POST ARCHIVE
It's truly a corner now
I love libraries.
Libraries have always been a place of comfort for me. Growing up, I went to the Newburgh Free Library, which has a gorgeous view overlooking the Hudson River. It was my introduction to a lot of culture that I wouldn't have had acess to otherwise. I didn't have a lot of access to pop culture growing up since my family didn't have internet or money and also because my parents saw pop culture as threatening to their belief system.
I started my own library as a kid, which basically meant I organized my bookshelf. I'm pretty sure I also made a sign-out sheet, but I'm not sure if I went as far as making library cards.
When I started my job and was given a few bucks to decorate my desk, I chose to decorate it as a library by buying a small corner bookshelf. That way, I can be surrounded by books even when I'm coding. I prioritized conversation starters for populating the bookshelf, but I also included overflow from my bookshelves at home.
I recently was happy to purchase a new bookshelf handmade by a local craftsperson. I had been thinking about the shallow bookshelves of Books & Bookshelves (located at 99 Sanchez St, SF) ever since I saw them a couple years ago and finally pulled the trigger to get my own.
So, I think having my site be somewhat library-themed is appropriate. I think it enables a pulling together of an eclectic variety of ideas. I also think it conjures feelings of home, of warmth, and of comfort. I think the fireplace also brings in the idea of cinders, which is on brand, but also fits into the concept of a library. It brings to mind Victorian-era libraries, like Vassar College.
Website updates:
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Replaced the big home screen buttons with a sidebar for every page. The sidebar is styled as a bookshelf. I've remixed the existing button art as the icon and cover backgrounds. I've also added a bunch of other touches to make them feel more organic. The glass buttons were rather short-lived. Claude added the orange cube on the shelf as a nod to cinder cube, and I couldn't help but be charmed, so I've kept it. An easter egg from the original buttons lives on.
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Home screen revamp. Now that the big ol buttons are gone, the home page needed a little lovin'. I'm trying to avoid making the site strictly a blog site, so I've chosen to keep the blog somewhat deprioritized visually and instead add illustrations to complement the bookshelf.
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I've added a proper Games section. You can now play the WebGL games I've made directly from this site! Ideally I'd like to serve the Java and Solarus games as well, but for now they're just downloads. I haven't included the mac download for Carnival Town because afaict it doesn't work.
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Swapped icons for handdrawn versions
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Updated the Contact page because I felt like it
[2026-09-21]
I had a great time presenting the lego trains and lego toilets at the Noe Valley Art Festival. A lot of kids were excited to see them, and many adults too.
I've been working on a lego model of the 19th street station in Dolores Park.
I've added a contact section because I realized the site desperately needed it. Like, I told multiple people to look at my site before realizing there isn't a straighforward way to contact me from here. But now there is! So this shouldn't be a problem going forward. I had to make a new icon for it.
I also did a lot of UI upgrades. Fuck consistency, I went with glass-ish buttons and medieval-looking fonts. It's just what I'm into at the moment.
I'm in denial that this site is basically a blog.
I should add site nav. It'd be cool to do a slide-deck adventure or something like that.
[2026-03-24]
I keep thinking what I could post here and not being sure what to write.
I guess one thing would be this slideshow I did on Ukiyo-e for a work summit as a fun off-topic presentation.
I guess I could also post pictures of my minecraft world, or other ideas I'm batting around in my head but haven't executed on. Or, like, write on some topic I care about, but I'm not sure what that would be. Work? Politics? 'The WEIRDest People in the World?'
Lego Muni Instructions are now available!
I finished making the instructions for the Lego Muni-- and they're now available on Rebrickable! Rebrickable makes it easy to assemble and order the pieces, and best of all, I'm offering the instructions for free 🙂.
I'm hoping you'll build it motorized (because I spent a long time making the electronics fit 😅), but the motor is optional. It's sturdy enough for kids to play with it, but the building experience is geared towards teenagers and adults. You can even build multiple Muni cars and chain them together!
And if you do build it, I'd love to see your version! Feel free to DM me on Instagram with pictures or feedback.
Happy building!
[2025-05-13]
I've completed the instructions for the V3! Check out the Lego page for new information. They should be available on Rebrickable soon if approved. I've also updated the page with a more detailed history and a GIF version of a post I shared on Instagram. (I should probably create a home page link to my insta...)
Behind the scenes, I've also converted the rest of my site to use the Jinja2 templates, so a bunch of minor inconsistencies should be resolved. Shoutout to realfavicongenerator.net for being easy to use!
[2025-04-30]
I've been working on the site some more, and now I've created some automations to help make creating new posts easier!
It ended up being fairly painless, and I'm pleased that I was able to leverage my Python knowledge!
I got motivated to add RSS support after Alana Pearce, the main host my favorite podcast Play, Watch, Listen, said she fixed their Patreon's RSS feed, which made me think, people still use those? And like, they sound helpful! So I've added one. You can find it at feed.txt! (Neocities also has a guide on adding RSS to your site!) And in order make RSS, it helps to have the posts be generated instead of manually editing all the files 🙃.
I started off using Jinja2, then contemplated using a static site generator. Then I was like, "are there Python static site generators?" And there are! I found Pelican, and then realized, this basically does what I already was doing plus some markdown parsing. And then I thought, they're probably using someone else's library to parse the markdown. And sure enough, they are! So I grabbed the markdown library. Then I was like, how are they turning this text into nicely grouped items with metadata for RSS? So I read the docs and it turns out you can do this with the metadata extension to add some data at the beginning of each markdown file.
So I've turned all my old posts into markdown (there's only a few lol) and changed the pages that reference them to be Jinja templates! So that should all be live now. This also sets the groundwork for creating a template for the other pages! Up until now I've been editing them all by hand.
One roadblock I ran into was that I wanted to copy-paste the html into the new md files, but it was html escaping a lot
of it. I fixed it by adding |safe to my templates and surrounding the html with a <div>
after reading that by default it
ignored top-level html elements in the docs.
I also switched from using WebStorm to PyCharm for this project for the Jinja2 support 😋. But now unfortunately I need a better process for previewing my files, images are broken in the generated files. It's hard to get the tooling to work 😭.
Also note, we are now live on cindercube.net! ( previously, cindercube.neocities.org)
My best wishes to any who are reading!
[2025-04-01]
I've been obsessed with working on a LEGO Muni Metro Model for the past few months. I've created a public Insta to show off my work: @cindercube
I've also updated the lego section of the site with some details on the different versions
[2024-08-20]
Submitted Trashterpiece for the 2024 GMTK Game Jam!
Be sure to check it out on itch.io!
Proud to have completed it with mint, tofu, and kukara. I feel like we really knocked it out of the park!
[2024-07-28]
- I made a piano arrangement of "Watcher" from 1000xRESIST! Check it out on my MuseScore page!
- I updated my itch.io with my old games from game jams and school
[2024-06-21]
- Added links for gaming and music
- Replaced icons with lower resolution versions for faster loading times
[2024-06-20]
Added a bunch of things, still working on more
- Added a bunch of resources to the code page that hopefully people find helpful
- Added links to various stuff I've made, like Github and Soundcloud
- Added an archive of a random tumblr page I found in my gDrive
- I've started to make more sensible layouts
Still working on filling out other pages.
I've been really enjoying making all the logos for the different pages. I think I've developed a look for the logos where there's two vanishing points, one to the top left and one to the top right, but the right one is further away. There's a light source to the left. The theme is represented by a single 3D object on a textured background. A dark area under the object suggests a shadow. Colors of the object are preferably non-representative. The color of the foreground and the background should contrast. The brightness should run the whole gamut, from white to black. Also, the background should contrast with black and the page's background color. The code logo should be redone but it's good enough for now.
Did not mean for the Drawing background to look like the Life is Strange cover but honestly it's kinda sick that it does
Hello, world!
Just starting this whole neocities thing.
Here are my goals for this website:
- Eat a lot of cereal
- Show off cool stuff I've done
- Show off cool stuff other people have done
- Eat a lot of veggies
- Design my own site from scratch
I'm mostly thinking
- Games
- Music
- Code
- Drawing
- Lego
plus whatever new interests I acquire along the way! Maybe I'll do some stuff on the trains in San Francisco while I'm at it.
My site is cooler than yours ;P
Don't take me too seriously
The Hobbit Review (GBA Game)
[2013-11-15]
Overall
Overall, this is a pretty good game for the Gameboy Advance. It lacks in some areas, like graphics and gameplay, but it still is worth it to spend a few hours playing this game. This game version of Tolkien’s classic story (released around the time of the Lord of the Rings movies by Peter Jackson, not the new movies,) is a pretty accurate telling of the story.
Graphics
The graphics of this game are pretty good, especially for the characters and unique locations. However, this game is very lacking in terms of graphics in the dungeons, where it repeats to the extent that you can find multiple rooms that all look identical, their purpose not being to be a puzzle to a user or to confuse the user, but because they didn’t make enough variety in tiles in the game for one, or expected the user not to notice. However, other than that, the textures were pretty good, with the game having its own specific feel in terms of textures. The map and the title screen feel very appropriate and well done, finely depicting the feeling of the book.
Gameplay
The battle controls and setup in this game are pretty good, especially with hand-to-hand (close range) combat. The charge and roll with the staff is also a nice gameplay feature. The weapon upgrades are nice, but they don’t really add much to the game. The upgrades in health and shielding are necessary, but the whole fraction thing is a little misleading because at the end of the game you don’t have a chance to go back and get the upgrades you missed after you go on to the next area. Also, it isn’t necessary to get all the upgrades to beat the game, making them seem a bit inane. Boss battles are well done. Most of the puzzles are fairly easy, but occasionally a puzzle comes along that isn’t as obvious. However, after the fact, they usually evoke a “well, duh, why didn’t I think of that?” reaction.
Sound
This game has its own trove of memorable melodies that blow the average game out of the water, with the exceptions of the likes of Zelda and Mario. I sometimes caught myself humming a theme, and after a little thought, realized that it was from this game. The sound effects are pretty good, but sometimes they become a little cliched or exaggerated.
Addictiveness
This game is moderately addicting the first time through, but the large adventuring regions are hard to keep track of and can become tedious (specifically, the Misty Mountains). Also, the ending is surprisingly abrupt (“I should rest now.”), which doesn’t lead to feeling of, “hey, I want to play that again!”
Depth
This game feels pretty big as you get into it, and has good-sized dungeons, but at the end it feels like it was missing about and eighth. The added scene where you have to get the three pendants before you can give the guy the arkenstone feels tinier than it really is, but despite it feeling like filler, it makes the game’s ending more abrupt.
Story
The story of this game is really good, and it retells it accurately, even bringing up fond forgotten memories of reading the book as I played, as the game quotes the book (or something very near to it) quite frequently. Bilbo the hobbit is taken on a slightly involuntary quest with dwarves by Gandalf the wizard. They set out on a quest across much of Middle Earth to reclaim the treasure lost by the dwarf lords of old to the dragon, Smaug. They get into trouble with goblins in the mountains, resulting in Bilbo finding the Ring of Power, which can turn him invisible, and the goblins on their tails all the way out to the Lonely Mountain, where Smaug lives with the Dwarven treasure. The dwarves are captured by the woodland elves on their way, but Bilbo frees them and they continue to the mountain. They do not defeat Smaug, but they accidentally release him on the nearby town, where townsman kills him with an arrow to a weak spot. The townspeople are now lined up to attack the dwarves in their fortress, but then the goblins and their allies come, and there is a huge battle in which the dwarves are reconciled to the others. Bilbo goes back home and lives in his hobbit hole some more. I just love this story, not as much as Lord of the Rings, but I love it nonetheless.
Difficulty
A few of the boss fights here are harder to beat, and the occasional puzzle takes some looking around, but this game is pretty easy, to the extent that you can beat it without finding all the upgrades.