The Ghost Howls turns 6!

Ladies and gentlemen, I don’t know how I reached this point, but today my blog becomes 6 years old!

The Ghost Howls started as a way to promote my startup Immotionar, and I had no idea someone could be interested in reading what I had to write. 6 years later, I’m still unsure why people read me (and at this point, I’m too afraid to ask), and I’m still unsure for how long I will be able to keep this blog alive, considering that my daily job is becoming more and more tiresome. The future is always uncertain, especially in these crazy ’20s, so I just focus on the present, and enjoy this remarkable achievement.

6 years and more than 1000 articles written. Wow… if I think about it, it is impressive. 6 years waiting for the Apple headset that is always “going to be released next year”™; 6 years of the emotional rollercoaster of “VR is the future”, “no wait VR is dead”, “hey VR is now the metaverse which is the future of the internet”, “but VR is not becoming mainstream and people don’t know what the metaverse is, so it’s a fad”; 6 years waiting for the killer app of VR; 6 years that mainstream AR glasses are always “5 to 10 years away”; 6 years aiming at the potatoverse. And for sure we are not where 6 years ago we predicted things would have been “in 5 to 10 years”, so it’s 6 years that we suck at predictions about technology.

But these 6 years have been cool. I’ve learned a lot, I developed some interesting applications, I interviewed some important people, I have written some popular articles, and even invented a viral meme. I’m not where I predicted to be 6 years ago, so I suck also in predictions about myself, too, but I can’t say I’m dissatisfied with my current situation. The thing that I like the most is the people that I met all these years, the friendships I made, and the support I have from the community. When I go to a VR event, and I continuously meet and hug people… this is the best reward for these 6 years of writing walls of text on this website. I love this community, and I thank you all for supporting me these years.

And the other amazing thing I have is the satisfaction of having helped someone: sometimes people write me that they managed to develop and publish their application thanks to some tutorial of mine; or that thanks to an article of mine they managed to get some investments or partnerships. I’m really happy when this happens because at these moments I realize why this blog is useful and why it is worth keeping it alive.

So thank you everyone: I would have never written articles for 6 years if I were alone. I managed to do that because of you all.

Every year I think about some special way to celebrate my blog’s birthday. Well, this year I have a few things in mind. First of all, as you have seen, I have revamped the website. Thanks to the help of Infinite Officine and my bro Max Ariani, the website has now a tidier design, has complete GDPR compliance, and is well readable on mobile. I have so solved all the main issues you notified me of in the last months. There are still some details I would like to be fixed, but I’m happy to have finally managed to improve this website. Thanks to all my Patrons that with their support made this possible.

I am also thinking about doing a few interesting interviews. The most important one I have in mind is with the person that inspired me to start this adventure. I have already contacted him and I’m waiting to see if we manage to make this happen. The other one is with an XR professional I esteem a lot, and I hope to talk with. I really hope to manage to do at least one of these two interviews, because I’m sure you would love them. I’m also thinking about writing an article with some lessons learned.

Of course, to celebrate this birthday you can’t also miss the exclusive Skarredghost NFT collection, a series of 6 JPEGs featuring unique monkey ghosts eating potatoes valued at 100 ETH each. You can buy them on this dedicated website where the right-click is forbidden. If you buy one of these NFTs you enter the exclusive Skarredghost club, where you can access a discord server that I won’t read where you can propose the next features of my blog.

And then… I don’t know. If you have some ideas, I’m open to listening to them. John Carmack, if you are reading this post and you want to do a Wolfenstein3D-themed party with me, I’m totally open to that. Jensen Huang, if you want to send me a black leather jacket, my size is M. Tim Cook, if you want to ship to me a pair of the glasses that are coming out “next year” in preview, I would be happy. I’m open to celebrating in every possible way.

In the end, my dear readers, I thank you again for what you have always done for me. And if today you want to make some noise to help me in celebrating, well, I would be happy about that. Feel free to write a comment here or on my social media channels to celebrate the 6 years of The Ghost Howls! Let’s all virtually have a toast together. Cheers!

(Header image by Isabella and Zsa Fischer’s @twinsfisch)