--|-- lantern-cat's blog --|--

11.3.2025 - I wrestled with the aforementioned tutorial a whole bunch before I realized that something I was coding elsewhere kept throwing it off. For now, the links to other pages on my site don't look the way I want them to, but I have completely revamped my homepage!
I also ran into Atabook, a source for creating free guestbooks for websites. It's part of Nekoweb, which is a really cool project I haven't delved into as much as I've wanted to. That will be my next step.
I did archive the original version of the site index page for nostalgia's sake. I'm really happy with the new version, though. The cloud photo in the background is my own work ^^ The cloud background on the blog page is ALSO one of my own photos now, not a random source image like it used to be.

Finally, I have cultivated an understanding of margins, so now everything can look more like a proper webpage and less like a bunch of boxes stretched the whole width of the screen. I tweaked this blog and my playlists page accordingly.

11.2.2025 - I created the groundwork for the Lonely Town section of this site, including finally digging into the flashlight code Neil Ciciriega wrote in the March 21st post. I found a source on centering things in CSS via this stackoverflow page in my attempts to center the site home link (this gif: ) within a circle on the homepage there. It was pretty easily done once I understood the right commands to use! That's been the whole story arc of my learning process.
I also started reworking my site homepage into something I'm happier with. I've found this try-it template to be helpful, but this is definitely a bigger hassle than the other stuff I worked on today.

11.1.2025 - I made some animated pixel art today and found a good resource on fonts as well, so I can use some non-standard fonts.

10.31.2025 - I made a new div class for blog posts to make them more distinguishable. I feel like I finally understand CSS styling for div classes after much stumbling in the dark. I'm happy with what I've created so far, but I'll leave all the old blog posts in the prior, stripped-down style. Eventually I will have to decide whether I want to paginate this page or keep it an endless scroll down to the beginning of the project. I also created the playlists page for my site today. I centered the embedded youtube video on lobter as well.
More resources I utilized today: this neocities page, warning for flashing imags | this blogpost about horizontal rules |
While hunting for a nicer background image for my main page, I learned (from this neocities blog) that it's poor etiquette to link images directly from other neocities users because it counts towards their bandwidth allowance. It's preferred for users to host their own background images. Thankfully, in my pursuit to create most of my assets from scratch, I've mostly been doing that--but there are a few other image hosting sites (like tumblr) where I'm loading and embedding images I didn't create, at least for now.

10.30.2025 - I've added some custom cursors to specific pages on my site, as well as replacing some of the plain color backgrounds with images. This tumblr blog has been a treasure trove of information and image assets, as well as this site for cursors. I ran into this site as well for asset generation, but haven't done anything with it yet.

10.29.2025 - A friend from another site has re-sparked my interest in working on this project, sharing some kind words and pointers for coding. I have some ideas about how to restructure parts of the index page to make it prettier, and inspiration to put some actual content on the pages about my book characters; the book has been written at this point, anyway. My next concerted effort will be creating a custom cursor for my site and filling out character bios on the Solus pages.

3.23.2025 - I talked to my sister on the phone today, and she looked at this website.

3.21.2025 - After a bit of a break, I spent a large part of yesterday making pixel art for the Solus pages of the site (the train, pretty much, which is still not finished yet!!) and coding the Solus pages. I have learned one way to make menu sidebars, and I'm working on learning how to make basically the equivalent of Microsoft Word text boxes for content that will load in the body of the page. I played around with some CSS padding div's, which seem to accomplish the look I want, BUT float around on the page and obscure other things--especially when I check on mobile. So I either need to keep learning more about those, and maybe how to assign absolute positions relative to other stuff on the page, or do it some other way. I could probably also just assign a background color to any given paragraph and then put a border around that--I will probably try that first, it seems easier.
Days ago, I also asked some folks on reddit about an idea I had for the Lonely Town portion of this site: the flashlight game I want to make. They said it would totally be possible with Javascript, and that Neil Ciciriega (of all people) actually made something like that once so I could look at his code if I wanted. Lots of useful links in that reddit thread, but I'm gonna copy them here as well, because I can.
The link to Neil's flashlight html code
Search results on the site CodePen for flashlight effects
Someone also suggested I try to just make a large (larger than any screen) black image with a transparent circle in the middle, and make that image draggable, so you're just dragging one image on top of another. I don't mind that idea, but it'll be my last-ditch "just do it as easily as possible" effort. Kind of like what I'm doing above with using bordered paragraphs for now, on Solus, instead of digging into CSS properties for the padded div classes/tags. Not sure if "class" is interchangeable with "tag" in html vocabulary. Hmm.

3.16.2025 - I began this website on the 14th. I haven't done too much with it so far, but I'm having fun carving out a little niche for myself on the internet. Today I made a repeating lobster-dancing pixel gif, along with some other pixel art for the site.
Yesterday I sketched up some ideas for how I'd like this website to look someday, and took some basic notes on html.
I feel like the hardest things to accomplish will be the things I'm willing to wait longest for--finishing touches, interactive elements, ambitious concepts which I won't be super upset if I can't do.
I am currently writing this blog entry in the html editor itself, because I'm not sure how to make a post yet. That should probably be the first practical thing I learn how to do!!

Blog!!