Formally, we would define this site as a technology focused e-zine. We hope to bring you diverse content in the form of guides, reviews, opinion pieces, general commentary, and relevant news. Informally, if you've read Philip K. Dick's classic "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep", this site is our "empathy box", trying to make connections to the feelings and emotions of others in the digital realm.

ByteVortex.tech has born out of a necessity to share our thoughts and interests in a place on the digital realm that we can really call our own. In the preceding days of late 2023 we have been burned out by platform after platform becoming less useful, more focused on monetization, generally becoming more enshittified. Consequently, we have become increasingly suspect of the dealings and motivations of these platforms, especially if they are a privately owned "free" service. With the rise of generative AI tools and models, and their disdain of privacy, having a digital place where to connect with others has turned into a race about who are we willing to surrender our ideas and interests. And possibly also risking the same for the people we connect with.

Opinions, ideas, advice, and debate have value, perhaps inherently so, but it's increased when they resonate with others. We don't want to surrender that value to anyone else but the community we build here.

If you want to support and follow our efforts, we invite you to subscribe to the site for free or join us in our discord server. You can also just share our site to anyone you think might be interested. For an independent publication, word-of-mouth is a fantastic way to promote us, we don't want to depend upon those same algorithms we're so suspect of.

If you want to help us to be self-sufficient without the influence of ad publishers or data brokers, you can always become a paid member. We have plans to provide exclusive and early-access content as a thank you for that vital support.

Welcome, and we hope you enjoy your stay.

Who's Cheshire?

Writing has always been a meh part of my life.  I've always had the appreciation and understanding that writing is something helpful and useful in all aspects of life.  Yet, when it comes to ACTUALLY sitting down and writing, I can stare at the screen for a bit, then find something else to do until my brain decides to kick into gear.  That is what happened when I started writing this intro post.  Here we go.

I go by the name Cheshire in the internet realm. You might have come across me somewhere sometime, or maybe not.  Who knows!  A little bit about me before info dump: I'm a Xennial with a Gen X sister who moved countries for a better life.  I don't use pronouns, officially diagnosed with ADHD as a child (that followed my crazy butt into adulthood) AND decided to take myself off of the medication because it was too expensive.  I've had to learn to deal with my attention problem for over 16 years and it is one hell of a roller coaster at times.  I currently hold two degrees, one being a Certified (and licensed) Veterinary Technologist and the other degree being for Computer Game Design and Development.  I survived a car accident to where I've been left with life changing quirks. Activities that hold my attention: gaming, reading, writing, cooking/baking/making-messes-in-kitchen, robotics, building things, creating things, things things, you get the idea.  My interests are VAST and if I'm not learning something then I feel like I'm failing in life.  

You can find me:

• Twitch
• YouTube - game guides and other various activities
• YouTube - stream offloads
• Peertube
• Instagram
• Pixelfed
• Mastodon
• Kofi

Needless to say, I'm a geek, gamer, nerd, whatever descriptive word that fits at the time. I enjoy learning a lot of different things and it gives my dopamine a nice hit when I learn something so awesome, I have to share. I write game guides, document various projects (and share the progress sometimes), partake in some fun (sometimes weird and chaotic in a good way) community games, and encourage others to try out the fun things I talk about.

Finally, it's a pleasure to meet you/me ❤

And who's HellraiserMX?

In the mid to late 90s, I became a technician in a still nebulous term back then called "Computing". I had learned DOS. I also learned the third version of the shiny new Microsoft toy called Windows 3.1, that still ran on top of DOS. My word processor of choice was WordPerfect. My programming language proficiency was in Pascal. And the personal computers I learned all this, they had a "Turbo" button. Due to multiple turns of life, I became a college dropout, but kept working in the nascent IT field, and I've been constantly self-teaching trying to keep my head above the rising waters of the always evolving digital world.

Outside my formal professional formation, I became enamored with PC-Gaming, ever since I put my hands on a keyboard, and Wolfenstein 3D was shown in my monochromatic CRT monitor. I hosted Quake 2 public servers that were able to provide a low ping for other players in my country, in a time when 400ms were good speeds for us connecting to a public US server. I managed a couple large online communities that focused on the minutia of computer hardware. With the popularity of online forums decaying, I kept a modest online presence, suspect of the rise of social media. Briefly wrote for a couple of online publications in subjects as varied as Heavy Metal music and general technology.

I've been late-diagnosed with ADHD, and other not-fun personality traits. I've been classified as a Libertarian Socialist by an online test. Science like Cosmology and Biology can endlessly stimulate my sense of awe. Which is the only logical explanation I'll give for my guilty pleasure of binge-watching medical dramas. I'm not much of a Mysticist, I'm more of a Rationalist, but I can still be generally attracted to Buddhist and Taoist philosophy. I practiced some traditional Martial Arts at some point in my life. Most times I'm an overzealous protector of my privacy. Which can make for a "fun" life in this integrated world.

Finally came to the decision of creating this site due to my exhaustion trying to find a place where I could brain-dump my thoughts and interests and not feel like I'm being scammed of something precious. I hope that you can find those thoughts and interests (and opinions, and advice, and struggles, and debates) also valuable for yourself.

You can also find me (for now at least) exclusively at Mastodon. Sometimes.