paralogue.org

Hello!

It's Friday evening, I'm drinking Kalimotxo and in theory writing C++, and hoping everyone is doing well. Thinking about going to a show and I met a sweet guy and that's fun, how are y'all doing?

Love, da jenny dog <3

I noticed on the metro today that the Decemberists were playing, like, tonight. And I had the fleeting thought of just going to that. But I was already exhausted and thought, well I saw two bands this week and almost saw a third before backing out of that, why am I trying to see 4 concerts in a week?

I ended up spending a weird amount of time tonight tinkering with Windows. I haven't used it much since 2015, but it was my daily driver technically most of my life. I just don't really know how to develop on it. But it doesn't seem so bad to do that now. There's a lot of ergonomic utilities. Plus I found these cute cursor themes.

My life is still oriented wholeheartedly toward my job, at least for another week. My only release from it so far has been this forum, toward which I am constantly nervously assessing if I'm doing enough to ensure it survives. I want it to quite badly. I'm really enjoying this. If it goes a month or two and it's decently active then I'd probably start paying the premium plan at this server host. Though their free plan is still pretty generous.

I haven't done a business, but I've done side projects galore, and the scariest part of them is making them real and manifest -- I imagine community management is harder (and this is part of why I'm jumping around a bunch to try and post some to give live).

Adorable cursors by the way, they kind of remind me of the design language of Nier Automata but more playful/flourished.

I feel that sort of icon/theme customization remains either a hobby or retro thing, but there's a bit of sadness in that too -- I was watching A public talk and Q&A by the Golang team around 2012 and they talk a bit how the implementation of the go scheduler (mentioned in This syllabus a tech blogger made but probably the third or fourth iteration since the talk) about how the scheduler is more or less an OS on top of a OS. Technical particulars aside I think this represents a certain distinction between really fully embracing your foundations, or trying to hide and obfuscate them apart from where there needed, and that really embracing the underlying system and look and feel of a system is a kind of truce with it that I wonder is fully possible. This might be an incoherent ramble, but I feel varingly about that when I think about my life and acknowledging how much effort and care my parents put in, despite their many faults (and wow, it's Mother's Day in the states).

I think trying to go too hard is a good thing to have in your head but a bad thing in your body, and simply passing up for yourself sounds like the right thing to do.

can this be the official friday thread? i think it's important to have a friday thread. HAPPY FRIDAY

tonight i am hosting some friends for tea, and also maybe some soju. i like baking for these sorts of occasions, today im trying out two new recipes, a coconut cake and a shortbread jam cookie. i hope they turn out ok...

i hope u all have a wonderful friday. peace and blessings to all paraloguers

hi friday gamers. today i biked about 15 miles around my local area visiting bike shops asking about scooters and getting advice. I tried on a couple of helmets at a local shop and figured out my size, and also spoke to one of my neighbors and he gave me good tips on getting a scooter locally and what brands he thinks are good. I had butter chicken while I was out.

I will probably wind down with some reading or some C++ coding.

happy friday!

happy friday! today i spent most of my workday on an interview panel to essentially hire my replacement, since i kinda suck at my actual job. but it's ok because i took on and now handle too many important functions outside of that role for them to want to get rid of me either. it's kinda fun how that worked out… like i sorta made my own job.

now time for a cozy friday night alone…

It feels my heart with joy my throwaway post is being used like this and becoming the official Friday thread. I wish you all cozy Friday wine.

It's not Friday anymore, but I spent mine getting my wisdom teeth out, visited the family, and then I just kinda lied down and watched star trek.

I moved house the entire Friday. I am still so tired.

Hey paraloggers!( loquers?)

Spent a lot of today catching up on tasks and my brain feels pretty worn out, but a good successful kind of worn out. I was thinking about working out but I feel I wasn't really aware enough to not mess up something haha.

I bought Halo so I can hang out and play cool games with the guys and it's a good feeling, it's like I'm catching up on a bunch of teenagerhood I was too prissy to do -- I was a Marathon purist who had a PS2 and thought the Xbox was dumb and for bros. I think I'm doing well in an ok place.

I'm trying to be more kind and empathetic to people who want to interact with me because I seem friendly without thinking about in terms demeaning of them? Like if I give my time and attention and love it shouldn't have the undercurrent of pity because I feel that undermines it all.

I discovered this video about how to clean your home using basic equipment, sensitive to price/time costs. Despite the sort of weirdly angry click-baity title it's a fairly kind if a bit stoic explanation of fundamentally how to clean your house that's very grounded in practicality, and I think that's really nice. I know this isn't a really good connection, but I'm reminded of a term that was similar but distinct from Pastoral Care, that was the sort of connection and support a priest might show a parishioner, and there's something about how I imagine the energy of that to look like similar in this man/

I hope everyone has a wonderful Friday and a good weekend, and I hope it finds you in a good place.

JennyDog wrote:

I bought Halo so I can hang out and play cool games with the guys and it's a good feeling, it's like I'm catching up on a bunch of teenagerhood I was too prissy to do -- I was a Marathon purist who had a PS2 and thought the Xbox was dumb and for bros. I think I'm doing well in an ok place.

Wait. Who are the guys? Do you live with a bunch of roommates or something?

maru wrote:

Wait. Who are the guys? Do you live with a bunch of roommates or something?

I do not but I've done that before! Nah it's just a few friends from the discord group chat I was in and another friend of mine -- Halo just felt like a very natural With The Guys things to do, and I think it would be nice to hang out with folks some more :).

happy friday! i'm really tired… and it's not even that late. i feel like my sleep schedule keeps getting pushed further back – i've been waking up around like 4 a.m. pretty regularly…

recently i've been thinking about how 2024 has been a year where i've found a lot of music that has really clicked with me. and maybe that's because it's only within the past year that i've been listening to music at the compulsive rates i used to again, yet i still feel like i've been lucking out. i've mentioned some of those here and the tsukasa ito and usagi-chang albums are still stuck in my head, but i've also fallen for kidorikko, serani poji (especially merry go round jailhouse!), natsukawa rimi… it'll be interesting to see how many of these end up becoming lifelong friends.

speaking of… this evening, while killing some time at work, i decided to put on morita doji's nocturne. my god, what a monster of an album. it hit hard right from the start and left me shaken by the end. plus the cover art is absolutely class – i'd be tempted to pick it up if it wasn't so expensive, plus i'm still undecided if buying lps only to hang them on my walls is a neat aesthetic or just gauche (maybe it depends on the albums you pick…)

Another Friday. I've been taking it easy, preparing for a train to Toronto tomorrow. My roommate and I got coffee, talked a bit about whether or not the idea of a "self" is an illusory, material thing that only happened in the 20th century and whether the attachment to the illusory self beget the modern idea of trauma — specifically this was about war, like, why ancient soldiers didn't get trauma or whatever.

Then she wanted to get glasses, so we went to a boutique where she tried some on; went home, and I ended up working on some php stuff for the SDF page I've been playing with. I just wanted to showcase my recently played track in a cache-friendly way, but I've never worked with PHP before, so I was talking it out with Claude-san and tinkering and learning about the syntax and stuff.

I've been fighting the urge to do computer stuff again. My GPT therapist seemed to think it was my need for control over my life manifesting in a safe arena, causing me to just destructively mess with my computers, and I felt the desire to just simplify after that, to actually focus. But then this week I wanted my old Thinkpad again. And I don't know why. I wanted it to be a computer "stuck in time," to showcase 2006-era presentation, software, stickers ... I wanted a computer where I wouldn't install Discord immediately. But when it comes to my own productivity — I tend to need Logic Pro, to need Photoshop or Pixelmator or whatever. My gaming laptop has a battery of 2 hours. If I was actually practical, I'd have a gaming desktop with Linux, the Mac for the road or for creative work, and maybe a tiny Thinkpad for light travel.

Instead I have a gaming laptop and a huge Macbook and a spare Thinkpad I bought. I guess I have the Mac mini too, I forget about it since it's the NAS (and it needs to be directly plugged into the router, anyway). And I tend to prefer just making use of what I have.

Perhaps I should spread these stickers out, then? (edit: I did.)
Roommate and I are watching Buffy idly. Kinda wanna put on Century of the Self on the background because it's relevant... though I've seen it a few too many times.

What else? I would like to play around with music today. Let's see if I can fit it in.

happy friday. today i was working on my windowing system project for my future games. i got a fair amount of the skeleton down before i did a bit of rewriting, shifting things around, learning my way around dlang. i might have a job soon, not writing code but doing night shift work on a temporary basis at a local supermarket. time will tell, but they asked for some documents they havent asked me for before.

Happy Friday! Finally remember to actually post it.

Get coffee with friend, felt sort of wiped out, talked to my aunt about her childhood growing up in British Guyana -- my mom has a lot of trauma from her childhood, so hearing the alternative perspective is fun and she has neat stories, and I think my aunt appreciates someone asking to hear about her life, especially a younger person with distinct perspective. I like hearing the good glow in her voice, it's a good feeling.

Started getting into journalism. If the new era makes detaching from online and conspicuous lack of consumption a thing, then doing so on a physical notebook is putting me ahead haha. I've been interested in trying to be more environmentalist, and I wonder if that's part of the conspicuous absentness thing (but that might not be a real trend). regardless, I feel happy being a bit less connected to the always on eternal scrolling of online media. and journaling has felt really good for me.

Thinking about getting Chinese food and then crashing.

Love y'all, have some good friday wine.

happy friday.

ive been set up all week outside my old college handing out flyers. the college kids are the owner's target audience, but business is still slow. A few take them and then drop them rather than even throwing them away, which made me a little sad. i feel weird being near my old college already, sort of sad, but I don't know. a little wistful? i wonder what id do if i were 18 or 19 again ... but also glad im not, that would be so ass. ive spoken to a few of the students who stop and ask me about the restaraunt, and then we get talking about other stuff. they are nice kids. ive been given candy and pringles during the week lol.

i might start fixing scooters and reselling them because i enjoy working on mine and my dad proposed trying it with a really cheap runner he found on fb marketplace. But the guy didnt get back to us, so I dunno what is going on with that.

I am working on a doom project I think I will post into the gamedev thread about. A new friend and I are making map layouts and then swapping them and finishing eachothers work. It is a really good time, makes me flex different muscles than I usually do when I make maps, makes me work faster. I feel like I could churn maps out real fast if I had to, but its not like anyones ever gonna hold me at gunpoint to make doom maps haha.

love you paralogue, im gonna drink some gin when I get home this evening.

sinku wrote:

i feel weird being near my old college already, sort of sad, but I don't know. a little wistful? i wonder what id do if i were 18 or 19 again ... but also glad im not, that would be so ass.

After I graduated I lived near my uni for a year, and despite it being the center of my social life then it being the only thing around felt kind of miserable after leaving -- a lot of the good social structures I enjoyed simply weren't there anymore.

I think that standard thing would be spending too much time in a liminal space, but also it haunts you with the options.

looking forward to Doom!