Pay no attention to the [[Profile|man behind the curtain]]. What we make can change the world.
- I practice human-scale programming.
- I want to embellish all the things.
- I believe in a web for everyone, not just pros.
This place started out as a mirror of [another website](https://nosycat.notimetoplay.org/). It was meant as an experiment, but worked out better than the original. My goals were:
- test a new kind of [[Design|web design]] and page structure;
- have a place to [[Notes|organize text]] before giving it a more permanent home;
- fool around with an underused [[Wikis|wiki engine]].
That was then. Now it's mostly a [home away from home](index.html). Welcome.
Profile
I'm a programmer who has little left to code. A web designer with little left to say. Just a ghost of social networks past, haunting the web.
Art still helps a little. Let's talk:
- [Neocities](https://nosycat.neocities.org/) 🐱 [Codeberg](https://codeberg.org/nosycat) ⛰️ [SpaceHey](https://spacehey.com/nosycat) 👨🚀 [PeerTube](https://cuddly.tube/a/nosycat) 📽️ [Open Game Art](https://opengameart.org/users/nosycat) 🎮
"The links page is the powerhouse of the web." – [matt bee](https://mattbee.zone/p/)
## Credits and license
[[Home|This wiki]] is made with [Siteleteer](https://alamantus.codeberg.page/siteleteer/#About%20siteleteer).
Illustrations by the author; handcrafted SVG.
Copyleft: This is a free work, you can copy, distribute, and modify it
under the terms of the [Free Art License](https://artlibre.org/licence/lal/en/).
Design
In Ancient Greece, the word "techne" meant both art and craft. It's as if they considered both synonymous back then, or at least equally worthy: a surprising show of humility from a famously proud culture.
Nowadays the closest thing we have to that is design: art in the service of practical creations. You know, like machinery. Or... web pages.
(It's perhaps odd that this is even an issue. Imagine clothes tailored with no concern for aesthetics, except for highly specific situations. People even make graveyards pretty.)
Makes sense, too: you can't make a fancy painting or compose a symphony without technique, any more than you can make a car too small to accommodate an engine, or seats for humans.
The problem is, of course, that technique in turn requires rigor and self-discipline. Those are dirty words nowadays. Worse, design requires empathy: feeling and caring for what others need or want. Empathy hurts. That scares people.
But also: artists keep saying they don't want any constraints. Like what, handrails on stairs? We've tried drawing outside the page once computers made that possible. Literally, with infinite scroll for example. It turned out to be poison for attention spans: a trap.
Graphic design doesn't have to mean "unreadable artsy-fartsy websites". It's up to us.
Wikis
This site only has a wiki due to my recent habit of putting one everywhere. And every one of my wikis has a page about wikis because that's how I roll.
(Some people will argue it's not a wiki if it doesn't allow for collaboration, but I say language drifts. Call it a digital garden instead if you prefer. Besides, you can edit this one in your browser, save your own version and publish it somewhere else. We can even have a conversation that way if I happen to know about you.)
Without friction, you can't get any traction; too much friction, and you'll be going nowhere fast. That's where a wiki engine can still matter.
Notes
I'm beginning to think that what you put on the [[Home|homepage]] of a wiki matters a lot. It provides writing prompts and sets the tone for everything that comes after.
A [[Wikis|wiki]] should always have comprehensive links between pages, even if it comes with a sidebar, go-to bar or other global navigation.
- That's easier said than done, but still a good goal.
For years I used directories on websites as containers. There's a better way to look at them: as *namespaces*.
Some experiments don't pan out. It's okay to let go and move on.