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_ __ ___ (_)_ __ (_) |__ | | ___ __ _
| '_ ` _ \| | '_ \| | '_ \| |/ _ \ / _` |
| | | | | | | | | | | |_) | | (_) | (_| | for stuff that I don't
|_| |_| |_|_|_| |_|_|_.__/|_|\___/ \__, | want to put excessive effort into
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I decided to have a miniblog for short thoughts. Contrast my main blog, although the entries there aren't that much longer.
I will upgrade miniblog entries to real blog ones, particularly if they end up being more than a few sentences; in that case, I will add a link to the main blog page from the miniblog entry.
Newer entries are higher. Just like the main blog page, if there are too many entries, I'll make a miniblog2.html, miniblog3.html, etc, and I'll mention that on the feed.
Miniblog entries aren't immediately placed into the feed, they'll be put in a digest feed entry whenever I feel like it (usually alongside another site update where I update the feed, and I will probably allow them to pile up a little so those following along via the feed have something more substantial to read through).
I still have some updates in the pipeline for the site... that I probably won't get to for a while. Most of my free time continues to be spent on learning Japanese, with me typing this being a quick break.
subs2srs and impd are really useful. I'm probably not using them the intended way - I don't have Japanese subs for a lot of stuff so I ended up throwing a bunch of audio+picture cards with English on the reverse side, and my setup for impd is pretty much just fighting the script the entire time since I want to put the files on my cheapo no-name mp3 player that doesn't support Opus (annoyed the files it generated had a .ogg extension since my player tried to open them and choked horribly as I tried to figure out how to turn the thing off - yes, it's an Ogg container, but fuck off).
I feel like I'm making progress, and I feel like it probably would be sustainable, but the whole AJATT thing sounds like a one-way ticket to burnout and genuinely feels like an aggressively hyper-brute force method taken as gospel, so I'm stuffing myself with as much Japanese as I can tolerate at a given time (lots) and letting myself have down time. The good news is that I am feeling a bit of withdrawal when I do stop, so I do in fact end up getting back to things.
I have a full blogpost on the way for this, I just have no idea whatsoever when I'll get around to editing and posting it. Mata ne!
Last day of the year!
I have a bunch of stuff written and drawn for the site and I probably won't get it uploaded until 2025 since it's like 1am and I really should be sleeping, and I'm gonna be doing shit later today instead of being home, lol. An awful lot of what I've written is stuck on my phone and I'd need to get it off since I wrote it while on break at work, and while adding to the gallery is very simple, it still involves some level of effort. I really should finish that article I was going to write about how any kind of friction gets in the way of even simple tasks... but there's a bit of friction there, lmao. I'll get to it. (´人｀)
I got back into seriously studying Japanese so most of my free time/idle noodling time outside of work has been replaced with Anki study or watching stuff in Japanese. No real loss, a lot of my time was purely wasted on YouTube. Dr. Slump is such a funny show. Hopefully, by New Year's 2027, I can reasonably say I know Japanese, even if only to a fairly basic level.
Thought of the day: big companies can survive stupid mistakes that would instantly destroy smaller organizations. Worse yet, they can thrive while in the midst of completely fucking up.
If someone ever wonders how a small company or an individual can out-do a multi-billion dollar corporation despite all the money the corporation can bring to bear upon a task, the latter is under constraints the former two aren't, while also being in a position where cause and effect for mistakes are too distant to really correlate. There is a reason why big companies find themselves hitting the trust thermocline - everything seems fine and the numbers keep going up, even while they're in the middle of completely fucking up... and then things reach a tipping point where everyone just leaves for someone else, anyone else.
I can't remember where I saw the specific post that had me thinking about this, but I guess the important thing is that I remembered to post about it.
I fucking hate seeing pictures with anti-AI filters used on them. I fully get why they are used, but they give me the same disgust to look at as seeing not-quite-right details in AI generated images.
Updating the site is relaxing. Sometimes it feels like work, but mostly it feels like when I'm posting on a board somewhere, but with much more control and permenance. Honestly, I probably should just replace some of my idle posting on imageboards and similar with site updates.
I am considering the merits of getting a Pi 500 or a used ThinkCentre to replace the Pi 4 sitting next to me. The Pi 500 would be a completely drop-in replacement and would save a fair bit of desk space as an all-in-one thing. The ThinkCentre would be vastly faster, but it isn't like I use the machine for anything intensive, it plays a grid of downloaded videos and music.
Honestly, I probably could just leave things as-is, although having a bit more processing headroom is always handy for cases when I can't actually use my main desktop that is right next to it.
Go Nagai's work is so fucking good... Violence Jack kicks so much ass. The fact that I can't go and buy a copy in English is some serious bullshit, this is one of the best manga I've ever read. I truly believe that Nagai's name belongs up there with Tezuka's.
Also, I have decided to add miniblog entries to the feed, but not immediately.
I'm messing about with a dumb idea with Toki Pona called Toki ne Pona that you can check out here. This is a rough draft.
It is a set of fully optional, fully removable prefix words you can use to make your Toki Pona statements more readable. Text should be convertable directly to grammatical Toki Pona by simply erasing the Toki ne Pona additions - it might not be that readable since it was written with the expectation that certain things were clarified, but it is designed to be both easy to learn and easy to ignore.
I had considered doing an "upgraded" version of the language, but honestly, fighting the tide of existing users and trying to push my changes is not something I feel like doing.
I'll add this to my Toki Pona page at some point (edit: done), and will write a full blog entry too. This would be a full blog entry, but I still need to work on it and make an HTML set of documentation for it.
(November 16th, 2024) - upgraded to a main blog entry.
Getting back into making music. Struggling (as expected), since it has been a long time since I've written anything. Have a listen (.mp3, Catbox) to what I'm doing this immediate second, a Zundamon song written in Toki Pona. It's a bit of a mess right now, hopefully I can clean it up nicely enough. I also hope (assuming I keep the line since it's very cheesy, it's basically "listen, this song can do good to all" semi-literally, it sounds much less dumb in Toki Pona than in English) that I remember to change "kalama musi ni" in "o kute e ni: kalama musi ni li ken pona e jan ali" to "kalama musi mi".
At some point I will add a Toki Pona page to this site. I'd like to think I'm skilled with it, but I don't go to the big Toki Pona Discord since I don't use Discord (among other reasons), so I know I'm not well practiced beyond shouting "ko jaki soweli" (horseshit, dogshit, some kind of animal shit) when I see something dumb at work. I'll probably upgrade this entry when I finish the song.
The Maho Girls Precure sequel is in 2 months! I'm so excited. I should probably re-watch Maho, honestly. If it's anything like the Yes 5 sequel, I probably won't need to rewatch, but I feel like I should.
There's a trailer on YouTube.
I'm still a bit surprised they're even doing a sequel for Maho.
I absolutely feel like I should program more, but I can't be bothered to do it. I really do want to make another game with m(vl)gl in particular. A lot of stuff in modern programming is absolutely a pain, which definitely influenced m(vl)gl's design a lot. I'll probably expand my feelings on this in a full entry, it's like 12:30am and I have a headache, lmao.
I need to practice drawing faces. I'm typing this so I actually remember to do it. A lot of my drawings just have a circle with two lines for eyes because it makes my life a lot easier, and I want to fix that.
Magical Fami is so good... I'm not too far from the end. I'll write a main blog entry when I'm done with it. It's so good...
It does lose some steam around the end in terms of keeping me hooked, but it's still just such a great love letter to the Doremi franchise.
(November 4th, 2024) - upgraded to a main blog entry.
Still reading a bunch of manga. The Mazinger manga was fun (at least, before the Great Mazinger portion). The scans I found were kinda crap and I'm certain there were chapters missing. I'm reading Mitsudomoe, it's really dumb, but kinda funny. Reading Bleach still, and I'm reading Yu Yu Hakusho as well.
I want to read Violence Jack, but apparently there's a big gap in which chapters are translated, unless I can read Italian. I need to go finish Devilman Lady (really, restart it from the top) since it kicks ass. I think I stopped entirely because the tab I was reading it in got closed for whatever reason, lmao.
Manga is great. I feel like anime takes too much of my limited free time to binge on, but I can read a bunch of manga and start and stop whenever. I tried watching anime in that fashion, starting and stopping whenever, but noticed I'd barely finish 2 episodes in a week, so I gave it up.
Still reading Judge Dredd. I'm on the Hell Trekkers storyline, and it kicks ass. I will probably write a full entry later.
It is admittedly a wagon journey west story like you've probably read before, but it has a very cool Judge Dredd universe flair to it due to the madness of the Cursed Earth: towns full of mutants, hordes of dinosaurs, great lakes of lava, radiation storms, the works. Very thrilling storyline.
[edit] Finished it, the ending is kinda lame. Fun ride, though. Probably won't write a full entry for this storyline in particular, I'll probably do one for what I think of where I am in Dredd overall. Just finished the City of the Damned storyline, which was pretty cool if not amazing.
Started my miniblog! Entries will be short, maybe terse, maybe clunky, who knows. Who cares, lol.
I want to play Pop'n Music properly, but I don't have a controller. I use my IIDX controller with its 8 keys. There's a "key 0" to the top-left of key 1 so I can rotate my controller around for P2 side play in IIDX. Scratch is Pop'n key 1, that extra "key 0" is Pop'n key 2, and then IIDX 1-7 are Pop'n 3-9.
Whenever Pop'n key 2 shows up in a song, I start messing up. I am now increasingly aware of how many Pop'n songs seem to focus on keys 3-9 like if they were charted for IIDX, lol.
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You might also want to check out my proper blog, which features somewhat longer (if still not long) articles.