three (well, two and a half) updates in a week?? on freckleskies dot neocities dot org??? unheard of

there's always this problem of the little flame, the little fire inside you. it lives, for lack of better words, călcată in picioare și bătută de ploaie, most of the time at least. you'd think it's small enough to be put out by the wind. you mourn and weep its absence, but then something happens. the wind fans, not extinguishes, and it gets a little warmer

finding words is hard, hold on

you like to see it, you thrive, you live on it! it is your fire! but not too hard, you know, since fanning it, at least right now, does nothing but tease and delude. you can't cook on this fire, you can't get warmed on this fire. it simply burns, a little more pleasant, a little more orange, and all youre thinking about is being cold and wet. you like seeing it, you feel like you're not quite dead yet, but you're not alive either. you just hope it's going to keep burning until, next time the wind blows, the flame gets fanned again, not extinguished, and you're alive again, not dead still. you just hope it's going to keep burning until, the next time you can be alive again, if the wind blows, the flame gets fanned again, and not extinguished

boy, i trailed off a bunch. this was originally about me finding the very beta version of this website. see it here:

logs > freckleskies beta

it comes with an ever so slight improvement to the logs formatting, another little step in sprucing up the site, bringing it to what i wanted it to be in the first place. the flame is warm still

postscript, i legally have to mention americandrim in any post mentioning puya, they'll kill me otherwise. whatever

and you do it every single day, again

evening website

life can be a cruel bitch but i can't help be in love lest she takes me down with her

some upsides:

1. god damn it, i had a whoole update planned out in my head while showering, then by the time i dry off and sit down to write i forget. oh well, i'll think of something. hold on

2. i'm back home for a couple weeks, then another couple weeks with my girlfriend in the netherlands so really looking forward to that. last friday i met with some friends from hs (high school, not homestuck), not just my usual boardgame group with which i meet regularly when i'm in ro, but two other guys i was actually much closer with then just kind of, idk, trailed off after hs. we just all met for a couple beers and to talk but it was really fun, we're all doing well which is quite nice. some weller than others. speaking of the boardgame group, we're supposed to meet this thursday at this pho place. god i've been having it in mind ever since we talked about it, been craving it so hard. thursday afternoon can't come soon enough

3. oh right how could i forget, i've been meaning to post this ever since i was in the airport. let the record show:

see the full spread

4. since we're on the subject of food, boy, this one's great. i decided i put on a little too much weight on. since my phd started my day to day in the uk has become extremely sedentary, more or less sit inside and at the desk all day, noone to meet or nowhere to go (other than random sporadic walks or grocery trips). anyway, long story short i got to about 108 kilos, pretty bad even for my height (187cm)

this morning tho! 99.4 kilos, first time under 100 in some years. it's been maybe two months(? plus minus a week or two) since i started making an effort towards this. it's even the biggest effort in the world either, i still eat good, i just eat less. smaller portions. it's an effort though, but so is everything else really. pretty happy with this one, gonna keep going like this until i hit about 90-92 i think

5. i finally got a new mouse which is quite awesome, will resume my adventure game streak with probably sam and max hit the road. i never finished gabriel knight and i have a couple more wadjet eye titles bought on gog, but i need time to recover between wadjet titles and i don't have the brain space for a sierra game now. good old lucas arts it is

some downsides:

1. it's all so troublesome

2. you have to do it every day too

3. every single one!

4. morning still comes, neither cold nor bright

monthly updates? more likely than you'd think!

the days are getting longer so i went for a walk after work

you can kinda tell spring has sprung, i've been getting a bigger drive for enjoying things. this is an odd thing to say but it's the best way i could come up with to phrase it. enjoying and making things

unfortunately i partake in either very little. my work has become somehow even more isolating than before. the contract job i used to work on before at least had me communicate with the people i was doing it for, sometimes even meet with them at their office and get treated to lunch, but this new one is for a chinese firm and i'm more or less cut off from them. communication is done by my supervisor, whenever that even happens, then kinda retold to me later. even between me and my supervisor there's like nothing, it's all very hands off. it's always been like that though, can't act like i'm surprised, and i suppose i can't be mad either cos it somehow worked til now. anyway. at least this new contract is finally work related to my phd research, no more random fullstack dev (just maintenance ig), just an honest to god time series forecasting problem. an obtuse problem but relevant nonetheless, i don't feel like i'm just wasting my time on nothing (as much, at least) anymore. it's a trade off i guess

but hey, speaking of ~isolation, my girlfriend was here for a while. nothing of particular note happened other than eating at some really good places a few times, going on some really nice walks, and adding a few more business cards to my collection of business cards from places we go to and really like. i also had takoyaki for the first time which was so so good. god i love octopus, it's very very different from the usual ways i've had it (grilled and also the way this chain of supermarkets at home serve it from their deli stand, which is kinda like grilled but it's not grilled, i dont think it's boiled either, honestly no clue and trying to look it up isn't fruitful, but it's served with herbs, oil, and lemon and it's oh so good) but still delicious. tasty ass animal

took a small break from adventure games after finishing technobabylon (one of the best point and click titles i've played). a couple weeks ago i ended up watching the fallout show which was so good, i can't believe how much attention to detail they could squeeze in it. i kept avoiding game adaptations couse i was always under the impression that they're lukewarm at best. never could've imagine something like this can stand this proud. between the show, detonating a massive feral ghoul at my weekly friday night magic game (and rly love for the set as a whole), playing fallout 1 on my 3ds, and just a lot of built up general interest in fallout, i finally came back to new vegas. i played a bit a summer or so ago but didn't stick. well not this time. i really clicked with it this time

i love it in novac. i just noticed the cursor shows up because the screenshot binding i use also brings up the pipboy right after. i should prolly change that. anyway, last night i just set jason bright and his followers off to space, godspeed, bright emperor!

can you believe this website has been in this unfinished draft-like form for, what, four years now? but i finally got the diary pages to look more or less like i've been planning them in my mind and notebook for long now

it's slowly coming together. this is nice

there's a bunch of other misc updates and improvements packaged alongside the new diary. like i said, coming together eventually. i think the diary came out really well