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May 9, 2025
I found a site that could generate a hazmat sign graphic and looked up the specifics for liquid nitrogen, so there's the background. I also spent a very long time trying to figure out how to get a semi-transparent box behind the text. Very thankful for the people from 10 years ago with the same problem. I added another semi-transparent box behind the header. I think next I'll make an icon for the tab. I've also drawn my graphic for Doom Done Par, but I need to color it digitally. I also fixed the links on this page from my previous posts (I had several extra "/").
May 2, 2025
I am realizing that shutting down the Insta page will require me to do marketing. There's a small list of things I should probably do. Make QR codes for my pages is a good start. With the inclusion of my Summer series of rides, I have a graphic which I can turn into a postcard with the QR code and site address. I'll probably go to Monk's Copy Shop to get them printed as I know someone who used their services to make some spoke cards for a race he did. I'll leave them around our frequent stops. Lots of coffee shops and bike shops have community boards. Another thing I've been thinking of to keep people interested in this page is to make an email newsletter for when big updates or events happen. More research needed on how to make a sign up incorporated into this site. I don't want to use a service like Mailchimp because I'd like to keep using things that are open source, or at least free.
I also have a fun, just-for-me project planned. As is probably obvious to some of you, I like Doom. I like that all of Episode 1 was shareware --an idea and model I really like, which is why all my DIY games are dedicated to the public domain--and I like that all the levels have a par time to beat. I've beat Doom before but never on Ultra Violence or harder, and never under par time. I plan to do a Doom Done Par project for myself this Summer. It just seems like a fun challenge.
Addendum from May 4, 2025: QR codes are incredibly easy to make. Bing generates them for free.
April 17, 2025
I watched a couple interesting videos about our current internet/political age and the techno-feudalist world we live in. I also watched a nice video about measures to take on this page to trap AI scrapers in an eternal loop of nonsense links. If you're reading this, also consider making your own website/webpage and phasing out your traditional socials. Or if that's too daunting, make an email newletter for your actual friends who would miss seeing what you're up to online. Start small in your big tech divestment and tackle it in bite sized chunks. I was also reminded that DEVO was ahead of the curve on all of this. General Boy stated in 1979's Duty Now for the Future
"There is a direct connection between Devo's work in the music field and a big wiggly world around us. You may not be aware of this, but we are in the middle of World War Three. It is not nuclear bombs that we must fear; the weapons is the human mind or lack of it on this planet. That will determine our fate... We must fight back. We must know what we want. We must want what we need, and what we need now is Duty Now For The Future."
So I will continue to believe in the things that make it tough on me. When it comes to Big Social Media and data harvesting, the only way to win is not to play.
April 6, 2025
I've just re-edited the photos on the weekly rides section to be 360p tall and auto adjusted their width. I'm typing this prematurely because the site is not loading properly yet on my phone, but on desktop it looks fine. I'm teaching myself how to use GIMP for a graphic I plan to use fo the Summer series of rides I'd like to do. I'm thinking of other projects to do as well; mostly various crafts like earrings and iron-on patches. The background art process is also ongoing because I'm learning how to watercolor.
March 8, 2025
I already know I'm spending the off-season this year reformatting all the photos to be more phone screen friendly. Some of them aren't even computer screen friendly. I'll spend some time making divisions for each ride. The other big project will be wokring on the text based adventure game. I've been following a beginner's guide by Huw Collingbourne. That's also a long process because fixing up this site is the first priority. A small improvement I still want to make is having my own custom art for a background on the main page instead of the public doamin image Among the Ice Floes (which is still a cool piece of art).
February 25, 2025
This is an effort to get off the main social medias. Cryodome is already a community building group that only supports local coffee shops and restaraunts. The more I learn about coding this site, the more I want to integrate other local sites and services into the page. If I want to stay off Instagram (already off Twitter and Tiktok), I have to stay engaged with this site and hopefully be engaging enough that other people will also want to build their own pages and divest from the attention-monopolizing social medias. At the same time, Cryodrome, to me, is more than a winter bike ride. It's the umbrella for all my interests to gather under and share without feeling like I have to market them or brand myself.
"Practicing art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what's inside you, to make your soul grow." Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
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