08 May 2022
I did a minor update to the
Helpful Accommodations for Autistic People article, reflecting my experiences with a cooling weighted blanket that I purchased for research purposes, and a large desk fan, along with my current sleep regimen. The relevant new passages have been highlighted in red on all four themes to make them easier to find for anyone who has already read the original article. Hopefully, this will be of some use to someone.
Beyond this, I also added a new link to
the Dock, the illustrious
Mermaid Elizabeth's Microsoft Chat Resources Link Page, which is undeniably the most prolific and useful Microsoft Comic Chat resource of all time.
For anyone unfamiliar with Comic Chat, this wonderful program transforms IRC chatrooms into comic books where everyone can pick an avatar and emote as they please. It was created by Microsoft in the 90s and, although officially phased out in a few years in favour of MSN Messenger, it has enjoyed a strong cult following that persists to this day. Most recently, #comicchat was established on my IRC server (irc.koshka.love) by my friend
ShadowM00n as a Comic Chat-specific channel for people to play around in.
There is an entire vault full of custom avatars that you can download from the aforelinked Mermaid Elizabeth's website if you are interested in participating, although Comic Chat also comes with a number of zany default ones. KoshkaIRC has users from timezones all over the world, so feel free to drop by whenever, especially on the weekend! Lastly, for anyone who hasn't been on IRC and hasn't had the benefit of being linked to it yet, enjoy my informative hidden
GET ON IRC propaganda page. (:
01 May 2022
So I've been too busy (and lethargic due to stress) to complete any new articles lately. It didn't help that I also inexplicably contracted the flu a second time in a multi-week period, apparent proof that I spend all of my free time thirstily sucking on doorknobs like some sort of virus slut. I did add some new links, and have some IRC-related announcements to make. I moved
Majin Tween/Human Raccoon's glorious website up to the Affiliates section of
the Links page, and added the new website
Emerald Coast to the Affiliates and
Chocolate Doom to the Doom section.
Beyond this, two things have come up recently on IRC that I feel are worth making a formal announcement on. First, I am looking into upgrading my server infrastructure to handle the increasing number of things I am running, and am tentatively considering offering IRC bouncers to people once this is complete. Bouncers are basically always-on programs that remain connected to IRC perpetually and allow their owner to login from their own IRC client whenever, in order to chat and review any messages that were sent while they were disconnected. They're good for anyone who wants to be on IRC 24/7 but does not have a server of their own to allow them to do so.
E-mail me, let me know on IRC (irc.koshka.love, # and #speakez), or leave a comment in my
Guestbook if you are interested in this. No promises yet, but I want to know how many people are interested in this so that I know what kind of resources I would need to undertake this.
In other news, there was recently a nostalgia-fueled revival of the lulzy
Microsoft Comic Chat IRC client on KoshkaIRC. For anyone without the benefit of using it before, it essentially allows you to adopt an emotable cartoon character avatar for IRC, and transforms IRC conversations into
ALL CAPS-ridden comic book pages.
The infamous BoneQuest webcomic was generated almost entirely in this client. Please let me know if you are interested in this, and what time and day of the week works best for you. KoshkaIRC has people from many different timezones and it will be helpful to determine what time/day will work best for a recurring Comic Chat Night event.
21 April 2022
My sincerest apologies to everyone who has checking back for an update I finally managed to beat back my writer's block and successfully completed
a heartfelt reminiscence article on Raptor: Call of the Shadows, the classic DOS game that essentially served as my introduction to gaming (alongside Doom). Enjoy! I know I have been neglecting my Gab pretty bad lately, and I do plan to resurrect that soon. In the meantime, be sure to get on IRC!
16 April 2022
I added three utterly ludicrous childhood dreams of mine to
the Somnium, and did a wealth of necessary background work. The Kingdom should now load faster than ever before thanks to a tweak I did, and Macula's Maze's (grossly outdated) filler page is now on macula.koshka.love, free from
its former home at Neoc*ties.
Additionally, I am a good way towards my goal of confining every single section on the website that has multiple pages to its own directory. This will make the Kingdom more organised both for myself and for visitors, and will hopefully further improve SEO. I am setting up 301 redirects as I go, so don't worry if you have anything here bookmarked, as you will be painlessly redirected to the new link, if so.
That's about it for now. I am having bad writer's block that is preventing me from finishing any of the articles
that I am currently working on, and am busy with a number of other affairs, so I can't really make any promises for when the next update will occur at this time. I'm still fairly active on IRC, however, so feel free to jump on and say hi! (:
10 April 2022
After going through the comfiest flu I've ever had (just a few days of taking more naps than Joe Biden), I have added
a detailed write-up on my reasons for leaving Neocities and migrating towards self-hosting to the
Library of Babel. The decision was very out-of-nowhere and I did not want to speak about it formally before I had a chance to gather my thoughts.
04 April 2022
Added a short new dream to
the Somnium. Also, I am
back on Gab due to the repeated urgings of a friend of mine. I will make an effort to mellow down on the drunken shitposting and stick to keeping people up to date on the Kingdom and such, this time around. Bast willing. I am in the process of moving the entire Mystery Mansion section into the koshka.love/dos/ directory to keep things clean, but since self-hosting allows me to actually set redirects, there is nothing to worry about, as the old links will automatically send you to the new ones if you visit them after the fact.
31 March 2022 (2030 EST)
"Early" April Fool's joke that I cobbled together at the last second. I put it up today to avoid friends over on the other side of the pond for whom it is already April Fools being completely left it up. The background and
incantation are from the extradimensional entity known as The Hiss, from the sublime computer game
Control. That is all. If you missed the last update, don't forget to join the KoshkaIRC network at irc.koshka.love, '#speakez' and '#'!
30 March 2022
I am proud to announce that after a few long evenings of learning and tinkering, I have set up my own IRC network! The server name is irc.koshka.love and the main channels are currently (the respectful discussion enforced) # and (the almost entirely unmoderated) #speakez . If you have any interest in chatting with folks into old Web/computing/gaming nostalgia, you are strongly encouraged to drop by! If you don't have an IRC client and don't want to get one (you really should!) there is a Webchat interface available
here. The current MOTD is available to read
here if you want to get an idea of the current vision.
It remains to be seen when the active times will be for this network, but for whatever it's worth, I will do my best to be around 1730-2230 EST on weekdays and most of the day on weekends. Stop by and say hi! We don't bite! (:
27 March 2022
After a long spell of not having the motivation, energy, or time to accomplish anything beyond shitposting on IRC, I am back with a brand new sub-section for the
Mystery Mansion dedicated to
lolwut-esque
written reminiscences of various DOS/Windows 9x games from my childhood. There is currently a lengthy write-up about Wacky Wheels, and more will come later. You can visit the Reminiscences sub-section directly by clicking on "Mementos" in the Mystery Mansion Explorer window (the word "reminiscences" is too long and gets split in two lines in Explorer, which I did not like.)
Additionally, I have added an interesting new dream I had to
the Somnium.
For anyone wondering, I am very much aware of how increasingly labyrinthian this website is becoming, with more and more pages having designs that don't incorporate the sidebar and sections being unintuitively nestled inside other sections (the Library of Babel special). This is due to my consistent lack of forward planning coupled with the sheer size of the Kingdom (80+ pages as of this writing), but it is not something that I have any intention of "fixing". I enjoy the feeling of adventure that comes with how easy it is to get hopelessly lost in here (a friend affectionately compared it to the Oldest House in Control).
14 March 2022
I have continued my efforts to breathe some life into overly-neglected parts of the Kingdom by adding two new reviews to the
Town of ZZT's
ZZT Game Reviews page - the groundbreaking Frost 1 by Zenith Nadir, and the fantastic sequel to the already-reviewed PPDV game: PPDV2. Both are legendary games that are more than worth your time checking out if you have any interest in DOS gaming.
In less interesting news, I also finally made the effort to sort the pages in the UFO/Babel sections on the map on the front page and the World Map pages by categories to make it easier to find certain pages. In retrospect, I have nary a clue for why it took me so long to think of this, given what an overgrown and unsightly mess they were becoming.
13 March 2022
As promised, I have triumphantly briefly returned to the Kingdom's roots with a wholly irreverent and crude comedic
Library of Babel rant tackling
the subject of societal treatment of death. If you enjoyed my past comedic articles, such as the
I Hate Social Events one, you will be in for a treat. (:
I also added a brand new Affiliate,
Pre-Dead, whose website happens to be referenced in my article as he has proposed a very interesting concept - that of using personal websites as a sort of way to preserve people's souls and memories - that has occurred to me as well. Check it out!
12 March 2022
Another quick "yard sale" update. I updated
the Halloween fan-shrine at the
Haunted House with an explanation of the Cult of Thorn, the Thorn curse, and Wynn's identity, which I had forgotten to include in the original write-up, as well as some new information that I learned about the plot of the never-released Halloween 7. All of the new paragraphs are temporarily coloured red to make them easier to find. I also added a tasty chicken recipe to the long-neglected
Koshka's Kitchen page at the
Library of Babel.
In other Babel news, I started working on a very irreverent comedic article today, which I am hoping to have done tomorrow. If you were a fan of the humourous Babel rants from the early days of this website, you will be in for a treat. (:
10 March 2022
I have added 13 excellent new links with descriptions to
the Dock. The list is as follows:
Additionally, in response to sordid current events, I am officially disavowing the once-respectable DuckDuckGo.
As explained by Dig Deeper, DuckDuckGo has been sketchy from the start and has had numerous issues for years, but
the recent partisan censorship of pro-Russian information is a red line that I cannot stomach, as I will abide neither censorship, nor slander against my people and homeland. As such, I have replaced the DDG search bar on the front page of my website with a superior custom Yandex search engine that will allow you to search the Kingdom without any risk of censorship. Enjoy the freedom! (:
04 March 2022
A growing array of reasons, none of which are particularly worth delving into, have spurred me to migrate Koshka's Kingdom away from Neocities and onto its own hosting.
There is nothing to fear, as the Kingdom will continue to be accessible via the
https://koshka.love URL which it has been living at since May of last year. A great many thank yous to my friends jvlfools and ShadowM00n for their invaluable assistance with this endeavour, which involved a great amount of uncharted territory for me.
Although you will be unable view the up-to-date version of the RSS feed if your feed comes from the https://koshka.neocities.org/koshka.rss URL instead of the
https://koshka.love/koshka.rss one. If your feed lists the most recent update as being the "The Kingdom Has Migrated
(PLEASE SWITCH OVER TO THE UPDATED RSS FEED)" one from 04 March, it is out of date. Since a number of friends use the Neocities feed to keep up with websites they follow, including mine, I will also continue updating the Scratching Post page on Neocities when I update the website, to make it more convenient for everyone to keep up.
The majority of my reasons for the move stem from wanting more control over my website, as well as to have full control over the "koshka.love" domain name for whatever endeavours I may desire to use it for (such as my hostname on IRC servers). Neocities has certainly done a marvelous job at recreating the Web of old on its servers, and I have had the grand pleasure of meeting a number of very intelligent and creative friends and acquaintances through it. It is a terrific stepping stone for would-be webmasters/webmistresses, but I am now ready to brave some wilder jungles.
In unrelated yet exciting news, I have added another Affiliate website by a friend of mine - the budding yet already delightfully cute
Prints's Pink Palace - to
the Portal and
the Dock. Check it out!
26 February 2022
One of those "yard sale" updates. I created a brand new header for the
UFO section due to my growing dissatisfaction with the original one due to the infinity symbol not looking like a real rainbow (which I felt did not look good on the design). The new header is in my opinion far prettier and more stylish.
Additionally, I added to new dreams to
the Somnium (a new one and a childhood one), and added one new Neocities Affiliate,
Metaparadox, to
the Portal and
the Dock. That is all.
20 February 2022
I am interrupting this prolonged silence by putting up
a prolonged shameless infodump on the Halloween horror movie series. Everything you've ever wanted to know, didn't want to know, and didn't know that you wanted to know about Michael Myers. This will live on
the Haunted House section, which I have decided to branch out into being a "general horror fiction" section instead of limited to just creepypastas.
06 February 2022
I added
the follow-up article to the first Life Advice to Younger Autistics article to
the UFO, offering up some additional important advice, including some more personal things. Many apologies for the delay, as I had previously mentioned this would be up LAST weekend, but completely lost track of time.
26 January 2022
I added yet another new article to
the UFO -
Life Advice to Younger Autistics, Part 1, the first in a two part series of things that I wish someone had told me at a younger age. The second part will be done hopefully by the end of this weekend. I also added a new category in the Autism section as I have tentative plans to make more autism-related advice articles directed at various situations and groups in the future.
22 January 2022
The upcoming article that I was working on was getting a tad too long even by my standards, and I was worried about people avoiding it like the
Personality Disorders due to the sheer length. As such, I wound up cutting out the part about autistic inertia,
and turning that into its own article, which is now up on the
Autism section. I also added a new Affiliate,
Agora Road's Macintosh Cafe, to the
Portal/
Dock. Enjoy!
17 January 2022
Did a minor update to the
"Odd" Autistic Behaviours and Why We Do Them article, explaining why autistic people tend to inexplicably change the subject to ourselves during conversations so often. I am working on a
major autism-related article that I hope to be done with in the coming days, and it occurred to me that with all of the personal anecdotes littering it, I should make a note clarifying this tendency beforehand.
15 January 2022
With Russian Christmas and New Year's having come and gone, I suppose I have lost my final excuse for keeping the Christmas theme on the front page up. Oh well. I do still prefer the regular pink theme in spite of how much time I put into getting the Christmas theme "just right", but I worry a tad about how many pink-phobic visitors I am scaring off with it.
In other news, I have added a number of new links (and descriptions) to
the Dock - Cidoku.net to
the Affiliates category, DOOM Honorific Titles and Compet-N to
the Doom category, Lori Central, OpenJazz, and Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Warehouse to the brand new
Jazz Jackrabbit category and The Devil's Dictionary to the
Miscellaneous category. I also fixed a few broken links that had developed on various pages on
the UFO due to my recent re-organisation of it. That is all, for now...
09 January 2022
I wrote a follow-up article to my
original Intense World article, explaining how the theory's postulations explain the phenomenon of dyspraxia, and proposing a new model for the autism acceptance based on the theory. I had much of this in my head for months now but only just now was able to beat back the writer's block to actually put it to HTML. A sign of things to come, hopefully. I also decided to keep the Christmas theme (and Holiday Macula) up until after Russian New Year's (14th January), because I like them.
03 January 2022
In the interest of organising the website as it grows increasingly larger, and of making the website easier to crawl for search engines, I decided to move the entire autism section (UFO) into its own sub-directory and change the filenames of some of the pages to make them more intuitive. The old links should still work for quite a while; but they will simply redirect you to the updated link if you try to visit them. The new main page of the section can be found at
https://koshka.love/autism/. Truly, a day well spent.
I will probably eventually do the same to every section that has more than 1-3 pages (notably the Library of Babel, an arduous task that I am already dreading doing because I only know how to do these things manually), so be on the lookout for that, I suppose. That is all.
31 December 2021
Merry Christmas (again) and happy New Years! The Jazz Jackrabbit Christmas Episodes fan-shrine,
Burrowsville, is finally up and running over at the
Mystery Mansion! Enjoy! As usual, please enable JavaScript and do
not use Internet Explorer as it unfortunately does not properly support CSS animations. ):
25 December 2021
Merry Christmas! After a month of constant work, my Christmassy psychedelic ZZT game,
Santa's Advocate, is finally available for download from the
Town of ZZT. HIGHLY recommended if you have any interest in DOS games, psychedelic humour, or just comical Christmas fun in general. Many thanks to Jvlfools,
lolwut, and Surlent for beta testing the game and providing invaluable feedback towards improving it!
In decidedly less Christmassy news, I also added a nightmare I had last night to
the Somnium.
23 December 2021
Happy Winter!! (: I fixed the broken link to my ZZT game
Santa's Lil' Helper on the
Town of ZZT after
lolwut helpfully pointed out that it wasn't working, and added a new dream to
the Somnium.
Santa's Advocate is now set to be released one day late, on Christmas Day, 25 December. I'll probably get it done today, but I don't want to rush the people who volunteered to beta-test it, especially considering how hectic many people's schedules are around this time of year. That and, as always, I would rather finish my work late than finish it on time and have it not be as good as it could've been.
19 December 2021
At the risk of being the bearer of bad news: I just wanted to say that I am not dead yet! I have two important announcements to make regarding upcoming projects that some people may have some interest in.
Firstly, my promised forthcoming Christmas ZZT game,
Santa's Advocate (detailed description available in the linked page), has turned into something far more ambitious than I had planned it on being when I first started working on it. I still have faith in my ability to release it on Christmas Eve (24 December), but it has utterly monopolised my free time and prevented me from getting any work done on any other creative project, hence the complete lack of updates. This will likely be my final ZZT game, and the gem of my (admittedly mostly mediocre) 18 year ZZT "career", and I would like to humbly request a few people to beta-test it before release.
The plan is currently to put together a beta version by the end of the day on 22 December, leaving a day both for anyone interested to beta-test and for me to make some rounds through the game and make last minute changes. All you need to play this is the freeware game
ZZT and a DOS emulator such as
DOSBox or DOS-compatible operating system such as Windows 98, in order to run ZZT. If you have any interest in DOS games, and/or psychedelic comedy, this may just be your cup of peyote tea. Please
contact me if you are interested!
Here is a screenshot of the title screen, and
here is a screenshot of a random board.
The second announcement is in regard to the upcoming Jazz Jackrabbit 2
Fan-Shrine: Burrowsville. Unfortunately, due to how much of my time the aforementioned ZZT game is taking up, and due to the fact that I still have little ideas for this project and have only created a simple basis for it so far, I will most likely be forced to push this back to either New Years, or as far back as Old (Russian) Christmas, on 7th January. I apologise to anyone who was looking forward to that. I'll see if I can get it done on time after Santa's Advocate is wrapped up, but I have little faith in my ability to do that.
Regarding my
other previously promised projects such as
Macula's Maze, the autism articles, the Dragon Ball Super fanfictions, the Quarry, and so forth, most of them are in progress in some forth or another, and I am still hopeful to get those out eventually. Koshka's Kingdom has not been abandoned, just plunged into a period of stasis due to my current priorities.
06 December 2021
I haven't been updating much lately, but I wanted to announce another forthcoming project of mine that perhaps a few people may have some interest in. I have revived
my ZZT "career" to release one final ZZT game: a
Viovisian psychedelic adventure where you aid Santa Claus in his (exceedingly nonsensical) battle against the Krampus, who is attempting to usurp him. If you're a fan of DOS games, and/or psychedelic/trippy humour, this should be your cup of peyote.
Here's a screenshot of one of the boards that I've finished up so far.
The current plan is for this (still unnamed) ZZT game to come out on Christmas Eve (USA time) and for the Jazz Jackrabbit 2: Christmas Chronicles
fan-shrine (Burrowsville) to come out on Christmas Day.
30 November 2021 (Late Evening)
In celebration of the Christmas holiday season, I have unveiled a completely new, festive design for the
front page, including a number of graphics that I created just for the occasion. Most importantly, at the suggestion of my ever-brilliant friend
ShadowM00n, Macula (seen on the bottom of the page) now has a holiday monocle and top hat! The finished product is a bit lacking because I am too drunk and tired to wrestle with .GIF colour limitations any longer, but the concept is undeniably brilliant.
28 November 2021
After a fun weekend of Web 1.0 Archaeology, I added 29 excellent new links to
the Dock, which now sports a whopping 233 total links! I also added two new categories - Comedy & Oddities, and Web Forums, to organise things a bit better. The new links added are as follows:
Internet Pioneers and Computer Hope in the
Other Computer Resources category, MadTom's Pick in the
ZZT category, Doom WAD station and Classic DOOM in the
Doom category, Phil's Wacky Wheels Site, S&F Prod, and the Apogee FAQ in the
General Retro Games category, The Shadowlands and Everything You Need to Know About Vampires in the
Mysticism and Supernatural category, Boards.ie and B3TA in the
Web Forums category, Neil's Pennsylvania Home Page and Horace 'Kicker' Vallas in the
Comedy & Oddities category, Kat's Corner, Erowid, Totse, Dissolved Girl (rest in peace), Contemplations From the Marianas Trench, Send Coffee, Obsolete Computer Museum, Encyclopaedia Metallum, The Meditative Cat, The Cephalopod Page, RussianSpaceWeb, Moose Creek Nike Site, and Almighty Guru in the
Miscellaneous category, and LittleSis in the
Politics category.
Descriptions are included with the links, as always. Happy exploring!! (:
26 November 2021
I updated the
Helpful Accommodations for Autistic People page with some additional thoughts on noise-cancelling headphones, after having purchased two separate pairs of them and used them extensively, along with a few other assorted updates and corrections.
20 November 2021
After spending some time replaying some of my favourite ZZT games, I became inspired and decided to create a new sub-section for the
Town of ZZT, dedicated to reviewing ZZT games and preserving the rich gaming history found in them. The new
ZZT Game Reviews currently hosts reviews and screenshots of two classic releases from the year 1999 - Edible Vomit and PPDV - and I will be adding more as time goes on!
14 November 2021
After studying the front pages of dozens of Web 1.0 websites that I like and noting what they did well, I decided to do another partial revamp of
my own front page. Most importantly, I added a topbar with icons linking to the most popular and important sections of the website for the benefit of new visitors, along with a search bar to search the website via
DuckDuckGo. I also condensed and updated the opening text, brought the Wildcat Den mailbox over to advertise the guestbook. The topbar is an experiment that I may wind up adding to every page of the Kingdom, or get rid of altogether.
I was also informed that apparently there are issues with lag when scrolling on the scrollable elements on Chromium and its forks (Chrome, Edge, etc). I'll try to find a way to fix this issue later, but for now anyone using one of these browsers is probably better off browsing the website with
Pale Moon, or getting news updates from
the Scratching Post. I apologise for the inconvenience.
07 November 2021
Added a goofy dream I had last night to
the Somnium, and also finally gave the page a brand new, unique design. I had been meaning to do the latter for months now but only suddenly had a perfect vision of what it should look like while mowing the lawn earlier today. I also finally added Macula to the page. Apparently I only came up with
his origin story as an entity born in the extradimensional dream world of Aberra after I put up the Somnium, and never thought to give him a cameo afterward.
Finally, I have added three new Affiliates:
Soukds,
Actually Autistic Blogs List, and
antikrist.
31 October 2021
Halloween night is upon us, and I have arrived just in the nick of time with a spooky new fan-shrine for the classic DOS computer game
Monster Bash:
the Haunted Manor. Please be warned that the page largely does not work in Internet Explorer due to that browser being too incompetent to handle CSS animations, of which the page contains many. You will also need JavaScript enabled for the interactivity to work.
In other creepy news, I have fixed the broken links to the legendary creepypastas Infected Town and The Patient That Nearly Drove Me Out of Medicine over on the
Haunted House section and added one new Affiliate,
Arez.
To anyone who may be wishing some of the existing game shrines at the
Mystery Mansion had more meat to them, I
am considering going back and expanding some of them eventually. To be quite frank, every single one of these shrines has been a spur-of-the-moment experiment that I made up as I went along. I never have any clue what I'm going for before I start chipping away at one of them, and I am steadily learning some useful CSS/JavaScript tricks as I work through these, some of which I really wish I had known about when working on prior shrines.
17 October 2021
I wrote up a very drawn-out
analysis of the many intersections between autism and personality disorders, on
the UFO section. It turned out to be the longest thing I have put up here so far, but the subject really did turn out to be a rabbit hole that warranted all of that. Be sure to check out the
Red Forest section that I put up yesterday if you have any interest in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. or simply enjoy reading about goofy/obscure computer game glitches!
Once again, I have no immediate promises right now beyond the Monster Bash fan-shrine for the
Mystery Mansion on Halloween. I am hoping to have the Quarry section finally up soon-ish. Macula's Maze will take a while yet as I will need to learn how to create text adventures in Inform and make sure I can get that set up via JavaScript on Neocities. Time/energy permitting, those two "missing teeth" on the sidebar will finally be filled in within the next few months.
Check out The Scratching Post for a complete archive of this website's updates!
