Hello
Hello
Hello
Hello
Hi!
Been working on some stuff since the last post…
Website redesign
Finally got around to it! As much as I liked the previous layout for my website, it was very much just a landing page. Essentially a way to replace linktree. It started to feel very cluttered with a lot of social links and no real indication which one to click on. Now, it’s an actual website with content. I highlight the most important links in the header and leave the rest as lower-priority icons.
The profile image is fetched directly through my Atmosphere profile so it’s always in sync with my Bluesky account. This has been the case before, but now I also pull in the banner image.
I went for a multiple-page approach. I did previously have a projects page but it was quite outdated. Now, it’s been replaced with a page which dynamically pulls all notes from this notes site in the Projects folder. It renders them inside my actual website, with links to show the original note. So everything on my main website is in sync with my notes website, eliminating the need to update project details in two different places (which was the reason why I never updated my projects on my main site before).
I’ve also added a new apps page. This is essentially a place for me to link to some of my projects directly. Everything under the projects page is an article about the project. So, in order to just let me link to projects directly, I made an apps page. This is mainly for web projects, although I may put some notable downloads in there too. For instance, VRChat Bluesky Image Post was always hosted on my main website, but there wasn’t any way to discover it unless you read that note page. In fact, I kept forgetting what the URL for this project was and had a hard time finding it whenever I wanted to make a VRC photo post. Now, it just lives in the apps page.
And my old Activity Feed is still there, just moved to its own Timeline page. This just helps to organise the website a little bit, as I really like this feature, but it was causing some clutter before for sure.
listening to some music as I’m writing this note…
Overall, I’m quite happy with this redesign. I’ve been on-off trying different things for a few weeks now. I even experimented with going for that Marathon / Cicadamata type aesthetic (not sure what it’s called) but didn’t go through with it in the end. The final design was made to closely match this notes website actually. Featuring Catppuccin colour schemes, same mix of Sour Gummy / Atkinson Hyperlegible fonts, and just general vibes tbh. As I honestly use the notes site more than my main site, I figured they may as well be some consistency between them.
Note Link Improvements
As part of that, I’ve also somewhat improved how links render on my notes site. This also impacts how they render on the main website in some places, as the note site data is used for the project pages.
I had already added link cards to the notes site in the past, they look like this:
Whilst I like how that looks, it gets a bit cluttered. Before, any time an external link was in a note, it would render one of these below the paragraph. Now, I’ve made some improvements to the Quartz plugin (along with an Obsidian plugin companion) to add inline link previews. These are very much inspired by how Notion renders links. That was possibly my favourite part of Notion, I just don’t want to use Notion. Now, any links inside an existing paragraph will show an inline preview by default, like this: https://yernemm.xyz/ . You can even mouse over it to see a pop-out preview with similar info as the full-on link card. To add to that, beyond the default behaviour I can also set any link to render as any type of preview.
Website Discord Embeds
I mentioned this last time in 09-18, but I managed to get this to work. Sending links to my main website on Discord displays the special embed now with buttons and page description etc. This feature is work-in-progress at Discord at the moment so this may possibly break in the future, who knows, but it’s cool!
That’s a lot of website improvements, whew
Now, for other stuff:
VR Stuff
I ended up placing a reservation on the Steam Frame, though I got waitlisted. Unfortunate, but I guess it gives me some more time to think about it. Though, I’ll probably still get one.
I guess partially related, I’ve been trying out my Quest Pro again recently. I’ve switched from it to the Bigscreen Beyond 2e around the start of this year. It’s crazy how heavy the Quest Pro is in comparison, especially if I also put on headphones and an extra Vive tracker for space calibration. But, that is what I used to main before my Beyond. It’s nice to be wireless and to have actually good face/eye tracking. I feel like neither headset is explicitly better. Like if I wanted to play actual VR games, sure the Bigscreen Beyond is better in most ways: comfort, resolution… though somehow worse FOV than the Quest Pro (at least the vertical feels quite bad). But for me like 95% of my VR use is VRChat. And in this scenario, having good face tracking and hand tracking is really nice. I just need to find the transceiver for my Modmic as the Quest Pro mic is awful.
I’ve also tried Basis VR recently. I missed a lot of the big capacity tests for it, I need to give it a real try, as well as upload my avatar. It’s a very interesting platform, as it almost feels like the Bluesky of Social VR in the sense that it’s an open-source decentralised framework/foundation rather than trying to be the actual platform itself. The goal (to my understanding) is for the Basis team to build the networking and avatar protocols etc. but let other developers make their own games and projects on top of it. So maybe you play a VR game in the future that lets you just log in with your Basis account and have your avatar and so on. The concept is really cool, even if what we actually have today is not quite there yet. They do manage to hit some really impressive player counts in their server stress tests. VRChat struggles in the low hundreds whenever they do capacity tests, but Basis pulled off around 1500 clients in one instance in a recent test…
VRChat have been making some controversial moves again lately, with their failure to address Gen AI disclosure requests, and just releasing a vibecoded webpage which features AI-made worlds… It’s really not a good look so I’ve seen people once again look towards alternatives. For me personally, I’m not planning to go elsewhere. I mean I’ve tried other platforms like Chillout VR and Resonite and whilst they have cool features in their own right, they just don’t have the player base unfortunately. Who knows though, hopefully this gets addressed soon.
Gamin & Shows & Films
Just a quick section here to mention what I’ve been interested in lately!
Chainsmoker Cat ended this week. It was quite a fun anime. When I watched the first episode, I wasn’t sure if I’d continue due to how gross it was. But honestly the humour got better as the show went on (or I just got used to it) and it really grew on me. I hope it gets another season!
Steel Ball Run is finally back, that’s neat. Just watched the episode earlier today and do not remember what was going on in the previous one…
As for gaming, I’ve started playing Control this week. I’ve had this game for years but I guess with Resonant releasing, I’ve felt like I should finally try it. I initially bought it I think because it was one of those games that ran well on Steam Deck. So I got it around the time the Steam Deck released on sale, and then never played it on Steam Deck or otherwise. It’s nice though. At first I was quite confused since the game just sort of drops you in without explaining anything. I felt like all the characters knew what was going on, but I didn’t. Eventually though, the story is explained a bit further and it starts to get interesting. I’ve also tried to read some of the text collectibles you find, as they’re kinda interesting SCP-esque documents. It’s an interesting setting.
As for films, I’ve also watched The Odyssey and Resident Evil this week. Both are good! I liked The Odyssey a bit more though. Despite being around 3 hours, it kept me interested throughout the entire runtime. Resident Evil was also surprisingly funny, and made sense despite me never playing any of the games before.
Am I done?
I haven’t written a post this long in a while. I guess I’ve just done a lot over the past week, and a lot of other stuff has happened. I’ll end it here though as once again, I’m writing a post when it’s very late and I’m tired. Quite the usual pattern for me with these at this point…
