Essays

I've written an awful lot over the years, but I've never really collected it in one place until now. Most of it ended up buried in archives or in my files, but no longer! I have here linked every single blog post, opinion piece, and deep dive into some obscure bit of media or technology from all my years online that's still worth reading, and hopefully you find something you like skimming through.

(There's a lot more than this on Letters and also the archives of the Scratchpad, my personal blog from 2019 to 2022, but it's either stuff I don't necessarily vibe with anymore or it's just outright terrible.)

The Rediscovering

This one's big enough to get its own section.

This was a set of essays I did on the Scratchpad between mid-2020 and early 2022 giving my initial impressions on thirty 90s and 2000s rock records I had in my collection and never quite gave a fair listen. I found some surprising new favorites, some ones I hated, and each essay is given an appendix from more recent with my final thoughts on the album and the entry in question. Give 'em a skim through, you'll find a bunch you might recognize and a bunch you almost certainly do not.

Gaming and Tech Essays

Title	Date Published	Location
Cammy vs. the PhotoCam III: This Has Gotten Stupid	October 7, 2025	Letters From Somnolescent
The exciting(?) end to a six-year-long attempt to get a single, working unit of an odd, Taiwanese-made, AOL-branded camera circa 1998. (This one pretty well makes "Cammy vs. the PhotoCam" from 2019 and "Cammy Revisits the PhotoCam" from 2022 obsolete, but they're also listed here for posterity, and proof that I am indeed this fucking crazy.)
Catching 'Em All, and How to Do It	June 22, 2025	Letters From Somnolescent
Back in 2022, I made it my mission to complete the Pokédex in at least one Pokémon game, and I'd finally managed it while I was staying over with Caby in 2025. Freaky glitches, funny skips, and maybe even a little bit of audience participation? (That means you reading this. Go answer my little journal meme, comments are still open.)
Five Things I Learned from "Hacking Windows XP"	June 22, 2025	Letters From Somnolescent
From a library sale, I picked up a book on customizing, optimizing, and securing Windows XP. I knew a lot of it already, but a surprising amount, I didn't! Let me share that with you.
SomnolCCSO, and Reviving an Old, Dead Database Lookup Protocol	February 6, 2024	Letters From Somnolescent
CCSO was a people lookup protocol for the college kids in the late 80s, and with a whole six known servers in existence, Somnol brought a new one to life. And Cammy coded something!
2600 Pac-Man: Was it That Bad?	February 23, 2022	Letters From Somnolescent
It's still routinely considered one of the worst games of all time, but meet it on its own merits and 2600 Pac-Man is still mildly fun. Here's a deep exploration on the gameplay of the port.
The Clever Feat of PNG Optimization	October 27, 2020	Letters From Somnolescent
The way PNGs are encoded makes it possible to save 20-60% of their overall size with zero loss in quality. How's that work? What magic do you need to make it happen? That's all in this essay.
The Luddite in Me Screams	June 29, 2020	mari's Scratchpad
Lamenting e-waste, our world of planned obsolescence, and increasingly-frequent attempts to fix human problems with new technology.
Tools, Toys, and You and I	May 9, 2020	Letters From Somnolescent
More rumination on how we rely on such fragile technology to power the modern world, and how computers should augment humans, not replace them.
Why Gopher Will Fail	May 3, 2020	mari's Scratchpad
Part two of a post on the future of Gopher (a document-retrieval Internet protocol—effectively FTP on steroids), and why I think its community will let it down and it won't achieve its deserved success.
Why Gopher Will Succeed	May 2, 2020	mari's Scratchpad
Part one of a post on the future of Gopher (see above), and why I think it still has a comfy place in the modern world.

Music Essays

Title	Date Published	Location
Somnolescent Record Club #2: Cage the Elephant's Thank You Happy Birthday	February 28, 2025	Letters From Somnolescent
The second entry in the Somnolescent Record Club series, going back to my middle school days with a noisy freaky 2010s rock record I still very much cherish.
Somnolescent Record Club #1: Autolux's Demos (2001-2002)	January 28, 2025	Letters From Somnolescent
I've spent a lot of time over the years Seriously Analyzing music, so here was the start of an attempted series celebrating how I also casually enjoy music and fantasize to it plenty, featuring an old high school favorite.
3-9-7-1-5: Exploring the Expanded Conet Project Boxset	April 1, 2024	Letters From Somnolescent
The favorite of conspiracy theorists and indie bands alike, numbers stations, strange, anonymous shortwave broadcasts consisting entirely of spoken numbers and strange noises, fall under my microscope. I paid £200 for the privilege!
First Draft: Pixies' Come On Pilgrim	November 1, 2023	Letters From Somnolescent
The fourth edition of First Draft, talking about the highly-productive sessions that led up to the Pixies debut EP...and the half of what was recorded that was left unreleased.
First Draft: Failure's Magnified	October 1, 2023	Letters From Somnolescent
The third edition of First Draft, revisiting Failure's second record Magnified from 1994 and comparing it to the home-recorded demo versions originally slated for release by their label and later released on Failure's Essentials compilation.
First Draft: Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot	September 18, 2023	Letters From Somnolescent
The second edition of First Draft, looking at Wilco's landmark indie rock classic 22 years after it first streamed online and comparing it to no less than six discs of in-progress cuts from the long, winding recording sessions.
First Draft: ...The Dandy Warhols Come Down	July 1, 2023	Letters From Somnolescent
The inaugural edition of First Draft, a look back at an album that was cut down or redone from its initial version to see what all the extra time in the oven did. This one concerns the Dandy Warhols' second record and its scrapped first attempt The Black Album.
The Absurd Netherworld of Internet Archive Tape Transfers	June 24, 2021	Letters From Somnolescent
The Internet Archive hosts a lot more than just websites, like, say, transfers of amateurly-recorded cassettes! We explore obscure klezmer music (is there any other kind?), a 70s family having breakfast, and a mixtape of 90s hits made for a girl's friends. Aww.
Experimenting With 5.1 Downmixes	March 8, 2021	mari's Scratchpad
I've long wondered about the differences between a stereo mix from a CD and a 5.1 surround downmix, and what even the point of surround mixes for music are. This post mulls on the topic with Nirvana's MTV Unplugged in New York as the focal point.
Look What Your Money Bought	January 11, 2021	mari's Scratchpad
Defending Nickelback and riffing on the idea of authenticity as part of a band's image. Remember, it's okay to want success until you openly enjoy that success—then you suck.
The Desperate, Bottomless Pit of Nirvana Fan Albums	September 16, 2020	mari's Scratchpad
There's been a trend on YouTube and places over the past few years of fake, post-Kurt's death Nirvana albums, and I find it rather miserable and creepy, not to mention historically absurd. Listen to another band, please.
The Tragedy of MP3.com	January 15, 2020	mari's Scratchpad
The start of an obsession! My attempt to tell the story of the failed early indie music streaming site. There's several followups to this linked at the bottom of the essay—happy rabbit hole exploring!
End it Someday: Looking Back on With the Lights Out	November 23, 2019	Letters From Somnolescent
15 years of a big ol' Nirvana boxset! Going through all four discs and talking about what it gets right and what it gets wrong. Motivated my own attempt at a Nirvana rarities boxset two years later.

Personal Retrospectives

Title	Date Published	Location
London, Through the Eyes of the PowerShot A20	July 24, 2025	Letters From Somnolescent
A nice collection of vintage digicam photos I took while hanging around London with my girlfriend Caby this year. If you like weird couches and deep colorful skylines, this one's for you!
The Majestic Serenity of Late 1990s Network TV Ads	June 4, 2025	Letters From Somnolescent
For lack of a better place to put this, I celebrate turning 26 by looking at a batch of also just-turned-26 network TV ads. You got the old tech, the new agey foggy landscapes, the vintage cars, and a decidedly less obnoxious tone than the ads we see today. I do love it a lot.
Cammy's Greatest Hits	November 28, 2024	Letters From Somnolescent
I've gotten tired of the "wow look at how shit everything used to be" type retrospectives I'd post every year around the holidays and spent Thanksgiving 2024 instead appreciating what all I got up to that year. SomnolCCSO, learning PHP, getting better at art, losing weight, and seeing Caby again!
Further Down the Artsy Rabbit Hole	December 29, 2023	Letters From Somnolescent
More about my time spent learning to draw, and more stuff I'm proud of from the year! This one's a lot more positive than the last, as my confidence grows...
mariversary 4.0: Revisiting Nostalgiamining	April 1, 2023	Letters From Somnolescent
Revisiting the initial essays that earned me much notoriety on Neocities, and their bizarre continued relevance. (Seriously, there's like seven different sites linking to them now, and yes, I still get emailed about them every few months.)
My First Year in Art	February 3, 2023	Letters From Somnolescent
January 2022 marks when I started drawing officially! I look back on the first year here and go over some drawings that I think make for good milestones.
mariversary 3.0: The Platypus Years	April 1, 2021	Letters From Somnolescent
For the third anniversary of me joining Neocities, I explored my original site, in all its odd-but-pleasingly-colored glory.
mariversary 2.0: I Actually Paid for This	April 1, 2020	Letters From Somnolescent
Two years after joining Neocities, I look back with amusement at all the many sites I made using my Supporter's plan. We also discuss if Kyle Drake is an asshole (he is) and if I'm always right (I am).
mariversary: Thinking About Neocities	April 1, 2019	mari's Scratchpad
A sorta sappy little look at my time spent on Neocities, the site where I met the Somnolians and my future wife. Not bad for shitposting at children!
The Day I Became a Nostalgiaminer	November 2018	Neocities
The inspiration behind, and the making of, my little fake 90s personal site minerteaux, which of course takes its name from the "nostalgiamining" term I came up with.

Web Essays

Title	Date Published	Location
The New HTTP Order	January 1, 2025	Letters From Somnolescent
A lament about how the choice for how people can see your site has already been made for you, courtesy of gigantic tech conglomerates who know better than you. (somnolescent.net unfortunately now has to force HTTPS across most of its subdomains, but the good news is that RetroZilla 2.3 now supports TLS 1.3 and can load our sites again. If you're browsing on older PCs, RetroZilla is seriously a must.)
What Even is Somnolescent?	August 25, 2023	Letters From Somnolescent
A ponder on the ways everyone seems to misinterpret Somnolescent as a collective, either who we are, what we're into, or what we're supposed to be—and everyone includes ourselves, yes.
The Great Somnolescent Time Machine	April 20, 2022	Letters From Somnolescent
A bit on vintage website restoration! These are still largely my working methods and the things I do to patch sites for archives or just for my own usage in the event I have to grab them from the Wayback Machine.
Fw: Fw: Fw: The Bizarroworld Time Capsule of 00fun	March 18, 2021	mari's Scratchpad
A strange 2000s website filled with "eCards" that only I seem to remember...and no, don't ask me why I remember it. Exploring it, exploring why it was made, and exploring why it should probably stay buried.
The Death of HTTPS (on somnolescent.net)	February 2, 2021	Letters From Somnolescent
Sunsetting the "secure" version of our sites, and discussing the scare tactics around HTTPS, its usage, some people's desire to force it, and how difficult it can be to escape its grasp.
The Death of the Hobbyist	December 18, 2020	mari's Scratchpad
It's sad how no one seems to make things just for fun anymore. I'm in full support of artists getting paid, sure, but when that's the point, what fun is there to be had?
Neocities and a Lack of Passion	September 2018	Neocities
Easily my most contentious essay—encouraging users of the site to delete their accounts if they failed to make their sites fun and interesting to browse through.
Nostalgiamining vs. Forging the Future	September 2018	Neocities
The lesser-known predecessor to the Passion essay, on how Neocities users like to copy the rainbow vomit part of Geocities as a substitute for a personality. Coined the term "nostalgiamining", which has somehow made its way to Urban Dictionary.