sharksonaplane

sharks + planes as formerly seen on Twitter

@sharksonaplane

Sharyna Tran

Sharks are cool and comfortable!

Elden Thing | Back & Body Hurts Platinugggggh Rewards Member

Profile pic and banner credits: sharkaeopteryx art by @superkiak! eggbug by eggbug! Mash-up by me!
[Alt-text for pfp: a cute sharkaeopteryx sat on the ground with legs out, wings down, jaw ajar, and hed empty, looking at eggbug and eggbug's enigmatic smile.]
[Alt-text for banner: a Spirit Halloween banner with eggbug and the sharkaeopteryx that Superkiak drew for me looking at it with inscrutable expressions]

I'm a Vietnamese cis woman born and currently living in the U.S. You may know me from Sandwich, from Twitter or Mastodon (same username), or on Twitch as Sharkaeopteryx. I do not have a Discord or Bluesky account.

Ask me about language learning/teaching, cooking/eating food, late diagnosis ADHD, and volunteer small business mentoring. Or don't, I'm not the boss of you.

I think people deserve to be young, make mistakes, and grow without being held to standards they don't know about yet and are still learning. So, if you are under 22, please don't try to strike up a friendship or get involved in discussions on my posts.

Please don't automatically assume I follow/know/co-sign someone just because I reposted something from them—sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. Also, if you think being removed as a follower when we're not mutuals is a cardinal sin, please do not follow me.

log inask
🐘Mastodon
search for @sharksonaplane@mastodon.sandwich.net and hit follow if you want
Hang out with me on the Auldnoir forum! (you can DM there!)
discourse.auldnoir.org/
Sign my Cohost yearbook 📝
recocards.com/board/cohost-yearbook-sharksonaplane-94772758696c
Follow me on Twitch
twitch.tv/sharkaeopteryx
Add my RSS feed (not working yet but I'll get to it!)
sharkaeopteryx.neocities.org/rss.xml
My Throne link
throne.com/sharkaeopteryx
My Ko-fi link
www.ko-fi.com/sharkaeopteryx
sharksonaplane
@sharksonaplane
nomnomnami
@nomnomnami
nomnomnami
@nomnomnami

let me tell you about neocities

if you're like me, you got a little taste of geocities as a kid before yahoo pulled the plug on it in 2009. if you're like me, you heard someone started a revival effort called neocities, and thought "aww, that’s nice" without looking into it any further. you maybe visited the neocites homepage once and figured it would take too much time/effort to learn html to make a decent website for yourself, and why would you do that when you already have social media? what is there to gain? it sounds hard, and you have better things to do with your time...

but do you really? does making a personal site need a cost-benefit analysis? what the past me (and maybe you too, sorry i'll stop speaking for you,) didn't realize was, NEOCITIES IS REALLY FUN???? i think there's just a small barrier to entry that stops people from reaching the fun part--and i don't mean learning to build a site!!! because i don't think that's universally fun!!!!!! but the amount of self-expression happening on neocities makes it SUCH A JOY to browse. i think here in 2024 it's harder to realize you can just wander the internet without a specific goal, and without an algorithm to throw it all at you. (i mean, you're here on cohost so i'm sure you get it!!)

the old web you may or may not have nostalgia for is still alive in a new form and you don't have to keep sitting here lamenting the current state of the internet (bad). you can just go on neocities and see a thousand little handmade websites of people sharing things they care about. it's amazing. i'm legitimately so sad that i skipped out this place for so long, because i wrongly thought there was nothing for me in there!!!

so i have written a beginner's guide to enjoying neocities. i'm still completely new to it (i only started building my site 2 weeks ago) so i don't even know that much, but i really really wanted to share how to have fun browsing sites at least because YOU CAN JUST DO THAT!! I THINK IT'S HARD TO REMEMBER YOU CAN JUST CLICK ON THINGS AND GO ANYWHERE!!!!! please let me tell you how because this has been my new favorite hobby and i want everyone to experience the fun!!!!!!!!!!!

sharksonaplane
@sharksonaplane

Me five minutes ago: neocities is neat and I'm glad it exists, maybe I'll check it out sometime if I ever get around to making a personal site but there's no rush—
Me now: wait I think I might still have the raw html from my Spree site from when I was like 17, peak shitty late 90s/early 00s design and all, crap I can't wait to get home and check now—

You must log in to comment.

in reply to @nomnomnami's post:

hvb
@hvb

hey, your site looks really great! and jam packed with stuff! lovely work. i made a Regular, Non-Neocities Website again a few months ago (mainly for professional reasons, but i'd like to add in some more stuff eventually for people who wanna poke their heads in). casually maintaining a personal website is something i've done off-and-on for like 20 years, but it's certainly been a long time since i thought much about browsing other peoples'. it's rad that neocities lets you just Browse. that's powerful, and i'll definitely spend some time doing that. the ancient art of random browsing has fallen out of favor, but it should return.

login to reply
nomnomnami
@nomnomnami

thank you!!! omg yeah i feel like you get less out of browsing when it's usually just someone's social media profile you're looking at, so maybe we were all trained out of it... people make such amazing stuff tho... i gotta check out your site now aaaa

login to reply
sneakyscarab
@sneakyscarab

i made a neocities account a couple years ago for pretty much the same reason, and last november i finally got into actually working on it and its SO FUN just making a little website full of stuff i like and being able to just do whatever i want with it in terms of layout, styling, putting in weird secret pages and easter eggs, etc. it absolutely rules.
if you wanna take a look heres my site :> https://sneakyscarab.neocities.org/
(also, your neocities is great! i love all the little graphics, especially the doodles on the games page!)

login to reply
trashcataria
@trashcataria

huh, this is the first i'm hearing of the browse functionalities. as someone that knows how to make websites, i dismissed neocities as a wix-or-squarespace-like, and i didn't really need that kind of handholding. but if there are social aspects that makes it a bit different and more interesting. at least for as long as i can. like. make stuff and be creative. which comes and goes.

login to reply
rylieeric
@rylieeric

"my biggest piece of advice is not to use the neocities editor." I've been using that editor for a while so not sure if that's gonna make me change that.

I've been on neocities for a while thanks to my musician friends that happen to use it. This post inspired me go and do a redesign. I'd say my site is already neat as is. Like, have you seen orange used in the majority of a site? Or a place with ENTIRE BITS OF LORE from stuff someone created WITH ITS OWN LORE TOO? I, however, have several new ideas that I want to go do now.
You (nami) appear to already be following me, but for everyone else: https://rylieeric.neocities.org/ is my site.

login to reply
Mats-the-cat
@Mats-the-cat

this was a verry nice read
i learned about neocities trough an online show called LOVEWEB and have been exploreing the old web ever since, i did want to make a wbesite and i still do, its just, been working on too many projects (i got like 6 things i need to complete) so it kinda ended up on the back burner, but yeah, always great to see more people get intro web development, i really needa get back intro it
if your wondering what website i made, i made this in two days:
https://matsthecat.neocities.org/
(i got no idea why the image constantly breaks)

login to reply
caro
@caro

DO U KNOW HIKARU NO GO OH MY GOD . i am searching the globe for other hikago likers i am scouring the earth. i must have more friends to talk about this fucking show wtih

login to reply
caro
@caro

ITS THE GREATEST MANGA OF ALL TIME probably not but i think its phenomenal. my local library had a box set and i read it in like single-digit ages, then revisited in high school and fell in love again. i scream its praises to the heavens everyone who revisits it gets DESTROYED EMOTIONALLY if u read it as a kid and didnt finish it i think it might make u cry.

the anime is really good because they put all their effort into being a faithful adaptation. dont be discouraged by the looks they had like five dollars of budget and they spent it all on animating akira's hair

login to reply
neuroknives
@neuroknives

Your site is great! And this is a great write up about neocities. I love my only page over there and making things for it. I uh... I am a weirdo who uses the built in editor tho lol. At this point I think I've embedded myself in the browser editor workflow too deeply to switch. Probably bad! But it works for me lol

login to reply
Pinned Tags