After years of coveting it, I finally managed to secure this domain. It was parked by a domain squatter and they wanted $2000 for it at time. I got it last year for less than 1/10th of that, and since I’ve been wanting it for a while now, I thought it was a reasonable cost.
I’ve had the domain for a year now, but only had free github hosting. I just put a static image on the page, but never did anything with it until I got notice that my domain was renewing through my registrar. Github requires you to make visible all the contents of your webpage to the world, and I didn’t care for that. Since I wasn’t doing much with the site, I didn’t mind too much, but when I saw my domain was renewing soon, I thought I’d buy some hosting and do something with my site.
I hope to keep this at least somewhat updated. I’m keeping the Hello World post just as a reminder of when the hosting went live. I’m still not certain what to do with the site, but I thought I’d share some of my interests, mostly as a reminder to myself of the things I enjoyed doing.
I hate how oppressive and assaulting white screens feel, so I’ll be theming my site in dark mode.
I think this is my second site. Third, if you count the one I did in undergrad for one of my infosys classes. I might have once had a geocities site, too, but I can’t be certain. So assuming I didn’t, then my first site was created around 2000 or 2001, and I was hosting Gameboy Color roms on a free hosting website. My url was gbcdt.cjb.net. cjb.net was a short url referrer, and my site was hosted on webjump.com. I can find instances of gbcdt.cjb.net on archive.org, but it won’t load the actual website itself, just some of the frames from cjb. I’m disappointed about this, as I’d like to have a look at my old website.
I don’t know why I thought to create a GBC rom site. It was a lot of work for little gain. I was downloading roms from some irc channels and rehosting them online. The reason I was even interested in these roms was I had bought a Bung Mr Flash 64mbit cart. I could put 4 roms on this flash cart, and I would be able to play them on my gameboy. It was the coolest thing I ever had at that age. I played a lot of video games growing up, and I was still a teen then, so I didn’t have much money. This was the cost of about 3 games, and I was able to play all GBC games. It was the best.
I even dabbled with creating game guides. ECW Hardcore Wresting was released on the web a few days before it was released in stores, so I took the initiative to write up a moves guide for it. You can find it here on GameFAQs, where it’s managed to survive the last 22 years
I think it was about this time that I really developed a love of handheld gaming. Playing in front of a big tv or on pc is great, no doubt, but I really enjoy the intimacy of sitting on the couch in laying in bed and playing a game.
I’ve had every major Nintendo handheld. I remember discovering that one of my christmas gifts was the original brick Game Boy that came with tetris. I opened it and played it under my bed, and then closed it back up. For the gameboy color, I participated in my neighborhood yard sale in order to raise the funds for it. I sold a series of children’s book I had about a little rabbit. I can’t remember the series now, and a google search is failing me. I later regretted selling those books as they were some of my favorite growing up, and I thought I’d like to share them with my future children.
I got a Gameboy Advance not long after it launched, it might have been a high school graduation present from my parents. I resisted for many years, but I bought a Nintendo DS when I was in the army in 2010, 6 years after it had first come out. I got a New® 3DS not long after those were released, and I’m not sure what the catalyst was. I think they had a big sale bringing the cost from $200 to $100 and I thought why not. And just a few months ago, I bought a Switch, 4 years after it had come out. I also have a Sony PSP Go and a Playstation Vita.
I like the 3DS and Vita the most, because they allow me to play the best Castlevania games. I can play all the GBA, DS games, and also Symphony of the Night between those 2 systems, and those 7 games are just my favorite. Symphony of the Night is the best one, but the other six are all so great too, it’s hard to say which one is second best. But I have flash carts for all those systems, or have softmodded them so that I can play roms from an SD card.
I think that will do it for now, I just wanted to set up some initial thoughts to get this ball rolling.