When I shut down my old blog, Two Way Roads, it was because I didn't know what to do with it. Envisioned in 2007 as a smarter take on the late "X-Entertainment" website with topics (including what I dubbed as "cool thoughts", look, I was younger, okay?) very similar to the current Carbon-izer type layout (in fact, the current website is probably more to the vision of what I originally had back then for TWR), it eventually became a mess of various topics that never gained a following with the exception of a few well-researched articles on topics like the Houston Auchan or the defunct The Learning Company, as well as being one of the first websites that really talked about Yoot Tower in detail. In 2010, I formed Carbon-izer (initially Carbonizer), designed as a less ambitious project to document my college career.
Perhaps I didn't know what I was doing, and Carbon-izer fell flat and I wondered if killing TWR was the best of plans. Most of the new posts just seemed to be more of the same as TWR, and to make matters more interesting, X-E, one of the major inspirations for Two Way Roads to begin with years ago, shut down due to basically the same reasons TWR did. Go figure.
Even the "more mature" take on the blog didn't work, so a lot of the archives (now being purged) consist of things like this:
It's cringe-worthy stuff like this why my brother pretty much wiped the contents of his blog after academia. Writing personal crap is either boring or potentially harmful. The more you leave stuff around on the Internet for people to find, the more they can use to attack you. This is just generally good practice. For most of us, the fear is potential employers. It's unlikely employers are going to reject you if you use a screen name and keep your Facebook hidden, but for more "unique" individuals, this is the sort of thing that builds dossiers on darker corners of the Internet (Encyclopedia Dramatica, Kiwi Farms, or certain Reddit subs), and they're never going to give up their hold on that.
I tried doing other stuff with Carbon-izer but never managed to really get into it. I even promised that Carbon-izer would be a home for new content while the main site was being updated. That didn't work either.
The new site will be a partial reconstruction of older concepts. It will be mostly about video games, but not exclusively. Sometimes little bits of other stuff will pop up as well, and that's just fine. Happens for every blog. Magweasel.com, a defunct (as of 2013) blog run by the same guy who ran |tsr's nes archive, once had a picture of Waco for a podcast picture. When I left a comment to no response, and that's just as well. Sometimes a bit of randomness and mystery is needed for these things. Besides, I'll take it as is (nearly everything in that picture is demolished or significantly altered).
While I reconstruct the site to fit this new purpose, I'd like to say that as of this writing, I am almost done with the new version of Carbon-izer.
Perhaps I didn't know what I was doing, and Carbon-izer fell flat and I wondered if killing TWR was the best of plans. Most of the new posts just seemed to be more of the same as TWR, and to make matters more interesting, X-E, one of the major inspirations for Two Way Roads to begin with years ago, shut down due to basically the same reasons TWR did. Go figure.
Even the "more mature" take on the blog didn't work, so a lot of the archives (now being purged) consist of things like this:
...So I was in line at a gas station, just pulled behind a car. Apparently the car had just gotten there because a college-aged girl (about my age, maybe slightly younger) got out and began to use the pump. Used her card, punched buttons (credit or debit? our "engine-enhancing" additive? receipt?), and began fueling. So, after sticking it in her car, she walked back into her car. I thought she was just sitting there, maybe even going so far as to record her gas refueling (yeah right). But then I noticed that there was exhaust coming from the car. That's right: she turned on her engine (possibly for A/C) WHILE HER CAR WAS REFUELING, one of those they tell you explicitly NOT TO DO.
So I drove over to the opposite end of the fuel island (with no cars ahead of me) to fuel up MY car, which in addition to having no one in it (it was rush hour, after all), in the event that her car blows up due to her incompetence, I could have an escape route to flee before the entire station went kaboom. Fortunately, no explosion occurred, which was good because I feared more for the other people fueling their cars than for her. And luckily for her she's probably at home right now instead of being a crispy skeleton.
And this was the same trip that on the WAY to college, someone almost ran into me, I swerved, and I accidentally bit my tongue, which hurts still, but at least my car's intact.
It's cringe-worthy stuff like this why my brother pretty much wiped the contents of his blog after academia. Writing personal crap is either boring or potentially harmful. The more you leave stuff around on the Internet for people to find, the more they can use to attack you. This is just generally good practice. For most of us, the fear is potential employers. It's unlikely employers are going to reject you if you use a screen name and keep your Facebook hidden, but for more "unique" individuals, this is the sort of thing that builds dossiers on darker corners of the Internet (Encyclopedia Dramatica, Kiwi Farms, or certain Reddit subs), and they're never going to give up their hold on that.
I tried doing other stuff with Carbon-izer but never managed to really get into it. I even promised that Carbon-izer would be a home for new content while the main site was being updated. That didn't work either.
The new site will be a partial reconstruction of older concepts. It will be mostly about video games, but not exclusively. Sometimes little bits of other stuff will pop up as well, and that's just fine. Happens for every blog. Magweasel.com, a defunct (as of 2013) blog run by the same guy who ran |tsr's nes archive, once had a picture of Waco for a podcast picture. When I left a comment to no response, and that's just as well. Sometimes a bit of randomness and mystery is needed for these things. Besides, I'll take it as is (nearly everything in that picture is demolished or significantly altered).
While I reconstruct the site to fit this new purpose, I'd like to say that as of this writing, I am almost done with the new version of Carbon-izer.
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