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2023 archive




< 03/12/23 | 9:28 >





< 02/12/23 | 01:39 >


oh boy would you look at the time

i had a bit of a "coming back" message written out but it got too late making the new advent calendar for this year. pretty excited about the theme. anyway, it's late and i'm pretty tired. i'll finish the rest of the post sometime this weekend

few days ago the website reached 200k unique(?) views huh. not sure how unique they are but it's a pretty big number alright. it feels pretty uhm.. interesting? i can't say it particularly piques anything in me but i guess its a neat little thing, i hope you had a nice visit. i love this website to no end and it is somewhat heartwarming to see this aspect of it grow as well


i miss home. lately i seem to have fallen with a terrible homesickness. after my last update and before leaving home back to uni this summer a series of events happened which made me realise i have everything i need and i have everything i want in my home country. there's peace, there's beauty, there's stability. it's home

ok nvm maybe i won't do the update tomorrow maybe i can stay up now lol i seem to have it in me now that i started

alas, i have about four three and a half years left here in the uk. it's not like i despise my time here, i'd just rather be home.

speaking of, i started my phd. i don't have a proper reserch question yet but i'm looking into time series analysis and demand forecasting. my drug descovery days are just about over and done with, i'm still working with the same people (and dear god i hope nothing goes wrong and we go out of business because i'd love to stay here forever, if i have to use a linkedin genuinely it'll be OVER lmao)

shortly before leaving romania i caught the east european comic con which was a great time, me and my girlfriend cosplayed the medic and pyro from tf2, photo attached

i met a new friend there who got me into, at first, flesh and blood (the tcg not like, the meat) then later into the pokemon tcg. fab is fun and all but boy did i really get enthralled by poke lmao. i've been really looking forward to building a competitive deck irl too so i can take to a couple stores i have nearby that run events. it's like he was the final piece that solidified card games as a main hobby of mine. it's too late to talk too much about it but boy do i have fun with them lol. i also started attending the uni's tabletop society's card games night where they primarily play (mtg) commander. we primarily play (mtg) commander and it's loads of fun, i get didn't get to play much paper magic outside of prereleases but having a regular gathering (get it) like this is doing wonders to my brain

speaking of favourite games, i pulled the trigger. i went back to wakfu. for good now i think

it took little convincing to see the fact that i can easily afford to keep a subscription active constantly now and i won't need to maximize my time with it lol. it also immensely helps that jachym came back to wakfu with me, or rather i did w them. it feels very homey, and boy the game has grown so much. all for the better

incredible how much this game can feel like home to me


right, it's about past 2am now, stupid late so i'm gonna head to bed. tomorrow i've got nothing planned so i'll probably spend the day figuring out all my characters in wakfu agian, building this commander deck for my gf (master chef ) we've been tinkering with for a while, maybe play some of the poke tcg too, truly take the day off and relax. good night website



listening to: monkey island 2 - IBM-PC Ad-Lib soundtrack [emulated]

< 24/08/23 | 20:30 >


i sit up to stretch, mere 910 hours into my summer

"i should update my site", i say a month and a half after i said "yeah sure summer baby ill update my site regularly, ill work on those template updates and prettify it pretty"

summer's alright, not much particularly cool going on. i've been seeing my girlfriend a lot and have started going out to play boardgames semi-regularly with some old friends from highschool. betrayal at house on the hill is hell of a boardgame. currently i'm taking a break from working on my point and click adventure game engine. have i mentioned it before? i must've. i've been chipping away at it during evenings. here's a quick little update of what i'm currently doing:

i just finished detecting the concave vertices in the walk-area polygon. i'll use them to build the graph for a* pathfinding which i'll get on right after i finish writing this post. here's some other features:

i call it loom. more to come


tomorrow i'm going to the beach with my girlfriend for a short vacation. i'm pretty excited, we haven't been away together in about a year (if you don't count flying to eachother when we're not in our home country). for those wondering, YES, I HAVE PACKED INFINITE JEST, BY DAVID FOSTER WALLACE, IN MY BAG. I HAVE PACKED IT BECAUSE I AM, IN FACT, READING INFINITE JEST, BY DAVID FOSTER WALLACE. train leaves early in the morning, oh how i missed romanian trains

and speaking of missing things, the first east european comic con i miss in 9 years (because it was in may and i had my finals so i couldn't fly home for it) and they're holding a second edition in september, so excited i didn't completely miss it. i'm gonna go as the tf2 medic and my girlfriend as the pyro. maybe i can fix up my old gyro cos for one of the days

i really doubt it but fingers crossed someone will run a wilds of eldraine prerelease there. there's no local game stores around, theres one boardgame store in bucharest which doesn't hold magic prereleases (or any other kind as far as i'm aware). they hold some cool dnd dming workshops but that's just about it. eecc is exactly during the prerelease date so who knows, maybe there's gonna be someone organizing a prerelease, fingers crossed

i am so excited about wilds of eldraine. it's the most i've been excited about a magic set in eons. there's so many cool cards, the virtues cycle looks incredible with virtue of persistence being one of my new all time favourite cards. so much new support for food, so much new food in black! court of vantress... *said in a dreamy voice laying on my bed kicking my feet in the air and twirling my hair around my finger*, new alela...... her.......... her (gender neutral)................. so many cool orzhov, dimir and golgari cards..... multicolored adventures....... roles............... not much in simic (yet) but fine i'll live with that. i could go on



< 17/07/23 | 22:12 >

reading: infinite jest by david foster wallace


as i have now began reading the copy of infinite jest by david foster wallace that tom bought me i am legally obligated to tell you all that i have begun reading infinite jest by david foster wallace

i've also added the infinite jest wallacewiki alongside a new wikis section on my links page


growing real proud of the links page, it's starting to look pretty great



< 14/07/23 | 19:22 >

listening to: izzo - the deli, Vｉｒｔｕａｌ－ ４２０ - ｔ​ｈ​ｅ​ｓ​ｅ ｈ​ａ​ｎ​ｄ​ｓ


currently typing this in a london northwestern railway train (or is it a west midlands railway train? both? who knows) with an hour to go til my destination so i'll be hasty

here's da updates in (vague) chronological order:

first, my friend sv moved in with me. i know, i know, you're all thinking it, tom 2?? first two games of magic we played he kinda utterly flattened me so he's hitting the ground running, tom i had to take a While to teach magic and for him to get into it properly. also, on his moving day he showed up with like, six(?) boxes full to the brim of dnd sourcebooks. i knew he was into dnd but i he's REALLY into dnd. when we unpacked them his room looked like a library. i am so so so excited to finally play real proper dnd. don't get me wrong, the kind where we fight hatsune miku impersonators, have a beach episode and accidentally stumble into a tesco (and a mcdonalds too while i'm at it) in the midst of a high fantasy medieval town is still fun, but i just wanna experience the setting properly for once as richard garfield ed greenwood intended lmao

second, me and my girlfriend just celebrated our three year anniversary! she flew over to me and we've been spending the last couple weeks together. very fun everytime we do this. the thick of our time together usually happens during summer in our home country as we're usually both busy with uni/work but living together for random periods at each other's place away is always a treat. we went to this brazilian place for our ani which was delicious

third, got my first hatemail! adding here for archival reasons

big man status on the internet now huh B). guy got so angry he switched to czech halfway thru which was kinda funny actually. my cz friend told me he called the website a vagina. couldn't have put it better myself really. made it i believe

fourth, i graduated, officially, with the congregation and robes and all. the ceremony was really nice except the accent color for my degree was fucking gray. of all colors, a gray hood on the black gown, what's lovelier than that lol. combining fifth in this point cos it's also short, i also secured funding for my phd which is a great stone off my mind

think i'm nearing my stop so i'll end it here in hopes i get time to push too. pumped to get home, i got back into gamedev, haxe heaps is starting to look not as foreign and undocumented to my eyes, and the wiki for my setting looks prime for writing in. i think we're back bros,

we're so back !



< 28/06/23 | 19:47 >


laying in bed, listening to my otherworldly synth or jazz or whatever it is

theres a cold breeze hitting me through my window. it comes and goes, like a pulse. this is a nice moment

it's even raining, the kind with very thin raindrops

ophelia by andré popp is playing right now. picks from hareton salvanini, wojciech karolak, the april orchestra, nino nardini, and others played earlier

it's nice, like i'm decompressing. i've nothing to do


short break, said goodbye to tom, he's moving out and back to his home town. we shook hands. i don't think either of us knew what to say or do lmao

i've made a really good friend in him, i'm sad to see him go. chet baker's almost blue is playing right now

his empty bedroom is an odd sight now. we went through both monkey island one and two together in there. both sat at his desk, i watched him play and gave obtuse hints every so often, and we'd laugh at the witty lines in the games and other things. my song is playing right now. i'd go on and on about how flawless the second game is and how masterful most parts of it are. we'd also often just completely derail and go on random maybe hour long or longer tangents about other random stuff and just dick around on wikipedia or other random sites. fond memories. i'm sad to see him go


the air is very nice to sit and be bored by



< 27/06/23 | 21:50 >


what started as a diary entry became

logs > memories

as i decompress



< 22/06/23 | 15:41 >

listening to: dear japan - hollow hearted hands

watching: the sopranos


my end of uni marks came today. i got 82% on my dissertation and 77.3% degree average, first class degree. can't believe it's over

was it worth it? well

i mean yeah. skills-wise, sure, you can learn everything yourself at home, but the selling point is the environment here. had i not come i would've never met my supervisor with whom i've been very happily working for two years now. it's because of him alone that i not only even have a clue where i'm headed, but a clear path. had i not come i never would've met all the incredibly smart people around me who (maybe without their knowing) drove me to keep going and cemented away most doubts i had with this path. who, as corny as this sounds, are a genuine inspiration. had i not come i never would've been part of the uni's gamedev society, which was an incredibly rewarding group to be a close part of. had i not come i would've had much more difficulty leaving my home country. had i not come i would've probably ended up a cog in a shitty corporate company. a tool, not a human, one of many. i am happy with where i am

speaking of, yesterday we had the last gamedev soc meeting for this academic year. it was also the last meeting with me as the chairman of the soc. pretty weird to come to terms with saying goodbye to the committee. since i came to uni i've been very close with the soc, being pretty much the only proper social interaction i've had for my first two years here. obviously i'll continue to show up and be involved with it for as long as i'm here, but there'll be some things i'll miss. i love this place

liverpool was nice. i still have great issues with the uk but at least it's good to know there's places not as bad as birmingham. i used to think this was the final destination for me but over the last couple years, in particular the last few months, it's become crystal clear to me that it is not. i'll see how this works out for me over the next few years

another thing, i've added a huge amount of links to the links page, including plenty of new personal websites and blogs. the list is growing really nicely


unreal how quickly i fell in love this damn show. it's right up there with mash for me. never would've seen it coming



< 18/06/23 | 15:21 >

listening to: gorillaz - the fall

watching: lost, the sopranos

playing: black mesa


it's been about a month since i finished uni and my website stuff i wanna do list™ is pretty big. uni went well though, i don't have marks yet but im pretty sure i got enough for a first class degree. my supervisor said he thought my dissertation was good, the evolutionary computation final went incredibly well and the computer vision final, while i was p much exhausted and fed up with it by the time i took it, still went alright. work is nice and reasonably relaxed too. in september i'll start my phd,

i've kinda been languishing. there's things i'd love to do that i put off in the recent months but i figured pressing myself into them won't do any good now. i'll take some time to laze around and do nothing, watching the sopranos, making dinner, going on walks, watching lost with my girlfriend. little things, nothing of substance. taking it easy for a while. whoa it's the 18th already? the gray hairs in my beard are all but gone

i went to the magic lotr set prerelease yesterday. the set is loads of fun. i built a GW food deck and went 3-1 with it. the mvps were two bag end porters and arwen, mortal queen. they won me every single game

first round i went 2-0 against a guy with both the one ring and the palantir, primarily bcos the rest of his deck sucked lol. he was drawing like 3 cards per turn but he just didnt have anything proper to play. second round i went 0-2 against one of the regulars at the store who seem to be a real pro. he played a BW deck. one of the matches in that round i even had good draws and was playing consistently on curve but still couldn't keep up with him lol. third round was fucking bonkers, went 2-1. against UB control, first match took like 30 minutes, i went up to fucking 50-something life, then back down to exactly 1. i had no board at all but managed to deal exactly enough damage (5) to kill her before she was gonna kill me next turn. i wish the match was recorded, both of our hands were shaking by the end, neither of us taking one breath for like the last 10 minutes of it. then second match i lost in like three turns couse i kept a bad hand. polar opposite. third match was normal. so was round four, went 2-0 again, against a grixis deck focusing on big guy hit hard with the grixis sauron. she had a huge board but i was healing a lot from the lifelinking porters and also had a threatening enough board. it all came down to me attacking and her blocking, eating through all her blockers slowly. never did this well at a prerelease before. decklist

i can feel the lazy period is kinda coming to an end though (thus the diary and links updates). the dust kinda settled and the breaths caught. been much more excited about getting back into drawing more regularly, writing and working on that game engine i was making before uni got stupid (that surely i've mentioned before? maybe?) all the fun. tomorrow i'm going on a day trip to liverpool with tom. it's raining really prettily right now. oh a new jojolands chapter just came out

reading: jojolands



< 17/04/23 | 14:08 >


turns out a great deal of people around me have been into homestuck all along

this is an amazing realization



< 16/04/23 | 22:21 >

listening to: roland romanelli & janick top - automne a fleur d'amour, alan feanch - flowers country


hi website

what have you been up to

haven't heard from you in a while

i finally finished my dissertation. it's a study on whether molecular graphs can finally outperform molecular descriptors for drug discovery tasks now that transformers introduce a global receptive field with attention. spoiler: they actually do. i'll send you the paper if you want to take a look, just email me. it's interesting stuff but i'm pretty tired of it lol. i also got a phd offer!! not fully sure if i'm taking it tho on account of funding (and i'm also really tired lmao), but i'll try find a way. gonna have an interview for a studentship at some point so wish me luck with that. in the last three months while i worked on finishing everything i also started and finished all of mash 4077th. i love this show like none other, my little comfy escapist fantasy. found family in far removed settings just does something to my brain

i've been at home for about a week now. it's a nice change of pace, doing nothing for a few days until i fly back and everything starts again. had two really pleasurable bike rides today and yesterday. boy the weather was so beautiful today, it rained all day and then at about 5-6 it stopped and everything was a bit damp and smelled of wet grass and concrete and nobody was out on the streets (couse y'know why ever would you risk getting wet god forbid). very refreshing, very grounding experience

once again i struggle to find time for various things i want to do. especially during the last few weeks when i tried to pull everything together for my dissertation and ended up doing these 14 hr days. yet despite that i think i'm doing good with it. i'm struggling a bit to keep consistency with my infrequent drawing, but it is much better than not drawing at all. i've had a lot of fun writing a bunch in a wiki i made for my worldbuilding project. i got Really into magic the gathering, like waay more than i already was into it lol. a bit upset that i'll miss the first two mom prerelease events at our lgs but i emailed the guys and reserved two prerelease kits to take home and i'll just play with tom. still gonna make the draft on wednesday

i'll try to update more often. i've been getting some rly cool ideas on how to change up the site and make it a bit more fun to browse (for me at least), so i'll slowly add on to it. i'm trying to find the balance of food review/recipe pages. i cooked a bunch more things from the holeinmygut cookbooks, and from cookbooks and places i wanna add to holeinmygut, but also fought with not wanting to cook them bcos "wow i really don't wanna write the page on it"


i should go to bed now

god knows my eyes are heavy

i leave you with the songs i listed above, a new post in which i dig around an old hdd i have, and, once again, my most beloved song in the world. this song means everything to me, nostalgia, sorrow, joy, enthusiasm, but now, more than anything, rekindling



< 20/01/23 | 22:22 >


i just watched moonrise kingdom and i really liked it. i felt the same watching it as i felt reading the books i was reading when i was 13



< 20/01/23 | 12:03 >

listening to: lana del rey - last girl on earth, chelsea hotel no 2


hey what's up guys it's scarce here

i decided to take the day off. i'm very slow today. i made some breakfast, played some yugioh (which is something i do now lol) then did my laundry and vacuumed. i was looking through old files on my laptop and i found an archive of my old facebook account, now deleted sadly. most of the morning i spent reading through old chat logs between me and this girl brie who was my closest friend at the time. they're particularly, uhm, soothing? in a way? that's a bad word for this but you get it

and something i drew

i've been drawing more than usual (and considering that the usual in the last 6 months was nearly none,) and i'm really having my fun with it. nothing beats listening to music mixes on youtube while drawing i've found, truly one of life's finest pleasures. i think i'm gonna take a short walk to get some air then draw some more, and then later me and tom are probably gonna play monkey island again. i've been making him play the games recently, and by that i mean he plays and i watch him, and sometimes give a hint if he's been struggling with a puzzle long enough. we finished the first one sometime before chsitmas and now we're about halfway through the second. lechuck's revenge is truly a flawless game. to clarify, we're playing the VGA/Floppy/DOS versions with the IBM-PC AdLib ost, the peak of comfiness, the perfect renditions of the games. i still haven't played the third game, something about the art style kinda throws me off, but i will once me and tom are done with the second game. from what i've seen of it so far, it takes place on mêlée island™ again, which also turns me off a bit from it since i liked the novelty of new islands and new adventures, instead of just rehashing everything. i hope that's not the case, but if it is

oh well

happy new year



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