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Home For Fiction – The End

November 24, 2024

Yes, that’s exactly what it sounds like: It’s the end for Home for Fiction. I’m giving up. I feel I have nothing of value left to say.

More still, I’m at a place right now that I feel as if I’d never had anything of value to share. In other words, the entirety of all my posts, novels, music, apps, drawings, and anything else, feels entirely pointless.

It’s then more honest – to me, first and foremost – to simply stop here; sort of pretend none of this ever happened.

In more practical terms, I’ll leave the site online, at least for a while. The domain and hosting are already paid for some time into 2025, so we’ll see what happens next. If I’m still around, I might renew it…

«Η επιτυχία της αποτυχίας μ’ έχει τρελάνει» – Λεξ

the end. image of cat.

Recent Changes on Home for Fiction

August 5, 2024

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!

recent changes Home for Fiction. Image of unimpressed cat.
Here’s an unimpressed cat to go with this post…
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Simple Analytics that Respect Privacy: a How-To Guide

July 29, 2024

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!

simple analytics; image of chair on Greek island
Simple analytics, Greek style!
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