Blog Archive on The Hive

Say It With Your Chest

Wed, 03 Jun 2026 14:41:59 -0400

I recently read I oppose marijuana legalization — on libertarian grounds by Jim Grey, and it has truly been living rent free in my head ever since. Not only do I disagree with Mr. Grey’s stance, I believe his reasoning is deeply flawed. I take so much exception to his stance that I just had to write this post so that I can hopefully move on.

Uh-oh, Stinky!

The crux of Mr. Grey’s opinion is that weed stinks. Okay, that’s fair I suppose. Personally I don’t mind the smell, and I think some kinds even smell pretty good. Smells like good time and laughing with friends if you ask me, but to each their own. But a smell by itself is far from a just cause for making something illegal. Save for Surströmming, of course.

The 2nd Amendment and Defunding the Police

Mon, 11 May 2026 10:29:02 -0400

I’d like to open this post by saying that anyone who is pro-second amendment and also pro-cop is delusional. Those two ideas are antithetical. This is what I’m writing about today

The Delusion of the Second Amendment

The second amendment to the United States Bill of Rights states that

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Eating: It's Nice!

Thu, 07 May 2026 09:47:26 -0400

Today I read “This is why I’m fat” by Gordon McLean, and a lot of the ideas he puts forth I can relate to, so I wanted to write about those, and my own experiences. With the societal stigma put on people with high weight numbers, it’s good to have neutral conversations about it.

Am I Fat?

Personally, I don’t consider myself fat. Not yet, anyways. Despite this, I actually weigh more than Gordon does at the time of that post. Regardless, I don’t feel fat. I’ve got a belly, sure, but I still think I’ve got some pounds to go before I reach “fat”. Of course, my doctor disagrees, with him having once noted in the after-appointment notes that we “discussed over-weight BMI.” We, in fact, did not discuss this.

humans.json: Yet Another Identification Protocol

Tue, 05 May 2026 09:53:26 -0400

There’s been talk going around about a new protocol, humans.json - not to be confused with humans.txt, of course. The purpose of this protocol, as I understand it, is to provide yet another way for us on the open web to differentiate ourselves from AI and to “vouch” for each other.

I’ll start by pointing out, I did go ahead and implement this on my site. I like joining in on these sorts of things because I see it as just another way of promoting other sites that I like/love.

100 Webmaster Questions

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 09:39:20 -0400

I haven’t had much energy to write lately, but when I saw Shellsharks had completed this questionaire, I just had to join in.

1. Please introduce yourself.: My name is Apis Necros, or Bee.
2. How long have you been making websites?: I think I made my first website in fourth grade on Freewebs.com. If I recall correctly, I think it was about Sid Meier's Civilization IV, which had recently come out.
3. And what got you into the hobby?: I wanted to talk and write about my favorite video games.
4. What kind of website are you most interested in?: I like seeing peoples' tech demos, and reading their thoughts on a wide array of subjects.
5. What's your workflow? Do you plan your websites out thoroughly or do you come up with the design as you go along?: Professionally, I do try to settle on a general structure for a site before writing any code. Personally, I do *think* about how I want the site to flow, though I usually just go with whatever idea comes as it arrives.
6. Please link to your biggest inspirations.: For prose: Ed Zitron
For personality in writing: Shellsharks
For genuine-ness: Jame's Coffee Blog
7. What's your favourite part about making websites?: I like having a place to express myself whether that's through my writing, my coding of the site, or through the design of it.
8. And the thing you struggle with the most?: Resisting the urge to burn it all down and start over.
9. Do you keep the same layout on all of your pages? Or do you use different ones?: For the most part, yeah, all my pages have the same layout.
10. How confident are you with CSS?: I'd say, like, 6 out of 10. I still rely on one of my best friends whenever I struggle, though.
11. Do you know how to correctly use <dl>?: Nope, lol.

Edit: I just went back and read the docs, and I gotta say, this questionaire was given to me in the form of a <dl>, but that's not right! This should be an <ol>!
12. What is your favourite HTML element?: I mean, the humble div is hard to ignore, but I think it's gotta be dialog because it help standardize the concept of a modal.
13. If you're making a new web page from scratch, what is the first thing you do?: I start by figuring out, generally speaking, where I want the reader's eyes to go. Where should the nav bar be? Where should the main content be? Stuff like that.
14. Do you know JavaScript?: All to well...
15. How about PHP?: Sure do! Big fan of PHP 8.2.
16. Does your website have a theme that you stick to?: No. I intended for it to be a place to talk about cyber security stuff, but at that time I thought of my site as a way to promote myself. I thought of it as branding. Over time I found myself just wanting to express my true self on here, so now that's what I do. I write about whatever I want, and I write the same way I talk as opposed to writing a LinkedIn post.
17. Are you more focused on content or design?: Definitely content. I usually have a big burst of energy to focus on design at the start of the site, but then before the design is even finish I tend find myself wanting to start on the content instead.
18. Do you own a domain name? If not, would you ever want to?: Sure do! A couple, actually.
19. What do you think of nostalgia-focused or "retro" websites?: I love them! My favorite sites to visit tend to be Y2k-core.
20. Is your HTML valid? Do you even check?: I try to keep it valid, but I'm sure there's a few "invalid" things here or there because I just disagree with why the "correct" way is "correct".
21. What are your opinion on buttons and banners?: Check my footer, lol. I think they're a great way to personalize your site.
22. What do you think of button walls in particular?: Good. We need more of them, and we need more people making buttons.
23. If you started over again, would you make something similar or completely different?: This design is very much so a product of me, so I know any new design I make will be very similar to this one.
24. Are you envious of other people's websites?: Eh, no? I mean, I think some people have really cool sites, and I wish mine could be that cool, but then I look at my site and think it's exactly what I need it to be, so :shrug:
25. What text editor do you use?: On desktop I use VS Code almost exclusively. I do break out Notepad++ when I need to do some heavy regex-based find & replace. On the commandline I use vim.
26. Why do you use that one?: VS Code just works™. NPP handles large files the best of any editor I've used. Vim is a flex.
27. Do you host your image files on your web server, or on another host?: I do host my own images, yes. I really don't have a lot, so it's not a hassle. If I had a ton of images, I'd just run a different domain to organize them there, and then just reference them on my other sites.
28. This might not be relevant to you, but what's your opinion on the Neocities vs. Nekoweb debate?: Never heard of Nekoweb. I do like how Neocities has gotten people back into the concept of personal websites though, so if it's anything like that, I'd probably like it.
29. How much server space would you estimate your main website takes up?: It's about 200mb
30. Do you keep local backups of your files?: Kinda? My site is a git repository, so I have various "backups" depending on which computer I'm on.
31. Do you prefer simple or highly visual websites?: I prefer highly visual sites, though I do usually use my browser's reader mode when reading long pages. I do this regardless of the amount of visual noise on a site, though.
32. Do you stick to certain colours? Do you do that on purpose, or is it your subconscious?: I do stick to certain colours and it is subconscious, but I don't know why.
33. Have you ever thought about quitting? Why?: Not particularly. I go through periods of not writing, but I don't think I ever **won't** need a place to yap about whatever, so I think I'll always have this site.
34. Do you have many webmaster friends, or is it a solitary hobby?: I've got a best friend that has their own site, and I consider a few of the people in the Indieweb scene friends.
35. Do people in your real life know about your website?: Some do, some don't.
36. Do you update your website very often? How often is "very often"?: I think before today it's been months since I touched it, lol
37. And the overall design, do you change that much? Why or why not?: No, I try not to change the design very often except for maybe adding new features. I think users tend to get confused when site layouts change, and especially if they change often.
38. Is your website more you-focused, hobby-focused, or outside world-focused?: I'd say it's more me focused, but like, my perception of the outside world-focused. I tend to talk a lot about how I process the things going on around me.
39. Do you do web design professionally?: Sure do. Been at it for almost 10 years at the time of writing.
40. If not, would you like to? And if you're comfortable answering, what do you do for work?: N/A
41. Do you communicate with people by email very much?: Yes. I actually prefer it over instant messaging platforms a lot of the time.
42. Some people reject social media and use websites as a replacement. Do you keep social media outside of your website?: Eh? I do link to some of my socials on here, and I do post links to my site on my social whenever I write a new post, so in some sense they are intertwined.
43. How about instant messengers? Do you use a mainstream one like Discord or Telegram? Or something like Matrix? Do you avoid them?: I have a handle of them. Mostly mainstream ones.
44. Do you listen to music while you work on websites? If so, what kinds of artists?: I almost always have music playing. And if it's not playing, I'm probably singing/humming in my head. I couldn't even begin to list off all my music, but you can find some of it over in this post.
45. Do you keep everything you make on one website, or do you have more than one?: I have more than one, but >90% of what I do is on one site.
46. On a similar note, do you keep to one topic on your site, or many?: Many, many topics on this site.
47. Do you present your real self, or at least try? Or do you construct a persona on purpose?: This is about as real of a me as if we were talking in person.
48. Have you ever made a good friend thanks to your website?: I'd like to think so.
49. Are you happy with the way HTML and CSS currently work?: Yeah, I think the specs are in a pretty good place.
50. What are practices that you think people should avoid?: Don't use <b> for bolding. That's what <strong> is for. Get with the times, lol
51. What about under-utilised practices, or things you think people should do more?: Tying this into the previous question, I think people should learn about the more semantic elements, and make use of them. main, aside, article, etc. They're there, and they're pretty good. I know that, mostly, they're all div's at their core, but like, you can't just have a mountain of div's. Semantic elements don't just help bots. They also help future developers (including you) understand the intent of a block.
52. Do you use a lot of semantic HTML? Or are you guilty of generic structure?: lol, didn't even see this before answering the previous question. Yes, I try to make use of semantic elements where ever appropriate.
53. Do you consider different browsers?: Ehhh not really. Pretty much everything is chromium now, so as long as it looks good on chromium, it should look fine anywhere.
54. Speaking of, what's your preferred browser? Convince your readers why they should use it.: I currently use Vivaldi. It was made by the guy that originally made Opera back in the day. He made Vivaldi after he was kicked off the Opera project because he didn't want to give into what The Corporate world wanted him to do to the browser. And now we have Opera GX sponsors on YouTube. I think he was vindicated.

It is still chromium, so that’s not great, but its built in ad and tracker blocker is pretty good.

Why Are We Celebrating?

Mon, 17 Nov 2025 14:28:25 -0500

Maybe it’s because I’ve gotten older, or wiser, or maybe just more jaded, but it dawned on me the other day, that I can’t think of any holiday I celebrate where I actually feel like I’m celebrating anything. For the most part, holidays just feel like an excuse to spend more money than I actually have. There are truly only a few holidays I can think of that feel worth celebrating.

Library of Echoes

Tue, 02 Sep 2025 13:40:56 -0400

Over the past year, this blog has become a library of echoes. You all don’t see it, and that’s kind of the point. I’ve acquired quite a collection of drafts. Many of the posts are about things I felt very strongly about in the moment, but then the moment passed, and I am no longer sure I was making the point I wanted to make. I still feel strongly about the topics, mind you, but the firey passion I had is no longer there.

Ten Pointless Questions

Mon, 05 May 2025 08:24:01 -0400

There’s another blogging questionnaire going around, and thanks to a tagging from ShellSharks, you now get to know some useless information about me. You can find the original post by David on his blog.

Do you floss your teeth?

Pft, no. Not with any regularity. Much to my dentist’s chagrin, I struggle to have any routines in my life, and my dental hygiene is included in that. I floss if I need to (i.e. I can feel something stuck in my teeth), or if I’m not doing anything and I happen to see some floss.

Core Values

Wed, 30 Apr 2025 09:11:22 -0400

The company I currently work for has something they call the Core Values. The Core Values are four guiding principals that help us achieve our business goals. They are principals we want to see in all employees, and they drive our hiring, firing, and promotion decisions. This all may sound pretty “corporate synergy”-ish, which would make sense since it does come from a business philosophy system called the Entrepreneurial Operating System, but these Core Values have successfully gotten us where we are today, and I think the Core Values we use align with my own personality pretty well.

Hoping the Void Shouts Back

Thu, 17 Apr 2025 10:56:26 -0400

Thanks to Kev Quirk’s post, I found this post by Joel Chrono, Blogging Expectations, which was in turn inspired by a post from Robert Birming, which was inspired by a post from Brandon’s Journal. Isn’t the internet great? I encourage you to go read all their posts to get a clear picture of the conversation at hand. If you only read one, though, for the sake of this post, make it Joel’s.

I was struck by Joel’s words because I felt like I was reading my own thoughts. Because of this, I wanted to take this time to expand on my /why page. The core detail of Joel’s post that struck a cord with me is that behind the notion that we write for ourselves is the honest, guilt-laden notion that we write hoping that maybe someone will notice, and maybe give us a crumb of attention.

An Aggregate Problem

Thu, 27 Feb 2025 14:07:19 -0500

I was talking with my coworkers one day about our work lives before joining our current company. One of them mentioned how the union at the grocery store they worked at was very corrupt. There were rampant cases of sexual assault and harassment amongst employees, but no one would ever get fired, or even talked to about it, because the union would just sweep it under the rug. I was absolutely flabbergasted! Why would a union protect those kinds of people? Unions are there to protect the workers, not to facilitate crimes against them. I then remembered that, of course, this is the problem with humans; en masse, we’re corrupt.

Get To Know My Taste In Music

Tue, 04 Feb 2025 13:29:13 -0500

It seems that questionaires have become a trend among bloggers, and I’m so happy about that. As I explained in my last one, I used to love filling out these kinds of things back in the MySpace days. My friend ShellSharks tagged me in his post where he answers these ten questions, and who am I deny the people what they want.

I did do a similar kind of questionaire in the past, A Music List, but that one was a bit more ephemeral than the questions asked here.

Get to Know My Blog

Wed, 15 Jan 2025 11:05:39 -0500

I’m a child of the mid-2000’s internet, and as such, I spent a lot of my time on MySpace filling out surveys, or memes, or meta posts, or what ever you want to call them. When I saw this post from Kev Quirk in my RSS feed, I opened it so quick. And after reading it, I knew I had to fill it out too!

Get to know my blog

Why did you start blogging in the first place?

I started blogging because I’m too much of a thinker for my own good. I’ll sit there for hours just ruminating on this or that. I learned in high school that writing can be a good way to get those ideas out of my head, but I also knew that some times I did want other people to see what I was thinking about. There’s also the matter that I want a career in the tech sector, and I know it’s good business to have a blog where you write about technical things. Now, do I really write all that many technical posts? Maybe not, but I do write about what’s important to me.

Love and Transactionality

Tue, 17 Sep 2024 10:57:52 -0400

One of my partners recently posed an interesting question: do I think love is transactional? I immediately responded with a “no”. I said that I think no true, proper love should be transactional. They then followed that with, “Okay, but then what’s ’true love’?” Having considered this many times, I explained that to me, true love is doing things for another person simply because you want to. After some more discussion, they were satisfied with my answer, but I kept thinking about it. A little while of introspecting later, I realized that maybe my answer wasn’t correct or complete enough. Today I’d like to expand on these ideas.

Inside Me Are Two Wolves

Mon, 03 Jun 2024 12:55:49 -0400

Why Did I Think I Could Do This?

Last night, before I went to bed, I started trying to learn cross-stitching. I bought one of those beginner kits that’s got a pattern and everything you need, and as I sat there reading the instructions, I thought to myself, “Why did I think I could do this?” It’s not that the instructions were particularly complicated, but they were more extensive that I thought. And worse, they were new to me.

An Ode to Lost Friends

Mon, 11 Mar 2024 10:00:43 -0400

The mind is truly a fragile thing, and an unfortunate truth is that in order for it to maintain itself, it must forget things eventually. Even people we once held dear cannot always escape this fate. Today’s post is an ode to forgotten friends. I remember you, even if I cannot remember who you were.

This post is actually one of the first that I wanted to write for my blog. I’ve been working on it since before this site even existed, and it’s the reason I have my People series in the first place. This series exists to help prevent me from forgetting anyone else important to me. I’ve always had a bad memory, so I try my damnedest to catalog whatever I can; be it through pictures, video, or blog posts.

Deobfuscating a Malware Stager

Fri, 22 Dec 2023 13:15:11 -0500

I was recently approached by a friend in regards to a WordPress site they manage that had been compromised. While they planned on wiping the site entirely to make sure nothing malicious was left behind, something they had been looking forward to doing anyways, they did offer to let me look over some of the malicious files to see if I could gleem any interesting info. There were dozens of files; most of which had random gibberish as file names.

Live on IPFS

Wed, 09 Aug 2023 14:52:57 -0400

It actually has been for a couple months now, but I keep forgetting to announce it ^^'

What The Dink Is IPFS

IPFS, or InterPlanetary File System, is a peer-to-peer network designed and developed by Protocol Labs. Its stated goal is create a robust network of nodes to allow for efficient file transfers for networks spanning multiple planets. If you’re on Mars, but want to watch a YouTube video from Google’s servers on Earth, it’s gonna take a hell of a long time for that video to buffer. Through IPFS, the video could instead be fetched from your roommate, your neighbor, and/or anyone at all that’s on the network. The speculative gains on transfer speed are the major point here.

Squishing Circles

Mon, 07 Aug 2023 16:19:11 -0400

I was admiring my Procedural Circles Generator the other day, and lamenting on the fact that I never ended up doing anything with it. It really is a clever trick for generating some vaguely circle-like shapes, and could still be useful for future genetic algorithm type projects. But this day, I wanted to do something with it. That’s when I thought to myself, “How would this circle look in binary”.

Expanded Circles

As it stands, the circles are already fairly minimal when it comes to the amount of data they use. Seeing as their original purpose was to be easily modified by a not-quite-genetic genetic algorithm, the circle really just consists of an origin point, and then a series of floats that signify one point’s distance from the origin. Everything else that makes the circle a circle is all in the draw step. All of this is kept in a JSON object with just a handful of properties. Even the maximum & minimum distances, and the maximum delta difference aren’t stored.

Men's Kinning Red Flags

Wed, 04 Jan 2023 09:58:47 -0500

The following is a non-exhaustive list of kins that men often have that, in my humble opinion are red flags. Men that kin these characters may be fixable, but they may also just need time to figure themselves out.

This list will be updated over time as I come across more.

Wheatly (Portal 2)

He sees himself as an under-dog, and wants to conquer, but has some awareness that he just makes everything worse. This can lead to a self-pitying downward cycle as he tries to overcome his own perceived failure.

Posting "Failures" Can Be Good

Fri, 05 Aug 2022 19:10:00 -0400

Over on the Code Golf StackExchange site, people will post programming challenges with the goal of the challenge (usually) being to write code in the language of your choice that solves the problem in as few bytes (or characters) as possible. What I want to talk about today is a submission I made to a challenge where I actually missed the mark for the shortest, but was still proud enough to post my answer.

Mental Illness, Autism, and Suffering

Wed, 06 Jul 2022 18:02:01 -0400

The other day, I read this excellent blog post by Mark Dominus. This post, Mental illness, attention deficit disorder, and suffering, is actually a response to another post. This original post is about how the author, Freddie DeBoer, believes that Today’s Kids™ think mental illness is too trendy. DeBoer posits that those with “mental illnesses” are becoming more and more proud of their conditions, and that this turn around is unhealthy, and ultimately unhelpful. Dominus offers a well thought out response, and states that some of what the original author calls “mental illnesses”, are only so to the extent that society defines them as such.

Bees and Their Effect On Technical Recruiters

Fri, 17 Jun 2022 12:44:19 -0400

The other day, while doing some research in implementing XFN on my site, I came across the work of Tom Morris. Even better, I came across the first public GitHub project I would contribute to: Bees.

A Buzz Of Emails

The aim of Bees is simple, catching tech recruiters in a lie. When working in the tech industry, it’s very common to get cold-calls from recruiters trying to bring you over to their company. A common tactic of these recruiters is to say something like, “I saw your work on X, and I think that your experience there makes you perfect for this role.” Of course, they didn’t really see your work on it, they just saw your name is attached to it, and rolled with it. Even better, sometimes X isn’t anything more than an empty repository!