Progress

I released a new long(ish)-form blog article

Please take a look at my latest single topic article, on understanding systems from different points of view, when you get the chance! I worked hard on this! It has been in draft form for more than 2 years -_- I’m glad I finally sat down and cleaned up my thoughts on this topic this week.

Airsonic

Possibly the last time I will write about Airsonic for a while, not because of any issues, but because of how well it is going. I haven’t finished sorting the few remaining albums which got mixed up or anything. Despite that, what is there is fantastic! It has just been so satisfying to have my music collection back again. Ultrasonic on Android has even allowed me to do offline listening in the car! In addition, I ran my first backup. So I feel like I’ve really made permanent progress in a way that I had not done with any previous attempt.

Site maintenance

Been struggling to figure out why rsync from my phone to my site started requiring a password. Turns out nearlyfreespeech.net just wouldn’t work with my old rsa key anymore. Creating a new Ed25519 key worked just fine! I spent like 3 hours on this -_- Next time hopefully I will search the FAQs FIRST.

Mini Painting

I finished two more goblins today and primed a third (by hand - it is too cold out for spray paint right now). I think writing about them here gave me the encouragement I needed to work on a couple more this weekend. 17 left to go!

For these two I used some new Army Painter Speed Paints, which was definitely interesting. I’m still so new to painting. So I’m not sure where to go from here or what to work on to improve. It was nice to go a little faster and looser with these fast paints.

Reading

Otherworldly Izakaya Nobu Volume 6 ended with foreshadowing for more serious plot developments. That’s ok I guess. Hopefully this doesn’t turn into a Genshiken situation, but I don’t think it is that kind of work. Not that there’s anything wrong with Genshiken per se (I don’t actually know tbh). This is just the comfiest slice of life and I would rather it stayed chill.

I finished Volume 3 of Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! which was pretty good. Although I think the black and white presentation, low print quality, and information density sometimes descends into an unparseable mess. It also feels like the first time in a while for me where there have been a lot of cultural references I don’t get. The translator’s notes in the back on Comitia and its differences from Comiket were illuminating. I had never even heard of Comitia before. I’ve been to US cons that allow fan art and ones that don’t and enjoyed the artist alleys in both. So this was a cool perspective!

I continued a bit of Kakuzo Okakura’s The Book of Tea. It is truly fascinating! I don’t have much more to say right now. I’m not sure if I will be able to collect my thoughts on this work into something cohesive even once it is done, but it has been a pleasure to read.

Flying Witch Volume 10 is on-deck. I’m absolutely looking forward to it!

Gaming

I have played so much Halo that I might be burning out on it. That’s something I want to try hard to avoid, but I also want to stick with it so I don’t lose my edge. I want to be able to play with skill when new content does finally drop. The gamefeel remains top notch. I suspect it will make its way to my top games list if my feelings don’t waver over the next year.

Meal Subscription

My girlfriend and I have signed up for Everyplate, which is the cheaper version of Hello Fresh (#not-sponsored, though you could have guessed that). If you are not familiar, this is a service that provides recipes and all the ingredients as a delivery box each week. So far we have done 2 weeks with 4 meals each. It has been better than I expected honestly.

Given that we’ve historically either microwaved everything or eaten restaurant food of some sort, this has been kind of a big time commitment. I was surprised to find that it is extremely fun to cut everything up and get it cooked. It probably helps that I’m reading Nobu right now. So I’m really in the mood to cut some veggies.

Of the 8 meals, we’ve only had 1 go really horribly (I burned the veggies to a crisp). I also learned the hard way how truly engrained my girlfriend’s hatred of cooked broccoli is. But overall the meals have been quite good! I don’t think we’re saving any money or anything, but the value is still there. I would definitely recommend!

Ukraine

I have worked very hard to escape the news over the last several years. I went so far as to put DNS bans in place on my home internet for several new sites. So I found out about the situation in Ukraine in a very weird sideways way.

I must admit that I acted inappropriately initially. I had no context and did not understand the gravity of the situation. I privately criticized someone for bringing up the situation in a tech topic specific chat room at work. With only what they said to go off of, it seemed like yet another instance of weird political talk in a setting where that is specifically banned. Things like that have happened many times previously in just my few years at this job (both with Trump era politics and interoffice politics). So I hope I can be forgiven for misunderstanding. I will be apologizing to the individuals I discussed the situation with when I return to work on Monday.

Putin’s attack on Ukraine is truly horrible, as is any war. I hope that the world can find a way to push back and maintain the freedom of the Ukrainian people with the least bloodshed possible.

With that being said, I will be doing my best to focus on things that I can control and enjoy, in general and on this site in particular. So I may not address other world events, even when posting in close proximity to their occurrences. That does NOT mean that I do not care. It simply means that I don’t want to talk about it. Please assume best intentions.

The Journey Continues

My last two weekly summaries came on Mondays because I had a holiday and then got sick the next weekend. Hopefully that doesn’t repeat this time. So I’ve written this on a Sunday instead. I’ll still not make any promises that this will continue, but it has been nice to get something up and out!

The world is only getting weirder. Make some time to make something. You will feel better if you do.