5-3-2025

Pic of the day:

Kathryn and I finally got a chance to picnic in Jackson Park! We mostly missed the cherry blossoms (I think this is an apple tree) but we ain't picky lol

I'm jamming to:

Matt got me hooked on Tapeworms which is a French band that essentially makes J-pop lol. I like their ridiculous accents hon hon

Todd:

Todd

I watched:

Tim and I went to a 20th anniversary screening of Revenge of the Sith and boy what a wacky movie. It's like somebody gave a middle schooler an infinite budget for sickass effects and gorgeous spaceship designs. "From my point of view the Jedi are evil!!!" huh ok bro

I'm playing:

I'm soooo close to finishing the Johto pokedex in Crystal Clear, the only Gen II pokemon I haven't caught yet are the legendaries (u can get all of em in Crystal Clear because hell yeah). Recent dex additions are Blissey, Espeon, Dragonite and Entei 💪😤💪

I'm thankful for:

Been getting some new clients n projects lately! Weeeee paying rent. The fun thing about freelancing is that I get to mess around with so many different work types-- in a given week I'm doing like 5 or 6 completely different mini jobs and that makes me p happy

Featured Citypic:

The Pittsfield is just so damn good man. Apparently it's now tiktok famous lmao. If that dude messes up this building I will FIND him (but tbh he seems to be pretty passionate about it so it's prolly fine)

I'm looking forward to:

K and I are going to the AQUARIUM today we're gonna see BELUGAS with their big baby heads

4-17-2025

Pic of the day:

Todd smelled his first pencil eraser

I'm jamming to:

CAPSULE is one of my fav J-pop groups and I feel like I discover a dope old song by them every month or so. This one's from 2006!

They were really experimental & early to the EDM-J-pop-thing so maybe like 10% of their stuff has aged well... but when it hits it hits. Toshiko Koshijima's ultra-layered-stereo-chord-autotune-vocals are like pluggin your ears directly into cyberspace

Featured Coolzone:

A parking garage aka the peoples' balcony

I'm playing:

I hit 201 Pokemon caught in Crystal Clear! Number two hundo was the Tyrogue the Karate Master gives u at the bottom of Mt. Mortar caves, which I was stuck in for like 3 days. It's a children's game yall 😅

I've also been getting back into Smash Ultimate-- I forgot how addictive the Pikachu up-throw to thunder combo is

I'm thankful for:

Some of my friends have been really setting the pace with direct-action fundraising and volunteering recently and it's been awesome to see and support. With how insane and scary the Fed has been recently, it's giving me hope that young people will be able to organize properly in opposition at the local level.

I'm looking forward to:

Seeing Kathryn and some family this weekend, and it's supposed to be warm! Also some good buddies are working on moving here so I'm excited for that :)

4-8-2025

Pic of the day:

Crit Mass is the closest thing I have to a personality

I'm jamming to:

Tennyson has a really nice vocal rhythm, just smoooooooothly gliding overtop the beat without being too locked onto it

I'm playing:

My little Johto safari continues in Pokemon Crystal Clear! I'm up to 199 caught, with some of the recents being Chikorita, Togetic, and a bunch of the baby pokemon.

K and I were co-chilling on her couch the other night (she was watching White Lotus and I was playing my gameboy) and one of my eggs started to hatch, and I was like "hey hey watch this, I forget what it's gonna be, but it'll probably be cute"

It turned out to be Igglybuff, and the cuteness was apparently so shocking that Kathryn just screamed YAAAAAAAAY

The next day she texted me this:

I'm thankful for:

The fact that I trusted my gut and ignored my otherwise-brilliant tax guy's advice to start investing in the stock market lmfaooo

I'm also thankful that my friends Stacey and Matthew chose to do a combined karaoke-birthday last weekend and invited me and let me be annoying heheh

I'm looking forward to:

Supposedly the Jackson Park cherry blossoms are gonna bloom this month but uuuuuuuh consider me skeptical

3-14-2025

Pic of the day:

My obsession with St Clair St continues.

I'm jamming to:

Been a big Carpainter fan since my little stint in Japan in 2018-19. His stuff is so mechanical and complex, but with that little touch of warmth, like a cozy seat on a bullet train

I'm playing:

So, I bought an HDMI to mini-HDMI adapter, all excited to play my Anbernic emulator thing on my monitor, and turns out it's totally bunk on a software level. Soooooo I'm back on Helldivers 2 babyyy!

The score is great but it's been getting a little tiring-- so I've been muting it and playing the Dune Part II ost instead lol. Fits weirdly well and recontextualizes everything in wacky ways

I'm thankful for:

Todd! I randomly picked up one of those plastic propeller-handle-toys at a hardware store for him and he's absolutely feral for it. I think the aerodynamics break his brain cuz when I zing it, he meows his little head off and can't seem to predict where it'll go. He likes carrying it around in his mouth :)

I'm looking forward to:

My next tat-- I've got the design nearly finished! Shoutout to Max for helping me sort out some aesthetic balance issues with it

2-28-2025

Pic of the day:

K and I in Boston! We love these tiny Santa-elf-sized streets! She makes fun of me for saying that!

We went on a weekend-ish vacation, first to NYC (to see her brother) and then took the Amtrak up to Boston (to see some Revolutionary War sites and the Little Women house)! It was great, we saw tons of cool historic sites and architecture and I had my first canoli. And then two more canolis

I'm jamming to:

Just a thick instrumental for nite zones. I like the all different snares

I'm playing:

Pokemon Emerald Seaglass, which is a romhack of Emerald Version. I'm playing it on my 40XXH emulator thing. It's got some great new 2nd-gen-style art (and some awful new art) and a speedup button, so I'm messing around with it. Feels like cheating on my nearly-complete Crystal Clear Version on my gbc tho lol

I'm thankful for:

That I live in Chicago lol. NYC and Boston were so cool to visit, and so different from Chi and from each other. Block sizes / street designs / alleyways / terrain / architecture / transit systems etc etc. I was really surprised by how uncanny they looked at first-- being famous, prototypical American cities, it was odd that they seemed to be missing stuff: trees, gardens, alleys, large waterfronts, parking garages, etc. And with such tight winding streets!

Coming back home to Chi, it's interesting how "right" it looks in comparison-- I suppose that's probably because I came here a lot as a kid, while I was forming my first concepts of "what a city looks like" ?

There's def some stuff I wish I could steal and teleport to Chi-- like Central Park and maybe the whole Beacon Hill area-- but overall I gotta say, looking at it with fresh eyes, this one's my favorite

I'm looking forward to:

Springggggg

2-15-2025

Pic of the day:

The glow is cuz I took this thru a pair of clear safety glasses (which I wear when I'm walking in bad weather, it's like my own personal windshield lol)

I'm jamming to:

I love George Clanton so much. His last show here was incredible, the pit was insane for it being essentially vaporwave

I'm playing:

A bunch of old games on my new emulator thing, mostly Mario Kart DS! It was one of my favorite games in like, 2007, and honestly it's aged really nicely-- it's still super smooth, it controls surprisingly well with a d-pad, and the pixel art textures fit right in with the DS's low rendering resolution which gives the whole thing a nice chunky consistency. And Eyerok is cool

Also K and I played a little bit of Animal Crossing: Wild World cuz that was *her* fav game as a kid haha. She says she misses how rude the villagers used to be to you

I'm thankful for:

Snow!! Twinkly fluffy floating edible crystals that fall from the sky. I could never live in a place that doesn't get snow.

I'm looking forward to:

Seeing my buddy David's tiny old house that he just closed on. It's a red brick workers cottage from like 1890 and it looks amazing

2-2-2025

Shoutout: Sanjee's Software-Defined Radio Thing

Today's shoutout is my buddy Sanjee's idea for a software-defined radio (which he's calling "SDR" like it's gonna catch on lol). He says the idea is to take a radio antenna and hook it up to a computer that uses software to control the frequency-tuning, rather than a physical analogue transistor / potentiometer / whatever. He says people have done it before, but it's definitely new to me!

I think it sounds like a sick project, though I'm unsure what it'd be good for besides making super annoying noise

But this'd hardly be Sanjee's first contraption / doohickey. He's built several of these sorts of things. He's ahead of the game in that regard

Pic of the day:

Love when industrial stuff is painted bright green. The contrast is crazy-- almost like, a perversion of green itself

I'm jamming to:

"That's a sport"

I watched:

The Brutalist at Music Box! It was humongous in all dimensions. I haven't quite sorted out my thoughts about it yet lol

I'm playing:

Helldivers 2 on PC with my pals. Still. It's like the only 3D game I've played in months. The Autocannon is just too good man

I'm thankful for:

Coworking sessions with friends :) I'm lucky to have buddies who like working and yapping at the same time. It's maybe my favorite way to be social

I'm looking forward to:

Getting some really good fancy Japanese food with K for restaurant week!!

1-28-2025

What's new:

Working on this blog thingy, petting my cat, etc. Realized the Iroha lines up perfectly with Hot To Go lol

Pic of the day:

I like how Todd's pouch plops over his legs when he stands like this. Reminds me of Pikachu heheh

I'm jamming to:

Hatsune Miku lol. This is a live performance of a song that's literally Sleeping Beauty? Idk, I just like the harmonies. This was song #1000 in my awful playlist Sugarpop!

I watched:

Nothin! Seeing The Brutalist with some buddies on Thursday though :)

I played:

OlliOlli World for Switch. Since I heard that the Switch 2 will carry over all my Switch games, I felt like buying a new little one! OlliOlli World is colorful and casual-- it has momentum-oriented gameplay that reminds me a bit of Canabalt or Dino Run or Night Skate. It's not perfect (the dialogue is god-awful) but it's fun and flowy and has a slick soundtrack that reminds me of 2017

I'm thankful for:

Lake Michigan. Growing up, I didn't realize how rare it was to see a completely flat, unbroken horizon of water. There's something very calming about it, especially when you catch a glimpse of it from beyond the vertical chaos of the city. And it changes colors every day!

I'm looking forward to:

K's orchestra concert this weekend! She's playing Edward Elgar's "In The South (Alassio)" which she showed me and it rules, it's so cinematic

1-22-2025

What I've been up to:

Nothing lol it was the holidays baby!

Just kidding, I did quite a bit of client work in the lead-up, and had to crunch a bit buying Christmas presents for everybody. K was super helpful in preventing me from freaking out. She also gave me a ride back to Chicago! cry face heart emoji

Pic of the week:

I'm jamming to:

I'm playing:

Street Fighter Alpha for my GBC. Cute little fighting game-- it's slow enough for me to actually be decent at lol!

I watched:

Nosferatu. Cor blimey, we're Germans! I liked how it took really heavily parodied stereotypes (to the point of like, Sesame Street) and found ways to make em really gothic and scary again! K liked it too, through her fingers. She was the one who suggested it hahaha

I'm thankful for:

My family's health. Seems like everybody's taking much better care of their backs recently

I'm looking forward to:

Building this blog thing, to hopefully allow me to get off social media for good! I think it's been a long time coming-- I really genuinely believe social media, in pretty much every form nowadays, is bad for us and our society, not least of all because of all the billionaire owners sucking up and kissing the ring lately. I think I'll lead a happier, healthier, perhaps simpler life by leaving social media and doing something old-school like this instead.