Yeah, I don’t get it either. But oh well, the file is read-only, so I’m doomed to use it.

As to how hot rods, outer space, and physics can somehow combine into something that is even remotely playable… you’ll just have to wait until I actually get around to finishing it to find out!

No longer!

This is now (once again) Superluminal, my personal blog, where I talk about whatever the hell I wish.

I was afraid of treating this site just like a normal personal blog because I could never really come up with anything (interesting) to talk about. But having been quite active on Twitter for a while now, I’m realizing that 140 characters is quite often not nearly enough to say what I want to say properly. If there are people that want to know what somebody who makes more than one thousand euros per year thinks about the whole WordPress/GPL debate, then I should have a place where I discuss this, no?

I’m going to stop acting like a professional, and just post whatever the hell I like. Sometimes this will be self-promotional, sometimes it will be educational, and sometimes it will be lolcats.

Meow.

Ps.

Please look me up and slap me in the face if 6 months from now this is still the newest post on the blog.

1. Running a flash arcade
2. Running a tutorial site
3. Running a funny links/pictures/etc. site
4. Developing a few other sites that are just as diverse
5. Trying to learn how to cleanly make WordPress themes, with the idea of perhaps making money with it
6. Developing a flash game to promote the aforementioned arcade, and also bring some money in on its own.
7. Trying to write fiction
8. Right in the middle of being an English student at the University of Amsterdam

My problem is that I’m not an expert or professional at anything. I’m just starting out, and I’m still figuring out what I can and want to do. I know I don’t want to be employed. I know I’m smart enough to make it on my own and run a business that’ll at least feed me. But I’m so far.

I guess it’d be nice if I had some connections… Sure, I have people I engage with every now and then on Twitter and forums, but nobody I really know well or could collaborate with.

But enough whining, I’m getting back to work.

• A game to promote Physics-Games dot Net
• An flash arcade with educational games
• A place that will be a sort of creative outlet for me (more that usual, at least) where I will hilariously attempt to write science fiction.

Here’s a preview of all three:

The game, the title of which I am not ready to release yet, but can somewhat be inferred from the following artwork:

There isn’t much to see for the educational arcade yet, but it will be a refitting of the Physics-Games dot Net theme with a more appropriate color scheme.

And as far as the sci-fi writing site is concerned, I present: Fience Sciction! Clever eh? Oh yeah, it’s very well possible that I haven’t actually posted a story yet and it’s filled with Lorem Ipsum. It’s new, be patient. Maybe there’ll be a formal announcement once I have some stuff on it.

But I want this, so as usual I’m going to try. There is money involved this time, so I might actually succeed in my goals. The game is actually coming along a bit, and I hope to have it done before the end of March.

While sorting things out for the game, I started noticing how I have a certain pattern of learning. I have always been a bit self-reflective, and I’m thinking that, trying to somehow get a business going out of this work, being a little bit more self-reflective won’t hurt. So it seems to me a good idea to write down these thoughts that occurred to me.

I already know a bit about pretty much everything. Spending most of my teenage years watching television (some if it educational), reading anything I found interesting,  watching other people fuck up lots and having a ton of free time has really given me a lot of knowledge on both a global, common-knowledge scale and about a bunch of different subjects. Basically I know a little about everything.

Generally this a positive trait, but I’ve noticed that it can get in the way of my learning. Usually when there are lessons for something, like say tutorials on how to make Flash games, they tend to be too simplistic, and I get bored. I already know a bit about Flash. I’ve animated with Flash, I’ve done some (very) simple ActionScript, I don’t need to know how to make a button, how to move a ball from one side of the stage to the other… So, getting bored I look for more complex lessons, and jump right into the deep end.

Of course, then it gets way too hard. All the knowledge I have about a particular subject is pretty much due to semi-random exposure, there’s very little structure there. So then I get annoyed, because this is too hard, and the other one was too easy, and depending on my motivation I probably give up and move on to a different subject at that point.

This is why there aren’t any Flash games with my name on it out there (yet).

This is why I have very little money.

Of course, I don’t always give up. Depending on my motivation I either adapt my strategies or my goals, or I push on and keep going, taking the easy lessons and moving on to the hard ones, giving myself structure and all that.

It is because of adapting my strategies and goals that I am pretty versatile with WordPress, something I knew very little about just a year ago.

It is because I will push on and just learn what I have to learn that this game will be finished, and will also actually be somewhat fun to play.

Being more aware of why and how I give up when I don’t want to should help me keep going in those times when things get a bit too hard and/or annoying. I am somewhat of an adult now, and I have a lot of compensating to do for being such a lazy fuck for such a long time.

I’ll be fine.

My Superpowers:

1. I’m really smart. Like, IQ of 140 smart. This would mean something if IQ tests were at all an accurate indicator of one’s intelligence, but numbers are damn fancy anyway. The most accurate indicator of my intelligence (besides I guess getting into university, although looking at some of my classmates…) is that I’ve always been able to get myself out of binds without too much trouble, and, depending on my level of motivation, I can learn things ludicrously quickly. Also, my mom always said I was smart, and she’s awesome so it must be true.
2. I live in one of the most prosperous, most progressive and most technologically advanced countries in the world (hint: windmills and tulips that can get you high). Basically, when it comes to making sure I don’t starve to death, I’m ok. I never really have to worry about money and I can easily live off of very little of it.
3. I know how to use a computer.
4. I have a lot of free time.

My Sidekick:

My absolute best friend on this journey is WordPress. I don’t know jack about webdesign or development. Well, I didn’t until I found WordPress. I just opened a file called “index.php” and saw a wall of letters in quite an odd configuration. Using powers 1 and 3 (above) I was able to decipher most of it, and eventually get to the point where I can edit it to suit my needs. The community, from theme and plugin developers to fellow WP lovers on Twitter and forums, is simply the best community of anything I have ever encountered. Any question asked has already been answered, and even if you ask it again you’ll get a friendly answer.

What it is, Exactly, That I Do

What it comes down to is that I abuse super cheap hosting and super awesome WordPress and my superior mammal brain to create websites that have content that at least a few people find useful and interesting. Badabing badaBOOM. Slap some ads on there and I’m a millionaire. No, not that simple of course, there are a lot of nuances and stuff. Basically, I try to create websites that either do something that isn’t being done yet (so a Lamebook clone is out of the question) or do something that is being done already, but better, or present the information in a better way. That’s why Physics-Games dot Net at least looks different from the other 3 billion flash arcades out there.

How it is, Exactly, That I Do This

Just making it up as I go along, mostly. The plan goes like this:

1. Come up with an idea.
2. Consider the quality/relevance/unique-osity of this idea.
3. Consider the technical and practical feasibility of this idea.
4. Buy a domain, set up WordPress on that domain.
5. Find a WordPress theme I can hack into something fairly unique and functional.
6. Add advertising as needed.
7. ???
8. !!!
9. Fix everything.
10. Profit.

Right now I can do it all by myself because all the important stuff (farming for food, the invention of computers, WordPress and all it’s theme and plugin awesomeness) has already been done for me. Once a site reaches a certain size (and this hasn’t happened yet), and depending on the need for it, I’ll hire a professional designer to really clean up the mess that I made.

All the content on those sites will be supplied by me. Perhaps in the future I’ll hire people to supply content, but that’s the future, not now. The content is either entirely original, or reposted or recycled, but with a unique twist or organized/compiled in a unique way. Either way, the content will be somewhat unique, not spammy, and absolutely useful.

Financially, my only investments at this point are domains and hosting, and I intend it to stay that way. I won’t have to pay anyone for content for the time being, and I’m not interested in advertising any of my properties. I don’t have the budget, the knowhow, or the interest to spend any time/energy/money on advertising yet, and I’m happy with growing my properties organically. You could see it as a test; if a website can get fairly popular without the need for advertising, then I must be doing something right.

So there’s that. I don’t really have much to show for all my big fancy words yet, but I’m working towards that. Thanks for reading. If you have any tips, or warnings, think I’m a damn fool or a genius, don’t hesitate to scream at me in the comments.

Oh yeah, and because I still apparently have too much free time (who needs sleep, right?) I’m going to try and make a game myself for Physics-Games dot Net. I had considered sponsoring a game but I don’t have the budget for that yet, and I’ve considered finding someone to team up with and handle all the programming but it’ll take ages to build up trust, so once again I’ll just have to do it myself. It’ll be a challenge, I know that, but I managed to learn how to hack away at WordPress without knowing CSS or PHP at all, so I see no reason why not knowing ActionScript 3 should prevent me from making a somewhat decent game. No need to make something mindblowing, just something fun that helps promote the site and stuff.

We’ll see how that goes.

Am I proud of it? Muah… it’s alright. I mean, the quality of the site is definitely up to my standards and all, but this one was more of a business thing than anything. I enjoyed making it, but I did not have to modify the theme much (nor was I planning to) and thanks to WordPress’s scheduling feature I don’t really have to touch it anymore for a few months except for comment moderation.

Maybe I’m just being modest, maybe that modesty is just me being arrogant, and maybe that arrogance is just there to compensate for my low self-esteem, but the website exists, is not spammy, and will have useful content added to it every weekday. I guess I should be a little proud. Maybe that pride will grow once it starts getting real traffic. I’m going to explain this further in my next post, but my plan, at least for the time being, does not involve advertising of any kind. I don’t have the budget, knowhow, or interest to get into advertising, so I’m just going to let it grow organically. I figure it should get to a decent traffic level because I’m offering a good service and all that crap, but we’ll see.

So, that was that, my projects for the next three weeks (until the new semester starts and I have to do this school thing again) will be speeding up Physics-Games dot Net so it’s not slow as ass, and getting some kind of featured game carousel back on there, as Featured Content Gallery was conflicting with the lazyloading that is oh-so-necessary for my image-filled homepage, and I still haven’t figured out that Cu3er thing yet, the WordPress plugin isn’t totally ideal. If any of you know of a slider with similar functionality to the Featured Content Gallery plugin, please let me know. Also, there’s some whispers going around about something called “EduCade” but you’re just going to have to wait for that.

Obligatory Superluminiferous Portal/Hub thing link

I have set extremely high goals for myself this year, both in the level of my productivity (which has never been particularly high) and the results thereof. I do not consider these goals to be entirely unrealistic, but while reaching them would be fantastic I would be pretty happy with myself if I got even a tenth of the way there.

I think I’ll be okay. I have been working on a new project lately which isn’t all that creative or anything but makes good use of a domain which was just wasting away. All this time I was supposed to have been studying for a couple of finals I have this week, and now that this week is here I guess I should put those projects on hold. After those exams I’m going right back to work though. I’ll have about three weeks until the next semester starts, so I want to put in as much work as I can. The plan is to launch this latest site on the 11th, and then work on everything else, including getting LazyLoading to work on Physics-Games dot Net so it doesn’t take 600 years to load.

This will be a good year for me. Very productive, very profitable. I’m not gonna hope for stuff because that just activates the lazy part of my brain, but being able to take the ladyfriend somewhere nice and sunny this summer would be very nice indeed.

1. This is my writing style. Deal with it.
2. I am pretty arrogant.
3. Suck it down.
4. I’m just kidding, I love you guys.

I say stuff like “I never want to work for anyone” not because I think having an employer is stupid, but because I don’t want to be “employed” and because I know I don’t have to be employed. I’m not gonna waste your time explaining my entire journey or whatever, but over the years I realized that the concept of me having a “job” or a “career” just sounds ridiculous. I’ve always been weird, I’ve always done my own thing (something which my teenage self never enjoyed much, but it was for the better) and I have to keep doing that because I only gots one life to live, baby. I’ve lived a relatively privileged life (compared to most Earthlings), I’m lucky enough to have been born with an unusually large amount of intelligence (thanks mom!) and have this internet thing which I believe to be some form of witchcraft. I learn things quickly, and WordPress is crazy awesome with a great community that is always willing to help. Domain and hosting costs are practically nothing.

So I’m trying to do this. But I’m not just trying, I am forcing myself to be confident and doing everything I can to make this happen.

Because then I will be happy for the rest of my life, and no laws will have to have been broken. Can’t ask for much more than that.

Happy Holidays, all!