moonpod
My name is Andrea. I like a lot of things, but more than anything I like art, nature, and tinkering.
I've been very enamored by the idea of taking back ownership of my data and technology usage lately. It seems like a popular subject, and it's one of many reasons I decided to make a Neocities site. I learned recently that my iPad 6th generation will not be receiving the newest iPadOS update, which means that the clock is ticking on how long I can trust it to receive security updates. I feel like I need to get a better idea of what risks I would be taking by continuing to use such a device. It's great for drawing, annotating pdfs, and for watching videos, among other things, and I don't want to stop using it just because Apple thinks it's old, but at what point will my apps stop working? Will I be able to browse the internet? I'm currently writing this post from my 10-year-old Lenovo Ideapad that I recently refreshed by installing Ubuntu. It's not a great laptop, and I have much newer devices I could be using, but something about not using Windows feels really good. I feel like I own this device. There are some drawbacks, of course: I can't buy a new battery for this laptop, and it's much better used to do one thing at a time than to multitask, even with Linux installed. For me, using Linux, getting frustrated with Apple for ending security updates (eventually), using an iPod, and even using Neocities are all related: I'm trying to distance myself from the attention-grabbing nature of social media and make use of what I have for longer than these companies want me to. I want more open-source, more creativity, less advertising, and less algorithm. I do feel like I'm a bit addicted to YouTube at the moment, and I'm not entirely sure what to do about it, because it's the one site I still love. Instagram, TikTok, Facebook... Twitter? I've lost interest. But YouTube feels like potential to me, where the other sites feel grabby and annoying. I'm considering a break or a limitation, but I haven't figured out the best way to plan it quite yet.
These past few weeks have been very busy, good and bad. I'm happy to finally get around to trying out a real layout. I do eventually want to be able to feel like my website is more interactive, but I always want to have a blog in here somewhere. It could be hidden, who knows? I really want to make a kind of artful interactive site eventually. Now that I have a layout, my next order of business will be to figure out how to overlay a scrolling box so it looks like the you're scrolling through an iPod going through a link menu. I also need to make actual collections of things I like to keep in these linked pages. I'm also kind of confused as to why copying and pasting my former blog entries has resulted in some weird text formatting surrounding accents. "Mœbius" and "Méliès" are displaying weird. I'm still also interested in getting an RSS feed up in here, but we're working with *baby steps*, mkay?
I have a lot of plans for this site, but it's becoming kind of clear that I have forgotten most of the html and all of the css I learned back in the 2000s, and I'm going to need to do a crash course. Here are some of things I want to do with this site:
I'm feeling a kind of joyful frustration at the challenge of it all. I had a lot of fun in my Webpage Design course in high school, but I never got too far. I wonder if I can dig up some of the webpages I made on my old laptop... I know I got really into assigning links to specific parts of images. For now, I'll keep adding things in this format, because it's simple enough to move around, and looks *ok*.
I started this page because I felt like I was consuming too much media and not being creative enough, and it appears to be working. Yesterday was the first day in a while that I actually drew something in my sketchbook, and I honestly haven't written like this in a while, except maybe in my journal from time to time. Having the space to actually write things instead of condensing them into quippy blurbs for social media is refreshing. I simultaneously feel anonymous and deeply personal about this site. I hope I can keep it up!
I'm updating my webpage. I've been gathering inspiration from a few sites, and I find myself very drawn to The monastery of St. Blamensir and Lunaspace. There's something about the nostalgia of a kind of Windows 95 desktop and I really like how Blamensir game-ified their website. Both designs makes me want to click around. I really want to have images, exploration, whimsy, and illustration as elements of my website. I sketched a cute iPod man, kind of inspired by the iGuy (pictured below).
I've also been feeling pretty inspired lately by some old-school French futurists and illustrators, namely Georges Méliès, Mœbius, and Albert Robida. I've always loved fantastical and surreal illustration, and I've wanted to dip my toes into it for a while. I have always loved the art nouveau style, particularly that of Alphonse Mucha, and I have a lot of appreciation for the medieval surrealism of Hieronymus Bosch, and the magic of Miyazaki. I think I have a lot of reading, looking, and drawing to do in the next week. Building this website kind of feels like giving myself the fun project of art homework. Like I'm trying to distill something from everything that inspires me. The first step is probably to read the world of Edena by Mœbius, which I've borrowed from a friend (Thanks, Aaron!).
I suppose I'm starting to think of this site as a sort of inspiration board. I used to love pinterest for this function, but I really enjoy citing my sources and creating things from the ground up. Re-learning html and css feels like binding my own sketchbook with code. I'll come back with an update soon, I hope.
Welcome to my webpage; I haven't entirely figured out how I'm going to use it. The font face will remain as courier new until I figure out how to make it Chicago. It should be pretty easy to guess that I'm really nostalgic for iPods, but my intention with this site is really to focus more on creation than consumption. I'd be lying if I said I didn't care if anyone saw my page, but I've spent a lot of time on social media, and I'm yearning for something simpler. I want to feel like I have the mental energy to read and listen and create. This is an experiment for me. 29 July 2024
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