Blog Posts:
- December 15, 2024: Feeling the Burn(out)
- In which Clay is just... so, so tired of all of this.
- December 4, 2024: Another Month, Another Challenge
- In which Clay requests help choosing a world to focus on for a worldbuilding challenge (with a digression about whether the Wongery has a reason to exist).
- December 1, 2024: Lessons Learned: Novel-Writing Month 2024
- In which Clay eventually discusses what he learned by attempting a November novel-writing challenge this year, but only after lengthy digressions over other topics including how much he finished of the novel, how he thinks it turned out, and the fact that the title of this blog post is an homage to a completely unrelated podcast.
- November 27, 2024: Chapter One
- In which Clay shows the entire first chapter of the novel he's working on for the November writing challenge... after some discussion of the unsatisfactory rate of his progress so far.
- November 20, 2024: Dream Job
- In which Clay rhapsodizes about his dream job of just sitting at home and doing creative work, although not before spending about half the post talking about the progress (or lack thereof) on his November novel.
- November 2, 2024: Untitled
- In which Clay relates his progress on his novel as of day two of The Event Formerly Known As NaNoWriMo
- October 29, 2024: The Votes Are In
- In which Clay checks the results of the poll about the setting for his November novel, after having completely failed to do any significant planning or brainstorming prior to this point
- October 26, 2024: A Taste of Adventure(s)
- In which Clay registers for an account on the World Anvil worldbuilding site in order to participate in its NovelEmber writing challenge, and in the process of exploring the site ends up finding another challenge he doesn't really have time to participate in but nevertheless does. Anyway, he ends up coming up with ideas for twenty-one RPG adventures set on worlds of the Wongery.
- October 21, 2024: Location, Location, Location
- In which Clay belatedly begins the preparation for the novel he plans to write in November, starting by putting up a poll to help him decide which world to choose for the novel's setting.
- October 3, 2024: Bad Karma
- In which Clay is forced to reckon with Reddit's baffling karma system.
- September 9, 2024: SEO What
- In which Clay belatedly decides to do something to help the Wongery show up better in web searches.
- September 7, 2024: No Mo WriMo
- In which Clay explains why, despite what was said in a previous post, he will not be participating in NaNoWriMo after all, and shares his feelings about generative "AI"
- September 7, 2024: Essential Services
- In which Clay underestimates the importance of malware protection for hosted domains.
- August 31, 2024: Art Failure
- In which Clay once again laments his artistic shortcomings.
- August 22, 2024: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back
- In which Clay discovers that his update of the MediaWiki software on the Wongery site has broken some of his features, and as usual goes into rather too much detail about what he has to do to fix them.
- August 14, 2024: Geography Lessons
- Clay discusses how through the research he has to do for articles in the Wongery he has been learning about geography and other subjects.
- August 3, 2024: Write or Wrong
- In which Clay is inspired by panels in the Gen Con Writers' Symposium to maybe get more serious about writing (fiction unrelated to the Wongery). Maybe.
- July 30, 2024: All Work and No Play
- In which Clay wonders whether he would actually be more productive overall if he took a break once in a while.
- June 14, 2024: Show, Don't Tell
- In which Clay resolves, in the hopes of inspiring other people to use the Wongery content in their own fiction and game projects, to release some fiction and game projects using Wongery content himself.
- May 31, 2024: The Making of a Monster
- In which Clay lays out all the things that have to happen before he can finally start adding detailed content to the RPG space.
- April 1, 2024: The Purpose of the Wongery
- In which Clay attempts to clear up some apparent misunderstandings about the purpose of the Wongery.
- March 9, 2024: Change of Plans
- In which Clay complains about how his webhost fumbled the migration of the Wongery to a new hosting plan.
- March 3, 2024: Worlds Enough But No Time
- In which Clay celebrates the posting of an article about a new world to the Wongery, and wonders once again whether it would be better to focus on fewer worlds and develop them more quickly (while still having no intention of actually doing any such thing).
- February 25, 2024: Antisocial Media
- In which Clay deplores recent developments at Tumblr, and abhorrent behavior by its CEO and staff, and regrets having given Tumblr money to Blaze a post back in January.
- February 14, 2024: Do The Hustle
- In which Clay grumbles about his job (while trying to avoid revealing too much about what he actually does), and reiterates his hope he can find a way to make a living with creative work.
- January 24, 2024: Back to Basics
- In which Clay, after having scrambled before the hard launch to improve the site's look, features, and functionality, finally gets around to posting a couple of new (nonstub) articles.
- January 8, 2024: Seven Days In
- In which Clay reflects on the "hard launch" of the Wongery a week prior, and discusses some of his next steps.
- January 1, 2024: Breaking Our Silence
- In which the long-awaited "hard launch" of the Wongery is finally carried out, and nobody cares.
- January 1, 2024: One Hour Remaining
- In which Clay finally gets around to redesigning the Wongery site and making it look slightly less terrible.
- December 31, 2023: Moving On Up
- In which Clay thinks he has initiated the Wongery's migration to a new hosting plan. This would later turn out not to have been the case.
- December 30, 2023: Mappae Mundorum
- In which Clay finally adds very rough world maps to a few Wongery articles.
- December 29, 2023: Game On!
- In which Clay gets the subspace extension (mostly) working, and once again goes into far too much detail about how he did so.
- December 28, 2023: Navigation Location
- In which Clay, to his own great surprise, not only gets his phpBB extension that parses wikitext working, but also makes some decent progress on writing the MediaWiki extension to implement subspaces, and goes into excruciating detail as to how he did this. (That last part is not surprising.)
- December 27, 2023: Cracking the Code
- In which Clay tries and fails to create a phpBB extension that parses wikitext.
- December 26, 2023: Building the Meta
- In which Clay starts adding content to the Metawongery.
- December 25, 2023: Joy To The Forum
- In which Clay finally posts some forum rules, does a bit of pruning and rearrangement of subfora and categories, and discusses some other improvements he wants to make to the fora eventually.
- December 24, 2023: Going Wider
- In which Clay's first MediaWiki extension becomes fully functional (albeit at the expense of a kludgy hack to the MediaWiki code), and Clay is inspired by a forum post to create brief "stub" articles for topics that come up often enough to warrant explanation but that he hasn't had time to write full articles for yet.
- December 23, 2023: My First Extension
- In which Clay finally creates his first MediaWiki extension, an extension that is supposed to exclude articles that do or don't include certain templates or are or aren't included in certain categories from being selected by functions that return random articles, and which does not actually do that yet, but does at least do part of that.
- December 22, 2023: Going Meta
- In which Clay finally creates the Metawongery
- December 21, 2023: The Beginning of the Endpoint
- In which Clay finally gets around to modifying the code for the Wongery site to use MediaWiki APIs instead of calling functions from the MediaWiki code directly, and describes in more detail than anyone is likely to care about the pitfalls he encountered on the way.
- December 12, 2023: A Surfeit of Spaces
- In which Clay discusses some other new namespaces he's considering adding to the Wongery eventually, though they definitely won't be up before the hard launch, and may not be up ever.
- December 4, 2023: Going Wide
- In which Clay tempers his expectations for what will be done before the hard launch, although he doesn't temper them quite enough.
- November 27, 2023: Good News, Everyone!
- In which Clay finally gets around to creating a more convenient way for him to make blog posts, and rambles on about it for far too long.
- November 20, 2023: Other Openings
- In which Clay, after spending several paragraphs wallowing in self-doubt, discusses some open-licensed settings he is aware of outside the Wongery.
- November 11, 2023: A Tale of Two Worlds
- In which Clay discourses briefly on the process of working out climate and terrain for a world very different fron Earth.
- November 3, 2023: Buy Me a Coffee
- In which Clay discusses his plans to eventually have a Patreon and/or Ko-fi account for the Wongery, and muses on some possible benefits for patrons.
- October 27, 2023: Weekly World News
- In which Clay discusses his possible future plans for the site's now long defunct World of the Week feature.
- October 19, 2023: Happy Oxfordshire Day
- In which Clay bemoans his current financial difficulties due to a slowdown in the industry he works in. Title unrelated.
- September 19, 2023: Getting the Word Out
- In which Clay discusses his plans for publicizing the Wongery, almost none of which actually ended up being carried out before the hard launch, while one thing that he specifically said he wouldn't do did.
- September 14, 2023: Engine Trouble
- In which Clay relates recent unfortunate developments regarding the game engine Unity, and resolves to eventually look into learning to use the Godot game engine.
- September 10, 2023: The Daily Grind
- In which Clay describes his daily routine, to the extent that he has a daily routine, which is quite a small extent indeed.
- September 6, 2023: If I Were a Rich Man
- In which Clay expounds at considerable length about things he would like to do if he had the money to do them, which he does not and clearly never will.
- September 1, 2023: Subsubspaces
- In which Clay finally conceives the idea of dividing the planned Wongery subspaces into at least one more level of "subsubspaces". Whether this is a good idea remains to be seen.
- August 27, 2023: Squeaky Clean
- In which Clay finally cleans out all the obvious spammer accounts from the Wongery forum, and also sets up some new social media accounts for the Wongery.
- August 7, 2023: Recharged
- In which Clay relates his adventures at GenCon 2023, and states his hope that having taken a break from work for the convention may help him "recharge" and become more productive. This did not really prove to be the case.
- August 2, 2023: Welcome to Wongery.net.
- In which Clay dithers about which top-level domain name to set as the primary one for the Wongery.
- July 25, 2023: Lifelong Learning
- In which Clay reveals that he just finished a Udemy course on HTML and CSS and hopes to put into practice what he learned to improve the Wongery, and also briefly mentions other Udemy courses he plans to take.
- July 21, 2023: Whither Wends the Stream?
- In which Clay discusses the ongoing WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, but not before pontificating on the future of streaming and home entertainment.
- July 16, 2023: A Note of Discord
- In which Clay laments how Discord has been displacing fora despite its much lesser utility for archiving old content, and from there launches into a broader discussion of ways the web has been getting worse, ending with a call to action to help make the web better.
- July 11, 2023: Wizardposting
- In which Clay admits to having been wasting time wizardposting on Tumblr. (If you don't know what wizardposting is, it is poorly explained in the post.)
- July 3, 2023: And Now, a Rant About Tumblr
- In which Clay summarizes the turbulence that various social media sites are currently experiencing, and then rants about an attitude of certain Tumblr uses which he finds annoying and counterproductive.
- June 13, 2023: Forgotten Lore
- In which Clay realizes he's completely forgotten what certain words in a certain Wongery article were supposed to refer to.
- May 9, 2023: Sesquipedalianism
- In which Clay discusses his reasons for using obscure and/or obsolete words in the writing he does for the Wongery.
- May 5, 2023: What's in the Cards
- In which Clay gives further consideration to what open-licensed card games to prioritize for the Gamespace.
- April 29, 2023: A Matter of Policy
- In which Clay ponders some details of the implementation of the Wongery Gamespace, and briefly considers including additional content for certain games under Community Use or Fan Material guidelines.
- April 22, 2023: Posts of the Past
- In which Clay belatedly implements some long-needed improvements to the site, and briefly discusses his incompetence as a programmer and/or developer.
- April 2, 2023: Answer My Riddles
- In which Clay finally implements better anti-spam measures on the Wongery forum like he should have done years ago.
- April 1, 2023: An April Folly
- In which, still mortified by a stupid post he made ten years ago, Clay promises never to attempt another April Fools' prank on the Wongery.
- March 31, 2023: How Not to Blog
- In which Clay details the absurdly laborious process he goes through to make a blog post.
- March 28, 2023: Credit Where It's Due
- In which Clay belatedly recognizes the need for yet another new subspace for crediting sources.
- March 17, 2023: Fun and Games
- In which Clay proposes expanding the Game subspace to encompass other types of game besides role-playing game, and lists some open-licensed games that might be included there.
- March 11, 2023: The Whole Cabal Game
- In which Clay realizes to his dismay that a term he used for organizations in one world of the Wongery could be taken as an antisemitic dogwhistle, and resolves to rectify the situation.
- February 6, 2023: The Art of the Wongery (Or Lack Thereof)
- In which Clay explains why the Wongery doesn't have more illustrations, and discusses possibilities for changing this situation in the future.
- January 27, 2023: Opening the Dungeons
- In which Wizards of the Coast finally drops its attempts to deauthorize the Open Game License, and so Clay can finally stop blogging about it.
- January 24, 2023: Let's Talk Licensing
- In which, after some further updates regarding what's going on with the Open Game License, Clay discusses the licensing terms of the Wongery.
- January 16, 2023: Wizardly Dreams
- In which Clay relates further developments in the Wizards of the Coast Open Game License situation, and segues from there into a discussion of what he would do if he had enough money to buy Wizards of the Coast, which of course is not a thing that will ever happen.
- January 9, 2023: Game Changer
- In which Clay discusses the leaked update to the Open Game License by Wizards of the Coast, which could have disastrous repercussions for the role-playing game industry (though not necessarily for the Wongery itself).
- January 8, 2023: Logging In
- In which Clay goes into far more detail than anyone could possibly be interested in regarding his struggle to get the single sign-on working again for the Wongery site since the last MediaWiki update.
- January 2, 2023: What Am I Doing?
- In which Clay self-indulgently speculates on the reasons he hasn't been getting much done on the Wongery, including but not limited to the strong possibility that he may have ADHD.
- December 13, 2022: Pulling Focus
- In which Clay decides to choose one particular location within each world of the Wongery to primarily focus on.
- December 1, 2022: I Beg to Defer
- In which Clay decides to reschedule the "hard launch" of the site for January 2024.
- September 1, 2022: Back Inaction
- In which Clay apologizes (again) for having gone so long without an update, and promises to make another update within the next few days. This did not happen.
- April 2, 2022: Game Plan
- In which Clay discusses his plans to add namespaces and tabs to the Wongery wikis, and further details his plans for the Game namespace.
- March 25, 2022: Your Ad (Not) Here
- In which Clay discusses the prospect of advertising on the Wongery, specifically the fact that there isn't one.
- February 20, 2022: Discontinuity
- In which Clay discovers that three articles he wrote in the Central Wongery contradict each other.
- January 17, 2022: Neology
- In which Clay discusses his proclivity for making up new words.
- January 9, 2022: Several Sparse Spaces
- In which Clay discusses the many missing templates, categories, and projectspace pages in the Central Wongery.
- January 1, 2022: Happy New Year!
- In which Clay wishes the zero people reading this blog a happy new year.
- December 30, 2021: A Week of Work...
- In which Clay enumerates what he got done on Wongery during the past week, which included updating the site to the latest version of MediaWiki and phpBB, clearing out all the forum spam (but not preventing more from being posted), and posting two new articles.
- December 21, 2021: One Year From Today...
- In which Clay retroactively designates the public launch of the site in December 2012 a "soft launch", promises a "hard launch" in December 2022, and goes into detail about things he hopes to have done before the hard launch.
- December 23, 2015: Reboot
- In which Clay promises to relaunch the site's World of the Week feature in the new year, this time without the art he had used for it without permission. This would not in fact happen.
- May 31, 2015: Blowing Off the Dust
- In which Clay apologizes for having gone more than nine months between posts, little knowing that there would be a much, much larger gap coming soon. He promises to have a new article up every day, a promise that would be made many times and would never even come close to being kept.
- August 8, 2014: Easy Come, Easy Go
- In which Clay mourns the disappearance of the link he celebrated in the previous post, but mostly goes on about all the spam he's been removing from the forum. He mentions that one deleted spam post bore the title "Worldguard Infinity", which may become significant much later.
- May 9, 2014: Second Sighting
- In which Clay once again laments how little he has gotten done on the Wongery, and celebrates having found another link to it, in a sad retread of the previous post.
- December 21, 2013: What? A year, it's been?
- In which Clay reflects on how little he has gotten done in the year since the Wongery opened, and gets far too excited about having found a link to the Wongery from another site.
- April 2, 2013: What Is Real?
- In which Clay reveals to nobody in particular that the previous day's post had been a poorly-conceived April Fools' prank.
- April 1, 2013: Reality Check
- In which Clay carries out what may be in contention for the title of the most poorly-conceived April Fools' prank ever.
- February 14, 2013: Down Time
- In which Clay laments not having more done on the Wongery, which would quickly become an ongoing theme.
- January 8, 2013: The First World of the Week
- In which Clay announces a new site feature which was to be much shorter-lived than he anticipated.
- December 21, 2012: Now Open!
- In which Clay announces the opening of the Wongery, and nobody cares.