Summary

What follows are my thoughts on the website Pixel Area and how it then inspired me to create a companion website, Pixel Kinship.

I'm sure I first discovered Pixel Area on Mastodon. That's without question. Who shared what and when I'm too lazy to research, so my apologies to the unnamed good citizen of the fediverse that shared something that made it's way into my feed.

Yes, I'm a day late and a dollar short and this should've been written and published, oh I don't know, on November 11th (11.11) but, oh well, here we are.

On Pixel Area

What is Pixel Area you ask? Well, no better way to answer such a question than the creator, Oleh Providnyk:

Pixel Area is a 100×100 coordinate grid with room for 10,000 websites. Each pixel belongs to a real person and links to whatever they have online: a blog, a project, or just a small site they made. You pick an empty spot, choose a color, add a short description, and visitors find you by wandering around the map, one coordinate at a time, without really knowing where they will end up.

When I stumbled upon this website (pseudo-webring?), it tickled my fancy in more ways than one: love the aesthetic of the site itself, it's a very simple concept, there's a limited number of spaces available, fun can be had in choosing your coordinates (if you're a numbers person or someone who finds meaning in random numbers), and it's generally just a cool idea.

Not long thereafter, I became the proud owner of x11y11, which is currently pointing to my photo blog, n0madz ephemera. I say currently because this may change in the near future, but for now, if you haven't checked it out and like random art, photos, and graphics, go check out my photo blog.

Inhabiting space x11y11 also meant that I have access to this cool badge, which lives in the footer of most of my sites:

So, long story short, Pixel Area is a cool site that you should check out and claim a square if you have a digital site (or sites) that you like to call home. Oh, and the site has a Mastodon presence as well, so give them a follow while you're at it.

On Pixel Kinship

At this point, if you're following along, you're probably asking yourself, "Okay, so now I know what Pixel Area is, what the hell is Pixel Kinship though?" Well, glad you asked and you've come to the right place, Pixel Kinship is a companion website to Pixel Area. It's unaffiliated with Pixel Area, though, I have received Oleh's blessing and incorporated some of their feedback into the design and implemention of Pixel Kinship.

Pixel Kinship provides a few things that I couldn't readily find in Pixel Area itself. Namely, it provides an easy way to review associated information for a particular pair of coordinates. The information it provides is stuff like, who the immediate neighbors are for that coordinate pair, which squares are occupied versus unoccupied, and then it also compiles a few stats based on different mathematic and meme-worth properties of that number pair.

Numerical Relationships

The stats or properties associated with a coordinate pair are directly inspired by the random number generator site/game called RNGDLE, which is a ton of fun, entirely without purpose, and yet oddly satisfying when you pull a "rare" or "legendary" number.

The stats currently being tracked by Kinship are as follows:

• Shared X coordinates and shared Y coordinates - so it lists all the coordinates found with the same X value (or found in the same column) or Y value (or found in the same row)
• Diagonal coordinates - coordinates where x=y
• Prime Pairs - where X and Y coordinates are both prime numbers
• Same Coordinate Sum - as an example using x11y11, coordinates that also sum to 22 (of which there is one occupied space currently matching this criteria for me, x18y4)
• Mirrored Position - where the coordinates are flipped, so x2y3 matches x3y2

Notable Coordiantes (or what I think of as meme-worthy coordinates)

The Notable Coordinates are purely for fun and bear little to no resemblance to the numerical relationships above. This section was purely created so we could call out the proud owner of x6y7, or figure out who the lucky owner of x69y69 is, or who knows what's up and rightfully claimed x4y20 (lucky bastard). There are more than a few in this section, and I'm open to incorporating more if anyone can think of any fun number pairs, numerical relationships to explore.

Here's what's compiled so far, and I'm only including the general name for these relationships so if you want to know what they refer you're going to have to check out the site itself:

• The 67
• 420
• Nice squared
• 69
• 1337
• 418
• The answer, twice
• Lucky Sevens
• 1234
• 123
• Double Infinity
• Pi Digits
• Euler's Number
• Golden Ratio
• Square root of two
• Square root of three
• 3-4-5 triangle
• 5-12-13 triangle
• 8-15-17 triangle
• Fibonacci neighbors
• Fibonaccie neighbors II
• Twin Prime Axes
• Smalled Prime Neighbors
• Square Numbers
• Square Numbers II
• Double Nines
• The Far Corner

Additional Features

Beyond the above, Pixel Kinship also includes a directory in list format of every coordinate, which you can choose to filter by occupied or unoccupied.

It also has a page for Recent Changes, which just lists the changes found when updating the site to pull the most recent grid information. Unoccupied spaces are purely listed as unoccupied to honor the privacy of the individuals formerly occupying those spaces, while recently occupied spaces are called out so any new members can be greeted warmly.

Lastly, there's an export to markdown feature which you can use to export the info associated with whatever coordinate pair you choose. An example of what's included and what this looks like is found below.

Final Notes

At the end of the day, I enjoyed getting to explore and claim a Pixel Area space, and I wanted to know who my neighbors were, which spaces were unoccupied near me, and, lastly, who the proud owner of x4y20 is so we can be friends.

There are spaces near me available, so if you're interested and made it this far, let's be neighbors 😊

The below is an example of the markdown export for my coordinate pair.

Pixel Kinship — X11Y11

• Exported: 2026-11-12T20:55:03.385Z
• Directory snapshot: 2026-11-12T13:07:24.226086+00:00
• Source: https://pxlarea.com/directory.html

Selected square

• Coordinate: X11Y11
• Status: Occupied
• Pixel Area: https://pxlarea.com/x11y11
• Website: visual ephemera
• Author / owner: n0madz
• Website URL: https://photos.wzrds.fun/index.html
• Description: #X11Y11 visual ephemera is a place where I post photos, artwork, graphics, quotes that have caught my fancy.
• Tags: personal, photo, art

Immediate neighborhood

• Valid adjacent coordinates: 8 (out of up to 8)
• Occupied: 3
• Unlisted: 5

Unlisted neighboring coordinates

• X11Y10
• X12Y10
• X10Y11
• X10Y12
• X12Y12

Generated by Pixel Kinship from a cached Pixel Area directory.
Unlisted means not present in this snapshot, not confirmed available for claiming.
Visit Pixel Area to check a square’s current status.