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Past Site News:

December 31, 2023

Happy New Year!

Minor changes to some magic related content for now. The 'guidance' section of some existing magic sections are also going to be re-written in the near future. This should better align with what they are meant to be (my thoughts on the deck, interesting synergies) rather than explicit matchup instructions, or other knowledge which can go stale (and which currently very much is).

December 2, 2023

A LONG break! More puzzle answers are still coming Soon™ (I promise), but for now the first speed puzzle for my site, and themed around speed climbing to boot!

June 14, 2023

A long break! Puzzle answers are still coming Soon™, but for now updated some magic decks in the meantime.

April 24, 2023

Recipes have moved to Dumpling Academy, my second website.

April 23, 2023

Still working on more features and better functionality here, but the main recipes page can now be populated with the contents of our shared recipe folder, and has rudimentary filtering based on tags.

April 18, 2023

  • Incoming support: Recipes

Extending the blog structure to allow for Kathy's recipes to start filling that section of the site. More details TBD, but for now, direct links work, but they aren't yet searchable.

April 9, 2023

Nothing glamourous today. Moving site updates older than a few months to their own page, officially adding a privacy policy considering the stats feature relies on a user Id, and fixing some bugs.

April 8, 2023

  • New feature: Puzzle Stats!

Solution guides are still on their way, but was more motivated to work on something else right away. The answer checker will now keep statistics about number of attempts and incorrect guesses globally! For puzzles that have a solution guide available, these stats are now showcased at the top of that page. Check out the Tutorial puzzle for an example.

March 2023

Happy #Enigmarch! Each day I'll be adding a new puzzle from the inspirational prompts posted on the Enigmarch website.

February 25, 2023

Section for conference talks / publications added.

A new puzzle has been added! Right before #Enigmarch as well (where I plan to add 31 puzzles over 31 days). This puzzle is the implementation of an idea I have had for a long time, with heavy inspiration from a particularly wonderful MIT Mysteryhunt puzzle from 2020.

January 28, 2023

While we are still over a month away from March, I set up some of the scaffolding for the puzzles to come!

Additionally, made some caching, storage, and timeout related updates to the site to (hopefully) allow things to load quicker, more reliably, and using less browser resources.

January 27, 2023

Myr myr myr! A new legendary creature has prompted a long-time stalwart of the decks page to get an update! Introducing Urtet, Remnant of Memnarch!

January 13, 2023

Slight revision to the Magic page, drawing a different distinction between my decks and my wife's. Better at larger breakpoints. Also updated the construction status of a few deck ideas.

Deck view now supports a "stacked" view, and remembers user preference.

January 3, 2023

Happy New Year! Not much in the way of goings on recently. The next big update is likely to be #Enigmarch 2023, with the intention of being a full round of quick puzzles rather than a single one.

I have a conference presentation in February I am working on, so expect the About page to get updated with a link to the presentation material once that is completed as well!

August 27, 2022

The Alchemy Round is fully complete! Some renamings occurred for clarity, but puzzles have not changed. I have also refined ❌ Marks the Spot to be a bit cleaner as well.

August 14, 2022

One more puzzle in the Alchemy round to go! Not sure if this one will come together in the next week, but hopefully having a buffer to still wrap up in August!

I am also hoping to have a few more puzzle solutions posted and some internal component refactoring done in the next few weeks as well.

August 8, 2022

  • New Feature: Puzzle Solutions

As promised, the blog structure was extended for hosting puzzle solutions! I plan to gradually fill these in over time (just like with the Magic content), but the largest hurdle is now complete!

You can see a solution has been added (part of the answer bar at the bottom of the screen) for the very first puzzle I ever made, Tetris!

August 7, 2022

Well this one came together quick... Hopefully this means I can roll out the whole round before the end of August!

August 6, 2022

I have finally created a meta puzzle! To facilitate the concept of round and meta puzzle, I have added to the main puzzle landing page.

There will be 3 more puzzles in the Alchemy round at some point soon (I know the themes, just not the specifics)!

I am also working on extending the blog structure to support puzzles, much like how the deck guidance now exists in the magic section (and is still slowly being fleshed out). This will introduce solution pages where I get to talk about how to solve the puzzle (if you have finished it or do not feel inclined to) and also inspirations and motivations.

At the current rate the next update will be in early September, but I hope to have all 3 remaining Alchemy puzzles ready by then (if not with staggered releases sooner)!

July 11, 2022

I have redone the main landing page and added stubs for decks that are in progress. In the coming weeks I am looking to add at least a short philosophy blurb under each completed deck, and those updates should come without a full site enhancement.

On the puzzle front, I have captured some ideas for my first round, but am still ways away from both finalizing that idea, and finding a way to represent it here.

And finally the blog is... a struggle. But if I come up with something worthwhile I will definitely keep at it!

June 28, 2022

  • New Legacy Deck: Burn

I have gotten a chance to play some more magic recently! Working on fleshing out the deck details for my Legacy decks, and picked up the 11th deck for my battlebox!

June 17, 2022

This idea came together pretty quickly! While it ended in a different format than what I originally had in mind, I quite like it! Hopefully you do too!

June 13, 2022

I've been preoccupied with other things and a lovely vacation, but hoping to resume some entries in the coming weeks. Added a disclaimer indicating that all my opinions are my own, because all my opinions are my own.

April 16, 2022

The Magic deck details pages have been updated to support philosophy and sideboarding guidance for select decks. Currently only Amulet Titan has any details added (and even that is a work-in-progress), but more to come over time! I've also began tracking match results, and will look to see how I can integrate statistics of this regard cleanly into the page as well, or if I will need to update that section manually.

April 2, 2022

Image optimization is here! Site experience should load faster (aside from blog posts as I am not self-hosting most of those images currently).

March 30, 2022

Yesterday I found out from a friend about #Enigmarch, a month long puzzle creation challenge. Well it's VERY far into March at the moment, but I wanted to participate, and as such have created a single puzzle with the spiritDay 30's theme is PHANTOM, so this is close right? of a month-long challenge (though I couldn't find a way to work the daily prompts into each of my days unfortunately). Looking forward to tackling it day-by-day next year!

March 28, 2022

Nothing notable here aside from a bunch of minor styling updates noticed now that I have a blog post to look at. I also updated the page metadata for unfurling (e.g. when I post pages to Facebook or Twitter, it will now have details about that page rather than just the site) and messed around with a few of the 'noscript' settings, but would be wholely surprised if anyone legitimately encountered those.

March 27, 2022

  • New Website!

The original version of my website was an interesting project, but after running into some annoyances with maintainability, it's time to begin anew! If you're reading this message, the new website is live! It matches the previous version functionality-wise (mostly), and has a new (more fun) theme than just light/dark mode! It also introduces a new feature that I (hopefully) will make an effort to update at least once a week...

  • Blog!

That's right, we're back in the blog-o-sphere! Previously I had tried using external blog sites and linking them around, but none of them really met my style. A few considerations went into this thought, but ultimately I figured it was worthwhile to build myself if I'm going to actually try and stay on with it. The first blog post on this site will talk about the differences between the previous project and this one, and why it took catching COVID to give me the uninterrupted time blocks to actually finish.

  • Content!?

One of the first things I built on the previous website were link-outs to my Youtube Channel and Twitch Stream, but outside of a small amount of content in 2020, I really didn't put anything out there. As the world re-opens, I'm hoping to have more time for hobbies, and looking to capture them in a meaningful way to share with others, and one (or both) of those locations will likely be where any video-form content goes. Will it be good quality? Likely not at first, but I'm a reasonably particular person, and I care about production value, so if it is something I become more interested in who knows how it will turn out.

  • Wrap-up

And that concludes the first "Site News" update. I encourage anyone who has never visited this site to take a look around (the icon in the top-right-corner of the nav can be clicked to see full site navigation). There's a good number of hobby showcases, and a handful of puzzles to explore. If you came to this site in some way that I wasn't aware of, I would be interested in hearing what you think, and can be reached at website@carvers.info.

That's all for now, here's to the start of something new (and hopefully well supported)!