Blog
2023
25 December, 2023
Some highlights on this year
Book
Man Without Qualities by Robert Musil
The book about everything, that I finally finished this year. It's hard to believe any other writing could ever top this, it just covers too well the modern human soul.
There was also an amusing experience out of reading "7 Principles for Make Marriage Work" and "I Hate You - Don't Leave Me" concurrently, where the latter is about Borderline Personality Disorder. The books ran a lot of parallels on the emotive/reactive nature of hurt people, and offered similar solutions.
Movie
Puss in Boots: The Last Wish
Cute movie about dying. Also enjoyed "Elemental" as my weakness is the Romeo-Juliet template
Game
Lethal Company
A low-pressure voice-chat social game where you can be matched with funny people. Wish more of these games existed - specifically ones which don't focus on long-range weapons.
Song
遠郷タワー by MOROHA
Spotify Link
On the radio one day, the theme was "stories about moving from the country, to the city". They played this song. The lines and delivery are very emotive, speaking of being a disappointment to parents, being too poor, the dread of returning home as a failure. My favorite line is (translation attempt): "At the grocers, I grab you; the item with the half-price sticker. We will go home together as two undesirables".
Manga
Skip and Loafer
Though it looks like a typical highschool romance/drama, I would describe it as an anti-trope soul-melter. While the wholesome moods resembles Oremonogatari, the drama aspect goes over the difference between the genuine warmth and "courage" that people from the country tend to be imbued with (the girl), compared to the cynical, self-preserving nature of city personalities (the boy).
Software
Obsidian
I had tried Standard Notes, Confluence, Notion, Evernote, and some other note-taking software, all of which you can hear the tortured cries of your CPU, being forced to process Javascript code enough to get a man to the moon and back 500,000 times. I was later introduced to Obsidian, which is an offline desktop application. It works great, and is probably only equivalent to getting said man to the moon and back about 400 times, so my CPU is able to tend to more important matters, such as providing Discord with a full list of running software on your computer every 10 seconds. At the moment I've been Obsidian mainly for the project titled "Make my home look less like a dungeon cell".
-
This year was pretty awful, this year was pretty great
Maybe next year can be more mellow
I still got to learn of lots of things, spend lots of time on various uncharted lands (I barely made it out alive, I tell you), and output interesting forms based on those experiences.
Good luck on next year, everyone
animated by astronaut friend
vault and pierce
11 December, 2023
schedule books
7 December, 2023
Hello
As I am under the time capsule roof, I got to go through my past years' schedule books, dating back to 2014
Since the schedule books weren't written for outside viewing they are at times a little unhinged
I'm not sure if they're representative of me as a whole; hopefully not
I will have to ask
My favorite brands were Moleskin and Hobonichi, which I currently use
The preferred format is week-per-page with some space to write notes
Pens used: 0.28mm black ballpoint
Red ink is usually used for dreams
Here are the schedule books -
And below are some pages from each year which make me look the least bad probably maybe
2014
2015
Portal was an internet cafe I used to frequent
It was a nice time
2016
Recurring themes: Food intake management
2017
2018
2019
Doodle of unknown intentions: SCP buddie walking his dog, holding a poop bag because he is a good citizen
Notes for the Club Penguin Not game, and planning for Fishing With Cat
Trip to Melbourne
2020
So there was a game, called Dungeon, and I can't find where it is from
The notes for the game are on the bottom right
The terms return 0 results
I'll have to ask conq but he's moved on to The Overworld
2021
2021 was split between freeform paper and a medium-sized desk calendar
I'll upload the desk calendar pics in February since I don't have access to my Place right now
2022
This will also be uploaded in Feb
2023
Fun with stickers
Common Themes
Some common themes seen through out the years are:
- Diet
- Time management
- Identity management
Many weeks would be peppered with trying to micromanage what the diet should be
Not sure if it has a positive effect;
It's probably 50-50 of peple in deathbeds wishing they either worried more or worried less
Even more frequently were strict, often hourly, timetables created to ensure I Got The Most Done (i.e. felt the least ashamed due to heavily associating self-worth with output (for the record, I hold no regrets (that may be because I am still like this)))
The two above are the simplest friendlier ones
I do not think I want to post the 30+ other table-style timetables it is pretty shameful
I suppose I should already be feeling enough shame with every other aspect of this post
With identity, I was under controlled intentions (obsessed) with shaping my identity in a way I thought was superior
It also had to be painfully tangible
Usually it wasn't good enough to have one identity so I would make a three-identity being within myself multiple times a year, often one for online presence/programming, one for creative, and one for real life
They were not allowed to touch since that would diminish the value of each other
Pretty funny
Some might say this is a horrible way to live, that everyone should accept themselves for who they are, fill their life with warm comfortable painless things, et cetera, but I think that's an awfully wasteful way to spend your 20s
Going through the constant process of Never Being Good Enough pushes you to actually try, act, learn, experience new things
(Important note: The attitude of Never Being Good Enough should lean towards "-and I can do better for myself", and not "-and that's because I suck and can't do anything")
And with new things comes growth of your wisdom and understanding of yourself and your world
This process is not permanent - eventually you reach a point where you're Good Enough. Or you kill yourself. idk survivorship bias i guess
Previously I would create guidelines on diet, time and/or identity at least once a week, but these days I do not do any of them, as I have reached what I think is a decent version of myself
Took over 8 years, and maybe that's a lot longer than the time other people take (side note: I have not known anyone who does any of this), but I'm pretty happy with how things have ended up, and I don't really feel like I'll need to do any of it again, though it still sounds fun to do sometimes
schedule book good
material gain II
25 November, 2023
some pictures of how the clay objects ended up
shiba plate, cat plate and teppy painted
teppy excited for his time in The Chamber
close-up of cat plate with shiny coating
Painting small things, I've found, is quite the miserable experience, and I'd like to not do it again, but I find that the cat plate turned out pretty great, which means I will have to do it again.
and speaking of miserable, I've been away from my usual placeAndTime - where I'm on a different device, location, diet, climate, culture.
No, it's not that miserable, but it's a spacetime where I had catastrophically failed and had been rejected, so everything has a gloomy backdrop.
But that's an optional dramatic view that I am attaching onto things; currently, as a tourist, these things shouldn't be of any concern, and I should just enjoy the eery utopia-like attributes of this land while enjoying its food.
what I wanted to actually say, though, was that I think it's good to live away from everything you're used to sometimes. How fickle is your mind? How much of a comfort-reliant person are you? Does it stress you out not to have something, or not be somewhere? Are you technically prepared to support yourself (work) if your house happens to suddenly explode and you don't have all the things you're used to having?
i miss everything :boohoo:
teppy looked better matte
material gain
13 November, 2023
hello
I have a [ ] habit of seeing something and thinking "that is cool, i think I can do that too."
so after seeing some cool pottery/claywork at a crafts event, I decided to give it a try.
(it is very hard. nothing ends up being shaped the way you want it to. your body does not move in the way you want it to. nothing is right in this world)
when I went to the plastic anime robot store they only sold air-dry fibrous clay, which I recommend against because they are very notflexible.
This was one of the first I got to make, of a cute Steam emote I used to use a lot
I think it turned out really well despite his bumpiness
but we're all bumpy so it's ok
The most recent air-dry piece was of an astronaut friend.
here is the drawing of them in 2020
the shoes are pretty dumb I don't know what I was thinking
and the model turned out like this
nice
I then was able to get the clay I intended to get, which was oven-bake clay.
despite being cheaper this was much easier to work with, like when you're trying to made mudball dinners in the playground
so i made TEPPY!!
tebbyeee
here they are 1 day after drying - I was concerned they would crack on the outside, or droop from the forces applied to it by nature, but they were in such high spirits still.
if only we could be so strong.
on the left is crow plush in a scrungled form after being hugged by my uncle
the reason I got started with all of this was because I wanted to make little plates.
a friend said they would find a small plate useful to put keys on to stop it from scratching their tabletop
they probably don't even remember saying that anymore
but I WILL make them enjoy this.
all acquaintances in my vicinity will be getting plates whether they like it or not
ink slave notes
9 November, 2023
some footnotes to go with the inktober entries
- sacrifice our time and energy for money and sacrifice money to avert pain
- the cyber space is such a nice place to hide
- would be nice if a warm thing kept me company like a snow puff
- thought the accidental lighting was cool and gave an underwater feel
- what a grim prompt. i wish to be the mouse atop the pancakes
- words are powerful spells i think
- cute
- didn't like this one
- stir fry
- i recently started losing a lot of hair. it is not nice. the person keeps opening mail even if they know it's malicious
- i like rusty spoons
- it turns out the middle bit of flowers is a lot of tiny flowers and i did not know this
- a good journey calls for good food
- big fluffy things are lovely until they crush you
- posca cool drawing
- a prince with a million promises for the paranoid moth
- memories are like oil spill for your wings
- feeling overflow
- pretty sure it's the first time I've drawn leaves on a tree. turned out like a broccolli but that's ok. wahey!
- stay within furry arms
- me
- silly man
- maplestory
- they won't call you
- very proud of this one. palette found on notes page below :D
- influenced by my dear inktober friend hh
- this was forecast to be my least favorite but i ended up liking it. the gradients are unintentional. my pen ran out
- weech doctoer with golden kitchen rubber glove (midas)
- tidehunter is kind of eldritch yes?
- i see the future, you're not in it
- was going to have the two just hug and kiss but that was too unrealistic
drafts
other thoughts
I've always struggled with details, such as hair, leaves, and 50,000 hearts coming out of eye sockets, so throughout this challenge I tried putting in more time and patience towards these little things. I look forward to seeing how they change my future drawings.
Really struggled towards the end with 28 - 31. the creative stamina of these people is amazing
Ballpoint pens are underrated. I recommend drawing with them
think my favorite one is between leakage, iridescent, suffocation pancakes. though I also like rusty, memory and deception.
hard to say. i did a lot of foreign things so I'm mildly amused by a lot of them.
thank you very much for your patience
Legitimate Businessperson
29 September, 2023
teppy's sozai
Finished teppy's sozai website
It now has backgrounds, accent graphics, emotes and dividers
This tested my ability to be consistent
Which I am not
Below is the canvas of most things created for the site
man without qualities
Divine intervention has permitted me to finish this godforsaken novel after 2 years
It's a great book for people in all walks of life, whether they are a pondering their loneliness, considering infidelity, planning suicide, or desiring to kill their spouse.
The English translation was done well as it make syou question your own literacy, while thinking "There is no way an english-speaking potato would be able to come up with such expressions"
And while the book is fiction, a majority of it is pure philosophy
So together, the book makes you feel Very Stupid. Which is wonderful I highly recommend it
One thing that stood out was Musil's understanding of women and how they think or act, to a degree I've never seen in any works, even those by women.
It made me wonder whether he was exceptional, or that men and women were better connected back then (1930s). I think that's possible -
for there to have been a narrative shift over time to make the two groups further from each other.
isn't limited to gender either, I think it's been the case for race during our lifetime.
Fiction tells us comforting things albeit a 'little' unrealistic, and it would only take a few generations for the power creep of Fantasy to get to a point where people now consume enough fiction and it overtakes their consumption of real life. Real life hurts, so you consume fiction, and you become further from the world. the cycle continues
consume real people instead
also don't take any book recommendations from German people
metric
19 August, 2023
Have been enjoying making old-style layouts recently
Had forgotted to add the Teppy's Layouts page back to this website so it was added back yesterday
The cool thing was that I completely abandoned that site and came back to it a year later to find it has 90+ followers
Which I think is the highest metric I've received on anything online within the last 10 years
cool
Here's a layout completed yesterday, complete with marquee animations and iframes:
30
19 August, 2023
Turned 30 this month
Got to experience a very full day including cake with family, Comiket, and meeting an online friend there for the first time
My other online friends (who unfortunately found out about my birthday) also wished me well, so that was nice. JD even made me a video which made me feel special and cared about
At Comiket I got to buy from my favorite genre, which is "girls who traveled overseas and wrote a short manga about it". They are so expressive and give you a good idea of what the author is insecure about, what they fear, how they react - you feel like you know them as a friend afterwards.
I really do like this genre, and italways makes me happy when there's a subculture of passionate girls confidently creating.
On turning 30,
I've done very well for my age for some aspects of life, seemingly in exchange for doing poorly in a specific areas of "human relations". Usually it's expected for women my age to have a partner and planning a child at this point, but I'm definitely nowhere near that
I'm still fluttering around on little crushes like a blissful teenager
But you know, I don't think that's so bad
In the end I have family and online friends who are always open to talking to me, and care about me
and I'm pretty happy with where I am;
Where I may spend less time working, to spend more time making things I want to, reading interesting things, spending time with interesting people, and eating delicious food, all in good mental and physical health
I don't think there's much more I could ask for.
Fate has been something of a best friend to me,
Always looking out for me and giving me great gifts as opportunities
It's easy for us to look elsewhere and think "but why don't I have this and that",
but I find it nice to be able to trust my best friend.
back
12 August, 2023
made this layout today and I really like it - it's really satisfying to make something that feels "you".
It basically took my whole day though, while watching Japan's speedrunning event RTA in Japan
I like the Japanese speedrunning events a lot more than the western ones, they're video games-focused where the westernevents are focused on ego and vanity.
For this site now the to-do would be:
- Friends page
- About page
- Favicon
- Link button
hmm
8 August, 2023
Site is back with a new layout, this time in the form of a HTML table. This automatically makes the site very cool.
I will try not to be too miserable this time but I cannot promise anything
In regards to the word finder game - I've been thinking of making it into a room/doll maker.
You complete words to get currency, and with the currency you buy from an unreasonably large selection of avatar and furniture items
site prompt
7 August, 2023
There's a recurring problem, or a non-problem, that I have, and I think many others do too, where you have an identity crisis for your website.
It doesn't feel right? It should do something different! It should show this and that. It should be all these cool things, forever.
Or "oh no, I made the site feel more like <aspect of self that I don't particularly like>, better nuke the entire site".
Previously I had an issue where I was being too personal with my blog posts, so that made me feel ashamed, and run away from it, to here on Neocities, where I'm mostly anonymous.
Now I want this site to be something more useful, and I've always loved sozai sites since I was a kid (also there's something about Japanese sozai sites specifically that feels so amazing), so I'm tempted to discard all the junk on here and start afresh as a proper sozai site with a whole bunch of useful and useless knick-knacks.
And then I'll need a second site to house all my drawings and software things.
The goofy thing is, I'll need the sozai site to blog about my personal things, while the site with all my personal projects will be kept somewhat stoic and formal.
Does that sound crazy?
Maybe
so the todo from this would be:
- Bring back my previous site by merging this site (without the blog) with the previous site's blog. There's 10 years worth of posts on the other one so I think it's a waste to let it go
- Convert my layouts neocities site into a sozai site
life prompt
5 August, 2023
The last few months I've been in a sort of strange limbo of "not doing much" - lots of daydreaming and reading.
Which for me is uncharacteristic, since I'm the type to be constantly working on something (my sense of self worth used to be (still is?) very unhealthily and strongly tied with the quality and quantity of my output)
There has been a general feeling of not wanting to do much, and not seeing the point in doing much.
So to shake that feeling off I'm going to get back to forcing myself to start working on something.
Easy things:
- Start an art account which is dedicated to DTIYS challenges and daily prompt challenges
This is an idea which wouldn't require any sense of direction, because you simply draw the target character
- Go back to crochet
But it's pretty boring
Hard things:
- Continue work on the word finder game
The "word finding" mechanic is done, but making it look nice is hard ):
- Start taking up oven-bake clay sculpting and painting as a hobby
Would require finding & purchasing materials
- "Just draw whatever you feel like!"
yeah rightttt
well
4 August, 2023
Though it was a soft rejection, the response was kind of positive
Wasn't expecting to be able to keep talking, and in a way it's a little worrying since I don't know if it would be a good idea for them
We're both worried about wasting each other's time
I think that's funny.
ε=ε=ε=(~￣▽￣)~
I don't seek it, but I often come across blogs of currently dying people, mainly of cancer.
I came across one today, a gentleman who has a wife of 15 years, where they are both prepared for the death in the coming weeks
He claims the most important things in life are human connections, which I agree with. And then he briefly went over some regrets about how he used to spend his time (too much social media and such)
One thing I like about my own life is that I have no regrets, despite having experienced many things, and making many life-changing decisions
I feel fortunate for that.
And a lot of time is usually spent interacting with other people
Despite this, I don't really have many long-term connections.
I think usually people have someone they can rely on, like a family member or a close friend.
I don't have such a thing, for some reason.
Maybe it's some subconscious decision I've made which has subtly affected all my actions.
mp3brain
3 August, 2023
I found myself sending him a 5.5-minute mp3 file of a confession to him
How horrific
I didn't want to send him a text essay, and I didn't want to make him uncomfortable by saying it to him in a voice chat, so I figured a voice recording would be ok
and I figured it would be ok because we don't talk that much anymore anyway
and so it should be ok if we stop talking completely? at least then I could get over them properly
I can only be happy that I'm in a position where I have the freedom to be able to express these things
Tune in next time for my emotional downfall
No I'm kidding I'll be ok
booke
2 August, 2023
Read a book today, "17 important things in your 20s" (20代にとって大切な17のこと) (I am technically still in my 20s so I rushed through it in time weheheh). I am a sucker for self-help books, they are like junk food to me
This one was decent; I was surprised about how often it mentions suicide, but I guess it is a Japanese book after all
One of the questions the book asked was, "What things did you enjoy when you were a child? What happened to those things as you got older?"
And that's a good question. Often times, "realistic" and "practical" thinking gets in the way of what we used to enjoy doing
For me, it was playing with flowers in a bucket of water outside on the sunny grass, and drawing without thinking about what looks good or bad. I'm not sure if it's possible to eliminate those thoughts once you have it, the realizations as you get older feels like having mixed paint into white, never to return to white again
Computer Science Page
31 July, 2023
The "Getting into Computer Science" page is now done
Hopefully it helps some people
Reformatted my PC today, as I do a few times a year
I think it's good to do this because if you stick to one instance too long, you may lose out on accounts and files, when you forget details or your drive dies
Which is probably one of my bigger fears, to lose my digital files（；´д｀）
Keep your files backed up, and make sure you actually remember your credentials to the accounts you use a lot
Bokura
29 July, 2023
Played Bokura with the person I like last night. It was a really great little puzzle/story game, and I recommend it strongly to those who want to have a shared experience with someone where the experience is actually completely different. It's hard to explain (everything is hard to explain to me), just try it.
Took me some weeks to get myself to ask them because I felt like I should be avoiding them rather than giving myself more reasons to stay attached. These days many hours are spent splitting my brain between "I should tell them" and "I did this to myself so I should just ride it out without inconveniencing them". I'll probably just hold onto it forever, however long that is.
Pretty happy with how fast I was able to get the Materials page up. I think I might tackling a new Computer Science section next.
Hope you're all having a nice day surrounded by kind, warm people.
Materials section
28 July, 2023
The materials section is now in! And also the guestbook. And also the about section with some past layouts.
I discovered that a Neocities site I made last year has 77 followers! Whaow :D
It's a layouts site of HTML iframe layouts I made for fun.
It's listed last in the materials page now.
Plans plans
26 July, 2023
Hi, a few ideas on what I could work next on the site -
- Materials: I already have some backgrounds, stickers, bullet point graphics, layouts that I could organize into a materials page
- (More) Materials: HTML/CSS guides
- "Computer Science": Informational area on getting into computer science - recommended roadmap, readings, trivia
- Games - A personal screenshot/review collection of games I've played
- Reads - Essays of mine and interesting reads from other websites
and a personal note:
Watched Pretty in Pink with Monkey today, and it easily is top 3 all time favorites for me.
Some aspects felt a little too spooky stalkery but I thought the human drama writing on all other aspects was so bittersweet and nuanced.
I also could not find a Neocities button/banner anywhere (the default one's kind of bland and not suited to the old-web style) so I just edited it a bit. Can see it on the sidebar now. It's jarring but I think it's funny.
Spaces in filenames on Neocities
25 July, 2023
In my day in recovery from a nightmare I figured out the issue with Neocities, WebDAV and filenames with spaces.
Neocities itself allows spaces in filenames - e.g. "img/my image.jpg"
But when you use WebDAV for upload, it replaces spaces with a "%20" - e.g. "img/my%20image.jpg"
And this makes partial sense because URL encoded space is "%20".
The issue is, when you try to visit the image on a browser, it does not work - visiting "img/my%20image.jpg" returns a 404.
It's because the filename has to be double-decoded for some silly reason.
That is to say, the "%" has to be decoded int "%25". So in the end the file name "img/my%2520image.jpg"
So I just had to replace all instances of image links with spaces in them using preg_replace_callback:
$body = preg_replace_callback('/<img (.*?)src="(.*?)"(.*?)>/', function ($matches) {
$matches[2] = str_replace(' ', '%2520', $matches[2]);
return '<a href="' . $matches[2] . '" target="_blank"><img ' . $matches[1] . ' src="' . $matches[2] . '"' . $matches[3] . '></a>';
}, $body);
goofy ahh
Hell World
24 July, 2023
Was finally able to get myself to carry out the tasks to get the site on Neocities.
- Gathering HTML files
- Paying for Neocities to get the WebDAV upload feature
- Installing Filezilla Pro to utilize WebDAV
I see now that spaces in filenames aren't treated as smoothly on Neocities, so there's a lot of broken images.
But I be tired, so I'll fix it laters
Todo:
- Fix spaces in image and file names somehow
- Guestbook
