The making of LAUNCHPAD

:// INTRO

I think it might have been around 2001 when I first jumped online.

There have always been periods when I only visit the same sites without exploring. Then, I would go into this craze of seeing how much weird (funny) stuff I can find.

After having tried a handful of browsers throughout my time, I realized there was something missing: organization.

Normally you can bookmark websites. I’m so old (now), I honestly have no idea if bookmarks have always been around.

There’s one thing that sucks (for me) though: you can’t view them all at the same time.

:// WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT SITE CALLED?!?!?!

I remember vividly the first site I actually frequented. I was HEAVILY into Pink Floyd’s The Wall. So naturally I wanted to look up lyrics for their songs.

This is when I also happened to discover search engines.

Like a complete amateur, instead of writing down the name or memorizing it, I would type in “words for Pink Floyd songs” (remember, this is before I knew lyrics were actually called lyrics.

It was a green on black site which probably destroyed my vision as much as reading with a flashlight in the dark did for me. These were the early days of the net. When every site had a “click to enter screen”, shit I’m old…

Whoever put this site together, had a cow on the main page. Once I found the lyrics to COMFORTABLY NUMB (which happens to be my favorite song EVER, I would break out my DISCMAN and read along as I listened to the song.

Now that I think about it, I regret not remembering what that site was called. Trust me, I’ve tried.

:// THE WORLD WIDE WEB

As the years passed, sites came and went. Some are still around but I stopped visiting them (NEWGROUNDS anyone?).

Around the beginning of the 2010s I started taking my bookmarking seriously. Hell, all of my folders were structured in a way where every folder and site listed were organized alphabetically.

As many of those sites started being taken offline, that definitely killed my “enthusiasm”. Why go through the effort if those sites could and probably would be gone at any moment.

Thanks to the WAY BACK MACHINE I can still visit some of the sites I still remember. Unfortunately, most of the links are broken or the site is barely functional.

Flash baby!

Once I discovered RSS readers, bookmarking was completely dead to me.

For those unfamiliar (poor souls), RSS readers basically save your favorite sites and tell you which posts “you missed” since you last visited.

Again, my OCD kicked in. Everything had to be organized by “theme”, alphabetically of course.

Today, there is only 1 site I have on my RSS reader: Bloody-Disgusting.

Keeping up with “scoops” as they came in started to become too much to handle.

Hell, it took the fun out of being online.

I remember logging on to have fun. Hopefully discovering some cool weird sites I can share with my friends. But the constant barrage of “news” just took the fun out of it.

:// LET’S GET TOOLED UP BLOOD

That’s a line from ATTACK THE BLOCK by the way.

I’m pretty scattered when it comes to ideas. Usually ideas for projects come to me quick, most are pipe dreams where I think “that would be cool, IF I knew how to do that”.

Others are “I can ACTUALLY do that”.

One thing I have learned since I got into this mess of a lifestyle, I realized that one thing can make or break you: tools.

Tools, are not defined by their name or brand (to me).

Tools are actually defined by how they help YOU.

If something helps you in your daily workflow, then that tool is extremely valuable to you. If it looks like a million bucks but is complete trash to use then guess what, it’s useless to you.

Then it finally happened (last week actually): I realized my web browser sucks.

I switched to Brave probably a little over a year now. It’s based off of Chromium (which I actually like).

The cool thing about Brave is that it actually blocks all ads and trackers out of the box.

Combine that with a VPN, hackerman sexy.

The browser itself actually works great. It’s fast, doesn’t eat up all of you RAM (Chrome). But you can only save 12 sites on your main screen.

You can ADD more sites, but you basically end up “swiping” to the next list.

How the hell am I gonna fix that?

:// AGAIN: LET’S GET TOOLED UP BLOOD

Then it came to me: I can set a custom page as my home page on my browser. It can be a HTML file on my PC.

Holy Shit.

After losing sleep for one night brainstorming how I could pull this off, I finally sat in front of my setup, opened Brave, Sublime Text and broke out my HTML and CSS book.

The idea was simple: a home page with text only, no flashy CSS or any other nonsense.

Straight HTML with columns, links and headers.

The idea was to theme it just like this site. Same background color (#111111 baby), same font (Inconsolata baby) and each link would have that sexy SPAN tag which I like using all over the place.

Two nights and 83 lines of HTML later I had it: LAUNCHPAD.

It’s a simple three column layout which holds all of my favorite sites in categories.

This time I did not organize anything alphabetically. Instead I chose to organize everything by “frequency” of clicks.

The great thing is that LAUNCHPAD can grow exponentially.

It might seem like a lot of links, but these are hands down THE sites I visit and work on regularly.

My HTML skills are very weak. Everything I “know” has been from quick internet searches or by skimming through my books.

( Makes me wonder what I could put together if I actually read the damn things front to back )

( Challenge accepted.. )

As of tonight (launch day) (no pun intended) the home page breaks down like this:

SITES

These are the sites I am on daily. Most are mine (shameful promotion).

FORUMS

Same as sites, but these are forums where I like to get down and dirty. The first two are mine, the rest are gaming forums. Nerd.

WIKIS

One is mine, the rest are also gaming related.

FEEDS

Self explanatory. These are sites where I just consume anything and everything that I stumble upon.

You every try going down the CLOVERFIELD universe rabbit hole?

That shit will change your life son.

RESEARCH

I have been getting HEAVILY into the (original) XBOX modding scene.

That section is currently filled with sites and forums for that old black box.

I just realized I should add a RESIDENT EVIL section. Especially with links to vintage sites which are gone now (classic Project Umbrella anyone?).

This thing can grow. If I actually knew what I was doing, I could make it fully responsive.

Hell, it might even be possible to automate updates for it.

We’ll see.

So far so good.

It’s been a great start to 2023.