PROJECT SPG is an art project I've begun a couple years ago, though I haven't produced a ton. The core concept is simple : using a lot of Gimp filters. Previously, when producing pictures in Gimp, I've relied on the pencil to create pixel-art stuff. As a challenge to myself, I decided to minimize my use of manual tools, and instead rely on Gimps filters and selection tools. I've still only brushed the outer edge of it.

As I wanted to publish something in the 6th issue of Tilde Town Zine, and faced with very short time, I've decided to create a new piece for this project. My original plan was very different, but a busy month ensured I didn't have time to complete it peacefully, so I put it on standby. Instead, I made the (currently redacted) TSS-001. I am unfortunately under very strict orders to not divulge any information about it yet.

However, there are still news that I can publish about this project : I've created a page on Tilde.Town to showcase the publicly available ones. Each art piece is sorted and put into precise categories. Moreover, they are all composed of a picture and some text. On my computer, they are all organized in a structured folder, with README.md and the like. However, I've decided to put it all on a single page here. Indeed, I want to keep my work more manageable by having a "one page equals one topic". But there was still the question on how to display here, preferably with some cool CSS stuff, as I'm trying to do around here. Given the theme of PROJECT SPG, I've settled on a "green on black computer" aesthetic. And what better than to having a computer inside your computer ? So I created a greyish computer, had it display an overflowing block of contents, and the core of my concept was done. I've added some shadows and reflections on the screen, to better sell the effect. I'm pleased with the end result, although the outer computer is still a work in progress. I want to add a power button and some more texture. But the more important thing is that you may enjoy PROJECT SPG immediately, without having to wait for me to get this page in a more ready form.

In due time, TSS-001 will join its simblings. And from the few information I've got, we've never been closer to said time. I hope to make more in the future, and not only for the Zine.

Hello ! This is my first blog post on this website. I will talk about my plans for it.

Current state of blogging

Let's begin by taking a look at my current blogging situation. First off, I currently maintain two blogs : Minis, about wargaming and miniatures, and I am the Fog in the Forest, a music blog. However, I also have a personal website, and this Tilde website as well. I am planning to transfer my personal website from Jekyll to Zola, and I will probably setup a blog on it then. But as you can see with this post, I am also starting a Tilde blog. I'm worried that I'll be able to keep up with so many platforms. However, I'm not planning to regularly update my personal or Tilde blog. Concerning Minis, I'm trying to post a new article every week. I haven't been able to follow this schedule, but I've posted more than an article per month on average, so I'm okay with this. As for I am the Fog in the Forest, until yesterday, it had had no update for more than a year. There are still a couple of technical things to work on, and this has bothered me, to the pouint of not publishing anything. So adding to more blogs may not be the best idea ever. I'll see how that goes.

In the future, I am still not sure what I will post on which platform. I know that I will try to regularly write pieces of fiction. I also want to talk a bit about computer stuff. Yet I am not sure where to put these two. They are well within the genre of content of Tilde Town, so would fit nicely there. But I want to store my projects, whether technical or artistic on my own server, and so talking about them there would make more sense. Thus, my plan is to post news of my projects on my personal server. This would also serve as a sort of portfolio. On this Tilde I would mostly talk about this Tilde, and maybe some silly experiments, smaller pieces of things and various stuff. As you can see, I don't have any clear plan yet, but I'll get there.

The future of this site

Given that you're reading my blog, you may already have noticed that there are several pages on my Tilde site. None are truly finished, but I've fleshed out the basic concept. I want every single page to have a different style, except the blog part. The index is a pink page with a static right column, and a retro vibe. I don't know where this will lead me. For my Ideas page (more on this later), I want to give it the look of a parchment. The colors are there, as is the layout, but I'll need to add the texture and the font. As I want to keep it as lightweight as possible, I don't want to have a 4K parchment texture background image, so I don't know yet how I will do this. The last page I have created so far is this blog, or rather, this newspaper. This is quite simple to do, and I'd say 95% of it is done.

Lucidiot, the one who introduced the concept of tildes to me, maintains a list of his ideas. They are mostly the abandoned ones, given to the public, and with some explanations about what made him abandon them. I think it's neat, both on a personal scale and on a public one. Such a list allows to get an overview of things one has undertaken, with a reminder of the purpose of the project as well as the challenges. It also means anyone can come and potentially finish one of the ideas one day. I've decided I'd do an idea page as well. For now, it's mostly new ideas, that I haven't even started. This serves both as a project todo list and as a brain dump. Indeed, the issues with ideas is that I don't want to abandon them. If I don't write them down, they will just poison my mind, until I forget all about them. By giving them such a space, it should ease my mind.

In a similar vein to this ideas page, I've started a question section on my homepage, which will eventually become a fully-fledged page. I will write there things I wonder, but haven't got time to do research yet. If anybody reads it and has some answers, or elements of them, I'd like to be contacted to get them !

Another thing I want to work on there is feeds. I've been using feeds for years, and I regret that they aren't more used on the web. Too often, I find blogs, or websites posting news on a subject, and they don't have any kind of feeds. It's usually because of a lack of time by the webmaster, or a will to monetize content by having people come directly to the site. The latter is quite a bad capitalist practice in my opinion, and social media have made it worse. So I try having feeds on my weblogs. For now, every static-site generator I have used had this feature, so setting this up has been relatively painless. With Zola, all I needed was to add a line in the config.toml file :

generate_feed = true

But while I was at it, something came to my mind, which I immediately wrote to my ideas : between my blogs, Github, Gitlab, Wikipedia, Openstreetmaps and all kind of other accounts, I probably generate quite a number of feeds. I'd like to list them, and see if that tells me something.

Tilde Town

I've been on Tilde Town for about a week now. It's a nice place, and there are lots of cyberstuff to learn and experiment with. I'm not the most outgoing person, and my time has been taken by various other activities, but I've still been able to mail a couple people and chat on IRC. So far, I'd say my presence here has been quite positive to me.