Happy new year, hu ?

Hello everyone, and sorry for the waiting. But as I expected, early 2021 is rough on me. I failed to find a new job on time (meaning, before Feb. 17th).I’m still looking for one, as I have no income at all since that date. I failed to find a business model for Cyca, I failed to build a social network from ground up to talk about Cyca, and I failed to find a job. I think companies consider me too old now to be a web dev, they are afraid I would cost them too much, or that asking less than what they expect is a sign of poor self-estime. I guess.

Now that I identified what was going wrong and potential solutions, it’s time to move on. I spent the last two months sending resumes, searching for opportunities, and even new career paths. Besides php-gemini, I haven’t wrote a single line of code. But it’s far from meaning I did nothing at all. I wrote and published a book (in French only : L’Humain, cette espèce primitive). I’ve always loved writing, and philosophy, so I wanted to give it a try, and I’m already writing a second book. Writer as a career would totally suit me, so, as my web dev career seems to have reached a dead end, why not ? As long as I love what I do…

Now, I’ve been warning you : I can’t afford as many time as before to work on Cyca. Which doesn’t mean the project is dead.

Cyca is not dead.

I just need time.

New version

So, today, I have released a new version : 2021.8.1, with the following changes :

• I re-introduced migrations files that were “compacted” in a MySQL dump. When I used this feature from Laravel, I didn’t realise that the dump was tightened to the database server used at that moment, MariaDB in my case, so it was impossible to install Cyca on PostgreSQL, for instance.
• Another problem with PostgreSQL was related to the use of the char column type to store user’s language. This is fixed now.

A very small changelist, I know. Yet, I repeat : Cyca is not dead. I love Cyca, there is no satisfying alternative from my point of view, so I will keep updating it, just not at the same pace as during 2020.

What’s next ?

At this point in my life, I only have options, which, by itself, is a good thing :

• I want to go back to University to learn Philosophy, which would allow me to learn everything I’m lacking, mainly about human relationships, which in turn could help me promote my work as well as write new books
• I keep trying to monetize Cyca, even if it’s just via donations.
• And, on top of these two paths, I keep looking for a new job as web dev

There is no guarantee in either these paths, so I just need to follow life wherever it would lead me to.

Technically, I have a lot of things I wish to do for Cyca :

• Embed php-gemini to Cyca, so you can bookmark gemini websites
• Improve javascript portions of Cyca’s code, especially regarding the whole read/unread process
• Update the documentation to be more welcoming to new users

It will be done eventually, just not on the same weekly-basis as 2020.

Thanks for your patience 🙂