Welcome to The Works of Egan
Published on Feb 25, 2024
Hello there! As you may have read over at Dream Avenue, I've decided to pack my bags and move platforms once again! Welcome to The Works of Egan!
This is going to be a pretty long post, so before we get too deep, let me just recommend that you grab this site's RSS feed to keep up with my posts. You can also follow the site on its Neocities page, and you can follow me in any of the places listed here.
So yes, the first point that needs addressing is that I've not only moved house, I've also changed names! Why The Works of Egan? Well, Egan is my name, and this site contains my Works.
It could be as simple as that, but it's also a play on my default username, Eganworks, which itself comes from a fake company name my cousin Kevin came up with when he and my sister and I were all making a fan-film sequel to Mister Roberts, a movie from the 50s featuring Henry Fonda, James Cagney, William Powell, and Jack Lemmon, and you know what let's just go with the previous explanation.
While the site you're looking at may be new, theworksofegan.net has actually already existed in another form for a little while, as a sort of About Me / informal portfolio / what I'm up to right now sort of site. Just a little thing that grew out of wanting to build something here on Neocities.
I always felt a little weird about having that site exist separately from my blog, and I've always thought those two things would make a lot more sense sharing one space. And now those two great tastes are together at last! But I digress. If you're coming from Dream Avenue (my previous blog), it's a big change!
Again, you should remember to grab this site's RSS feed if you'd like to follow my blog posts that way, and haven't already done that. The old Dream Avenue feed will not be updated or ported over. You can use this link here!
If you're a loyal reader from a previous era of the blog, you'll be happy to find that I've ported over all of my previous posts, and put in a decent amount of work to make sure everything displays and behaves properly on the new site.
Please let me know if anything looks broken or weird!
So let's talk about this new site
I mentioned earlier that The Works of Egan has existed as my Personal Website for a while, and that I've now mushed it together with my blog. Which means that while my previous blog was just a blog, this site is so much more!
Outside of writing my silly little blogs, I'll also be using this site to keep track of other projects I'm working on, like motion graphics and film photography, share links to other places and things around the web that I think are worth sharing, or that I just don't want to forget, share what tools I use, what I'm playing right now, and all sorts of other information.
The sidebar on the right (or at the bottom of the page if you're on mobile) features a Site Map, which will give you a list of pages you'll find on the site and where they live in relation to each other, a list of other places to follow me, a list of other blogs I like, a list of tags you can filter my posts by, and some good old-fashioned 88x31 banner GIFs, because that's the aesthetic I'm going for here.
Each post features a section for comments at the bottom, powered by Disqus. There's a great guide on how to get ad-free Disqus comments for free on your small, non-commercial site here.
And site analytics are powered by Goat Counter, a free, privacy-minded analytics solution dedicated to de-Google-fying the web.
The site itself is hosted on Neocities — a wonderful hosting platform with the spirit of the Old Web — and built on 11ty, a static site generator that really was the final piece to the puzzle of building this place.
This website will never feature ads, trackers, pop-ups, or any other invasive or annoying features.
There's plenty more I'm planning on adding here post-launch, so stay tuned, click around, and if you like what you see or have any suggestions, thoughts, or ideas, don't hesitate to reach out in any way you see fit!
(There might even be a secret page or two waiting to be discovered 😉)
A bit of a manifesto
A personal website, as I see it, should be equal parts showcase and journal. It's online because I want to share it with the world, but it also exists for me, because I want it to.
I think keeping a personal website full of the things you like, are interested in, want to keep track of, don't want to forget, etc, is a great way to open yourself up to possible connections with others like you. But it's also important for it to be something that brings enjoyment to its creator first and foremost.
The web should feel more personal. More people should do this.
I decided to make this website, and move my whole blog here because I love writing and want to keep doing it, and because I want to share myself with the web and the cool people I meet there.
But also because I genuinely love and enjoy web design and development. It's just such a clear and logical and beautiful process to me, the way this code and these rules come together to create an interactive, visual whole that you can use to communicate parts of yourself to the world.
I'm adding my little square to the quilt, and helping to build The Internet: that shiny, mythical thing that captured my imagination as a child in the dial-up era.
You can read a little bit more of why I decided to make this move here.
Ok so what do I write about here?
Mostly video games, honestly! Some reviews, some insights, some listing what I'm playing now and want to play next, and some short, excited posting about games I'm nostalgic for coming to fresh platforms.
But I also post about my life, the blog, pizza, covid, Sonic the Hedgehog, New York, photography, and the occasional entry in a link roundup series that I call "What Else Is On?"
Not to mention my annual Game of the Year (GOTY) top ten lists, only one of which was three months late!
I don't keep to any kind of schedule (though there was a good stretch in 2021 where I blogged every day), and I'm always trying to write smaller and more often.
Some Blog History
2017 - This blog's life begins when I decide to start writing about moving to NYC on my Squarespace portfolio website, a topic which lasted all of two posts.
2018 - I remember my blog exists and start writing about using Paper, a drawing app I pined after for years and finally started using because I bought an iPad.
I also start my end-of-year GOTY list tradition.
2019 - I am too busy hating my job and enjoying the pre-Covid world to blog at all, except for my GOTY list.
2020 - Covid hits, I get laid off from my job, and group of writers I follow on Twitter all start a blog on Blogger together during lockdown. I get the bug (the writing bug, not the other bug, that comes later).
The Go To Hell Space, this blog's second incarnation is born.
2021 - I briefly move The Go To Hell Space from Blogger to WordPress, blog almost every day for most of February, move back to Blogger, and change names again.
Dream Avenue, this blog's third incarnation is born. Less than a month later, I move back to WordPress.
My love for writing has truly been rekindled by this point.
2022 - Dream Avenue chugs along happily on WordPress as I get busier and busier with freelance work, but remain dedicated to The Craft.
I buy the Disco Elysium jacket, one year after telling myself I shouldn't.
I discover Neocities, and wonder if… But no… It isn't time yet.
2023 - My 2022 GOTY list balloons way out of control and I get bottlenecked on writing for a few months, but still manage to write some fun blogs after that.
I play DOOM for the first time, the year we both turn 30.
2024 - I discover a static site generator called 11ty that would make maintaining a blog on a site I build from scratch and host on Neocities one million times easier.
And here we are.
Conclusion
It's been a long journey getting here! My knowledge of HTML, CSS, Javascript, and now tiny bits of other languages in 11ty has grown immensely since I started. My high school self would think I'm really cool right now.
If you have a Neocities account yourself (and if not, just give it a shot!), you can follow this site's page here. If you like what I'm doing, you can even throw me a tip!
Thanks so much for stopping by my housewarming post!
Hope you wanted something to read.
Til next time!