13.11.24 "Pokémon Snap & bicep curls"
I've been playing a lot of New Pokémon Snap recently. It's kind of an empty game, not much goes on, but I'm enjoying drifting through the landscapes and violently throwing apples at all the Pokémon. This is my serene and beautiful dream.
I've also been attempting to lift weights lately. It feels unwieldy and alien to me, but I'm hooping to "get into it" for real. 5 sets of 5 reps of 20 pound bicep curls girl, I need this. I need the strong arms of a beast.
Most of my time, though, is spent on editing. I'm excited to see the big, chunky project I'm working on right now come to fruition. The biggest video of all time. I shall say no more. Back to work.
06.11.24 "Election - very bad"
I was woefully underprepared for how this US election would feel. Seeing Trump win again has filled me with an intense nausea. Last night I was out at a karaoke place with a big group, not looking at any of the election reporting, just kinda chilling. That feels so far away and sort of stupid now. It's hard to fathom the cruelty of the public. Truly shocking, even if it isn't surprising. I regret allowing myself to feel optimistic about the Harris campaign. It hurts more this way - but then again, there's no way to prevent it from hurting. It's devastating. To anyone reading: I hope you're okay. Any small thing that can bring you a shred of peace or fun right now is worth doing. Please take care.
27.10.24 "THE WEBSITE"
Me in my beloved Snoopy hat.
You know what's mad? You know what's crazy? I've been styling the headings for these diary entries individually, with span tags, when I could've just styled them via the css. What a fool I was. Currently, I'm fine-tuning a new CSS page for this site, taking everything I've figured out about having the layout look nice on different devices, and making a new page that can be used to style everything. I still use a few different CSS pages across the site, and some are severely outdated, so it's gonna be nice cleaning them up.
I've also been crafting a beautiful routine for myself lately for YouTube video editing, etc. Since right now I'm working on the next major Big Joel video (it's literally MADNESS), and my own hour-long video, I needed to carve out a way of attending to both big projects in a way that stopped me from neglecting them, but also allowed for other, fun stuff. It's tough! But I have a time app on my phone that I've started using to log my time, and that's really helped. If I spend an hour a day minimum on this thing, then it'll get done. I CAN DO IT. Okay. Bye.
29.06.24 "Little glass of limoncello"
I'm having a little glass of limoncello. It was a cooler day today, and so it felt fresh and nice. Still warm, but breezy outside. I worked on the layout of a new webpage that will serve as the index for a let's play of Final Fantasy VIII - I'm excited to do that here, add some more Squall type pages.
I am so close to finishing my next video, too. Maybe tomorrow it'll be finished. Maybe the day after. We'll see!
28.06.24 "Sweat"
It's a hot, sweaty summer day! I filmed a few pickup shots for my next video, and would you believe it? I accidentally recorded the whole thing with the wrong mic! A classic YouTuber scrape! It was only 20 minutes of work though, so it wasn't so bad, but the heat makes it a bit harder. Took a big shower after that.
It's also the first day of the Summer Steam Sale, and although I rarely buy anything (I already have a backlog, so it basically seems pointless to add to it unless it's a special case), I'm always a little obsessed with it. Just looking at those discounts and collecting the trading cards. That's good. I need to do it.
A couple of days ago I started playing the Switch version of Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, and that thing rocks. It's really chill and fun, and has enough RPG flavour that I feel like I'm in my element. Mario should always have a big hammer, tbh.
24.06.24 "Diary 2 - Return of the Diary
Hey! It's been over a month since I've written a diary entry! Time flies.
Lately I've been working on "big" projects. My YouTube channel has been taking off (somewhat), which has been incredible to see, and quite a shock! So I'm very focused on making the next video, and it's a really exciting time. I think I'll hit 30,000 subscribers sometime in the next few days. My cunning little empire begins... 😈
I have been getting really into Backloggd. I love writing little game reviews, and I also love that the site is way less populated than somewhere like Letterboxd. It sort of feels like it's just me and a few stragglers I come across in the wastelands every so often. It's really good. I'm reviewing some Shrek games.
I love reviewing stuff that people don't care about as much. The low media of the world. It's endlessly fascinating.
Maybe I'll set myself a goal and try to write here with a bit more regularity. This could be my morning pages (it's 8:51am right now). The sun is shining!
18.05.24 "The Great To-Do List"
Something feels incredibly good about having a list of little tasks and then doing them. I keep a running to-do list, and it gets filled up with more and more disorganised things. And yesterday (and today) I decided to Tackle Those Things For Real. I've been doing some errands recently since I'm at home and I have to do local London stuff anyway. Stay organised, stay real, etc. But working through the list truly pleases me. Feels good. I made a new delicious spreadsheet to record the time I spend language-learning, and that's gonna be really good. I re-designed my diary document so it looks distinct and gorgeous in my files. I did all the little errands that exist with making a new YouTube video and readying it for publishing (it's currently in copyright claim hell, praying for the best), and I finally replied to some penpals (this always gets put off).
Organisation is genuinely my greatest passion. And I've bought myself a pack of Sainsbury's oatmeal and raisin cookies. I think they were £1.10. I'm not sure why I chose them over the chocolate ones, but good God they are delicious. A perfect reward.
17.04.24 "Energy Woman"
I was about to write "I'm writing this one in the morning", but it's 2pm. Right now I feel filled with the great enthusiasm and energy that only comes two days after a long, exhausting flight journey and performing three simple tasks that have been utterly impossible to for those two days. The return to normal operation levels from a place of intense sleep deprivation is glorious, and being alive, in that moment, is heaven. I also feel incredible because I called to get a doctor's appointment and received one for the same day, a practice almost unheard of.
On my flight I listened to Conan Gray's new album, and good God it is incredible. I'm a sucker for an industrial-infused synthpop sound as always, but now I really get why Kim Kibum is so in awe of this man. He made a perfect album.
Today I have a few tasks to do - 1. I have to start catching up with the list of DCOMs I have yet to watch. This is paramount. And 2. I have to draw some pics, scan them, and queue them for posting. If I get enough time and have enough energy after that, I'll work on some animation or edit my next video. We'll see. I still have to take it a little bit easy.
10.04.24 "I love my website :-)"
I spent some time working on my website, and it this point I have it nice and responsive, so it looks generally pretty good on mobile. I’ve learned so much lately about various different elements, and I just feel like I get it a lot more. I’m not sure why it’s so endlessly compelling, but I love my beautiful little website. My sweet child. Incremental gorgeous updates for you, my dear.
Anyway, I have one small book to read before I have to go home soon, so I’m gonna started on that. I love reading a nice 1970s, thin paperback, although I rarely read a physical book these days because I’m an amazing ebook woman. I still appreciate it.
I’m hoping, today, to get close to finishing my next video script. Right now I’m feeling that specific tired feeling that comes after a bunch of coding tweaks, and before the other thing I have to do, but if I pour myself a new iced coffee and let the sugars pool in the most sensitive parts of my teeth, I will surely then be activated and ready. Wish me luck through the screen (thank you).
08.04.24 "Eclipse"
Today I saw my first (partial) eclipse, and it was so, so cool. I didn’t know that eclipse glasses simply blocked out everything but the sliver of sun you’re interested in. It’s like entering a different world. It’s amazing.
I also had doughnuts for breakfast today, so all around pretty indulgent. The small and big things go so beautifully together.
02.04.24 "Split"
It rained massively today. I'm so close to finishing my book, so I think I'll manage to do it tomorrow. I'm starting to understand how to make responsive web pages that look good on both desktop and mobile, so that's exciting, and last night I watched Split. M. Night Shyamalan is supremely insane and I do kind of stan. Boy why are you doing all that? Ok.
27.03.24 "Breaking Bad is changing me"
Breaking Bad is too crazy. I'm going crazy. Up to 4500 Japanese words roughly on Duolingo, which is so great. Not too long before I should get the course finished... I noticed both times it was 11:11 today. I love to make a tiny wish when I notice it. Blink hard to seal in the wish. Let's come true! Also I know I said I would have this be a one sentence diary and then immediately was compelled to write more. That was a trick I played on myself. hehe.
prev.
17.05.23 - 26.03.24
26.03.24 I worked on animation today, accompanied by true crime videos (a necessary tool). It feels nice to work on and I'm happy I have a good avenue for animation, considering it's a poor choice for my own channel for reach 😇
25.03.24 I am just so tired, but that's ok.
24.03.24 Finished Jane Austen's Emma today.
23.03.24 You know what? Let's make this a one sentence diary.
26.02.24 It's been a minute since I've updated here, but yesterday I saw an incredible exhibition on the work of Auriea Harvey at the Museum of the Moving Image. It was really inspiring looking at her intricate, dark little websites.
I need to play more with WEB STUFF. However, I have to prioritise some video work in the near future. But this, and the idea of making a ZINE PDF, really excite me atm. Gotta do it.
07.10.23 Tomorrow I really want to try getting up early and writing. I've been excited about creative work lately, especially because of the ease and fun of making short videos, but I've neglected WRITING. So I gotta do it.
Also, here are some important hex codes (a note for later):
24.09.23 I've been spending some time with my family.
We walked with two dogs, Chili and Sanday, for hours around Blair Castle. We saw sheep and cows, and the beautiful castle gardens. It was very cold.
I'm thinking about lofty creative ideas. A painting taller than me. Murals. 1000 paintings all of the same thing.
I love thinking about LARGE projects. But at the same time, I love tiny little notebook drawings. And I'm also sleepy. So you know...
18.08.23 I watched Shin Ultraman today.
A bizarre and gorgeous film.
I love the constant barrage of new Guys, the rapid pace, and the incredible glompy look of the CGI. Really good stuff.
I should get around to watching some tokusatsu in general (and Kamen Rider, because Shin Kamen Rider is next on my list).
I had a delicious salmon tartare for dinner and it seemed to put me in an incredible mood. Everything was beautiful after that.
I also did a good amount of Duolingo Japanese afterwards, so I felt really good about that.
I’ve been concentrating more on Japanese vs French lately, although I’m trying to keep both languages active, so I do French in the morning and then Japanese in the evening or vice versa. It works pretty well tbh.
They complement each other since it’s satisfying how easy it is to read French, but it’s also satisfying when I’m able to understand Japanese smoothly (which seems to be getting easier) - so when one is getting a bit dull or tiring, the other one can sort of wake me up and make me feel good.
According to Duome (my favourite tool!) I’m up to around 1000 lexemes in Japanese, and 3500 in French. Pretty nice progress! :-)
04.08.23 I had a perfect day today.
I got tons of notes done for some video plans, and then I went to the cafe and had a cappuccino and a cookie (they have incredible nutty, salty ones which I love) while doing Japanese Duolingo drills for about an hour. I'm trying to commit MORE to Japanese study lately, gotta be rigorous!
Later, I had a delicious linguini carbonara for dinner and went to see the new Mission Impossible movie. It's stupid, but pretty fun, and I love Vanessa Kirby in any context.
I've also figured out how to add YouTube shorts to a playlist, an act that is oddly obscured thanks to the different default watch page for shorts as opposed to regular videos. Anyway, I made a playlist for my recent shorts, which are all videos about "the origins of" a different well-known character.
They don't get much attention at all on there, but I think it's really fun to make a little series, and I get to draw a different fun character every week or so. It's a little experiment.
31.07.23 (´；ω；`) I have done it!
Yesterday I finished my unicorn puzzle, and it feels so good. The brown, leafy parts were the trickiest, but once I got everything else in, it all fell into place. And it was VERY satisfying.
Now I will have to find a new puzzle to do. Watch this space!
27.07.23 The puzzle is progressing. No one can stop me.
25.07.23 ゜・。。・゜☆ Yesterday I began a glorious new puzzle. It has unicorns on it. I am very excited about this, although I’d like to try more 500 piece puzzles sometime. 1000 pieces is a lot! But there is something soothing about the puzzle. Slotting a new piece in. This is what God must have felt like when he created the Platypus, or when he created Sonic the Hedgehog 2. Really quite good.
27.06.23
Ok. Here's the first diary update since the NEW site redesign.
I'm very proud of writing this code (mostly) from scratch this time. I'm drinking a big Sainsbury's Starbucks caramel macchiato drink right now. Full of sugar, full of luxury.
I've been thinking about the strangeness of the past few years. How hard and weird it's been. I saw a stamp the other day with the king on it for the first time, and it shocked me for a second. I'd forgotten that our stamps wouldn't have the queen on them anymore, and something about it made me feel sad.
Not because I'm a queen enjoyer, but because having the queen, having this woman be The Queen felt like an interminable fact of life, somehow. Something that would never change. Something you could rely on forever. And of course, that was never true, and it doesn't affect my life one bit that it's no longer the case. But I guess in that moment I felt that nothing ever really stays. A dramatic thought. But you know, death is around. It's weird.
Today I saw a woman in Sainsbury's (yes, when I was getting my very important meal deal which included the aforementioned caramel macchiato) - she insisted on using chip and pin to pay for her stuff.
She said "I PREFER TO DO IT THIS WAY IF YOU DON'T MIND" to the jovial young guy serving her. And I was thinking.............. why?She insists on doing it the slow way instead of the modern, fast, and very sexy way. Is it just because it's what she used to do? Or is there some other deep and gorgeous reason that would have never occured to me?
Everything changes, but maybe not if you cling on just hard enough. The last chip and pin transaction in the world has to belong to somebody.
13.06.23 ゜・。。・゜☆ I have finally done it. I have achieved 1 (one) push-up. Delightful. I was actually stunned to discover this ability. I think I’ve been trying to do wall push-ups daily for about three weeks. And I did it!
This is the motivation I need to keep exercising. It’s crazy to just be able to do something physically that you couldn’t before.
I’m not sure what’s next though, because now that I’ve done ONE push-up, I am on top of the world.
━━ I was inspired by SHINee’s new single ‘The Feeling’ to make a video sort of going through it, and I really enjoyed making it.
However, the strict copyright claiming that happens when it comes to making content about music is a deterrent. I’m thinking about making some more videos like this, and if I really feel like it I will, but it makes sense to go in the direction of stuff that is easier to play around with, doesn’t have as much likilihood of getting DINGed by YouTube’s copyright system (and upheld by SM, lol), and is a bit more exciting for my audience.
It was nice to see comments from shawols though, and of course I did have fun.
Right now I’m on section 4, unit 18 of Duolingo French. My streak is at day 1420.
I know roughly 2670 lexemes. I’m approaching the halfway point, and I will not be deterred. I need to win at French.
━━ Finally, a new Big Joel video that I edited came out today. It’s a good one. The Hannah Montana Movie: An Unhinged Masterpiece.
07.06.23 ゜・。。・゜☆ Today I worked on a couple of different art commissions (both cute, one involving a devil), and some video editing/animation stuff. I've been a little bit unwell the past few days (very, very mildly, but a persistent headache has bothered me).
I've also been enjoying updating this website way too much recently, so I'm BANNING myself from spending too much time on it so that I pay enough attention to other things. It's bizarre how much of a time-suck it can be. I remember feeling that way all the time when I was a kid and just loved finding things online all day. Powerful stuff.
- Here are a few paintings I made this week:
I bought a super cheap a3 (roughly) sized paper pad a while back, and it's just really nice to mess around and make some loose paintings. I've been doing them in stages while watching Disney Channel original movies. That's living baby!
━━ Here's some plans for this website that I wanna do when I have time:
I gotta become a true Neocities user by making a shrine sooner or later, and why not one for The Guys of all time. SHINee world baby!!!!
So far I am happy with "blonk", but I really want to expand on blonk. I love blonk.
I've been thinking about an idea I'm calling "anime reviews for misandrists" - I've been watching a lot of My Hero Academia lately and I feel strongly that I must share my thoughts.
Everyone wants to know my thoughts on Deku and the other guys. Many people are asking me to do this. Thousands of people are emailing me begging for my hateful and judgemental anime reviews.
Who knows if I will do these things. Only time will tell.
02.06.23 ゜・。。・゜☆ Woah! Happy June~♡
It's so sunny today! I went to the park for a little while in order to collect some small pieces of footage for a video project I'm working on (top secret, but a scrapbook-y visual project), and I lay in the grass and read two chapters of The Handmaid's Tale.
That book makes me wanna cry, it's so beautifully written, poetic, and so deeply horrible. Margaret Atwood is an intense freak genius. I've been taking my time with it because it's so emotionally demanding.
- Here's a small to-do list for today:
(just about)━━ I also made a Duolingo custom avatar. That's me (she has so many French words in her):
23.05.23 ゜・。。・゜☆ Shakshouka for breakfast, the world's personal delight for me today :-)
22.05.23 ゜・。。・゜☆ Ok. First of all, I downloaded a bunch of sound effects from BOTW and I’m enjoying listening to them. Maybe I can add a little bit of sound to the website soon.
Something unintrusive, but a little bit of flavour. I’m restricting myself from spending too much time on this site today, but I really wanted to add a self-updating ‘recent tracks’ thing on the homepage which pulls from the last.fm API, and I’m very pleased to have successfully cobbled something together from this forum user’s very useful post, adding my API key and tweaking the look of it so it just displays a super simple piece of text.
I’d love to figure out how to do something similar to display a Duolingo streak or what I’m currently reading on Goodreads, but idk if I’ll be able to. Even if I don’t understand how they’re coded really, I’m happy I was able to successfully work an API request on here. Very cool!
━━ Now I gotta work hard so I can reward myself later with some more Zelda. I’m editing a video about r/dogfree right now!
21.05.23 ゜・。。・゜☆ I just watched this video about tamagotchis and I'm going insane. I want the Mothra one and the BT21 one most of all, but they are all so fascinating. I started fantasising about making my own game on tamagotchi software. A beautiful dream
━━ I have been diligently playing Tears of the Kingdom, and just like when I played BOTW it's igniting a huge, powerful urge to play through all the Zelda games (or MANY of them). So yesterday I spent a while playing the first one, The Legend of Zelda, and I had a really good time. There are just so many incredible, iconic design choices (who is that old woman and why is she smiling?) and it's so... cute!
17.05.23 ゜・。。・゜☆ This morning I am drinking a jar of iced coffee and watching Scritti Politti's 1984 TOTP performance of 'Absolute', an unimpeachably perfect pop song. This is going in the sidebar as 'the best song in the world'. We all need this.
━━ Yesterday I woke up and wrote a to-do list that was ordered mostly by priority, but also arranged slightly to give me little "breaks" of more fun or easy things to do. It supercharged me and I made a few nice drawings and made sure to take a walk (I've been neglecting this lately and my knees have gotten more crackly as a result).
★ The bear is watching.
Japanese diary