This blog was first created in 2003, run off of (as I recall) a PowerMac G4 in my bedroom. This was before ‘the cloud’, when it wasn’t entirely absurd for people to run websites off of spare computers in a closet. It was originally hosted using DynDNS1 at (I think) hamstergeddon.dyndns.org because I had recently discovered Invader Zim and I thought the name was funny.2

I chose to run on Movable Type because it was free, customizable, and easy enough for a relative UNIX-neophyte to get running on Mac OS X.

At some point – I think in 2006? I got a real domain name (seankerwin.org) and moved to a real hosting provider. Time had moved forward quite a bit and though (to my surprise and delight) Movable Type still existed, it had changed considerably and my custom page design didn’t translate well. Ever since ‘whenever that was’ the site has been running on a fairly standard MT template with only minimal modification.

Then the fire nation attacked.

Actually, I quit my job, moved to California, and started working at SpaceX. Which proceeded to eat my free time like some kind of chronovorous monster.

Eventually I – what’s the polite term for ‘burned the frack out’? And I went from delivering stuff to orbit to ‘maybe delivering stuff to Saudi Arabia someday?’ and then to ‘hey buddy wanna rent a scooter’ and dear God when you put it like that it really feels like a slow steady decline, doesn’t it?

Anyway then the scooter thing took a turn for the worse and now suddenly here I am with enough time to work on my blog again, and now we’re all caught up except for the wife3 and the kittens and all the other stuff.

Anyway:

  • The iClan page is blank because iClan doesn’t work on modern OS X and somebody else filled the void while I was MIA and I don’t think the world needs iClan anymore.
  • The Stylunk page contains the web-based Stylunk that had been previously labeled ‘beta’ and is now the only version of Stylunk you’ll find on this site.
    • The only thing I touched on web-Stlyunk were the styles – I hit them very hard with a rock to make them fit into the new page layout. There are probably bugs.
    • I haven’t updated any of the code since I first posted it 8+ years ago, and in hindsight it’s a horrifying mess. At some point I may rewrite it, because I suspect in TypeScript and React it would be a depressingly short program.
    • If there are new clothing colors in Clan Lord since I went AWOL, you are free to submit a Pull Request, because…
  • The new site is hosted on GitHub at https://github.com/skirwan/skirwan.github.io
    • It’s built on Jekyll and hosted through GitHub Pages.

I have like three different folders full of ‘blog post ideas’ that I’ve been saving for the past eight years; hopefully I’ll get some of them published before I end up employed again4.

  1. Circle of life, right? You’re good, you’re popular, you’re bought by Oracle, time passes… I’m surprised you still exist and how expensive you are. ↩

  2. That this statement is in the past tense should not be interpreted to imply that I do not presently find the name ‘Hamstergeddon’ hilarious. ↩

  3. My two favorite things are ‘putting serious and important things in a place where the reader has been led to expect unimportant information’ and ‘my lovely wife’, and I’m sure she won’t mind that I’ve done a little crossover episode here, right? ↩

  4. This statement is made in jest, but I am well aware that I’m very privileged to be able to say this jokingly. ↩