Skip to content
BLEAT | DOE - Digital Organization Environment
weeklybleats2.md

Weekly Bleats 2: New website!

Hi! Lena here.

So, uh, I announced this weekly newsletter and proceeded to immediately miss the second post. Not a great precedent, I know! But hey, lift your eyes from the text for a second and look at where you're reading this: NEW WEBSITE LAYOUT BABYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY.

I spent most of this time working on the website, which meant that I didn't get much time for myself and/or to actually write the second installment of Weekly Bleats. I feel awkward about it, like, does this mean I joined the huge amount of people who fail their new year's resolution within January?... Let me answer that with another question, though: who cares‽ calendar years are arbitrary! I'm not gonna let a tiny hiccup stop me from continuing this project~

Updates

I only really worked on the website these two weeks, so this section is more like a loose stream-of-consciousness devlog... Here goes!

This entire project was made possible by dotcomboom's autosite. More specifically, I used AutoSite-Legacy, because I run Linux, and Wine and the AutoSite GUI don't seem to like each other too much... It's mildly annoying having to build the website every single time I want to check how something looks, but long-term this will probably let me offload the final build process onto a github action or something so it's automatically updated whenever I push changes to the website's repo.

I designed the website around the concept of an old fantasy OS running on a fantasy VM; both with deer pun names, of course. In-universe, DOE is supposed to be the first version of an open-source Desktop Environment designed to be adaptable to the multitude of use-cases that would inevitably pop up in a society of anthropomorphic animals. I imagine this particular version would feel like a mix of late nineties operating systems like Workbench 3.9, Mac OS 8 and, more specifically, UNIX systems using the Common Desktop Environment. I intend to sneakily insert DOE-based operating systems wherever computers pop up in any of my projects. It's a fun way to establish a shared universe, and it solidifies this website's role as a sort of "hub" for all of my creative projects.

The idea to frame the next version of my website as a retrocomputing VM comes from my recent hyperfixation with Zachtronics and the presentation for their last game, Last Call BBS, where you explore an old computer a friend set up for you to play retro videogames on. The "Welcome!" message specifically aims to have the same vibe as the game's welcome message, and I feel like it adds a bunch to the experience. I might rewrite it a bit in the future, but I like its presence.

The boot sequence in the landing page is supposed to look like Linux's boot process, and the idea to have that landing page at all comes mostly from msx.horse's Slowchat. It's the last thing I worked on and, imo, it looks a tiny bit uninspired? But, again, it's the details that gradually add up.

I've still got a bunch of work to do. First of all: if you open the website from a cellphone you might notice that I broke my golden rule to provide a mobile version for every single one of my web design projects... I wanted to have it ready to release along with the rest of the website, but properly executing the kind of high-concept "fantasy OS running in a VM running in a web browser" took longer than I initially expected and I didn't have enough time to polish the mobile-specific stylesheet. Similarly, accessibility is still WAY far from the standards I usually hold myself up to, and I will make sure to rectify that as soon as possible! I just wanted to have some live version of the website available to run accissibility audits on, so accessibility might be spotty until next week. I'm extremely sorry if this affects anyone here! (If you're reading this after I fixed it, uh, well, glad I fixed it in time I guess?)

As a bit of a footnote: Weekly Bleats makes the microblog redundant, so I removed it off the frontpage since I wasn't using it anyways. It was fun in August last year when I was using it very actively, and I might eventually bring it back, but for now it'll just live in my backups.

Media log additions

  • BOOK: Alice Oseman - Heartstopper: Volume 5
  • BOOK: Chelsea Manning - README.TXT
  • MOVIE: Hayao Miyazaki - 君たちはどう生きるか (The Boy And The Heron)
  • ALBUM: Lemonetric - The Dissolution of Albedo Säure
  • ALBUM: WangleLine - Disaster Field
  • ALBUM: Ana Frango Elétrico - Me Chama De Gato Que Eu Sou Sua
  • ALBUM: nobonoko - Gato

Linkdump

  • [ARTICLE: I want to see my friends' posts] This short article accurately expresses my current feelings on social media, and one of the main reasons I decided to make this website instead of creating a fediverse account. I understand the importance and benefits of federation, but holy shit, I literally just want to be able to keep up with my friends.

  • [ARTICLE: How a 27-year-old Codebreaker Busted the Myth of Bitcoin's Anonymity] Pretty fun read about the process of deanonymizing the blockchain. It almost feels like a puzzle.

  • [WEBSITE: MyNoise.net] I didn't really discover MyNoise this week, I have actually been on/off using it for the past decade or so, but I recently had a project idea that made me get back into it and... It's still super good shit! Stéphane's work is just brimming with heart and love for his craft; consider giving a one-time donation if you end up trying and liking MyNoise! It's a superior alternative to using megacorporations like YouTube or Spotify for your background noise needs, for sure~