.
hVmark Update
hVmark is now at version 1.6, which adds inline text markers for code and centered text blocks. And yes: by "centered", I mean <center>.
The code inline marker has actually been an undocumented feature in the live parser that I'd been working on for a while, at least since the start of 2026. Now, after extensive testing, I'm confident enough to set the feature in stone. The centered text, on the other hand, is my in-road into adding more block-level markers to hVmark. Does that go against the spirit of hVmark? Possibly, but I'll get more into my thoughts on that at a later date.
With the new code marker, the hVmark page's source is now ~90% written in hVmark. The documentation is written in itself (with some isolated <h1> and <h3> lines sprinkled in for flavor). Not gonna lie, I'm pretty jazzed about that.
Jackie's Back
And, of course, elephant in the room: The Textbook Case is finally making some head-way. And it's about God damn time, right?
I mentioned before that it would be in four parts. Well, things have changed, and now it'll be in five. Not to spoil anything, but a lot happens in Part 4, so much so that the ending needed to be split in two.
Part 4 should be due out before May, so be ready.
Still BiPoLaR 20 Years Later
And last, but certainly not least: I'm FEELIN' GOOD TODAY!
Why's that? Because it's been 20 years since this happened: