spring has sprung!

lets do a meditation exercise. find a quiet spot. close your eyes. imagine you're in the mid-suburbs of an australian city. it's 10pm. the air is crisp enough that you need to a light jacket, but not so cold that you can't smell the jasmine tree three houses over. you're getting out of your piece of shit 1999 toyota starlet. you got too busy writing an unbelievably massive blogpost that you forgot to get something out of the fridge for dinner, and you have turned this dilemma to your advantage by using it as an excuse to try out kfc's sweet tokyo burger box. it is not very good. you will use the combined power of three chicken thighs, a hawaiian roll, a medium sized potato and a mountain dew to blog for another three hours.

(that was a bit of a silly bit but going outside at night right now is actually so so nice)

hello! i've had an absolutely crazy two months and keep getting torn away from my computer screen in favour of something more outside flavoured. i'm reaping all the rewards of this time of the year in the southern hemisphere - walking and riding outside is super lovely both temperature-wise and sense-wise. i suspect that the increase in sunlight is partly to blame for my improved mood as well. both my partner and i had birthdays since the last blogpost and we had a cute joint party with a load of our friends!

it feels like my relationship has really hit its stride this last couple of months. the birthday party is a good example because we were on the same page about most of the things that we wanted to do and the whole process was incredibly painless. i've started to really unlearn some of the weird fears i acquired from my last relationship, which took a while but is making me feel like way less of a lunatic. i've been riding the high of getting past the initial dating uncertainty and feeling like our lives really gel now. it's awesome! it's fucking awesome!

laser and electro

_{my body hair endgoal, fyi}

i've done quite a lot of laser hair removal over the last couple of years, but since my facial hair is still quite stubborn i've been getting electrolysis for four or five months. for those unaware, while laser lets you hit an area the size of a 20 cent piece with a single flash, electrolysis goes hair by hair, and each hair takes about 5 seconds to fully scorch. it can be unbelievably painful, and because there are far fewer techs trained to use the machines, it also costs a tidy premium. on the other hand, it is (per my research) the only technique that can properly permanently remove hairs due to it burning the absolute shit out of the individual hair follicle. i've been trucking along with this painful and slow process and it may in fact be wearing me down. the results are slow (i've had eight sessions and only the absolute point of my chin is now hair-free) and the impact on my already suffering bank account is pretty noticeable. comparatively, i can get a package deal on laser hair removal which gets prices down to around 30 bucks a month, and the sessions are short and significantly less painful.

i'm not necessarily going anywhere with this, but i thought someone else considering the same treatment might appreciate the insight. it kind of feels like my conclusion after fixing up the ceiling of my last apartment - can you do this? yes! should you do this? maybe just consider the whole picture first lol

video games

i feel like i've played almost nothing all year, and then september hit me with an absolute barrage of new stuff and it's thrown my schedule on its head

cloverpit

this one is very reminiscent of balatro, with a bit more of a focus on chance (and controlling it) than its contemporaries. it also has a (light) progression and (light) story and (light) lore. like with all these games its a great time to spend a couple of hours figuring out all of the weird strategies, but i did lose a bit interest after i got the "true" ending for the first time. still! it's got an awesome aesthetic and a very spooky general vibe that i found quite effective

skate. (aka skate 4)

this one also kind of came out of nowhere - i wasnt initially interested because of the awful free to play stink that's smeared across it, but compared to the rest of the industry skate 4 actually handles the money side fairly well - there are lootboxes but the randomness is minimised and you cant waste money on duplicates, and paying doesn’t seem to influence the gameplay in any way. which is good! because the gameplay is very fun! i think you know the game is doing it right when i realised i'd just been skating around and practising tricks for an hour without any goals or directions. it just feels good! the music is also a really fun collection of tracks that fit the skater vibe immensely and i went and grabbed them after my first couple of sessions to listen to them more intentionally

super mario galaxy 1+2 on switch

i never played this one because i didn't have a wii when it came out, and i also skipped the super mario 3d all stars version because i heard some pretty negative reviews. i have always been intrigued by these games though, and i was slightly more confident this time after watching some trailer breakdowns showing the improvements that had been made for the switch (notably the texture upgrades, touch controls and other quality of life changes). in some ways i think we're kind of spoiled by the new breed of high speed movement 3d platformers, and heading back to something a bit more simple like galaxy feels pretty odd. the game is still really fun though - the concept is wildly unique and the settings and music are excellent. the difficulty seems to be balanced pretty well for an experience which is just "fun", which is fine by me

silksong

here's the big one baby!!! i played and finished hollow knight to quite a high percentage years ago, and while i do believe it to be an absolute masterwork and extremely fun, i never quite got that level of rabid fan begging for the new release. i think i was applying my normal mentality of "if a piece of art is really good, it doesn't need a sequel" and while i still stand by that, this is definitely one of those situations where they learned everything they could from the original and addressed every complaint and shortcoming. silksong's story is easier to approach, i like its characters more and its challenge feels more fair. there are more movement options and the game makes full use of it by continuing to open up the map as you learn new skills. its so fun to head back to an early game area, open a previously unopenable door and discover a whole hidden area with new (appropriately levelled) mysteries and challenge. the music and visuals are incredible as always, and you can tell that they've made the most of the development time to iterate them to a razor's edge. the same has also occurred for the gameplay in general which feels extremely well thought out, especially in the beginning where you have a more limited set of skills and are less likely to have got completely overpowered by finding hidden upgrades. its great! im having a load of fun, and its so cheap that you honestly should be too

albums

album cull

i've been doing not that much new music stuff the last couple of months, mostly because ive been trying to trim down my music library. there are just too many albums that i only sort of care for. i've gone through 233 of my collection of approximately 1100, and of them, close to half have been culled! it's really fucking slow going but i think it's going to give me a really good end result

i do still have some top albums though!

baby pop - france gall

[click here to load the youtube video]

i'm not going to lie to you about this one - i found about this album from the credits sequence of dragon pilot: hisone to masotan. the album is sort of exactly what it says on the tin: very upbeat and airy pop music from a single vocalist, but with a strange kind of sombre vibe to it. it's nice!

swagger - flogging molly

the pogues is a bit of a mainstay in my friendgroup, and i branched out a little while looking at celtic punk as a genre. i grabbed the mary wallopers self titled album and the meanest of times by dropkick murphys, but this one stood out for being the loudest and fastest of the bunch. it's a belter album, to use some australian parlance, and is definitely gonna be a roadtrip mainstay

downtime ep - dojo cuts

this one is a local australian funk band that came on the radio and my partner and i totally jived with. it's unbelievably groovy and great for throwing on in the kitchen with some drinks, although it is a little bit short

olympus pen ee-3

_{this isn't actually mine, but mine has my real human name on it so heres a stock image instead"}

i got this camera yonks ago! but i never actually developed the film until last month and i honestly made a huge mistake by waiting so long. the first nifty little features are its automatic exposure setting, meaning it runs battery free and without any fiddly settings. absolutely great for a point and shoot that i don't want to think about. the second interesting bit is that it's a half exposure camera, meaning that it gets two landscape shots for every portrait section on a piece of film. this has the dual benefit of doubling the number of shots you get per roll, but also pairing shots in these really cute doubles that can almost tell a little story if you're clever about it

pentax pc-330

after the success story that was the pen ee-3 i dug up my other old film camera that had been languishing in a box for years. the flash sets the pentax apart from the olympus, and i tend to bring both with me to events these days to be prepared for any light situation. it also takes excellent photos! i'm truly flabbergasted at just how good some hand me downs can be

knights of guinevere

[click here to load the youtube video]

i shamefully sort of like glitch's other well known project, the amazing digital circus, and now they've released the pilot for their first 2d animated series. and it looks really good! the story is pretty intriguing, i love the design in the titular guinevere, and the animation in general is really well executed. i'm curious to see if they can keep up this level of detail for an entire season. but i'm happy to find out!

stickers

i found a bright red sticker stuck to a traffic light when i was in melbourne in july, attached with a clever tearaway tab so i could still remove the backing and stick it on my laptop. further inspection revealed a url and a sign up form for a mail only sticker drop. i obviously signed up. i then thought very little of it for a couple of months

lo and behold an absolutely stuffed letter showed up in my mailbox in late october. there were a bunch of stickers, some artwork, a couple of magnets with my legal fucking name engraved in it, and a hand written note!

Hey REDACTED!
you have been the first stranger that
has signed up to the mailing list. Such
a surprise, thank you so much and for
the kind words I have included extra stickers
for you! I started this list to keep things
excitin when sharing my artwork. Hope
you enjoy the updates. keen to share more :)!

Welcome to the second official mailout!
Since the last update I have continued
work on the prouction. On the reverse
of this page is thefirst look into
the world of the band. if its not
FUN, WET, HEAVY or HOT we
reserve no place for it!
cant wait to share
more from
REDACTED
38 of 65

i have gone and anonymised the whole thing because im not certain how much they'd like a bunch of random international chucklenuts to apply to their mailing list out of nowhere, but i'm also going to send them some artwork back and ask whether they'd like me to keep gatekeeping the project, and if they want me to open it up i will

anyway! this was just super cool and i wanted to share it. it completely made my month!

nona the ninth

this one's been a long time coming! for those not in the loop, this is the third book in a series of four about a bunch of spacefaring necromancers in a far future feudal society. the world that tamsyn muir describes is vast and complicated and full of secrets, and its characters are written with so much depth and personality - i never question their decisions or interactions because they just feel so real to me! i finished harrow (book 2) earlier this year and borrowed my friend's copy of nona. while its main gimmick is maybe not as good as harrow's it takes the very interesting angle of looking at the conflict of the series and its very complicated intricacies through the eyes of a (functional) child. it's really good! i'm super looking forward to the fourth and probably final book in the series, but we have absolutely no idea when that's coming out

post nona resources

i found this post super good for explaining the epilogue of the book because it is extremely confusing. spoilers! obviously

i've also started listening to this podcast now that i'm up to date and not at risk of spoilers. amy and mel are turbo nerds about this book series and have the whole thing committed to memory, so its a great experience for getting up to speed with some of the more obscure elements of the series. i've absolutely blasted through it and enjoy the two hosts dynamic immensely

epilogue

i had a bunch of dotpoints of miserable things i'd thought throughout the two months that i was going to dig into, but i'm just gonna summarise the more positive ones quickly. i've gotten a lot of value out of the saying that "it's everyone's first time on earth too" recently. not as a way of excusing bad behaviour, but to give your peers (and your parents, honestly) some grace when they do things you disagree with or mess up. it's really helpful in grounding yourself in the fact that most people are just trying their best with the information that's given to them. except the capitalist class! they're making life worse for the rest of the planet and have simply decided that their bank account is more important :)

i need to apply this grace to myself as well. i have felt like i've gone and made the wrong decisions a lot in the last little while despite trusting myself and taking in all the intel available to me, which is demoralising (i promise this isnt insidious by the way, but it is slightly dramatic. i've just been looking at the direction of my life as a whole)

i've also been exposed to quite a few online "witch hunts" on tumblr recently and they've been bumming me out. for ref, the people involved are definitely acting poorly! one is probably a pedophile and has a incest kink that seems less and less innocent the more they talk about it. but the more other people talk about it, the less productive it seems and the more it feels like just more gossip and entertainment. i dont know how you deal with these kinds of people in your online spaces, but this doesnt seem like it

ive also been thinking about my life philosophy of always exploring new things and new places. the note i wrote was "make sure to cut through the park and find out what the other side of the rainwater tank looks like" because i did just that in a park while cycling home one day and found some cool graffiti. neat!

and finally, i have a bunch of other posts in the works that are all half finished. i've fallen into a horrid rabbithole for automating linux colour scheming, i have a post about bitmap fonts i like, and i have two recipes almost ready to go. keep an eye out!