ENTRY 03: 09/23/2023 - Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger

BACK! BACK, FROM THE DEAD! Or so some might say. It’s been a hot minute since the last major site update, I’m well aware. Not to worry, I was merely gathering my power for this recent string of updates! See, I’d been worrying for quite some time about the future of this site with respect to the difficulty of updating the thing. As it was before now, I would have to update each page individually, given that many areas re-used code. That in itself wouldn’t be such a big deal if I kept the place nice and small, but I’ve got plans and schemes, y’know? Having a blog like this one means I’ll eventually have a lot of pages that need updating.

Thankfully, I’ve sorted that problem out quite nicely, thanks to a hot tip from my pal Crank. Once again, their wisdom proves invabuable to the continued existence of this web-crypt. Bless ye, I say. Anyway, having rebuilt my site on my end to use Jekyll, I can now utilize the power of layouts and templates to update this static webpage with reckless abandon! In practice, that basically means more updates, with less work involved. Heck, this post was written in Markdown! Markdown, I say! Ahem.

In other news, I’ve mostly been trying to keep to business as usual. A few neat, fun things have come up in the last while, though.

For example, one of my pals has been drumming up some impromptu writing events on our mutual online hangout space! We ended up writing some short stories, it was really fun! I was really impressed with what they were able to put out, but I was the only one able to finish within the mutually-set deadline. Mine was also the longest, incidentally. I might post it within the Fan Fiction section I plan to add to the site at some point, I’m pretty proud of how it turned out.

Writing with the pals has made it apparent how much I need some kind of silly little project to keep myself going, prior to and just after the writing event happened I was in quite a slump, socially and mentally. I tend to self-isolate in situations like that, and this was no exception, but during the thing I found myself interacting and enjoying spending time both working on the project and chatting with my pals about this, that, and the other thing.

This led me to a first for ol’ Cap’n Metalhead: joining a voice call with my friends. Historically, I’ve been extremely mic-shy until this point, trying to keep my voice off the web out of some misguided attempt to maintain some abstract definition of privacy held jointly by my social anxiety and my own self-loathing re: the sound of my own voice, but in the last few days I’ve thrown away this feeling in favor of the freedom to just speak directly to my friends in real-time. It’s been incredibly rewarding, as much as the social anxiety hasn’t exactly gone away. I still worry sometimes if I perhaps choose my words carelessly, or if I accidentally said something that might have made one of my pals feel less than good. Whether that ever stops isn’t really for me to know, but I strive to do right by my friends first and foremost, and I’ll just have to trust that, as long as I follow that as a goal, I’ll eventually navigate the thing.

So, that’s been really nice. It’s helped to offset the aforementioned slump conditions between projects quite a bit, in tandem with my recent spat of videogame playing. I’ve hopped onto two games recently that have been sitting in my backlog for quite some time, those games being Fallout: New Vegas and Final Fantasy III for the NES.

Both games have proven to be quite fun so far. I started on Fallout first, having owned a copy for many a long year. Quite the videogame, that. Historically, I’ve bounced off of it due to not approaching it with the right attitude and focused attention, but now I’m at least starting to get the hang of the roleplaying aspect of it, which has made the ensuing detailed post-apocalyptic simulation gameplay much more rewarding. Plus, it’s always fun to dig around in cabinets and populated establishments in search of junk and valuables to stealliberate.

For a completely different flavor of roleplaying game, I turned to Final Fantasy III. I’ve been meaning to give it a look ever since I learned what the Job System was, from reading through some of The Subspace Emissary’s Worlds Conquest by AuraChannelerChris. Legendary author, by the way, their achievments, while dubious to some, are above and beyond what I’ve been able to accomplish. But I digress. I find the Job System intriguing, and its inception originates with FF3. I’m playing it through a ROMhacked version, FF3 Maeson I believe it’s called, which took a bit of time to set up. I had to first apply the desired English translation patch to the original Japanese ROM, then apply several other patches to that afterwards, but now that that’s sorted I’ve been having a nice time. Great music, great visuals, and a fun, if a bit simple plot so far.

That’s pretty much been the scope of my recent endeavors up to this point, discounting various ephemera. Plans for the future include updating this site further, visiting a local convention in the beginning of October, and acquiring a Halloween costume prior to the holiday itself. That last item may fall through, as the Chinese seller of the costume I purchased is taking their sweet time putting it together. Had to order in a custom size, so I guess it’s to be expected. I dunno. I just hope it arrives at all.