June - August 2022

8/12/2022

Recently it seems like Neocities has been having issues with updating sites. Not just that, it seems like the internet connection in my area has become more faulty. It's definitely not disrupting my internet usage that much, but its been affecting me enough for me to have noticed it.

Every time something is wrong with Neocities, I've been fine just living with it, but now that I'm getting into the habit of primarily doing edits through Atom it's really changed things up for me. Atom isn't the best text editor out there, but it's the one that works for me. Which text editor I'm using doesn't really matter as long as it has live server support though.

For those who don't know what live server is, it's basically a feature that allows you to preview your site as you update it, similar to the thing CodePen offers except it can function offline. Just knowing that I can tweak my site offline to add to Neocities when I'm back online is enough to send buzz through my head, but using a dedicated text editor instead of the one that comes with Neocities has plenty of other benefits too.

I write a lot on here, obviously, and I try to enclose everything in paragraph tags because I think that helps with screen readers. Do I like writing every paragraph tag? No, and Atom has a feature to autocomplete paragraph tags (as well as divs, links, anything that gets repetitive really). Getting the file paths for images is easier, too. I have quite a number of folders on here to keep myself organized, though when editing through Neocities, that incidentally means a longer file path I have to remember. If I don't remember the file path, then its browsing through multiple pages dedicated to one folder after the other. On an editor like Atom, your files are displayed like a directory, making it easier to find your file at a glance (unless you're the kind of person whose eyes glaze over when they see a long list of items). Atom also has the added functionality of copy and pasting file paths. Just right click on the file you want to link to and select 'Copy project path'. Just make sure to insert a forward slash before you paste!

8/4/2022

I recently watched two different videos by Drew Gooden and Eddy Burback about a similar topic, which is 'relationship experts' and pick-up artists sharing their batshit insane methods. If you're smart you probably already know not to take relationship advice from these two demographics, but just now I'm able to put into words why the advice is shit.

For one, with these people, the advice they give seems straight-forward on paper but endlessly vague when you look deeper into it. As an easy example, in Eddy Burback's video on the matter, he covers a relationship expert who proclaims women can fix their broken relationships with just a kiss. Again, on paper that sounds really simple, but I don't think how exactly a kiss can fix your relationship is ever covered in the course. If you twist a man's tongue the right way, does that turn off the part of his brain that makes him an asshole or otherwise undesirable partner? Piss off. In my heart, I feel like this guy is sharing this advice knowing it won't work. If the kiss doesn't fix your clients' relationships, that's another opportunity to advertise your bogus course. I'm also not 100% sure how to articulate this, but the instructor of this course being a man also plays into the viewed legitmacy of the advice. The advice may seem ridiculous, but it's a man giving the course, so surely it will work, right? (Wrong, if you know what men want, it makes it even easier to lie, and thus further promote your product.)

Blegh, this isn't even to mention the relationship advice given to men, by men. Whereas the advice given to women by a man at least seems to come from a place of familiarity, hearing how some guys give advice for finding women is like listening to someone's advice on how to catch bigfoot — they just do not seem to know anything about how women work. Having seen more instances of this kind of advice instead of man-to-woman advice, the biggest issue here is that all the relationship advice given severely over-complicates everything and still manages to be vague. 'Womanese', 'sexual market value', 'having the right approaches', ffffffffuck off.

8/3/2022

Revisting my thoughts on Stray, as I've seen the full game now and I believe my initial look at it was... not entirely wrong, but not entirely the point either. The idea that the androids developed culture as a way to cope with the dystopic circumstances as intelligent beings is not entirely wrong, but it kinda paints a drab picture, where culture is just a 'tool' for survival. My new perspective comes from how the androids are actually referred to in-game: Companions. Companions were meant to live alongside humanity, and in their abscense the Companions carried on their legacy. It doesn't matter so much that humans as a species have disappeared, the Companions have grown to be human enough.

7/22/2022

It has been a new month for a while, and the 'new' demons are at this point, quite old. Unlike previous times I've updated the web blog, I'm not going to archive it every month. I'm not 100% sure how to explain it, but it seems like kind of a waste of space to have an entire page be dedicated to 3, or even just 1 post. With that, I'm probably gonna archive this set of posts once it reaches a sizable number, or if the page just gets too long.

I'm not here to talk solely about sitely things though! Recently, I watched a stream of my favorite Youtubers playing Stray, a game where you explore a seemingly post-apocalyptic world as a cat. Although humanity has seemingly been gone from the picture, they did leave behind a population of androids, who are the closest analogues to humanity in this setting. I feel like I always get this way when it comes to the depiction of sentient robots, but the depictions in Stray do make my brain itchy, and I must scratch.

A first is that the androids seem to take inspiration from and copy humanity. Stray is probably not the first piece of media to depict this kind of relationship between humanity and robots, but I feel it's more commonly the opposite of this dynamic we see. Androids have a lot of characterisitcs that help survival in a setting like Stray — lack of a need for clean air, food, good problem solving skills... but surviving isn't living! Regardless of what physical traits a race has, if it has intelligence on par with humans, it'll probably find just survivng incredibly hellish. What has helped humanity endure the toils of living has been culture, which I think the androids of Stray seek to replicate.

6/16/2022

Argh, lately I've been feeling frustrated with myself since I haven't really produced any art. I've been re-learning some proportions since I haven't been drawing too frequently, and at first I could get in at least a couple practices, but drawing a basic full-body even once now makes me feel mentally drained. I think ever since I graduated, the excess free-time I have has caused me to re-develop my 2020 quarantine syndromes.

I'm not sure what I'll be doing to help myself. Going outside would be the prime thing to look into, but at the same time I have no motivation to do so aside for health reasons. It's hot and humid, there's mosquitoes, and anywhere worth being is too far away without some sort of transportation that isn't my feet. For now, it might be good to take my art less seriously and in the very least just make something, and not worry about having it be polished.

6/10/2022

Ever since I got a new phone I've been playing a lot of Sky: Children of the Light. I've finished the game at least once, and even after I've finished the game is still a blast to play. I'm a little concerned about what will happen once I've collected all the regular spirits, but by then I guess Sky: CotL will be a game I'll play less regularly. Thinking about writing a review for it since I think even more people should play it!

6/1/2022

The internet is a graveyard, we all know that, but the special kind of grief I have encountering old interactions on the web will never lose its edge. Recently, I just remembered a roleplaying forum I stumbled upon whilst trying to set up the off-topic forums for the CoS wiki (it still is dead). What I'm surprised about is how this forum hasn't fallen apart due to aging, but that's probably due to the forum provider itself not dropping dead yet.

While this forum doesn't have many topics made, I think its clear that during this forum's usage it was well-loved, with some of the few topics having tens or hundreds of posts attached to it. Seeing some of the roleplays be intact is fun too, though they're not my cup of tea to actually read since I'm no longer 14. Speaking of which! One thing I remember about Forumotion is that if you choose to display your birthday on your profile, it will automatically update your age. Most, if not all of the users on this forum are now adults in their 20s, probably out there with a real job n' shit.

There's probably more I could learn by logging in, as that's the only way I can gain access to things like users' profiles, but something about that feels wrong. It would be like tampering with an ancient artifact, no?

Also, apparently the forum had a large viewing spike in 2021 (site states that "Most users ever online was 48 on 4/7/2021, 5:43 pm), 10 years after most of the forum's activity. Wonder what that was about?

New month, new demons (but now the demons are homosexual)

Aside from it being Pride month, I have some good news for myself: I'm finally getting a phone! Won't be using it for social media since my prescense nowadays is shite, but I will be able to take better pictures of my fish (very cute). Expect to see more pictures of them in the future >:D