Welcome to the
NEW
CREATIVITY HACKER!

Featured Post

About The New Site

2025-04-20 (Mod: 2025-06-17) | 5 minutes

Welcome to the new Creativity Hacker. If you remember the old site, things will look very different this time around, but there’s method beneath the madness. Follow me down below the fold to find out how I’m organizing things this time around. And more importantly, why.

---

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, the reason for the new site is basically: because hackers. But by taking a healthy pause between hack and response, I’ve been able to reassess what the site is for, how it’s going to operate, and ultimately, how I want to engage with the internet going forward.

Defying Topic Shackles

The internet tries to lock creatives into single dimensional shackles: if you’re a musician, your site has to be about your music; if you’re a writer, your site better be about your writing; if you’re a research chemist, you’d better be all about the chemistry. If you dare to cross your streams, the algorithm gods will eat you alive.

I don’t fit comfortably into just one box, and over time, the more projects I undertook, the harder it was getting to make them play nice together under a single roof. Sure, I could have created a different site for each project, but each one becomes another expense, another hosting contract, another site to secure, and another audience to feed with regular content. It simply isn’t sustainable to start a completely new business identity every time I come up with something fun to explore.

So when the hackers finally came, I had no gas left in the tank to mount an effective resistance. All I could do was jam on the brakes.

But in the quiet pause that followed, something interesting happened. I realized that chasing algorithms has wrecked the internet, and if I was going to start it up again, this time I was going to do it my way. That’s why this site looks so bland on the front page. Think of it as the lobby of a professional building. We’ve got an animation company on the second floor, a writer in the penthouse, an electronics lab in the basement, a 3D printing shop in the back, a game development company up on 4, and a rock band rehearsing in the loading dock. Somehow, it all fits under one roof, but what possible brand identity would cover all of them?

Embracing The Chaos

This time, instead of fighting the distractible nature of my curiosity, I’m going to try leaning into it. CH-2.0 has been designed from the ground up to be the public face of all my projects. It’s my lean, clean, project machine. If you’re interested in how site management and audience engagement have become an integral - almost automatic - part of my process, check out Project Websmith.

That page is also a perfect example of how this new site embraces my ADHD-like attention span. Every time I come up with another project to explore, I can spin up a new section on the site by simply writing a note to myself describing the idea. That note will automatically become a landing page to which I can then post progress updates, attach documents and downloads, and chat with other people who find it interesting.

You can get ongoing behind-the-scenes content for all the active projects under the Workshops menu above, while projects that have already been released are in the Exhibits menu.

Another important part of the new structure is that CH-2.0 will also serve as a replacement for my newsletter. I have always rankled at the modern ethic that says it’s okay to annoy 1000 people just for the hope of engaging with 1 or 2. Even worse, doing so whenever I have something to say, regardless of when you might be interested in hearing about it, strikes me as the pinnacle of arrogance. Death to content algorithms! (Even when the algorithm is me. :-)

To honor its legacy, I’m preserving the name by using it for the fiction and culture oriented blog pages. The Liar’s Hearth is where I’ll be posting articles and ideas related to fiction, entertainment, games, storytelling, etc. (There’s another blog, covering the intersection of society and technology, but I’ll let you discover that one on your own.)

But whether you come for a blog, or the word game app, or my fiction, or even my 3D Printing stuff, I’ve set things up so that you can create your own custom “Jefferson Newsletter” that you can pull whenever you decide you want it. If you want to know how that works, look here.

So Many Rabbit Holes To Explore

There’s no point in listing all my projects here now, because the list would be out of date by supper time. Besides, I’ve designed this site to reward exploration, so I’m going to encourage you to do just that. Poke around the menus above. There’s a lot here already, and more of my older stuff will be migrated over soon too. (If there’s something specific you’d like me to prioritize for migration, drop a note in one of the comment areas. I’m happy to consider requests. :-)

I don’t know if many people will actually find this new site interesting, but I’m pretty sure that the ones who do will be my kind of people.

Which ever kind you are, welcome to my brain.

#about #featured #launch #meta

To join the comment conversation, jump to the article's main page.

From: Hearth

Trump Reduces Cost of Artemis by 87.5%

2025-08-19 | 3 minutes

The Whitehouse is jubilant today, hailing President Donald J. Trump as an unprecedented genius. After firing former NASA Chief Bert McMurdle and installing himself in the dual roles of lead administrator and chief scientist, the multi-talented Trump effected sweeping changes to the entire roster of programs under management by the agency. The first to reach completion, Project Artemis was concluded successfully today, and came in at an estimated total cost of only 12.5%, as compared to the budget originally approved by McMurdle.

Over

From: Norsk

Frinorskliv - Dag 427

2025-08-09 | 1 minute

WARNING: Clumsy Norwegian coming in 3, 2, 1…

Det har vært 427 dager siden jeg begynt å lære meg selv norsk, men jeg ikke har skrevet mye på norsk ennå. Så i dag skal jeg begynne å endre det. Velkomm til Frinorskliv - en serie hvor jeg skal øve norsken min i små biter og dele dem med verden. Med alle feil og mangler.

Over

From: Studio2

Varys - The Power Spy

2025-08-07 (Mod: 2025-08-09) | 4 minutes

For years I’ve protected my office server from the harsh indignities of sudden power failures by shielding it behind a traditional UPS battery backup. For more than a decade, this arrangement has kept my pixels glowing through half a dozen actual power outages, and any number of brown-outs and glitches. Over that same period, the internal battery has eventually died and been replaced twice. I don’t begrudge the battery for failing - it’s an ancient battery tech that has more in common with the battery in your car than the one in your cell phone - but the replacements are expensive.

So when the battery failed again this week, I decided it was time to re-evaluate.

Over

My Online Adventures

Support My Work!

Buy Me a Coffee!

Check Out My Latest!