1 files changed, 57 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/blog/august-status-update.md b/blog/august-status-update.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f963ab2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/blog/august-status-update.md
@@ -0,0 +1,57 @@
+---
+title: "August Status Update"
+date: 2020-08-22
+draft: false
+series: 
+  - status
+---
+
+August shifted back from a meta month onto a more even balance with development.
+For Hackagotchi, I worked on the new websocket backend to allow for real-time
+updates to player's hacksteads, as well as started maintaining the new chat
+backend, Gotchinet. In other news, I've begun to move the FLL-Scoring codebase
+into a monolithic app.
+<!--more-->
+
+## Hackagotchi
+### Backend
+Cedric[^1] spent a few weeks working on a new Websocket API called "The
+Wormhole". This will allow for our new non-Slack clients to receive real-time
+updates from our central backend, at a significant increase to our current
+client.
+
+Moving to our own backend is essential to eliminating the limitations imposed by
+Slack, including an issue that's been plaguing our players, namely that
+sometimes Hacksteads would fail to display, because of Slack limiting the amount
+of "Blocks" we can send to an app Home.
+
+### Gotchinet
+Part of moving away from Slack is providing our own chat platform. Communication
+is such an integral part of the game, and I want to drive the creation of a
+community around Hackagotchi.
+
+I've created an IRC[^2] network for Hackagotchi, that is planned to be
+integrated directly into the standalone clients. The dev team has already moved
+over to it and we're writing documentation to help our existing playerbase move
+over (something we're expecting to be made easier by the standalone client
+integration). You're welcome to come on and chat on [KiwiIRC][kiwiirc-gotchinet]
+
+## FLL-Scoring
+I've had some time to think since the last time I made a commit to the codebase,
+and in that time I've realized that making this app decentralized doesn't make
+sense like it does for, say, SourceHut, in which each service isn't tied to any
+other except the meta service. In FLL-Scoring, however, each service will be
+tied to another. You can't have a Scoreboard without a Tournament, you can't
+have Teams without Tournaments, etc. As such, I'm going to be continuing
+development of the FLL-Scoring app as a monolithic app.
+
+My goals haven't changed much though, I still want to build a fast and reliable
+app with minimal JavaScript. I still believe that's possible and I will
+continuing working until it's done.
+
+[kiwiirc-gotchinet]:
+https://kiwiirc.com/nextclient/#irc://irc.hackagotch.io:+6697/gotchi
+
+[^1]: Lead developer for Hackagotchi
+[^2]: Internet Relay Chat. Old and venerated text-based communication tech,
+built on an [open standard](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1459).