Time Moves Ever Forward

:'3

I wanted more posts out more frequently but that sure didn't happen lol. This one's gonna be a bit more rambly so you can probably skip it.

To be balanced, I am still working on things. My GPU started to eat shit so I had to replace that. Unfortunately, I can't stress it out too hard, as I've realized the horror of having my PC case be too old for modern cooling standards, so now I'm doing the whole thing. Fuck it. The unfortunate side effect of this is that I have to wait a little longer to do my art again since I'm waiting on my parts to arrive. As of writing, in November, the GPU is installed, and the CPU and Motherboard are ordered. My case, memory, and cooler will be ordered next paycheck, and storage is on the list as well, but for later.

The good news is that I'm no longer getting the graphics artifacting and flickering, which tells me that it wasn't just a driver issue, and that the GPU was indeed dying. I will have to change parts of my workflow so the 3D components of the art isn't as intense, which I'm OK with.

This does mean that all of my major purchases are donezo, for now, and thus I can prepare for school in earnest.

Now that I'm out of my depression rut, thanks to a couple of people who are super kind and fun to hang out with (:3), I can look back at the effects objectively; Things are looking up now, but I expect there to be more, lesser roadblocks in the future. That's OK.

During the time period of October 2022-June/July 2023 (and even extending a bit into September), the depression absorbed my entire life, and whilst I could get things done, to say I could function was another thing entirely. Whilst I generally dislike spotify for various reasons, I think my listening time on my wrapped and the scrobbles on last.fm heavily reflect that time period, where I just kinda existed for weeks on end, not really being able to feel, listening to my depression music.

That dark time has passed, and my motivation is somewhat returned. I'm still burnt out a little, but I can at least look at code again without wanting to throw up, which is a good sign.

Current objectives:

• Finish infrastructure projects
• Prepare for school
• Get some music out at some point
• Forge a better future.

Moving on, I will note that my general social media presence is pretty much dead; Obviously I like the fediverse for various reasons, but I struggle to interact with it because I guess I miss having a circle of folks to interact with, which I don't really have anymore as a direct result of Twitter dissipating, in addition to the social anxiety I feel. Overall, however, I still think a protocol is ideal vs a platform when regarding social media. This being said, I will not be touching bluesky, for example, with a ten-foot (≈3m) lead pole, mostly because it's heavily moderation-resistant and also has Jack Dorsey's involvement in some fashion. After everything I've seen, I think I'm OK with avoiding platforms and protocols he's involved in.

All this to say that I'm trying to post more from here on, I just don't really have the feel for it yet.

As for the blog in and of itself, I'm working on a new theme to achieve parity with my main site, but I'm not sure how I want to handle it this time. Skinning bootstrap4 last time was... fine? But it doesn't seem to support the meta tags I need it to, and adding them in is like, somewhat haphazard since I haven't yet found the areas where they even actually get added, which is somewhat frustrating. Solution: develop my own theme; Caveats: time sink. Will have to think about it.

Also I'm a little older now. Weirdly enough, I got a spike of website traffic on my birthday. Not sure what could've caused that. If you're looking at my blog and was a part of that uhhh welcome! and I'd love to hear from you because I'm so confused about where the hitspike came from, and why it was on my birthday of all days.

Expect a follow up when I'm less rambly :3