Tattoo art for Lunati, a feral Tacoma to match the one I got of her character years ago. She had it inked over the summer and it turned out awesome.
2023 is almost over and the past year has brought an unprecedented amount of commissions. At first this seemed strange, due to the fact that I'm not actively advertising and have withdrawn from virtually all social media. Despite this, people somehow keep finding and commissioning me.
After a bit of research, it made a little more sense. People seem to be finding me almost exclusively by word-of-mouth, and maybe also my website. I'm certain most are from folks simply asking a past commissioner who made some piece of art and being pointed in my direction.
As a result, I've been completely flooded with commission requests. And while this might seem like finding a lucky coin, as we all know, every coin has two sides.
The good side: Obviously money, who doesn't need more? If you honestly don't, you can send some my way.
The bad side: Having much less time for my own work, deadline stress.
This year, the anxiety of non-stop commissions outweighed the benefit of making a few extra pennies.
With all that said, I feel like now would be a good time to formally close public commissions for awhile while I give myself some breathing space, along with time for myself and loved ones.
Wishing everyone here the best in 2024 and a very happy new year. Spend some time with those closest to you, and remember to give yourself a break every now and then. We all need one sometimes.
Btw, I'm still putting out monthly icon packages on patreon, so if you'd like to dress up your desktop with new icons each month, please consider subscribing to me there!
A Fix Long in Coming
New full body avatar for Lunati Senpai! Yay!
Lunati says: "It's your local mouse Lunati here with a new website update! I'll be splitting the dialogue today with Tacoma, she'll help explain what we've been up to. This update was a very long time coming. For years we've struggled with an awful bug that causes huge errors when this website was loaded in the Firefox browser."
Tacoma says: "It's been a little bit since my last update and, as Luna mentioned, there were some issues with the site in certain browsers *cough* Firefox *cough* which made regular updates, and even visits to the site, frustrating. This was problematic enough that we had to put our heads together to come up with a better long-term solution. What came out of it was another overhaul of the css and html, along with new javascript that will add better compatibility to all browsers (except ie11, but who's honestly using that anymore?)
Lunati says: "So like, that bug that Tacoma mentioned was a total nightmare to fix, and I've been literally trying to squash it for years and years."
A before and after of what was changed on the site.
A long rant about what was fixed, with geeky details.
What made it so tricky? I would fix it, on a regular basis, only for that same bug to turn up again in a new build of firefox some weeks or months later. All because I was using code that was designed to play nice with multiple older browsers. So, I've now totally ditched support on this site for Internet Explorer for like most of it, and ripped out the code that caused Firefox browsers (not all Firefox-based browsers mind you, Firefox specifically). Why some weird advertising app at some point abused the document ready function, I will never know."
For future reference, the javascript code that caused the issue:
if (document.attachEvent ? document.readyState == "complete" : document.readyState !== "loading") {
fn();
} else {
document.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded', fn);
}
The above, and total variations of it were tried many many times, boiling down to "if the document isn't ready, wait until it is, then show the age check banner" which works normally, if you aren't using Firefox. Firefox runs two sets of things that cause this issue, it systematically removes things from the background as it is loading pages, and runs a function to put off loading content as long as possible, going so far as to interject itself into web pages. This normally isn't bad at all, it makes the browser feel more "snappy" and is really cool. The problem? Since that code runs in tandem with whatever code is on a website, and isn't properly sandboxed, you get an endless loop.
What fixed it was ripping out all the code on the page, and just replacing it with jquery, and rewriting what I could in ecmascript6.
Long term workaround wearidly was to open the site in one tab, then open up a new tab, open the site again, and it would work perfectly as long as the page was cached.
Also, wiping your entire Firefox profile, and starting a fresh one cures the looping part of the bug for a period of 2 months to a year! Obviously, this is not the kind of fix you can ask random visitors to this lovely website to do, that would be silly.
Some fun fixes over the years that totally should have worked, but didn't:
Adding a wait function after it loaded, nope, only fixed it for a month.
Renaming any file used on the page, including the css! (Totally not joking, this worked for a year).
Variations of ready / wait, all of these would fix it for a month or two.
Using jquery's ready function? Nope, that one fixed that weird loop, but still would make every single background image vanish from the site.
So what was your local mouse senpai hacker to do? She ripped out all the code, said screw it, and rewrote everything from scratch, old browser support be damned. Our site now totally breaks in ie 11, and just shows basic html formatting. A small victory so I'm sticking with it, happy to know that I'm now stuck with browsers that update and old versions wont be haunting me for 6+ years anymore. More people overall use Internet Explorer and friends to view this website than Firefox, but I expect ie to drop dead long term, and I'd rather support the browsers Tacoma and I use on a daily basis.
So all of that is basically what happened to me trying to repair that stuff, but it was finally done!
Tacoma says: "Lunati did an absolutely amazing job fixing the most troublesome bugs we had in the old code. I'm not nearly as patient as she is but she's been a great teacher. She regularly helps people fix code in other online spaces and her bug squashing solutions are nothing short of brilliant."
Lunati says: "Outside of that? My vtubing is on what is (hopefully) a temporary hiatus as I work my butt off with my day job and re-evaluate what do do with my stream. Streaming is seriously a big part of my life. I need it back, and I think about it daily. Sure, I could just get up there, but I'm thinking about what I want to do with my time, and putting some time into mapping out what kind of content I would feel excited doing that's more niche than just streaming video games all the time (although I totally want to do that, too.) I'm so busy lately I don't have time for even games. My days consist of waking up, working, having dinner, doing chores, and sleeping again. With 50-70 hour work weeks, I need to figure out where to squeeze my hobbies in."
I have a new avatar all up and ready to go, now I just have to animate it, and maybe sometime get around to even rigging. But that's a whole other rabbit hole that is way out there in what to do. Streaming will return with a new avatar but, in the meantime, working on projects I can do in tiny 20-30 minute breaks at random times when I can squeeze them in, which will support my streaming when it resumes.
Tacoma says: "It's been busy over here but we've been doing great and I can honestly say things are only getting better for us. I'm still shipping out my monthly patreon packages, working on personal art projects, collabs and generally enjoying being creative and flexible in the ways I have the most fun with.
Despite the occasional trouble with code, there's something magical about having my own exclusive corner of the web, away from all the noise and advertising on social media. With each day I'm made more aware how important it is to have something like this, especially given the state of the internet today."
"I hope my site can inspire more people to break away from that, if only to reclaim a space for themselves that was always available and just hadn't been utilized. There is so much more to the net than doomscrolling, drama and recycled content. Find a hobby or skill that you love and make it your bitch. Don't hold back!"
Warm, fuzzy thanks to my Patrons on Patreon: Elwood, Kaori, LoveBot and Bitsy.
You guys have made a real difference in my life, thank you all so much for your continued support.
