I Made a Video (Internet Nostalgia Incoming)! | 31/AUG/2024

Hey, long time no update.. Like two years, almost. Oops..

Ok, I swear to God I haven't been doing nothing this entire time, I've just been taking a break from my usual website creation things to spend time with my loved ones and work on other projects that I've been putting off forever. One of which is a video about the founding of my online chat space of choice from my teenage years, Habbo Hotel.

For those of you who are unaware, I've been a huge fan of Habbo's art style for the last twenty years or so, having first signed up waaaaay back in March of 2001 when Habbo first made its way to the English speaking market from Finland, and as a result, I'm one of the few people left from this era who actually somewhat actively participates in the Habbo community from time to time. A few friends of mine who joined Habbo a little bit after me (between 2005 - 2008) have asked me on several occasions over the last 10 or 15 years if I'd ever consider writing a blog/archive covering the early/founding years of this stuff, and in more recent years, people have asked me if I'd ever consider doing a video about the topic for YouTube.

Why now, you might be wondering? Well, as grim as this is going to sound, in the last 5 or 6 years, several older Habbo users have passed away, and it got me kinda thinking recently about how long I'm going to actually keep putting this thing off for. A Habbo friend I've had for the better part of 20 years now passed away at the first half of 2024, and it honestly shook me a bit. I was talking to him one week, and literally a couple of weeks later, he was gone, just like that. Although I'm not planning on going anywhere any time soon myself, life just kinda comes at you as a bit of a cunt sometimes, and you never know what might be just around the corner, so I decided in that moment that I was going to stop putting things off that I actually want to do, and just do them while I can. This video is one of them.

Although I'm not a professional videographer, YouTuber, editor, or whatever, after some help from a couple of friends, I've put together something I'm honestly incredibly proud of, and if you could check it out, that would be massively appreciated. Comments, likes/dislikes, feedback, whatever, all would be appreciated. If you want to check the video out, you can do so below, or by clicking here.

Bet you weren't expecting this (PEELOPAALU) | 25/NOV/2022

Ok, so here's the gist of what this blogpost/newspost is about: I am heavily considering starting my work on Peelopaalu again. Earlier this year I decided to take a bit of a break from updating the website, but after a lot of consideration, I'm now thinking of maybe getting back on the horse and giving it a go again. I'm in a much clearer headspace as of now, and this last week I have thought a bit about maybe doing something with Peelopaalu sometime in the first half of 2023. What this something is though? I don't know yet. Maybe I'll randomly just start updating again as I used to, maybe I'll change something up, I honestly have absolutely no clue right now.

Now I've put this out there, I have a few things I absolutely need to get some feeback on before I go any further with this. If you could email me, Tweet at me, PM me on Newgrounds, or just get in touch somehow, I'd really appreciate it if I could get some thoughts on the following:

1) Should I keep the project limited to being indefinitely hosted on Neocities, or should I expand beyond this to allow for more features (search function, tagging, etc?) This would potentially come with costs, so I'd need to find a way to make this worth my while if I go down this route.

2) Should I bring back Peelopaalu in its current form at all, or should I reset the directory/collection to 0 and start building links again from the ground up? Why would I even consider this, you may ask? To ensure quality over quantity, prune mass-amounts of dead links, and clean the directory up.

3) Should I cull the obituaries page? Why? It takes time to update it, check for an archive.org link, and it generally slows down updates by quite a lot. Pruning dead links and replacing them with new ones without commemorating the old (and dead) ones keeps updates coming without delays. This comes at the cost of the directory randomly gaining/losing links at random spots on the list. I am also considering removing the obituaries page in favour of leaving dead links on the main directory and just highlighting them in red to signify them being dead. What do you think of this?

4) Would anybody be interested in me abandoning legacy Peelopaalu in favour of a deep-web/dark-web/onion-links version of the site? It would still be hosted on the clearnet, and would link to a mix of SFW and NSFW content, but everything I link to would be 110% legal and not morally reprehensible (so yeah, no linking to the obvious sickfuck shit people associate with that part of the internet, of course)

5) None of the above? If nothing here does it for you, what's your idea? I'm open to discussing this with you via email or whatever. Just drop me a line. I'd love to hear what you want to see from me and Peelopaalu as a site in the future!

Thanks for checking this blogpost thing out, and thank you very much for continuing to follow my spaces online. This blogpost was originally written for my personal website (s.neocities.org) but will be (or maybe already has) been posted both there and on Peelopaalu (peelopaalu.neocities.org) in hopes of reaching a wider pool of people.

I hope to hear from you soon!

Site Updated, Been Sick, Working on Stuff, a Question | 11/NOV/2022

Jesus Christ, it only took me like a year of inactivity to get my ass in gear and get shit done. I've been off work this last week with what is either a SUPER fucking nasty chest infection or a touch of COVID, but either way, it seems to have enabled me to actually do some stuff today I've been wanting to do for the last 6 - 8 months (yeah, yeah, I know.) So what's changed?: The "other stuff" page has been split into the new "Get in Touch" page with all of my profiles linked on it and the sort of "projects that aren't projects" page I originally planned to use "other stuff" for. Currently, there's only one thing on there, maybe that'll change, maybe it won't, we'll see.

Oh yeah, I also added mine and my wife's sticker store to the "Projects" page, considering well, y'know. It's a project. My only ongoing internet project at the moment, actually. If you're into My Little Pony, or more specifically, 4chan's /mlp/ board culture? Maybe give it a look. If you're not into that sort of thing? Also cool, give it a look if you want, don't if you don't, either works.

I also wanted to ask, while I'm rambling on about nothing. Would you guys be at all interested in seeing me post blogposts showing my process for repairing old electronic wristwatches? I'm not sure if anyone reading this is aware, but I've always had a thing for watches, and this last year I've gotten very into tinkering with very broken Tissot Seastar 2030 calibre and 2031 calibre powered models from the 1970's that I find on eBay. So far, I've successfully managed to repair 3 severely damaged examples and bring them back from the brink of death with no repair manuals or any prior experience working on watches outside of doing direct movement swaps, so I think what I've learned could potentially be useful to someone else going into this with no prior experience like I did as these movements are VERY poorly documented online outside of one excellent website I found here. I dunno. Figured it could be something fun and different for me to share on my site, but if nobody is into it, then that's cool too - I'm more than happy to just continue doing that sort of stuff IRL and keeping what I do online seperated from my other hobbies. Here's a pic of the first watch I managed to bring back from beyond the grave for anyone who might be potentially interested in seeing how the whole process works:

Tissot Seastar ft. an in-house designed Tissot 2030 cal movement from approximately 1973. (before service and restoration)

Tissot Seastar ft. an in-house designed Tissot 2030 cal movement from approximately 1973. (after service and restoration)

Dunno if you dudes would be interested in seeing more of this type of thing + a detailed breakdown on what I do and how I do it, or if it's just not for you, but hey, give me a shout via email either way and let me know. I'd be happy to hear your thoughts!

As always, feel free to email me if you have any suggestions, feedback, or just want to say hi for whatever reason!

I hate writing. | 03/NOV/2022

Can someone please do me a solid and explain how to go about writing a blog? I despise writing, but I have niche interests I can rant endlessly about but absolutely no drive or know-how when it comes to putting a blog about these sorts of things together without immediately becoming demotivated and burned out on the idea. Anyone have any ideas on how I can get over this? Writers block is an absolute bitch. This is why I quit writing green for /mlp/ years ago.

Feel free to email me if you have any suggestions.

Pointless Blog Update | 16/April/2021

Hiya, just felt like adding to my blog for once to just have a mumble on about various things. I’m currently all-set to get married on the 22nd of this month (super excited about that shit too, by the way), but that means I’ll be taking a short (and this time I really do mean short) break from updating Peelopaalu with new links for the next week or so. I’m aiming to get back to regular updates, but with the wedding coming up in less than a week(!) I figured I owe it to myself to take a bit of time to unwind and just enjoy some of the small shit for a little bit and spend some much needed one on one time with my other half before we tie the knot.

So, what am I up to outside of wedding plans at the moment? Good question. Outside of work? Not much right now. Playing a shit load of SSX3 on the PS2 has eaten a good chunk of my spare time as of late. For those of you who don’t know, I’m a massive cheapskate and I found a copy in CEX (a sort of electronics pawn shop here in the UK) for 3 pounds before the lockdown and promptly said “fuck that” and figured I’d hold out for a cheaper copy, and that day finally came earlier this week! I found a copy for absolutely bugger-all recently (srsly, like less than 1 pound bugger-all) because the box was smashed to high hell and back and the sleeve was torn up a bit. Not really an issue for me considering I have a stack of spare boxes that I was given by someone who found them in their garage without games a few years ago. One new box later, and hey, it looks bredi alright/10. Sadly though, my PS2 controller is completely fucked. I got it along with the aforementioned games, and holy shit someone suffered from serious FIFA rage back in the day. This thing is absolutely rat-assed. The controller shell is misaligned, one of the screw posts is smashed off and was rattling around the controller until I dismantled it and removed it, the L1 gets jammed occasionally, L2 is missing stabilisers so it wobbles a bit, the ferrite bead is loose and slides up and down the controller cable (how the fuck did this happen?), this thing is just a fucking mess and is bordering on unusable which has led me to deciding to just grab myself a brand new, never used, mint and genuine PS2 dualshock 2 controller so I don’t have to deal with buying a lemon on eBay. Maybe the old one can make a good “player 2” controller for when people come over or something, but its days as my main controller are numbered. Maybe I’ll unbox the new one when it arrives or something and post a video on my YouTube channel.

Here's some random images of the stuff I just rambled on about. Click any of them for a larger image hosted on Imgur.

Console I play on: Regionless PS2 Debugging unit, this one is a DTL-H50002 with the serial number C0000286, but I also own another debugging station (model number DTL-H30102, serial number 0309938)

Spent the last few days playing this so much that I’ve almost fully maxed out Griff.

SSX3 before and after. Never going to be a mint collectors copy or whatever, but who gives a shit about that?

Current game collection - I only buy stuff I like, so a lot of this stuff probably isn't of any great interest to anyone but me and my partner (Neopets is hers)

Nothing much else to share right now other than that I am working on a Peelopaalu update that I plan to push out after getting married and getting a few other bits and pieces in order. I reckon you’re probably going to like this one too – I’ve put a fair bit of effort into trying to make it nice and varied so hopefully you get a kick out of it. Oh, and to mark the upcoming 1,000th website on the directory, I decided it was about time I got a sticker made to slap onto my laptop and guess what? I have extras. Not by choice, but by the very nature of how custom sticker printing companies operate and I figured why not cast a line out there and see if any of you guys want one? I’m still currently waiting on them to show up, but they’re nice-ass high quality shiny die-cut stickers that hold up really well to the elements and whatever else you want to throw at them (I’ve used this company before and their stuff is pretty great), expect me to post pics of them to the listing (hopefully) soon on the Support the Site page of Peelopaalu. I’m thinking $7.00 (USD) + postage is a good price for them, but I dunno. I’m basing this off of what other small sticker shops charge for their designs, so if you think another number is more appropriate then let me know! I’m happy to send them anywhere in the world if you want to grab one, but make sure you let me know ASAP because there are only going to be between 5 – 8 of them available as I haven’t decided how many of them I want to use myself yet.

Until next time, this’ll be it from me for the time being! Speak to you dudes after I’m married!

New Site, New Blog, New News! | 09/April/2021

Whew! Took me a while, but I'm back at it again with the blogposts. I've had a few cans of Fosters and I've decided it's about time I actually started updating this page again. It's only been what? Uhh... Three months since I last blogged.. Oops! I have been busy with my other thing over at Peelopaalu though, so I do have a semi-valid excuse!

Anyway, what's changed since I last had a massive rant in my blog? A lot, actually. Peelopaalu got a complete makeover and I fixed some massive issues with the site that were driving me batshit insane, I finally decided to redesign this site for the 4th(?) time now, oh, and I'm getting fucking married in two weeks. Yeah. Almost forgot about that one. I should probably break these things down one at a time though, so here goes.

Peelopaalu Changes/Updates:

So, it's been annoying me for the last few months how Peelopaalu's pagination system works. Yeah, I know months ago I said I wanted to keep it as long as possible but I quickly realised when I broke the 500 links mark that this shit just wasn't going to be sustainable in the long term. I tried for the longest time to justify not splitting the directory into pages, but it just became so ridiculously unbearable to browse without losing where you last left off that I had to do something about it. Originally, I split the whole thing up into pages of 600, but that wasn't enough, so I decided to just break it apart into pages of 250 at a time and now the site is considerably much more pleasant and easy to just scroll through and keep track of what you're actually visiting without it turning into a complete cluster-fuck. I apologise profusely for not doing this sooner. My bad.

I also decided to address what I saw as the biggest problem with Peelopaalu: The site layout. Don't get me wrong, I liked how the site was well.. Laid out. I just didn't like the colours all that much anymore. Pure black kinda destroys your eyes after a while, and the blue+black with fast scrolling just about gave me motion sickness when scrolling so I decided to switch it up a bit. I first swapped to a God-awful green+black theme, experienced exactly the same issue as the blue+black scheme, and then decided to stop being a lazy bastard and actually fix it properly by going back to the drawing board altogether and working out a theme that both looks (I think) nice and is also (again, I think) really easy on the eyes, which has resulted in this nice muted grey and lighter blue (so we're still sticking with the OG theme!) scheme which I feel suits the site incredibly well. If you want to give feedback on the new theme, you're more than welcome to email me by clicking the button in my site navigator - I'm more than happy to consider tweaking it again if you have a suggestion or whatever!

Personal Site Updates:

The theme changed to match Peelopaalu's and I also tried way too hard while making that little pixel tower in the header. I know it's not perfect pixel-art or anything, but I tried my best on it and I'm kinda proud of it for what it is. I'm gonna miss the koala I used to have in my logo, though.

Stuff still to update: Buttons/banners on the projects page, completely rewrite several things across the site, tweak logo (maybe?), fix Ko-fi button colour.

Life Updates:

So, here's the stuff I'm most excited about: I'm getting married! Yeah! Really! Back on the 8th of this month, my partner and I went to our local town hall to give notice of marriage and with her being an Australian citizen and not a British citizen, we were told to expect everything to take around 72 days before we even hear back about the possibility of getting married. Not great, but we accepted it and decided to go ahead and just wait it out. Here we are less than a month later though, and boom, into my inbox pops an email from the Home Office telling us "yeah, go ahead and get married, whatever man" so we decided "fuck it, we've waited long enough" and immediately booked our day in for the 22nd of April. This is great for multiple reasons: First one being that it means after more than a Goddamn year of trying, we're finally able to get married and spend the rest of our lives together, second one being that it means we can get married AND have enough time to sort our impending next lot of visa bullshit out, and thirdly, it means we have plenty of time to get our savings back up before the year is out after getting married and dealing with all of our visa crap! It's almost like things are looking up or something! Who'dda thunk it? Expect another update in this regard after I've actually gotten married. I may or may not end up writing a blogpost talking about it. Stay tuned.

Anyway, that's all I really have to share for now. Sorry for the slightly unorganised and rant-like nature of my posts on this site. I try to keep Peelopaalu as clean and "to the point" as possible, but I kinda like to use this page as a place where I can let my hair down or whatever and just vent about shit whenever I feel like it.

Hope you're all doing well out there and staying safe in these weird fucking times. Feel free to drop me an email if you want to ask me anything about my site, about my blog, or if you just want to shoot the shit and chat. I'm always glad to hear from people.

Old Blog-Posts Removed | 09/April/2021

Didn't really feel like including my old blog-posts in the new site design. I do plan on dumping them on Pastebin sometime in the future though, so if you're interested in reading them for some reason, keep your eyes peeled!