Does the word “insulter” exist in a standard dictionary? I don’t know and I’m too bored to search. But the name Walrus Insulter definitely does, in my dictionary. Obviously for those who know him, Walrus Insulter refers to none other than the supreme overlard [sic] of puns, my cartoon character Punning Walrus. If you haven’t met him yet, just click the “Free Walrus” link on the top menu. Or here’s the direct link for the lazy ones among you…
The whole thing, as they usually do, began on a boring cloudy afternoon. I was playing with my home network, trying to find new ways to annoy my neighbors (more of this in a while), when I realized that the best… walrus for the job is of course Punning Walrus.
Walrus Insulter: Don’t mess with the Walrus 😛(more…)
Important Note: There are some more recent developments that occurred in the wake of the text below. Besides the recent changes described in this post, I decided to make the Home for Fiction apps Patreon-only content again. Yes, I admit it: I have been defeated. I was naive to think this could work, simply as a result of Disney-magic and people’s understanding. To put it plainly, I simply can’t afford to pay for the server resources required. It’s either this or nothing.
Everything below this point should be seen as a snapshot of history and might not reflect current reality.
You might have noticed some minor changes on Home for Fiction lately. Or then again, you might have not, and the only person reading this is me. Ironically enough, this very element (meta- time!) is part of the reason there have been such changes.
Among these recent changes, the most conspicuous must be the disappearance of comments and the lack of a link to the support page that used to decorate the header.
Moreover, if you’ve found this post coming from the common app interface (just try to visit any of the Home for Fiction apps), you have realized that all Home for Fiction apps are nowadays limited to a fixed number of users per day. Each user is also limited to a few boots per hour.
I want to explain all this – though, somewhat egotistically, not to you; the intended audience is I alone, as it has always been. Writing this post is only meant as a vehicle for putting my own thoughts in order and understanding something new. But if it’s informative to you, great!
Here’s an unimpressed cat to go with this post…(more…)
A programming post for today, but with a little twist. We’re not making a story planning program or an interactive fiction “game”. In a way, we’re not even making anything concrete – though I will share with you some code samples. Instead, we’ll take a more theoretical look at what I term simple analytics, with respect for privacy in the foreground.
As you perhaps recall, I recently revamped both the main Home for Fiction site and the blog itself. Doing so, one of the things I wanted to do was to completely eradicate all forms of privacy-invasive analytics. So I threw out Google Analytics as well as Jetpack analytics for WordPress.
Let’s take a look why and, mostly, what could one do if they’d like some simple form of stats/info that respects users’ privacy. I’ll also throw in a story about grandpas’ underwear for good measure – trust me, there is a connection hidden in there!
