It's Eric Woodward (dotcom)

So, 2025 has obviously been a doozy of a year. I’ll let future historians put it into its proper context, but being in the middle of it wasn’t always easy, and sometimes it felt like the best thing to do was just to stay busy.

However, in this push to stay busy, it appears that I forgot to post anything here at all for over 365 days.

So now, on this, the final day of this banner year, I thought I’d share a brief rundown of the various things I’ve been fiddling with since the year began.

• The year started out with the publication of the beta version of my RPG website, PlanarVagabond.com, featuring updated rules with aa unified skill check mechanic and the addition of a metric tonne of new content (something I would continue to add as the year progressed).
• About the same time, I ended our Isle of Dread mini-campaign (or rather, the players did, by killing and/or gaining control over the big baddies and finding the means to rule the island and/or return home).
• In the spring, I started my first truly collaborative (mini?) campaign, set at the prestigious Hexhall, Royal Academy of Faerie Arts and Arcane Sciences, a school which exists in both the material plane and the Faewolde. It’s also a special campaign to me, as it’s both the first in-person game I’ve run since the pandemic, and the players are my son, my daughter, and my daughter-in-law (a first-time player).
• Also this spring, at the suggestion of my son, I picked up a lightly-used Backbone mobile controller. Combined with a “spare” Galaxy S23 (which I loaded with emulators) and a pair of Raycon headphones he gave me for Father’s Day, it’s been my game system of choice ever since.
• In June, as part of a code challenge for my employer, I wrote and released Maze of the Minotaur, a web game which also stands as my first my first (and, to date, only) Android release.
• Also in June, I started running some players through the classic D&D module, Tomb of Horrors. Although it was intended to be a one-shot, we’re now up to 3 sessions, no one has died (yet), and there’s still a good bit left of the crypt, so… it’s turning into a mini-campaign after all. Who knew? 🤷
• This July brought an update to Camp Happy Island Massacre as I migrated its web runtime to js-dos, enabling it to run more smoothly, and on more machines.
• In late summer, I finally completed a long-running, off-again/on-again project, and (briefly) launched the Deus Reloaded BBS. Unfortunately, I ran into some technical issues which made it effectively useless, and I shut it down shortly after launching it (I might go into the story a bit deeper in the future).
• Fall brought a new obsession: the humble twtxt.txt file, a decade-old “decentralised, minimalist microblogging service for hackers.” The simplicity of the concept really inspired me, and I started working on several iterations of both my own twtxt.txt file, as well as utilities to read, write, process, and display those files:
  • TwtKpr: A small node application to view, edit, and update a twtxt.txt file (pronounced “TweetKeeper”, still WIP).
  • TwtStrm: A small node application to load, parse, and display the content from all of the twtxt.txt files followed by a single source file (pronounced “TweetStream”^[1], also still WIP).
  • fluent-dom-esm: a small client-side JS library (published via jsr.io) that provides a fluent, jQuery-like interface to the modern browser DOM.
• In early November, I ran my third annual (and likely final) rendition of the Halloween one-shot, One Night in Ravenloft, this time played with a twist of cosmic horror via the introduction of Neurovores (aka creatures that Flay Minds). Also, I had enough players for two sessions this year, with both ending in defeat for the forces of evil once again.
• Earlier this month, I participated in the Advent of Code. I ran out of steam about 2/3 of the way through, but I fully intend to finish my solutions as time permits (maybe even over the remaining holidays).
• Finally, concurrent with the release of this post, I made a few small updates to this site, adding links to my twtxt.txt file to several pages, updating my /now page, and adding a Code Page to collect my libraries and code-related links together.

So, what about 2026? What projects might see the light of day before the calendar turns again?

• I’d really like to finish (and release) TwtKpr and TwtStrm: both are fully functional, albeit somewhat rough in terms of user experience, so with a bit of polishing, I hope to have them ready to turn loose in the next year.
• I’m also close to finishing a long-simmering project: an actual Planar Vagabond’s Guide to the Multiverse zine! I’ve got issue #1 mostly laid out and ready, but I’d really like to at least get started on a couple more issues before I release anything (just so I can keep things organized over the long-term).
• I’ve been playing with the fantastic A-Frame library a bit on the side, trying to create immersive experiences inspired by my hazy recollections of 90s VR (and VRML, in particular), so maybe something will come out of that which is worth sharing…
• I’m working on some fairly major updates for Planar Vagabond, introducing a series of classes with a unified, roll-to-cast, freeform magic system, along with (maybe, hopefully, finally) publishing rules for summoning and binding elementals (including demons).
• I plan to run a few one-shots this year, including possibly writing a new halloween one-shot (based on my experiences with the previous Ravenloft games).
• Finally, I hope to start up another mini-campaign, potentially set somewhere other than a medieval-fantasy world (maybe something modern supernatural, or post-apocalyptic cyberpunk, or even post-post-apocalyptic science fantasy 😮).

Of course, these a just the ideas I have right now - who knows what new depravities will seize my crazed imagination as the year unfolds?

I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

Recently, I decided to try my hand at some CSS shenanigans, and spent a few hours replacing this site’s long-serving background image with a scrolling grid background.

I’ve been obsessed with digital grids ever since I first saw the movie Tron (presumably during its initial HBO release, when I was around 6). Tron and Flynn were some of my first heroes (they fought for the users), and I remember being blown away not just by the movie, but by being able to play the same game they play in the movie via the incredible Tron arcade cabinet. I distinctly remember going to the Chuck E. Cheese’s near our house and playing it, complete with the special blue joystick, and just like the movie, it was amazing. And it was all grids.

So that’s the “why”, as for the “how”…

The capabilities of #web rendering engines (AKA #browsers ) have improved immensely over the last few years, particularly in the area of CSS effects. A link to a link to a link lead me to a couple of stack exchange questions and a collection of fantastic synthwave-inspired CSS effects. The next thing I know, I’ve replaced the site’s static background image with a scrolling one.

Except… I know that not everyone likes moving background effects, so the only responsible way to add an effect like that is with a toggle that allows the site visitor to turn it on and off at will. And the only responsible way to add an interactive toggle like that is via progressive enhancement: visitors without JS enabled (or those whose browsers don’t support <script type="modules">) will get just a static background grid, but those who do have JS get both the scrolling grid AND the toggle, tying the presence of the feature to the ability to disable it.

If you want to know more specifics, check out the commit on my self-hosted git server, in particular the changes to the scripts.js and styles.css files.

Because I, too, fight for the users.

Update: 2024-04-27

Since posting this, I’ve come to realize that the CSS-based grid solution I described above had some problems - most notably, the scrolling-performance hit, particularly on long pages. The simple presence of the affect was causing clipping issues and serious scroll-lag all over the site (really, any page longer than one vertical screen). Plus, the animations themselves had a tendency to get super-janky the longer they went.

Not as “user”-empowering as I’d hoped. 😦

In the end, I wound up trading out my pure CSS solution for an implementation that uses a tiny SVG file, as it is much more performant, while still allowing for color customization (I wonder why… 🤔). It’s a little bit “flashy”, but it’s still a decided improvement.

Ever since the early days of JavaScript (remember document.layers?), I’ve been interested in building web applications, from the complex to the trivial. In that time, I’ve built more signature generators, magic 8-balls, and die rollers than I care to mention. But, apart from the tools at Planar Vagabond, most of these #WebToys are lost to time (or sitting on some 3/4 full hard drive waiting to be rediscovered).

Until now!

I’ve decided to start archiving them here, in my lightly-tended digital garden, under the heading of WebToys (a moniker chosen based on their dubious utility). And the first #WebToy is a project I’ve had in mind for over 25 years, but that I’ve just finally put the 4-ish hours in to complete: .

The BPS (Bill Paxton Soundboard)

Back when I was in college (circa 1997), a friend of mine and I would often discuss ideas for “fun” (and typically useless) computer programs. One night, one of us suggested a virtual See-and-Say themed around quotes from the great character actor, the late Bill Paxton. Of course, writing such a program wasn’t worth the effort (especially circa 1997), so we just kind of chuckled and forgot about it.

Fast-forward to 2024: the company I work for has a “UI Developers Guild” (for those interested in bettering their development skills), and they recently started running coding challenges, both to drive engagement with the guild and to give the coders a chance to do something non-work related. This particular challenge had 3 simple rules (copied verbatim below):

1. Play some kind of music / sound
2. Be viewable
3. Don’t work over 4hrs!!!

After briefly contemplating what to offer as my entry for the challenge, the idea from college bubbled back to the front of my brain, and I thought, “this is my chance!”

The rest, as they say, is history.

Work Breakdown

• One hour thinking through the concept and writing the rough draft player.js and main.js modules;
• One hour to turn draft into MVP, addressing layout and audio issues;
• One hour to add images and expand the audio selection; and
• One final hour^[1] to add mobile support and some light documentation.

Now, this is obviously not the first Bill Paxton soundboard on the #interwebs , nor is it the most comprehensive. But, unlike the ones in the App or Play stores, mine doesn’t require any scary permissions, and won’t track you relentlessly. And, unlike other web-based soundboards, mine has no advertising, and… won’t track you relentlessly. So maybe mine is better, at least in some ways. 😄

Plus, releasing it here doubles as my entry into the aforementioned coding challenge, so win-win!

With a few more hours work, I’d probably turn it into a PWA and add full offline support (caching the sounds and images in localstorage), or maybe disable the buttons until the previous sound is done, but… that’s for another day.

I suspect I’ll wind up creating (or finding) other similar small #WebToys in the future, and when I do, I’ll add them here. In the meantime, I’m open to suggestions: what other tiny, useless programs does the world need more of?

Last Sunday evening, quite out of the blue, the web server that hosts this site started making a horrible whining noise. A quick finger-check determined it was the fan making the noise. I tried to clean the unit (and the Pi4 beneath it) with some compressed air, but alas, the damage to the fan had been done.

Thanks to the magical delivery gnomes, a replacement case arrived the very next day (well, technically it was the following night, which was unfortunately about 2 hours too late for Monday Night’s session of Planar Vagabond, but close enough). So, Tuesday morning, I started swapping the old case for the new one, and 15 minutes later, it was back online.

After some looking around, I went with a “ICE Tower Cooler” by GeeekPi. It was relatively inexpensive, easy enough to put together, and the LED in the fan adds a distinctive, #cyberpunk vibe to the machine (particularly compared to the somewhat professional-but-pedestrian original case).

For the past few years, I’ve been releasing content under various licenses, usually linking to the “official” website for each one. But starting today, I’m looking towards the future, as I’ve finally added web-friendly versions of several of these licenses to this very website.

Right now, there’s only 3 (which makes sense, since that’s all I’m using at the moment), but with all of them excitement over the ORC license (and some other OGL alternatives), who knows what this brave, licensed future will hold?

Why Host Them Here?

Two simple reasons.

1. I like having a simple, permanent link^[1] to each license’s text (ideally, with my name on said licenses).
2. If I’m going to have a simple, permanent link to each license’s text, it’s going to be hosted on my website.

See? Simple.

Where Are They Being Used?

• Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal
  • Most of the client CSS and JS files here, MythicWarsGame.com, and PlanarVagabond.com are released under this license (and shipped un-minified) to make it easier for others to read the underlying #web code.
  • I’ve been toying with some AI image generators for making simple pictures of magic items (as well as the odd NPC), but the Federal Copyright Office says they can’t be copyrighted, so I released them under this license as well (just so there’s no doubt).
• Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International
  • Most of the content here and at my other sites (often stored in Markdown format).
  • Honestly, this is my favorite license to use, as it feels like it helps others build new things without enabling over-monetization (including the scourge that are web ads).
• The MIT License
  • The server-side source for most of my server-based projects (and most of the forks stashed on my Github account) are released under this license

I’m working on a few other fun projects right now, and I figure that having these links will be increasingly useful if and when I get them to launch.

Until next time, here’s to the future!