Ichomancer's Blog

I've got a four day weekend here! Absolutely legendary, and well needed achievement. This gives me plenty of time to work on Pixel Angler and my website. Running a Pixel Club, is just an absolute blast. The Aquarium fills me with such joy whenever I receive a new fish. I've got some other tasks as well. My E39 always needs something. This time, its rear tail light, but what concerns me is its my good tail light... My bad tail light, is working. Which unfortunately makes me rather paranoid, as I know I'm on thin ice in the tail light department. The old car probably wouldn't mind some oil either, though with it's low mileage and good condition, it usually aint to thirsty. I'll want to do some work on my E-bike, some fly-tying, and with any luck, some fishing. My luck runs out there though, as I'd almost be guaranteed no fish. When it comes to fishing, I am neither skillful nor lucky. If the weather permits, I'd love to fly some FPV drones as well.
Though, Pixel Angler is really coming along nicely. I'm truly working on some of the finshing polishes, while trying not to get too ambitious. It's working nicely, and I don't want to break anything. I find optimization can often be the tricky step, because there's a lot of room for serious error. It's definitely no secret that I make a fairly heavyweight website. So, this game is of course going to be standalone from any of my other scripts, and it will feature settings to improve performance on weaker computers. I'm hoping that everyone can enjoy this as much as I have been. It's definitely at the point in development, where I'm having so much fun playing it, that it's distracting me from the work. The work still required that is most daunting to me, is all the text. I've gotten a bit ambitious in that regard, and, while it is hopefully fun for people, I also aim to make it educational and, in that way, somehwat immersive.

Man, I've been on late night shifts for so long now I've gone fully nocturnal. It is good for coding, perhaps.. However, I miss the sunlight. I like the calm of night, but I live in a sketchier part of town. Soon, I will face the jetlag of abruptly returning to early morning shifts. I realize now, that the time of writing this, is when I would be waking up.. Yikes. Sometimes, I kind of like being a cog in the machine. I just wish the machine gave a little more vacation time. I guess, I also have to drive to the machine, and gas is really expensive now, and the machine I drive demands 91 octane. It also demands a lot of care, as it is nearly as old as me. But, I take care of my machines, which is probably why I work on devices worth more than I'll earn in a lifetime. Hell, just one of them is probably worth more than all the money all my ancestors have ever made put together. Sometimes the responsibility is a lot to bear, because I care. Thankfully, many of the people I work with are absolutely fantastic. The experience is perhaps invaluable, but, I do dream of one day having the freedom to do what I want. I feel like I am too creative to waste it working for other minds. I mean, jeez- if it aint a ridiculous flex- but my random personal website gets as much web traffic as the international multi-billion dollar organization I work for. So, in that way, I feel on top of the world thanks to Neocities. My little primate brain that grew up in the middle of nowhere didn't evolve to comprehend numbers above 100, so this whole internet thing is just wild to me. The only path to personal freedom that really makes sense to me is developing games and simulators. It's a monumental challenge, but I'm slowly chipping away at it. A side effect of website development- having a place and audience for your projects- is an accelerated desire towards projects that might benefit from an audience. A multiplayer game, being a perfect example.
Anyways, I would really love to keep writing more, but the sun is rising. Sleep is important for me to maintain optimal cognitive performance.

Hello everyone! I thought I'd share an update on the development of my fishing game for neocities..
I'll start by saying most of the game is finished, and I'm just working on bugs, fine tuning, optimization, etc. Here is a brief list of where the games at:

• Gameplay: 95%
• Assets: 40%
• Text/Dialogue/Story: 25%
• Testing & Optimization: 50%?

• There are 28 fish to start, of which, I have fully painted & animated 11.
• Some elements give the player creative freedom and customization, the special sauce for any game!
• The game features very light social elements, and the ability to share what you create
• Pixel Angler features a form of fishing seldom represented, as well as some mechanics I have never heard of in my decades of gaming.
• Designed for casual play, but also has content for more serious gamers
• Many upgrades, and spiralling late-game progression.
• The game has weather, a day night cycle, and even seasons!
• Pixel Angler fills a rather unique niche, and I've targeted some of my friends like an angler targeting a shy brook trout.
• Unique Pixel art + css aesthetic, game engine is all static js
• Did I mention, a unique form of gambling? In a fishing game?
• There be Lunkers.

So, development is pretty close! I've luckily fixed a pretty game-breaking bug over the weekend, which really slowed down some development. I've otherwise had a pretty solid workflow with the assets. I made 7 today alone! After that, I just need to do some writing, and final testing that everything looks nice. I've already tested the build, and everything is working nicely. I'm pretty new to using node.js for this kind of thing, but I wanted to for testing purposes. Unfortunately, it means one of the roadblocks is figuring out how to not have the code compile has a heaping pile of functioning garbage. I say some writing, but really, there's going to be a ton of text in the game, as one of the features is a full species journal with tons of scientific + gameplay tips. Luckily, I am an extremely fast typist.

In other news, to build the hype, I have created the stunning new Aquarium Pixel Club!

Please, feel welcome to go check in on the fish. This will give you a sneak peak as to what some of the assets might be looking like in Pixel Angler!
I've been working on a Pixel club for some time now, and, halfway through it kind of clicked that, duh, it should be fish! Fish are awesome, and, I'm releasing a fishing game soon! Maintaining a Pixel Club has already, honestly, been such a blast! It is really exciting to hop on Neocities and find a new Fish donation. They all look so good swimming together, and I can't wait for more!

I am hoping to release Pixel Angler in celebration of one million visitors on my site, to me, that type of traffic wasn't even a number I could hope to imagine.. Historically, I was in the boat of thinking 1000 was a huge number. So, I hope that gives me at least a month, because that means I can take my time a little bit, but, I tend to work fairly quickly on these sorts of things. I anticipate I'll finish all the fish assets this week, because I'm having so much fun with it.

As always, as a webmaster, there is always something to celebrate on the blog posts!
On this here post, we are celebrating 600K visitors, and over 20K lines of code! Cheers everyone!

I'm excited to announce a game that will soon go live on my website! Without revealing too much and spoiling anything- it is a fishing simulator.. The first version should hopefully be released on my website in a month, it's coming along really nicely, and I have to say- it's actually rather fun. I've got a few bugs to work on and features that I'm trying to implement, but overall, it is already a very unique take on fishing simulators. In a way, I am making it for my friends who love to fish, and it features a very particular form of fishing and some very interesting customization options, gosh, I'm really excited to share!
I will share this animated GIF I have made of a northern pike, to help build some of the hype for what you might be seeing:

I am also celebrating quite a few monumental achievements, which is what sparked the courage to make a free game like this:
-500K visitors, wow.
-100 Subscribers, I love the neocities community!
-18000 lines of codes! About to get a rather big update- maybe we'll hit 20k!.
As always, cheers everyone, and thanks for stopping by!

I have now returned from a fly fishing adventure to Kamloops!
I have always thought Kamloops to be in an obscenely beautiful region. I always love driving around and exploring the wilderness there.
The skies are fantastic. The geology is rich and fascinating. The terrain- the topography of the glacier-carved valleys overshadowed by hills and mountains in every direction.
I adore that the biome seems to change everywhere you go. One lake might be in a semi-arid desert grassland. The next might be in an enchanting open birch forest, and one lake over is dense pine.
Alright, lets get into the nitty-gritty:
The setup was 4 highly inexperienced anglers. 3 kayaks, and a boat (capable of comfortably fishing 3).
1 Kayak was pretty maeng-da (pimp-grade), and the other two were back-breakingly uncomfortable. So most days we had one in the kayak and 3 on the boat.
We explored several lakes; Walloper Lake, Peter Hope Lake, Edith Lake, and Community Lake.
Edith Lake is a knutsford classic, and so it holds a special place in my heart. However, Community lake was my favorite for the features. Little islands and coves, drop offs and shallows, overall, very nice.
Walloper is a great beginner lake, productive, and with hungry but small trout. Usually, you can catch a fish off the docks here quite easily.
Most of the time, we woke up very early, and went out in frigid rain to try our luck at the morning bite. Unfortunately, we came a little ill prepared as we were expecting warmer temperatures. However, we endured just fine. The nice thing about Kamloops, is you will always get some sun, even on a rainy day. When we had it, it was very warming.

Day one: Walloper.
Three of us stopped by Walloper lake on the drive up the coquihalla. The temptation of an easy catch was irresistable.
It took me maybe a year to land my first fish, so I'm used to some pretty tough and slow times here and there. I was very pleased to feel my indicator get pulled down. A good little bite, but, unfortunately I lost it.
This was a great indicator though, that, perhaps this trip would be succesful. My friend and girlfriend also got a good bite, but also missed the set.
I'm fairly certain we were all mostly running leeches on indicators here. It started getting late quick, so we continue on to Kamloops.
Fish caught: 0.

Day two: Edith.
Edith lake can be quite productive, and is known for sporting some massive rainbow trout and even brook trout.
Unfortunately, it's a little too close to Kamloops and has gotten a little too popular in my opinion. It is however, a great Knutsford gem.
If yall didn't know, Knutsford is a really great place where you will find some of the happiest cows on Earth!
Anyways, on this day all three of us were on Kayaks, exploring all around Edith. It was really quite windy- common in Knutsford, and Edith is rather exposed.
So, lots of trolling. My friend was also using a sinking line trying to get a bit deeper. We were mostly running chronomids, but also trying some leeches.
Fish caught: 0.

Day three: Peter Hope.
For those who didn't know, my name is Peter! So, by this point, I did hope to catch a fish.
This was the first day where we had our fourth fishing buddy, and he's the dude with the boat.
So, on day three we had three in a boat and one on the kayak. Peter hope has some Kokanee salmon, which none of us have ever caught.
We were watching one spawn off right off the docks in crystal clear waters- really cool.
There were quite a few folks fishing this lake, and we were getting pings all over on the fish finder.
Pretty much the whole time we were sinking chronomids. Occasionally, when the rain came, some of us switched to dry flies, as one part of the lake had plenty of rainbows jumping.
Fish caught: 0.

Day four: Community Lake.
My favorite lake, and I had guessed that just off the maps. This was suggest by one of my friends highly experienced father.
Very beautiful region- near Sun Peaks. Lush forest lake, with little bays and islands. If I were a fish, I'd be quite happy here.
Day four was supposed to be the nicest day, but turned out to be the roughest. Right as we got there, it starts just pouring with some frigid rain.
As we get out on the lake, the rain just keeps coming down harder and harder, soaking all of us to the core.
We were still fisihing, but I can also only imagine, most of us were also surviving.
Thankfully, after several hours of an increasingly violent downpour, the sun started to peak out. Past midday, it was just beautiful skies with rolling nimbus clouds.
This was exactly the morale boost we had needed, because by this point, we didn't have a single bite.
We had eventually made our way to where the action seemed to be happening, and proceeded to watch two other boats get a fish on every 10-20 minutes, with an ensuing 10-20 minute fight.
It was pretty impressive to see how much gusto the trout at this lake had, they were just smashing the line. Over time, word had spread about what tactics seemed to be popping off.
Much to our dismay, it was the exact tactic we had mainly been trying all day long- letting a small dull chronomid bob a few feet off the bottom- with the 12-16ft zone being prime.
So, we doubled down on the tactic, tried a bit deeper and a bit shallower, and a few different spots.
Eventually, our friend on the kayak gets a massive hit, and very quickly into the fight he made the mistake of grabbing the line a little two hard, instantly snapping his line and creating a gash in his hand.
He was just disgusted by his greed. We were all really hoping he would land that trout, it probably would have been a personal best. This was just a full on fishing day, dawn to dusk.
As we were packing up, a quick downpour occured once more, signaling that we had made the right choice to call it as the sun was setting.
Just after that, we were all blessed with the beautiful view of a vivid double rainbow during sunset.
Fish Caught: 0.

Absolutely wonderful and fun time hanging out with my friends. I have such a respect for these fish, sometimes I'm a little proud of them when they whoop my ass like this.
My partner and I learned to tie flies on this trip, so that was fun too. My friend didn't have the right materials for making chronomids, but I wanted to make one, so I ended up creating the "King Chron" - an massive bloated chronomid that will probably never ever entice a picky trout.

Total fish caught across all anglers: 0.

Despite a level of popularity I'm really not used to in other mediums (I wish my music was as good as my website lol), I've been putting my website on a bit of a casual hold.
I'm still maintaining it, and as you can see, I'm still updating it in certain ways. Adding content to the widgets, stuff like that.
However, despite some pretty epic ideas on my todo list for this website, I will be focused on an even more ambitious project.
I've been developing a game with my Brother! The plan is very solid, and it's been an idea I've had for ages. Really, it's a game I just can't wait to play myself.
I'm going to keep it a secret for now, but once we start teasing the development and (obviously) making a website for the game, it will be pretty obvious what it's about.
We've settled on some really exciting tools as well. We will both be practicing a lot of Crocotile 3D for the assets, so that gives you an idea how awesome the vibes are going to be.
The game engine will be Godot- it just seems like the most sensible choice for us currently. I'm not sure yet if I want to wwise or fmod for fancy audio- I've played with them in the past. I'm not sure if it's needed yet.
But, I will definitely be using FL Studio and Audacity for creating the SFX & Music. Luckily, throughout my music creation, I made tens of thousands of samples all for myself :). But, I also have some cool new devices to utilize- such as the Soma Ether. I might have to use a little bit of Blender here and there, but I'm going to try and stay away from it. I think Crocotile will allow me to really get a good level of asset creation achieved, which has always been the crux. I'm sure there's tons of other things we will likely end up using as well, but for the core visual, audio, and engine- I think this is a pretty good estimate.
It's a project that will take a few years, so whenever I'm being productive in that department, it will be the focus. I'm really excited to share more soon.

So first off, I've just made the blog posts collapsible. Beyond that, I've been busy adding tons of friends to the button ribbon, and working on some nice pixel art.
However, in implementing the teleporting bunny and kitty, they wound up completely breaking the website. It was a tricky bug to figure out first, but luckily disabling those scripts helped me get to the bottom of it. The behavior otherwise indicated a taskbar problem. I always find it quite rewarding to fix critical problems like this under pressure, however, it does disappoint me that this likely impacted some visitors.
In this blog post though, I really wanted to express some gratitude, with what a whirlwind of support I've received...
I started this week celebrating 20k visitors on my website and maybe 20 followers on neocities. The week isn't even over, and I'm already celebrating 70k visit and over 50 followers. Just,, wow.
Not to mention, my music has had more attention than ever. (which embarrasses me, because I think its all horribly mastered lol..)- but it's something that would truly make my younger self overjoyed to know.
A lot of the music I share here was made over a decade ago, I've otherwise just ceased to have interest in actually releasing music, but perhaps that will change, now that I have a nice place where I feel it belongs.
But, to be honest, I've been initially motivated to make this website out of sheer selfishness- just the self pleasure of having fun making an awesome website.
So, it really is an epic cherry on top to have been introduced to so many other incredibly talented website developers, and to have had such glowing feedback. So really, thank you all!

Happy 4/20 from Canada!
I just wanted to make a quick little blog post to share how much fun I've been having here.
Not just with building a website, but with slowly joining in on the neocities community while I explore other websites.
I love crawling the web just for the sake of it, you come across great inspiration. Neocities just so happens to be an absolute treasure trove.
While I'm usually rather shy, and particularly wary of online activity, the community here has been really warm, welcoming, and to me, rather creatively enticing.
So, while it hasn't just been the joy of creating a website, it's been the equal joy of watching others create websites as well!
I've started to follow some really amazing websites- it just so happens that some amazing websites have even stumbled across me!
So the same joy I get from bringing a new feature to life, I now get to witness as well in other websites that I love to follow.
I considered making a website of the month widget, but the choices are overwhelming! I would probably just make something automatic, based on what I'm following.
Speaking of widgets, as of writing this post, sadly I had to take my warp speed widget offline. Just as it was starting to get good.
I'll have some more time later on in this week dedicated to some pest control. Luckily, I was able to isolate a pretty awful performance issue some browsers would experience.
Hopefully, it will be back up, and soon with the glory I anticipate- being able to warp through the universe.
I do wonder, how long to be on this website to reach the edge of the universe, and what happens? Science has not yet determined an answer suitable for the web-browsing experience.
One of the more challenging things with this widget is working out an appropriate graviational influence for the warp effect.. As the distance between bodies becomes greater, the warp speed increases.
Of course, with everything, this requires some balancing. Even at extreme speeds, what might take you a second to blink through our galaxy would take years to reach distant universes.. So, yeah.
To be honest, with the current updates I was working on, it really wasn't ready. I had only properly processed half of the images I planned to use for the planets.
I was making all the backgrounds transparent. Normally with paint.net, but I was using Piskel as a rather nice free online way to edit GIFs.
Hopefully, with some luck, I will be able to showcase this fun feature soon.
Anyways, I just wanted to give a big shout out to all the people following along for the ride- as it's been a blast to follow you all as well!

I thought I would make a list of some of the games I've really enjoyed recently.
The list isn't initially complete, and I'll add some more games to it over time.

Aneurism IV

Path of Titans

Motor Town: Behind the Wheel

Space Station 14

Holy smokes, I just wanted to make a quick blog post to celebrate the fact that I have already had 20 thousand visitors in such a short amount of time.
The amount of feedback I have recieved is truly inspiring, and it's been such an exciting journey to slowly intertwine with the community.
In my travels, I have stumbled across so many incredible websites, in which I draw inspiration.
To those that have stumbled across my humble domain and wonder where I got such creativity, you're already on the right path! Keep exploring!
Some other notable milestones include over 15k lines of code, and nearly 20 followers already on neocities!
To be honest, I think I may have gotten on the "special sauce" page one day..
It's the only explanation I can think of for a sudden massive spike in traffic- where one day I suddenly had over 10,000 visitors.
So, if that's the case, that is really super cool. I have no idea, but if anyone ever finds me on the special sauce, let me know in the chatroom!

Hi all, so we've seen just a massive flurry of ambitious updates in such a short time.
While it's pretty exciting, it leaves me with a lot of crumbs to pick up.
So, the mobile experience on the website right now is pretty awful, so that's a current focus
Things are pretty functional and nice on PC, and I'm happy with how it's turning out.
I've been working on trying to optimize performance as well, as my ambition will only grow, I need a strong foundation.
Beyond that, getting the new theme's dialed in, as well as a few more magic themes.

The latest website updates have seen the creation of a pretty complex easter egg! Details in the spoiler below.

I just thought maybe some of yall might be interested in aquiring this delectable mouse that I am utilizing.
While I cannot take credit for the initial mouse, I did however edit it the brilliant clicking animation.

I chose to implement changing the glove on a click by adding a class for the clicking cursor in css:

html {cursor: url('/knights-glove.png'), auto;}

html.clicking {cursor: url('/knights-click.png'), auto;}

Then, I used some lightweight js to toggle that png:

document.addEventListener('mousedown', () => {document.documentElement.classList.add('clicking');});

document.addEventListener('mouseup', () => {document.documentElement.classList.remove('clicking');});

document.addEventListener('mouseleave', () => {document.documentElement.classList.remove('clicking');});

Viola! Now you can have an awesome old-school clicking mouse!
There is a little more special magic going on with the mouse on my site... Infact, you don't even technically have a "mouse"

As you can see, I've been really enjoying web development. My website is loaded with bits and bobs now. Exploring the indieweb has been loads of fun, and really inspiring.
At the time of writing, I only have a free neocities account, but already plan to soon upgrade. Lots of my desired features will required things like CORS.
You can still enjoy the concept of what it might one day look like- but expect some of my little apps to work a lot better when CORS is available to me.
The synth is still rather rudimentary, but I will inevitably become more ambitious with it's features overtime. Synths are really fun and rewarding, but at the same time tedious to troubleshoot.
I've tried to design it as nicely as possible- but discovering the shortcomings of a synth involve creating the worst sounds you can and trying to break it.
I plan to add a lot more musical toys in that sense, such as drum machines/sequencers and things like that. Really, just for fun.
The purpose of the situation room though is to provide eventually as much of a global overview as possible. At the same time, providing a fun secret-service aesthetic.
One day, I might make that it's own website in the little webring I plan to develop.

I've got a lot of plans for the future, and plan to make this website quite the rabbit hole- so be sure to stop by again!

Learning to write HTML and getting creative making a free website on Neocities. Using various AI to help guide me along. Otherwise, I just have some basic programming experience and a small bit of HTML/web dev.

I live with a sweet old puppy named Luna, a cuddly-yet-deadly kitty named Sammy, and the most wonderful girlfriend I could ever wish for. She is actually better at web development than I am.
You can check out her website if you like here: Sybernetic's Website - Enjoy!

I work as a flight simulator technician.

Anyways, I can't share much more about my work.

The purpose of my website is to learn more about web-development, practice artistic design, and to share my various projects and achiements!

You can read more about the creation of this website on the Updates History page.
I hope to make this an inspiring respite for everyone.