The website's RSS feed has been reactivated after years of neglect, you can add it to your RSS reader of
choice by appending this link to the URL list. From now on, (public)
project updates and site changes will also be announced via RSS, eventually we will be adding a public alternative
as a secondary means to reach our user base, in the meantime, we emphasize that as of March 2021,
XENOBYTE HAS NO PUBLIC PRESENCE IN ANY MAINSTREAM SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORM.
On a side note, our custom EMACS configuration HEXmacs was also updated by removing obsolete packages and shifting
the PHP autocomplete configuration from ac-php and php-extras to lsp-mode, which has been steadily replacing most autocomplete solutions
for a while now.
The rest of the configs will be updated in due time.
uy LOCAL PROJECT HOSTING & NEW GITEA INSTANCE
Starting today, all our projects are being locally hosted for direct download in their
respective sections, their source code will also be available in our new, public gitea
instance available at git.xenobyte.xyz.
To keep the codebase clean, the repo trees have been reset to remove deprecated files from versions
that are no longer supported, both SkeletonGL example
programs were updated to V2.0 as well.
This git host migration from third-party to locally served isn't necessarily a permanent departure from
the various public git service providers, rather a preventive backup to ensure our projects remain online
and as a safer, private way for our clients to keep track of their request's development. As for the
previous public git accounts, they will remain inactive until the local repos are ready, once that's
done they'll be cloned into a public git host for distribution purposes just as before.
It's been a busy winter so far, with many unrelated setbacks and sleepless nights, fortunately the
development goals that were set the past year have been successfully met, clearing the way for future
endeavors that would otherwise be postponed. This will be one interesting year.
uy SERVER UPGRADE & SITE UPDATES
The XENOBYTE.XYZ server has been upgraded to slightly beefier hardware to
accommodate for incoming changes, including the return to locally hosted copies
of all our freeware source code, as well as re-enabling the TOR hidden service
that has been offline for around three months now. TOR traffic is almost negligible in comparison
to that of the clearnet, but the growing uncertainty around the internet's legal limits and the
shameless censorship of independent websites leaves us with no choice.
The original xenobyte.xyz server with a whopping 480MB of RAM
The upgraded server sporting 25G of storage and an entire GB of RAM
In the meantime, we've made some minor changes to the site's frontend, sorted the media gallery, and added
new content to the scripts section. Version 4.3 will hopefully be ready before February.
uy SKELETONGL VERSION 2.0 RELEASED
After months of short yet consistent bursts of effort, the Skeleton Graphics Library version 2.0 is finally here!
SKELETONGL V2.0
This marks a very
important milestone for the library as it is now in its
first stable release with all it's promised features plus
some more:
■ Updated to compile with C++20
■ Full .INI configuration file parser
■ Runs on both legacy and modern hardware
■ Fully compatible with legacy systems like WindowsXP
■ Integrated logging, and hardware profiling tools
■ Specialized shader and OpenGL debugging
■ Can be compiled for virtually any modern operating system
■ Compatible with all modern (version 3.3+) OpenGL versions
■ Deterministic (FPS limited) and uncapped rendering
■ Included post-processor with custom shader support
■ Lag free input system for mice, keyboards, gamepads and joysticks
■ VSYNC options, window management and multi-monitor support
■ Project template and makefiles included
■ OpenGL blending modes for all renderers
■ Tiny codebase, has five dependencies (all free)
■ Doxygen commented, includes example programs
■ Fully exposed OpenGL rendering pipeline for customized builds
There were also many changes to the engine codebase to comply with better
practices as well as to allow for almost total customization of the rendering
pipeline. It was also stripped of all vestigial, legacy code that served as
testing grounds for what today are features.
See the CHANGELOG
for a thorough list of the updates and this devlog entry for more information on the ver 2.0 release.
For the time being the project will be prioritizing stability, bug fixing, updating the available example programs and finishing its third official game, Risk Vector.
uy PROJECT REBRAND: NEOHEX.XYZ -> XENOBYTE.XYZ
It has been quite an interesting project so far, soon approaching it's
first anniversary as NEOHEX.XYZ though it has been online under different names since
around early 2018. Originally, the site was created to publish my projects and experiments away from the
scrutiny (and staleness) of the mainstream alternatives, an independent digital sandbox from which
to further my ideas. Not that it has deviated from its purpose, but around late 2018 I began
taking on project requests from a handful of online contacts and eventually the public at large, promoting the
then humble personal hub into the half-assed crypto-business it is today. Mindlessly jumping through
different domain names as they expire is thus coming to a close to help solidify the brand.
2018 - 2019: XENSPACE.NET
2019 - 2020: NEOHEX.XYZ
2020 - ????: XENOBYTE.XYZ <--- YOU ARE HERE
The change usually happens when the domain name is close to expiry to make the
most out of the original investment as well as to refresh the project's aesthetic by giving it a
cool new domain every year. NEOHEX.XYZ (the third domain so far) still has around hundred days left in the registry
and, it has already seen the highest amount of traffic of all the different names previously used with
around 3K unique visitors every month with no marketing effort whatsoever.
Local traffic analysis (with around 20 days of missing data)
Interestingly enough, this past year has seen an increase in third-party usage of the same
brand name, some of these companies / individuals even provide (comically) similar
services, unnecessarily obfuscating the project from its respective result pool, and a
very small one at that.
The site is still in the process of being rebranded but should be fully updated to ver 4.0 later this
week. NEOHEX.XYZ will be redirected to XENOBYTE.XYZ for the remaining of its registry.
uy DEVELOPMENT TOOLS UPDATE
Both of our current development tools were updated to match
the new versions of their respective base software. HEXmacs
is now working on EMACS ver. 27+ which now has native JSON parsing (via libjansson) for much faster lsp-mode completion. This change
alone has deprecated the alternatives, if you use the default javascript configuration included in HEXmacs
(or any other lsp related packages) you should definitely upgrade. The HEXmacs installation guide has also been finished.
Our ricing files were also updated for the October release of arch (01/10/2020), all configurations are now
working for the latest available version of their software. The volume bug that happened when toggling mute/unmute using
AwesomeWM hotkeys and the unreliable image rendering in URXVT + ranger were also fixed.
Finally, the site saw some quality of life changes including modal media loading in the
gallery, mobile rendering improvements and some contact changes. Updating to ver 3.5.
uy NEW SECTION: CODE SNIPPETS / SCRIPTS
The site has been updated with a section for code snippets worth preserving, either as
educational tools or just out of pure interest. We'll be adding a complementary tutorials section in the future as well, there are quite a few
subjects relevant to our work that could use some additional literature.
Updating to version 3.4.
uy PROJECT UPDATES: SKELETONGL VER 1.9 & SITE OPTIMIZATION
Between the impending economic
doom and the almost year long quarantine, it's been quite a challenge to keep up
with the current development roadmap. However, thanks to our anonymous patrons, most
of our free software projects are now production ready, with a
few of them collectively powering almost half a dozen projects.
Some of our clients have agreed for their projects to be developed with our custom
engines and frameworks, SkeletonGL is currently powering a (closed source) data visualization tool for
crypto market analysis, while pocket_php is managing seven websites and two REST API servers with another
one soon to launch.
A big thank you for your preference!
There's an interesting project that will be officially announced in the coming weeks, and that
damn arcade game is close to being done.
For the time being, SkeletonGL will be getting its last update before
version 2.0 releases with its third example application, and the site has been further
optimized in preparation for even bigger changes.
Expect some interesting news before November!
uy NEOHEX.XYZ VER 3.0 RELEASE & THE FUTURE
It's been almost five months since the re-release of NEOHEX.XYZ. In that time span the site has
gone through an alpha and beta phase, has seen around 9K unique visitors (with zero marketing
efforts), has successfully completed fourteen freelance projects for anonymous clients, collected
81 blog posts, hosted a Tibia TFS 7.4 and CS game servers, has been relentlessly hounded
by Chinese webbots since launch and survived bouncing around local VPS services as they went
bankrupt.
second half access log
A painful a birth as it may have been, the NEOHEX project has slowly but steadily been
nurtured into the platform it was envisioned to be, receiving today its biggest update yet. Finally
graduating from BETA to RELEASE.
■ The entire site has been redesigned
■ Gorillions of grammar error finally fixed
■ Every single project has been cleaned, updated and (better) documented
■ Journal navigation updated
■ Contact information updated
■ Added more images to the gallery
Everything seems to indicate that the second half of the year is going to be just as wild if
not more, such an uncertain future keeps plans halted and efforts costly, but never abandoned.
uy NEW SSL CERTIFICATE & HONG KONG IP RANGE BAN
NEOHEX.XYZ has been getting swarmed with port scans and failed ssh attempts
from IPs in the range designated to Hong Kong. Since the site isn't relying
on a middleman (like cloudfare) to mitigate most fake requests, we've resorted
to range banning Hong Kong IPs for the foreseeable future. Despite this counter measure, the performance impact on the main server is still noticeable.
The site's SSL certificate was also renewed.
uy CAS-SGL: OPEN SOURCE CELLULAR AUTOMATTA SIMULATOR
Last week, we received a request from an engineering student
(hailing from an unspecified college) asking for help with his programming
final project. It turned out to be a Conway's game of life, a very simple
cellular automata simulation that can produce some truly astonishing
results. Being a software engineering class there were a few, specific
features the program had to honor that raised the complexity from a
straightforward triviality and there was a relatively tight time constraint
as well. The client opted to outsource the development to us and was
happy enough with the final product to he gave us his blessings to release
the source code for free, making it another SGL example. The project has been wiped clean of the client's data
and added to the NEOHEX.XYZ projects page here.
uy QUARANTINE UPDATE
Business has been rough, two thirds of our local clients either had to cut all non immediately essential costs or straight up closed due to the financial stress this irresponsible quarantine has caused. Residing in a particularly dry area for R&D with a trendy preference for outsourcing was challenging enough without the current financial meltdown laying waste to what was left of our already crippled economy. On the flip side, our privacy focused, online engineering services have grown to an average of about 3 finished requests per month. That's 3 more requests than originally expected, specially when taking into account the absolute lack of promotional effort.
Monero has been added to the payment options, with more alternatives on their way. Updating to v2.8.
uy RISK VECTOR
FREEWARE GAME MADE IN SGL
I've been working on the next SkeletonGL example game to pass the quarantine, hence the
constant commits to the repository and the lack of updates to the site. It will sport a
much more complete and stable template that complements what SGL was originally
built to do: render. Though it will be a simple arcade game running on a much more capable engine, its completion will finalize the development
of SGL 2.0 which will enable further plans to blossom into projects.
The server underwent an unexpected ten minute maintenance this past Sunday, removed some clutter and changed some contact info as well. Updated NEOHEX.XYZ to v2.6.
uy CORONAVIRUS UPDATE: INTERNET OVERLOADS & SLOW CONNECTIONS
If you're experiencing unusual lag, the issue most likely lies in your ISP acting as a bottleneck for the unprecedented amount of traffic currently flowing through.
As the ongoing quarantine confines more people that would otherwise be working to their homes, the increased demand for bandwidth has overloaded ISPs worldwide. Some have been affected harder than others, but overall, the stability of the internet has taken a noticeable hit that will most likely last for as long as the quarantine. That being said, should the speed of our client's services reach unreliability, they will be immediately tended to.
uy SERVER MIGRATION & DECONTAMINATION EFFORTS
The economic impact of the ongoing coronavirus chaos bankrupted the
small VPS service provider that previously hosted the
NEOHEX.XYZ website as well as one of
our client's project. Both of which have been successfully migrated to
new hardware. Needless to say, as we yet again approach the point of no return,
maintaining all of our client's services online becomes an increasingly
difficult challenge that we will not shy away from.
A few rendering issues on devices with unreasonably low resolution were also fixed, updating to ver 2.5.
stay safe, lads
uy WWW. PREFIX REMOVAL, BUG FIXES & CORONA VIRUS DELAYS
Calls to NEOHEX.XYZ using the www. prefix of ye'olde now redirect to clean versions of the URL.
This to simplify linking to the site and to properly deprecate old standards that don't serve a
purpose anymore. A few backend bugs were also squashed, and some contact data was updated.
Needless to say, due to the current coronavirus panic server uptime can't be guaranteed, should
services fail beyond a day expect an email with a status update. For the time being, I have no
option but to delay the planned announcements until the shit storm wanes down, if it ever does.
Have a fun apocalypse!
uy DOMAIN NAME CHANGED: XENSPACE.NET -> NEOHEX.XYZ
IP's and DNS entries have once again been updated. Same project, new name.
NEOHEX.XYZ
Click the image for a link to the old stie background, originally made for a lainchan "glitchart" thread.
uy NEW PROJECT REPOS & BLOG #TAGS
The XENSPACE.NET projects have been indefinitely moved to a new git account here. The previous account will remain active until further notice, however, it won't be getting further updates.
Lastly, a few additions were made to the blog, namely the content hashtags that will allow for keyword based filtering of the now many entries.
Updated to VER 2.1
uy INCOMING GIT CLEANSE
The XENSPACE.NET software repos will be moved to a new home in the near future. The current git trees lack standardization and most of the first commits are so old they are pointlessly complicating their respective records.
uy XENSPACE.NET [BETA] ANNOUNCEMENT
Though the site has been officially online since 2018 its services and content have been so far limited to a (very) select few, being held back by an early development status and its relative lack of priority as a side project.
Despite the slow progress, steady additions to the XENSPACE.NET project have paved the way to its open BETA.
13/02/2020 - VER_2.0 [BETA]
■ Revamped the entire site
■ Added content tags to the journal
■ Renewed SSL certificates
■ Updated the contact info (including the PGP keys)
■ Added support for mobile home icon access
■ Enabled access for both IPv4 and IPv6
■ Removed all JS dependencies (except the navbar's uptime counter)
■ Updated the media gallery contents
Though there is still much to be done before declaring the site feature complete, the foundations for the future have been laid.