A group of enthusiasts from the technical support team of the Moscow internet provider “MTU-Inform” established a resource for all users under the shared name “Support Homeplace.” It was hosted on the company’s infrastructure and held an underground status. Official approval was absent, but no one intended to shut it down either — customers loved it. The site featured a variety of amusing and not-so-amusing texts, materials on the basics of working with the internet and Usenet newsgroups, and a wealth of technical information related to computers, among other things. This site fostered a large community within the Usenet hierarchy of mtu.inform, which endured long after the project’s closure.

The reasons for the project’s closure were mundane: the company decided to hire a new “media projects department director.” Upon seeing the thriving (albeit not entirely “legal” from the company’s perspective) community, he sought to bring it under his control. What followed was swift, unfolding along the lines of “arrive, destroy, and leave.” His clumsy and disgraceful attempt to commercialize the community — without any effort to thoughtfully plan, strategize, or prepare — ended in predictable and resounding failure. Meanwhile, the original authors of the project were left with the pitiful remnants of a once-flourishing resource.

The active core of the community migrated to a new address within the original corporate hosting environment. However, this resource was now independent of the company’s policies, had a new design, and operated as a private project. Your humble servant took on the role of administrator. As a result, the site was named after my nickname — “Jim’s Homeplace,” retaining part of the old name but clearly emphasizing its affiliation with a private individual (to avoid confusion).

In essence, it was an exact clone of the original project with all the same materials. It was managed and maintained by the same people, but the shared Usenet-based discussions were moved to a web forum integrated into the site, where the community was successfully revived — albeit in a somewhat reduced form, of course.

The resource gradually faded away. Organizers and active participants drifted apart, focused on other projects, and moved on with their lives. There were no dramas or intrigues — just the natural course of events, with everyone pursuing their own goals. While we maintained active personal connections, few were still interested in supporting or developing this specific online community, myself included. At the time, I had shifted my attention to a gaming project in collaboration with AlenaCPP.

With no other interested parties, I decided to shut everything down and put it to rest. However, a “golden archive” of content was preserved as a tribute to all of us who started the project. This collection was carefully maintained over the years, right up until the resource ceased to exist.

Although at the time I absolutely despised all those little online diaries and LiveJournals, I occasionally felt the need to share streams of consciousness with friends. Too infrequently to justify starting a full-fledged diary in some thriving community, yet often enough for the endeavor to make sense. So, with the consent of the other founding members, I decided to set up a personal blog on the existing site.

With minimal effort, WordPress was launched on the hosting. I don’t remember why we chose it back then, but from that moment to this day, the blog has operated exclusively on this platform. Even now, despite the overloaded mess it has become, I believe it’s only usable by someone who’s been hooked on it since its very first version and has slowly acclimated to its madness over the years.

In September 2011, disaster struck: the blog was suddenly forced to change hosting and domain. Up until that point, the blog had lived on a Russian hosting platform (yes, the very same original one), to which I unexpectedly lost access due to distance and the fading of nearly all connections with my former homeland. This outcome was predictable but had been ignored due to my own laziness and negligence. When the inevitable happened, the entire site migration had to be completed in just a couple of days — salvaging the data while watching access to the original servers slip away.

Although this event didn’t significantly alter the blog’s status or content, I consider it a pivotal milestone in the site’s history. The site fully transformed into a proper blog — and a fairly popular one at that. This shift coincided with two major developments. First, I began publishing articles about my DIY projects, which many found intriguing. However, the blog reached its peak activity and popularity when, at the end of 2010, I moved with my family to the United States and started regularly posting about our life there.

During this period, I found myself torn between two fundamentally different directions for the blog’s future. One option was to turn it into a “slice of life” blog, featuring something akin to “traveler’s notes.” The other was to focus on a narrower DIY specialization. Each path would attract entirely different types of audiences and inevitably shape my hobbies, interests, and lifestyle in distinct ways.

Over the next six years, the blog continued to grow and gain popularity, gradually transforming more and more into an entertaining DIY resource — a transformation it ultimately completed entirely.

“The Lost Year”. A murky time when the blog was barely updated. This was due to my exhaustion from attempting to run my own business (discovering along the way that I’m about as good a businessman as a goat is at giving milk) and my decision to look for another job.

And, as luck would have it, I found one — becoming an IT specialist at a company called Texas Shooter’s Supply, which manufactures and sells firearms. There, I encountered a severe state of disarray in the area I was assigned to manage. For an entire year, I had to throw myself fully into bringing everything into order. The work was incredibly interesting but extremely demanding. There wasn’t any time left for anything else (you know, things like “personal life,” “hobbies/projects,” and the like).

My entire online presence boiled down to the occasional drunken rambling on Facebook during the rare Fridays I actually noticed. However, finding myself in the canonical “you’re a programmer — fix the microwave!” scenario, I gained skills and experience working with modern industrial CNC machines. Switching roles multiple times a day between “webmaster,” “admin,” “process engineer,” “designer,” “programmer,” and “machinist” was… well, let’s just say it was something else.

But gradually, life settled down and got back on track. I found time again for hobbies and personal DIY projects.

During this time, the blog thrived, living a vibrant and fulfilling life as it should. In my opinion, this was the most interesting and productive period, marking the blog’s peak as an entertaining DIY resource.

During this phase, I once again changed jobs, becoming a technical specialist at Baker Hughes. This was notable because my professional activities now involved working with complex devices where mechanics and electronics played equally significant roles. This gave a strong boost to my personal hobbies in the same direction. My projects became far more intricate and ambitious.

For instance, I embarked on a comprehensive process of transforming my entire home into a so-called “smart home,” featuring controllers of my own design. From scratch, I built my own original 3D printer and a CNC milling machine for metal. With the skills I had acquired, I could now create these machines myself from a piece of metal and a handful of electronic components, crafting them exactly the way I wanted, rather than relying on pre-made Chinese kits with their “take what you’re given” limitations. The composition of my garage workshop was almost entirely reimagined. The circular saw was no longer the centerpiece of production, and one room in the house was fully transformed into a dedicated electronics lab.

Naturally, some of these processes were reflected in blog posts, setting the overall tone of its content during this period.

The blog ceased its activity. By that time, it was primarily popular among Russian users, who made up as much as 90% of its audience.

When Russia unleashed its full-scale war against Ukraine and began a rapid descent into the Middle Ages amid the jubilant cheers of z-patriots, I realized I no longer wanted to entertain that segment of the audience. The mere thought of doing so became repulsive. Any association with Russian origins, culture, or language turned into an unbearable psychological torment — one I had, ironically, inflicted upon myself.

All publications on the blog were halted, though it remained accessible in the state it was in during February–April 2022. Personally, that year became one of relentless doomscrolling and depression for me.

When the hosting period ended, I chose not to renew it. As a result, the hosting was shut down, the domain name was put into dormant mode, and all materials were removed from public access and transitioned to a minimal maintenance state on my home server, confined within my local network.

Official Date
of the Blog’s Final Shutdown

December 17, 2023

(25 years online)

Although new articles still occasionally appear, they remain drafts stored in an internal home database.