Meara's World

Welcome!

Welcome to Meara's World!

This is a weird place for me to post a variety of content.

My interests include:

coding
crafts
languages
politics
gaming

Coding

This is where I post various content related to coding.

Professionally, I work primarily in php/mySQL and LSL, but I use various other languages as needed.

LSL

Generic Info Giver on Touch: I made this configurable info giver for someone who needed options for LMS, items & group restrictions.

Blog

13.11.24 - A New Beginning

A whole new site - or page, at least!

Website Changes

I had a previous version of this website, which was equally random and in some ways more nostalgic, but I wasn't able to keep up with it the way I wanted. I think a simpler website like this will help me focus.

Some of the things I did with this layout that I haven't done before or haven't often used are are below.

I used more variables in the CSS so I can simplify changing colors and details like dividers and :before and :after content.
I figured out that CSS will let you concatenate within a content part so I was able to simplify things there by making a var(--break) that held "\A", which is the CSS escape character for a line break (which is totally different from every other language I know).
I used CSS to make the animated background instead of using gifs, mostly so I can change the whole color scheme easily.

Language Learning

In non-website related news, I started a new Turkish course. I have been interested in Turkish for a while so I'll see how it goes. My reasons for wanting to learn Turkish are primarily academic (I love the way German words come together into super long very specific words, and Turkish seems like a much stronger version of that since it's agglutinative). I also just think that area of the world is very interesting with convergence between so many different regions (Europe/Asia/Arab cultures over the centuries). It's not going to be easy, but I'll study for a while and see what it's like.

Some places say Turkey is not LGBTQ-friendly, but I think with Turkey it is a bit mixed. There is no gay marriage there, but being gay has been legal since the 1800s. I think, like most places, it's more about being respectful towards the local culture and being aware of circumstances that may be unsafe or uncomfortable. I definitely want to go to Turkey eventually, but it will be a few years and I'm more likely to speak Turkish in Germany before I get to travel to Turkey. I would think most people would assume two women travelling together are friends or cousins, and I don't plan on PDA in places it is not appropriate.

Links

I always find links sections to be some of the most helpful personally. These are some of the sites that I use most frequently.

Games

Many of the games I enjoy lately are browser-based and primarily text-based. They are weird, indie games, often ones I can enjoy while doing something else.

Neopets Classic: Bring back old nostalic Neopia with the classic games and styles. An Unofficial version of Neopets.
Critter Mound: Raise an army of insects in this minmaxy text-based idle game.
Kingdom of Loathing: Strange and silly browser-based RPG.
Improbable Island: Reality tv text-based rpg with hunger games vibes.

Game Dev

Resources for Game Development

Storylets: You Want Them: Helpful blog posts about using storylets as a narrative structure in game dev.
Fantasy Consoles/Computers: These are fun to mess around with. I like saving a central list because a lot of time passes between messinga round with these so I like to see what is new or interesting when I come back to them.
Octo: An interesting browser-based fantasy computer.
Pico-8: One of the classics when it comes to fantasy consoles.
VVpet: A fantasy console to create tamogatchi style games.

Languages

I enjoy learning languages and these are some of my favorite resources.

General

YouTube: Everyone knows YouTube, but my trick is to translate a subject you like, like "knitting" into your target language and search for that. You'll find videos on topics that actually interest you. If the translated word is too close to another language, just add more descriptors to your translation (knitting vlog, knitting patterns, knitting review) and transplate the phrase until you find things in the target language. Subscribe to their channels and you'll start seeing more related content.
Lingq: I like Lingq because I can import the interesting YouTube videos I find and see the written transcript while I listen and see which words I understand.
Omniglot: This is an interesting site for learning about different writing systems and languages. It's more of an overview about how they relate and their characteristics and writing samples, but I find it very interesting.

Conlangs

Language Construction Society: This group has resources for creating your own constructed langauge.
Vulgarlang: An interesting tool for generating conlangs. Of course, I prefer handmade languages, but there are things to learn from here.