I have added SEVEN new animated cursors that complement my already pre-existing "Default" and "Link Select" cursors.
These include:
• Horizontal scrolling, vertical scrolling, and a movement initiation cursor when navigating scrollbars, middle-click dragging, or playing around with the Kitty
• Precision cursor when magnifying and minimising content within the image galleries
• Cutie Keroppi pen cursor when hovering the text entry fields in the guestbook
• Confused fella when hovering over other froggies
• "Unavailable" cursor that currently only takes effect when trying to drag elements you shouldn't be. I will probably find more use for this in the future
Don't even get me started on how much of a ballache it was to even get these implemented and functioning in all the ways I wanted them to work either. I had to fight the backend tooth and nail switching all my cursor behaviours over to the DOM layer (and no, it's nowhere near as sexy as it sounds).
Another cool upshot though is I realised I could paint my custom scrollbars to this layer too, which means they even persist in finicky browsers like Firefox now!
I've completely overhauled (and overkilled) my sites load optimisations down to the finest detail today. There's nothing else of substance to optimise now, other than gradually turning my images more and more into potatoes. 🥔
The bulk of the changes are to do with how and when my site loads, or defers the loading of, particular assets and scripts. I've very carefully attempted to streamline this pipeline as smoothly as possible.
Some of these changes are:
• Pre-loading the top few images of different pages when you hover the corresponding nav button, which in most scenarios allows the page to transition seamlessly populated, even on 1st site visit
• Pre-loading the first music track after everything else on the page has loaded so as to not hog up the bandwidth over the visuals. If a visitor is exceptionally speedy or has mega potato internet, then it switches to just initialising as soon as its ready
• Some behaviour was left to load until the user clicks through the Entry screen, like the loading of SFX
• Many things now only load when in close proximity to the viewport. All images outside of the first few (which get special priority), the guestbook contents, all sorts of things
I'm double-dipping on the posts today chat!
I was thinking more about the parts of myself and my life that I would like to share here, and I realised that I've never even shown my two cats on here before!
I would love to make an entire shrine for them eventually when I feel up to it, but for now here's a few picces.
Bubba (Left) and Mischief (right)!
(idk why Mischief looks so zooted sometimes lmao)
I read something today that made me want to challenge how I thought about the use of AI, especially in the indie web space.
I initially strove to never use AI in my site and was proud of the fact that I'd earnestly made everything either 100% myself, or from a template or resource that someone else provided and then made heavy tweaks to it to make it more my own.
This was true for the entire year of this sites existence, that was until a few weeks ago when I tried AI for the first time to help clean up my piece of shit code and figure out how to transport my site to the new layout system I wanted. I just didn't have the drive or the want to learn how to navigate doing all that on my own.
It was an absolute cheat-code. It saved me so so so many hours of learning things I wasn't particularly interested in and cut-out all the brute work of singling things out in my terrible code to shift over 1 by 1.
This led me to then start ruminating on what else it could do, and I began using it more liberally for implementing more complex new features that would have taken me an age to implement from scratch on my own, if I could even figure out how to craft what I wanted with just google searchs and forum posts to begin with.
Again, AI completely cut out having to do the detective work and provided how to do this for me almost instantly. I heavily edited all that it gave me to match my ideals with my own images and styling and whatever else, it just helped so much to expedite the behind the scenes stuff.
This stuff is just scary, scary good.
I can see how easy it is to become overly comfortable with using this tool, become lazy, and become unwilling to learn new things. I don't want to become that person or let my usage of it become more than a timesave on the gritty back-end stuff.
Something I've not come to a conclusion on yet is whether or not using tools for the back-end html/css is a diminishment in expression. I find myself thinking things like "Is it not just a rote language with finite characteristics?" "Isn't this just what I'd end up doing myself anyway and just saving me time?" "Isn't what really matters what I do in the front-end that you see and feel and experience?"
I care so deeply about my visual style and authenticity that I would hate people to think I took shortcuts in that department too, or lump it all together as something wholly tainted or something like that.
Ultimately I want to strive to be as individual and human as I can be. I don't want people to look at my site or my code and think "this is just some computer made bs". I've really, earnestly put 100s and 100s of hours of my soul into this site to make it as uniquely "me" as I currently know how, and I will strive to do this even more so in the future.
I completely understand how proud people can be, especially in this online niche that I've found myself in. I can't even argue with the notion some people have that using these tools in any way is some kind of blemish or reason to not engage with a work that utilised it, however small. It's their prerogative to do that, if they want.
I just hope I don't end up in anyones bad books for beginning to take some shortcuts. I want to be transparent about the fact that I have begun to use AI to streamline and expedite my workflow and to get templates and baseline stuff setup for me to expand on. As time goes on I am committed to learning how to do more of this myself too, not less.
I will keep trying my best 💚
I finally stopped putting it off and managed to finish my new guestbook!!
I managed to port over the old comments to my new system too!
I am now able to reply to people's comments that they leave for me.
As for what you guys get, you are able to pick from a selection of fun accent colours and emojis, yippie!
I've gone crazy and spent an insane no. of hours changing my site to an "SPA" file structure.
I'm not smart enough to explain what this is properly, but I will list the changes it has allowed me to implement.
My active music, gifs and cursor animations now all persist when navigating between different pages on my site.
This is because my site now has a static base index that is always loaded and active, and I simply change out the main body to navigate to different site pages now, rather than letting the browser completely destroy and rebuild my whole page each time.
This should make my website highly fluid now, with no real discernable blips or loads when changing pages.
• Added a Keroppi gif that routinely spans the bottom of the webpage, complete with fun backwards and forwards travel text!
• Both animated and gave SFX to all the Keroppi's in my site header
• Made every background texture slightly mottled to make the site easier on the eyes and less monotonal
• Reduced the file size of additional graphics that I overlooked last pass
• Updated my lightbox to zoom-in at the point you're hovering before you click instead of defaulting top-left
• Also added a loading message to my lightbox until the images appear - useful for first time visitors who don't have the large files cached yet
• Got my flying kitty to scale appropriately with the rest of my site on resize
• Fixed my youtube embeds so that they scale properly on mobile
• Overhauled my lightbox (the pop-up that appears when you click on an image) to have custom arrows, an ESC button and the functionality to freeze scrolling for rest of the webpage when it is active
• Added .webp image thumbnails on site load instead of them being large, raw files, which will drastically improve performance on most pages - expand images in my galleries to see them in their native resolution!
• Completely overhauled how my site handles different resolutions, including both resized windows on desktop and different mobile devices - it should now perform consistently in most scenarios!
• Added custom interlocking borders around many of my images that match my site theme, along with a hover effect
• Additional fun flavour text when hovering many of the interactable elements on my Home page (see if you can find the easter eggs!)
• Added a custom scrollbar to Firefox (as much as it allows me to, anyways)
• Many more pictures of my Keroppi collection have been added, yippieee!
• Added a lightbox to images so you can view them at a larger scale, as well as navigate through all the images on the page through this interface via the buttons or your keyboards arrowkeys
• Fixed the remaining visual discrepancies between Chrome and Firefox, like the volume sliders not looking right on the music player and the grab/grabbing hands not showing properly on draggable elements
• Added an entry screen on desktop!
• Added many sfx when hovering over every interactable element (if toggled on)
• Autoplay of the music player (if toggled on)
• Numerous small fixes with custom cursors and button hover effects
• Fixed the Keroppi head shake animations
• Added speech bubbles on hover to all of my favourite sites, detailing what I enjoy about them
• Made most hoverable elements more fluid in their animations, I also added some visual feedback when hovering over links
• Added a grabbing cursor when moving the kitty around the screen and operating the sliders in the music player
A beautiful piece of art I purchased from Rabbit Paw Studio, please go and support them!!
• A second animated cursor when hovering over links
• New images on the Home page with a little animation and dimming effect when hovering over them
• A Selfie Page and an Art page (soon), accessible through clicking said images
• "Home" and "Back to Top" links at the bottom of every webpage
• Also just added a bunch more 88x31 pics for sites I like, yay!
Cleaned up a few issues I was having on mobile, namely:
• The shadowing under the text in my site banner being misaligned
• The positioning of the text in all of my headers being off-centre
• The spacing between all of the elements being too large/inconsistent, especially the Socials element
• The navigation buttons overflowing on certain devices - they should now stack vertically & uniformly
Things should look more streamline now 🙂
I recently decided to "come out" as Agender.
I figure it would be nice for others like me to see some sort of solidarity or something. I've been meaning to add something about it to my website for a while, but just kept putting it off lol.
Anyways, see these tweets for more of a rundown if you're curious.
Love ya!
Wow, 2 months since my last update huh?
So much has been going on since my last entry. I've been to some amazing places and spent some quality time with some really great people.
I really feel like I'm coming out of my shell finally these past few months and the "fake it til you make it" kinda approach towards confidence is finally paying off. I'm so much more comfortable in my own skin these days and actually showing my personality to my friends and loved ones instead of hiding/not saying the things I want to say.
I'm really trying to see and feel the good in me. Trying to take more pride in my appearance, being more forward in my interactions, not being so afraid to make jokes or connect with people - everything has just been so much more positive lately.
Maybe I am funny sometimes. Maybe I am attractive to some people. Maybe I do have worth and deserve nice things now and then. Maybe it's ok to reach out to interesting people and be bold about connecting with them and making things happen.
I'm also just feeling so happy in my relationship. We've always gotten along great, but lately it just feels like we're really on the same page about so many aspects of life and really respecting each other as individuals to the truest extent. I feel very lucky to have her.
The following pics are from a big meetup we went to with our friends in Pickering.
To speak more on the meetup, it was amazing! I had only met 1/3 or so of the people going in person before so it was rather daunting. But so many of the new people I met were SO NICE and fun!
We visited a castle, a lovely seaside town, had a nice meal out and sang karaoke into the early hours of the morning. I will cherish those days forever.
There's a lot more images I could post and things I could say about my trip but this post is already getting long as fuck, so maybe that's for another time.
Now I'm back home and just trying to keep my confidence going and to keep connecting with others.
I feel like I've made some special connections lately and I'm excited and optimistic to see where it takes me.
There's so much love in my heart right now and I'm just going to let it out.
❤️❤️❤️
I finally got around to updating the photos of my Keroppi shelves!
I still have a ton of items in storage too as I've run out of room to display them. 😵
Love that green fella. 🐸
I've chilled out a bit more now, and the 'crisis' I had a about getting older has subsided a fair bit - or at least I'm thinking about it as an impetus to live and do more fun things.
I'm trying to set in motion behaviours that will help me in socialising more and just going outside more too. I've been agoraphobic for a long time, but it got to a level recently that was getting unmanageable..
I'm trying some anti-anxiety medication and I can already feel the weight in my chest lifting, which is a bit surreal and rather shocking recognising just how heavily my anxiety was impacting me physically, not just mentally.
I still don't really know how to talk about myself and that's why I haven't made an entry in a while. I'll try be more active again.
I keep going mental lately about "getting old"
I've always been someone who suppresses their emotions A LOT and there's a lot of things about myself I never properly actualised or even really knew.
I guess the biggest thing that gets me right now is the thought that I should have known I was gay (or I guess more accurately queer) much earlier. And all the experiences I missed out on by not being true to myself.
I've always just had little to no sense of self it seems like, and was happier just shelving my personality or any vibrant aspect of myself. Maybe it's part of being non-binary and not caring about gender whatsoever, or being autistic, or just avoiding others for a very long time. I just ended up removing myself from the loop entirely.
And I find myself blaming a lot of things and not knowing how to really deal with it. Like society or school for not guiding me.
And I just really hate myself a lot at the moment. I feel sick when I look at myself. I don't want to get older, look older, feel older. None of it.
It's like I'm in mourning for a timeline of my teens and my 20s I didn't have.
Idk how to shift this feeling like I'm over the hill. And how attempts to express myself how I wish I did 10 years ago will just seem pathetic now. I feel like I'm acting like a teenager all the time, seeking attention. Fishing for compliments. It makes me feel so worthless and desperate.
And I'm unsure how to be normal about making friends or gaining validation. It's like I'm trying to speedrun the process and it's very one-sided and selfish.
I just want to be liked. I want queer people to think I'm cute. I want boys to like me the most. It's something that keeps popping up at different moments in my life, so it must mean something to me that other things don't.
I want to get back into streaming.
My twitch year-in-review thing said that I only streamed a handful of times in 2025. Even when I was streaming more, I was never as social with it as I would like to be and mainly focused on the speedrunning aspect.
This year I would like to really try just playing games for fun and making more connections with people.
I feel like there's a lot of love in my heart and I want to find more means of relating to people - hopefully streaming helps with that.
Maybe using webcam will help with my self-image; or relating to people further, or both. I don't know.
Worth a shot.
Yesterday was my 30th birthday!
Seeing friends was really nice. 😊
I tend to forget that I exist to other people, so for everyone to be so nice to me and tell me they've thought about me or looked at my website or my speedruns was really heartwarming, even if I find it tricky to take it on board.
I hope to see them more and put in more of an effort this year - It's worth it!
The fit:
I purchased the domain name callumbal.com!!
There's also a lot more I want to do with this site but it's hard to find the motivation.
I need to update the photos in my Keroppi collection for one thing - I've amassed a LOT more since I last posted.
Would be cool to catalogue them as well for posterity, there's so little info online about some of these items.
Just as it says really. I'm just going to say whatever is on my mind and try not overthink it.
I've been longing for some kind of outlet for my thoughts and feelings for a long time now, and social media just doesn't cut it.
I'm hoping if i put things down in writing it can help me actualise them. This blog is a *loose* new year's resolution I have about accountability and just feeling like I have some sort of purpose in the world.
I've been trying really hard to be more social lately and it has been going pretty well.
I'm turning 30 in a week and I'm definitely ruminating a lot about getting older and feeling like I've lost so much of my youth.
I still don't know where I fit in the world and I still don't really seem to be able to connect with other people in meaningful ways.
I'm growing ever more fearful of dying alone without having ever been contented with anything.
I'm pretty nihilistic so a big part of me says what's the point anyway, it's all just fluff to distract from the inevitable sad end anyhow.
It's hard to set goals when it all feels like a fools errand.
I hate to be so disattached like that, yet it's been this way for a long time now.
I don't really know where I'm going with any of this.
Do others feel as despondent as me?
It feels like there's a trick I'm missing to not overthink things.
I'll think about what if I bite my tongue most of the time I eat.
Or I'll go to a gig and only be able to think "this is the bit you're meant to like. This is the bit you're supposed to switch off." And it never happens.
Every single night I just hate sleeping. How are you supposed to turn it off?
I hope 2026 is the year I find whatever missing link it is that stops me from getting so stuck on everything.
The hope is it's one of those "your brain is missing this chemical and this pill will fix you" scenarios.
Maybe I just have aggressive ADHD or whatever the fuck. I feel like I have so little control over it at times and it's just tragic.
Not a particularly positive first entry but it's just what I'm feeling.
Between now and the next entry I want to try to keep up socialising with others and just striving to keep my brain engaged with ANYTHING.
Try and find more "tricks" to keep my brain occupied instead of vapidly whittling hours away going around in circles in my head in bed or staring at my PC screen with nothing happening.