No opinion piece this time, I’m still working out the next one. Turns out two weeks per article is a pretty tough pace to keep up! For now, I’m just checking in to reflect on how the year has started and what’s next.

The blog Link to heading

First things first: I’ve been super happy with the blog. It’s offered me a space to write what I want without having to worry about character limits or style guides, and my site is relatively easy to customize thanks to the static site generator I use. Part of this week’s lighter writing load is offset by updates I’m making to the site, which take time to debug and fix. There were some stylesheet problems I noticed on mobile that should make reading on phones easier. I may also move to a different theme - I was taken in by the relative simplicity of this one, but it’s a tad impersonal feeling. It would be nice to strike a middle-ground between simple and easy on the eyes.

Part 2 of the bad media blogpost will be coming soon, probably next. I have some future topics on the docket as well, about things like rulesets for competition, relevance in discourse, nerd culture, and a comparison of two very different online games.

Personal projects Link to heading

A good amount of my time this year has been taken up by personal projects. I’m winding up to work on leaderboards.gg and winding down work on my discord bot RocketBot. Housework remains ever-present too. I’m putting a passthrough in my office wall so I can more easily play VR games in my living room without having to drag my PC out of the office. Hopefully this will mean more VR games on my stream (and maybe even a healthier me)!

I have been streaming again - not as much as I’d like, but I’m working on getting back to my old levels again. I’ve also been learning Street Fighter V, something I always thought was going to be unfun for me. I’m really feeling the improvement and I can tell the people I fight against are also improving, and that’s super encouraging. Capcom Cup IX was yesterday (as I write this) and it was such a good tournament I’m super pumped to keep learning SFV until 6 comes out.

What have I been up to? Link to heading

My dad visited early on in the year for an event I got him tickets to - it’s called Art Battle, and I’m happy to say I nailed the gift. It’s basically a cage match where artists speedpaint for 20 minutes while an audience slowly walks around them and observes. It’s a lot of fun, and it had been years since I’d been to an art battle. I forgot how much I missed live events like that. Plus, my dad ended up buying two of the pieces made at the event for his office.

This Thursday I attended a cooking class (his Christmas gift to me) where I learned how to make sushi. It was super fun, very laid back. The instructor was very insightful and clearly loved sharing his experience with others. Turns out making sushi is actually very easy, but getting the taste and texture of sushi rice takes some know-how. I ended up going home with a lot of rice and fish on top of all the stuff I made there so I’m gonna be eating it for a bit!

Sliced cucumber and avocado, raw salmon, tuna, crab, grilled tuna, and shrimp sit on a tray next to a cutting board, which holds a bamboo rolling mat and a sheet of nori.

Apparently, blue cutting boards are for fish - I don’t remember any of the other colours except purple which is for allergies, and white which is general-purpose. I got a huge white cutting board just like this recently and it’s so nice to prepare food on I’m amazed I didn’t get one sooner.

Six maki sit on the cutting board. There are toasted sesame seeds and roe on top. They are delicious. — I was pretty happy with these ones

I learned pretty quickly to keep my knife wet, or else the sushi tears and stretches very easily. It’s kind of amazing just how sticky the rice is even after you rinse off all the surface starch!

Crab maki, reverse-wrapped salmon maki, and salmon and tuna nigiri sushi sit on a plate. — I made way more than this but I also ate way more than this

How have I been? Link to heading

I remarked in my 2022 end-of-year post that I was entering the year with a sense of hesitancy, and I’m pleased to report that feeling has more or less evaporated. I have a tendency to get stuck in my own head about personal worth and the stuff I wish I was doing, and for years I’ve been meaning to do things like write this blog or get into fighting games. So… I have! I think setting this goal for my blog, giving myself two weeks per post, has really motivated me to move forward on tasks on my bucket list. It’s also been pulling me out of the emotional slump I was in towards the end of 2022, which is great. It feels good to be om top of things again!

Stay tuned, next week I’ll be following up on the bad media post.