Latest Posts
Covid Quarantine Knitting
I honestly thought I might dodge covid forever and become some rare test subject in a future study to create a vaccine for covid-25 or something. I didn’t though, so now I’m going through a year’s worth of tissues in a week and knitting in bed for seven days until I meet the Japanese guidance for leaving self-isolation.
Bucket List Progress: Bike Shimanami Kaido
I am thoroughly exhausted from two back-to-back trips (Hong Kong & Shimanami Kaido) with the future in-laws, but I can’t retire the tour guide hat since my own family has just arrived in Japan too. It’s a wild coincidence to have both our families here at the same time, and my partner and I are trying to load balance hosting and logistics as best we can. I marvel at her patience.
Year of Self-Respect
To minimize saddle soreness during a two-day bike trip in two weeks, I started practicing long rides on an indoor bike today. It feels strange to prepare so responsibly, but I’m really proud of how I’m trying my best to live in alignment with my theme for this year: self-respect.
Website and Mental Health Progress
CW: Mental health (bipolar and ADHD, but mostly positive/getting help)
2023 Resolutions
Congratulations to us for making it to yet another year! Before I get into what I’m doing in 2023, I wanted to note a few realizations I had about 2022 when I filled out my YearCompass:
Salads for Adult Consumption
I’m nearly 30 and, although I can whip up cooked meals with ease and confidence, I have nearly zero intuition when it comes to making a satisfying leafy salad. As a vegan, I’ve been subjected to many a sad, cold salad as the only vegan option at a restaurant, which has led me to kind of resent them, honestly. However, when I eat a lot of veggies, my skin is clearer, and I don’t get acid reflux before sleeping, so I’m going to try to take care of myself by learning “salad theory”.
A Guide to Virtual Pixel Art Pet Sites
Over the past four weeks, I’ve been having a ton of fun waking up each morning like it’s Christmas day, eager to see which of my eggs have hatched and which have grown into their adult forms on my Hatchery page. Given how much serotonin I’ve gotten from these pixel pets, I wanted to write up a summary of the different sites with tips I wish I knew before starting (and accidentally killing four dragons RIP 😭) in case anyone else wants to get started too.
The Joy of Hatching Virtual Pets
I have never stopped loving the magic of adopting a virtual pixel egg and waiting for it to hatch into something glorious. They’re like a much more visually detailed tamagochi without the accidental neglect and disappointingly unpredictable lifespan. I’ve recently signed up to adopt these hatchable pixels at several sites and created my own hatchery page. I wanted to share the list of virtual pet sites I came across with brief reviews in case you want to sign up too!
My First Week Developing on Neocities
The first week of working on this site was the biggest serotonin boost and fit of personal passion/interest/inspiration I’ve had since I started streaming on Twitch at the start of the year. I found it hard to even sleep then because I was so excited to work on it in every spare moment. I wish someone had told me that if I was feeling unenthusiastic about everything, I should go back to whatever sparked wonder for me as a kid.
How to Write a Blog Comfortably with an SSG
If you’re reading this, it means that I’ve figured out an ideal blog writing and publishing experience for Neocities.
A Guide to Setting up Jekyll for Complete Beginners
Building this website has been both extremely empowering and humbling at the same time. I have a kanban board of ideas for what I want to tackle next (mostly behind the scenes stuff), but I’m often far beyond the limit of my current technical literacy. Without ever taking a single programming class, I often find myself unable to describe what it is that I want to create for my website in a way that triggers the right keywords of my web search for documentation, and it can get frustrating, but the payoff when things work just the way I want them to is so worth.