This blog is written for the Writing Gaggle, which you should totally check out.
Also, my personal blog can be found here: https://www.catmonad.xyz/blog.
Hello all. It’s time to share with you what all I’ve been working on, to give you a better idea of what I’m about, and what you can expect from me in the future.
That’s the list of things which I’ve begun work on, under this name, and have made any semblance of reasonable progress on, which I intend to continue working on and which are not in a complete state already. My internal complete list of projects is uselessly long, haha.
I have a lot of fun! Let me tell you about it.
I’ve really, seriously, enjoyed writing this blog for the public. It’s been enjoyable to tell people what I’ve been thinking about, and very satisfying to teach them. The pace we set, one post per month, with the Writing Gaggle, has been perfect for me. A lot of our other members haven’t been able to keep up, which is understandable, but, with my particular circumstances and thought patterns, getting one piece out the gate each month has turned out to be the exactly right goal for me to strive for.
This has been so fun that I might expand it, but let’s not get too ahead of ourselves, right? 😸
I’ll be telling everyone about this in a future post, but I help run a modded Minecraft server for regulars of the RPLCS. We’re currently in the process of assembling a new modpack and tools to run the server, which is proving quite fun, especially because many other people are putting in a concerted effort, so I don’t feel like I’m toiling alone. (That’s a problem I have sometimes.)
Looking forward to playing this. Might record video of it for fun.
Lately, I’ve finished quite a few projects, and it’s quite satisfying to see my code fulfill its intended purpose.
In the last month, I made a tool for forwarding input devices between computers, and it was really nice to see it perform well at what I wanted. I haven’t yet decided what to do with this thing, but I might make binaries available for those curious to use it. (Be forewarned, it only supports Linux right now. If people want me to add support for other platforms, I’d be down to accept money to do that, haha.)
I also have written various other little tools which satisfy my needs in other areas, like the server which manages deploying changes to the Gaggle front page.
But I’m not just up to doing Little Things. I have a big Secret Project which I can’t reveal yet, but which I’m hoping to sell. My hope is to eventually pull in enough money to just work on things I have passion for, and maybe make the world a better place in the process.
I also have a toy programming language I’m working on, which isn’t yet developed enough for me to let other people use, but I’ve knocked out enough problems in making it that I am hopeful I’ll be able to, in the probably far future, solve real problems using it. For now, it’s a research language.
As much as I enjoy working on all my projects and helping everywhere I can, I can’t do everything, and I am subject to human things like burnout. That means I have to carefully manage how much I work on and how much energy I sink into things.
This also means that, while I would like to, it is not guaranteed that I will finish every project I’ve mentioned above. I try to be careful to only start projects which I think I can take across the finish line, but I do make mistakes, and unexpected situations do crop up.
My graveyard of abandoned projects is quite expansive.
I am a member of the moderation team for the Rust Programming Language Community Discord Server. It is a struggle to keep on top of, and it always feels like we’re barely staying above water.
We’re not an official arm of the Rust Project, but the fact remains that the space we maintain is important. Consider this a call for help. We’re still functioning, but this job is basically a gift wrapped mental health crisis, and we’re perpetually understaffed.
We need help with our process of finding more mods. If you can help with that, please reach out to me in my DMs on Discord, or at https://hachyderm.io/@monadic_cat if you prefer that. Messaging me on Reddit should also work, but I may take longer to check it.
I overwork myself, essentially as a rule.
My hobby projects and volunteer responsbilities take over all of my free time, to the point that I continuously fail to justify time for pure relaxing fun. I’ve been working on this, and I have people who help me, but I have not solved this problem yet.
Hopefully I’ll be able to say something better when my End Of Year Status Report comes around.