Updates

April 17, 2023

In good news, I've gotten another year of funding at UTD to finish my dissertation! I'll be teaching over the summer, but it gives me time to work on the dissertation in a (slightly) more leisurely manner while going on the job hunt.

In just news, my second chapter needs a bit of revision. I've got a lot of material to work with, so getting my thoughts down right was rough going. Thankfully, the extra year will give me time to get it redone by May-ish.

In less positive news, The Yesterweb is closing down. For those who don't know, The Yesterweb was a fairly loose gathering of folx who wanted to (re)create the decentralized web of Geocities or the personalized style of old MySpace. It was an inspiration for me, and their resources and knowledge helped me make this very website. Unfortunately, it suffered the fate of a lot of the old webrings: too popular, too quickly. According to Sadness (one of the founders and who built the tool this site is built off of!), it got blasted around social media as a "great webring to join to boost your SEO and build up your backlinks": words that make my stomach churn from the sheer impersonal avarice it implies. Regretfully, I was a bit too introverted at the time to fully join the webring when it was active. But in the interest of keeping the spirit of the Yesterweb alive, I'll try reaching out to set some up. I'm not exactly looking to ~boost my numbers~ so much as find others who share that chaotic spirit that thrives on doing things a little bit off-kilter (like use a Neocities page instead of a Linkedin profile).

That's all for now. I'll be updating the site to make sure all the links work (had to take one down already), so keep popping in to see what's changed!

May 23, 2023

Small update. I'm in the process of uploading some of my games to itch.io. They are rough, to say the least, but I think they can be helpful as inspiration for future projects. You can find them here: https://cirby1412.itch.io/.