Salutations dear humans! I come in Peace!

[SergioEduP]

Heyo , I'm Sergio, just your regular 23yo from Portugal who is getting pretty tired of only browsing the same 5 sites everyday and finally decided to put my programing and (very rudimentary) artistic skills into making my own little corner of the web (  https://sergioedup.com/), fully homegrown website by me, hosted on cloudflare pages.

I love making stuff, be it programming, drawing or actually making something physical,for me the best things about making stuff is knowing that I actually made something from nothing with my hands and knowledge and being able to share that something wit more people to hopefully inspire them to also go and make stuff, but always struggled to share what I make with other people, I tried most social media but that always ended with a lot of anxiety and stress, so I stopped until recently I discovered this great community of independent people just making websites and sharing what they do, and I just thought "wait a minute.... I'm a programmer, I can make my own website and it doesn't need to follow any rules, I even own a domain already!" so that's what I've been working on if you want to check it out, there is also a blog there where I plan to post semi-regularly what I'm up to and what I'm working on.

Since I was raised around computers I am a nerd at heart! I run Arch BTW! And generally prefer Free and Open Source Software whenever possible, I also love to play all sorts of games, some games I find myself coming back to semi-regularly include Minecraft, BeamNG, Factorio, OpenTTD and both Portal games, and some games that I'm currently playing trough include Blatro, Baldur's Gate 3 and Patrick's Parabox.

I am very interested in retro tech, all of it, (you might have guessed if you looked at the general design of my website) I have a modest collection of retro consoles and computer hardware and am always happy to learn about weird and possibly obscure retro tech! But I'm also very interested and curious to see how modern tech keeps evolving!

I am also currently going trough Draw a Box to improve my drawing skills a bit beyond the basics and make more things to share, I have some ideas for short comics and games that would benefit from this, I am also learning to play the drums, always loved the drums since I was a kid and since I now have the means and space for it I just dived in, and I'm also learning how to use the Godot Engine with GDQuest, again to make some small games in the (hopefully not far™) future :)

Since I joined just after Christmas I hope everyone here had a nice time with their family and I wish the best for the rest of the festivities!

I'm happy to be here, I'll also share some of my stuff here and can't wait to see more of what everyone else here has and will share!

[EdenInTheGardens]

Welcome !!!!!

I hope you had a good christmas too ! Your website looks really cool, really excited to see where it goes


Also I was wonderind what retro consoles do you own ? :o

[SergioEduP]

I really like your website too, I tried to make my "windows" movable like your updates one but it got too messy really fast (and I couldn't get it to work decently on mobile) so I left it static, can't wait till you share some of your art there! Really like your profile picture too!

Also I was wonderind what retro consoles do you own ? :o

My collection is pretty small and I don't actively look for more consoles to buy, I just get them as I come across them on used markets, right now I have a Super Nintendo Entertainment System, a Sega Megadrive, a Sega Dreamcast, an Original Xbox (Thanks Microsoft for the weird names of your consoles), a Wii and a Play Station 2 (I wish I had kept my old PS1 when my brother gave me my PS2). And for more modern consoles I have an Xbox 360, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One (The fat model also known as VHS for its size) and Xbox Series X.

[JINSBEK]

Welcome from Reject Convenience! So you saw his video on cookies, huh? That's really neat! I found him through his video on living with a dumbphone for 2 years, he's the reason why I've stepped away from my smartphone except for transit and 2FA, and switched to a Japanese flip phone and MP3 Walkmans. Through a roundabout way, Reject Convenience is also how I found my way to the MelonLand community. It's nice to see someone else coming from his videos.

I have had an account on pretty much every social platform out there, I even tried to make my own content and publish it on YouTube a couple of times, and every single one of those attempts ended the same way, with a lot of stress and anxiety, the constant comparison of myself with others and trying to make me stand out wile also relatable so that more people come see what I have to show, and the constant pressure from society and these platforms to be successful (whatever that meant). With all of those attempts I ended up closing myself up more and more. The most recent of those attempts was just about a year ago, at the start of 2024, and when I gave up I just convinced myself that it wasn't for me.

This spoke to me. At first I didn't "mind" participating on all these platforms--Twitter, Facebook, Instagram--but as time went on, I spent more time and effort trying to be "palatable" and less time devoted to actually feeling, thinking, writing, painting, and making music. Other people were "successful" and I had the "skill" to be successful, but I never had the heart to really force myself to play the engagement tactics that everyone else was doing. The Internet wasn't fun anymore. Making art wasn't fun anymore. So I quit and focused on my physical health for more than a year. From this point on, I'm going to focus on publishing my art and other pieces on only my own website, and maybe only a few pieces occasionally crossposted onto Pixiv, SoundCloud, etc. I'm not going to try to keep up a "visibility/engagement" schedule or deal with social media anymore. I'm just going to have fun building my own website.

[SergioEduP]

I've seen the dumbphone video after the cookies one, I've also seen quite a few other people on YouTube following similar paths, I've not taken the plunge into dumbphones because I really like my smartphone as a tool, what I've done is "clean it up", disabling notifications for pretty much everything except messages, uninstalled a lot of apps that were not doing any good for my mental health (I'm particularly proud of uninstalling Reddit and YouTube, those were just literal time killers for me, standing still for 3 seconds was enough for me to grab my phone and open one of those two) and hiding some apps from my apps list so that I can open them when I receive a message but not mindlessly open them to waste time scrolling.
I also tried carrying an older smartphone (that I de-clutered even further, I don't think that that phone can even make calls anymore lol) just to use as an MP3 player but it felt very redundant since I was still using the exact same apps and music library that I had on my phone and I ended up using my main phone again. I'm still pretty happy with it anyway, after all that I went from multiple HOURS of screen time everyday to about 40 minutes (I like to watch a couple of creators on Nebula during my lunch break at work since I can't leave the factory)

Your phone looks pretty cool though, Japanese products almost always look cool and very well thought out, I miss when companies over this side of the planet actually took the time to make interesting designs that were also practical for their devices instead of just doing whatever their biggest competitor is doing.... I'm still mad that they removed my beloved headphone jack and slapped a couple of  useless cameras on the back of all phones....

I also want to add that you can set up distraction free modes on modern smartphones (at least on Samsung ones), I have mine set up so that it automatically enters "sleep mode" at night, so no notifications and as a bonus black and white screen so that it is less likely that I use it instead of sleeping, and a manual "work" mode where I only allow notifications of messages and calls from my parents just in case they need something.

[Paprika]

Hello and welcome to the Melonland Forum !

That is a very nice website you have here, the color palette is very nice ! I think there's a handful of people into retro tech and stuff like this on the forum now, I hope you'll make some nice friends there !

Here's a Gameboy as a welcome gift !

[SergioEduP]

Hello and welcome to the Melonland Forum !

That is a very nice website you have here, the color palette is very nice ! I think there's a handful of people into retro tech and stuff like this on the forum now, I hope you'll make some nice friends there !

Hi, I had taken a look at your website just before joining this forum and I like it too, it also made me realise that my French is in pretty bad shape so I probably should practice it a bit more. Also that is a pretty big comic collection you have!

Here's a Gameboy as a welcome gift !

And also thank you for this gameboy with one of the best games ever made!

[Paprika]

it also made me realise that my French is in pretty bad shape so I probably should practice it a bit more. Also that is a pretty big comic collection you have!

If you understand everything on my website, then you'll understand any kind of french ! I write in a rather funny/sarcastic tone most of the time and I tend to make bad metaphors and bad jokes so it can be quite hard to get for anyone that is not fluent in French.

As for the comics it's big because I've been reading those since 1995. I'm more interested by comics that I actually read / like rather than owning a "key issue" or a "CGC graded comic". It has an immense value to my heart, not in money