Look and Feel

Hello all! I’m sure all of your lives have been nuts lately. Mine sure has. With a lot of career/family things going on, I had to take a hiatus from doing any updates to this website as well as my social media accounts (which is why, if you haven’t noticed, I haven’t been posting anywhere really). But even though I took that hiatus, it doesn’t mean that I completely stopped thinking about everything I want to work on and everything that is currently in the process of being done.

And that is precisely what I want to touch on in today’s post. This is going to be a long one, so strap on in.

I think every once in a while, it’s crucial to take a step back and take a long, hard look at what you’re working on. Take a break to do some research, work on some other projects, and, in general, let your work sit and digest for a little while. Then, come back with fresh eyes and a newer, more innovative, more informed approach. I do this with everything, be it websites, paintings, drawings, writing, or home improvement projects. And I highly recommend this advice often to anyone who feels stuck in a particular project, as I’ve come to find myself with R.A lately.

With R.A in particular, in the past couple of years, I began to experience a sort of accumulating irritation with the way site progress has been going. This was both on the back and front end, as well as a gnawing notion that there were more robust and substantial ways of accomplishing everything I wanted to achieve without nearly half as much heartache and headache. This also culminated with the fact that it was becoming clearer by the day that this wasn’t the best medium in general for the project (more details below). In my hiatus, I researched the viability of my approach, because all of the work I’d been doing on this site, all the aggravated hours I’d been putting in, all increasingly felt like they were very clearly going to waste – and I wanted to take some time to understand why my gut was telling me this.

In my research, I listened to the advice regarding my progress from people such as yourselves reading this now. Also, from others who had been around the bend professionally more than I have. I actively sought out advice others gave to those in similar situations via online forum archives. I even listened to some YouTube rants by people who seemed to know what they were talking about and pictured them speaking directly to me. It was all very effective at smacking me with reality – like a brick to the face. After all that, I’ve decided to make massive changes to my site and approach to R.A as a whole. Specifically, I was hit with the realization that what I thought was the best path to executing my idea, under closer scrutiny, was a massive time and money sink. And especially if that meant copying what my predecessors were doing wrong, even though I honestly thought that I was bettering their approaches and methods. Also, I needed many moments to collect my intentions and just, in general, realize exactly what I wanted to achieve with R.A. Just because I’ve had this vague idea since I was a kid doesn’t mean I have to stick to it entirely to the last letter if there were better ways of getting things done that made more sense for the present time. Time has passed and people and technology have changed. I myself haven’t stayed the same. So why have I kept my aspirations in their unaltered, childhood forms?

P.S – Before you read, please note that every time I say “as a kid” or “childhood”, I really mean any time from around the age of 6 years old to about 20. I’m serious. The definition is very broad, and upon rereading, I don’t feel like going back and adding specifics.

What’s Now Officially Been Removed Forever And Why

The Entire Learning Interface – This seemed to be one of the few actual things I let on to in the various blocks of text found on this site. It honestly seemed like an incredible idea at the time, especially since I realized the trend of working from home long before the pandemic (primarily because of many of my old work colleagues chattering nonstop about it at the time). I realized that learning from home would follow suit as well. I already joined some “online magical schools” when I was a kid, run by different groups who were looking to capitalize on the Harry Potter trend. Kids were flocking left and right to join schools of witchcraft and wizardry, just like those in the books and movies. Such schools unabashedly said, themselves, in various interviews that that’s exactly what they were capitalizing on.

But many of those schools didn’t seem like the books at all. At least they didn’t convey the same atmosphere to me. They all just had flat, academic lessons to offer. No great story, and, much to my dismay, the classes offered were only remarkable because of the occult and vaguely taboo (for the time) subject matter. They weren’t very interactive or memorable. Most weren’t even anywhere near what I actually wanted to learn about, which was the history and practices of my own ancestors, not just the standard western practices popularized and romanticized in HP. And more than anything, I was chasing the feeling of being wrapped up in an incredible story. Just like in the books. The online schools were just information dumps. No incredible, memorable tale. Just standard digitized encyclopedias written by ordinary folks like you and me.

Well, guess what. Most recently, I’ve come to find that schools such as this are a dime a dozen and have popped up all over the place. Having been active in more esoteric circles on social media, I know this to be a fact, as most of the business-oriented people I follow or that follow me, have a school or course of some sort that they offer on their website. I guess everyone my age who joined the same communities as I did when they were younger decided they could do it themselves too. Perhaps they saw the same gaps in niches that they thought they could fill to make what they had to offer better than what was already out there. Maybe they thought they could make a more established name for themselves or were just looking to capitalize on advice from some online guru for some easy cash. And guess what, they have almost no traction and have to sell these courses very hard, especially since there are so many for the potential customers to choose from. And even potential customers are in general limited since everything can be found online for free with enough digging anyway. (I tried saying I’d keep everything free to try to get around this but the amount of work, time, blood, sweat, and tears that went into everything I did would end up making that an impossibility eventually.) 

And on top of everything else, the subject matter is no longer as closed off and exclusive as it was back in the day. It no longer warrants the joining of an exclusive online “magic school” community. Primarily because it’s no longer as taboo as it once was back in the early days of the internet. Support networks are easy to find on popular social apps so the social media aspect of these schools is not necessary anymore. Personally, for every course I was able to gain paywall access to, I was able to find a dozen more free sources elsewhere that explained the same exact subject matter in a much simpler, faster, and more engaging way. People now consume everything via popular apps and don’t have the attention spans to read a short article (let alone a longer one like this – if you consider this long). Only a select few would sit through an entire course. Younger kids especially seemingly have much better things to do with their lives than sit in silence, read, and take tests to pass classes in their free time (which is one of the main ways learning platforms operate – even with gamification cranked up to the max). Even in regular classrooms, teachers now have to do extreme mental acrobatics to hold their pupils’ attention. Only a rare select few would go to a self-directed class. And part of the main problem here is that the old system of lesson->test, lesson->test (rinse, repeat) no longer works. In fact, tests were one of my most hated parts of traditional schooling.

The Funny Quizzes – One of the first things I tried to do to get around that problem, while still sticking within that old system, was to make the quizzes and tests required to pass the classes shorter, more dispersed, thoroughly reworded to encourage more critical thinking, and crucially, individualized, fun, and funny. (I also made sure the lessons I wrote were also very frequently broken up and written in an engaging and fun style.) Sometimes I’d even make a note to include images, diagrams, or even videos, which all took an incredibly long amount of time to put together.

My mixed-age beta test audience loved them, so I thought I’d figured it out! I’d put in “joke” answers in almost every question and would rephrase them so that you couldn’t just copy and search the keyword in the article in a separate window. That’s actually what I did when I was a student at some of these online schools. I’d literally have a separate window open with “CTRL + F” at the ready, and I turned it into a game to ace as many courses without reading a single thing as possible. It was surprisingly easy. In the end, however, I was collecting certificates but not learning a single thing, and that nearly singlehandedly defeated the entire point of the school. But it was because the system itself was boring and outdated and allowed for such shenanigans. I always told myself I’d eventually go back to reread and actually learn, but really, did I? If you were a kid, would you? Of course, you wouldn’t, because it’s not fun and feels like a chore. Even now, I don’t know most adults who would, especially with their busy life schedules. Everything available in such courses is simply available for free in binge-able short video format that’s a lot easier to digest since it’s spoon-fed information straight into your face. You don’t have to do any legwork by sitting down and concentrating and reading or watching long lectures that someone poured hours of their life into. Even most books that were once so coveted on these subjects are now available for free online with a quick Google search of the title + “.pdf”.

The Interactive Landscape – So for a long time I stubbornly stuck to making the same old, broken thing others did, but slightly “better” and “different”. I dug a little deeper into my memory to try to remember what websites I actively engaged with as a kid for hours in the end. These had to be memorable, highly interactive, bright, and colorful sites that would grab my attention with every single thing that was happening. At this point, we’re talking about earlier childhood e-pet sites that were making a splash of a comeback as waves of all the kids that frequented them were getting older and trying to remember the good old days. I remembered a lot of knock-off sites that sprung out of the craze, even when I was a kid, with people drawing their own pets and creatures, and how I always wanted to make one myself. How wonderful would it be if I could make something similar now that I’m older and have the hobby-time to dedicate to learning PHP, etc. But I didn’t want to make another pet site, I wanted to make a small world for R.A, and the use of the interactive maps specifically was what was most interesting to me.

I mean, envision this; how incredible would it be if you could take a boring, old school framework like the one I just described, and place it onto a Neopets-inspired interactive map. It’s what small-child me wanted the Harry Potter website to be when I logged in for the first time ever. Instead, I was greeted with disappointment. So I carried around the idea for making just that wonderful combination of experiences in my mind for almost 20 years. And in my 20’s, I finally decided that just such a Frankenstein might actually be a cool hobby to pursue.

Early on, trying to figure out how to make everything sing well together, I frequented many forums to see if there were any plugins or scripts that would do most of the base framework legwork. I wanted to make it all myself, but I’m not an idiot. I know the scope of the project was incredibly large, and there’s no way I’m making everything myself from scratch. There were some frameworks available, but nothing recently updated and comprehensive. So I realized I’d have to slap something together myself eventually. I found a few different tools to help me make the maps (some of which I posted on Instagram) and the assignments that would take the student on adventures across the maps on the site. They’d learn from various encounters and people they’d meet there. Some of the courses I made would require students to complete these little adventures instead of pass tests. At the end of the little experience, there would be a code that they’d then have to copy and paste into the course password to pass onto the next stage. I had assignments that would make students post onto specific forum threads to encourage student interaction and more natural forum use. After posting the comment, they’d, again, get a code with the “successfully posted your comment” text to move into the next stage. I’d sit there and daydream about finding all of those codes on a cheat-codes website one day. I’d chuckle to myself. Then I’d curse up a storm again because immediately after, something on the site would break again. I even had a whole progress tree of stages that students could advance to, and an entire pre-requisite courses tree set up with titles they could earn with each stage they graduated to. All trashed because it’s just not viable.

Student Interaction – As lightly touched on before, one of the other ways I’d have assignments be more interactive was to have some lead students to the forums area. They would answer specific questions about lessons in pre-set-up threads (similar to having a written assignment vs. just everything being multiple choice). The idea was that this would provoke interaction among students and help them be less shy in discovering the common discussion areas. This was the most infuriating part of the entire build, however. Everything having to do with the forum specifically, for some reason, loved to break. And the breaks weren’t contained to that area. They broke almost everything else alongside them. Only the basic pages that didn’t have anything really linked on them remained untouched.

Part of the reason I’m going into detail with this now is in case anyone else wants to replicate it and take on this version of the project. I personally am dropping it because I don’t see much of a future in it as a website. But everything I’ve written and worked on so far, I’m in the process of migrating to another platform… especially the 200+ pages of fully written out dry, non-personable lessons. They can no longer be in the same format or written in the same way, but at least all of the research has already been done. I’ll go more into that in further updates. But basically, as it stands, everything and its mother has to be rewritten again.

Another feature I included to facilitate student interaction and add to the liveliness of the entire site was to add a chat feature. That, along with the forums, and Suggestion Box, which you can find me mentioning having problems within previous posts, was when I started having significant doubts about using this specific platform and method to make R.A a reality. The chat broke down surprisingly less frequently than the forum. Granted, it only ever held about 2 accounts testing it at a time, which is stupid low for a test and shouldn’t be counted at all. But since the Suggestion box was actually open to the public, it was much more frequently written about. The major limitation was the website server speed itself as well as getting the SMTP to work correctly. After moving hosting services multiple times over, countless aggravated phone calls, and chats with support, we all finally agreed that we needed to set up our own server to make everything work quickly and consistently. This is problematic since I’m not willing to sink more money and time for purchasing, upkeep, and storage. And this is basically when I started to take a step back and rethink if this was really the best way to go about everything.

I was fine with writing for hours on end and doing research from books and sinking the precious waking moments of my life into this project as a major investment. I made the 2+ hour-long train rides to and from work much more bearable at the time. But once the serious issue of purchasing, upkeeping, and storing a server for a site I was making just for fun as a passion project, without knowing exactly how many concurrent users will be accessing it at any given time came up, I absolutely drew the line then and there. At a certain point, I’m no longer willing. Especially since student interaction was never really as important to me as all of the other interactive frameworks I described. Those frameworks were able to scratch my creative, artistic, storyteller itch, whereas students could simply use Instagram or TikTok to satisfy their interaction needs. At a certain point, I deleted both the forum and the chat, but it somehow didn’t help with the site speed. Very aggravating indeed.

Gamification – To add more pizzazz to the progression system and add more rewards, I even came up with a badges and contests system. The badges were similar to basically any old gamification system you’d find on any website or MMO. Some were awarded for daily visitation, some were awarded for finding a random, obscure page on the site, some for reaching a certain level of learning. Most of these systems I can fully end up reusing in the new format I’m migrating everything to, so there’s not too much to groan about here.

For some of the contests, I even made real-life medal-of-honor-like badges I’d be able to ship out to the most eager of students. I’d envision them having fun wearing them to Renn fairs and LARP events, or simply displaying them in a trophy cabinet along with their dance/martial arts/track-and-field/*insert childhood school activity here* trophies. I still have these. They will never be for sale. I still plan on holding contests to give them all out and that’ll be the only way to get one’s hands on them. I guess I’ll go into more details on that in future updates as well.

Real-World Meetups – Speaking of Renn-Fair-like LARP events, I had a short mental fling with hosting one myself at one point. Alongside the half-finished calendar that I uploaded and forgot about, were grand plans for real-world meetup events. Then, the pandemic happened and I lost all sincere interest in pursuing those as well. But in all seriousness, how could I possibly manage to spread myself so thin with maintaining the website, constantly updating it alongside social media, and on top of everything planning and managing real-life events? Pandemic + being overworked + family emergency drama have done a thorough job in turning me off from any such pursuits for the immediately foreseeable future. Not much more to write here. But it was an idea, the remnants of which can still be found across the site and in my cabinets.

P.S. For those that asked – the ritual celebration mentioned in a previous post actually went very well! It was an amazing get-together with some wonderful, thoroughly-missed friends who drove in from all over to come together and see each other for tghe first time in many years. I think that for a very long time now, the only types of real-world gatherings I’ll be able to stomach will be for people who are near and dear to my heart. I do believe I’ve become, in general, more selective with who I spend my time with and who I give my energy to. And I highly suggest this for you too.

I’m now officially incredibly out of steam and will have to end the post here. I definitely have more to say and more to update about. But I thought this post should stand alone and be put out first on account of its uniqueness. Usually, update posts are made about features added and growth of some sort. This one has entirely been about what’s been taken away (I just hope I didn’t forget anything). But that too, is growth in its own way. You sometimes have to drop a lot of old, broken baggade to be able to soar to new heights. This has certainly been a trip, and a massive learning experience. Though I wish I’d dropped some of these old ideas sooner, I’m happy everything happened exactly how it happened. I was able to learn, grow, purse an interest, and amass an icredible body of research that I can convert to future use.

This website now officially serves only one purpose: to post updates on the main project and be an information hub for progress, to-do lists, and roadmaps. I’ll post some fun interactive things here and there that are essentially remnants of old code if I ever get the time. But don’t expect too much. Hopefully, with everything gone, the site itself will load just a tad faster now too.