Update on roncli.com redesign

Posted
Coding Node Rendr roncli.com
For about five years now, I've grown to despise the style of my home website and this blog. Yeah, it was okay at first, but even my limited design skills have surpassed the current design of the site. It's long overdue for a change.

My design goal for the new site was to do something custom and have fun with it. Technology for the sake of technology, if you will. I came up with a good set of topics for the site and, in my head, figured out what each section would look like. Eventually I wrote up an outline of requirements, and then translated those requirements into a project in Asana to keep me organized.

Then, those tasks sat there. roncli.com was created as a project in Asana in February of 2012, over 3 years ago. I started the site in ASP.NET, then switched over to a solution in node with Express as the web server and Backbone as the front end. Neither of these solutions got far. I was just far too busy with other things to make a project of this magnitude worth doing.

However, once I switched jobs earlier this year, finding the time to work on the project became much easier. In May, I rebooted the project for a 3rd time, moving to a solution in the young Rendr library for node. Since then, with the exception of a month and a half towards the end of last year (thanks, Warlords of Draenor!), I have made steady progress.

And, that progress is accelerating.

I divided the project into 7 major milestones:

  • Framework - Basic things such as the site design and account management.
  • Blog - Interfacing with Blogger. I expanded this to include Tumblr as well, because I wanted to include my creative works as well.
  • Pages - On the old roncli.com site, pages are basically /page.asp?PageID=1. I hated that then, and I hate it even more now that I know about things like SEO. The new site allows for arbitrary HTML pages to be created anywhere at any time, not limited by the site design but only by the HTML I use.
  • Music - Included with this section is a media player that accepts YouTube and SoundCloud media.
  • Coding - A basic section that shows the projects that I am working on.
  • Gaming - Dedicated to all things games, this section reads in data from various gaming APIs for display in one section.
  • Life - Largely based on the Pages section, this section is simply a collection of things that don't fit in the other categories.

So far, 5 of those seven milestones are complete. I'm currently working on the Gaming milestone, which is a bit more involved than the others simply because I'm reading from no less than 4 data sources to get the data that appears on the site, and coordinating the APIs required for them are kind of a pain. The last milestone, Life, is simply content, so really I'm very close to being functionally complete, which is very exciting.

The drive to complete this site ultimately came from a number of different forces. First, this site is showcasing me. Everything I share with the world will be somewhere on that site in one form or another. Second, it showcases that I can actually code what I say I can code. With node being a relatively new technology, and rendr a very new framework (rendr just went 1.0 this year), having a body of work is something I can point to and say yeah, I can do this.

Lastly, I kind of want a new start. Not in the sense that I am starting over as a new persona, but rather a new home base from which I can operate out of. When I do something, I want to be able to share with people a place I can be proud of. To me, roncli.com needs to be a thing, not just a dumping site for files and old hobbies.

My goal is to launch by the end of the month, so if you follow me, be sure to keep an eye out for the new site. I'm very excited about what I am doing, even if it's just on a small scale. I have other plans beyond roncli.com as well, but getting the base established was a big necessity for me before trying to branch out from it.

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roncli.com Blog
This is my blog where I give my thoughts and opinions on various topics and share my creative endeavors with the world. I run two personal blogs, but combine them here for ease of access.

Blogger - My oldest blog using the Blogger platform contains posts full of opinions, gaming, and code.

Tumblr - Tumblr posts are all about my creative side, containing music, videos, writings, and updates on my web creations.

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Social Media
Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

I'm fact that's what Lingo needs: a "phone" block. The clue is an incorrect autocorrected form of the answer. ๐Ÿ™ƒ

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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

It's like my phone knows I've been playing Lingo. I typed in "exited" and my phone was all:

โฌœ๏ธ EXCITED ------
โ–ช๏ธ
โ–ช๏ธ

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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

@arborelia Bag-les.

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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

A comparison of the classic Tetris and Descent communities. Not a post I write lightly, either.

roncli.com/blogger/37031578090

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martin
@luftlesen @mstdn.jp

Aptiz played #Pentis again. In the beginning you can see roncli asking in the chat for the right version. About an hour later, he broke the #PentisRankings record with 60K ! Congratulations roncli ๐Ÿ† ๐ŸŽ‰
twitch.tv/videos/2052528360?sr

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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

Yeah, it's season 11. But the OTL Season 6 highlight reel is up, this time Fireball has taken the reins! Check out this video jam packed full of kills, deaths, silliness, and Sirius puns. youtube.com/watch?v=SXstLVjnaG

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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

Over on , someone retweeted sympathy for the people being laid off today...

...and then said that Amazon Games was hiring. You know, the one that just had layoffs in NOVEMBER.

Honestly? Tech sucks right now.

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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

Seriously. Why is it called Sagittarius, A Star? Clearly, it's Sagittarius, A Black Hole. Silly astronomers.

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Cultural Historian: Dr. RGST
@DrRGST @mastodon.social
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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

This eslint/stylistic breakup is going to give me a headache. Don't developers have something better to do than give other developers busywork?

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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

Bing is so bad. otl.gg is being blocked in their search results, and Bing webmaster tools are absolutely useless, not telling me why it's being blocked.

Does anyone know of some way to get a human to look at this and see what's wrong with it?

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Olivia W'
@WLivi @retro.pizza

it's not actually common for real hackers to use two keyboards at once; that's just a stereo type.

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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

I got my wish. ๐Ÿค’

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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

Me and my wife, despite buying a house of nice size, always seem to get in each other's way, be it in the kitchen, on the stairs, it doesn't matter. She's all up in my two square feet.

I often joke that all I want for Christmas is my two square feet.

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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

Update 2: The record that beat Blue Scuti stood for one day. Blue Scuti got it back.

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๐ŸŒช MikeMathia.com ๐Ÿ“ก
@mikemathia @ioc.exchange

#C++

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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

Update: This record stood for 1 day.

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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

I got the honor and privilege of calling the NES Tetris NTSC world record today while running Classic Tetris Wars on my Twitch channel for the very first time. It was thrilling. Congratulations to Blue Scuti for his 6,609,220 level 153 performance. clips.twitch.tv/DiligentDeadGo

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Yogthos
@yogthos @mas.to
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TwistBit
@TwistBit @musicians.today

like, you used to use a phone line to access the internet

now the internet is accessible on your phone

nothing has changed actually

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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

Six Degrees of Sunday returns Sunday, January 7th, at twitch.tv/roncli. Cya there!

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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

Are you ready to get Six'd Off?

Six Degrees of Sunday, my 6DoF long play Twitch series, is getting revived for 2024. Plus, I will be producing Six'd Off, a companion YouTube series showcasing each game.

Check out the announcement for the game list and more! youtube.com/watch?v=yeRbjjpQVZ

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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

So I started a fresh YouTube channel some time ago, and yesterday I released the first real video to it.

Check out highlights from Argus Industrial Moons' run to the OTL Season 10 Best of the Rest title! youtube.com/watch?v=Z2x-GGW9FY

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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

I guess that qualifies as a "log"...

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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

People at work are calling Kubernetes K8, and I hate it. It's not "Kubernete"!

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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

Want a preview of what CTWC will be like next weekend from a gameplay perspective? CTL Season 22 finals starting now.

twitch.tv/classictetrisleague

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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

No airport hell this morning, but you know that lady that talks about security at literally every airport? I just realized, she sounds old AF.

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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

If this security line posted signs "5 minutes from this point", "10 minutes...", etc., They'd have to post them every foot.

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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

I'm sorry, what?

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Robin Ward
@eviltrout @carpdiem.online
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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

Did I miss Elon making another purchase? twitter.com/unity/status/17016

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Konstantinos Dimopoulos
@konstantinosd @mastodon.gamedev.place

That's a lovely free bundle of books for people interested in getting into games programming: fanatical.com/en/bundle/intern

#gamedev #book #free #programming

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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

Use TypeScript they said. It'll be better they said.

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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

If you know, you know.

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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

@shanselman Speaking of Overload, here's something you may be interested in... recently, some community members released "Overload First Strike", a single player Overload campaign that is a complete remake of the original Descent First Strike campaign.

overloadmaps.com/overload-firs

It can work with just the original game, but it works best with "olmod" as it takes advantage of some of the features it provides: olmod.overloadmaps.com

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Scott Hanselman ๐Ÿ‘ธ๐Ÿฝ๐Ÿ๐ŸŒฎ
@shanselman @hachyderm.io

@PossiblyMax @deepthaw ya and there are new remakes of Descent like Overload that are enhanced and thereโ€™s even hardware that Vic Putz made to make the Space Orb look like a controller with NO drivers. Works on all operating systems hanselman.com/blog/bringing-th

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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

I don't know who wrote this, but MORE PATCH NOTES LIKE THIS PLEASE. ๐Ÿคฃ

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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

First OTL flag capture in 7 seasons, and it was a game winner. clips.twitch.tv/PeppyFitOrange

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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social

I could buy a nice amount of coffee with this!

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