The State of Pete's Place!

Pete's Place is under construction.

Yes, I know that is the standard disclaimer on a large percentage of all web sites on this planet, but in this case it is literally true. It is not even close to being complete; the foundations have barely been poured, and if you are not careful you may immortalise your footprints in the drying cement. The "KEEP OUT" signs and yellow-striped barricades are firmly in place. Vast portions of what I have planned for this site have not even been thought about in any sort of detail, let alone written. It is even possible that the few things which are here may not work properly.

So why is it here at all? you ask.

Good question.

In the past, for each major incarnation of my site (on each of my past ISPs) I have done all the work, all the writing, all the development, before posting anything online. It has worked, but each time it has been a daunting task, and my free time seems to shrink with every passing year. The last major upgrade, overhauling the HTML to get it fully functional and styled by CSS, is still only about 65% complete and has been sitting on my local drive for more than a year with no further progress.

Whereas if I post this site piecemeal, as a work in progress (or so goes my cunning plan!) I will have a reason to keep working on it. And it may even become something worth using. (Besides, what I have in mind is fairly modular in nature, and publishing one module at a time seems a reasonable approach.)

That's the plan, anyway...

The Shape of Things to Come

I had a plan.

Of course, what I plan, and what I actually find time to achieve, are often two different things. Who could have predicted, a couple of years ago, that I would pour most of my creative energies into developing Half-Life Deathmatch levels? (Particularly considering that HL mapping seemed to be mostly dead, with many people mapping for more capable gaming engines while waiting for HL2 to burst on the scene.) Still, that is what I've been doing, and what I shall probably continue to do for a while yet.

So, of course, other things -- all the stuff I had planned for this site, for instance -- have pretty much taken a back seat. And the only thing which has actually grown here -- albeit slowly -- has been my mapping page.

All is not lost, however; my old site -- in its semi-CSS-but-mostly-not incarnation is still available, albeit somewhat out of date (last major writing effort was about four or five years ago). That should keep you amused for a little while -- and maybe, when you return, something more will be working here. Perhaps it is time I started porting some of that stuff over to here. Or perhaps not...