The diary

I decided I wanted to make good on my desire to have my own webpage. I looked up neocities, and got a page. Its thelonetree based on something that I'm wanting to write. ...I'll probably want to post my writings on this page eventually. I messed around with the base settings, but got overwhelmed pretty quick. I put off learning HTML for realsies until later.

I realized that I'm going to have to pick away at this over time. Today's the day I set up any kind of beginning infrastructure. I'm also following along a tutorial to help get myself acquainted with how HTML works. I've also got a page I'm making as I follow along the tutorial. It's probably pretty cringe to anyone who knows what they're doing, but I'm having fun. Maybe I'll see this later? Learning how to link around to various pages will be immensely helpful. It'll be even better once I can make the homepage into something that isn't... black text in a white void. One day. Oh, but I can make it a directory! let me do that right now!

messing around with background stuff... i put a light blue color for the background i think its too vibrant, I want a much more subdued blue for the main page. I'll also want different colors for the different pages. what color should the diary be...? I'll do graphics eventually. Id love an animated gif of a cloud drifting across the main page...

In a stroke of utter self-contempt, I've made The Hideous Quilt Experiment™. Despite the fact that it is a blatant crime against the eyes, it was a very handy experiment and a useful practice of basic elements. I'm going to learn some more actual HTML now, though.
I Went ahead and finished up the "beginner" portion of the course. Giving us forms this early felt mean... However, having been following along and fooling around, I'm already feeling quite adept with the basics of HTML! The next time I go in, I'll beginnging the "intermediate" portion, which says will involve CSS. I'm both intimidated and excited!
I may not be able to do any more tomorrow. Tomorrow's a big day. Still, CSS is going to be a huge step! I'm excited to see what it holds for me.

As expected, yesterday was crazy busy! But, I'm back at it again. Today I'm leaning the basics of CSS. This can be seen on my main page (at least as of writing this), where I've made a two-tone color image that's dithered together, then stretched it across the page and matched the background color to the bottom color. The effect is a fade to a lighter tone of blue at the top of the page. It's not great, but its kinda cool for a first try! I used Paint to make the image, which was a crappy experience. I'm definitely going to have to learn a better program to use. Especially since saving the image instantly corrupted the colors... Oh well. Its just a conceptual thing. It'll get replace eventually.
If you want to see the original image I used, you can check it out here.
I also learned about some text modifications, like how to alter text color with the span tag. Next page in the tutorial is... urgh, "text". I maaay have jumped the gun a little?
I LIED, I WENT BACK AND DID MORE! I did the whole "text" section, and hooooo boy, was there a lot to take in! My style sheets will likely have a ton of specialty cases of code. I've been feeling like these tutorials omit little bits of information that make a huge difference. Span, code, what next? I hope the margins section doesn't kick my ass...

I took an easy day today. Made a starry field to test out using a gif as a background. Turns out that only works in a css file- inline didnt work.

I didn't want to continue the course, but I wanted to do something to the site... so I remade the backside to be a little more befitting the name. I just. Hope that it isn't immediately obsoleted, since thats a manually made gag. Nothing automatic about it. Still, little things like that still keeped me engaged with CSS and HTML, so its still helpful, even as I take a "break". Tomorrow, barring anything big in my life, I'll make more headway on the course. Margins... hoo boy.

HAHAHAHA GUESS WHO FELL INTO A SLUMP FOR ALMOST EXACTLY A MONTH?!
Yeah.
So, I'm giving this a go again. Picking back up with Margins in the CSS portion, but I dunno how far I'll go. I'm mostly just trying to work myself up to doing this again. I kept thinking about doing this, I just... kept... putting it off. I'm not proud of that. Ah well. I'm here again, right? Anyhow. Let's see what I can't break.
I broke the headings! Hooray! And in doing so, I finally finished "beginner" HTML and CSS. Funny that I had stopped just short of the cusp. I likely already know a good chunk of the stuff in intermediate by virtue of reading additional documentation and mucking about, but this was still very effective. I'll try to be back on this again soon. I'll be making new pages for the intermediate, advanced, and so on courses. It'll be good, and I'm hoping to really let all these skills sink in. Oh, I'm also making this diary a bit more readable now that I know how to make CSS pages. Henceforth, this page will not merely be bullet-pointed items, but bullet-pointed items that are more centered, have larger text, and automatic spacing between entries! I think that alone makes this way more readable.

Today I took a stab at tables. I found some interesting applications... I still want to start cracking away at the "code" tag, but I'm still fairly hamstrung when it comes to knowledge. It'll have to wait for the time being. Maybe I should spend some time making some inline CSS code for this page, make these entries a little nicer, eh?

Some cheeky additions while I was at work today. I should rush getting to the advanced stuff. This stuff is all boooooring, I can frankly skim this stuff. I wanna learn about buttons, I'm taking this stuff about niche tags and lists too seriously. I can come back and review all this. Its not like the basics which were broadly applicable. Once I get to interactive elements, I'll have a much more fun time, I think.
Update: This helped me come back later in the day and crank out the rest of the intermediate stuff. I'm hoping the Advanced level stuff hooks me like at the start. Hopefully more of it will give me tools to play around more. Gotta remember playing around on this site is just as valuable as studying.

Made a very tired art piece at 4 in the morning.

Today marks the day I depart from an unordered list for this diary page. Now it is featured as a series of collapsible buttons! To be honest, I cribbed most of the code from a web tutorial, but I'll be making tweaks as I go for sure. These new collapsibles mean that I can add extraneous stuff without fear of bloating the page. For example, I added the aforementioned "art piece" to yesterday's entry. I can include images without that becoming the page. ...Although, an "art gallery" page would be neat. I should add that to the to-do. I'm keeping the pink theme for the page, though. Feels right for a diary. I'm just hoping this shift doesn't break the basic functionality of the page... somehow. Oh, also, I plan to include a standard sidebar in most pages for the home button. Asides are neat.

The functionality seems to work. I'm removing the ul now. Oh, a slight grievance: the content portion of the collapsible buttons is a bit bigger than the button itself. Weird.

I'm trying to implement a number of small QoL changes to this page. I've tweaked the home aside and I'm trying to make text that appears when you hover over an entry that prompts you to click to expand. This has... mixed results. Trying to get it to recognize a specific element among many identical ones is... beyond my capabilities, I fear.

Made some changes to the main landing page. Oh, and over the past week, I started the MitD page and the ButtonQuest pages.

Decided to add a contact page. It's just email for now, but I want to let anyone who's curious enough to poke around have a shot at saying hi if they so wish. I don't think I'll get enough attention to get much, if any, use out of it, but why not have the possibility open?

Made a folder for some abstract stuff. A place for microfiction, of a sort.