as you have likely noticed, the website is being overhauled slightly. the "song of the week" experiment has been quietly retired, and instead been replaced by a more all-encompassing "music" page -- namely because my website was shitting the bed whenever i made it run anything even slightly complex, so the new "music" page has essentially become an entirely different website. additionally, the navigation bar has been updated to have many more options, although none of them be accessed at this time -- "links" will be an extensive list of links, namely resources for this website or anything else of interest; "vidya" is internet lingo for video games, and is a place where i can happily sperg out about anything i care to play; finally, "gallery" is a very tenuous page regarding what i actually want it to be, but the current plan is to have it act a hub for any design projects i feel comfortable enough in sharing. personal projects, namely -- something that might help gleam a little insight into who i am.

real life is going alright, i suppose. i have been getting extremely antsy over these last couple weeks, i am no longer content to just lay down and rot until i get a job. this is why i made this website, started going all in on Japanese, picked up my dusty-ass keyboard, and also began to exercise daily. it hasn't gotten too overwhelming yet, i'm focusing on improving in incremental steps over a long time period -- i'm nowhere near proficient enough to speak a sentence in japanese, or confidently compose something, but we will get there eventually. i definitely think that documenting it on this site helps my development, makes me able to view my progress. i actually feel alright. i am currently perfectly content when it comes to my education, career, hobbies... my social life is the only exception, it is singlehandedly hurting my soul. i am not a pessimistic person, believe it or not... but when it comes to making connections, forming meaningful relationships? it is over. i used to be so gratified at the thought of being alone, but now i dread it. people are unreliable, and the world is a dark, evil place.

okay, enough depressing bullshit. a couple days back i got a hankering to play that tomadachi life game on the switch. it is basically a life simulator where you create little people and watch them interact with the world around them on an isolated island, taking care of their needs along the way. the old 2014 ds game was a childhood favourite of mine, and i have always been a fan of games that basically boil down to playing with dolls, so i figured i would give it a shot. i set up an emulator (scooped up a game key on internet archive of all places) and naturally recreated my likeness first. it is an amusing "game", even if nintendo sort of expects you to handcraft everything yourself using a mediocre drawing application -- although i do appreciate how deep the customisation goes, and the lack of censorship means that you can be incredibly immature >:). i have populated my island with about 21 unique characters so far, mainly from media i enjoy, or very depraved original creations. i do feel like a bit of a loser for not having a lot of people i know on the island, but it is honestly very fun trying to make a fictional character look and sound as accurate as possible, trying to capture their unique quirks with such a limited system. i dont think the game has too much longevity, but i am enjoying my time nonetheless.

katakana has been hammered into my brain successfully. i have employed a learning technique that involves battering my brain with every individual granule of knowledge until it can recognise every japanese particle on sight. now i just have to learn kanji... and this may take a significant amount of time. pray for me.

in the meantime, things are going quite swimmingly. if a bit uneventful. this website is stil a massive work in progress, i keep changing my mind on what i want for it. i decided i want to have a page for music, movies/tv and videogames, as well as a long list of links that i think are neat. the implementation of this is yet to be decided upon. i shall figure it out.

a couple weeks back i decided to learn japanese. i had the idea that learning a language would be a productive use of my time, even if japanese is on the harder side. i'm making decent progress, i have hanamura down pat, and im steadily learning katakara and getting to grips with beginner kanji, mainly just trying to get a hold of the radicals for now. im making use of various mnemonics methods to get it locked down in my noggin quickly, and also using the usual spaced reptition software like anki to ensure nothing escapes my feeble little mind. grammar frightens me and i will not be thinking about it for now, it's like archeology - identify all the bones before figuring out what order they go in. i know that is not what archeology actually is but you get the idea.

i chose japanese specifically because i do sort of have a desire to watch anime and play visual novels without having to deal with localizer nonsense, awful dubs, or having to mostly focus on the bottom 2 inches of the screen instead of the beautiful animation that i am no doubt missing. also living in japan would actually be very pleasant probably, maybe i'd retire there. pretty weak reasoning but it is the fact that the reasoning even exists in the first place that i want to learn it and not like... fuckin italian. i watched the sopranos, i am very familiar with that language.

I am feeling particularly ashamed of myself today. i haven't been outside for around two weeks and it is starting to take a heavy toll on my mental health. it's such a nice day, too. i am nested inside newbuild hell, not a single point of interest within reasonable walking distance. everything is just so inconvenient. it would be nice to find a remote spot in the wilderness to sit down and read for a while, i suppose i should take the effort to find an area that gives me that peace. the first step to doing this would be fixing my awful sleeping schedule. i sleep at 5am and wake at 3pm and that will not do, no WONDER i feel like shit. this insomnia must be terminated. my grand plan is to do my exercises just before midnight, with the theory that i will become so exhausted that i can do nothing but sleep, and the temptation to procrastinate will be diminished. another detractor would be my skin condition, which i think was the final blow in mentally destroying me. i have slacked off on applying my creams and moisturisers for so long and it is dawning on me that i must change that if i want to feel truly comfortable in my own skin once again. these are the first steps to bringing back the kyle that once was. and it will start TODAY.

in other news, i have recently decided that i will be dumping music streaming services for the most part and instead have everything stored locally for my convenience. in the past i have used tools such as spicetify to mitigate the more egregious spotify features and also improve the UI, but I crave more. spotify does not offer high quality audio, and the recommendation system has turned into an endless feedback loop as of late, so i am taking matters into my own hands. i will source my music from soulseek and use foobar 2000 as my primary audio player from now on. i appreciate how you can get foobar to automate the sorting process, and it has a great deal of customizability. you'll see above my own configuration, which adapts to most screen sizes, and has a lovely little spectrogram (music visualisation is something i have great interest in but haven't yet had the time to do a full deep dive), with the cherry on top being the lovely little nintendo ds font that i find very kitschy.

Today the website will likely be in a semi-complete state. this is good. it is not the prettiest thing in the world, but it is practical. and it works. mostly. i value when things look nice and i would like to make this very nice one day, but as is, i do believe i've made something at least somewhat charming. you look at this website and see the funny running skeleton and you are intrigued. i guess i strive to create something that is interesting, as opposed to achieving total visual clarity. naturally the two are not mutually exclusive. i will gladly sacrifice composition and hierarchy for the ability to have more gifs strewn across big clunky grey boxes. if there was one pain point, i would like a bit more colour. that would be my main goal if i take it upon myself to build upon this little webpage as it is looking a bit grey.