I like to think that I read quite a bit—certainly more than the average person—but in reality, I read anywhere from one to three dozen books a year. When looking for new books, I occasionally purchase books that seem interesting or culturally relevant but are unavailable in a well-formatted, digital version.
Then I begin the arduous task of digitizing the book and creating an e-book version that will last a lot longer than any paper document. When I go about this, I usually spend weeks on each book; I fix typos, I ensure there are no weird errors in the formatting, and I try my best to present the information in the same way that the author intended. I don't modify these books per se (I wouldn't dare add or remove any information), but I do repair them when necessary.
Typically, I'll turn the text into a standard EPUB or into mostly-plain HTML (depending on the use case). These formats are almost universal and will render well on damn near every device on the planet. EPUBs and PDFs are very common in the e-book world, but while PDF is handy, they aren't as easy to edit and have some other issues that I won't dwell on. EPUB on the other hand is HTML + XML all wrapped up in a ZIP file. They're remarkably easy to work with using a piece of software like Sigil and they preserve the text for easy conversion to other formats if needed.
I preserve these books for myself as well as for future generations. If they're out of copyright or somewhat old, I will try my best to get them uploaded to the Internet Archive as I think that site is a great and noble resource. If they are of a more sensitive nature, then they'll get stored in my personal library until I decide if and where I want to share them.
I also strongly believe in open access to information and I feel that piracy of digital goods isn't theft. That being said, I don't think it is right to sell someone else's hard work without inputting a significant amount of effort to transform or repurpose it into an original work. This isn't a complete opinion of mine and I plan to update this article or turn it into a complete essay someday.
Lastly, I have created a new section of this site named after my home library: The Library of HBM. I plan to upload some of the books I have helped to preserve (as well as a lot of other books that I have collected) to this site in some capacity, but I haven't fully decided how I want to share them.
I likely won't host many of these books directly on this site. Instead, you'll probably find them on the Internet Archive, shared via BitTorrent magnet links, or bundled in encrypted .zip files. I'd rather not risk violating NeoCities' content policies by hosting material I don't technically own, but I do plan on sharing my large collection of books somehow. Watch for updates!
The New Flesh is a short but very enjoyable (and quite trippy) musical experience. The entire game takes about 30 minutes to explore, but there is quite a bit to discover; plenty of funny little moments, creepy characters, and some pretty good music. My favorite moment was seeing the rats dancing on the trash cans.
The dithering and pixelated graphics were neat and they added a retro feeling to the game when paired with the simple mechanics and low-poly meshes. The gameplay is straightforward and sparked my curiosity without being too hand-holdy. The end sequence made me rather motion sick, but almost all videogames do that to me nowadays.
It reminded me a lot of those Itch.io indie games that show up at game jams. It seems there was a lot of love put into this game and it shows. Go check it out if you are interested. It's free!
In June of 2025, my poor PT Cruiser suffered a string of systemic failures that culminated in the ol' girl kicking the bucket just before hitting 190K.
In one incredibly long weekend I overheated going up a mountain, got stranded for a few hours, got a brief tow, then drove the rest of the way to my destination once the engine cooled down. Two days spent investigating the issue lead me and my mechanic (a close relative of mine) to conclude that it was probably fine. We thought the issue was with my cooling fans or thermostat not functioning properly.
I left my mechanic's house at around 08:00 and didn't get home until 21:00. For a drive that was only supposed to take 8 hours, all of the overheatings, getting stranded, and eventually getting towed 125 miles closer to home added up to about 13 hours total.
Overheating on the side of the highway
My PT Cruiser was out of commission for about two weeks while I diagnosed, tested, and eventually resolved the overheating problem by replacing the coolant and radiator. I was ecstatic and that car never purred so well and she drove cold as ice for another month or so.
One evening, going about 45 mph on a straight road (downhill even!), the wife and I headed home from the grocery store as the Cruiser just stopped accelerating. No BANG, no grinding, no death knell or warning whatsoever. She slowed to a stop and never drove again.
I called our roommate and he came to the rescue, took us and the groceries back home, and I called a tow truck the next morning. I met the driver on the side of the road (8 miles from my house) and he followed me back to the driveway. He dumped the car, collected the ~$190 I owed him, and I set off to repair the cruiser yet again.
The Cruiser's final sendoff
After discussing it with my mechanic and weighing my options, I decided that this old car wasn't worth the effort and money anymore, so I decided to sell the car to the local car yard where I get a lot of spare parts from. To "give 'er back to God" as it were.
RIP my PT Cruiser
Sidenote: I don't believe the car ever made it to the pickyard, I'm fairly certain it just got sold at auction. What a shame.
With the cruiser gone, the search began for a replacement as I really appreciate having two cars as my wife still works and when her car is acting up, she can then use one of mine as a spare. (This will be important later.)
I started scouring local used car lots, online ads, CarMax, CarFax, Craigslist, AutoTempest, ebay Motors, and even Facebook marketplace, but none had a vehicle worth purchasing. All were too expensive, too damaged, or too far away. I wasn't 100% set on what kind of car I wanted to get yet; I was mostly looking at 2nd Gen Honda CR-Vs and 7th–8th Gen Honda Civics.
A few different listings stuck out to me, both 7th Gen Civics (2001-2005) and both with a host of issues that became obvious as I saw them in person and finally realized why they were listed for so long and so cheap.
The red Civic coupe
The first was a $4,500 Civic Coupe, bright red, tons of cheap respray and body panel issues. It also threw an engine code for a bad gear ratio which heavily indicates a bad transmission. This was a shame since it only had 120K miles on it. The second was similarly priced, in an ugly tan color, a few dents, but this one actually rand and drove alright. It definitely had an exhaust leak or some kind of aftermarket muffler so it sounded like shit and had cheap, failing tint. I think it only had 160K on the odometer.
I happened to check AutoBidMaster one afternoon and found a green 2002 Civic Sedan with a surprisingly low number of miles (only 112K!). My curiosity was piqued and I placed a measly $500 bid on the car. The auction listed it as a donated car that would start under its own power (or with a jump), would shift into drive, and move forward. I figured that I would gamble on the car and see if it would be my little emerald in the rough. It was also listed as a donated vehicle, so I hoped that meant that it was just neglected and not a turd.
The paint's clearcoat was heavily damaged, the battery was dead, and the engine seemed to have a minor oil leak. Without seeing the car in person, I just had to rely on fate to see if the car would be worth the effort. The auction closing day finally came and I won the auction with a bid of $1,600. This was not what I ended up paying and only started the laundry list of shenanigans that would end up plaguing me because of this too-good-to-be-true car.
The auction closed, but the purchase hadn't been finalized because the seller had to "approve" my bid. This shady practice is known on AutoBidMaster as an "on approval" auction as opposed to a "pure sale" auction where the final price is whatever the last person bid before the close of the auction. The seller ended up contacting me a few hours later stating that I could win the auction if I increased my bid to $2,000. This was just plain insulting and really goes against the whole point of auctions. I couldn't complain too much since I knew this was a possibility before I bid, but I figured that even $2,000 was worth it if I could secure such a low-mileage Civic.
I declined the offer for $2,000 and retorted with $1,800. He countered with $1,950 and didn't respond to any counters from me. I eventually caved and agreed to the $1,950 and began the purchase process. The purchase price was bad enough, but the $1,200 in fees from AutoBidMaster was really painful to swallow. The site also charged me ~$300 to ship the car from their lot to my house which was only a distance of about 30 miles.
I paid the company the ~$3,500 it ended up costing and a few days later the green meanie was in my driveway and the real torment finally began.
The tow truck dropped it off in my roommate's parking spot, so my first order of business was to move the damn thing. This was difficult with a dead battery (which was really dead and wouldn't hold a charge), so I instead opted to lube up the cylinders with some fogging oil through the spark plug holes—as it had been sitting for some time—then attempt to start it with my old Honda Element group 51R battery. It fired right up after much protesting from the stale fuel and slumbering electrical system. I put it in drive, pulled it about 20 feet down the driveway, and parked it. There it would sit for another two weeks.
During all this time, my wife and I started to pack our things and prepare to move from my roommate's house and into a new place on the other side of town. This put a damper on my car repair time which started interfering with my pack-n-move time, all to the chagrin of my dear wife.
Between moving preparations and going to work, my time was limited to get the Civic into good enough shape to make the 30 mile trip to the new house. I had a list of things to do:
Change the oil
I already had the correct oil and filters as I have a similar year Element
All 4 wheels matched and had good tread, which was nice
Once all that was done, I took her on a maiden voyage to the gas station. This is when I noticed the shifting issues. The tranny shifted really hard, a lot harder than it should, even though it was a 20+ year old car. I thought it might be me not putting the right level of fluid in it, but I triple checked it and the fluid level was fine. This was bad news bears indeed.
My mechanic wasn't 100% convinced the tranny was bad as it was throwing some codes for a bad PCM (computer) and some bad shift solenoids. I started on the latter, buying two off of ebay, installed them both, and while those codes went away, the shifting was as bad as ever.
Moving day came and went with the Civic holding it's section of the driveway firm. I hadn't driven it far enough to be sure that it could make the 30 mile trip to the new place. After everything else had been moved, the Civic was all that remained. I needed to replace the PCM before it could be moved though. There is apparently a design flaw with this generation of Civic where if the alternator gets loose, it can ground out on the interior of the engine bay and fry the computer. I believe this is what happened to mine. I purchased a replacement PCM on ebay for $45, removed the two immobilizer chips from my old one and soldered them onto the new one. This took about an hour and completely resolved the engine codes for the PCM.
The old immobilizer chip on the new PCM
My wife and I drove down one night and she dropped me off at the (now) old house. She went to see a relative and I went to work replacing the PCM and checking the ATF again and when I determined that the levels were good. I took it for a very short spin and the shifting hadn't gotten better at all. After a few minutes, I decided to just start driving and see how far I could get.
I started off down the road and after a few minutes of it banging around, I threw it in 2nd gear and drove the whole trip at ~35 mph. This annoyed the hell out of the folks behind me on the single-lane roadways that I had to drive down, but I had my hazards on, so oh well.
I parked it in the driveway, locked the doors (with the key, no keyless entry), and there it sat.
A week goes by and my mechanic (who lives a few hundred miles away) said that he had an open weekend, a used tranny for the Civic lined up, and all the tools to do the swap at his house. He just wanted me to be sure that it was the right move since he had to rely on my amateur observations and my lacking vocabulary and therefore couldn't make a very informed judgement call.
I took it to a chain mechanic that was open during the evening and they confirmed that the tranny was bad and needed a rebuild if not a full replacement. I relayed that to my mechanic and he purchased the tranny. Now it was the end of the week and with my slim window of opportunity approaching, I decided to make the eight hour drive to his house—with the Civic's transmission shifting harder than ever—and hope for the best.
I left the new place at 23:30 as I was too riled up about the upcoming trip to sleep after getting home from work at 17:00. I think I only got three hours of sleep that evening.
The first hour went well. Since it was the dead of night, traffic was light and I wasn't as likely to get in anyone's way while making the trip. I drove the majority of the trip in Drive, but some areas were limited to 2nd as the tranny didn't like low speeds.
The next few hours were pretty calm, but I was getting very tired as the night wore on and the dawn approached. A few close calls with dozing off, a weird sound I heard in traffic (that turned out to be my fender liner scraping against my tire, I later cut it off at a gas station), and a clunky-ass-drivetrain were the biggest worries from the trip. By 08:00 on Saturday, I was in the driveway of my mechanic's house. I then proceeded to go upstairs and crash for six hours in his spare bedroom.
A foggy view from the early morning drive
The afternoon rolled around and as I got out of bed, I see the Civic in his backyard now and he confirms that the tranny is bad (and worse than he expected!) and that he can definitely replace it with me over the next two days. We got to work, raised the car on jack stands, removed the undercarriage, dropped the old tranny, and popped in the new one by 22:00 that night.
Lifting the new transmission into place
Sunday morning, we put the subframe back on, replaced the headlights (I brought them with me), cleaned up the mess, and went to the store to get some ATF and cotter pins. We filled the fluid, felt the gears, and took it for a successful test drive. We celebrated with a big dinner that him and his wife cooked up. I went to bed around midnight and left for home at 09:00 the next morning, but with pockets about $460 lighter after the tranny and ATF.
The Civic with new headlights
The drive back was a lot easier than the drive down. Although, ten minutes into the trip the engine threw a P0740 Torque Converter Clutch Solenoid Circuit error. The transmission still shifted just fine, so I drove the few hundred miles back home, stopping for gas, and to fix the fender liner issue that one time.
I pulled into the driveway and breathed a sigh of relief, but work on the Civic has only just begun.
The bluetooth module installed into the Civic's radio (If you can't find a ground, make one!)
The contacts that I hijacked for the BT signal to use
My first thought was to simply add bluetooth to the existing stock radio. This would add some modern functionality while retaining the stock design. I accomplished this by purchasing a universal bluetooth module for about $8, stripping the RCA connectors off, and wiring it up to the tape deck circuitry inside the radio.
This worked, but the deck was smart enough to not output sound from the tape circuitry without a tape present. I popped in a dummy tape and that sort of solved the issue, but the whole time music is playing I can hear that tape spinning. The audio quality wasn't amazing and it was rather quiet, but it worked for a short while. I ended up going back to using one of those bluetooth FM transmitter devices instead.
A few days later, I found a silver Civic radio from a Hybrid 2003, cleaned it up, and popped it in the dash. It looks good and sounds good too.
The whole Civic was covered in shitty tint that has long gone bubbly and brittle. I spent a few hours scraping it off with a razor blade, but I found out that—at least for the rear window—I could vaccuum it off with a strong enough shop vac. This helped me get the rear window about 80% clear before I stopped for the night. I still have some of the other windows to do.
With the radio situation solved, my attention turned to the speakers in both front doors as well as the two under the rear window. I swapped all four with a set of
To be finished soon...
The Civic with 2001 Civic coupe seats
Need for Sneed sticker on the rear window of the Civic
The Civic with red and green instrument cluster lights
This article was originally written for NewSaint.org
Back in December, I learned about NeoCities and their goal of bringing back the personal, pre-WEB 3.0 / 2.0 feel of the early internet. I thought this was a great idea and immediately signed up for my free website. I then quickly did nothing with it and sat on it for six months.
About a week ago, I got the idea to host a small, online art gallery of the works that I've made—both with and without AI—to show them off and to make use of my free website slot. It's been a lot of fun to write the HTML, CSS, and JS to make the site look somewhat good and be pretty functional. ChatGPT has been very instructive on what to change and how to make my vision of the site come to fruition.
The HBM Art Gallery is a digital exhibition featuring a collection of generative artwork, experimental edits, and traditional compositions. This site is also a personal project created to show off what I find interesting about the world in general and art specifically. Most of the displayed works are parts of small themed series', but some are simply one-off projects or half-baked ideas. This gallery serves both as an archive and an evolving showcase.
One thing I've always appreciated about social media is the block functionality. I don't like to have private accounts or channels or whatever, I like to have my stuff free and open for anybody to look at. But, whenever someone comes across my path that I find annoying or ugly or just bothersome, I block them and then poof they're gone and I don't have to see them and my ramblings won't grace their eyes again.
Someone posting stuff I don't agree with?
Blocked.
Someone being annoying?
Blocked.
Some "protected class" whinging about something or other?
Blocked.
Someone virtue signaling about some bullshit that they are parroting?
Buh-buh-blocked!
I dislike anonymous / internet arguing as it leads nowhere and doesn't change anyone's minds. People—en masse—are too stubborn for discussion online and with the rampant use of irony, how can you tell if someone is being serious or not? I prefer to just erase them from my sight. I don't like to argue or leave negative comments or engage in any way. I just block them.
On the flip side, I am blocked from commenting in like a dozen Telegram channels for previous anti-(((Abrahamic-religion))) comments. That's the price I pay and I don't really mind.
Also, every platform that has a like button should have a dislike button. Unlike those Meta platforms, YouTube, and the like, we need a way to show our disapproval without going into the comments. Reddit almost has it right, but the vote system still focuses on the positive interactions most of the time. Interestingly, Itch.io got this right and has a visible like and dislike counter for their comments section.
Lots of content creators hinder their audience's ability to inter-/react with the posted content by disabling comments, hiding likes, or otherwise limiting engagement, usually when the general opinion on the posted material is negative. That's why I leave the negative emojis enabled on my Telegram channel. I'm not afraid of that guy that vomit reacts to my homemade meatballs or my desire to make videogames in my free time.
Perhaps my approval of blocking and my disapproval of a creator restricting responses is a double-standard. I could see that argument, but I don't care!
I'm gonna finally give Pixelfed a try. Not too hopeful, but seems to have a good foundation.
Feel free to give me a follow or just take a look at my posts if you're on the fediverse: pixelfed.social/hbm
Update: I have disabled my Pixelfed and I'm thinking about just deleting it. It's just as annoying as the big social media platforms, but with 0.1% of the content. Lots of virtue signaling and whining about politics. I knew it was a lost cause when I found myself blocking basically every account I saw on the explore page.
