oh christ another website
Only sort of! Kind of! Sorry! I will keep the old version of this site available as a subdomain on Night Electricity, but I will not update it with any more posts. The electron gun will now be firing from this new location, with a snazzy new template, Strawberry Starter!
what was wrong with the old website
Nothing exactly, but even as a silly side project running an HTML blog as a sub domain on a static site markdown blog didn't feel ideal. It's not really what Zonelets is designed for, and while I personally gel more with markdown nowadays, Zonelets is a more than viable option for fun online, especially paired with Neocities.
ok but i still don't get why you chose to use zonelets again anyway
When I started the first semi-successful version of Night Electricity, it was running on Zonelets, and indeed you can still view that version here. I really like the current version that runs on Jekyll, it's very snazzy and responsive and broadly more accessible. But it is a little boring- hopefully not to read, but definitely for me to use. As I went over in CRT's first post, the format is a bit restrictive, I wanted to have fun online, and I had lots of fun online with Zonelets before, so why not try again?
so do you not like it anymore?
Zonelets is great! It remains an excellent sandbox for HTML experimentation, and I would not have known where to begin with CSS styling and static site generation without it. For me it was a stepping zone, for you it could be a home! I did not fully explore everything it could do, so there's plenty to get on with. And as powerful as Jekyll is... god. Look at this screen. 
awful
Agreed. But to display that image in Zonelets, I would have had to type:
<p class = "center">
<img src= "/assets/images/gracefulfail.jpg"
alt"Jekyll error message describing a graceful fail" />
</p>
Whereas in markdown I just type:
that doesn't seem that hard
It isn't, but markdown is certainly easier, and with a static site I can serve it locally, which makes it easier to check if I've made some catastrophic mistake before you all see it, which is nice for me! It serves the purpose of letting me make quick silly things, as evidenced by the fact that I was able to write this in about twenty minutes in Notepad++. And while Jekyll was kind of a pain on Windows, Strawberry Starter and 11ty were far easier. If you follow the guide you should be up and running in no time, and it will be even easier for you if you use Neocities, as it includes built in upload support!
so why did you make a new domain if neocities would be easier
I called this Cathode Ray Tubetop before I knew you could have a dot top domain. I wasn't going to let that go uncorrected.
are you going to stop writing with this gimmick
Hello! ST here. This post was uploaded to the previous, Zonelets powered version of the site. Much of it still pertains to the philosophy of CRT, but things have changed, as you can read about here. Promise we're done with meta posts for a long while though. Back to the article!
why do you have two websites isn’t that excessive
I have more than two! You can still view the old version of Night Electricity on Neocities, and there are many older worse ones besides. I’ve always liked writing and being a database animal so websites have always been fun for me. The reason I started this one is because there were so many times this year that I wanted to write something longer than a social media post and less formal than an essay, and also I missed the scrappier nature of Zonelets. Any pressure I put on Night Electricity seems entirely self imposed, but it’s also presentationally imposed! But I didn’t want to tear down the site that I gave myself stress migraines over, so here is a little nested one, with the benefit for me that I can edit it all on my desktop, and the benefit to you that I almost know what I’m doing now. So maybe it’s one website? Who can say!
should i make a website
Sure, why not! I do not recommend any website builder like Squarespace et al because you are probably not trying to start an MLM, but Zonelets is easier than you'd think! I did pivot to Jekyll to have a static site I could write in markdown (read: make a more accessible site thats easy to update) but Zonelets tutorials are extensive and hosting on Neocities gives you a nice free option. Wordpress is still alright last time I used it but like the Substacks and Mediums of the world it's much more about their consistent branding and formatting than your creativity. Big tech will not save us, any platform birthed from it will inevitably kowtow to bigots in the pursuit of tech libertarianism (hey someone should write about that. twice). And nearlyfreespeech is a great option for cheap hosting, far less evil than the github which I look forward to excising myself from.
what's a cathode ray tubetop
My screen-name on Bluesky, after I uploaded this post and a very cool artist friend of mine said it sounded like a good name. She was right!
cathode ray tubetop
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— cathode ray tubetop (@nightelectricity.com) November 9, 2024 at 5:39 PM
I'm a person who owns a CRT after taking a tram to a car park and giving a man 30 pounds and then I tried to put it in my bag and it was too big so I ran with it in the rain back to the tram and sat it down next to me like a phosphorescent child and then eventually gave up on the other end and got an Uber and tried to answer no questions. CRT stands for Cathode Ray Tube, Jill in Resident Evil 3 wears a tubetop, this is a silly enough name for a silly project.
what do you think of resident evil 3
I'm so glad you asked! I might like it more than 2 now? It's definitely meaner in a way that appeals after having played all of these games several times (except for the Survivor and Outbreak games, and any of the bad multiplayer ones, and Gaiden? is that the one where the imply leon is a zombie? and it has golf combat? i think that one game in UFO50 thats inspired by Clock Tower is also inspired by that...) and I love the risk reward of using a bunch of resources to down Nemesis for a better gun etc. It has a noticeably terrible localisation but it also gave us DRAIN DEIMOS and DEAD FACTORY so it's impossible to say its bad or not. Both it and 2 have absoloutely incredible backgrounds too, check out how cool it looks!
no rest for the wicked
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— cathode ray tubetop (@nightelectricity.com)
November 14, 2024 at 8:35 PM
when are you going to end this intro post