Intro

What a turnaround! 2025 so far has gone much better than 2024. It hasn’t been without a few hiccups, but the first few months of this year have left me feeling pretty good about things in general. Here’s what I’ve been up to!

January

January began quite slowly, but I got started on two new things: Revamping this blog and playing Magic: the Gathering.

Magic

After going to a local furry meetup, I got some friends to explain how Magic worked. I’ve wanted to try playing for years but was always daunted by the scope of the game. I’m pleased to report that it’s actually quite fun! There’s a lot of different ways to win a game and lots of different formats to change things up (though unfortunately, everyone seems to play just commander these days).

A new set just launched called Aetherdrift. I went to a prerelease event, figuring it would be a good way to meet other people who like the game, and it was! The event was a great time and I met a few folks who invited me to join them for weekly commander games at a local gamestore.

I may have been a little ambitious in my approach! I’ve bought a bunch of outer and inner sleeves for my cards along with a binder to store my nice ones. So far everything goes in there, but my new magic-player friends keep giving me cards so eventually I’ll need a box to store the bulk stuff. I’ve also started cataloguing my collection in Moxfield, down to each and every specific printing of each land card I own. Probably overkill, but it’s nice to know how old these things are. Some of them are even worth money!

February

Getting into Magic was the thing that really kicked off this year socially for me. Since then I’ve been making regular effort to hang out with local friends and it’s really improved my mental wellbeing.

Timeleft

Last week I signed up with Timeleft, a sort of dinner matchmaking service. The idea is to meet 5-6 new people in your city and eat out at various interesting restaurants. It’s been a fun way to meet new people, but it’s also just nice to get out on a Wednesday night each week.

I wasn’t sure what to expect but it was a good time! They pair you with folks based on your demographics and interests, and the group I met were all pretty interesting people. By the end of the night we were hanging out like old friends. I recommend it to anyone trying to expand their social circle. Lord knows we all need some third space these days.

Friendship ended with Hugo, now Astro is my best friend

I’ve been wanting to update my blog for a while now. While Hugo was a huge improvement over Wordpress, it itself was not particularly nice to work with and over time I’ve only become more and more annoyed trying to use it.

In short:

• I don’t know Go and don’t want to learn it for a single writing project
• Hugo doesn’t have good editor support for editing shortcodes and layouts
• If a build fails, it’s really cryptic as to why
• The documentation is bad

Since I started writing this blog however, I’ve become much more familiar with VueJS and Typescript, and I wanted to try using a framework that leveraged my existing skills. After a short search I discovered Astro, which seems to be the best option for my needs.

Astro has:

• Markdown support with custom Vue-like components
• Typescript and Visual Studio Code support
• Fully static page output (many competitors only offer hydration solutions)
• Good documentation!

I grabbed a starter template and updated it to suit my needs. I’ve wanted a more colourful and eye-popping website for a bit, so I tried to make something bright but clean, colour-minimal and high contrast. Something vaguely inspired by y2k-era flat colour posters. I don’t think I’m quite there yet but I’ll figure it out. This site is definitely a work in progress, but that’s fine since I actually like working on it and it’s really easy.

I do have some complaints. This site uses Tailwind, and I’ve gone back and forth on how much I like using it. I was going to praise its simplicity but after the most recent update I’m genuinely not sure how to even install it correctly, which is insane. The world of JS development truly is hell, even at the best of times.

March and beyond

Anyways, that’s been my first two months. I’m going to try and write something new each month, and next month’s post will likely be about a furry convention I’m attending. I’ve managed to convince a non-furry friend to attend, which is certainly going to be an experience. Until next time!