Not really sure what things to write here and not to write here.  I feel like writing more is good for me, but sometimes writing less is good for others.

House is pretty much free of fleas now, so we did a great job vanquishing them.  There are still some outside in the yard but the inside is pretty much all clear except for the possibility of the one room that currently isn't being used.  Yay.

The fleece throw blanket that we put through the washer is doing just fine.  It probably shouldn't go through the washer again like that but after a bit of time it looked a lot better than when it first came out of the wash, and then I got a metal brush/comb (for pets) to help detangle the fibers as well, which seemed to help a bit.

Played MtG (in paper!) for the first time in gosh knows how long...I could feel my brain slowly melting, haha.  Games like alttpr are of course also very mentally demanding, but those are somehow less tiring, really.  I think it's because there's a good mix of on-the-fly thinking but also some sections which are just execution where your brain gets to relax a little more (though often your brain is still considering what the next "plan of action" should be in the meantime).  MtG is just....really tough.  Combat can be a nightmare to tease out sometimes and even more basic stuff like spell sequencing, I made some mistakes on.  On the plus side, I feel like even being rusty, I'm able to look at a somewhat complex board state and use heuristics to feel out what should be the right play without delving into every single possibility.  I think those sorts of "broad strokes" intuitions are super helpful, and being able to make value judgments in terms of trading resources.  Every action in MtG is really just a matter of trading resources (sometimes on-board resources, other times potential resources), so in the end the decisions just boil down to evaluating different resource exchanges against each other.

I've been working on an art project this month and it's nearing completion!  It's been really great to work on actually, doing art like this makes me feel happy and alive.  Unfortunately this also means I didn't managed to get around to the All in a Day's Work 5 cover (d'oh).  That'll have to be next...

Have not been doing so much in the physical exercise front, but getting back into it, with some DDR and such.  I took a stab at making the frankenstein-hacked soft pad better by replacing the super thin foam layer with something more sturdy, but in the end the thin crappy one worked better as it was more flexible.  So that was a bunch of hours basically wasted, though I did at least cut some extra holes and trim the thin crappy foam so it is better than when it started at least.  I also found the input debounce setting in Stepmania, which serves to combat jittery sensors, so that's great.  Still not a perfect pad of course, but I mean...there's a limit here.  Hard pads unfortunately are still not the easiest to get, would probably cost a few hundred dollars.  Not worth it at this point, though I'll have to revisit that decision come xmas maybe?  In the meantime I could serve to refresh my poi skills and especially my taichi forms, which I have been seriously neglecting.

Streamed another alttpr run today.  Ended up being on the slow side as it was an all dungeons required seed, so all the other times were pretty slow as well.  Given that, I did decently, though I had some execution flubs.  My routing felt ok, maybe I could have made better calls on where to go first, but I felt like the paths in which I routed my checks in general were just fine.

So the BBS that I found has a non-active game of Falcon's Eye going with one supernation and....that's it.  I started building up my nation but we'll see if the other guy just randomly decides to crush me or not (they spied me, but didn't attack....).  There's a game of LORD going, which seems to actually have players, but unfortunately the Ultimate Universe game seems to not even be setup to run correctly, as the daily maintenance doesn't seem to be running.  On the plus side, I took the time to figure out how to run the AI players written for UU (yes, the registered version has AI players!  amazing...), so now I've got my own local universe dimension set up all for me, and I can play at my own pace, with the 15 other AI players in the universe all doing their own thing.  So far I've set up my ship with some basic stuff, gotten a bunch of money through trading, paid off my federation debt, bought a bunch more devices, and have now created a planet and am trying to get that all established and running. :D

Having the urge to continue the Touhou 1CC challenges where I left off, which means trying to attempt Subterranean Animism on Hard...we'll see if/when I start that.

Social studies...it's hard to feel like just doing random stuff is really effective at this point, but something is better than nothing, I feel like.  I put in my daily effort today.  Someday I think it'll take some more concentrated efforts to feel like I'm doing the right thing, but that day is not today, nor is it tomorrow.

Also, I realized that I missed the Journey anniversary event this year.  I'm marking it on my bdays and dates calendar (march 13th) so I don't forget next time...

Awake at 4:30AM, typing up a blog post and eating a home cooked meal after working on an art project.....what more could I ask for, really?

Flea problem has mostly been solved, thankfully, after a bunch of hard work (and vacuuming...mostly vacuuming).  Life was honestly just sort of on hold while that whole situation was ongoing, so it's good to finally be able to sort of live again.

BLM stuff, which I'm really now beginning to refer to more generally as "Social Studies" took a pause as well, though it seems like I'm back at it again now.

Cooking has been going quite alright.  I tried making smashburgers and they were both fun to make and tasted great as well, will definitely do those again.  There's a couple other things I want to try sometime too, like I wonder if I could make a decent biryani/mansaf dish (slow-cooked lamb or chicken with yogurt sauce, and rice), or even some nice roti with a curry sauce.

I got hit by a random itch to play some games from the past, but this time not even SNES games, but BBS/door games, of all things.  I downloaded a telnet client and found a still-running BBS and made an account so that I can play some...amazing that people are still dedicated to running these things.  Funny because I've never actually played any of these BBS/door games on an ACTUAL bbs, I only played them locally on a single computer.  But hey, ~25 years after BBSes basically faded from existence is apparently not too late to get in on it.  Pretty amazing...

Have been doing some netplay here and there on the Slippi rollback build and it really bugs me how I =swear=, the slippi netplay build responds just a hair slower than the FM 5.9 build, even offline.  online, sure, I can understand, since you've gotta add the delay frames to account for latency.  But I don't really get why offline would be any different.  Maybe I'm just going crazy.  I tried measuring the latency with a hispeed camera and it seemed to show a difference there too, though maybe my sample size was small and I'm just going crazy.  Bleh.

Did another alttpr run tonight, getting what was a very good time for the seed despite some silly execution mistakes.  I'm getting better...just gotta keep practicing.

Niko

Never forget.

What is healthy to say is not always what is healthy for others to hear.  But there are no strict rules about that here on this blog, so here we are...

We're on day 2 of battle against a flea infestation here on our house.  The original source has been presumably dealt with, but we've now gotta handle the aftermath of fleas in various areas of the house, which basically has meant lots of spraying, laundry, and vacuuming.  We've made progress, but there's definitely still a battle ahead.  I've never been so excited to vacuum the floor before......

So yeah that has been occupying the bulk of my time and mental energy lately.  Though somehow I am still managing to get other things done, like my monthly pixel album artwork.  I have definitely been suffering from a handful of bites, but thankfully don't seem to be reacting too intensely, which is good.  In other words, most of the damage is mental -_-.  Tomorrow's menu is gonna be yet more vacuuming...at this point I'm basically set on vacuuming daily until there's reason not to.  It's annoying, emotionally, not being able to have a place that you know is safe, besides in the middle of a shower I guess.  On a more rational level you just kind of have to accept that you're gonna have some on you at some point biting you, there's no real escaping it, but still there's a part of your brain that just gets really paranoid.  Not that a single flea bite is super gross or unpleasant physically, but just the idea of something on you that is actively making the problem worse, and potentially contributing to spreading the infestation around, ends up making you really anxious.  So I guess right now it's mostly just an exercise of trusting in the process and the results.

Unfortunately have a nice synthetic fleece blanket that is a casualty of the battle, as it got washed in too-warm-water and is now no longer soft like before.  Regret...

Not really sure what else there is to be said.  I've been hanging on in there with social studies homework from time to time -- watched a full documentary yesterday while trying to hole up from the fleas.  Other than that.....yeah, really not much else.  When you're thrown into hardship like this you basically just focus on wanting to get out of the woods.  It's hard to stop and smell the roses with bees buzzing around you.

Sometimes you just keep pushing yourself forward even when you're tired, because you shut your brain off and just jam the controls so you can keep on working...

Got one thing done and now it's time to move onto the next.  Unfortunately, we seem to have gotten a flea infestation, so....that is also sinking up a lot of time.  And energy.  And that makes me a *sad camper*.  So *frumple*.  They are having the *GO! GO!* and there is *juice squeezing*

If I could, I would apologize to every one of them.  Even the ones that no longer matter to me.  But I can't.  Those mistakes...I'll carry them within myself forever.  They are my burden to bear, and no one shall absolve me of these sins.  Because the past is not something I can simply discard on the side of the road.  Maybe you can, but not I.

Just because it's a new month doesn't mean that BLM is over.  I hope you signed up for social studies with the intention of spending more than 3 weeks on it.

Seiken Densetsu 3 Thoughts / etc.

Checking Facebook now is the equivalent of scraping the bottom of the barrel for content...I feel like there are just so many better places I can go now if I'm looking for something to consume.  It's starting to feel like a lost cause.

After some experience with the rollback netcode on Slippi, I feel like I'm in this interesting place where yeah, it's just fine, but honestly even though it emulates the amount of lag on a CRT, it's MORE laggy than I'm used to since I've been on the "Faster Melee is the wave of the future, let's play with as little latency as possible" train since day one.  So I'm actually having to get used to the increased lag.  I suppose this is, ironically, perhaps why Melee is so uniquely positioned as a fighting game, to be adapted to netplay -- because the entire playerbase has been used to playing with latency from the get-go, so having that supported via netplay is arguably a lot easier.  Funny how these things work...

Lots of writing to catch up on this weekend.  I haven't even started on the Letters to Strangers project -- we'll see if I manage to get to that, but I have a bunch of other stuff to take care of first.  Besides writing, there's a bunch of other stuff to get done -- I need to put out a 64-bit apk for Watch for Falling Rocks (which unfortunately needs to be published under a different app ID), and then get the Spanish localization for Goodnight Meowmie out, among other things.

Finally got to the final boss in Dark Souls 1 -- seems like it'll be a hard fight (?) that will take a bunch of practice and getting used to, but that is perhaps fitting to cap off the Dark Souls experience.  I haven't attempted it that much, so we'll see how it goes.

ALTTPR weekly runs continue -- I felt pretty bad about my routing last week but somehow ended up with the 5th fastest time.  Guess I got bailed out by luck.  Will probably do my weekly run for this week tomorrow?

Been doing a lot of self-reflection lately.  It's been a struggle to not just identify things that I'm dissatisfied with in my life but also to identify ways in which I can start to change them yet still remain comfortable with myself as a person.

We finished up Seiken Densetsu 3 (modded with the Sin of Mana mod, on "Normal" difficulty).  Mod or not, I honestly feel like SD3 was somehow a worse game than SD2/SoM.

There's a ton more content for sure.  The graphics in particular are really defining of what can be achieved with the SNES style in certain areas.  Just look at how much detail is crammed into the background here:

To top that off there's even a night/day cycle, so you get changing palettes on the map.  But like a lot of other elements in SD3, this ends up being "cool" without really....actually adding much to the experience.  Someone had to put in all the effort to program this day/night cycle, spawn different enemies on each map depending on the time of day, and then make the light/dark elements stronger or weaker as well as implement different dialogue for the inn, and...in the end if you took out that element completely, I don't really think it makes that much of a difference?

I feel like that pattern really occurs again and again in SD3, where there are a ton of things that felt like they just got added to the game without thinking about how they would result in an actual cohesive and fun experience.  Sometimes enemies drop "item seeds" that you can plant at flowerpot in an inn in order to receive a consumable of the corresponding class.  There's even a little animation that plays when the seed "sprouts".  But...this is functionally equivalent to having the enemy just drop the corresponding item directly, except you have some minor inconvenience of having to wait for this animation...?

And you see this time and time again in SD3, I feel like.  When you enter battle, the characters have a special animation for "taking out their weapons".  Which looks kind of cool the first time it happens, but after a while it gets really old having a half-second delay on each screen.  Why was this necessary?  Combat got slow-paced compared to in SoM and even the spells all feel less satisfying to use.  Certainly the animations are a lot more impressive, but...they also simply take longer, which makes them less enjoyable to sit through, especially after the billionth time.  Again, more content, less enjoyment.

SD3 does do SOME things right, though.  Getting to pick a set of 3 characters and choose their "class progression" means that you can essentially pick your own formation of 3 character classes, each with their own tradeoffs and synergies.  (Of course, you have to basically look up all of the class info online ahead of time if you want to actually make any meaningful decisions...)  This kind of customization is great in an RPG.

The author of the Sin of Mana patch did their best to at least add some sort of interesting gameplay into the mix as well (sidegraded equipment with varying effects instead of strict upgrades, boss battle "gimmicks"), but in the end there I think there are too many core issues to really be redeemed.  You might think that it's a good thing that you can carry up to 20 of each type of consumable now (up from 4) but that just now means that all of the boss fights now need to be balanced with that in mind, which is...problematic, at best.

To make matters worse a lot of the fun aspects of SoM were thrown out the window.  Charge attacks in battle?  Gone.  Wide selection of weapons to use?  Gone.  In the end a whole bunch was added but the important things seem to have been left by the wayside.  Even the music isn't as recognizable and memorable, though I admit that I appreciate the attempt at weaving in themes from SoM into the soundtrack.  But whereas many of the tracks from SoM are very strongly recognizable and make a strong impression ("A Wish" is an outstanding example of this), I don't really remember a single track from SD3.

It does look like the Trials of Mana remake of this game looks a bit better, adding some actual skill to the battle system (you have to dodge attacks in the 3d world) and some added character customization that seems like a more rewarding experience, though multiplayer isn't available for that remake.

But yeah, it definitely didn't live up to the hype.  Perhaps playing with the Sin of Mana patch was a mistake as maybe this game would just be more enjoyable as a dumb "just attack things and kill them" game without as much strategy, but even then I feel like SoM would probably do a better job?

Adulthood

You know you're an adult when everyone starts telling you what to do instead of telling you what not to do.

I have grown, so much, perhaps even realizing it.  In ways that I both accept, and don't accept.  Where I am today is not where I am destined to be.  I will never truly be at that place.  It is a futile endeavor.  But still we struggle, because that is what gives life meaning.  Life, itself, is futile.  But we still try.  So believe in yourself.  Even when your cause is hopeless, believe in yourself.

3 Nen a Gumi (Mr. Hiiragi's Homeroom)

I recently finished watching this 10-episode JDrama called "3 Nen a Gumi", also known as "Mr. Hiiragi's Homeroom".  The plot synopsis of this show is given as:

With graduation 10 days away, homeroom teacher Hiiragi gathered all 29 students of class 3-A and proclaims them his hostages. His last lesson regards the death of a student that passed away a few months before. Nobody will be able to graduate until the truth is known.

In the following writing there will be some rough spoilers of what this movie is "about", but no spoilers to actual plotline events or potential "twists" that happen.  I feel like if you are going to watch this movie, it's probably because you know what it's about anyways, so I don't feel like I'm spoiling much at all.

Although I wrote this off at first thinking that it was just some strange over-the-top anime about a crazy teacher and some sort of murder mystery, I looked into it a little more and was intrigued when I saw that it tries to focus around themes such as social media, cyberbullying, and most of all the accountability of us individuals as human beings to each other.  So yeah, I decided to watch it.

I hate that I feel like I have to keep on giving this disclaimer about like every piece of art that I talk about, but 3 Nen a Gumi is (like most other works of art) not what I would call a "perfect" show, and it's not for everyone.  Its plot is not the most realistic to be sure, and you may not appreciate the way that it tries to work in its particular flavor of comedic relief.  If you are the kind of person who would write off a show entirely for having something resembling a deus ex machina situation, then this might not be the show for you.  You may even view it as being too "preachy" (as the netizens in the actual show do).

But I quite enjoyed watching it, for its willingness to unapologetically confront issues of social responsibility and (to a much lesser extent) mental health.  The main actor, Suda Masaki, who has performed a number of other roles too (Princess Jellyfish, Kamen Rider, etc.) has a stellar performance here as well.

The core message of 3 Nen a Gumi is not really anything too novel and when watered and boiled down, essentially amounts to "please carefully consider your actions.  Be a good person".  But it is one thing to hear this abstract textbook advice and quite another thing to have the consequences illustrated to you and explained to you in such a compelling fashion.  In this way Hiiragi-sensei serves not only as a "teacher" figure in the context of the plot but also in the real world as well.

Hiiragi-sensei's "lectures" and teachings were quite powerful at times to me and inspired me to want to consider in what forms I would like to act when interacting with other people in online public spaces, if not in general.

This message I feel is....well, actually, you could point to any number of time periods in recent history where this is relevant.  But the current climate of social media sticks out in my mind as a time in which this story is particularly relevant to keep in mind.  The FGC (fighting game community) is currently a wreck as multitudes of allegations of sexual misconduct, abuse, and harassment have surfaced against many well-known figures, and yes, we've seen this before (think about a very closely related community....an "industry" if you will, that has had all-too-similar events).  Not to mention the general political climate and abundance of what I will call "strong voices" on our communal internet spaces.  Finally, the disturbing abundance of clearly fake and/or fabricated videos, images, and evidence that is being used to rile up "internet keyboard warriors" who don't know better and are more than eager to pick up a pitchfork and jump onto a bandwagon.

In today's world most of our interactions with other people ARE through online spaces, simply through lack of other safe options.  2020 has not been a particularly kind year to many people, and you can clearly feel how there is a climate online where people are a bit...how do I put it, "on edge", or even (and I apologize for using this phrase) "trigger-happy".

When fingers are so easily pointed and herd mentality becomes an overwhelming factor in affecting people's lives, it is important that we act not as children, but as responsible human beings.  We SHOULD know better.  We must think critically.  We must do our homework.  We must consider our consequences.

"LET'S THINK."

If nothing else, this was one of the most engaging and interesting "online classes" I have ever taken.  And sure, maybe the JDrama format is not for you.  Maybe this show is not for you.  But if you think you might enjoy it, I would recommend that you give it a watch.


EDIT: Literally during the time that it took me to type this post, a former teacher of mine reposted a statement from a fellow educator about how much vitriol, unfounded complaining, and childish yelling is being directed at teachers from parents because "distance learning is a disaster".  "Grocery clerks are working, why aren't you?" they said, as they preached these professional educators on how their jobs should be done.

Please.  Think a little more before speaking.  There are real, human beings, just like yourself, on the other side of the internet.  It's okay to disagree.  It's not okay to belittle, to disrespect, and to assume that because you have a voice that your opinion is the most important.