Happy New Year! The year started busy with a month-long trip to my family home in the middle of nowhere, with several mini-trips in between. I've been trying to rest as much as possible when I'm not working, and I miss making music a lot.
I'm casually revisiting jerdehl.c to see what can be improved. I had an old version of it that sounded better than the current one, and I'm working on integrating the improved fire crackling into it.
Besides that, there are many social visits, new tattoos to be done, and pool time. Summer is upon us!
2024-01-23 - Pavlov’s bell - Cutting Tofu
I follow your orders to the letter
I say everything you want to hear
But everything that comes out of my mouth is a lie.
You parade me outside on a leash,
And when you pull on my collar,
I know not to bark,
Because God forbid people stare
And think of us strange—
“All families are psychotic,
Except for us.”
I sing your praises on command,
Hoping I hit all the right notes
Else I eat my dinner alone tonight;
But I never had an appetite, anyway.
The more you tell me not to,
The more I chew on my fingernails
Until they fall off dead to the ground
And I pick them up one by one
Careful not to make a mess
In front of your pristine glory.
Everything you want from me
Is everything I don’t want to give.
You left ages ago,
Door locked behind me.
But I still shake in fear
Of the aftermath of my poor decisions
And irresponsible spending habits.
I need to be needed,
Just like you need me to need you.
Besides,
Who needs enemies when we’ve got each other?
2024-01-21 New old art - a
Wahoo! Night Terror is finished! Currently sketching a new sequence which I look forward to sharing :>!
I did a few sprite commissions this month, see Alex, Squid, and Sofia.
I added a bunch of new(old) production art to uno and wiktopher. I'm trying to gather all of my art on this website, even the really old stuff (see old art). I logged into DeviantArt the other day and saw how they had fully intergrated AI into their platform, which makes me so, so sad. As HelveticaBlanc said so well in a recent toot(Mastodon): "I don't wanna see AI in any form, even as a joke. It's a nightmare for labor and the environment, an insult to the spirit of art, and I'm fully on the side of the Butlerian Jihad." Yes, me too. AI art is hollow, it is a grotesque parody of what it is to be human.
I've had two accounts parked on DA for the longest time (@esserawks and @mintenko), I kept them for memory's sake, but after seeing what DA has become I've decided to deactivate them. All of my art lives on this page now.
Grandpa Horst passed away this morning.
Mom called me this morning and told me. He had been lying in bed all week and was barely responsive, just moaning.
Now he has been released from his suffering.
Raindare and I just finished Black/Matrix 00, one that we've been juggling for nine months between BUSIN 0. Great game. "God"(ly) game! Sometime we'll get to moving on to translating the stories and extended fiction from that game's official webpage with some of the concept art that's been harder to find.
I'll update the reviews page once I've figured out how to collect my feelings. It's a bit dominated by Wizardry games as BUSIN 0 made me want to jot down my feelings on the more interesting entries in the series to me.
We're starting to write Devil Children post-...armageddon? manga? reset?... fan fiction and I'm pretty proud with how it's coming along. Someone who's only familiar with the manga should be able to follow along. Heir to the Empire is first, Grocery Run is still in progress.
Quite a few stories are still in progress, come to think of it! The Stray Vampire recently wrapped up. Within a Tempest is still coming together, slowly. Vivian remains popular with Japanese artists, as a character design.
Not a comprehensive list of changes of course, but who wants to write that?
The forge that we use at Hundred Rabbits has been taken down by DDoS attacks and
is struggling to come back online, the event reminded us that we ought to also
have mirrors and release versions of these source files available elsewhere. I've begun
to host copies across our various websites. The builds are still
accessible through itch.io.
Until we regain access and release the changes of the last few days, keeping
with the spirit of improving the resilience of the tools we use I've taken a
moment to write a kind of pocket version of the console emulator and self-hosted assembler as to see how many lines are
needed to start from the seed assembler and replicate it. A copy of the pocket
emulator, the source for the assembler and its hexadecimal representation have
been added to the wiki.
In the meantime, if anyone is looking for a specific file that is currently
unavailable, get in touch!
2024-01-11 - Prepping for Travel - Dook's Journal
Currently I’m preparing to leave for a week long trip to Tokyo! This was pretty spontaneous, we found out very late that we would be getting a month off over the new year in college. Me and friend were looking at getting away somewhere, and found some flights to Japan for an incredibly low price that was too good to not go for. And so here I am now!
A lot of my prep has been pretty simple, filling out some forms and getting my documentation ready. But on the other hand I’ve been setting myself up for a long flight, as well as my camera setup for the 5 days we’ll be in Tokyo.
I’ve got a ton of movies downloaded for the flights there and back, featuring some appropriate selections like Tokyo Drift and Shin Godzilla (I saw Godzilla Minus One last week and it’s incredible, highly recommend seeing). Especially threw in Killers of the Flower Moon as I can’t think of another time when I’ll be sitting down and bored for over 3 and half hours.
I also want to bring my Kobo with me for more relaxing entertainment. I have some books I need to continue, like David Graeber’s The Dawn of Everything and Don Norman’s Emotional Design (though I’m not sure how I feel about it yet). But I was also recommended some fiction in V.E Schwab’s Villains series by a friend.
Choosing a camera to bring was pretty difficult for me. I wanted to bring my Sony DSC-S85, as I bought it for travel, however it’s limited on storage (roughly 128mb!) and the battery is very poor on it. The alternative was a very hard to control point and shoot, or my expensive and a little bit boring Sony a6000 mirrorless. My friend ended up commissioning me to do a photoshoot of them out in Tokyo, so I used it as a chance to buy some upgrades to the S85. I started with a new battery alongside a quick charger, then attempted to buy some more storage. I say attempted because I discovered afterwards that the “Pro” memory sticks weren’t supported by my model, despite being identical. Thankfully, I can lower the resolution to get about 130 photos out of the 128mb of storage, and my friend is bringing their laptop so I’ll be able to offload my photos if I need more space (which is likely to happen).
I still have a bit more prep to do. I’ve lost a decent amount of my Japanese in memory over the past few years, so I’d like to write up a few pages in my notebooks with guides on numbers, common phrases I may encounter etc. My hiragana and katakana recognition is currently around 50%, so I should probably get that up a bit too.
We don’t really have a plan down, nor have we booked tickets to go to any big tourist spots. I think the plan is just to have a good time, enjoy the food and see what happens! I have some things I want to try pick up in second hand shops over there like a gameboy camera and a famicom disk, and of course a bunch of souvenirs for myself and my friends who are big fans of Ghibli movies and such!
Only a couple of days to go, can’t wait! - Dook
we found, edited and published some notes and prototypes related to POÑG, from 12020
poñg
Long time no seen!
I am taking a look back at 2023 so I can set my intentions and goals for this new year. As part of the exercise, I am re-reading all of my notes, journal entries and random scraps of writings I have collected in the past year, and WOW, I had forgotten I have been maintaning this journal since 2022.
Re-reading my enytries, I wish I had been more consistent with updating my journal in 2023. So much has happened that I have not documented. I am going to make it a goal for 2024 to be better at journaling and documenting my own life: it does help with introspection and growth.
happy new year! i didn't do any traditional new year's rituals to mark the year like i did for the last three years. i didn't even do the animal crossing countdown. though i woke up early yesterday (because i slept early! start the year right, etc.) and wrote in my notebook. again today. i'm thinking of new wall decor. i'm thinking origami.
2024-01-02 - blog
Published an interesting blog post today. I had ChatGPT write an article about how great AI is and posted it immediately without reading it. Hopefully you can tell. (If you couldn't and didn't register what was happening until the disclaimer at the end, I'm deeply sorry.)
To be clear, I don't like "AI" tools like ChatGPT one bit; I figured doing this would be an elegant way to communicate my feelings on the matter - here's how it feels to get tricked into reading AI-generated spam, this is how I feel anytime I see something AI-generated in the wild.
My perspective on the use of AI in writing is that if someone couldn't be bothered to write it, why should anyone else be bothered to read it?
-@lucretia@final.town
I've got half a blog post about this sitting on my computer somewhere.
In more fun news, my laptop server is up and running! Building the case was a fun time involving hand-cut aluminum rods and many 3D-printed brackets, but I'll save all that for the blog post about it. So far I've set up Jellyfin on it, and only Jellyfin. I plan to get some other stuff going eventually. Word of advice, don't use the official Jellyfin android app. It stutters a ton and is generally not very good. Use Findroid instead, but make sure to turn "mpv player" on in the settings, otherwise it will use software decoding and you'll get approximately 7 frames per second in your 1080p content.
2024-01-01 - Log
Wrote {New Year, 24}. Quiet day to start the year, spent with Alej and M. Long walk to Malden Center, cooked saag with tofu, and got a climb in at the new rock gym (and felt strong). Here's to a more stable and fulfilling year.
Small note: I fixed something that had bothered me on the site for a while. When images were an aspect ratio that didn't fit the page's content width and the alt text/caption were long, I'd end up with a large black area. To fix, I had to add the following style:
figure { display: table }
figcaption { display: table-caption; caption-side: bottom; }
Which gave me the visual result I wanted - where the img sets the width for the whole figure and figcaption.
Crazy end-of-the-year month. I worked almost every day on my december adventure, learning a lot in the process.
I spent time with the family, some days I got too tired to do anything productive, but I tried to stay afloat. Did a bit of my yearly review (to be published) and all the other workflows around it that are just for myself. I released the first proper FINAL MAZE Album to good reception. We now have a proper logo for the band. You can see it in the cover of the new album.
I also have been working on our next release.
I started reading Evil Eye (four novellas of love going wrong), by Joyce Carol Oates. I'm digging it.
On the last day of December, one of my Caffeine's Heir work got released on CD and tape by the netlabel Stargazing at Blank Skies.
We are spending the day packing for our long January trip and getting the laptop updated to work from it. It will be my first trip with all my computers fully networked through Tailscale, so I'm not worried about losing access to anything.
January promises to be a busy month, with me juggling work, family vacations, and planning an international trip for early February. Go go go!
2023-12-30 - It could’ve been a brilliant career - Cutting Tofu
I’m waiting for the punchline, the life-changing advice you’re about to give me, but it never comes and I am left wanting. So I’m taking out my anger on you, I said to the broken pieces of glass on the floor.
This drama you’ve been craving does not suit you at all, haven’t you had enough? You were only meant for this kind of life:
“Too fast to live, too young to die.”
No need to look back, just keep on going and you’ll get there, eventually.
This is now the next-to-last place where I post semi-regular updates (not counting social media because social media doesn't count). Since last time, I revived my personal wiki, and added a ton of stuff to it. Also did plenty of related work. Got many thoughts about it all. Many plans, too. Not so much energy, but winter's like that.
Speaking of which: it took me all autumn, but my latest story is finally complete, right in time for the holidays! Behind Gray Blocks brings back an old setting I created ten years ago. It's cyberpunk reimagined for Eastern Europe; mirrorshades not allowed! (Except once as a joke; I couldn't resist.) The result is well-anchored in a place and a season, and very satisfying in the end. So worth the trouble.
Last but not least, I've been working on a little interactive zine about my experiences writing sci-fi, using a new (to me) authoring tool that should be better known. It's nothing new, only some stuff I had lying around anyway, but people seem to like it anyway. Enjoy, and see you around.
I've been taking it easy for the last few days of the year, cooked a lot,
walked a lot. I've been re-reading SICP and idly poking at implementing a Lisp system in the style of Varvara. I don't have any specific goal for it beyond
exploring low-level symbolic computing, but who knows where these things might
lead.
After watching an excellent documentary about the Newton,
I found myself reading about the various ways to convert hand-written letters
into their digital representations, and soon found myself fascinated enough
that I just had to invent my own little shorthand calligraphy and interpreter.
2023-12-28 - Log
Impenetrable fog settled on the Heights this past week. Weird warmth on wet made point light smear, the full moon a melodramatic dim blob.
I gave my company the last week of the year off, so my last few days of the year have been spent with Meadow and Alejandra.
During naps and after bed I prototyped wxql, a query language inspired by a conversation at my undergraduate advisor's retirement party. The aim is to handle challenges with n-dimensional data such as those that are found in the domain of meteorology, and to provide a foundation on which a number of expressive queries can be used to build.
