lizardjay

Misc stuff in no particular order:

• My job wants to send me to a two week, out of town project management training program. I am partially excited for this, partially skeptical that there will be useful knowledge beyond what I already know, and partially dreading Networking with the other people... anyway, I emailed in my application and got no response so idk if I'm even going.
• I've clawed my Mahjong Soul sanma rank back into the top 100! ... on the English server, which is 2.05% of the total player base. So it's not as impressive as it sounds actually 😅 but I take my wins where I can! #63 babyyyyyyyy!!!! Ever since I got into the highest level room I've been fighting for my life. Last year I dropped down a rank but we are BACK and SURVIVING 😈 (The optimal method for my rank is actually to farm the people one room down, because of the exact numbers of last-place penalties between the rooms or something, but I object to this on principle. If I ever do that my opponents have the right to tear me apart like wolves.)
• M and I are watching the live action One Piece season 1 (late to the party, I know) and I had a dream where my mom (who does not care about anime) said that Luffy should "have Sanji's children" in order to avoid some kind of bad fate with the plot. I'm not sure I believe in Sanji/Luffy but I will be keeping this in mind as we continue watching. Maybe there's something there. Maybe things would be improved if Luffy was pregnant...? (As of episode 6 or so, if I ship anything it's Luffy/Zoro. But it's not like there's a whole lot of options yet.)
• We are also starting the game Chants of Senaar; it's kind of a language translation game? At the two hour mark, it's fun! I am disappointed that when you figure out the language it replaces your notes with the real words. I had one word that I noted as 'call me on the pgone' (typo preserved forever) as a placeholder, and that was overwritten with 'help' when we solved the language -_- bring me back my pgone!!
• I never made a Zeta Gundam post... short version: enjoyable, not as straightforwardly good as OG Gundam, probably because it tried to do a lot more. More factions, more people, more politics, more mobile suits in the fights and more talking between them, etc etc etc. It kind of muddled the waters. It also felt like we were getting a new and evolving sexism different from the previous series, but that's a whole other thing. I still really liked Zeta though. ZZ is on the list for after we have watched One Piece and Digimon Beatbreak and Witch Hat Atelier and maybe some other things to get past the Gundam Fatigue.
• A couple years ago now, I got an RSS reader set up only to forget what I even wanted it for. Now I have done it again and am actually subscribed to some stuff! I'm following a couple webnovels and newsletters now, and you can also put Youtube channels in there which is nice because I don't always open Youtube much on my laptop (I have my regular account on my phone and then my AMV channel separate for some reason, and separate subscriptions for each... it's too late to change it now), so this ensures I don't miss AMVs from particular people that I want to support. I feel mad with power. I can track EVERYTHING! 😈😈😈
• I've been sick TWICE in the last month+, which shouldn't be allowed. It's been three ish weeks since the last time and I still have minor symptoms -_- I am tired and behind on so many things...
• My latest bag of frozen peas is good! This is not very remarkable except that my last bag was not good. (I eat peas frozen as a snack btw.) Follow me for more exciting life tidbits like this 😅
• On the AMV front I am feeling very dull and uninspired. I opened up a couple projects today after literally doing nothing since January and poked around unproductively. The one idea I got the other day is best as a multi-character one so that's the opposite of easy. I just want something that's my usual... maybe I should go back to the vexercises and just goof around again. I also should watch more AMVs from other people...
• Apparently the new Nielsen rating thing is to WEAR A DEVICE THAT LISTENS TO THE AUDIO AROUND YOU AND DETECTS METADATA FROM SONGS AND SHOWS? We got a letter in the mail trying to entice us to do this. Absolutely not!!! I'm now wondering about whether their data will be skewed by the subset of people who are actually willing to do this. Supposedly it doesn't transmit any of the raw audio, just the info on what it's detected, but still! It's bad enough having a phone that is surely listening to you without adding this -_-
• I remembered to do my taxes last weekend and I'm getting $199 back at some point! I would prefer for this number to be 0 but somehow there's always a little extra every year. I think it's because we get salary increases in the middle of the year?
• And now, photos: some recent origami (both for coworkers; I'm sad to see the koala go), first flower in our yard, kitty cats.

I keep starting posts and abandoning them, so I think I just need to make them smaller....

Recent good things:

1) Finished week 100 in the Duolingo diamond league! (I am aware Duolingo is not very good for multiple reasons; it keeps me motivated though). And overall I will hit the three year mark at the end of March. But mostly I'm proud of the diamond league bc people keep trying to usurp me 😈
2) Relatedly, though it's not a neat milestone number: I have been working on my kanji for 778 days straight! I passed the two year mark in December. I introduce one new kanji every day. (Again, I recognize this is not a particularly "effective" method... but it's fun!)
3) My kitty cats, obviously. (I would put a cut here for the pics but I'm on my phone and it is challenging...)

I have a lot of posts I want to make and I'm behind on reading everyone else's, but:

To break up my Gundamposting (sorry, it will continue; we've started Zeta), here is a personal post! As usual it's pretty picture heavy.

1. KITTY CATS
2. assorted art
3. old nature pics I forgot to put here AND new pics

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I've decided to start writing up episode-by-episode thoughts about Gundam since I enjoyed doing that for Utena so much... the problem here is that I'm already 2/3 done with the OG Gundam series, but such is life :D so I will be starting at episode 29.

My coworker recently came back from a trip to Japan and brought me some origami paper! Practically speaking there is no real difference between this paper and stuff I can get online here, but all the color names are in Japanese so it's good practice, and it was very nice of him ^_^

To repay him for the gift, I just made him this duck! That's what this post is for: showing off the duck. I think it turned out really nice! I hope he'll like it.



Pattern from Jo Nakashima on YT. I've been using his channel for years; the patterns are the right level of challenging for me. Though there were a couple steps in here (like forming the head.....) that sent me into deep confusion and despair for a minute or two.

People with lots of icons (or any number, really): do you have any kind of philosophy on what icons to have in your collection, or which ones you like to use in what situations? I want to build up my collection but I'm getting choice paralysis :D

(I'm using my Tsuyu icon for this post, as my designated Thinking icon :D)

This question is prompted by me getting back into coloring manga panels for icons... it's really enjoyable! I'm catching up on the HxH manga (in some ways futilely, since it's looking like Togashi will never finish this arc, but it's still fun).

Here's a Kurapika from chapter 364. I find characters and creatures with big eyes and no mouths SO cute. I mean, look at him! As soon as I saw him I had to do something with this panel.



And here they are at icon size. I'm torn between my options! I guess it depends on the emotion I intend to convey with it. My range of emotions in my current icon set is kind of limited. Do I want innocent curiosity, or 'you've activated an interest of mine'?



Nobody look too closely at my shading. I don't know anything, I'm just here to have fun.

This time of year is always such a slog. I keep forgetting things that only happened days ago, and yet winter is so long?? You'd think if none of it registers it would go faster....

But anyway!! I had the day off due to snow! So here is a post. Be warned: there are a lot of pictures in it :D



This pic is as of 4PM, it's been snowing since noon, and it's supposed to keep going until 6AM O_O

Contents:

1. pseudo-art and photos (including cats)
2. reading
3. TV/anime
4. (bought) stuff
5. AMVs
6. RL
7. food

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I gotta catch up on DW and also have some posts I want to make, but instead....

Have y'all seen Doechii?????





Idk when I first listened to Doechii, last year sometime maybe? I have a couple of her 2020 songs in my playlist. But her latest album from this August is just.... SO GOOD.... and honestly both of these videos are PERFORMANCES. She's got the stage presence and the skill!!! She is so good!!!!!

Writing up this post I got sucked into watching the Tiny Desk concert again /o\

(Watching her cut out all the profanity in the Colbert performance is so funny :D)

Me, August 6:

I'm REALLY hoping that I won't regret posting this before the fight actually finishes. I can see it now: the next episode will have incredibly beautiful cinematic shots of Uraraka and Toga fighting in the sea spray with the light of the setting sun, and new backstory flashbacks for both of them...

The specific details were wrong, but. YEAH. THAT HAPPENED.

I don't REGRET posting and finishing the video; I think it's great! It's very much a... not a cliffhanger exactly, but a "standing at the precipice" type of ending. It's not ruined by the later continuation of events.

.... But now I wanted to include those events!! So I pretty quickly decided to do a version 2. Conveniently, I had cut out one verse/chorus from the song, so I just had to add that back in to make more room. The beginning is solid and doesn't need to be rearranged. But then I needed to put in some serious thought about how to work the rest of it. An extra minute is a LOT of time. And the whole structure is different, moments which were previously in the climax of the video are now just in the second verse/chorus.

It was also a good opportunity to fix some things that were weak in the original video. I think I really built in some new strengths with the edits. But I also introduced some new weaknesses.

Anyway: HERE'S THE AMV.



And because of who I am, I made a comparison video. Do not feel compelled to watch this unless you have genuine interest. I used the final chorus of the original AMV twice in here; once where I used the footage in the final video, and once in its original position in the final chorus.